by Meg Xuemei X
As I consider his counteroffer, I feel more eyes on us. He notes it too and takes advantage of the situation to press me. His determined look tells me he won’t go away until I agree to meet him.
I don’t care about what other people think of me, but I have more at stake than this arrogant boy. I can’t let the school know about us. Suddenly, I’m irritated that he has the upper hand. “You think I don’t know where the Nest is?” I say. “For your information, I wasn’t raised in a witch’s tower!”
“Then say yes, Xirena, and I’ll disappear,” he whispers. “People are still watching.”
I snap my head and scan the crowd, releasing all the iciness. Everyone averts their eyes. Kai tries to put on a straight face, but he can’t hide the amused smile in his eyes. I stare hard at him, but my coldness can no longer touch him. I purse my lips and give a small nod.
His smile broadens.
“Now go away,” I say, warning him not to make a bigger scene.
“Eight o’clock sharp at the Ducklings’ Nest.” A light of triumph illuminates in his eyes. He still sucks at covering his emotion. “I’ll wait until the sun comes up, and if you still don’t show up, I’ll come to the witch’s tower to fetch you.” He then stalks away.
I head in the opposite direction.
The Ducklings’ Nest was my childhood dreamland, but I haven’t stepped into its domain since I attempted to end my life three years ago. I was eleven.
It was a rainy winter afternoon, and the last day for school registration. My mother refused to pay for my tuition.
With the dreadful idea of being stuck with her hanging overhead, I wandered to the Nest.
I stood on the cobblestone-paved bank, staring at the rushing river. Under the pouring rain, I was alone in the vast wilderness. Wind and rain whipped me and water cascaded down my head, but I didn’t care. My mother’s words echoed in my head. “I won’t let you have higher education. Being a servant girl is the best you can hope for, and that’s your fate.”
No one decides my destiny other than myself. I waded toward the center of the river, remembering what my sister told me how our mother had once taken an abortion potion to remove me from her womb, but I had survived it. No one could get rid of me, unless I was the one to do it, like now.
The closer I inched toward the depth of the river, the darker the shadow of death, but I feared no death. It wouldn’t matter to anyone that soon I would no longer exist.
As the water reached my neck, thunder suddenly roared in my ears. I stopped in my tracks. What was that? Then lightning struck, cracking over the sky like white fire. This close to death, I could still appreciate its terrifying beauty.
Before I resumed my march, a second lightning bolt shot down from the wet sky, bursting with fury. One strike was rare, and the second in my path was like a miracle, or more of a forewarning. It sent me further down memory lane.
I was five then. I had snuck out of my house at noon to see the flood at the Ducklings’ Nest when everyone else was napping.
I stood at the narrow patch of the bank, watching the river rush by, wondering where all this water would go. The high noon sun was warm. I wasn’t aware of when I had dozed off and fell into the water.
Unshaped dreams made of lovely rainbows caressed me like waves of clouds. The music in my ears was the symphony of rushing water and dancing sunlight. The dream was interrupted by piercing coldness. I popped open my eyes and saw several big boys towering over me.
Why was I lying on the cold, hard ground? Before I could yell at the boys to get them away from me, my parents came.
From what the boys told my parents, I pieced together the other half of the story. Two miles from where I had fallen into the river, a group of boys spotted something floating in the water and debated whether they should fetch it.
Two brave boys dived into the river. The valuable thing they dove in for turned out to be a skinny, little sleeping girl.
* * *
The message was clear. The river had returned me once. It wasn’t going to admit me now. I didn’t survive so many adversaries for nothing.
I looked up at the stormy sky—endless gray, pouring rain and tears. I swallowed it all, whispering, “God, if there’s a God, witness this moment: I’m changing my future. I’ll become somebody one day. I’ll leave the earth and everyone behind and go chase the stars.”
I sank under the water, for its level had risen quickly from the rains pouring from the open sky. I resurfaced, struggling to shrug off my winter coat that weighed me down, and swam back toward the bank.
