Wild Orchid (4 page)

But try as I might I couldn’t quite make the connection between the form and what it represented.

“Determination?” I hazarded a guess.

“Close,” Li Po said. He gave me a sidelong glance, as if to judge my temper. “Do you want me to tell you, or do you want to keep on guessing?”

“Tell me,” I said at once. I wanted to understand more than I wanted to say I’d figured it out myself.

“Courage,” Li Po declared, at which I clapped my hands.

“Of course!” I cried. “He’s not certain what is coming next, so he holds one arm in front to protect himself, but he’s also ready to attack if he needs to. Uncertain but prepared. Courageous.”

I gazed at the character, as new possibilities seemed to explode inside my head.

“Does it always make you feel like this?” I asked.

“Like what?”

By way of an answer I captured Li Po’s hand, pressing his fingers against the inside of my wrist. You could feel my heart beat there, hard and fast, as if I’d just run a race.

Li Po gave a sudden grin, understanding at once. “Yes,” he said. “Every time I grasp a new meaning, it feels just like that.”

“Can you show me how to draw the character?”

Li Po placed the stick in my hand and then closed his fingers over mine. “You begin this way,” he said.

Together we made the stroke that ran straight up and down. That seemed to me to be the soldier’s backbone. The rest followed from there. Within a few moments we had reproduced the character together. Li Po took his hand away.

“Now you try it on your own.”

It was harder than it looked. I performed the motions half a dozen more times before recreating the character to both Li Po’s satisfaction and my own. I sat back on my heels, the stick still clutched in my fist, gazing at the row of tiny soldiers marching across the earth in front of me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Much more beautiful than embroidery.”

“It wouldn’t look as nice on a dress,” Li Po commented.

I laughed, too pleased and exhilarated to let his teasing make a dent in my joy.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t own any fancy dresses anyhow.”

I poked the tip of the stick into the wet earth, a frown snaking down between my brows.

“What?” Li Po asked.

I jabbed a little harder. “Nothing,” I said, which was a big, fat lie. But I wasn’t sure how to ask for what I wanted.
Courage, Mulan
, I suddenly thought.

“Willyouteachme?” I asked, the words coming out so quickly it sounded as if they were one. I took a breath and then tried again. “The characters you’re learning, will you teach me more of them? I know my father hasn’t said I may, but I want to study them so much and I …”

All of a sudden I felt light-headed, and so I drew in a breath. “I think it’s what my mother would have wanted.”

Li Po was silent for a moment. “It must be awful,” he finally said. “Not even knowing what she was called.”

Without warning Li Po sat up straight, as if he’d been the one poked with my embroidery needle. “I know,” he exclaimed. “We could make up a name, a secret name, one we’d never tell anyone. That way you’d have something to call her. You’d be able to talk to her, if you wanted to.”

He squirmed a little on the hard rock seat, as if he’d grown uncomfortable. But I knew that wasn’t it at all. Li Po was excited, just as I was.

“If I choose, will you show me how to write it?”

“I will,” Li Po promised. “Pretend you’re about to make a wish. Close your eyes. Then open them and
tell me what you want your mother’s name to be.”

I inhaled deeply, closing my eyes. I listened to the water in the stream. I felt the warmth of the late afternoon sun beating down. And the name popped into my head, almost as if it had been waiting there all along.

“
Zao Xing
,” I said as I opened my eyes. “Morning Star.”

“That’s beautiful,” Li Po said. “And look, the characters that form it look almost the same.” Quickly he drew them, side by side.

“Thank you,” I breathed when he was finished. Never had I been given a more wonderful gift. “Thank you, Li Po.”

He smiled. “You’re welcome, Little Orchid.”

I made a rude sound. “I’m big enough to dump you in the stream,” I threatened.

“Yes, but if you do that, I won’t teach you how to read and write,” Li Po replied.

I threw my arms around him. “You’ll teach me? Honestly? You’ll teach me everything you learn yourself?”

“Everything I learn myself,” Li Po promised. “Now and forever. You’re my best friend. I love you, Mulan.”

“And I love you,” I said. I kept my arms around him tight. “Let’s make a pact,” I said fiercely. “No matter what happens, let’s promise to be friends for life.”

“Friends for life,” Li Po echoed as he returned
my hug. “But we’ll have to be careful, Mulan. You have to work hard at your own lessons too. If my family finds out what we’re doing, they’ll split us up for good.”

“I know. I’ll be careful, and I’ll work hard. Honestly I will,” I vowed. “It’s just … being a girl is so hard sometimes. It always seems to be about pleasing somebody else.”

“Then you must master your lessons as best you can so that you can find the way to please yourself.”

I released him and sat back, my hands on my hips. “What makes you so wise, all of a sudden?”

“I’m going to be a great scholar someday. Haven’t you heard? Everybody says so.”

“Everybody being your mother, you mean,” I said. But I stood up and made a bow. “I am honored to become the first student of the great master Li Po.”

“I’m going to remember that, to make sure you pay me the proper respect,” Li Po said. And then he grinned. “Now sit back down. There’s one more character I want to show you.”

I settled back in beside him. Li Po leaned forward and drew a character comprised of just four lines.

