Wild Orchid (9 page)

“It is a wonderful gift,” I said. “I will take good care of it, I promise. But I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

“You are giving me your best friend,” the general said. “I think that’s more than gift enough. Now let’s go inside for breakfast before your father begins to fear that I intend to take you with me as well.”

And so on a fine autumn morning I watched my oldest friend and my newest friend ride away together. And I wondered what would happen to those of us who stayed behind.

E
IGHT

My days with my father soon fell into a rhythm. While he spoke no more than he had before, his silence no longer stung me with imagined comparisons between the daughter he had envisioned and the daughter he had actually found. This new silence felt gentler, more companionable somehow. As if my ability and determination to restitch his wound had enabled more than just the healing of his leg. It had created the possibility for us to heal as well.

I caught my father watching me from time to time when he thought I wouldn’t notice. He did this mostly in the mornings while I worked dutifully at my sewing. Sometimes I wondered if it was because I looked like my mother once had, hard at work with her own needle and thread. But although my father and I were slowly drawing closer, we both avoided the subject of my mother.

My days were not all given over to traditional tasks, as I had once feared they might be. My father suggested I continue with my reading and writing. He set me a series of tests during our first days together, as if to judge my progress.

“Your friend Li Po taught you well,” he commented after reviewing my work. “You have a fine and steady hand with a calligraphy brush.”

“Thank you, Father,” I answered, both astonished and pleased by the compliment.

My father gazed at the characters I had made, as if reading something there I had not written that only he could decipher.

“You must miss him very much,” he finally said.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “But I …” I broke off, hesitating.

My father looked up from his study of my work. “But what, Mulan?”

“I am glad that General Yuwen wanted to make Li Po his aide,” I said. “It is a wonderful opportunity. It is perfect for him. I would not have you think—I wouldn’t wish Li Po back just because I miss him. I am not jealous of his good fortune or his happiness.”

My father regarded me steadily for several moments. It was long enough for me to curl my toes inside my shoes, the closest I could come to squirming without giving myself away.

“Your feelings do you credit, Mulan,” my father said at last. “I think …” Now he was the one to pause, as if he wished to use the perfect words or none at all.

“I think that you would be a good friend to have.”

Before I could think of an answer, my father tapped the sheet of paper in front of me with the end of his brush.

“Now,” he said, “let us see if we can pick up where you and Li Po left off.”

And so my father became my new teacher, teaching me even more characters than Li Po had. Surely there was not a girl in all of China with my skills, and not simply because I could read and write.

It took some time for me to decide what to do about General Yuwen’s gift of his son’s bow, quiver, and arrows. But I finally came to the conclusion that he had not bestowed such a gift only to have it collect dust. And so late one afternoon, as my father was following his usual custom of quiet contemplation out in the sunlight, I took General Yuwen’s gift from its hiding place and changed from one of my new dresses back into my tunic and pants. Then I headed to the old plum tree.

There were no plums at this time of year, but there were still plenty of leaves to use for targets. The fact that I had learned to shoot on one of Li Po’s bows now came in handy, as it meant I was accustomed to handling a bow made for someone larger than I am. I made myself string and unstring the bow half a dozen times, testing my strength against its weight before I so much as looked at an arrow. And even then I tested the tension of the string first, pulling it back, holding it steady, easing it forward another half a dozen times. Only when I felt certain that the bow and I understood each other did I select an arrow and put it to the string.

I set my feet the way Li Po had always shown me,
feeling the power of the ground beneath my feet. I pulled back the string, sighted, and then let the arrow fly. By a hand’s breadth it missed my intended target, a fat cluster of autumn-colored leaves at the end of one of the plum tree’s branches. Annoyed with myself, I made a rude sound. I took a second arrow and tried again. This one just tickled the leaves as it whisked by. My third arrow passed straight through the target, scattering greenery as it went. I lowered the bow and rolled my aching shoulders.

“That is fine shooting,” I heard my father say. Startled, I spun around. I had been so engrossed in mastering my new bow that I hadn’t heard my father approach. We stood for a moment, gazing at each other. I was just opening my mouth to apologize for both acting and looking so unladylike, when my father spoke first.

“May I see the bow?” he inquired.

Wordlessly I brought it to him. He took it in both hands and examined it closely. “I know this bow,” he said at last. “It belonged to Yuwen Zhu, General Yuwen’s son.”

“General Yuwen gave it to me as a parting gift,” I said.

“Huh,” my father said, and I felt my heart plummet. In my experience this was the reply he gave when he wished to keep his feelings a secret.

“Today is the first day you have used this?” my father asked.

I nodded. “Yes,
Baba
.”

Without warning my father lifted the bow as if to shoot it himself, pulling back the string.

“Huh,” he said once more. He lowered the bow and turned to look at me. “And you shot only twice before you found your mark?”

“I shot three times,” I said, “and found my mark on the third try. The bow and I are still becoming acquainted.”

“Hmm,” my father said. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new comment.

“I suppose it was your friend Li Po who taught you to shoot as well.”

“Yes, Father,” I said again, and then I decided it might be better to get it all over with at once. “And to ride a horse, and to use a sword, though I’m better at riding and archery than at swordsmanship.”

“Is that so?” said my father.

