Sticky sweat and pain. These two impressions dominated Mulan's perception when she tried to lift on her arms once more though her muscles were tensed and felt close to ripping. Tears burned in her eyes but she refused to let them float down her cheeks because they were covered with dust and mud and everybody around her would see them, see her cry. She stretched her arms with a cry of despair and triumph, trembling uncontrollably as everything inside her screamed for rest from the torture she demanded from her young body. A spate of icy water hit Mulan and she broke down under the sensation, nearly freezing to death immediately as she lay in the snow and shivered for dear life; the tears turned to burning ice on her skin.
"Stand up!", a harsh voice ordered and another torrent of water hit her, making her cry even harder. Tears of anger. "Will you hurry up, girl? Or do you need another bath?!" The men arround her laughed roughly and Mulan fought herself to her feet, trembling like a lunatic from the sheer wish to stay alive. Her comrades sat around her on warming bales of straw, wrapped in their armours and shawls so they looked thick and round like Buddahs; Mulan wore only a thin dress. Her father was among them, arose from his seat, walked closer to her and put his hand on her shoulder, the other one covered her cheek to wipe her tears from her skin. He hadn't done this in a while though she'd tried to seek his favour with everything she had. Today she arose very early in the morning cooking a breakfast, carried a deluge of water to the stables and practiced her horseback archery all day together with the old armourer Xang Xang. Now, it was late afternoon and she was at her limit after her father had appeared, watched her for about an hour when Xang Xang made her run around the trainings ground for missing the target and finally let her do a hundred press-ups out of supposedly no reasons. But the sixteen-year-old knew exactly why her father would try to mortify her in front of all these warriors like a simple farmer's wife: because she was nothing better than a farmer's wife and she should never forget that all the respect and the friendliness other people showed her was founded by her behaviour towards and with them.
Hopefully Mulan glanced at her father and smiled brightly when he nodded, showing her that he was pleased with her effort.
"Thank you, father", Mulan whispered and attempted to hug him, but Shan Yu shoved her gently back to her spot, avoiding any other physical contact. He would always do that and Mulan tried not to be hurt by his action, but since she was nine years old her father had changed and had no longer been a father but a leader for her. "You did very well, Mulan, you're ready." The leader of the huns turned to his men that were silent like a grave and addressed a young man who stood close beside him when he said:"My daughter can fight and survive better than you, so watch out, maybe she's the one tossing water over you the next time." The elder warriors laughed about that and the young man's face was covered with redness when his leader patted Mulan's back and gave her a rare smile.
"Now go back to your grandmother and eat something.", he ordered his daughter. Mulan tried to wipe every single emotion from her face, bowed to him and turned around, leaving the men behind. Ignoring the looks that followed her, she jogged through the camp because the trainings grounds were close to the river and in a great distance from the last tents. She felt cold and tired but so proud as if her heart had wings and was about to raise her from the ground as she ran back to their home, jumping with every step. Women stopped with their work to look after her and whispered to each other, men stared, children stopped their play and ran after her. Mulan didn't look back. Why care about some whispering housewives, why recognize staring rude men if her father was proud of her and looked at her, damn it! She ran faster, her long hair floated around her in heavy masses of mud and dirt, coloured her dress with brown stains and made her look like a simple thrall that ran away from her master. But she was no thrall and as long as her father was breathing, as long as she had hands to grab a lance, a stock or a sword she would keep her people and herself from suffering that fate and was ready to do everything her father ordered. He did not speak to her of such things but Mulan could avoid to be seen when she desired it most, hid in the shadows and listened to her father speeches and consultings just to understand that there was a reason for his change and the new direction her fate had followed since he started training her: the wall.
Surely, since more than two hundred years the chinese people had worshipped its emperor by working itself to death with the attempt of finishing the great wall that would keep China disconnected from any outward influence and their enemies but the emperor did not know which ghosts he agitated by taunting and insulting her father that way. Ever since she could remember, the two parties had collide now and then, killed and raped, ravished and burned the other people in the hope of ending as the superior and finally, the emperor, she didn't know which one, had ordered to build the wall. And her father planned to break his descendant for it.
Mulan reached their home and opened the door to the warm fire and the room filled with smoke when she saw Janitja, their housemaid, who tried to save the burned stew with the only result of burning her hands on the hot bowl. It was the same old bowl her mother and herself had cooked with before her grandmother felt compelled to hire a maid for the housework because Mulan lacked time and will to do it since her father had ended her childhood with getting her trained. Like a man.