I went home. I dug out my mother’s secret money and took what I needed. I was the last student to register for the winter solstice.
My mother found out what I had done a week later and forced me to kneel in public to apologize to her. That was nothing to me. I was willing to pay the highest price to reach the sky.
* * *
The Ducklings’ Nest is no longer the untamed wilderness I once knew. The river has withered to a stream. One-third of the land has become frozen wasteland. Sadness sweeps over me. People aren’t kind to me, but the river is my friend.
I enter deep into the Nest, knowing Kai is waiting for me somewhere. But then doubts overshadow my thoughts: what if he lied about waiting until sunrise? I’m twenty-seven minutes late. Maybe I should just leave. Then Kai’s words echo in my mind, “Xirena, you gotta break the pattern of suspecting everything.”
Sensing an audience, I whirl on alert. A familiar scent reaches me first, blinding my reason, yet consoling me. It’s unmistakably Kai’s hot scent of flesh mixed with paint fumes.
My blood warms in my veins as he takes me in his arms, pressing me against his solid chest as if he intends to trap me there forever. I don’t resist. My mind is distracted by his tight muscles. How does he look when he pulls his shirt off? Will he reject me if I trace my fingers over his broad chest and then to his firm abdomen and then —I stir slightly in his arms—how can I think of that? I’m only fourteen! But then I mentally blame it on him for wearing that black T-shirt and sexy jeans under his black wool overcoat. But his gorgeous, young body always radiates heat. There’s no need for him to dress like an old man.
“I’ve been watching you,” he says.
I’d felt a presence the moment I stepped into the Nest. I thought it was a homeless cat or some small wild animal. It seems Kai is better in the wilderness than I am. But still, there is no excuse. I should have detected the slight sounds of his boots moving across the dry grass, considering I practically raised myself in the woods.
“Are you hunting me?” I tease.
He laughs lightly. “I used to hunt with my martial arts masters,” he says. “You’re elusive, the way you move. It seems you were caught up in your thoughts. I like to watch you thinking. What was on your mind?”
“You don’t want to know.” I circle my arms around his waist and bury my face against his chest, losing myself in his warmth, his solidity, and his masculine aroma. At this moment, I have no enemies, but instead a friend.
He seems surprised by my desperate need for him. Pleased, he bends his head, whispering my name gently. His lips touch my temple. A shiver of electricity surges through me like the waves of the night air, only it’s hot, not cold.
“Are you cold?” he asks and wraps his coat tighter around me, mistaking my shivers as coldness rather than pleasure.
I shake my head no.
This November is chillier than ever, but I’m grateful for the early arrival of the winter. Not many fancy the bone-chilling wind in the Ducklings’ Nest. After sunset, Kai and I can have the Nest all to ourselves.
“You have the hardest heart I’ve ever known in a girl, Xirena.” His voice sounds harsh, and his lips press into a hard line.
I’ve forgotten what our quarrel was all about, but he hasn’t. How can he, the boy raised by honey and sunbeams, understand why I’m the way I am? When I return to the land of despair in my mother’s lair, I’m ice all over again. Th
e warmth I receive from him turns into the cold light of fireflies. And no fire can warm me enough. Gradually I forget what sunlight feels like, and even come to fear it.
“So what are you going to do?” I ask gruffly. Despite the reluctance of my body, I pull away from him. My sunshine is going to abandon me. I’ve prepared for this day, but still, I feel something hammer hard in my chest.
His iron arms stop me. “I can’t stay away from you, Xirena,” he sighs. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Try harder,” I say. “You’re better off without me.”
“Better or worse, I stick with you,” he says. “And I won’t allow you to think you’re better off without me.”
His heat once again drives away the frost inside me. I cling to him like ivy to a wall, dreading a bleak future without him. But fear is one thing I don’t want to think about. If I dwell on it, I’m lost.
Kai squeezes my shoulder gently as if he can read my mind. “I’ll never leave you in the cold.”
“We can’t meet at your studio anymore,” I say.
