Sun Quan peered from the edge of Turtle Tower, sitting on a small islet in Hoan Kiem Lake. He stood in plain sight, filling the tower’s arched opening, but the threesome on the boat, tottering on the top of a giant turtle shell, were not in a position to care about onlookers. The turtle held the sword firmly across its mouth and raised his head once before splashing downward into the depths. The surface of the water parted as if a large drain underneath had been unplugged. The shell of the turtle dipped with the boat still balanced on its center. Each of the three intrepid riders screamed for mercy, like the thrill of descending over the peak of a roller coaster, headed to sure death. The turtle and boat disappeared under the surface. Sun Quan sprang forward—part-running, part-gliding, part-flying across the water—and dove into the spot where the turtle had sank. The harsh water closed in and repelled the ancient emperor so that he slid on his back across the expanse of the water and curled into a ball against the eastern shore of the lake. Sun Quan sat up and gazed at the water as it returned to its peaceful setting against the moonlight. The water had rejected him, and now he would have to wait.
Minh frantically held the ends of the oars; Lien and Tho clung to the sides of the boat. No one spoke or screamed further. The moment suspended them from all human action, until Minh pointed out the water. “Look!” It stood in luminous walls, radiating a fluorescent glow clearly painting awe on each of their faces. A giant air bubble encompassed the top of the turtle shell as the animal swam at a slow, steady pace.
“Ma?” Worry sat on the forefront of the question.
Lien’s tense arms gripped the wooden sides with such force that she didn’t hear the first call.
“Ma?”
“Ya…Yes?”
Minh had nothing more to add. He just wanted to hear her voice as he extended his gaze into the dark depths of the water. Tho reached forward and touched the teen on the shoulder.
“Minh, you don’t have to row anymore.” He had been futilely rowing still air. Tho’s words broke him out of the trance, and he relaxed his hands and dropped them to his side. “Enjoy.”
“Enjoy?”
“Yes. How often do we live through a dream?”
“Mr. Tho, where are we going?”
“I would guess the past, but—“
A face of a bearded warrior appeared on the outer rim of the air bubble watching them curiously as if the three were in a snow globe. He swam down to the head of the turtle. The turtle looked back and stopped swimming. The warrior pulled the sword from the turtle’s mouth and ascended to the top of the snow globe. Releasing a ferocious call, he pierced through the air bubble with both hands clenching the sword, but the walls of water didn’t burst. It accepted the sword without surrendering the integrity of the seal. The tip of the sword expanded several times its actual length and descended straight down towards Minh. He screamed, leaned back as far as he could, and opened his thighs wide as the tip of the sword poked into the wooden hull and stood straight up with the warrior holding its handle on the other side of the pressed in bubble.
“Who do you think you are? Why have you returned the sword in the middle of a rebellion?”
All three stared upward, fumbling over incomprehensible words. But it didn’t matter, as the turtle stretched his neck up and around the edge of the bubble and pushed the warrior away. He held onto the sword and pulled it out of the bubble, but lost his grip as it popped from the seal. Now the sword floated freely through the open water. The turtle jolted forward. All three of the passengers lost hold of the boat and tossed and tumbled into the side of the bubble which repelled them all with firm elasticity. They flew from one side to the other like in a child’s bouncy house before bounding head first back into the boat. The turtle had reclaimed the sword with its powerful jaw and continued swimming deeper.
“That was … horrifying,” Lien panted. “Are you both alright? Who was that—?”
The answer would have to wait. Small bubbles erupted around the perimeter of their personal snow globe like it had been placed inside a boiling pot. Thousands of bubbles spread in all directions around the circumference of the turtle. But the bubbles gave way to two amber glowing lights charging at them. The lights formed eyes—piercing ovals which lit up the face of a monster with giant nostrils, ears, and jaw covered by a leathery green-black skin. The beast breathed once and hurled a thousand more bubbles to engulf the turtle and the snow globe on its back. The beast hissed and confronted the tortoise.
“Is that a dragon?” asked Minh.
No one had ever seen one before. Tho muttered something unheard under his breath and pointed. He mumbled again and jabbed Minh’s back to look beyond the eyes of the dragon to a figure behind it. A rider, gripping one hand on the back of the beast’s neck, pointed directly at the three.
“Ly Thai To,” Tho whispered.
“What?” said Minh.
“The Ascending Dragon,” said Lien, now with a clear view of the ancient Vietnamese king.
“You are not welcome here,” said the king with an echoing voice booming off the sides of the air bubble. He reached for the sword, but the turtle swerved to the left. The three passengers clung to the sides of the boat. None of them had any intention of bouncing off the walls of the globe again.
“Give me the sword!” yelled the king.