Janitja was pale with panic when she saw Mulan, she was the leaders daughter after all but Mulan smiled at her, pulled some dry leaves and a liquor from the shelf to put it on the housemaids burned flesh. "Dear me, Janitja, one day you will burn not only your hands. Think of Fei!" Janitja grew even paler because juts like every girl of their tribe knew her story and though Mulan liked the women very much, she never grew tired of giving her as a scary example to keep Janitja from getting up to mischief.
"I'm so sorry, Mulan! I didn't know how to pull it off the fire so I used my bare hands, silly me. I feared", Janitja gulped fiercely, "that you are the leader coming home and see me acting stupid."
"But you have nothing to fear from him. He would never excite because of a burned stew." Mulan blinked in surprise and rubbed the herbs essence into her friends wounds before she covered them with the coltsfood leaves, fixing everything with a soft bandage. Janitja thanked her, looked around as if to see if nobody would listen to her next words, then she stepped closer to Mulan and whispered: "Our leader got one of the guards whipped to death by his own hand because he made a bad joke about you."
Mulan stared at her as if another head had grown ion her shoulders and Janitja looked down on her injured hand when she kept on speaking: "His tongue was loosened by too much booze and no matter how often he apologized nor how often the other guards assured the senseless foolishness of his remark...he showed no mercy." Janitja obviously shuddered by the thought of it, surely imaginung herself being whipped for burned food and she looked up at Mulan with sorrowful eyes. "You won't tell him that you know that from me, will you?"
Mulan gladly gave her promise though she felt far away with her thoughts when Janitja got ready to leave, but before the handmaid disappeared through the door, Mulan held her back.
"I'm sorry for that guards fate but I have no influence on my fathers actions. He'd rather kill me than let me try to soothe him." That was the truth, a hard truth but Mulan could speak it out lout without any bitterness considering that she'd never known another way since her childhood. Her father never considered himself as better or in a higher status but he was the leader and he never tolerated any interferences. Images of that fateful day appeared before her mind's eye, her father dragging her away from the fire, the grandmother yelling, begging and threatening after him as he carried her out to the wilderness of the training ground and her voice...her voice
Bloody fool, Shan Yu! You will see what'll come out in the end when you keep that girl from her fate, a women's fate! The gods will punish you for you breaking their will, a woman is a woman and can never be a man, remember my words! One day all this will have a bad end, San Yu, come back, listen to me! Come back, her mother would turn in her grave in shame if she knew, a shame, you bloody fool!"
Janitja still stood at the door and mustered her intensely, obviously her thoughts had been written on her face like a simples sentence and what Janitja saw was alarming.
"He was my cousin"
Quietly and without looking at Mulan once more Janitja left and Mulan stared after her.
The door of grandmother's chambers opened and the old woman stepped into the room, grumpily glaring at everything and her granddaughter that was about to skin some lignified grean beans for a new stew.
"Janitja, that silly goose!", she simply sat and poured herself a cup of tea with some Yak milk, cinnamon and curcuma. Mulan didn't reply anything and concentrated on her task with all her heart with nothing to hear from her grandmother but unjustly charges and vulgarities whenever they started a conversation. She'd become fractious, fractious and insecure from her decreasing strength and growing illness and the knowledge that she soon would be blind. "Since when do you care for the food, granddaughter? I thought my son had dragged you away pretending you were a man!" She spit out. "That fool!"
Mulan tried to stay calm and face her grandmothers comment with serenity but it was like a sharp sword buried in her back and caused an unbearable pain though she had combed her hair and put a fresh dress on to feel more comfortable and save her granny from ending up unconscious on the floor if she'd seen her in her dirty ripped dress returning from the training grounds.
"He ordered me to take care of the food and your medicine but when I arrived Janitja had burned the stew. I will cook some new." With that Mulan took a step over to the freshly cleaned bowl which would keep the new stew from tasting of burned flesh and cast the beans into the boiling water adding the bones and the flesh and poured some milk with pepper. Her grandmather snorted indignantly to express her low opinion of her housemaid before she gulped down the rest of the tea and let the cup fall. Her eyes drilled relentlessly into her granddaughter's.
