A Thousand Fallen Petals

Callista. She hadn't known what it meant, initially. The name had been a gift, the pretty sound tumbling from his lips like a waterfall. His Chinese had been simple, broken, and the musical language he'd spoken was a mystery. Even now she didn't know where it was from. She stared at the cold steel above her, closing her eyes. So many times, he'd drawn a map on the wet earth, trying to teach her, to help her understand his origins. Sea, far, very far, he'd finally managed to say, after several weeks of painstaking exchanges with the local traders. When understanding lit her eyes, he'd smiled brightly, his lips forming a euphony of syllables, only three of which she'd understood. Callista. By a funny twist of fate, it had the same meaning as her original name: Callista. Li Rong. Beautiful. It was what everyone had said when they saw her as a child. Na me mei! They'd exclaimed, their eyes bright. How beautiful she is! The goddess of beauty had moulded Li Rong with her golden fingers, people sighed. As she'd grown, tales of her loveliness had spread, and artists flocked to paint her classically beautiful features: wide doe-eyes, clear skin and a tiny mouth. The local poets penned extravagant praises for her. She puts the flowers to shame. She entices the birds to fall, and the fish to sink—so exquisite is she. Among thousands and thousands of girls who'd gone to Luoyang for the selection, she'd been plucked out of the crowd like a ripe fruit. She'd passed the inspection easily—the endless arbitrary requirements. Slender. A straight nose bridge. Sloping shoulders. Long narrow eyebrows. Lustrous hair. No birthmarks or scars. Check, check, check. All of it had been for nothing. Her tightly bound hands closed into fists as she bore the pain. Her kneecaps and ankles ached fiercely from kneeling. Rope bit into already tender skin, cutting off most of her breathing as it looped over her shoulders and tied off at her back. The palace guards knew how to mete out pain with frightening accuracy. Callista, he'd whispered. It was her beauty that was going to kill her, after all. It was her beauty that had driven her mother to take her own life in a plea for hers. It was her beauty that would've killed him, had she not forced him to leave. She'd been foolish. So, so foolish. Of course the eunuchs had been spying on her. There were eyes everywhere within the palace walls. Concubines belonged to the emperor. It didn't matter that he had four thousand of them. It didn't matter that he barely remembered her face, let alone her name. It didn't matter that her mother had done nothing wrong. All that mattered was that she, a common girl from a modest village, had been chosen as one of the emperor's esteemed concubines—a privileged position many would die for—and she'd thrown it away for a man with whom she had no future. A man she'd never see again. She'd disgraced herself, she'd disgraced her family, and worst of all, she'd disgraced the emperor himself—the Son of Heaven. She'd soiled his reputation, trampled on it as though it were mud. And for that, she had to pay with her life. Sea, far, very far. She hoped it was where he was now, far away from the emperor's wrath. As she heard the command ordering her end, she bowed her head, the vivid blue waters swimming crystal clear before her eyes.