The old man, the woman, and the teen conversed in quick, hushed tones in the darkness of the courtyard. They couldn’t return home, and they now had no connection to the underground resistance.
“Ma, do you think Cuong is dead?”
She hesitated. Tho replied.
“It’s useless to focus on things we can’t control and don’t yet know. What we do know is when they apprehended him, he was alive.”
“Why did Sun Quan allow us to escape? He could have crushed us.”
“His intentions and actions tell two different stories. I believe we have something he needs.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not quite sure.”
“Tho,” asked Lien. “Why did you take the photograph?”
Tho handed Minh a flashlight and instructed him to focus it on a cement table. He reached into his pouch and removed one of the black marble tablets, placing it on the rough tabletop.
“Mr. Tho! You’re bleeding.”
He had cut his hand on the broken glass of the frame, and a droplet of blood smeared the surface of the black tablet. It began to sizzle and a mist rose into the air, accompanied by a voice echoing in the thick, humid evening with a simple plea: “Follow me.”
The voice triggered a backwards step from all of them, and they conferred in silence with shocked looks under the deep shadows of the night. Minh’s voice sprang with excitement.
“Did you hear that?” All of them had, even though difficult to admit. “What does it mean?”
No one had an answer. “Keep linking the chain, that’s all,” said Tho.
Lien wrapped a tissue around Tho’s hand as he placed the rest of the marble tablets on the table.
“Why this photograph?” Tho asked himself under his breath.
“You mean even you don’t know?” asked Minh.
“I chose it because it contains an image of my former teacher. But beyond that, its significance eludes me.”
They placed the frame over the stones and inspected the image of the photo with the flashlight. Nothing.
“We need to remove it from the frame.”
“Careful of the glass,” said Lien, and brushed away crushed pieces with her sleeve. The frame had a thin wood backing held in by four flush turnkeys. Tho moved each and lifted the backing by the metal wire used to hang it on the wall. The back of the photo had no identifying marks.
“I don’t see anything,” said Minh.
“Always look more than once. Our eyes are not always accustomed to seeing the truth upon first glance.”
“That’s what mom says.”
“I got it from him,” she smiled.
“Well, upon second glance, I still don’t see anything.”
“Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong place.” Minh had his head so close to the photo it nearly touched.
“Where else can we look?”
Lien turned over the backing of the frame. A small, flat reed the size of a bookmark had been placed on the wooden backing with a sticky substance. Tho removed it and held it under the flashlight. Faint characters were etched lightly into the reed.
“I need my glasses,” said Tho.
“It’s in Chinese characters,” exclaimed Minh.
“No, that’s Han-Viet. Old Vietnamese script.”
“Well, I can’t read it,” said Lien.
“No, but perhaps if we …”
He lowered the reed until it lay flat across the marble tablets with both ends barely touching the first and fourth stones. The characters lit up as if on fire, illuminating all its meaning like the sun had back-lit it from underneath.
“Mr. Tho, can you understand it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What does it say?”
Tho studied each graceful stroke delicately inlaid on the reed.
“Remarkable.”
“What?”
Tho paused for one further study of the characters. “A passion to be free. Bound together, each link. Generations of ancestors. A bronze drum. A dragon. A sword. United. The past revealed in the present.”
He read it a second time and a third until Minh asked the obvious question.
“What does it mean?”
The light began to fade from the characters. Tho read it repeatedly, admonishing the others to commit it to memory before the strokes completely disappeared.
It was nearly 2 AM. They recited it together in the shadows of the courtyard. A private chant for a task yet to be defined.
“Mr. Tho. What does it mean?”
“The chain.”
“What? Mr. Tho?”
The man stumbled and nearly fell on top of the table. “Sorry, I—“
“Mr. Tho, you’re tired,” said Lien, clutching his arm to stabilize him.
“We’re all tired,” he replied.
“We must sleep. Remember that Tuan said this place will not be safe for long. Tho, come. I think I know where we can go. Miss Huong lives near here.”
“Your dear friend? I haven’t seen her in years.”
“Come. It’s the only idea I have.”
