A Song to Drown Rivers

by Ann Liang

She just nodded, her gaze still on the river. It was not the reaction a normal child would have to pain. Then again, perhaps there could be no normal children raised in an age of war.

And how many people under Heaven were really fortunate enough to know happiness? 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.

One could live with almost anything, so long as they had something to live for.

Eating was no longer just a means of nourishing the body, of appeasing the empty stomach and ensuring one had the energy to work another day, but a highly complex ritual. It was considered a great offense to have the head of a fish dish turned toward the king; an offense to make audible noises while chewing in the king’s presence. It seemed to me that the problem lay more with the king; who else would have the energy to be offended by nearly everything?

“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 urge to roll my eyes was overwhelming. I knew this poem already, and to read it as a tragedy was to misunderstand the poet’s intention entirely. The very heart of it lay in finding power in small and beautiful things. But of course I did not correct him. 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.

Why does it seem to me that the court’s idea of a lady is a beautiful, dull shell who has no personality and makes no sound, Zhengdan had complained to me afterward. They would be better off marrying a statue.

All I knew was the solidity of Fanli’s presence, the way a red-crowned crane knows the sweetness of the pine trees, or how a cormorant knows the melodies of the river water.

“But heroes always have tragic endings,” I said softly, a lump in my throat. “Yes, well. One cannot save the world and live in peace. That’s not how these things work.”

He looked terribly beautiful, the way wolves might look beautiful in blood-splattered snow.

“All right … They think you’re meddling in affairs you shouldn’t be, and you’ll bring the whole kingdom to ruin,” Xiaomin blurted. “And—and that all the foolish decisions the king has made can be traced back to you.” As soon as the words left her lips, she flushed and looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, as if afraid I would suddenly spring down from the bench and strike her. 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.

“The men will fight for their thrones and their power and their legacies, but to them we are nothing more than crickets and ants, insignificant, expendable. We will continue to worry over the rice and soy sauce and oil, three meals a day, how to escape the cold in the winter and the heat in the high summer, the holes in the roof and the bedding and the taxes. What does it matter who wears the crown, if they will not change any of this for us?”

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.