The Wind Dancer

The garden was the only place that Yue ever truly felt at home. Of all the places on that vast, sprawling estate, it was the garden where she only ever felt she could truly be herself. The whole place was teeming with greenery and jungle foliage, vines that coiled around the wrists and ankles and brushed against her bare, tan shoulders. The emerald green grass was cool beneath her bare feet, the smell of water, lotus and fresh earth all around her in the cool mists that rose from the waterfall. The canopy that stretched overhead from the bamboo, palms and huge orchid trees kept the place shady from the sweltering sun above.

Yue didn’t mind the house of course, but outside, especially at night, wasn’t like any other place in the world. Most people wouldn’t have dared set foot in a place like this if they truly knew its purpose. Yue and Yue alone, was the only one who knew its secret.

She trailed along the dirt path that snaked under the forest canopy, the hem of her red and gold chut thai brushing against her braceleted ankles, the tiny silver rattlers sounding like rain wherever she walked. Her black hair had been pulled into a neatly braided bun at the back of her head, revealing her heart shaped face and eyes so dark they may as well have been a piece of the goddess she revered. Slender and graceful though she was, Yue was made of tough stuff, able to balance and use a dah as well as any boy her age.

She trailed along the path until at last she came to it, the very place where the paper thin veils of the two worlds met and blurred. In the shaded grove were twelve little rivers, calmly flowing and spilling into a great pond shaded by the swallow-tailed roof of a stone pagoda. Huge blooms of pink lotuses floated on the surface of the water, filling the grove with their sweet scents. She crossed the bridge that linked the little island in the center of the grove, kneeling at the edge of the pond and prostrating herself in homage.

When she rose and peered into the water, she was pleased to find the two little koi fish swimming about, their whiskers trailing from their faces like long, stringy moustaches. Sorya and Chantha swam in their home, the water flowing around them like a protective cloak, just as it had always done when Yue first came to the estate as a small child.

Thank God and all the gods in heaven that no one knows of the grove……she thought. There’s no telling what would happen if they did……

Yue basked in the coolness of the grove, reveling in the fact that she was alone and away from the nosy servants. She was glad not to have lived at the royal palace in Thihan’s capital city either. To think that there were eyes everywhere, all those eunuchs who spied and tattled on everyone as though they were school prefects. To think that if she had been born to the queen she would have had to endure every single day within the palace walls, listening to the petty, catty arguments among the king’s wives and concubines, having to make herself look meek and timid lest she suffer the treachery of a greedy little eunuch. But here at her own little house, she was as free as a bird, away from prying eyes and the troubles that plagued the palace.

“Oh my sweet little fishy friends,” she sighed when they poked their heads up to greet her. “Is it sad that I enjoy your company more than most people?”

The little fish did not answer with words, but instead splashed their tails as if to agree with her before swimming again to the cool bottom of the pond. A high pitched chittering noise up in the branches caught Yue’s attention and when she looked up, there was Muki, the little ring-tailed lemur looking right at her with his staring little topaz eyes. His tail stuck straight up in the air as he scampered down the tree and onto her shoulder, his soft, furry tail curling around her collar as he squeaked and chittered.

“Oh you naughty thing,” she teased. “Of course I remembered what you asked for.”

From the pouch in her belt, Yue gave the little primate a piece of ripe, yellow mango she had snuck from the kitchens. The lemur greedily munched the sweet yellow fruit as though he had had nothing else to eat in ages. “Well Muki,” Yue sighed. “I suppose it’s off for the rest of our duties then.”

Yue left the pond behind her and with Muki perched happily on her shoulder, went away to tend the rest of her domain.