Go east, young woman!

The words of my friend resonated in my ears as the train pulled into the bustling metropolis that Cloyd’s Cross had become.
My mind ran in a loop… how would my father react? He had sent a son westward to seek his fortune, a boy who couldn’t even lay claim to peachfuzz and I was coming back to him as a woman, 15 years older and vastly different.
San Francisco had been my downfall or perhaps my savior, a saloon after a minor success panning for gold and a stupidly flagrant exuberance of petty wealth had gotten me dropped through a trapdoor while I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to get excited about being with a woman however nice she was when I wanted the bouncer who had glared at me on the way in.
How could I explain this?

Could I even manage to tell him that I had chosen this?

Could I tell him he never had a son?

I had a while to figure on the answers to those questions yet, not that I hadn’t been thinking about it for at least a decade. I might have been dumb enough to get myself shanghaied but I knew that one day my place at court would no longer be what it was at the height of my youth and beauty. I had dedicated myself to the other arts of life in the Emperor’s court, the intrigues and quiet power plays that not even the emperor knew of.

I grew to a position of power valued for my insight into matters scientific and military for once I turned my mind to it I discovered an aptitude for both tactics and strategy, something my tutors told me was very rare. Rare or not it allowed me to make my way from courtesan beginning to show her age to a favored military commander of the emperor.

Having honed my skills of intrigue at court I was aware of the rising discontent among the other commanders, that one such as I should be considered anything other than a toy. In their eyes I was neither man nor woman and that caused some hatred but more important was that I, a westerner, had the ear of the Emperor.

I spoke of this with the Great Man at some length and was amazed when he actually drew me into the familiar embrace I had missed so much. We had one final night of great passion and before dawn the next day my ship set sail for the west.

This trip was vastly different from that first voyage where I had been forced into servitude aboard ship. I had very little in the way of physical strength but I could make my way through the rigging with a skill unequaled by even the most experienced of the sailors. Since I was useless at hauling sail I was made lookout and cabin boy. The captain and first mate used me roughly and I tried to spend as much time as possible in the ropes.

I knew where my sexual interests lie, this experience had helped me to realize that much… but this wasn’t sex, it was rape. I was the first to see when we came into sight of land what would rise over the horizon and become the harbor at Shanghai. Once we were close enough that I estimated I could swim ashore and disappear I cut a length of rope, causing the mainsail to fall slack and luff. From my height I flung myself into space, holding on to the rope until I was far out over water before letting go.

I hit the water badly and it stunned me for a moment. The crew was too busy dealing with the damage I’d caused to pursue and I was able to hide under the piers waiting for darkness. When I did finally creep out I found the night to be a fairyland of lanterns, glowing orbs and pools of blackness making a stealthy way for me to creep along until I found a darkened stretch and after listening for a few minutes determined that the other side of the wall seemed quiet. There was a rather large pole made of some kind of strange material I’d never seen before, like giant wooden grass. I spent the barest fraction of a second pondering what this thing might be but the part of my brain that belonged to a climbing animal said it was a way over the wall into safety and so it was.

I dropped quietly into a crouch and found myself in a walled off area that seemed completely empty and dark. A little exploring led me to some bushes which I crawled under and almost instantly fell into an exhausted sleep.

When I awoke it was to the face of a woman so old it seemed like the wrinkles would consume her entire face… but it was because she was smiling at me and had that same look my grandmother had in her eyes before the consumption took her from us. That was the real reason I left… I couldn’t stand being where I was and having the only person in the world other than my little sister who knew who I was taken away from me like that… It broke a part of me.

She reached down and fingered my hair, dirty and matted as it looked and clucked at me. The words surrounding the noises were foreign to me but the sentiment was clear. I was about to get a bath. I was quite happy about the idea until figures surrounded me and soon had divested me of my ragged clothing and plopped me into almost scalding water. First they scrubbed me roughly with strong smelling soap and bristly brushes but once they had the worst of the grime off they changed to floral smelling soaps and unguents and I fell asleep again as one of them massaged my scalp and rubbed sweet smelling oil into my hair.

I had managed to leave my hair uncut since the day I turned 4 and my papa said I didn’t have to anymore. It had never been so smooth and silky and after I was dried and they took it down from the towel I was amazed to find that it fell to just an inch or two above my knees. I had always thought of my hair as being the color of river mud but now it shone like a golden waterfall, rippling as I turned my head.