“I’m sorry to have deceived you,” I began, “but I—”

My father held up a hand, and I fell silent. “I don’t think ‘deception’ is quite the right word,” he said quietly. “I never asked if you could do such things, for it never occurred to me that you might be able to. When I was away, I didn’t think much at all about what you might or might not do, to tell you the truth.”

An expression I had never seen before came and went in his eyes, too quickly for me to be able to identify it.

“Is there anything else that I should know about?”

“No,” I answered as steadily as I could. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“So let me see if I have this right,” my father went on. “I have a daughter who can read, write, ride a horse, wield a sword, and accurately shoot an arrow with a bow that would make a strong young man work hard. She can also weave, sew as fine a seam as I have ever seen, and embroider.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I hate the embroidery.”

“I am glad to hear it,” my father answered without missing a beat. “In my experience those who are good at everything usually are also good at being insufferable.”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it without making a sound. “I don’t know what to say,” I confessed.

At this my father laughed aloud. And suddenly the expression on his face that I had been unable to read before made perfect sense. It was amusement.

He handed me back my bow. “That makes two of us, Mulan. I don’t know what to say to you most of the time. That’s the plain truth.” He made a gesture. “Come, let’s walk and retrieve your arrows.”

“What about the bank?” I asked. It had been a tumble down the stream bank that had reopened his wound.

“I believe I have mended well enough to risk the stream bank,” my father answered, with just the glimmer of a smile. “Mending me is something else you did well, my daughter.”

We crossed the stream and retrieved my arrows in silence. My father turned and looked up into the branches of the plum tree.

“You like this place, don’t you?” he asked. “You come here often.”

“It’s my favorite place,” I answered. “It has been ever since I was a child. I don’t know quite why.”

My father was silent, his eyes on the tree. The leaves were turning color. Soon they would begin to fall. In less than a month I would turn fourteen. Within the following year I would be considered a young woman, old enough to marry, no longer a child.

“Your mother loved this place.” My father finally spoke, his tone quiet. The gentlest breath of wind could have knocked me over in surprise.

“When your mother and I were first married, it was early spring and there was still snow on the ground. But when it melted and the plum trees began to bloom, your mother went out every day to cut branches and bring the blossoms indoors. If ever there was a moment when I could not find her, I knew right where to look. This tree was the one she loved best of all.”

“It’s always the first to bloom,” I heard my own voice say. “Every year. I know because I watch for it.” I went on, before I lost my nerve, “I’m sorry for what I said before. When you asked me what my wish might be. I was angry.”

“Perhaps you had a right to be,” said my father.

“That doesn’t make any difference,” I replied. “In my anger I spoke with disrespect. It was wrong, and I apologize.”

My father pulled in a very deep breath, and expended it in a long sigh. Then, at last, he took his eyes from the tree and looked at me.

“Thank you, Mulan. You have spoken the truth to me, even though you were afraid to, I think. In return I would like to tell you a truth of my own. It is a truth that may not be easy for you to hear.”

“I will listen to your words with patience, Father,” I said.

My father’s gaze returned to the plum tree.

“I thought that I would never return to this place,” he said quietly. “I did not wish to, after your mother died. I have been a soldier almost all of my life. I have seen death. I have taken away life. Death on the battlefield is something I understand. It may not be easy, but if one dies performing his duty, a soldier dies an honorable death.”

He paused, falling silent for so long I thought perhaps he did not mean to continue.

“But your mother’s death, the fact that she should lose her life bringing a new one into the world …
That
I could not find a way to reconcile,” my father went on. “I could not even find a way to honor your mother in my memory. Every thought of what we had once shared and what I had lost was like a knife twisting in my heart. I even …”

His voice sank so low that I had to strain to hear it. “I even wondered whether or not I might have been to blame.”

“But how can that be?” I protested at once. “You
never meant her harm. You loved each other.”

“But that’s just it,” my father said, his voice anguished now, an anguish that came from deep within him. It seemed to cause him physical pain to bring it forth. His voice sounded as if it was being wrenched from his body against his will.

“Perhaps there is a reason our people marry first and hope love will come later, rejoicing if it comes at all. Perhaps to love as strongly as your mother and I did was unnatural. Her untimely death has always seemed so.”

“No,” I objected. “I don’t think that can be right,
Baba
. As long as you act with honor in her memory, isn’t love honored also?”

“But what if I did not act with honor?” asked my father. “I locked away my feelings for your mother. I deliberately put from my mind all thoughts of this place, our lives together, and the child we had created. I told myself that I was doing what a soldier should, that I was being strong.

“But the truth is, I was doing just the opposite. I took the coward’s way out, because to deny my past with your mother meant that I denied you as well. It was many years before I saw the truth of this, and by the time I did …”

My father broke off, shaking his head. “By the time I did, it seemed it had to be too late, as you were nearly grown.”

“And then you were wounded, and you had to return here,” I said, filling in the rest of the story. “And
the daughter you weren’t so sure you wanted fell out of a tree at your feet.”

“Yes, but not just any tree,” my father said, bringing us full circle. “This one. The tree your mother loved so much. That is the reason Huaji and I rode along the streambed. I wanted to see this plum tree before anything else, and you cannot see it from the road.

“And it isn’t true that I did not want you, Mulan. I just didn’t understand how much I did until I came home.”

“Then you aren’t disappointed in me?” I asked, trying to ignore the sudden quaver in my voice. “You don’t …” I paused and took a moment to steady myself. If my father could speak of things that pained him, then so could I.