Not yet… I’m not ready to leave this tranquil palace of ice and cloud. Not even as my aquamarine flesh ripples in the quickening embrace of water. There is something else. Something imprinted within the ice. Within my flesh. Cities shrouded in grey…in darkness…
I am awake. Lazurite shimmers with a golden aura as light from above sweeps through the gloam of frozen chambers and the steady drip-drop of meltwater keeps me from returning to the otherworld. A breeze carries the chatter of birds to the empty halls of my home, sweet voices with the promise of sunshine. It joins with the stone voice of Father Mountain and the groaning ice, reaching out to others awakening in this second life.
All around me waters surge into motion and droplet splash onto ice. For a moment, the sea hangs upon glowing walls. There was a flash of pearlescent scales as waves crashed and sucked upon shingle, and I hear a sorrowful lament of a female come from the deep. As with the faded dreams, the indefinite vision disappears before I could make sense of it. The meltwater of Gela Dandong is gaining strength, longing to move, to see the world…to bask beneath the sky…
The currents tug at my soul, pulling me from the lapis cocoon towards the birdsong and swaying grasses. I rush through secret passageways; twisting, coiling, and stretching into life as jets of foam and bubbles form behind.
Images dash across crystalline walls as I pass, cities of pewter and glass rising into the heavens while bridges vanished into cloud. Paper lanterns and colourful fairy lights shining upon black water. Rivers laden with cargo and blanketed in smog.
Then in a tumultuous moment, the waters I ride with break from their primeval source to tumble to the world below. My claws clench into the icy surface, and limbs tense, I leap into the air. Weightless. I was of the air and share the skies with a golden eagle soaring above. Droplets of light tingled across my skin as I drifted in rainbow mist. But I am of water, and to water I must return.
From freefall, I turn away from the wall of ice and return to the stream. The pressure against my ears quietens the world above as I move through a cerulean rush towards the sun. The voices of others came closer. First Dangqu from the Swamplands to the south joined with me, then Chumar of Red Water from the north. Their serpentine bodies coiled around me in play as they leapt into the air before crashing back down to startle the fish.
The surrounding plateau shifted through jade and olive to the droning of bees drifting among wildflowers. My river came to rest in a deep pool where the continual tug finally let go of me. Here I bid farewell to Dangqu and Chumar who continued on without me, searching for their next adventure.
To the west, the sun transformed the mountains into a fiery display. Clouds of vermillion and crimson watched over the Tanggula Mountains with its mantle of peach snow. As I lay there resting in the warm embrace, a breeze caressed my skin; a faint tang of brine woven with Oudh and Damask rose.
I faced into the zephyr, my whiskers twitched ever so slightly. Only She wore such a fragrance. The breeze brushed against me again as though her fingers were reaching through the abyss between us… The wash of the sea surged through tranquil space as ripples grew into waves and buffeted me around. Her light touch moved to my ears, to my neck… I could see her in the reflection of the stars upon the surface: pearlescent skin, eyes of coral, and Her temptress smile that had stolen countless lives beckoned me as my heart fluttered.
The last shards of light dimmed into black velvet: waters still once more. The image of Her, gone. My heart continued to ache at the parting as only winter lingered in the air. I exhaled, bubbles gurgling into life around my whiskers.
Her appearance had given the world the warmth of endless sun even as night fell. Now everything felt leaden. Paddling back into the current, I let the river carry me on again and floated on my back to watch the slow metamorphosis of pewter clouds. She was Queen of the Sea and I… I remember her as I remembered my brothers. Nothing more.
*
The mountains ruled the horizons all around as I continued floating down the Jinsha River through the night. Wisps of silver clouds raced across the sky after relinquishing their claim upon the skies, the stars shining brighter than diamonds in the moon’s absence. Wolves called to each other from far within the shadows of the cedar, their haunting cries disturbing a group of gibbons. The shrieks and howls of both ended the tranquillity of the night.
A grumbling noise was heading upstream towards me and I dropped into the river grasses. A boat scuttled into view that was nothing like the wooden vessels from my previous life. Those had been powered by hand or wind… aside from that one old coot who tried to harness fire of course. I’d tried to tell him it was a bad idea. I tried reminding him of that fact when he decided to try again at a different time.
The fisherman cast his net into the air. I wanted to stay and study the motor that had evolved from repeated disaster…but the fish had left this part. I didn’t want to deny the fisherman his catch as his net drifted back towards the surface and into the depths.
The sun was at its zenith as I returned to the surface. I’d been content to remain well away from the river traffic as more boats skimmed upon and down its length. Engines were humming and revving, the pitch altering all the time. My temples were throbbing from it all and the pain was making my vision falter.
The surface was thick with blueish smoke choking the air and tainting the water…It’s a wonder the fish come near the chaos. The air was seething and close, prickling at my skin as towering clouds grew into anvils. A sinking sensation trickled through my gut like embers as I looked around me from the shade of cedar.
