Page 35

It is late. Even the patrons who ordered jars of baijiu stumble off to their beds.

The locals mutter at the sudden downpour of rain, straw hats and tattered paper umbrellas shielding them.

The server blows out every candle except the one on my table, retiring to bed.

I was the first to arrive and will be the last to retire.

Moving the congealed food around my bowl.

Stubbornly hoping he will come for me, even though I know he is long gone.

The door sweeps open, rain and wind blustering in through the gap.

Shapes like thick snowflakes swirl towards me in a blustery stream, reaching out to hold me in an embrace.

I grasp at one, holding it between finger and thumb.

Paper. Squares of paper in every shade. Big enough to make kites, small enough to fold offerings.

The paper comes to me from Weifeng’s arms, leaping across the distance.

I do not understand. I do not need any more paper.

I am saturated in it. And yet the paper finds me.

It sticks to my cheeks and forehead, circles my chest and legs. Cool from the rain, like a balm.

Weifeng dumps out heavy bundles of paper from the woven basket upon his back.

Wrapped up in waxy banana leaves and tied in string like steamed parcels, keeping them mostly dry from the rain.

Pile after pile, he stacks up before me, not saying a word.

I am swaddled in a cocoon of scattered sheets, only my face free of the patchwork pieces.

“Why?” I ask finally.

“Because once it made you happy. I believe it can make you happy again. You do not have to bleed with every cut. You do not have to do everything yourself, the hard way.” Weifeng’s clothes are wet and stained.

His face is lined with exhaustion, clay rolling off him in fat drips to puddle on the ground.

Nevertheless, his face shines with triumph.

He has been to the next town and back to buy me this gift.

I untie the bundle on the table, touching the topmost square of cream paper.

I imagine what I could make with it. Folding and cutting fine floral details on the back of a dragon or circular motifs as round as mooncakes.

Without taking a piece of myself with every cut.

Without worrying that everything has to be perfect. I can simply enjoy it.

My hands shake as I lift the sheet of paper. Trembling like a fledgling with wet wings. My eyes blur so that I cannot see what is before me, tightening my grip in fear. The paper crumbles in my fist. I cannot.

I tear the damp paper from my body, tossing each sheet to the ground.

They adhere to my damp palms, to each other, desperate to cling on.

I know not if I am tearing his paper or my own anymore.

I mulch the clumps in closed fists, pulping it with my anger.

Ruined. Everything I have ever wanted has only ruined me and those I love.

Paper is too fragile for anything else.

LOW

When Weifeng arrived, Meiyu’s ex-lover had been dead for days.

She vowed a suicide pact with him, convincing him the gods would transform them into doves.

Stared at his body for hours as she used her teeth to tear her bindings loose.

She had no desire to join him. The only birds she would choose were the ones she’d peeled from her skin over the preceding days.

Cutting the shape of their paper bodies with fingers and teeth.

A flock of them, benign to his eyes, until she had taken her magic and pushed them down his throat.

Stuffed his mouth and nose with them until his bloodshot eyes finally saw that she was not the weak maiden he thought to rescue.

Not his one true love. Just a trapped woman making him suffocate on his own lies.

Weifeng took it all in, saying nothing at the macabre scene.

He dropped to his knees, arms already around her.

Despite herself, Meiyu stiffened, pushing him away with a snarl.

The paper flaked from where he touched it, thick manuscripts cleaving from her.

Sharp-toothed scrolls battered about his head with all of her frustrations, all of her rage.

Cutting him. She did not realise what she had done until he held his hand against one ear, blood trickling between his fingers.

He came for her, despite his family’s objections and her father’s death.

There was nothing here for him apart from her love. And she could not even give him that.

“He isn’t me,” Weifeng said finally. Logic told her his words were true. He had done nothing to deserve this suspicion. Yet, everything inside her that was lightness and joy had turned to amber resin. A well poisoned far beneath its surface.

“I won’t be a puppet in someone else’s story,” Meiyu said. Vehemence made her brittle, paper cracking in her hands.

“You wouldn’t be.”

“You do not know that for certain!” She was tired of being told what her future looked like.

By the father who did not want her to want, and yet laid the burden of his sacrifice upon her back.

By the ex-lover who sought to mould her in an image not of her own choosing.