Only a few privileged townspeople have a residential telephone, and the old-fashioned method of leaving messages in a secret hole is risky. If anyone finds the paper trail, they could use it as hard evidence against me, and I’d be done with. The school would throw me out. With a stigma like that, I would have to kiss my dream of being an astronaut goodbye, forever.
“I can whistle,” Kai says. “When I whistle, you’ll know I’ll be waiting for you at the Ducklings’ Nest.”
“But you whistle all the time to show off.”
“I wasn’t showing off.” He blushes with a smile. “I enjoy whistling, like I enjoy other forms of music.”
“Then we’ll create a tune to be our code.”
He tries different notes. When the melody of Auld Lang Syne rises, we both know that is it.
The first time I hear Kai whistling Auld Lang Syne, my heart flops like a fish on land. Even as time goes on, it never gets better. I doubt I’ll ever get over the sweet burn in my chest when the whistle hovers in the air, summoning me.
I never forget to maintain my apathetic expression, especially when my mother is around. She’s no fool. On several occasions, at the dinette table, I catch her stealthy glances when Kai’s whistles burst in the distance. I make sure no hint of delight and passion seep into my eyes.
If my mother hasn’t gone out to her Mahjong games when Kai’s whistle vibrates, I lock myself in my room. It takes half an hour before I can sneak out. Every second is a test of my endurance, but when I race to the Nest, and Kai emerges with starlight behind him, my angst vaporizes in the mist. My heart soars on the wings of eagles. And I run straight into his arms.
He always waits for me, no matter how long. His eyes blazing for me makes enduring the howling, whipping wind all worthwhile.
Often we both shake in the cold. To keep warm, he finds a large, broken tree trunk for us to sit in together. My warmth is important to him. One night I sense fear in his eyes. After my persistent inquisition, he admits that he realizes I’m mortal, and I can perish from harm, even from catching a cold. His irrational worries seem funny to me, but he’s dead serious. So, he brings a blanket.
“I know I’m a small girl, Kai, but I’m not fragile,” I point out. I go to bed every night feeling cold and every morning wake up the same way. There is no fire or heater in my room. I’ve trained myself to get used to low temperatures.
“I know you’re tough,” he says. “You’re the toughest girl I’ve ever met.” But still he insists on wrapping the blanket around me like a mummy, and tightening his coat around us. I notice that his coat is draped mostly over me.
“Do you have to neglect yourself?” I chide, forcing him to take his coat and cover himself.
“You care about me, Xirena.” He smiles.
“I care about no one,” I say. “But if you die of cold, who’s going to lend me fire, torch boy?”
“I’m not a torch. I’m a moth that seeks the hidden flame.” With his hand pressing against my face, his thumb sweeps across my cheek. “I was destined to find you, Xirena.”
The idea that our souls were fated to find each other makes my chest tighten with a profound, proud emotion. I lace my fingers around his neck, snuggling closer to him. He notices that I inhale his scent and stops talking. His chest rises and falls like powerful ocean waves against me, and his heartbeat is the rushing water caught in a whirlpool.
I twist my body, tilt my head, and glance at him through my lashes. A primitive heat scorches in the bronze specks of his eyes. Heat washes over me and forces my lips to part.
His ravenous eyes quickly wander to my mouth. You gotta stop this! The rational part of my mind warns me, but my body responds madly to his wanting. How would it feel to have his warm, curvy lips pressing hard against mine?
A blur of emotions—desire, fear, and confusion—churn inside me. Kai is also helpless to the pull as reason and passion wrestle in his darkened eyes, tormenting him.
A sudden wailing from geese overhead breaks the spell. Half relieved and mostly disappointed, I pull away from Kai. Before I turn my eyes skyward to watch the white wings soar under the glowing stars in a familiar V formation, I notice the crestfallen look in his eyes.
“The winter came earlier this year, so the geese have to leave for the warmer south earlier too,” he says after collecting himself.
