Page 31

WILL

L ook,” the performer says, sensing someone who would linger.

From the lacquer chest he lays out a wraparound top, a long outer skirt embroidered with peonies, a gossamer overrobe with flowing water sleeves and scarf in blush pink.

All in miniature. A tiny outfit that would fit only a child’s doll.

Beside the garments, he neatly places a pair of silk slippers and an ornate headdress. Then he pulls clay from his hands.

He pinches the wet slurry from his forearms, scoops it from his cheeks, moulds it with deft movements into a noblewoman with a round face and upturned eye.

A puppet to inhabit the clothes he has left her.

In an instant, the clay dries, porcelain white as fresh snow.

A glaze shines upon her features. He makes her swoop and wave, holding tiny hands demurely to her mouth.

And then a second puppet: a young man with thick caterpillar eyebrows and an earnest expression.

His immovable gaze happens upon the noblewoman.

Everything changes. With only a few strokes on their painted faces, the moment is still palpable. The instant they fall in love.

The performer slowly retracts his hands, like spinning a plate upon a stick.

The puppets remain, animated by the magic in his clay.

The life it gives them. They move towards each other, admiring the willow branch that drips above them.

Tilting their heads, gesturing with flat hands that will not bend nor point.

They do not speak and yet their story is clear.

A mother and daughter, striding purposefully towards the vegetable stall, stop to gawk at the show. A couple of children sit cross-legged on the dirt before the makeshift stage.

“A story of forbidden love. A beautiful merchant’s daughter fell in love with her father’s clerk.

But she was betrothed to another!” The back of his hand arches melodramatically to his forehead.

The two women giggle but wait, reeled in.

Others wander closer, their feet magnetised by the sight.

A magical puppet theatre is rare in a town as small as this.

Most of the magic users gravitate towards the capital, to its highborn households and businesses, if not the emperor’s court.

The two puppets fold into each other’s arms, the noblewoman’s head on the man’s shoulder.

The performer strikes a gong. It trembles through the mesmerised crowd, up and across the whole marketplace.

The puppets are yanked apart, as if an invisible barrier has come between them.

The performer leans in, voice quietening conspiratorially.

“Betrothed to a leather-faced Mandarin, twice her age! Her father locked her away, building a fence around her pagoda. The girl cried day and night until her maid relented. On the night before she was due to be married, the couple ran away together.”

He winks at me from across the market square. I scowl, annoyed he has caught me looking at all. My own stall is bereft of customers, unless I count the lonesome cockroach which skitters from my broom.

“They lived contentedly, for a time. She kept the house; he wrote poems to her beauty.” I roll my eyes, resisting the urge to stick two fingers down my throat.

The performer’s mouth wrinkles upwards at my response.

Behind him, the puppets dance as he speaks.

“Alas his skill with words was simply too great! His fame gave away their hiding place. The merchant and his men arrived with torches and blades, ready to destroy the couple.”

Vermillion-red and burnish-orange silk scarves flutter behind the puppet couple. The puppeteer cuts slivers of clay from his thumb, a faceless mob chasing after the pair. “As flames licked the walls of their humble home, the lovers looked into each other’s eyes and took their own lives.”

Even the children and street dogs are silent, sensing the sombre atmosphere.

Knowing they are all riveted, the man clasps his hands together, letting a single tear roll down his cheek.

“The gods looked down from Mount Kunlun. In their mercy, they transformed the couple’s souls into birds.

” He flings his hands open and porcelain birds fly out.

Their bodies are pure white with powder-blue wings.

The mesmerised crowd clap and cheer, filling his bowl with the clink of coins.

Before the sun is at its zenith, he has made more than I have in a week in this town.

He whistles as he packs up the puppets with care, smoothing down their robes before putting them to sleep in a box.

My temper flares, and despite myself, I stamp across the courtyard.

The porcelain birds flap their wings in a panic and flutter onto his shoulder as I approach.

“How dare you?” I hiss.

Weifeng’s hair falls across his eyes as he beams up at me.

Three years have passed since I last saw him.

