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Red Paper Lantern by Nick Yee The ivory moon is whole tonight. They say that there was once an emperor who was so greedy and cunning that he even wanted to cheat the god of Death. He sent his ministers to find the fabled Pearl of Immortality. Each minister in turn brought back one fabled medicine after another, but these bitter roots and soups only brought the emperor closer to his death, and still, no one had found the Pearl. Then as the emperor's eyes began to cloud over, the last minister returned with a pearl. But the emperor did not trust the minister, and seeing that he would soon die, he forced the queen to swallow the pearl so that she may accompany him to the River of Death. The queen grew pale, but as the emperor died, the ministers watched as the queen's feet left the ground as if she had become a feather. She floated, drifted, and then slowly she began to glow with a gentle white light. The ministers watched as the queen drifted all the way to the moon. They say it is her face that is the ivory. They call her the Lady of the Moon. And every year when the harvest moon is full, they tell the children this story. But the children remember this night because of the paper lanterns. The black canvas of night glows with vibrant firefly hues. One by one, the fireflies go to bed, and the night reclaims the land, but one solitary hue remains. She carries a red paper lantern on a thin bamboo shard. The water is crimson. The water is silver. The water trembles under this dancing breath of light. There is a warm heaviness in her heart, and she whispers to the river as the waters carry the lantern away: As you wander these valleys
and gorges And let no tempest douse
your flame In the darkest of nights And I shall wait for
you here
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