I like birds. I’ve made him tell me three times about wild Mandarin ducks. Folklore calls them lovebirds. A wild Mandarin duck is one of the few species that mates for life. If its mate dies, it never moves on. It never finds a replacement. The one left behind usually dies of grief shortly after.
I lay my head on Kai’s lap and let his bright, hypnotic voice take me to a world far away. The stars stare back at me. They hang above like millions of tiny, floating lanterns. It seems like any of them could fall right into my face. But I’m not afraid. I’m going to chase them one day.
“Have you seen the two interlinked stars?” His hand brushes my fussy hair from my eye and points at the deep sky.
I lift my head, following the line of his finger up. I can map out all the constellations, but I don’t recognize the stars Kai points out. From our vantage point on earth, the stars are kissing each other.
“You and I will be together forever, like the stars,” he says.
“They’re a million light years away, Kai,” I say.
“It’s a figure of speech. I mean we’ll never separate. Time and space can’t get between us,” he insists.
He doesn’t realize, our futures are also light years apart, and time and space do matter. He’ll go to the Central Art School in the fall, and the following year I’ll go up north to QingHua University in Beijing. I’ll then manage to attend the world’s best space science program.
And in his art school, he’ll meet a new girl. My chest tightens. This is the consequence of getting involved. I’ve become vulnerable, despite my best intentions and measures of protection. I close my eyes, willing the familiar coldness to return and embrace me once again.
I breathe out. Let him have the girl. Eventually, I’ll have to let him go. I can’t plan a future with him or with anyone. I’ll never be a wife or a mother. Most people consider it a blessing to have numerous offspring, like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky. For me, leaving my genetic mark is a curse.
The golden boy will go with the flow, just like everyone else. He’ll get married and raise kids and become mundane. When he lives like them in the regular circle of life, he’ll think like them. He’ll be a stranger to me, a stranger whom I despise. But it won’t matter to him anymore. He won’t even remember my face or my name then.
Suddenly furious, I improvise a poem.
“I come from dust
I go like dust, returning to the deepest space,
my only home.
My brief existence needs no company
Live alone, die alone
I leave nothing to thi
s world
but give myself to the stars . . .”
Kai is silent after I finish reciting my poem. The dry weeds and trees shudder in the unmerciful wind. Cold encompasses my shoulders, but I’m not affected. Ice makes me stronger.
“It’s beautiful, but too sad,” he finally says, holding my face in his hands and looking down at me. “I don’t want you to think that you’re alone. We have each other. You’re bound to me, as I’m tied to you. You know that, don’t you?”
What he promises is sadder than my poem. In our passing existence, we change our hearts like the shifting of day and night.
“It’s only a poem,” I say.
He regards me. “I see a strong influence of Classical Chinese Poetry in you.”
“I memorized more than three hundred verses when I was eight years old,” I say.
He arches an eyebrow.
I hesitate, and then decide it won’t hurt to reveal to him that I have a photographic memory. “Pick any verse you know, and I’ll finish the rest,” I say.
“Seeking the special one in the crowd,” he quotes, scratching his head as he fails to recall the next line.
I help him with the rest of the verses.
“I’m seeking quality
Sadly, she's nowhere to be found,
Suddenly, turning my head—
She radiates in the fading light of the night.”
“That sounds right,” he says, searching for another fragment. I continue reciting the remaining lines eloquently. When I finish, he gives up testing me and looks at me incredulously.
I look back at him with a ghost of a smile. “I was blessed with plenty of time when I was young, before I knew you.”
He laughs, his hand ruffling my hair. That is Kai, never letting a sulky mood get to him for long. “Guess I’ll have to get used to learning something new about you every day.” The deep tenderness in his eyes turns to liquid flames, purging the bleakness in me.
And then it’s time to leave him again.
“Stay a little longer, please,” he begs. “It pains me to separate from you even for a minute,” he complains. “I don’t know what has happened to me. I was never this way before I met you. I think I’ve fallen in love with you. I thought this kind of thing would never happen to me, and I laughed at my friends who fell for girls. Now I’ll be the laughingstock!”
