The Dragon Awakens

Chapter Four

A few hours later, Mulan looked around the kitchen at the piles of food surrounding her. There were noodles and dumplings and rice and soups and vegetables among so many other things. The kitchen smelled like fifty million spices all wrapped into one steamed cabbage leaf. 

"What is that smell? Charles, did you take a field trip to Chin- Mei?" Mulan's mother stopped in the doorway, untying her Hermes scarf and setting her Burkin bag on the counter. She'd had just gotten off a ten-hour flight from Paolo Alto where she was attending a series of fashion shows. She was the chief fashion editor of Style, the world's premier fashion magazine. Not to mention the fact that she had her own high-end global fashion brand on the side.

"Hello Ann," Nainai said with a soft smile, holding a stack of plates. "Go fetch your husband, we're having dinner together now."

Mulan's mother nodded, knowing full well that you never disobeyed Nainai, and hurried out of the kitchen. Mei Fa, Mulan's grandmother, had a very deep and personal relationship with her mother that Mulan had never understood. If you had looked at them from the outside you would have assumed her mother not her father, was Mei's child. But there was also an unknown reason that Mulan never knew her mother's parents, so all they had in terms of ancestry was Mei Fa. 

"Yes Ma?" her father strode into the kitchen and stopped dead at the sight of all the food. "Did you fire Charles?" he asked, slightly panicked, looking at his wife.

"No, now sit. We're having a family meal together. It has been too long since we have all been together." She pulled her chair back and the rest of the Fa family followed suit and sat down around the table, unsure of how to approach this unusual time together.

They started passing around food in awkward silence until their plates were full and Mulan picked up her pair of ceramic chopsticks that had some dust on them when she dug them out of the back of the pantry. They'd been a wedding present when her parents had gotten married and until Lanie went away, they'd used them almost every night. 
   "So I have some news," her father said, clearing his throat.

"Yes?" Nainai asked, expertly picking up her grains of rice.

"I have to travel to Portugal for the next month to close a business deal for my company... I tried to find a way to say no but I'm the only person who not only speaks Portuguese but who the investors don't think is a "slippery snake,"" he air quoted and Mulan sipped her tea, looking out the window to the rock garden a guy came by once a week to rake and weed it. There was a stone bench out there to sit on, but she couldn't ever recall a time seeing anyone out there besides the gardener.

"A month?" her mother asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm supposed to be starting my European tour in a week for almost two months. Can't you cut it short?"

"It's not supposed to be a month but I just wanted to be prepared and warn you ahead of time if worse comes to worst. But two months in Europe? Really? Do you think that our bank account can handle that?" he snapped and Mulan sighed. This was why her family didn't have dinner together.

"Excuse me, did either of you think about the fact that your daughter will be here alone? Again? What kind of parents are you? You even missed your own daughter's graduation! Did you know she was the valedictorian? Because I did which is why I'm here," her grandmother snapped in disappointment.

"Mulan..." her mother whispered. She reached out a hand to hold her daughters but Mulan pulled away quickly. "I'm so sorry." 

Mulan slammed her teacup on the table, tears finally welling up into her eyes. "Yeah well, it's not a big deal because they've been doing it since they shipped me off to boarding school and you left my life too so don't act like you're a saint either," she snapped at her grandmother.
     "Where were you, any of you, when I was spending Christmas with the feng shui guy and Charles playing dominoes!" she yelled and all three adults in front of her shrank a little. "So you know what? Keep on doing what you've always done. Go make business deals and go change the fashion world. I'll be here with Nainai for a while until I leave for early college at Columbia, full scholarship by the way. Which you also had no idea about."

She stood from the table and hurried out the back door into the garden. She hopped over the koi pond and across the cobblestone bridge to the statue garden. There were copies of some famous statues littered about like David and Venus de Milo, and there were also some classical Chinese ones. The whole garden was framed in cherry blossom trees that weren't in bloom anymore but the garden was Mulan's favorite spot when it was. It was where she'd go when she felt sad or lonely, and hope that despite all the bad things she'd done for Dragon Army, her afterlife would not be the most painful one. She did it to help save people, she told herself. She did it for the defenseless. What was one life, she told herself, compared to the billions in the world?

She heard the soft roll of thunder above her and a crackle of lightning before sheets of rain started pouring down on her. She didn't move though, just watched from a distance as lights in her house flicked off, save for her father's office and her grandmother's bedroom. She climbed up on the dragon statue like she would as a little girl pretending to save the day by riding her dragon into victory, and for the first time in months let herself cry.

Maybe it was a good thing that the Dragon Army was sending her so far away, so deep undercover. Maybe it was for the best that her parents were traveling to different countries, out of reach and unavailable. As for her grandmother, Mulan tried not to feel guilty about leaving her. She came here to be with her and Mulan was about to up and leave for who knew how long. Dragon Army told her for only a week, but she knew better than to trust that. She would plan for a month. Why she would need that long to kill a major general she couldn't fathom but life and assassins were weird sometimes.

Mulan rested her head against the hard stone and let the rain wash away her tears and her makeup to the bare, pale skin underneath. She was the dragon. She would do what it would take to save her country and its people. Even if it meant leaving her family behind.