Jin

Melting Pot entry. Genre: Romantic Tradgedy

He looked at her with mixed emotions. Every fiber of his being echoed alarm at this situation. He swallowed his nerves and reached out to her again, stretching his fingertips, willing them to defy biology and grow. His nails tore at the rough hemp of her tunic, ripping away from the skin underneath a few of them. Then, at last, he had her.

Dragging her as silently as he could toward his prone position, hidden in the dusty scrub, he desperately searched her body for signs of life. There! A faint beat. Another. His head ached with the pain of temporary relief. She would die soon if she couldn't get any air and then it wouldn't matter if the others came back to hunt down survivors.

After attacking the trade caravan at dusk, the Xiong Nu had set up an impromptu camp less than a hundred yards from their bodies. He could smell their fire and the sweat from their horses mixed with the more visceral scent of blood and death. The screams of the young girls being defiled had given way to sobs and then silence before he had chastised his cowardice and set out to look for her. She would not have been one of those led to the tents. She would have fought for the caravan by her brother Leong's side.

Sure enough, Leong's body lay yards from his sisters and one glance told Jin that nothing could be done for him. Tears threatened to overwhelm his vision as he pushed them back and desperately searched for anything around him that could save her. Leong's arrow sheath lay crumpled under his fallen form and one lone arrow bent out toward him. It would do. The shaft was made of smoothed bamboo and, muffling the sound of snapping it by wrapping the shaft with trembling fingers, he broke it twice to produce a straw six inches in length.

He looked at Xian again and felt the flutter of her pulse under his fingertips. Her pale, alabaster skin, looked beautifully iridescent under the moonlight. Speckled with the vivid reds of the carnage around her mimicking the cherry blossom of her lips. He felt as guilty as the defiling raiders drawing a specially sharpened blade from his medical pouch and touching her neck with it.

"Forgive me," he whispered, knowing that he had to save her.

As quickly and clinically as he dared, Jin stroked the blade in a well practiced thrust against the base of her windpipe and watched Xian's desperate eyes open in alarm. From the perfect brown almonds he had dared to gaze in when lost with her, they now became round and dilated with pain. Her rose bud mouth opened to cry out and it cut him to the quick to see her fear at the gurgle, pop and wheeze that issued from the freshly made wound in her throat instead. He looked at her with pleading eyes as his blood sticky fingers grasped the straw and pushed it between the rude opening of the incision.

Her arms had begun to flay weakly at his ministrations and so once he heard the reassuring whistle of air throught the bamboo he straddled her, gently pinning her arms back and calming her with soft sooing noises.

"Xian!" he whispered. "The Xiong Nu are still here. Please, hush now."

He felt her go limp as her fleeting gaze fell on the body of her brother. Her eyes filled with pained tears and she screwed them shut, mutely calling his name and causing the bamboo to wiggle as she gulped down her silent loss.

Jin felt such pity and despair for them both. Here was the woman that he loved, injured, grieving and affraid. The woman he had left a comfortable life in his father's estates to pursue. The woman who refused him out of respect for his station, and so loved him too, that she had convinced him to take this return trip home and beg his father's forgiveness.

Satisfied that her shock had given way to common sense he gently rolled from her to lay beside her. She tried to face him but the bamboo airway would not allow it. He propped himself up on this elbow and tenderly began to stroke the cool smoothness of her forehead, teasing the strands of her loosed raven hair away from her brow. He wanted to tell her everything; how much he loved her. How very sorry he was for loving her. How hurt he had been at her constant refusal of him when he knew that it had hurt her in return to deny him. How the turn of her head, or a glance from her eyes, could unsettle him beyond reason. How one flickering smile on those full-budded lips could torture him for days. He wanted to tell her all these things and more, but how could he? Hadn't he harmed her enough by following her out of Han's Empire and forcing her to send him away? He had ruined her reputation and standing and she had resorted to working alongside her brother in the family security business. Another hired warrior instead of the happy wife he had promised her life could be with him.

His thoughts must have been etched into his face because he was startled from them by the gentle caress of her cool fingertips against his cheek. She smiled as he looked down on her and silently mouthed, "I am sorry, my love." Then her eyes glazed over like a pool in mid-winter and the strange arrhythmic whistle from her neck ceased.

He froze. He couldn't breathe. She had left him. He was forsaken. A ball of ice filled his stomach and his limbs filled with alien energy fit to burst his veins. No. This couldn't be. He grabbed at her. He sat up and over her, careless of giving away his position. He tore her shoulders from the ground and her head lolled, limp with death. He cradled her form sobbing into the jasmine scent of her hair and rocking them both like a lullaby.

"Xian!" he sobbed, wetting her with the fierceness of his soul. "Xi-- ."

The blade stroked his throat with practiced efficiency. The corners of his mouth twisted into a momentary smile as his last living sight was the sleeping vision of his love before peace and darkness engulfed him.

(1071 wds)