The next day Song Jie had purposefully walked near the rose bushes, the bright sunshine stilled her nerves and she stooped down to look for absent tracks. She scavenged for some visual identifier of who had left the note. The owner of the pale eyes - more like an animal's than a person's, but still there was some emotion behind that gaze, something human.
There were of course no signs and another thirteen days passed without incident. Song Jie had even begun to accept her own sleepwalking explanation. On the fourteenth day Yang Min and Song Jie had decided to engage in some fabric-work to occupy their minds and forget all thoughts of strange nightmares and late night visitors. They chose coloured silks from the stores and began artfully fashioning them into new robes. Yang Min chose robes of teal green trimmed with dark blue and large blue silk buttons. Song Jie chose a dusty pile of folded thick pink silk with gold trim and gold buttons. The fabrics had patterns woven into them that Song Jie was tracing with her finger.
"Yang Min?" Song Jie began, when the round-faced girl looked up smiling.
"No," Yang Min replied promptly.
"No what? I haven't asked anything!" Song Jie looked surprised.
"No, I'm not beating the dust out of that silk for you. If you choose such an old roll it's up to you," Yang Min concluded with a disparaging flick of her dark eyes at Song Jie's pink fabric.
"I wasn't going to ask you to!" replied Song Jie laughing. "Anyway, don't ask me to help you sew your buttons on later then. I don't care if they go rolling down the hallway every time you move. What I wanted to ask you was," Song Jie paused, attempting to choose her words carefully before giving up and opting for a direct approach, "what do you think is in the Outside?"
"Go ask Auntie," Yang Min replied without pause, evidently having grown accustomed to Song Jie's strange musings over the years.
"She'll make up a story," Song Jie pouted.
"How do you know they're made up?" Yang Min narrowed her eyes, her lips half pursed around two pins causing her speech to come out slurred.
"She always twitches when she's lying," Song Jie responded, rolling her own eyes "she twitches when telling her stories. Anyway, I've no patience for monsters, if the whole of the world was covered in them there wouldn't be any cities out there, the Emperor would not live there."
"He has guards, like we do.” Yang Min shrugged, ‘he's protecting us, we are his flowers."
Song Jie sighed feeling frustrated, "What's the use of flowers you never see?"
Yang Min sighed and spat out the pins, "Song Jie, do you know the south-west corner of the second store room? Where the brick has crumbled and the stone rises up from the roots of that old tree? Well, under those tiles grow small wallflowers. I can't see them without half breaking my neck squeezing my head underneath, but we both know they're there. We always say how lovely it smells by that corner. Well, doesn't it just please you to know that something lovely is part of our garden, even if we can't see them?"
"That's wonderfully poetic of you Yang Min!" Song Jie laughed.
"Well obviously I've spent too many years listening to you rather than concentrating on how to sew buttons properly - ouch!" Yang Min had pricked herself with the needle and both girls were smiling now, needlework had never been Yang Min's strong point. Song Jie rose up, "I'll go fetch you some water to wash it."
Song Jie had taken a small cup and walked out to the pool. As she bent down, she watched the shimmering fish rise to the surface to catch dragonflies in the afternoon glow. She could not help but also wander down to the rose bushes, holding the water cup carefully. She was just drawing up to the blooms when she noticed amongst the large pink flowers was a small new white bud. Thinking something odd, Song Jie had drawn closer and saw that the emerging bloom was not composed of petals at all, but was in fact paper, folded and fashioned into the shape of a rose. She was amazed by the skill of the girl who had created it.
Suddenly a breeze came and the paper flower was lifted from the leaves and fell to the ground. Song Jie ran over to pick it up before it blew away again, spilling a great deal of the water as she did so. Holding it up to the light she realised that it was the same odd parchment as her mysterious note. Song Jie took a deep breath, steeling herself before she tentatively peeled back the petals of the flower to reveal the words,
"Don't you think so?"
The script was scratchy and of a hand untrained in calligraphy, either one of the girls was going to great lengths to disguise her own handwriting or it was not written by an inhabitant of the Concubine Houses. The latter thought made the hairs on the back of Song Jie's neck stand up. She hid the parchment in her sleeve and took the half empty cup back to Yang Min.
Since the paper rose, Song Jie had found four more notes. They had all been folded into beautiful shapes. One had been a bird perched on her windowsill, the second a frog squatting by the pond and two more as blossoms in the trees. Song Jie wondered why the other girls didn't find them - unless someone was watching her, carefully planting them in her path. The notion disturbed Song Jie, but it also lead her to walking in quieter areas of the garden or taking paths less used by the other girls as if she were indirectly trying to make it easier for the author of the notes.
