The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [16]
I inspired my army, and I fed them. At night I sang to them glorious songs that came out of the sky and into my head. When I opened my mouth, the songs poured out and were loud enough for the whole encampment to hear; my army stretched out for a mile. We sewed red flags and tied the red scraps around arms, legs, horses’ tails. We wore our red clothes so that when we visited a village, we would look as happy as for New Year’s Day. Then people would want to join the ranks. My army did not rape, only taking food where there was an abundance. We brought order wherever we went.
When I won over a goodly number of fighters, I built up my army enough to attack fiefdoms and to pursue the enemies I had seen in the water gourd.
My first opponent turned out to be a giant, so much bigger than the toy general I used to peep at. During the charge, I singled out the leader, who grew as he ran toward me. Our eyes locked until his height made me strain my neck looking up, my throat so vulnerable to the stroke of a knife that my eyes dropped to the secret death points on the huge body. First I cut off his leg with one sword swipe, as Chen Luan-feng had chopped the leg off the thunder god. When the giant stumped toward me, I cut off his head. Instantly he reverted to his true self, a snake, and slithered away hissing. The fighting around me stopped as the combatants’ eyes and mouths opened wide in amazement. The giant’s spells now broken, his soldiers, seeing that they had been led by a snake, pledged their loyalty to me.
In the stillness after battle I looked up at the mountain-tops; perhaps the old man and woman were watching me and would enjoy my knowing it. They’d laugh to see a creature winking at them from the bottom of the water gourd. But on a green ledge above the battlefield I saw the giant’s wives crying. They had climbed out of their palanquins to watch their husband fight me, and now they were holding each other weeping. They were two sisters, two tiny fairies against the sky, widows from now on. Their long undersleeves, which they had pulled out to wipe their tears, flew white mourning in the mountain wind. After a time, they got back into their sedan chairs, and their servants carried them away.
I led my army northward, rarely having to sidetrack; the emperor himself sent the enemies I was hunting chasing after me. Sometimes they attacked us on two or three sides; sometimes they ambushed me when I rode ahead. We would always win, Kuan Kung, the god of war and literature riding before me. I would be told of in fairy tales myself. I overheard some soldiers—and now there were many who had not met me—say that whenever we had been in danger of losing, I made a throwing gesture and the opposing army would fall, hurled across the battlefield. Hailstones as big as heads would shoot out of the sky and the lightning would stab like swords, but never at those on my side. “On his side,” they said. I never told them the truth. Chinese executed women who disguised themselves as soldiers or students, no matter how bravely they fought or how high they scored on the examinations.
One spring morning I was at work in my tent repairing equipment, patching my clothes, and studying maps when a voice said, “General, may I visit you in your tent, please?” As if it were my own home, I did not allow strangers in my tent. And since I had no family with me, no one ever visited inside. Riverbanks, hillsides, the cool sloped rooms under the pine trees—China provides her soldiers with meeting places enough. I opened the tent flap. And there in the sunlight stood my own husband with arms full of wildflowers for me. “You are beautiful,” he said, and meant it truly. “I have looked for you everywhere. I’ve been looking for you since the day that bird flew away with you.” We were