Miss Huong had a hot serving of chao rice porridge as the three woke up on top of red reed mats in her living room. Tho noticed the dragon imprinted on the mat flanked on each side with the ironic Chinese characters for ‘Double Happiness.’ It had been a long while since that phrase had held meaning in Hanoi. Minh stood up and remembered the saying sitting on the tip of his tongue. He recited it word for word with an intrigued Miss Huong listening most intently. She had spent many afternoons with Lien in Mr. Tho’s silver shop, learning myriad wonders about the universe, so she wasn’t surprised to find the ragged three knocking at her door in desperation in the middle of the night.
“Thank you for taking us in,” said Tho.
“No questions need to be asked in times like these. Just react to the beat of the moment. That’s what you always taught me.”
Tho smiled.
“My husband and son are both somewhere in the resistance, if they are still alive.”
It wasn’t a somber statement. Just a fact. One each person in the room understood as a great truth.
When the chao had been eaten and the necessary words of reunion spoken, they all sat under the ticking of the ceiling fan regaling Miss Huong with the events of the previous evening and reciting the words from the reed. Even Miss Huong committed them to memory.
“Such a beautiful saying.”
“And we’re trying to link it to Lady Trieu.”
“Which makes sense because she defeated Sun Quan in the third century if I remember my history.”
“You do,” confirmed Tho with a smile. “And the bronze drum …?”
“I know,” said Minh. “It represents the origins of our people.”
“That’s right. The stately drums from the bronze age which prove a different lineage from our northern neighbors. So the dragon …”
“Thang Long. The ascending dragon. The emperor saw a dragon ascend from the Red River, which encouraged him to establish a new capital city eventually renamed as Hanoi,” said Miss Huong.
“Yes, the establishment of our people. Bronze Age. A civilization being built. A new capital. And the sword?”
“The only one I can think of is Ho Hoan Kiem, Returned Sword Lake.”
“The turtle,” said Minh.
“The turtle brought the sword back from the depths of the lake and …”
“Is there a turtle still in the lake?” asked Minh.
“People say there are sightings,” said Lien.
Sightings. Tho remembered something. From when he was just a boy. He hadn’t thought about that for decades. He brushed it away. “But can we base our actions on what people say and the lore we were taught?” asked Tho.
“Don’t question the past until it proves itself wrong,” said Huong. “A wise man once said that.”
“Old decrepit man, that is,” Tho chuckled.
“So what are we saying? Is the turtle the key to the sword?” asked Lien.
“Why don’t we ask the marble tablets? Will they know?” Minh asked in an excited tone.
Tho shook his head. “The tablets are not a source of knowledge. They are a conduit to the past.” As he spoke, he removed the marble tablets from his pouch and placed them on the floor.
“Where did you get them?” asked Huong.
“They were gifted to me by my grandfather, and he said they were gifted to him by a mysterious stranger with instructions to ‘Keep the Legacy Alive.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I never knew … until today. I had used the stones many times over the years, mostly trying to understand a way forward in a dilemma, but …”
He trailed off as the three hung on the edge of his words. “The stones, the reed, the silver shavings, the drop of blood, the bronze drum, the dragon, the sword …”
He retrieved a small cloth pouch from within the larger pouch. He opened the string and turned it over. Silver dust floated downward.
“The turtle.”
The dust sprinkled randomly on the surface of the marble creating small puffs of smoke which whirled upward in a glowing cloud. He repeated it again.
“The turtle.”
And the same voice they had heard previously echoed once again through smoke. “Return the sword once more.” The smoke morphed into a rounded dome.
“A turtle shell!” yelled Minh.
Then the smoke dissipated into the air.
They all breathed in the moment of silence.
“Mr. Tho, what does it mean? We don’t have a sword.”
“You were right, Minh. The marble tablets are telling us what to do.”
“Which is what?”
