Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
centuries have done, and sought refuge in one of the sixteen grottoes
and various temples that pocked the sides of Stone Bell Mountain.
Marlena, Esmé, and Harry were closest to the main temple
grounds, whose original building, now gone, was constructed during
the Nanzhao Kingdom, around the ninth century. The decorative pil­
lars and tile roofs, which Harry could make out through the rainy
haze, were from a remodeling job done during the Ching dynasty,
only a hundred or so years old and repainted in more recent years af­
ter its near destruction during the Cultural Revolution. The three
rain-soaked visitors scrambled up the zigzag path, and when they ar­
rived at one of the temple buildings above a courtyard, they were
stunned by what they saw from ancient times. As the rain poured
down the awnings, it created a misty curtain, a scrim behind which
stood a pretty, young woman in turbaned headdress and bright pink
jacket singing to a young man who accompanied her on a two-
stringed erhu, which had the versatility to sound like anything from
a young woman moaning in love to a horse shrilling in fright. Our
travelers stepped closer, but the singing couple remained oblivious of
the intruders.
“Are they real?” Esmé asked.
Marlena said nothing. They must be ghosts stuck in time, forever
reliving one moment that was dear to them, she thought.
The woman’s singing rose, her voice warbling in unearthly surges.
The man began to sing in response. Back and forth they went, with
an incredible athleticism in their trilling vibrato. The man walked
closer to the pretty woman, and at the end, she leaned into his chest,
falling back like a viola returning to its protective case, and allowed
him to wrap her in his arms.
“Hullo!” a female voice suddenly called out.
When Harry, Marlena, and Esmé turned, they saw a woman in a
pink business suit standing under the eaves of another building,
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