Read Online The Second Wave by Leska Beikircher - Free Book Online Page A

the
last house, which was the garden of the family Jiang, and hid under
the large leaves of a gourd vine just next to a small pond, hoping
and praying the soldiers would give up the search for him.
    On that day, Meng Jiang Nu went into the
gardens to catch butterflies. There were many butterflies around
that day, every one more beautiful than the one before it. But
while Meng Jiang skipped and jumped about, her fan slipped out of
her hand and fell into the pond.
    Meng Jiang knelt down at the brim of the
small pool and, after making sure that no one was watching, she
rolled up the sleeve of one arm to retrieve the fan out of the
water.
    When Fan Xiliang saw her tender skin in the
sunlight, but nothing more of the person this delicate arm must
belong to, a longing sigh escaped his lips. Thus he gave away his
position.
    Meng Jiang, startled at first, told the
stranger to come out of hiding. But when she laid eyes on him, and
he on her, she recognized in him the man from her dreams, and she
fell in love with him passionately.
    Alas, it was not to be. Just when they were
to get married, the emperor’s soldiers arrived at the village. They
found Fan Xiliang and captured him, before the two lovers could so
much as share a first kiss as husband and wife.
    Months went by like centuries. Meng Jiang
waited for word from her husband, or, better yet, his return home.
But nothing.
    When one year was over and there was still no
word from Fan Xiliang, Meng Jiang decided on a reckless plan of
action: she wished all four of her parents good-bye, and journeyed
to the building site of the Great Wall herself, desperate to see
her husband.
    The Great Wall, she saw when she came close,
was almost finished, but at what price? The land around the wall
was all but covered in dead bodies. Workers who couldn’t endure the
whippings, who had starved, or had worked themselves to death.
    When Meng Jiang couldn’t find her husband
among the living, she turned to the dead. With tears in her eyes
she turned all of them over to look into their faces, but none of
them wore the features of her beloved.
    Word got out to the emperor that a woman too
fair for words was wandering along the Wall, crying. Meng Jiang
cried for three days and for three nights, wailing and screaming
and howling her husband’s name. The echo of her sobs travelled up
into the heavens, and deep down into the earth, and was carried
across the land by the wind. Her misery was so heartbreaking that
the Gods couldn’t bear to watch her suffer. They shook the earth so
that the Great Wall crumbled.
    And what should Meng Jiang unearth from the
rocks and the mud but the long dead remains of Fan Xiliang. The two
lovers were finally reunited.
    She cradled his lifeless body into her arms
to carry him all the way home, so she could bury him properly.
    But the emperor had already made up his mind;
he wanted to possess the woman whose passion was so strong that it
could move heaven and earth.
    He followed her to the village and forced her
hand in marriage. If she didn’t comply, he said, he would punish
her and her family for the crime she had committed: the destruction
of the Great Wall. But Meng Jiang was not merely beautiful, she was
also bright. She told the emperor that he had to do three things
for her ‘ere she would marry him. If he abided by them, she would
forever be his and would love him with all her might.
    Such were Meng Jiang’s conditions: Fan
Xiliang should be given a luxurious burial, one that was fit for an
emperor. Meng Jiang should be allowed to mourn her deceased husband
for one year, during which no one was to touch her. After one year
had passed, the emperor was to take her to the ocean. Only then
would she marry him.
    And so it came to pass. Fan Xiliang was given
a lavish burial. Meng Jiang mourned him for one year, during which
no one made physical contact with her.
    When the year had passed, the emperor
arranged for a carriage for Meng Jiang and himself to bring them