And even now, by the man she loved, who wanted to make promises for a future that was not certain.

“You cannot promise me that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. That we will never make each other unhappy. That we will live together until we are old and grey. My mother made that promise to my father. A lie.”

“It is true, I do not know how our story ends.” Weifeng took his hand from his ear. The blood trickled still, a slow drip like a tear running down his face. “I do not want to leave you, but I will…if that is what you need.”

Meiyu wished he was the tyrant the stories portrayed him as. The jealous suitor. It would make her decision easier. “I need time. Space to learn what it is to be myself.”

“Take it. A week? A month?”

“A year,” she said, turning her eyes away so she would not see the expression on his face. “A year to go through all the seasons, to find out what I want to write upon these pages. A year to prove I can be myself, and not simply fall into someone else’s narrative.”

Weifeng said nothing, so still that his features seemed but painted on.

His throat bobbed finally as he wet his lips.

“A year. I will become the person I wanted to be also. Let us meet, you and I, under the willow tree in your father’s pavilion.

A year today to see how we have grown, separately if not together. ”

WILLOW

The paper pulp falls in a ring around my feet.

A gift he offered me, destroyed in the only way I know how.

He wants me to be courageous, to jump back into the fray and follow those dreams as I once said I would.

But paper is too delicate. Despite the lofty ambitions I once had, I do not know what to do. I am afraid.

“You did not come,” he says finally. I expected it on the first day, when he saw me across the market square.

When he cut me with the puppet theatre as I had once cut him with my paper.

The accusation I deserved. I had promised to meet him, a year after we separated.

“I waited. A whole week, just in case. Even when it rained, on a night not dissimilar to tonight, I waited. And then the next year. And the next.”

“I could not find the person I wanted to become. All this time, I thought I was someone else’s story, but the truth is, I am nothing. A blank page.” I cannot look at him as I admit my shame. And then I lie, to push him further away. “I assumed you had moved on.”

“A blank page. How wonderful,” Weifeng says.

I stare at him. “No, it is a terrible thing. To lack the skill to write a real story.”

“The Willow Story – the ill-fated lovers. Is that a real story?”

“For some.”

“But not for you.” Weifeng stoops to pick a handful of the pulped paper from around my feet. “Not for us.”

He makes a space for himself, toe to my toe. Uses his fingertips to roll clay from his forearm, kneading it together with the ruined paper. Pinching and pulling out the resultant mix, until he makes a simple model. An arch.

“What purpose does it have?” I cannot help but ask.

“Does it matter?”

I have been so consumed with finding my purpose that I have forgotten to enjoy the journey.

One that does not always have to be walked alone.

He has always supported me. Listening and challenging me to be more ambitious, to create for no reason other than my own joy.

Just as I never belittled his dreams. In all the narratives, I lost that thread.

His wet hair clings to his face, and clay drips from his chin, but he is everything I have ever needed.

I ignore the bridge in his hand, but make a new one with my arms around his neck.

Paper and clay are not the most obvious fit, but together, we are stronger than anything either of us could be alone.

“This,” I say with certainty, “is where our story begins.”

Weifeng smiles tenderly, clay tears glistening in his eyes.

Beneath our feet, the paper and clay mix together to form something new.

It stretches up with our magic, a willow tree.

I am certain of many things: that the hand now clasped in mine will support, love and respond to everything I need; that we will grow together, branches intertwined until there is no way to separate the two.

It delights me.

It terrifies me.

He strokes my cheek, holding me until the trembling eases. Gently pushing the pages back into my jaw. He tilts my head up. “Look.”

Above us, the paper-clay tree forms a shelter.

A thick canopy of stretching branches and rustling paper leaves, like an umbrella overhead.

Father, ex-lover, Weifeng – they all wanted to protect me.

The feeling of being trapped tightens my throat.

Restricted. Then I see why he made me look.

The gaps. Papercut holes between leaves and branches.

Triangles that let in the sunlight. Space to grow.

Being together does not mean losing all of myself.

I understand now, what Weifeng was always trying to tell me. We do not have to follow the template of those that came before. Bamboo, ink, paper, clay. It is always a choice.

Our lips and hands touch. Clay and paper making something new. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.

Together, we will start a new story.