The dragon turned its head toward the turtle and let out a deafening screech. Its massive jaw opened and its sharp teeth pierced through the wall of the bubble and closed in on the three—now lying flat on their backs in the boat, screaming for the nightmare to end—but the air bubble flung back with great force, sending the dragon and its rider flipping backwards out of sight. The turtle glanced back and caught the eyes of the three red-faced passengers, peeking over the edge of the boat. The turtle nodded and continued its descent into the depths.
Before they could gather their bearings and begin to decipher their dragon experience, two women appeared above them—floating apparitions. They looked identical, with long flowing black hair and simple peasant outfits with cloth belts tied around their waists. They held long bamboo poles in their hands and poked the sides of the air bubble.
“Pace yourself. Question yourself. Know the ending before it begins.” They uttered these words in perfect unison. “Answer us.”
They uttered no question but demanded the answer nonetheless.
“What do you want?” asked Tho.
“We want to know one thing?”
“What?”
“Are you willing to die?” No one responded. “Are you willing to die for what you believe?”
Minh reached back for Tho’s hand, and the old man reassured him. Lien noticed the fierce stare from Tho.
“You know them, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Who are they?”
The apparitions asked once more. “Are you willing to die?”
“The Trung sisters.”
“Hai Ba Trung?”
“Yes.”
“What do they want, Mr. Tho?”
“They want to know if we are willing to go the distance like they did.”
“What did they do?” asked Minh.
“They jumped into a river and drowned themselves.”
“Pace yourself. Question yourself. Know the ending before it begins. Answer us.” They repeated the mantra in unison once again.
Minh stood up and pointed directly at the pair of women floating freely in the water. “We are not afraid. We’ll do anything for our country. Can’t you see us? We went into the lake on the back of a turtle!”
“Minh!” Lien yelled, but said nothing else. She smiled. After all, he had learned it from her. And she from Tho.
The turtle had stopped swimming but seemed disinterested in the two female ghosts. They both looked closely at the boy standing on the boat, and without saying a word, they floated in front of the turtle. One held her bamboo pole on a high horizontal plane and the other on a low horizontal plane. The poles flashed white and lit up with fire, creating a burning square portal. The turtle resumed swimming and passed through the portal to the dark water on the other side. The turtle stopped, and all three in the boat stood up and glanced toward the horizon. A faint light from the surface of the water hovered above them. They watched as a dark apparition slid across the water.
“Sun Quan,” said Tho.
The light spread outward from the location of the turtle and illuminated an army of Chinese terracotta soldiers, standing at attention, waiting to be deployed by their commander. The soldiers had animation without breath. They were a revelation at the disposal of history. As Sun Quan slid across the lake, his foot dipped mere inches below the surface, bringing the soldiers to life in a deafening chant. They drew their swords and attacked the turtle. The turtle shifted the handle of the sword into the tip of its mouth and held it en garde. The turtle flung its head back and forth, slicing the terracotta warriors one at a time, but their numbers overwhelmed it, swarming over the turtle’s body and stabbing it several times. Undeterred, the turtle fought on. Other soldiers pierced their swords through the air bubble, causing the three to prostrate themselves in the hull of the boat.
“What are we going to do?” yelled Minh.
“What can we do?” asked his mother.
Tho shuffled around for the pouch. He opened the drawstrings and reached for the marble tablets. As he pulled them out, the turtle shifted its body in a great struggle to survive against overwhelming odds. Tho lost his grip on one of the tablets and it fell downward. Minh lurched forward with outstretched arms and snared it with his fingertips before it hit the boat. He reached over and handed it to Tho, who placed all four in his palms and started chanting:
“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.”
Lien and Minh joined him. They repeated it again and again as the turtle continued to fend off the warriors while taking repeated blows from the swarming army.
In the middle of the fourth incantation, Tho stopped, stood up, and looked at the battle on the other side of the bubble: “We need you Ba Trieu. We need you.”
A voice rose from the depths and echoed off the bubble, like a whisper, as if a breeze lifted the words and sailed them out smoothly in all directions. The soldiers ceased fighting and fell still, remaining alive but not active. They listened as a deer hears the broken twig of an approaching hunter. The words dazed them, like they suddenly remembered a past defeat and its gripping horror entered their chests. They heard a voice—not of words, but of sound; almost melodic, and in a second, the sound split the warriors next to the turtle in two. A sword came hurling from the deep. The turtle reached its head upward, still holding the sword in its mouth as the two swords collided in an array of white light that blinded all of them for a moment. The three lowered their hands from their eyes and stood face-to-face with a large-breasted young woman, hair tied back, leather strapped across her legs leading to a mid-thigh length skirt and a thick leather belt strapped around her midsection. Her arms and shoulders were exposed, and she had a tight warrior’s chest plate across her torso. Her eyes sunk into her skull, almost invisible, but a beauty shone from her skin, a radiance that attracted the attention of all.
Tho, eyes lit, shook with excitement. He reached for her and smiled through the fuzzy, iridescent shards of light spreading in the water and said the two words on everyone’s mind: “Lady Trieu.”