I spent five seasons in that cherry tree, eating its fruit and sleeping in its branches. The only reason that I ever left was because my mistress found me and offered me a place in her home, something about her made me instinctively trust her and so I went with her. Looking back I am glad that I accepted, I would have been a fool to decline her generous offer otherwise I might not have a story to tell.
She took me to her home a little way away and at first, I was like a servant, helping to clean her home and learning how to cook her meals but over time we became closer; more like mother and daughter until one day when she gave me a half-day off from my chores. I had gone to a small clearing a ways away from the house to practice the moves that I had seen at the monastery, though with little skill. I had not been at it for long when I felt a pair of eyes burning twin holes in my back. Dropping back to the ground and pivoting as I landed, with profuse apologies flowing from my lips like water from a cliff's edge, I faced my mistress.
All she did was grace me with a look cool enough to leave frost where there had been fire leaving the apologies falling from my lips frozen in my throat. After I'd been silent for a minute with her sharp black eyes pinning me in place, she asks me a question that I knew was to be either my doom or my salvation. My life depended on what she wanted to hear. I opted for the truth. I told her that I had watched the monks as they taught the boys at the monastery and copied their movements as best I could, I told her of my hurt and confusion when the monks would not allow me to learn as well.
She nodded, her face betraying nothing of her thoughts. She turned on her heel and padded back towards the house, her slippers making barely a sound as they glided across the grass. I I did not know what else to do so I followed behind her as quickly as I could.
The moment that we reached the house she rounded on me, silently commanding me to remain at the doorstep. She disappeared into the house for about two hours, maybe more: all the time I stood unmoving there at the doorstep, waiting for her return without thinking of complaining. I felt that had I deserved any punishment that she saw fit to give me. Learning martial arts was really only an opportunity for men, accepting the marriage that your father, brother or uncle arranged was one of the only prospects for a woman. It was not against the law for a woman to learn martial arts, just frowned upon as it was thought that learning martial arts was thought to harden a womans body and make her unsuitable for marriage.
When my mistress came out again she told me that I had great patience to stay as still as I had for so long, young as I was. She was holding a bundle of fine white clothes. She told me that she had been looking for someone to pass her art onto for a great many years. She unfurled the bundle, letting a beautiful pair of delicately woven white trousers, a white shirt of equal quality and a belt white as freshly fallen snow hung from her fingertips.
She told me that my training would begin with me catching rocks. She plucked six smooth stones up from the ground and balanced them on the back of her hand, she then somehow managed to move her hand in just such a way that she was able to catch all six stones. She relinquished the stones to me and had me try to copy her movements but I only managed to catch two of the six.
She informed me that once I could catch all six stones, I would be ready to train. I also had to carry out other tasks such as holding two full teacups in my out-stretched hands for hours on end. That was difficult, but my hardest task was when I had to fetch water from the well at the bottom of the hill, two buckets back and forth until the barrel was full, but the path was steep and rocky so I fell and spilled the water more often than not. I would usually end up taking 15 or more trips to fill the water barrel by the house. By mid-day my arms and legs ached to the bone, I felt as though there were lodestones tied to each of my eyelashes and my hands, shins and feet were scraped almost to the bone but it was worth the pain. I was going to learn how to fight, something I had dreamed of since that fated day at the monastery.
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Cherry Blossom
Historical FictionI was a young girl living in ancient China during what became known as the Tang dynasty. I was found abandoned on the doorstep of a monastery by the monks that lived there, they called me Nǚhái or girl. My mistress called me Yīnghuā or Cherry Blosso...
