Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 2 - 2 | Page 29

The Seventh Voyage Sha Tin Junior School, Chiu, Jennifer - 9 No more medicine. No more money. Sick mother. I had all these things worrying me now. “Little Lotus, my sweet tangyuan, we have no more to... spend or buy. I am too weak to work… but you cannot take a chance in the workforce. I don’t want you to suffer!” Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. That was all Mother did these days. We had spent all our money on our food and the farm to keep it going. The medicine my mother needed had been too expensive for us to afford. So we had to sell the farm. Father had died, well no, disappeared ever since Zheng He came back from his sixth voyage. So someone had to do something or else something bad might happen. And that somebody was ME.“I refuse to let us sit home and get poorer and poorer!” I fumed. “Someone has to do something and no one else will do it for us! I know you love me Mother, but I also care about you from the bottom of my heart. I need to go to work. Please. I don’t want you to die! You are my only hope left! I am going to get a job as a sailor on the Seventh Voyage Ship! Then we will have enough to buy medicine!” “But my little lotus, you know that you are too young and a girl. *wheeze* You need to be over fifteen.” protested mother pleadingly. “I will disguise myself as a boy and will fool them easily. I am quite tall if I say so myself.” I bragged. “Fine.” Mother shot out. “But, remember” She softly whispered, ”I love you from the bottom of my heart and beyond. Stay safe.” She placed one kiss on my cheek and began a long, peaceful much-needed sleep. A few days later, it was time... I waved goodbye to Mrs. Chau, our kind neighbour and shouted “Take care of mother! Tell her I love her and I will come back safely!” Mrs Chau saluted, “I will, my little soldier!” I saw a sign on the docks that answered my questions about where to go: Sailors needed for cooking and cleaning. May take two years of training for swordsmanship and engineering. Please follow the arrow and ask for the name Yang when you reach the 6th Pier. Yang was a tiny, awkward man with an even tinier brain. He accepted me as a boy over 16 years of age without question. Yes. I thought to myself. Not bad. Now that I’ve deceived the registrar, what could possibly go wrong? Two Years Later… Training was tough and every day I faced strict discipline and rules. I also learned swordsmanship, engineering, knot tying, how to preserve food and how to defend ship cargo. We were on the edge of the Arabian port to trade silk and spices for bows and arrows when something seriously unbelievable happened. I was checking the rudder for barnacles that had latched there. As I turned around I hit someone smack in the face. IT WAS MY FATHER! All at once I felt a wave of happiness, frustration and hope wash upon me. “Father!” I quietly shouted. Except this man didn’t look like my father anymore. His great height had turned into a shrunk back and his once neat blackish grey hair had aged into a huge, untidy white mass. “Lotus? Oh, my darling girl! Listen here. Not long after that blasted man Zheng He arrived back from his sixth voyage, six armed guards showed up at our farm in the middle of the night. You and your mother were asleep at the time so you didn’t witness anything. Anyway, those terrible guards told me to follow them to the docks or to witness you and your mother die a slow and terrible death. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you, so I slipped away from the house with those guards. Once when I was at the docks, They gagged me… and.” he sighed, “I can’t tell you the rest or else we will be…” “Ssshhh!” I silenced him. “There’s an officer coming. Let’s check the rudder.”