Ahead of me were the two boats that had become the source of my disturbance. Two elderly men were brandishing empty crab baskets from a wooden boat and suffered a torrent of abuse from a group of younger men on the second boat. The engine of their boat muffled the words of all, while below it, the water shimmered in unnatural iridescence as oil seeped from the motor.
My nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought of getting closer to the cloying smell, but I needed to know what was going on. By the time I was beneath their vessels, the sticky substance had coated every inch of flesh and smothered my gills. Scratching at it coated my claws in the oily lacquer, spreading it further.
Then my eyes fell on them through the gloom…the hollow eyes of lifeless fish, the reason for the elders’ grievance. Slivers of dull silver counted passed the hundreds, the rancid flesh flaking away. Poisoned. The embers in my gut were igniting into wildfire that coursed through my blood, burning at my throat.
The air trembled, the anvil clouds collapsed, and the storm began. A metallic taste washed over my tongue within the electrified surge. I lashed my tail through the depths and nudged the wooden boat into the middle so that faster currents would carry the elders away.
Rain hammered down. Lightning crashed before me in a flash of hissing fluorescence through the roiling depths. Rage thundered from my throat and howled through the darkening day as I surged through the wreckage and leapt into the rain.
Oil still clung to my skin, refusing to come away no matter how much I raked at it. Lightning flashed through the sky, ripping the clouds apart as it rushed towards me to tear at the iridescent residue before booming upon the water below. My insides burnt worse than any fever. My heart writhed…breaking. I was screaming. It felt like a blunt knife was gauging into my left eye. I had to close it as the sky continued to shudder and flash.
The river was sacred. Worshiped. The mother of all life. Shrines and temples adorned its edge like hallowed jewels. Dynasties rose and fell all along the river while poets tried to capture the beautiful moments of life. Men had altered its course, adjusted and diverted its flow… but never let it be poisoned. The vacant eyes of river-fowl looked at me in the void between droplets.
Cries of terror rung through the world. Below me, the storm surge was reaching the narrow gorge. Screams. Shouting. I looked down upon it all, certain I was visible. It doesn’t matter. The pain in my temples forced me to close my right eye.
*
Water streamed from gutters, gurgling into rivulets below and sloshing into a deeper body. I squinted into the harsh light of civilisation; my body still numb from the abyss of sleep.
Aureate shutters of a teahouse in front of me were wide open to the twilight, with paper lanterns adorning the veranda that flowed around the courtyard. The pungent aroma of lapsang souchong drifted towards me as marbled koi lazed by my side, fat and complacent. They weren’t even fazed by me lurking in the depths of their home.
Eyes bore into me from underneath the trailing wisteria vines of the veranda where a person watching me stood. Waiting. Others moved behind them in a flurry of activity and someone started playing the guzheng.
The observer stepped from the veranda, moving with graceful strides and concealed by their parasol even as they crouched at the edge of the pond. The lengths of ebony hair with flowers pinned throughout and strings of pearls at her wrists and ankle gave her away.
“How did a water spirit manage to get himself landlocked?” Her eyes of gold glanced at me before she turned to inhale the perfume of the peonies beside her, the parasol balanced on her shoulder.
“Why is a mermaid walking upon the land?” Specks of red algae floated around me, catching in my whiskers.
“I like it here.” She looked over her shoulder to where the harsh lighting came from, as unaffected by its unnaturalness as the fish had been of engines. “No one else is around, you can come up.”
Fresh air filled my lungs. Being at the surface, smells from further away reached me too, that of garlic, soy sauce, ginger, and beef sizzling over charcoal. After tugging the pondweed away from my face, I let my chin rest on the warm stone tiles, looking up at her with what I hoped were my most beseeching eyes.
“You have more pressing concerns than what’s on the menu. They’ll be emptying this pond to clean it tomorrow… I doubt there will be any more rain tonight. Everyone is in a frenzy after that pandemonic storm you unleashed earlier. Whatever set you off like that?”
I didn’t want to remember. Before I could retreat to the safety of the pond’s floor, the mermaid reached out to me, cool fingers cupping my chin and holding my head towards her. “You don’t even remember who you are, do you?”
Bibliography
Primary Source:
The Mighty Yangtze: China’s Life-giving River, Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company (2009)
Secondary Sources:
Turner John, A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry, The Chinese University of Honk Kong (1976) Wai-lim Yip, Chinese Poetry, Duke University Press (1997)
Online Sources:
Behind The Name. Chinese Mythology
Names <https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/chinese-mythology> [accessed 07 November 2020]
The World of Chinese The
Chinese Mermaid 2015 <https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2015/08/the-chinese- mermaid/> [Accessed 04 November 2020]
Wikipedia Shuimu <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuimu> [Accessed 04 November 2020] Wikipedia Yangtze <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze> [Accessed 05 November 2020]