I was wrapped in the most beautiful gown I had ever seen, brightly colored with patterns of flowers and scenes alien to me. The feeling of the fabric was indescribable. It was almost as though somehow someone had turned water into fabric, it slid so smoothly with movement.

I was enchanted, totally swept away. As the days passed I learned that we were all expected to be as sweet and perfumed and perfectly groomed as possible. We all helped each other so it was on the second day that I discovered what I had thought were young women were in fact people like me… perhaps nominally male but only by virtue of what was between our legs. In many cases, as in mine, that was very little indeed.

We had another feature unusual for Chinese women of the time. None of us had suffered the cruelty of foot-binding and so had beautiful strong feet and were expected to become warriors as well as courtesans. Apparently a taste for unbound feet and women who could fight was considered far more unusual than a simple taste for those who were not wholly either gender.

I did not leave those walls for 2 years and by the time I did I had changed in many ways. There were medicines and foods that helped our bodies to grow like those of young women and I made sure to learn as much of that knowledge as I could. I was considered an unexceptional student in music until I introduced a mixture of some of the songs of my childhood with the rhythms and tonality of the traditional music in vogue at the time.

I’m not sure anyone ever thought of me as a stellar musician but the sound I had brought was so unique as to find audience in the chambers of nobles and eventually the chambers of the emperor himself. By the time that happened I had become one of the better dancers and was without question the best fighter. I’m not sure why that was. It seemed as though I could figure out each opponent’s move before they made it, see their riposte even before striking.

I think it was the game the old monk taught me. He called it “Go” and said it had been played for thousands of years. He taught me how to think about fighting, whether it was with words or swords. The last time I saw him was two days before I left China forever.

He said to me, in his oddly fractured Mandarin “If a woman could be Shao-Lin, you would be the greatest among us.” I attempted to protest and he, lovely soul that he was, deliberately misinterpreted my attempts at his native dialect.

“You are a woman, no matter about that little piece of flesh. It was my privilege to teach you and my honor to see you rise to power in court. You are and always will be the daughter of my heart. Your brothers will guard you always. You have much to bring the world, child. For too long you have, as westerners say ‘hidden your light under a basket’. You must go back to your homeland and shine as brightly as only you can. You brought light to an old man, now go share it with the world.”

For the first and last time, I said to him the words I had wanted to say for so long. “You have been a father to me. As long as I remain on this Earth, I will carry you in my heart and you will be my guiding light. I would not be alive without you and mother. You taught me that love is stronger than anything else in the world and I will spend my life teaching others the same.”

I switched from the formal and somewhat stilted language of the court to the rough language of his boyhood. “I will love you always, Father.”

We both collapsed into tears and held each other. I cried myself to sleep in his arms and when I awoke he was gone.

All of that is background now, history… except for the men who disembarked from the train with me and insisted on carrying everything but a few items I had secreted about my person. They were in garb and manner monks but in my heart they were my brothers. The Shao-Lin were a thing not yet known to the broader world and none of the rough looking characters found in any railroad and stockyard town had any inkling that their guns would be worse than useless against warriors of the monks’ calibre.

Luckily none of them seemed inclined to test the matter and our arrival went off without a hitch. We ensconced ourselves above the finest saloon in the town, the only one to offer hot baths with a room. One of my sisters had come with me. She had originally come from Siam and next to me she was incredibly delicate. None of my brothers would come into my chambers without her permission and she was really a bit of a taskmaster. She made certain that I never appeared as anything other than a lady of great wealth and power and guarded my public image a great deal more zealously than I might have wished at times.

She was scrubbing away at my scalp as I lay in a tub of scented water and suddenly it seemed too much. “Buppha?”

That was the name she had been given when she was sold to the slave traders. It meant “Flower” and it fit her as well as a name ever fit any woman.

“Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like as a man?”

I could hear her suck air through her teeth as she thought it over. “Sometimes” she said in her lilting trill “Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like. I cannot conceive of it. Men are so foreign to me… no matter where they are from they always want the same things…” She gave me a look I knew well.

