Just to warn you, some of the stuff Kate does in this chapter might seem a little to intellectually advanced for a 9-year-old, so just keep in mind that this IS fiction.

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Kate had her face buried in the pillows on her bed. She had soaked the through with her tears long before. Will had left the door hours ago, and she hadn't stopped crying since.

"I'll never please them!", she moaned into her pillow. She slowly lifted her head out of the tear-soaked fabric.

"They don't care about what I want or what makes me happy.", she whispered in fury. "All they care about is me being like every other girl out there. SO I WON'T EMBARRASS THEM!"

She grabbed a pillow and threw it at the closet. "Why couldn't I have just been born a boy?", she said, pulling her hair in frustration. Suddenly, she remembered a story she had read from a book she had found in her Grandfather's library earlier that year. It was a sort of poem about a young girl in China a long time ago. Kate couldn't remember the girl's name, but she remembered the story. There was a war and every family had to send one man out to fight. But the girl's family had no older sons, just her elderly father. So, to save her father from having to fight, the girl decided to go to war disguised as a man, despite her parent's pleas not to. After fighting for 12 years, nobody in the army had noticed that she was a girl. In fact, she was such a good soldier that, when they return after the war was won, she was offered a military promotion by the emperor.

Kate wished she could disguise herself as a boy and become a blacksmith. But she knew that it was a completely different situation. In the first place, she could never disguise herself that well to the people in her town. And even if she could, her parents would find it very suspicious if she weren't around the house, causing trouble as usual. They would definitely catch on. Sure, the girl in the story's parent's knew what she was doing, but she was a grown woman and Kate was still young. If Kate's parents found out about what she was doing, they would be able to stop her much easier than if she was a grown-up, like the other girl.

But, as she thought about it more, Kate came up with a solution to the problem. All she had to do was make sure her parents didn't find out about what she was doing. Then they couldn't stop her! If only there was a time in the day that she wouldn't be missed. However, this was something easier thought of than actually found. Over the 9 years of her short life, Kate had given herself a reputation of being a very loud child. When she was younger, her nurse had said that the only time her mouth ever closed was when she was sleeping.

Sleeping? "That's it!", Kate whispered, "The only time I won't be missed!". Immediately, she jumped out of bed and quietly opened her door. She tiptoed down the hall to her brother's room to get the first thing she needed. His door was open, so she crept in and walked over to his clothes hamper, at the foot of his bed. She reached into it, and pulled out a pair of his breeches and a jacket. She quickly left the room, went back to her own and locked the door again.

She stripped out of her dress and put on Anthony's clothes, hoping that they would fit. Anthony was a bigger than she was, so the garments were a bit big. Kate solved this problem by tying a sash around her waist and rolling up the jacket sleeves. The fact that the jacket was a little loose on her torso couldn't be helped. She decided it wasn't a big deal, anyway. At this point, the clothes were really just so she could move easier and so no one would recognize her on the streets, if someone happened to be awake during the night.

Now the problem of how to get out of the house presented itself. "I can't go out the front door", she thought, "That would be noisy and someone might be awake when I try to come back in." She would have to use the window. Kate had snuck out of windows more times than she could keep track of, but not from the one in her room. There wasn't anything by the window for her to climb down. "I'll have use a rope", she thought. Remembering something her friend, John, had shown her, she set to work.

Kate searched her room for any spare blankets that she had laying around. She found that the maid had put two sets of spare sheets under the bed. Kate tied many knots in each sheet and tied them all together; making a crude rope. She tied one end to the bedpost and threw the rest out the window. It reached all the way down to the front steps. Suddenly, Kate realized she couldn't have the rope in front of the door, which it was now because her window was directly above it. If someone were to open the door for some reason, they would see the rope and she would be found out. But she needed it to reach all the way if she wanted to climb back up. Kate sat on her bed and thought. After a while, she had an idea. It probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try.

She pulled the rope back up to her room. She took a piece of thread out of her embroidery kit. Then, Kate folded the rope a few feet over, so the bottom had a large loop. She used the thread to tie the end she had folded, so her rope resembled a large noose. Kate had tied the thread tight enough so the end wouldn't fall out, but loose enough so she could pull it free with a sharp tug. She tossed it out the window again. This time, it went just above the doorframe.

"Yes!", she exclaimed, "Now, let's see if the other half of the plan works." And with that, she was out the window and making her way down the rope. As was said, Kate had climbed out many windows in her house before, so she was very crafted in the art. In a few seconds, she was at the bottom of the loop. Kate braced her ankles and dropped onto the steps. Not wasting any time, she scurried a few feet across the lawn to a small tree growing there, took hold of one of the lowest branches, and pulled. She was planning to use the branch to hook the loop in her rope and pull it down so she could reach it to climb back up. After a lot of pulling and cracking, she managed to break the branch from the tree. It wasn't very thick or heavy, being at the bottom of the tree, but it was very long. Long enough to reach the rope, Kate hoped.

She picked up the branch, carried it back to the front door and, trying not to scrap the wood against the door, maneuvered it into the loop. When she pulled the rope free of the thread, Kate carefully hid the branch in the flower garden next to the steps. When put on it's side, behind the hedges, not even the keenest eye could have seen it was there.

It took Kate a little longer to climb up the rope than it had to climb down, with the rope being longer and her weight working against gravity this time, but she was back to her window in only a few minutes.

When she was back in, Kate untied the rope from her bedpost. Then, she changed out of Anthony's clothes, and put on her own nightgown. Lastly, she carefully placed the rope and the clothes between her mattresses, careful to make them as flat and even as possible. When she was sure the maid wouldn't be able to tell the difference, Kate climbed into her bed, and before celebrating her success with some well deserved sleep, she muttered in triumph "Take that, Dad."

DO YOU LOVE IT! OK, so Kate's a little advanced. DEAL WITH IT! lol! Just kidding, guys. For those of you who didn't catch it, that would be the legend of Mulan mentioned at the beginning. I looked up the real one, the Chinese poem, not the Disney version.

Here's the link, so you can read it if you want: (without the spaces and real slashes and dots where the words are written, since deletes actual web addresses) http: slash slash www dot geocities dot com slash Hollywood slash 5082 slash mulanpoem dot html