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Xia Lei closed his eyes and made some snoring noises. His sleeping act was so convincing he could trick himself.
However, Szlamy came right over and pressed him below herself without a care. Her mouth and hands roamed where they pleased and touched him all over. Xia Lei wasn’t able to hold out for even a minute. He opened his eyes. “You’re drunk. Go to sleep.”
Szlamy chuckled. “Do I look drunk to you?”
“You’re pretending?” Xia Lei’s jaw almost dropped to the bed.
“What’s so good about drinking alcohol? I want to drink you.”
Xia Lei was speechless.
Szlamy held Xia Lei’s face, her eyes full of sweet tenderness. “No one can stop us from being together now. You’re mine. n.o.body can s.n.a.t.c.h you away from me.”
“My head hurts. I think I drank too much. I’m so dizzy I should sleep for a bit first.” He had failed at faking sleep so he was going to fake drunkenness. He closed his eyes again.
Szlamy shoved Xia Lei angrily but he did not respond. She paused, then threw herself atop Xia Lei and rolled him over to ride on him. Xia Lei struggled but Szlamy was fierce like a wild horse. He was afraid that he would hurt her if he used all his strength against her, so he relented a little, but this little bit of giving in resulted in…
An angelic baby-face barely out of p.u.b.erty, still holding onto innocence but an explosively s.e.xy succubus body… Xia Lei fell to the chieftain’s ravaging, then well and truly lost himself. He didn’t care anymore. He was going to do it - just be together!
The house filled with curious sounds, sometimes high, sometimes low, and sometimes melting into a mess of accompanying sounds like a song praising the sounds of nature.
A large group of tribeswomen chattered outside the house. Some peeked through cracks in the door and some peeked through wormholes in the walls. Some even rode on the shoulders of their fellow sisters to look through the window. It was like some great celebrity had come to the tribe to hold a concert.
“What a man! He’s much more durable than the ones I have at home.”
“Sisters, do you think Szlamy will be weak-kneed tomorrow?”
“What ‘Szlamy’? Call her ‘Chieftain’ now!”
“Mama, Sister Szlamy is crying. Did someone hit her?” asked a little brat.
“You know nothing, kid. Szlamy is laughing, not crying.”
“She’s crying! I want to see!”
“Shoo, shoo! Brats should stay out of the way. Mama will grab some men for you when you’re grown and you’ll know if Sister Szlamy was crying or laughing.”
“Really? Then I want to grow up tomorrow… But I still want to see.”
“Shoo!”
Bang bang bang!
Someone fired at the sky.
This was a night which was not fated to be quiet. Someone was transformed from a girl to a woman that night, and someone went from h.o.r.n.y beast to wrung-out rag.
The rays of dawn chased away the darkness of the canyon and bright suns.h.i.+ne gently illuminated this paradise. A thin mist rose from the forest, making it look ethereal. The river water splashed as carp jumped out of its surface, wetting the men was.h.i.+ng clothing by the riverside. This made for a quiet and beautiful picture, like a G.o.ddess of the world.
Xia Lei felt tenderness and a bit of guilt as he watched Szlamy climb out of bed and prepare some food. However, Szlamy’s perky b.u.t.tocks and seductive back quickly dispelled his guilt. There was no way to feign modesty when faced with this great stunner of a baby-face H-cup.
Szlamy walked oddly, as if she’d gone lame.
Xia Lei got out of bed too. “It’s better if I do it. You rest.”
Szlamy smiled back at him. “It’s fine, I just hit my foot. You rest. I’ll call you when I’m done.” She abruptly remembered something. “But if anyone asks, you have to say that you cooked.”
Xia Lei smiled wryly and nodded. Men were the ones who served women in this tribe. Szlamy was chieftain now, so it would hurt her image if anyone discovered that she was cooking for him.
Szlamy went to the kitchen but Xia Lei did not go back to lazing in bed. He got dressed and went to the simple desk with drawers. He opened the drawer and took the ancient book out to flip through it again. The part he hadn’t had time to look at was also in ancient Hun and had some hand-drawn pictures too. It was too bad he didn’t understand the Hun language and couldn’t decipher the contents of the book.
“Time to eat.” Szlamy brought a black ceramic pot into the room. Her gaze went to the ancient book in Xia Lei’s hands and she asked curiously, “What are you reading?”
Xia Lei did not hide the book away this time. He brought it over to Szlamy. “I found a book. It should be something Dayetia left behind, but I don’t know how to read Hun writing. Do you?”
“I know some. Let me see.” Szlamy took hold of the ancient book and nagged him again, “You go eat some breakfast.”