“For myself I have always been a woman who loved other women. I have held a torch in my heart for you across these many leagues, across seas, through the intrigue of the court and I have held my tongue, dared not to speak of my truth. I know your heart lies with the Great Man…”

I could hear her heart break and if it had been within my power to change myself so that I could love a woman I would have done so…

“Buppha… if ever I would have room in my heart for another woman in that way it would be you, you must know that.”

She tried to hide her sigh. “My lady, I am as sure of that as I am of the sunrise. You know the truth as well as I, the closest we could ever be would be as sisters…”

I pulled her around from behind me and hugged her to me, soapy hands and all, and I kissed her. It was not the sort of kiss lovers give, it was that of a sister for another sister. “I love you Buppha…”

She murmured in reply “The name my parents gave me was A-Wut.”

She looked up into my eyes and I looked into her deep brown gaze before I barely whispered. ‘A fine weapon you are youngling, but you need love and you will find it. We are in a new place now and the rules of our old world no longer hold true. You are not my servant, I am not your master.”

“I do not know how to be anything else. Always I have served others… to be free is more than I can understand right now.”

“You will learn, my sister. We both must learn for as much as I held power at court I was no less a servant. Now, I am beginning to wrinkle up and I’ve gotten you all soapy so let us get rinsed off and go see what sort of local fare is on offer.”

We must have made quite a sight for the locals, 2 women in rich silks with equally strangely dressed men surrounding us. I noticed at least one of the women casting a speculative eye toward Buppha and wondered if she might be the first of us to find someone.

Well before the end of the meal I decided this town needed some decent food. What was served us would have been considered very rough fare indeed in the Far East. Fortunately Buppha and I were both as well trained in culinary art as any other of the forms we studied. Our Shaolin brothers were equally skilled with sword or wok and were having to put forth an effort to be polite and thankful for the food.

They drew the line at the liquor offered, instead bringing a rather delicate plum wine which did a great deal to make the meal more palatable. After so long using chopsticks and spoons I found that I had come to share the Chinese view of forks and knives… that they were barbaric. They were however necessary to cut up the large slabs of meat we had each been given.

I managed to eat 1/3 of mine, along with some revoltingly overcooked vegetables of dubious provenance. Buppha ate far less than I but she always did. Between ourselves and our brothers we finished off 2 bottles of plum wine and retired upstairs feeling at least fed but with a resolve to address the issue first thing in the morning.

Liu apparently had a bit stronger resolve than the rest of us and had essentially commandeered the kitchen. There wasn’t a great deal to work with but we did have an excellent breakfast of noodles in a fine broth and a fresh egg cracked into it to sit for a moment before serving.

He also made some dumplings to take with us as we were bound for my family’s spread a few miles out of town. I was dreading it but at the same time looking forward to seeing them, to explaining to them about my life…

Sooner than I really wanted Buppha and I were dressed for riding in proper western style and climbing onto the horses we had brought with us. We had purchased them once we landed in America and they were fine sturdy horses. No great beauties like those from Araby but doughty creatures nonetheless and with a sense for the local conditions and dangers.

I resolved to replace the high Spanish saddles as soon as possible though. They had their uses but could be rather uncomfortable. Soon we had left the dust of town behind us and were proceeding at that curiously ground eating amble these horses managed so effortlessly. The country around us was almost foreign to my eyes after so long in such an utterly different landscape but gradually familiar landmarks appeared and we stopped to water the horses and have a bite just before noon. The afternoon heat was a haze in the air as we rounded a bend in the track and there it was.

There was more of it than there had been, by a good margin. The house had at least tripled in size and gained outbuildings in addition to the barn which was far larger than I remembered. It seemed as though my family had done well in my absence.

There was very little in the way of movement, anything that had any sense was in some nice shady spot having a nap until it cooled off a bit. Even the chickens were scratching at the dirt under the shadow cast by the barn instead of being out in the full sunlight.

We all dismounted and tied off to conveniently located hitching posts then took a few moments to provide oats and water before I led the way up onto the broad porch and used a large iron knocker. It made a sort of a hollow sound, as lonely as the silence that had greeted our arrival.

