Insignia Read Online Free PDF Page A

One?” I whispered. But I must
have drifted off along the journey and returned to my body without
time to say goodbye. It happened sometimes when I was separated for
too long.
    With a sigh, I swung my legs over the side
of the bed and took a sip of water from the bottle on the desk
beside me. Remembering Qu Liang, I checked the small pocket in my
pajama top and was relieved to find his little qilin medallion. Had he purposefully left it for me? I believed so, and
couldn’t wait until the following night to ask him.
     
    The End
     
     
     
     

PART II
     
Adult/Literary Tales
     
    ‘The Red String of Fate’ by Holly Kench
     
    ‘Maidens of the Yangze’ by Kelly Matsuura
     
    ‘Black Smoke and Water Lilies’ by David Jón
Fuller
     
    ‘The Ghost Bride’ by Kelly Matsuura
     
     
     
     
THE RED STRING OF FATE

Holly Kench
     
    The string around my ankle chafed. The length
of it tugged and pulled, tripping me up as I walked down the
street. Wrapping around posts and tangling in knots, it weighed me
down.
    At first I was proud of the fine silken
thread. It was, my mother said, a sign I was destined for better
things. A husband was in my future. Yue Lao had blessed me and all
I had to do was wait.
    As a child I toyed with the thread, twisting
it around my little finger and strumming it with my thumb as though
it were a pipa. I played the instrument of my ancestors and
dreamed the song of my future.
    When the song was over, I whispered down the
thread, willing my words to reach the other end and wondering who
might be the bearer of my destiny.
    “Are you there?” I called. “Can you hear me,
Husband?”
    He was, I imagined, a warrior-prince. Too
busy to respond to my childish calls as he slayed advancing armies
in the quest to find his princess.
    But before long this princess grew up. I
tossed aside my crown with the fantasies of childhood.
    Despite my mother’s protests, I took up new
dreams.
    Instead of imagining a prince, I saw a life
of infinite possibilities. A future of my own design.
    But the thread pulled me. It tied me to an
unwanted reality, knotted me into expectation and restrained me
from imaginings of freedom and choice. One step in the wrong
direction and the thread dragged me back. The path of my fate was
set and the string that bound my destiny was unrelenting.
    I was ungrateful. I knew this without doubt,
for my mother told me daily. The hours on her knees were a gift to
me. She prayed, so that Yue Lao gave.
    And I was ungrateful. A word used to
describe my generation, it twisted into my existence, binding my
identity and knitting with the string around my ankle.
    I saw flecks of my ingratitude vie with the
thread of my fate. They sparked with volatile opposition, heating
up until I thought the thread might break. Instead the expectations
of who I was, and who I would be, fused together. Fastening.
    My ingratitude was as inescapable as my
future as Woman. Wife. Mother.
    These were certainties given to me. And
freedoms taken away.
    My mother saw the string as an anchor. It
would keep me good and safe. Unerring. Everything a daughter should
be.
    I pictured my husband, for, at some point,
his face had become a certainty in my mind, despite the twists and
turns of the string that tangled behind me. If I were to see him in
the street, I would know him in an instant.
    We were on this journey together. My
would-be husband and I. Although there was an unknown distance
between us, the thread ensured our mutual complicity. Without
meeting, we were partners, and without realizing it, I had become
as invested in his future as I was in my own.
    I pictured his face. The mouth I knew would
always smile when he looked at me, and the eyes that showed his
smile to be true.
    And I knew that, like me, his future was at
the mercy of the string at our ankles.
    So I took that string and I cut. I sliced it
through with a kitchen knife.
    With a single swipe our destinies,
intertwined for so long, split apart.
    I walked