Strokes of Ebony

by Nick Yee

Hua-Chang was an apprentice painter in Luo-Yang when he first saw Sau-Mei. Constant poverty had made him humble. When his parents died, he found that he could no longer bear the heavy clarity of life, and found solace in painting. He sold his mother's wedding pearls to buy a set of wolf-tail brushes. In this silent world of dancing black strokes, he could forget his own pain.

Sau-Mei was shimmering in crimson and painted pale as the moon when Hua-Chang first saw her. She was not beautiful, but her purity shone through the layers of red ivory that adorned her. Her father was sick in health, and afraid that no one would marry an orphan child, he hastily agreed when a wealthy silk merchant asked for her hand. Sau-Mei was seventeen when Hua-Chang first saw her.

As Sau-Mei's father lay in his deathbed, he asked a portrait of her daughter to be painted and buried with him, so that he might be close to her forever. With only a sliver of gold, he could hire no grand painter, and Hua-Chang found himself at their modest cottage.

Hua-Chang painted the warm ivory with cold ebony, and drew strokes of beauty that brought tears to the father's eyes as he spoke her name for the last time. Sau-Mei was married later that day to a man who cared for nothing except her fragile innocence.

That night, Hua-Chang tried to capture the same strokes he had painted hours earlier. But the rising dawn told him that he would never be able to. As the moon faded, a river of black ink spilled across his world. And his heart flooded with the pain he thought he had forgotten.

The silk merchant locked Sau-Mei in his manor until she collapsed one spring day when butterflies began to emerge from their cocoons. Hua-Chang saw her dressed in white as they carried her away. For the first time in five years, he held a brush in his hand. As the wind carried the wolf-tail embers away, he finally remembered what happiness felt like.