It was a good 20 seconds before I heard the distinctive Southern accent my little sister had picked up from somewhere or other... A book I suspect because the closest she’s ever been to the Deep South was being born on the way from there. Apparently she’d picked up a few new words too and I felt a twinge of pity for whoever was on the other end of that tongue. She had always had a talent for verbally flaying whoever crossed her but it sounded like she’d raised it to a fine art.

When the heavy door flung open I took in the sight of my now grown up little sister. I had to look up a bit, we’d been the same height when I left and she’d apparently kept right on growing while I hadn’t. Even with 4 inches added by my boot heels I only came up to her shoulder. It was a treat to watch her face as she took in the sight that greeted her. Buppha had sort of faded back behind me with a quiet little gulp so she mostly saw a short woman in a broad Stetson and typically patterned western clothing but made from different material. I watched her gaze sweep the porch and take in my brothers who were still dressed in their traditional wise and had taken up seemingly casual positions but ones from which they could monitor and act on any threat which might present itself.

A brief look of wonderment flitted across her face but beneath I noticed her noticing how the men had positioned themselves and she almost nodded to herself with a little look of satisfaction. “Well come on in then, knock some of the dust off. I’ll have you something to drink in a minute.”

We entered into a large room dominated by a huge fireplace, a far cry from the modest sitting room of the home I’d grown up in. The furniture was heavily made but well crafted and had a certain rustic elegance to it. High windows were opened to let air flow and it was comfortably cool inside yet surprisingly well it.

If I hadn’t been so nervous I would have laughed at the way Buppha’s eyes followed while trying to look like she wasn’t. She looked half attracted, half afraid. Altogether a sensible response given my sister’s often confrontive attitude and rather formidable appearance. I wondered for a moment just what might come of that and then brought my thoughts back to the matter at hand.

A smaller woman bustled in and wordlessly laid little pieces of cork on lace doilies before half fleeing the room. A moment after my sister swept out balancing a large tray on one hand over her shoulder, then swooping it down to sit on a little frame she carried. It was a rather impressive maneuver given that upon the tray were a large crystal pitcher of amber liquid, a cut crystal decanter with another sort of amber liquid and large glasses already filled for each of us.

I noticed her gaze linger on Buppha for just the barest instant and my earlier speculative musings took fresh albeit momentary flight. My sister settled herself opposite my and looked me over again, taking a sip of what proved to be chilled sweet tea with a slug or few of bourbon in it. The alcoholic content of the tea gave me an idea just what sort of emotional state my sister was in although you wouldn’t have guessed it by looking at her. As always, she was the graceful one, a thing I envied in her as children.

I was quite capable of tripping over a smooth floor or a random encounter with a doorframe or two even after all the training I’d had. Fighting or dancing, I could be the essence of graceful movement, water around stones. Just walking around, I collected bruises.

Someone had to break the silence and we weren’t in China anymore which meant I was free to speak. “It is so good to see you Uma… I have missed you so much...”

That was as far as I got before she pulled me out of my seat and into a crushing embrace. I returned it enthusiastically and we both oofed a bit. She held me at arm’s length and looked me over again. “You’re a lot stronger than you look!”

“Well you’re about as strong as you look! You’re definitely no longer the little sister!” She was… impressive in every way. A full head or better taller than me and easily twice as heavy but still fairly slim and well toned. The only fat on her seemed to all be in the right places and I felt a little inadequate, given that her breasts were almost the size of my head!

“You look like some sort of princess playing at being a cowgirl… What happened and who are your friends and…” she flicked her eyes over to where Buppha was perched in her regal sort of way and finished in a near whisper “Who is She?”

I couldn’t hold back the grin that spread itself over my face. I replied in the same conspiratorial sort of way “Buppha. It means Flower but she is the deadliest little flower you’ve ever seen. Take it easy with her, ok? She comes from a very different culture and is in a bit of shock over being out here, like this.”

“Me? Why I’ll have you know I’m as subtle as a rattlesnake…” She drawled with a matching grin.

“Hmph. More like a python…” At her quizzical look I explained. “Snake big enough to wrap around this whole room and as thick as Clem. They strangle their prey and though they aren’t poisonous, they can give one hell of a bite!”

I could tell she didn’t believe me and I didn’t blame her, I had exaggerated just the tiniest amount. Clem was a pretty hefty fellow. All the same, it was an apt comparison.

