Red Jade Bracelet

She never saw the flames. The wrinkled hands of her grandmother had held her back. A speckling of gold traced the coarse grooves of those calloused fingers. She looked down at her own gold-speckled fingers - all that remained from hours and hours of careful folding. The ashes rose and fell, and her grandmother said calmly that it was time to go home. Xiao-Hong held a red jade bracelet gently with her hands. She guarded it not because it was fragile, but because it was the only memory of her mother she had left to hold onto. And on nights when the crickets don't sing, she imagines that the flames were scarlet.

Xiao-Hong did not sleep the night of the fire. She used thin shreds of old linen to coil layers upon the thin arms of the bracelet. One layer at a time, she meticulously bound the bracelet until the gleaming red was hidden. But a fear still lingered. So every morning when the sun rose and before anyone had awaken, she would place the swathed bracelet inside a wooden box, and conceal it underneath her winter clothes. And every night, when she was sure everyone had gone to bed, she would take the wooden box out slowly, and clutch the small linen bundle as she drifted uneasily into sleep.

Her dreams feasted on her fears. Sometimes the dark shadow would steal the red jade bracelet from within the box underneath the winter clothes. Sometimes the dark shadow would slip it from her hands as she slept. And she would wake sweating with a vision etched in her mind; a vision of the dark shadow dangling the bracelet in front of her.

So she spent every waking moment seeking out hidden crevices in dark corners of the cottage, tree hollows, and underneath heavy stones she could lift. And every day, she would conceal the linen bundle in a different place. Yet in spite of all she was doing, the dark shadow still haunted her when she dreamed. So she spent her saved copper coins to buy locks and keys for the wooden box. Every night, before going to bed, she would replace the lock with another she had. Soon, she also began to hide the keys as well.

She wrote down the locations of the hidden box and keys in an obscured script she had devised, and carried the frail parchment paper with her at all times. Until one day, a sudden summer storm soaked through her clothes and the ink seeped thin. Xiao-Hong did not sleep for the next three nights as she scoured every crevice she could remember, and on the morning of the fourth day, she collapsed from exhaustion.

Xiao-Hong woke to her grandmother's calloused fingers stroking her hair. Her grandmother seemed to be smiling, yet tears traced her cheeks - as if a lingering helplessness had finally been painfully unraveled.

Grandmother held a linen bundle in her hand, slowly unbinding the coarse white to reveal the gleaming red that had been hidden since the day of the fire. Her calloused fingers held Xiao-Hong's frail arm as she slipped the red jade bracelet on. Xiao-Hong smiled as she felt the warm jade on her skin for the first time. The dark shadow never returned.