A Song to Drown Rivers

by Ann Liang

that my beauty was something unnatural, transcending nature itself. And that beauty is not so different from destruction.

Often, when I was around other people and felt their gazes on me, I had the strange, encroaching sense that my face and body did not belong to me. As if I had been designed purely for the pleasure of their viewing.

Happiness was a side dish, like the sweet, sticky rice cakes Mother made during the festivals, or the glutinous balls stuffed with rich sesame paste. But revenge—that was the salt of life. Necessary. Essential.

Later, though, I would wish I had stayed longer. Woken them up, held them close. Given them the chance to say a proper goodbye. But such things only occur to you in hindsight, framed by the before and after of everything you’ve endured; when it is still happening, all you care about is what lies ahead.

If my beauty was of the destructive kind, his was a beauty that pressed exquisitely close to sorrow; something as cold and untouchable as the stars scattered overhead.

“And the rest were created when she was tired. She dipped a long rope into mud and she swung it, and the droplets that landed became commoners. Like us.” Susu frowned. “You’re not made of mud.” “No?” “You are made of flowers,” she said decisively, crawling onto my lap.

In a world where everyone will demand something from you, it requires a certain degree of selfishness to be happy, you know.”

“We are most tempted by what we cannot have. Men will dream of the mountains they have yet to scale, the rivers they have yet to set sail upon, the plains they have yet to conquer. They are told from birth everything belongs to them, and so when something does not, they view it as a personal challenge.” I thought about it longer. “But also, from a distance, everything looks more beautiful; we are better able to conjure our own fantasies about them. Sometimes the fragrance of a feast is better than the taste itself.”

“The heart is a fickle thing; it takes and takes. It is easily swayed, and tempted, and made weak. Too many have fallen victims to their own irrational desires. But the mind—the mind is dependable, accurate, deadly. It destroys the enemy, not the self, and ensures that we do what we need to, not what we want.”

When men say they want a lover, what they often mean is they want a mirror; they wish to see themselves reflected back at them in the best light.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked, pausing. A silence, before the reply came: “You could never hurt me.”

“So this is how it feels,” he murmured, almost under his breath, “to be cut by your own blade.”

Surprisingly, it was Fanli’s voice that drifted to me, as clear as if he were standing right there in the room: What is the bigger cause? To him, almost anything could be done, so long as the end result was more beneficial. And I knew exactly what he would do in my position. It was quick; at least there was that.

But I wasn’t angry at all. In fact, I wasn’t even surprised. How many women throughout history were blamed for the weaknesses of men? We made such convenient scapegoats. We were raised to be small, to be silent, to take whatever we were given and no more.

This is how kingdoms fall, I thought, but I didn’t feel as victorious as I’d imagined. My heart was too heavy, a solid stone in my chest.

What does it matter who wears the crown, if they will not change any of this for us?” “But…” I was stunned. “But—Zhengdan’s father … Your husband … He was killed by the Wu. Doesn’t that matter?” “He was not killed by the Wu,” she said harshly. “He was killed by the war. By the will of kings.”

At dawn, they finally pull my body out from the water.

Death knows no mercy; it has robbed me of all my beauty.

He turns back to me, and strokes my hair gently, so gently, brushing it back from my ruined face as if afraid to hurt me. He does not let anybody else approach. He does not speak. He just kneels on the cold, damp dirt, holding me, the river rushing on and on behind him.

But King Goujian is not the answer to peace. None of them are. So long as we continue to put mortal men on thrones and hail them as gods, sacrifice our lives to their legacies, history will repeat itself. Just as the ocean tides ebb and flow beneath the moon, empires will rise and collapse, wars will start and cease, and the rest of us will be left to struggle against the currents. If only I had known earlier. If only I could go back in time.

Whenever he passes by the river, he swears he can hear a girl’s weeping. He conceals it well enough in court, but alone, he succumbs to the hysteria, the fear that rattles his very bones. I am but one of the many who will haunt him for as long as he lives. All those who had died for him, because of him, at his hands. I will not leave him in peace. I will not let him forget.