Half a month later, Mulan and her father receive a letter from Yuan Kai stating that he will not be able to partake in the scheduled duel due to the impending conflict with the Rouran. Before Mulan and her father can decide how to respond, they learn that an imperial messenger will be arriving in the village soon and that every house must send a messenger to the marketplace. Mulan, disguised as a man, arrives at the marketplace along with the rest of the village men. They are informed by an Xianbei messenger that the Rouran are invading and that "each household is to contribute an able-bodied male for the realm's defense. No exceptions. Conscripts are to report tomorrow at dawn."
Suddenly Mulan is gripped with the realization that her family has no able-bodied male. Her father is paralyzed, her brother Murong is too young and Dabao has the mind of a child. She knows she will have to be conscripted. On her way home, Mulan quickly purchases the best horse she can find. At home she tells her family of her decision to volunteer. Mulan's father gives her several weapons including the family heirloom, Heart Sea.
When Mulan reports for the conscription she has them change the name on the list from her dead brothers, to her own of Hua Mulan. Mulan along with hundreds of conscripts being the long march in columns to an encampment containing thousands of other conscripts. She cannot help but wonder if Yuan Kai is among them.
Once in the encampment, Mulan hears talk about someone called "the princeling" having arrived. She also begins to realize being a woman in a large war encampment with thousands of men is going to make if very difficult to hide her sex. How will she escape being discovered. But then an unexpected opportunity presents itself.
When Mulan first sees the princeling, she is stunned at how familiar is his movements and mannerisms are to her. They remind her of Yuan Kai, but she tries to put this out of her mind. Accompanying him is a large man named Captain Helou who treats the princeling with great respect and deference. Suddenly, a soldier comes forward to request a chance to demonstrate his martial arts skills with Captain Helou. Helou of course easily defeats the young soldier. Mulan decides to challenge Helou, requesting that he shoot three arrows at her from a pace of fifty feet, which she will catch with her bare hands while blindfolded.
The first two arrows that Captain Helou shoots, Mulan easily catches. But on the third shot, Mulan discerns three arrows coming directly at her with great speed. Stunned, she yanks out her sword, Heart Sea, slicing through the arrows and catching one of the broken shafts. When Mulan removes the blindfold she discovers that it was the princeling on his horse using a more powerful bow who shot the arrows. Furious, she approaches the princeling who asks her name and inquires if she wishes to join them. Hua Mulan agrees, realizing that this will get her out of the encampment.However, little does Mulan realize that she has embarked on a journey with her long feared nemesis, the young man she is fated to meet in a duel. It is a journey of self-discovery, revelation about her family's past, of redemption, forgiveness and love!
Discussion
Magnolia Sword, is a superbly crafted version of the Mulan legend/folktale. Author Sherry Thomas has managed to blend history, romance and adventure into a captivating tale for teens and adults alike. Thomas, who grew up in China, writes in her Author's Note that she "chose to infuse it with elements of wuxia, a uniquely Chinese literary genre that explores themes of honor, sacrifice, vengeance and forgiveness through the adventures of almost mythically adept martial artists." And in this regard, Thomas succeeds beyond imagination!
Although the story is about the legendary female warrior Mulan, Thomas has created an interesting backstory that forms the basis of the plot for this retelling. Hua Mulan is fated to meet another highly skilled warrior Yuan Kai in a duel in which the winner will claim two special swords. Mulan's family has one sword, called Heart Sea, while her opponent's family, the Pengs have its mate, Sky Blade. The Hua and Peng families have been rivals for generations, fighting over the two swords.
Two generations earlier Kai's grandfather Peng hoped to end the duels by arranging a marriage between Mulan's father Hua Manlou and Peng's daughter. However, Mulan's father was in love with another woman. He refused the marriage offer and married the woman he loved, Mulan's mother. This meant that the duel now had to be fought between Peng's daughter and Manlou. However, before the duel could be fought, Peng's daughter became very ill and her sister stepped in to fight Manlou. She won the duel, seriously injuring Manlou. When she approached Manlou to retrieve his sword, he acted dishonourably and threw two hidden weapons, poisoned bronze lillies at her. She died from the poison. Peng's daughter who fought Manlou was Yuan Kai's mother. So now that the children, Mulan and Kai are grown, they too must fight the duel to see who will possess the swords.
Mulan knows none of this until she is accepted into a special band of warriors led by a princeling whom she is certain is the opponent she must fight in the duel. She has met this opponent several times but their faces have always been covered so she cannot be entirely certain. The princeling takes them to his home where Mulan learns his real identity and the truth about the duel years ago from his aunt, the woman her father refused to marry. Mulan now knows that the princeling is Yuan Kai. Mulan believes that the princeling does not know she is a woman.
However there are several twists in the story. Shortly after Mulan's father returned from the duel, Mulan's twin brother, Muyang died. Wishing to keep this a secret, Manlou had Mulan take over her dead brother's identity, training her to be a skilled martial arts warrior. What Mulan does not know is that Yuan Kai knows she is a woman disguised as a male warrior. He made this discovery years earlier when he travelled to Mulan's home on Lake Tai and witnessed a young girl in a boat who transformed herself into a young warrior.
However, most of this is revealed gradually throughout the story, drawing the reader into the story. What is the true identity of the princeling and does he know that Mulan is a girl warrior? As the story develops, from the warrior band's mission to scout out the movements of the invading Rouran to the discovery of a traitor in their party and the impending invasion of the imperial city, Mulan must make a decision.
When Mulan learns of her father's dishonorable behaviour during the duel years ago she is devastated and filled with shame. Her initial decision is to remain at the Great Wall in relative safety, feeling she has done her duty by enlisting and keeping her promise to her family to stay safe and return. However, this decision makes Mulan feel conflicted. She has not been trained "in yiqi, the code of honor and brotherhood that governs righteous conduct for men." After all she is a woman, expected to lead a life serving men. Her conduct is to be "judged almost entirely on her chastity, obedience, and self-effacement." However Mulan decides to continue with the princeling and his elite band, looking at herself as someone who is a person who has skills to offer. "Brotherhood might be unique to men, but loyalty, devotion to friends, and a sense of fairness are not."
Mulan expects Kai to be filled with a spirit of vengeance and is surprised to find he is not. When she questions Kai as to what made him no longer want to kill her father, he astonishes her by replying that he never wished to do so. "What would I have done, by killing your father, except make things worse for his family? And what would I have done, by wanting to kill him, except make things worse for me?" Kai eventually reveals that once he discovered he was to fight Hua Manlou's daughter "in the guise of her brother", he wished that they "could have met under different circumstances." And so both Kai and Mulan put aside the old enmity between their families and work together to save their country. And ultimately to unite their families with forgiveness, compassion and redemption.
Thomas has done a superb job of crafting the characters of Mulan and Kai. Both are honorable, intelligent, disciplined and loyal. Their relationship develops and matures gradually over the course of the story, from two adversaries who do not trust one another to friendship and then to a delicate and tender love born out of forgiveness and mutual respect. Their story is timeless and the themes of forgiveness, compassion and repentance, enduring.
Magnolia Sword is a bright spot in young adult literature and might very well be the best book written for teens this year. This novel would hold up well as a screen adaptation.
Book Details:
Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas
New York: TU Books 2019
348 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment