(More stuff added at the bottom, December 3 AEDST)
Jee Sim was relaxing in a hammock below deck after a hard day’s cooking, drilling the crew of the Red Junks in Wing Chun, and inciting anti-Qing sentiment amongst the port workers.
The sacking of the Shaolin Temple remained the focus of his thoughts. As it always did, even after so many months.
The heat, the flames of bright orange, the choking smell of the thick smoke that stung the eyes, and the screams of monks dying as they fought against the overwhelming hordes of the Qing.
That and his last glimpse of the face of Ng Mui, whose heart-stopping beauty not even the shapeless nun’s robe and shaven head could conceal. Totally gorgeous, totally untouchable. Five years older than Jee Sim, and more deeply committed to the ways of enlightenment and the Eightfold Path than any of the Temple’s menfolk.
Some of the older monks had grumbled that she spent too much time in the forest and grassland around Mount Sung, observing animals at play, at work, and in conflict, though she spent as much time on menial Temple duties as any of them. That and her many dreams, and the long sessions she spent manipulating the yarrow stalks, consulting the Oracle. But none complained openly, for when she brought the fruits of her observations – new fighting techniques and forms – onto the Killing Floor of the practice hall, none of them could match her.
She had been both unusually attentive, and unusually stern, towards Jee Sim; he had indulged himself with the belief that he was somehow special to her, though he knew the foolishness of it.
The week before the great betrayal and the destruction of the Temple, Ng Mui had been teaching him a new form, one it appeared she was still formulating herself. The section she had taught him was part intricate, serial finger strikes to the vital points, wrists curving and flexing like shafts of green bamboo, and part bludgeoning downward diagonal strikes with the elbow. The soft and pliable with the hard and heavy. Yin and Yang. The Way.
Ng Mui told him it had come to her after she witnessed an encounter between a snake and a crane at her favourite spot near the river. “I call it Bil Jee,” she told him. “Now practise. Two hours at least, every day. Do not falter … the Oracle forecasts dark times ahead. Next week, I will show you the next section.”
Thrilled by both the new techniques, and the attentions of his Elder Sister, Jee Sim practised like a crazy man. But next week brought only the Qing.
Racked with exhaustion and pain from their wounds after many fights with armed Qing mercenaries, and overwhelmed with grief over their many brothers and sisters who had died in the battle, Ng Mui and Jee Sim lay, panting, on a ridge overlooking the firestorm that had been the Shaolin Temple. Their home.
“Sister, are we the only ones to escape?” Jee Sim croaked, before convulsing in a fit of coughing. Both he and Ng Mui had inhaled much smoke.
Ng Mui’s lovely face was streaked with tears, soot, and blood, but her voice was strong. “I don’t know, Jee Sim. But we must hope that we are not.”
“Where shall we go?”
Ng Mui’s panting seemed to slow, dropping in pitch, becoming even more laboured. “I must leave you, Jee Sim. To travel together would mean certain capture and execution.”
“Sister, please, no …”
She shook her head, placed her hand on his arm. “You must go to Guangdong. Seek out the performers of the Red Boat Opera Troupe. They are allies, who oppose the Qing. The nephew of my mother’s childhood friend, a young man named Wong Wa Bo, is among them. By all accounts a brash and foolish youth, but with a rare talent for the Dragon Pole, I am told.”
“And you, Sister?”
cont'd ...
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