"Oh, I am so clumsy, don't you want to pick it up for your old granny?" Mulan stared at her for a second before she bend down and took the shattered porcelain though she knew the old woman had did it on purpose. She knew what would follow.
"Mulan, you have to stop this.", her grandmother hissed while small drops of spit hit Mulan's cheek and she had a hard time to keep herself from wiping them off. Disgusting. "A woman's place is her home with her children, it is the gods will! No man will marry you if you do not stop playing around with the other soldiers, wearing men's clothing and ride that crazy black horse like a hussar. Your mother" "My mother.", Mulan growled under her breath and the old woman noticed the angry atmosphere around her granddaughter. "Don't speak to me of my mother, you know nothing, you don't know what she would have thought of this." Mulan tossed the pieces of porcelain into the corner where they shattered with a loud clank and made Coranja cringe. She mustered her granddaughter for a second as if she tried to assess how far she could push before the girl would slap her. She took a deep breath and whispered: "You are a woman."
"Oh, cut it out!", Mulan cried. "If that is your only argument against my duties then I can assure you that it will never keep me from fulfilling my leader's orders."
"How do you speak with me, your mother would turn in her grave if she knew what defiant and dismissive woman you've become, lacking any grace and humbleness! Your father is a fool."
"My father is a great man, Coranja, and his trust in my skills is an honour for every member of my family! Grandmothers should keep their granddaughters from unwise marriages and affairs, I am not romantic, you know I never was! And still you criticise and damn everything I ever did, but you are my grandmother." Mulan gave her a hard look. "Nothing but my grandmother and my father shall decide if I shall marry and end up as a housewife beaten by her husband or shall support his plans with every strength I can give!"
Coranja fell remained quiet for a second before she raised her voice once more: "You are as blind as him, your blindness and arrogance will be your mischief. How much of yourself will you sacrifice just to seek your goal: he will never love you as much as you wish!" She watched her granddaughter take a step back with satisfaction, a sheer pain on her face and faster than Coranja could push it away, she felt sorry for her words. This girl was not the one to be blamed, only the one who could not fight the damnation brought to her by the person she loved the most and would never stop to adore. But before she could say something, Mulan turned around and left the house with hasty steps and may Coranja's old eyes had tricked her but there were tears on the girl's cheeks.
Mulan ran, blinded by her angry tears and she felt the anger pulse through her veins, red and hot and boiling inside her like a heartbeat.
How dare you?!
How dare you?!
How dare you!
Mulan ran and held onto the nearest thing she could get which appeared to be a pole of the paddock's fence and leaned her forehead against the cold wood while she cried. She cried out of anger and the fact that her grandmother would betray herself and her father this way for it was none of her business if he allowed her become a warrior or not and dared to mention her mother in such a case. How dare she using Mulan's mother out of such a pathetic reason?! Did she think she could really order her son, the leader of the huns, to do as she wished?
Mulan got ripped out of her thoughts by a friendly whicker and saw the horse appear right next to her which made her smile. Khan, the black stallion was her own horse though her grandmother had railed against it for weeks, smashing their best teaset to bits, and Mulan had mastered every single manoeuvre on his back easily. The stallion nudged her shoulder with his soft nose and made Mulan laugh through her tears, caressing the big elegant head. Khan was unusual big and slender for a huns horse but her father once had told her, that his ancestors were no such tiny, sturdy animals.
"It's a family of horses from a country far away and I brought my favourite horse with me when I returned. Khan will serve you as a good comrade and friend." And Mulan was sure of that for he seemed to understand everything and learn as fast as a human.
A loud whicker made her head snap around and slowly but steadily dark silhouettes stepped out of the mist that circled the low mountain they'd build their camp on. The horses on the paddock became increasingly nervous but Mulan felt heat build up inside her chest. She turned around, waved her hands and cried: "The clans! They're here!"
Suddenly a real turmoil arose in the camp when everybody came running up the hill and stared at the foreign men approaching them. Mulan mustered the strange faces clenching her hands to fists. Somebody called to inform the leader and Mulan knew that this was the final precaution her father had spoken of a few days before. More men would come joining their tribe and in the end the warriors would ride. The wall.
Great thanks to all the readers and supporters, I hope you enjoyed reading! Thank you for your reviews, I will try to update more often! This start may appear really slow but I thought this was the right pace to give some background behind Mulan's situation. :)
Please review and tell me what you think!