jade bracelet

Prologue

A young woman looks lovingly down at her newborn son. Her hands, callused from work at the farm, gently rocks a little boy to sleep. His beautiful brown eyes are hidden from the world as his mother plays with the small tuft of black hair on his head. After a while, she sets the baby down on the bed and walks over to her husband.

�Is it prepared yet?� she asks, looking at an intricately carved bracelet.

�Almost�, he replies, sprinkling a fine powder over the trinket. After murmuring a prayer to the gods above he stares intensely at what he had just created. Suddenly the little hut was illuminated. A soft glow, brilliant in its many facets, emanated from the bracelet. The woman gasped, her hand quickly covering the piece until the light receded, leaving only an electrifying warmth inside the jade. The baby, now awakened, begins to cry. His parents run towards him.

�Hush Liu Bang, you must not wake anyone up.� The mother whispers reassurances as her husband hands over the bracelet, which she slips onto her son�s arm.

�Liu Bang, ah, never take this off, you will never be too big or too small for this.� The father says as he watches the bracelet slowly shrink down to just the right size for the little wrist.

With Ani Difranco blaring out, a girl with her black hair cut in a boyish way, croons the lyrics, horribly out of tune. Below, her mom screams out her name 6 billion times, and after getting tired of it, storms up the stairs. Opening Zoe�s door she screams.

�Kuai Dian! Your grandma�s downstairs!�

�Puo puo?� Zoe exclaims and runs past her mom and streams down the stairs.

�Aiya�.� Zoe�s mom sighs and turns off the music.

The two walk down the street hand in hand. An amazing similarity between the girl and her grandma could be seen.

�Ling ling, I have a gift for you. Some may call it a burden, but treasure it, for it links you to your past.� The small woman looked at Zoe (Ling ling) and took out a small jade bracelet. Zoe lifted the bracelet gingerly, mesmerized by the characters on it, she slips it on without thinking. Not noticing that the bracelet wouldn't have possibly fit her if it was the size when she saw it first. Still in her superfluous state, Zoe felt something stir, a glimpse of an idea that she knew, somehow, wasn�t from her life. The murky image keeps slipping out of her grasp until it explodes in her brain.

Her grandma, turning quickly when she hears Zoe�s sharp breath, is just in time to hear her granddaughter murmur an ancient prayer that she herself had chanted in her days when she wore the bracelet. As mysterious swirls of fog surrounds Zoe the old woman cries out, �Its not your time yet! Bai Niang, bang zhu wo!� Her plea for help seemed to instantly take hold. The fogs disperse leaving behind a girl, slumped on the ground and clutching a jade bracelet.

Zoe wakes to the beautiful melodic tone of her grandma�s voice humming.

�Puo puo?� Zoe manages to croak out, realizing, with a start, that she is at her grandma�s house. The woman in question looks at Zoe with humor glinting in the depths of her warm brown eyes.

�You�re feeling better, no? Next time, you will be more cautious, hm? The bracelet is not a tool, as many of our lineage has discovered, it is a being in itself.� Zoe�s grandmother sits besides her granddaughter and begins to spin her tale. �Long ago, our ancestors helped a family of tigers free from some trappings. That night, out of nowhere, 8 bracelets, one for each of the children of the family, appeared. A voice spoke, telling them how to prepare the bracelets for their little ones. As time went on the bracelet has been passed on from one to another in our family. The chosen one of us are randomly picked, only a wearer can tell who will be the next one.� Zoe�s grandma takes a sip of tea as she goes on, �Ling ling� these bracelets� they take you to one of your ancestors for they need to know something that you know, you can not go unprepared.�

Pushing a bag onto Zoe, the woman seemed to have aged a decade in a few minutes, �I must sleep, little one, but you are to stay here until it is your time, your mother will understand.� Taking a deep breath, the grandmother gets up and walks slowly to her room.

Zoe follows her grandma�s path with her eyes and when she disappears from view turns to stare at the bag that was given to her. It looked like one of those shoulder bags, but it was small and made out of cloth with some embroidery stitched onto it. Carefully lifting the flap, as if some monster would come out and take her back to that dark nothingness she felt this afternoon, she peeked inside. Zoe almost laughed when she saw what was included in her �preparation bag�. On top was a toothbrush, a tube of Aquafresh, some soap and a towel. Taking these items out one by one, she saw, on the bottom, a stitching of a tiger leaving a trap. Remembering her grandmother�s tale she packs everything back into the bag somberly looks down on her wrist and to her amazement the bracelet began to glow. Zoe taking this as a sign that it was her time, looks up to the ceiling as she whispers her prayer.

The deep nothingness seized her again, until she felt she couldn�t stand it anymore, then released her as if it was all a dream. Standing before her was a young man who looked as startled as she felt. Glancing down, she saw herself lying in an empty, muddy field. Feeling the sun on her side Zoe got up as quickly as she could. When she shook off all the mud that she could, Zoe looked back up at the man who was petting his horse. Zoe reached out with her left hand and grabbed the man�s, pushing up her sleeve, they both saw the identical bracelets. One resting on a tanned, muscled arm while the other circled a pale wrist that was adorned by other paraphernalia.

With a look of understanding dawning on him he simply said, �I�m Han Liu Bang.�

�Ling ling�, replied Zoe. Liu Bang just nodded and motioned her to come with him as he turned to leave. They walked in a companionable silence until reaching a creek. There he sat down, gesturing for her to sit in front of him. To his amusement, she immediately took out a white rectangular thing and began scrubbing her arms and clothes. After watching her for a few minutes he said quietly. �I am a soldier in the Qin army. They are quickly losing power, there is too much chaos�,� Liu Bang paused, and then seemingly on another track, said, �I was ordered to escort a group of conscripted workers to march North to help build the tomb for the First Emperor but along the way, many ran away. I will surely be punished for coming with so few workers, so I must find them, yet..�

�but if you find them, you will be late in reaching the destination and be punished anyways,� finished Zoe as she dried herself off with her towel. She watched as Liu Bang nodded, and asked, �What do you intend to do?�

�I don�t know, launch a war.. I have enough men. We could make weapons�� He stopped as Zoe shook her head furiously.

�Men,� Zoe muttered underneath her breath then said louder, �Not everything needs to be solved by violence.� She was about to continue on her spiel of nonviolence but she was gripped once again by the cold darkness. Then, there she was again, back at her grandma�s house. Zoe laid her head down fingering the carvings in her bracelet and fell asleep.

Note:

Liu Bang was a peasant who had joined the Qin army. Turns out he becomes the founder of the Han dynasty, a golden age, after many battles. He was known to be cruel and ruthless but also was known for his peace making skills. Later Liu Bang would also be known as Gao Zu, meaning �Great ancestor�. The Han Dynasty will be known as one which encouraged the arts and education, lasting from 202 BCE till 220 CE, a total of 422 years.

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