“I obviously can’t call you Tommy anymore and you’ll have to explain the how of that one later but what do I call you?”

“I have had a few names but now my name is Nuwang. It was given to me by someone very dear to my heart…” I had to work to keep my feelings of loss from showing and wondered if I would ever get over him. 6 months now since the walls of the Forbidden City vanished into my past and only having Buppha and my brothers along kept me from sinking into depression. I still cried myself to sleep many nights but life had taught me to deal with loss if nothing else. The same was true for all our little band.

“English, little sister. I don’t understand Chinese.” I looked up and saw understanding in her eyes. I just managed to say it again in English before she dragged me into another hug. She set me back on my feet after a moment and I straightened my clothing, letting fastidious habits take over while my mind looped back around.

“I’m sorry you lost him…” she murmured to me and it almost cost me what little was left of my self control.

“Its Mandarin.” She quirked an eyebrow at me and I went on. “There’s no such thing as “Chinese” except as a written language. There are a thousand different ways of speaking Chinese but only one way to write it. The spoken language I used was the formal court language called Mandarin.”

“So apparently traveling the world and becoming yourself hasn’t dragged you out of a book yet.”

The voice from the entry drew my attention over to the familiar figure of my father, older looking and voice a little thickened with age but still a fine figure of a man and as handsome as any I’ve ever seen. It was obvious where Uma got her size, he stood a good 6 inches taller than her and you’d have needed more than one axe handle to span his shoulders.

I was rooted to the spot. The moment I had anticipated and dreaded for so long had snuck up on me and… passed. No muss, no fuss, no explosions of temper, none of the nightmare scenarios I’d dreamed up. Just the thump of boots on wooden floor as he strode across the room and enveloped me in a hug that made my sister’s seem halfhearted, lifting me completely off my feet and spinning me around before he set me back on my feet and held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down.

“I never thought it was possible… you look exactly like your mother at your age. Tell me you’re here to stay, at least a little while?”

I could barely speak. “I’m home, Papa.”

“Nee-Wong, right?” He was trying, I had to give him that.

“Nuwang, Papa…”

“Isn’t that what I said?” He grinned at me and I suddenly knew everything was going to be just fine between us. “Gonna introduce me to your friends?”

I did and it was an interesting sight. My brothers each bowed as I introduced them and he returned it in his own way, a nod that from him was as good as a bow. Buppha bowed and he strode over and bent down to brush his lips across the back of her hand. She was quite flustered by that but you’d have to know her very well indeed to see it.

He strode over to the front door and bellowed in the direction of the barn. “Clem, let Bug finish brushin Patch out! There’s somebody here to see ya!”

“Ya don’t have ta yell Gray, I’m right here. Somebody’s here to see me? What for?”

This day just wasn’t getting any easier. Clem’s dad had worked for mine and we’d grown up together. He was as large as my father and more thickly built. There wasn’t a scrap of fat on him, all muscle and bone with an easy grace that belied his size.

I turned to face him standing in the entry with a glass of tea in his hand and watched the glass slip from his fingers before he swooped it back up with the other hand, never taking his eyes from me as they grew wide with shock and… something else I’d wondered if I’d ever see again. The other reason I’d left… I couldn’t handle the way Clem looked at me because I knew I felt the same way about him.

This whole being rooted to the spot thing was getting a little old but there I was, not only rooted but unable to tear my eyes from his. Eyes which kept getting closer until I was looking up at him and then he was… kissing me?

Suddenly I was looking at the ceiling, or I would have been had my vision not been filled with Buppha’s worried face. I heard her declare, in Siamese of all languages, that I was fine and could hear multiple bodies relaxing. I grinned at her and she realized what she’d done before repeating it in English, adding that I’d apparently been completely overcome by a kiss. Leather creaked with more relaxation and I heard my father’s chuckle.

“It is touching to know you were so worried but let me up now please?” She clucked at me a bit but soon enough I was sitting up sipping at Uma’s high-powered tea and blushing furiously while Clem sat where my sister had before, unable to wipe the grin I was sure I mirrored off his face.

“Dammit Clem, you could have warned a girl!”

“Well whenever I made a move before you’d make like a jackrabbit so I figured I better get surprise on my side this time.” I had to give him that much, I’d made like a jackrabbit all the way to China the way things turned out. “Besides, you’re even prettier now, how could I resist?”