The atmosphere conjured by the Concubine Houses left one feeling assured that no harm could possibly befall you within its walls. Nothing entered from the Outside, any adventures were contained and therefore, the unexplained, even strange notes in an unknown hand, did not scare Song Jie as much as it should have.
The notes all read similarly to the first two,
You cannot stay here forever...
Do you know anything of the Outside?
Have you ever tried to leave?
And the last one, shaped like the perching bird,
The World is silent, the World is still, it is waiting for you.
The words of the sixth note now haunted the nightmares Song Jie was becoming accustomed to. Then the notes stopped.
Song Jie scoured the gardens, under every tree and behind every bush, mistaking every flash of white for parchment paper.
"Dreaming you've lost your pin again?" joked Hua Ling as she noticed Song Jie scrambling about the bushes by the far walls.
It was during this time that Song Jie became more and more interested in the mysterious and enigmatic 'Outside'. Urged on by the notes she even made up her mind to speak to Auntie one evening during dinner. The old woman was busy ladling her second portion of lotus soup into a bowl.
"Auntie!" a gaggle of girls cut in before Song Jie had a chance to even speak. "Auntie may we have music tonight?"
"Please Auntie, it's such a lovely evening for music and song!"
Auntie shifted weightily in her chair, "Go on then, play your instruments," she huffed as if it was something that was going to cause her personal exertion.
Rejoicing, the girls ran to bring out lutes, flutes and sanxian. Auntie turned to find Song Jie stood uncomfortably beside her, "Song Jie, go and get Yang Min, I fancy one of her rhymes," she declared before turning and announcing to the room at large, "we will have some poetry first."
The butterflies in Song Jie’s stomach almost swooped with relief at the excuse to duck out of interrogating Auntie. Song Jie quickly fetched her friend who was pushed into the middle of the large assembled circle of girls. Yang Min fidgeted for a moment, biting her lip and then without pause, started to speak,
"There sits a frog by the pond
and of insects he's fond.
He feasts daily on flies
and to catch them he tries
to stick out his tongue
Then his dinner he's won!
But one day he did spy
a great dragonfly,
who shimmered and sparkled and shone.
Intending to eat
the magnificent treat,
he stretched over the side
mouth open wide
but away flew his catch
and with an almighty splash
the frog had fallen into the pool
and ne'er was a fate so cruel
as sadly for him,
this frog couldn't swim
and as he sunk down
the frog did drown
and let it be wrote, he croaked!
There was a round of laughter from the audience and Yang Min, red-faced and smiling walked back out of the circle.
"What kind of frog can't swim?" asked Song Jie grinning and nudging her friend.
Yang Min turned to her suddenly with a funny expression, "A paper one," she whispered back quietly. Song Jie's eyes widened as she opened her mouth to speak, however at that moment there was a chorus of "hush!" as Han Luli took to the stage and recited a long and beautiful poem about a girl who becomes a blossom tree.
Song Jie thought of the blossoms falling from the gnarled tree in her dream and shuddered. The following poems were similarly well constructed and all in the classical manner. However, Yang Min's starting verse had set the mood for merriment, so there were smiles all round. Several more girls went up, two of them accompanied by music. One talked of two bees courting set to very fast plucking of the sanxian. Another, a tragic tale of a cloud Spirit coming to Earth and falling in love with a mortal, but when he tried to embrace her she turned to water droplets.
Song Jie liked that one, she had always loved stories of Spirits. She was still lost in daydreams when friendly hands behind her pushed her forward, "Song Jie's turn!" shouted Han Luli. The girls cheered, Song Jie always tended to sing on music evenings and, like her friend Yang Min, often kept her lyrics humorous in nature, curious little compositions she had memorised, preferring to keep her own words to herself. However, today she felt like talking, Song Jie looked round for a moment, swallowed hard then began,
"A bird in a cage,
that's what you are,
trapped in a shell,
you never go far.
A blossoming flower,
that's what they say,
but you've got roots,
so here you'll stay.
A bee without wings,
sat here with your honey,
laughing at ditties ever so funny.
Like a flower, hidden from view,
safe in a garden,
isn't that you?"
A silence followed in the hall with girls looking blankly at each other when suddenly there was loud clapping, it was Yang Min. Others dutifully followed suit and soon, with more music and songs, Song Jie's strange verse was pushed to the back of their minds and the room was full of smiles again. All apart from Auntie, whose face had contorted into a strange expression.
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