He has not changed. The same lopsided grin that made me like him in the first place.

The nick on the shell of his ear that was entirely my fault.

Goddess of Mercy help me, I was an idiot then and it appears I have not shed the habit.

“I dare. You would not have approached me otherwise. I will take your anger over your indifference.” His cheeks are hollow where he gouged from his own body. The toll of his tale is apparent.

“You would spout this nonsense, to make money?”

Weifeng shrugs indifferently. “Better to confront the story than to hide from it.”

LOW

The girl was not very young nor very foolish…

but she was just young enough to still be giddy.

Balancing on the toes of her silk slippers as she walked on the low pavilion wall, she peeled layers from herself with the recklessness of youth.

Folded the paper into boats to spin on the lily pond.

Stretching up to place paper cranes on the branches of the plum tree, whilst the gardener shook his head but pretended not to notice.

Chattering away like one of her birds as she left mud-stained scraps of paper and scrolls scattered around like moulting feathers.

Everything was simple. Mistakes scrunched up into balls and quickly forgotten, torn paper easy to replace.

On the cusp of adulthood, everyone indulged her.

She would have time enough to grow up later.

Her mother had passed away not long after she was born, but her father had the gift of bamboo.

Wooed by every business from construction to fabric, each winter he would cut the fingers from one hand to give her the finest things.

His delicate paper flower, the most exquisite in the garden.

She had tutors in calligraphy and poetry; could embroider a perfect chrysanthemum and perform the peacock dance; handle a sword, a bow and a flute.

Her days were filled, but although she did not want for anything, there was a want all the same.

He arrived with the end of the rainy season, like summer had been tucked under his collar.

An apprentice clerk to help her father with his books.

His skin was inkstone. Words and pictures flowed from his touch.

She brought him lychees damp with morning dew; freshly steeped tea; she danced and sang until all the household staff whispered, but she paid them no mind.

She peeled scrolls from her legs, wide as the drapes on a canopy bed, folding her desire into paper lotus blossoms.

Paper and ink. They were fated to be. The destiny and purpose Meiyu had dreamed of. She had read all the great romance poems but had yet to experience it herself. To live one. Write one. The anticipation so sweet that she could subsist on it: the desire to fall in love.

WILL

“Did you follow me?” I ask sharply.

Weifeng strokes one of the porcelain doves on his shoulder.

His creations do not have a voice, but the bird shakes its wings as if to puff out against my wrath.

Even though I know it is clay, the fine feathers look soft and real.

Its head is tucked behind his earlobe. I resist the urge to pick it up and dash its fragile body against the ground.

The willow story has pursued me in the months and years since we last crossed paths.

No matter where I go, they are retelling it: in poems and song, sighing over the doomed lovers as they plant out the rice, as they mend fishing nets and shore up broken walls.

“Would you believe me if I said this was a chance encounter?” The dove hops onto Weifeng’s cupped hand and he gingerly places it into the low branches of a nearby tree. “But since I am here, have dinner with me.”

My traitorous heart skips a beat even as I frown. There is no escaping him in this small place. I fold my arms. “You are paying.”

He drags a stool over to my stall, mending the frayed hems of the puppets’ garments as I shuffle my wares in the hope of enticing new customers. Weifeng looks intently at his work, words as if not for me. “I always thought it would be papercutting.”

“I have not since…” My voice falters but he does not push me. We both know how far we’ve evolved from the tale his puppets tell.

“Lovers transformed into birds, butterflies,” Weifeng says, amusement tingeing his voice. He cleans the face of the noblewoman puppet, dabbing at the unseen tears upon her cheeks. “We are obsessed with flying.”

“Maybe we just want to be free.”

“And you, Meiyu? I kept away as you asked. How does it feel to be free?” I look at him finally, really look at him.

The dark circles under his eyes, the marks on his arm where he pulled the clay from his own body.

My hand aches to slip against his, to peel a layer from myself to bandage his wound.

The memory of his skin’s warmth is suddenly as tangible as the bamboo fibres I am holding.