Tho took a moment to reflect over his life. There were many things he couldn’t remember, but an image of his grandfather came to mind. He sat with his grandfather on the arched bridge, which led from the shore of Hoan Kiem Lake at the center of old Hanoi to the small islet holding the sacred Ngoc Son Temple. He could picture the sun beating down on his grandfather’s head, and he waved the boy into the shade across the bridge. As they sat under a tree, his grandfather pointed at the surface of the water. A turtle stuck its head out from the surface and glared at them for a moment, then it dove out of sight into the belly of the lake. His grandfather stood to his feet and had instructed Tho to stand up. He patted the boy’s head and said it was right. It was good. It would be so. Tho never understood what he meant until today. As he pushed away the memories, he knew exactly what they would do. “It means that at midnight, we shall be a boat on Hoan Kiem Lake, believing the universe will gift us a turtle.”
“Where are we going to get a boat?”
Huong raised her arm excitedly. “I might be able to help. My father-in-law is the caretaker of Ngoc Son Temple. I’ll contact him. I’m confident he can arrange something.”
“I knew there was a reason we came here,” said Lien. “Now, how are we going to sneak past the patrols? And once we’re in the boat, how will we remain undetected? We’ll be exposed on the lake.”
“And what do we do if we see the turtle?” asked Minh.
Tho raised his arms to temper the questions. “Listen, we don’t need to know the answers to know the way forward. Let our steps show us our path. Each one reveals the subsequent. Perhaps the universe knows not to overwhelm us with knowledge. Maybe we wouldn’t be keen to continue if we knew what awaits.” He turned to Miss Huong. “We would be much obliged if you could contact your father-in-law. If it’s all right with you, we’ll rest here until dark. My body is in a frightful shape.”
***
Several Chinese soldiers had beaten Cuong to a semi-conscious state and thrown him into a windowless pitch black room. When his senses began to revive, he had no recollection of time, and it puzzled him why they allowed him to live in the first place. He rested against a smooth black wall and willed his mind to tranquility. He believed agitation and anger would yield no tangible results. He would keep his mind fresh, even if his body pulsed with pain.
The wall opposite him opened. The black facade drew upward and smoke appeared around the edges like theatrical fog determined to heighten tension. The corners of the ceiling lit up with a line of red lights, and Sun Quan parted the fog with his glowing eyes. The dominating figure towered over the beaten young man.
“Do you know why you’re alive?” His voice rumbled low with only small variation in tone.
“No.”
“As long as you answer my questions, you will remain so.”
“I’m not afraid of death. I knew what I signed up for—to vanquish the filthy Chinese scum.”
“A young man not afraid of death can be a useful pawn.” The giant beast took a step forward. “What do you know of the old man?”
“I know nothing of him.”
“Yet you willingly helped him.”
“I regret it. It’s all foolishness. For nothing.”
A presence encircled Cuong, and a weight fell across his chest, pausing his breathing. The force pressed him against the back wall and pressured his wounds on all sides, like the damage had drawn inward and gutted the will to live right out of him. He writhed in pain, and as the grip released him, he collapsed to his side.
“The woman. What do you know?” Sun Quan knelt over top the victim.
“What woman?”
“The one they are summoning?”
“The woman I was with? She’s a nobody.”
“Not that woman.” Sun Quan lashed out and smacked the cowered soldier across the face.
“What woman? I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“Ba Trieu.”
Cuong lunged at Sun Quan and tried to hit him, but Cuong’s arms felt tired, like stone weights drooped over his wrists. He hit the giant man in the arm, but the warrior smirked as if flicking off a pesky gnat. Cuong looked down at his hands, but they looked different—like they belonged to another person.
“What do you know of the woman?”
“It’s all nonsense. The old man showed us some magic trick and … if you think …” Cuong laughed. “It’s all nonsense.”
“Your face tells a different story.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look in the mirror behind you to see the nonsense.”
Cuong turned and a section of the wall became a clear piece of glass reflecting his image back at him. Cuong reached out to touch the mirror and screamed. The image wasn’t his. Wrinkles and weathered lines had bored a different age into his skin. He screamed again. “What’s happened to me?” He had become an old man.
Sun Quan turned his back to the blathering Cuong. “Your age reflects your way of thinking. Your transformation has proven to me how little your rebel army knows. It’s just the old man, the woman, and the boy where your hope lies. And also mine. I’ll leave the lights on for you, so you can become well acquainted with your new self.”
Sun Quan exited the cell. The walls closed down behind him. Cuong remained on his knees, looking at this new reflection.
“No!”