The Life and Times of Master Han Fei

Chapter Thirteen

"To fight strange doctrines does harm"

-Confucius

Han awoke to pails of ice water splashing into his face. His wounds stung as the water made contact with his skin, and he let loose a cry of unspeakable agony. He was keenly aware of the crowd gathered around his limp body, craning their necks past the guards that stood between his torture and escape.

"That is all," he heard his brother call haughtily, and again he was hoisted up in the air, and carried into an empty tent.

His brother's blurry head loomed over him, and through a thick fog of unclearness, he heard a piercing voice penetrate through. "This is where you shall lodge, brother," a haughty voice announced, almost tauntingly. "I should hope that you find everything here more than adequately hospitable."

With that, Zhenghua left, his stocky form gliding out of the room. Han rubbed his eyes disbelievingly. His brother did not glide out of a room! His brother stomped! There was no way a man as big as the chief could ever glide out of any room, so gracefully, so elegantly, like some beautiful crane...

The prince succumbed to sleep again, allowing the emptiness of sleep to wash over his mind, to permeate each and every recess of conscious thought.

He dreamt of flowers. Beautiful, tall flowers, flowers as tall as trees, that glittered in the morning sun, and dazzled in the slivery moonlight. He dreamt of fish that waddled on land, and of birds that dove deep under water, hunting for pearls.

He explored with the birds; swimming with bear-like sparrows, blood-red pigeons, and mottled cranes. He went deeper and deeper into the ocean, in search of a pearl of his own, envious of the shiny little spheres his fellow fowl had found, fluttering his wings faster and faster.

Then, right in front of him, he saw a pearl the size of a boulder, glowing like the sun, an incandescent star causing the green water to bubble around him, pushing him to the surface.

He was so close, but the purple bubbles were too many, were too great, and so he ascended to the surface, agonizingly slow in the way he rose up.

The birds he had come with started to transform, their bodies shaking uncontrollably. They howled in pain, as they sprouted tails, scales, and then-hail.

Han looked upwards, but it was too late. The hail rained on them, on the ocean floor, relentlessly, unforgivingly. The birds with tails and scales barked to each other, and soon the prince saw their crimson red eyes trained on him.

They were onto him, the birds, and like arrows they shot up towards him, fangs at the ready. He was still moving too slowly, but he could do nothing; the bubbles from the pearls had slowed, and the more he looked around, the more he saw the birds-those deadly, deadly sparrows and pigeons-pursue him. He was going to drown now, he could see his gills vanishing, and his fins slowly, but surely, turning into hands. He was going to die, he was going to die; one of the pigeons had reached him, and its forked tongue had disappeared behind its fangs...

"Fei, I have your dinner," a grating voice called.

The prince woke up with a start, reality jolting him awake. Zhenghua was staring at him with open disgust, no doubt appalled by the state of Han's cot.

The bundle of straws that made up the cot had been stained with his blood; the prince doubted that anybody would be able to say that the chief had been lenient on his brother.

"Dinner is ready. Come. You are not a prince here; do not expect us to bring your dinner to you."

Han grumbled under his breath, following Zhenghua out of the hut and into the open. The intoxicating aroma of roasted meat wafted into his nose, filling him with a hunger he had left previously undiscovered.