The Lullaby
The particular edition of the book that the traveller had heard so much about – the often overlooked 13thedition from the Anhui Printing Press, was proving much more difficult to find than his brother in law had led him to believe. His brother in law – being directly connected with the rural Chinese press in question – had given specific instructions to locate a small district on the outskirts of downtown, and to ignore any given municipal road signs, local advice or intuitive feeling and to turn left at every turning for 13 junctions. The traveller doubted the wisdom of such poetic ordinance, but none the less indulged his advisor. To his enormous surprise and disbelief, the application of these directions actually led him straight to a house – well to be more accurate ‘dwelling’ – as it was constructed with little more sophisticated than timber, corrugated iron and breeze blocks repurposed from other now debilitated homes. The traveller approached the house taking care not to trip on discarded plywood sheets, upturned plastic chairs and a wealth of potentially recyclable materials that had been left to rot. Surveying the deteriorating establishment before him, he was entirely sceptical of the likelihood of this building containing any books whatsoever, let alone the particular tome he was searching for.
But before he could make a proper assessment of his chances, his attention was caught by a young girl approaching from the allotment. Dressed in simple but clean dowdy clothing, she beheld the composure of a nun whilst evidently nurturing the capacity for violence or destruction, judging by the glint in her dark wild eyes. She walked slowly but purposefully, humming a song whose words were unintelligible but whose tune seemed strangely familiar. Perhaps a song from his youth, when he spent long summer afternoons at his grandmother’s house on the outskirts of town. The reverie of his childhood melted away as the girl walked past. She was completely oblivious to his presence, but continued her song. Faint recollections of hearing the song before eventually crystallised in his minds ear to the form of a famous traditional Chinese lullaby. The enormous scorpion that scratched the earth as it walked its spiny legs in an enchanting rhythmic pattern seemed, like the girl, to be uninterested in his presence. Perhaps it was the stillness of the evening, perhaps the enchanting lullaby- but for some reason the stranger felt no sense of threat or danger despite the presence of the enormous poison laden barb that passed now a few inches from his nose. Perhaps it was the beast itself. Though it had only crude mandibles and but two dead-looking eyes on its cephalothorax, it was somehow perceptible that the girl’s lullaby brought a look of tranquility upon the it, revealing its intentions to merely plod past without troubling itself or the quiet evening with anything more than routine.