The Lotus Pond

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Lotus Pond

For Eastern Page, by Sai

TVTING SOY lay drowsily by the side XTX of the lotus pond, watching with half-shut eyes the little gleaming bodies of the goldfish as they swam in and out of the lotus roots. Just where Ming’s little dark head cast its shadow across the pond, a Ash paused for a moment, its delicate transparent tail waving lightly. Ming’s dark eyes shot open, and her little olive hand stole out and hung over the unsuspecting fish. There was a little splash; the lotus flowers swayed lightly for a second or two and the pond was dark with chufned-up mud. “Got you, my precious beauty,” chuckled Ming Soy, as she held up the wriggling gasping body. But her triumph was short-lived, for fish are by no means easy to hold,'especially when very much alive, like this one. With a quick twist of its lithe body, it wriggled through Ming’s fingers and slipped back into the pond with a little splash. Another splash followed it. What was it?

Then, with a little gasp of dismay, Ming realised it was her pretty little ring which her father had brought back to her on the ocacsion of his last

journey to the city. The pond was still brown and muddy, and Ming gloomily reflected that, by the time it was clear enough for her to see the bottom, her ring would most probably be buried out of sight, inches deep in mud.

As she sat impatiently waiting for the water to clear, the old nurse Yo Ki called her. Quickly Ming dropped her hand into the water. Mud or no mud. she must search for the ring while she remembered the spot where it had fallen. For a moment she felt about. Then her fingers closed on something hard. Her ring! Quickly, without looking she slipped it on her finger.

It was just as Ming Soy picked up her carved ivory chopsticks a few minutes later, that her old nurse started up with a cry of terror from the cushion where she had been sitting and backed away from the girl in horror.

“'The ring, the ring! O the curse of

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the Piper. Where did you get it? O woe, woe unto thee,” she wailed. Ming glanced at her hand. A cold band seemed to tighten round her heart. It was not her ring, but one far more exquisite in workmanship; it seemed impossible that human hands had fashioned it. It was a dragon made of a red gold metal. Every scale and each jointed claw stood out clearly. But it was its eyes that held Ming Soy like twin lodestones—two' cold, green emeralds. She could hardly tear her fascinated gaze away from them to look round the room at the horror-struck faces of her family. It was the cursed ring of Ling Cheng. It had been given long ago by Ling Cheng, a wandering musician, to one of Ming’s ancestors as a love token. But, as she had spurned his love, he had cursed her and all of her household, saying, “As long as the eyes of the dragon see daylight, it will mean woe unto your household. If you throw the ring aside as you have treated my love, death shall surely.overtake you.” The curse held true. Two days later the girl’s father heard the news that his caravan of merchants bringing silks and jewels had been attacked and robbed, and worse still, that' his diamond mines had ceased to yield. And, just before the harvest his crops had been ruined w’ith storms. Things had gone from bad to worse. Truly, the wrath of the gods had visited their household. They searched for the Piper, but he had completely vanished. Then, one day, the girl to whom the ring had been given was found dead by the lotus pond, and the ring which she had never dared to take off her hand had disappeared. Time passed on, and prosperity was gradually restored to the household.

Now she, Ming Soy, had found the ring. She looked at it again, as the last ray of the setting sun threw itself across the room full on the dragon’s gleaming eyes. The light faded, the stars came out and the moon rose higher and higher. The house was as still as death. Everyone must be asleep, if they could sleep while the curse of ill luck and poverty overshadowed them, thought Ming Soy, as she lay awake on her couch. Then she heard it—a low sweet piping like a little breese running lost and hesitant through a grove of bamboo. Then one moment wild and mocking, next soft, wistful and alluring. Every emotion ever stirred in a human heart the musician seemed to awake in his music. It seemed to draw the very soul out of Ming Soy, and follow it she must. Like one in a dream she walked out of the house, out into the shadowy moonlight night, out into the garden, and there by the lotus pond she saw him—the musician—a tall, almost ghostly figure, wrapped in a cloak of silvery grey misty material.

“Ling Cheng." The words leapt to Ming’s lips. He nodded, ceased his playing, folded his hands together gravely and gave a low bow. - Ming held out her hand with the ring on it. “Please take it,” she said. “It does not belong here, where it can only bring sorrow.” “You are right,” Ling Cheng replied. “I will take it. It does not belong to the earts. It dropped from the lap of the gods. I will return it, and perhaps then I can cease my wandering. One grows weary after a century or so,” and with a little whimsical smile he had vanished. Neither he nor the ring were ever seen again, but still the echo of his song haunts the lotus pond.