I thought I was blushing before, right then I felt like I was about to set fire to the sofa. “Clem, I…” He wouldn’t let me finish.

“I won’t let you get away again if I can help it.”

“I have no intention of going anywhere just now but if you think you can ‘Let’ me do anything or stop me if I want to do something you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Dammit Tommy you know I didn’t mean it that way!”

“Nuwang. Tommy died a long time ago if he ever even existed…”

That stopped him in his tracks. He seemed to be trying the sound of my name in his mouth, getting a feel for how to make the sounds right. “Nuwang then” and he got it perfectly which for some reason made a little thrill run down my spine when he said it. “When you left I didn’t eat for a week, couldn’t sleep… I would have followed you if I had any idea where you’d gone. I’ve been here ever since, cept for a little while I rode around in a blue uniform and tried really hard not to get shot.”

I’d heard of the American Civil War even in Peking and I was glad he’d been on the side that was freeing slaves. It was hard to imagine him going for a week without eating though, he could eat enough for a family and still want seconds and then a snack in an hour or so.

“Sounds like we’ve both had our share of excitement. I tried so hard to get away from who I am that I wound up running all the way across the world and finding myself. I know you never cared Clem but it messed with my head something awful and it was a long time before I could deal with it. You have to know… there has been someone else.”

He was silent for a moment while I worried about how he would react. The look on his face was one I had no idea how to interpret until it turned into a gentle smile, the same one that lit my darkest hours for so many years. “I’m glad. I spent a lot of time thinking about how lonely you must be. I was too, and I had a few… experiences I guess you’d say. Even had one that might have been serious but I never stopped carryin a torch for you and there was no way I could stay in Charleston after she took sick and died...”

He looked so lost I had to get up and wrap my arms around him drawing his head down into my chest while he clung to my waist. “I’m sorry you lost her Clem... but I’m glad you didn’t stay in Charleston. I’m glad I couldn’t stay in Peking…” It was a while before he was able to get himself together and it was comforting in a way. We’d shared grief as children and here we were as adults holding each other in much the same way we’d done after our mothers died.

It was more intimate, bereft of the fear and hesitation that had kept both of us, especially me, from being able to truly accept what lay between us. It was more than just me having come into my own, there had obviously been a lot of discussion between these three people who had shared my early life. All the fears and secrets that had kept us each from being as close as we should have been to the others were apparently out in the open, even mine… or at least those I’d had before I left. I’d acquired a few new ones and I suspected the others had too but there was the clear sense that those too would share the light of day.

In that small eternity my soul healed more than I’d ever thought possible. It might have lasted longer but I noticed Uma and Buppha stealing glances at each other and it was so funny I started giggling. Papa looked at me, looked at them, quirked an eyebrow and took a sip of his drink. Clem nuzzled into me a little bit, took a breath and drew back just enough to look into my eyes. I did a quick eyeflick toward the two of them and saw his eyes follow, then grow a little wider in understanding.

No secrets indeed! Well except perhaps each of them trying not to show their interest. I’d move that process along!

“Papa, I assume there is space for my brothers in the loft?” That made some movement at least since he spluttered for a moment before he got himself together.

“Like hell there is, those boys can each have a room upstairs, there’s plenty to be had. Plenty of room for their tack and horses.” He paused a moment and looked at all of them. “If my daughter comes home and tells me she’s got a bunch of brothers then I have a bunch of sons. I don’t know anything about you other than your names and you’re gonna have to refresh me on those but I’d be obliged if you’d let an old man act as a stand in for the parents you left behind.”

They looked at each other and bowed to him in unison before resuming their previous positions. He turned his attention to Buppha next. “The same goes for you young lady. I need another daughter to help me keep these boys in line!” He grinned at her and she managed to smile back before she burst into tears.

I moved to comfort her and she cried into my shoulder as I held her. My brothers knew how unusual this show of emotion was for her and more importantly they knew what had triggered it. It took a few moments for her to regain her composure and wipe her face of tears but when she did she gave me a wordless thanks before rising to walk over and sink to her knees in front of Papa before bowing to him.