Xia Lei looked in the ceramic pot and found just some boiled sweet potatoes, some potatoes and a flatbread. This was breakfast in their tribe and Szlamy was eating this as chieftain. What was the rest eating? The sight of the food made Xia Lei’s heart ache, and he didn’t feel good about it.
Seeing that Xia Lei had not moved, Szlamy said, “If you want meat I’ll get someone to bring some over. I’ll slaughter a goat for you if you want lunch.”
“No, no, no, this is okay. Vegetables are healthy.” Xia Lei picked up a sweet potato and gnawed on it. He’d been through tough times before on construction sites and eaten food which couldn’t even be used for slops. He would not reject the food Szlamy offered him because of the meagre poverty of the tribe. He was not the sort to forget his humble roots and l.u.s.t for riches.
Szlamy rifled through the book and said casually, “This is our tribe’s book. I heard my grandmother talk about it. It records our tribe’s history. You know that Attila the Hun had built his own empire. It failed, but that period was our most glorious.”
“What else is in it besides history?”
Szlamy turned more pages and soon reached the hand-drawn map of the ancient ruins. She examined it for a bit and said, “This also records our ancestors’ capital and its buildings. You saw it. This city is where we met. It’s called the City of the White Horse of Tomorrow. Legends say there’s treasure but we’ve dug in many places and uncovered no treasure.”
So the ruins was called the City of the White Horse of Tomorrow. It was an odd name.
“And then? What does it say afterwards?”
Szlamy turned yet more pages. “Some major traditional activities and ceremonies. And some drawings of important people. Princes, princesses, blah blah. This - look at this.” She pointed at a woman on the last few pages and said with a smile, “The legendary Princess Yong-Mei, Zhu Xuan-Yue. You can guess that she’s Chinese like you by the name, eh? Heh heh. My grandmother liked her best. She often told me the story of Princess Yong-Mei.”
She was surnamed ‘Zhu’ - wasn’t that the surname of the Ming emperor? And she was a princess too. Xia Lei thought of the Ming dynasty compa.s.s immediately. His brain whirred, linking persons, events and key items together. His brain seemed to have drawn a relations.h.i.+p chart of all these but this chart was still incomplete and he couldn’t see it clearly yet.
“Hey, why are you s.p.a.cing out?” Szlamy grinned at Xia Lei like he was a cooked sweet potato, all eager to eat him up.
“Um, nothing.” Xia Lei snapped back to his senses and said, “What else does the book say? About this Princess Yong-Mei, right, and your grandmother. What story did she tell you about this princess? Please tell me. I’d like to know.”
“I’m hungry.” Szlamy pursed her cherry lips and spoke teasingly. She was the marks-woman of the White Hun Tribe and killed easily but she was an eighteen-year-old girl in front of Xia Lei. She flirted and acted coy.
Xia Lei peeled a sweet potato for her and fed it to her; it was a very tender thing to do. He’d unexpectedly found an important lead and what Szlamy knew was just too important to him. He would serve her and give her a bath, no problem, much less feed her food.
Szlamy smiled sweetly as she ate the sweet potato Xia Lei fed her. She looked blissful.
“Please tell me,” Xia Lei pushed.
“My grandmother…” She choked before she could finish her sentence.
Xia Lei hurriedly patted her on her chest to help her swallow. The patting made her chest jiggle and wiggle and ripple wondrously. All that movement made the relations.h.i.+p chart in his head become a pair of round shapes; he didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
“The books says that Princess Yong-Mei built the City of the White Horse of Tomorrow. It took ten years to build it, and she stayed in the city till she died of old age but her grave is not recorded. The book says it’s bad luck. No one knows.”
“Why would the princess come build a city here?” Xia Lei was awash with curiosity.
Szlamy shook her head. “I asked my grandmother the same question long ago. She always said it was because of love. She fell in love with one of our Hun princes but was not able to be with him in the end. It’s a beautiful love story but I don’t believe it. Prince and Princess stories are the most unreliable ones.”
Xia Lei did not think so. In many historical events, what was written in history books were not necessarily true because history was written by victors. But folk tales were not necessarily fake because many folktales carried the grains of truth of historical events.
“Szlamy, can you do me a favour? Please translate this whole book to Pashto. I’d like to read it.” Xia Lei was not satisfied with Szlamy’s sloppy translation. He wanted to know more and he needed to find more clues.
“I hate reading the most. But I can get someone to translate it for you. Our tribe has educated people too,” said Szlamy with a smile.
“Nn, thank you. I’ll feed you another sweet potato.” Xia Lei picked up a sweet potato to curry more favour with her.
Szlamy’s large eyes were s.h.i.+ny and her voice all soft as she said, “No, I don’t want this root. I want yours.”
The sweet potato in Xia Lei’s hand dropped to his crotch…