The first was a downward swipe, slanting right to left. This was followed by a quick stroke across it to form a
T
, moving left to right.

Then on the right side of the down stroke, just beneath the place where the two lines crossed, Li Po
made a line that started boldly toward the right. Before it went far, though, it abruptly changed direction, sweeping back to the left and down so that it looked like a man’s leg bent at the knee.

Li Po lifted the stick and then put the tip to the earth and made one last stroke, left to right, angling down just beneath the bent leg.

Finally he lifted the stick and sat back, his eyes on me.

I studied the character. I was almost certain I knew what it meant, but I didn’t want to rush into anything. I wanted to take my time making up my mind.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

Li Po reached out and placed his palm on top of mine. We clasped hands, squeezing them together tightly, and I knew that I was right.

Just below that sudden bending of the knee was a space, a triangle. And it was in this space that the character’s meaning resided. For this was its center, its true heart.

It’s just four lines
, I thought. But placed so cleverly together that they represent two entities, joining in such a way as to create something else. That secret triangle, as if formed by two hands clasped.

“It’s ‘
friend
,’ isn’t it?” I said.

“That’s it precisely,” Li Po answered with a smile.

There was no more discussion after that. No more lessons, no more talk. Instead my only friend and I sat together, hands clasped tightly, until the light left the sky and we headed home.

F
OUR

In the years that followed there were many lessons, and the pact of friendship Li Po and I had forged that day continued to grow strong. Every time Li Po learned something new from his tutors, he taught me to master it as well. It wasn’t long before I had added riding and archery to my list of unladylike skills. And so over the years a curious event transpired, though I don’t think either Li Po or I realized it at the time.

I stopped being quite so wild, at least on the inside.

While the new skills I was mastering were considered very masculine, they also took hard work, dedication, and time. In other words they took discipline, and not even I could be disciplined and wild all at the same time.

Acting with discipline requires you to know your true nature and, having come to know it, to bring it under control. On the surface I might have appeared unruly and unladylike, preferring boys’ tasks to my own. But I kept the promise I had made the day of my first writing lesson. I learned my own tasks as well as the ones Li Po set for me. There wasn’t a girl in all
China who had my unusual combination of skills, no matter that I looked like a simple country girl on the outside.

I still struggled at certain tasks, as if my hands were clumsy and unwilling to perform those skills that did not also fire my imagination or touch my heart. But Li Po had no such problem. It sometimes seemed to me that there was magic in Li Po’s fingers, so deftly could he master anything he put his mind to.

Nowhere was this more apparent than when we practiced archery. I loved these lessons above all others, with the possible exception of horseback riding. When I rode, I could imagine I was free, imagine I was someplace where I didn’t need to hide my own unusual accomplishments. A place that didn’t require me to hide my own true face, but let me show it bravely and proudly. A place where I could be whomever I wanted.

In the absence of such a place, however, I practiced my archery.

I loved the feel of the bowstring against my fingers, pressing into my flesh, the stretch and burn of the muscles across my shoulders and back as I pulled the string back and held it taut. I loved the sensation in my legs as I planted them solidly against the earth, rooting me to it, making us one. It is not the air that gives the arrow its ability to fly. The air is full of currents, quick and mischievous, ready to send the arrow’s flight off course. The thing that makes the
arrow fly true is the ground. The ground calls to the arrow, making the arrow long to find its target and then return to earth, bringing its prize home.

I never lost my joy in setting the arrow free. Always it was as wonderful as it had been the very first time. I loved to watch it streaking toward the target, my heart not far behind it. On its way to the destination I intended and nowhere else.

On a good day, anyhow.

If I could have spent all my days shooting and retrieving arrows, I would have. But as good as I became, I could not match Li Po’s skill. There were times when it seemed to me that he and the arrow shared some secret language, whispering together as Li Po held the feathers against his cheek, waiting patiently, watching his target, before letting the arrow fly. I could hit eight out of any ten targets we chose, but Li Po could hit anything at which he aimed, no matter how far away it was.

“Let me see you hit that,” I challenged him late one summer afternoon. It was the time of day when we most often managed to snatch a few hours together. We were in our favorite place alongside the stream that separated his family’s lands from mine. We often practiced shooting here, for there were many aspects to take into account—the steepness of the banks and the breath of the wind—and, of course, there were plenty of plums to use for targets.

The particular plum I had suggested as today’s target was small, hanging on a branch toward the
back of the tree. In order to pierce the target, Li Po would have to send his arrow through the heart of the tree, through many other branches filled with leaves and fruit.

I paced the bank opposite the tree. We were standing on Li Po’s family’s side of the stream.

“Shoot from here,” I finally instructed. The place I selected was higher than the tree branch. Li Po would have to angle his shot down. This is always more difficult, because it’s harder to judge the distance.

Li Po moved to stand beside me, eyeing both the branch and the location I had chosen, and then he gave a grunt. I stepped aside. Quickly Li Po took an arrow from the quiver on his back and set it to the bow. Then he set his feet in precisely the way that he had taught me, feeling the ground with his toes. Only when he was satisfied with his footing did he raise the bow and pull the arrow back, keeping his body relaxed even as the bowstring stretched taut.