“I would be honored to consider you my father sir. Thank you, and thank you for my brothers who are too rude to speak!” She glared sharply around at them until they chorused their thanks in similar wise. She nodded sharply to herself and turned her attention back to him as he struggled to contain his laughter, the occasional chuckle managing to break free.

“Looks like I called that one about right!” He sobered quickly and reached his hand out to her. She stared at it before putting her much smaller hand into his. He quickly drew her to her feet and looked into her eyes, pulling her chin up when she tried to look downward. “No child of mine will bow to anyone, least of all me, you understand?” she nodded uncertainly and he looked around the room. “That goes for you boys too. We’re all equals here and no man or woman bows to another. I understand that might have been the way of things where you come from but this is America. We fought a war to get rid of slavery and folks don’t like reminders of it too much.”

He drew her into a gentle hug and she simply stood there for a moment unsure how to respond until at last, her arms crept around his neck and she returned the embrace. As much healing as had occurred for myself and Clem took place in those moments, that embrace. Buppha had been taken from her parents while very young to be trained for the life she would eventually come to know and had almost no memories of them. I had been her first true friend but it had taken years before she was able to respond to me reaching out. Years while she saw the agonies I put myself through and was put through by others until one night she finally opened up and told me of her own past. Some of it I had known but the full weight of it had to be shared to be borne.

Our stations in life there were very different but we had become sisters and it helped us both bear what had to be borne, do what had to be done to survive and in the process increase both our skills and my standing at court. Together we were a formidable team but because of the way life was arranged in the Empire she was not even mentioned while I was given all the accolades. It was terribly unfair as I would not have been able to do any of those things without Buppha working behind the scenes, preparing me for what I would face and assisting when she could do so.

To her, having a man she knew she could trust implicitly offer that sort of relationship? It was beyond even her stoicism and the façade finally cracked, more than I had ever seen around anyone else. Clem caught my gaze again with a wordless question and I promised in in equal silence that he would know later.

It suddenly struck me that we would have a lot of laters… there was no hurry. Perhaps it was just the way I had learned to think, to always look for the flaw, the chink in the armor. Whatever it was I had never envisioned the reality is it stood before me. I had apparently spent years taking counsel of my fears and not seen reality for what it was, not exactly a new thing for me. That same tendency had been at the root of my leaving as a child and I resolved, not for the first time, to be more open to positive possibilities.

That in mind, I took the opportunity to make a positive movement of my own and did something I’d wanted to do long ago, giving a little squirm and settling myself across Clem’s lap. If the response I felt was anything to judge by I’d done the right thing and I allowed the smile within to make its way to the surface. He reached for his drink and I snagged it out of his hand, taking a sip before giving it back to him.

He grinned back at me after his own sip and the last of my fears fled from the light in that grin. The old easy ways of our friendship hadn’t changed, just become what I now realized we’d both wanted them to be. Sure there was a lot of time between us and we’d both acquired our share of scar tissue, physical and emotional but none of that mattered.

Both of my families were together, as much as was possible and the world was a very different place for me, for us, than it had been just a scant few hours before. Instead of fears I was now taking the counsel of my hopes and dreams. My brothers were far more stoic about the whole thing but I could tell they were deeply touched as well and once they had some time to absorb the idea that they had chosen a new life for themselves they would thaw. I knew them to be a mixed and well matched lot of men who were the deepest of friends, who had fought and meditated and learned by each other’s side since they were children. Beneath the reserve was a wellspring of mirth and deep joy in simple things and I felt this new life would suit them far better than the one we left behind.

I was glad we brought some things with us though. I had become accustomed to far different foods than those I was raised on and along with us was the means and knowledge to transplant many of those things to new homes. We had discovered some of a new fusion of cuisine in California and it gave us all ideas we wanted to try.

Medicine was perhaps the biggest of the things we brought along. The medicines Buppha and I needed could be reproduced with a bit of time and effort but we brought enough for a long time and there was no real rush for ourselves. I knew Buppha and I were not unique in being who we were and these medicines could help others so we already had plans to begin helping those who came to us and seeking out others by the quietest of means. As accepting as my family had been the very idea of our existence was so far outside the imagination of most westerners that the only way to be safe was to be invisible.

The very idea of safety was so foreign that I hadn’t really considered it. I felt we’d made a great start on fusing east and west into something more than either.

Time would tell.