Balancing Act (434 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: ubermadness
Rating: 2 on 4 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Circe <fickle.muse.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-10-04 05:26:58 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The time had come to seek a wife. He had had a good time of it these last few years, but the elderly women of his family were beginning to talk about him in low whispers and introduce him to young men. It would not do.
He knew that he could not be happy with just any wife. The plain faced fishermen's daughters who walked by the house and gave him their plaintive, longing looks would never hold his interest. He needed a woman with grace and beauty and poise, and he devised a most clever test (or so he thought) to ensure himself of such a bride.
Each wealthy merchant's daughter that was presented at his door for marriage was told the same thing. She was taken to the courtyard where a bamboo pole was balanced between two chairs. The man would say this:
"My wife must have the poise of a temple dancer and the grace of a bird. To pass this test and become my bride, you must stand on that wood all night. If morning comes and your feet are still above it, you will be my wife by nightfall."
Girl after girl would step onto the bamboo pole with all intentions of still being there by morning. But the bamboo was thin, and the nights were cold, and toes grew numb, and girl after girl would fall into the dust of the courtyard after just a few hours, to be sent home to her family in disgrace.
The seventh girl who came was different from the others. Her eyes were bright and her smile was crooked and knowing. The man took her to the courtyard and told her of the test with something like regret. He would be sorry to see this one go.
The girl nodded when he explained the test. She walked over to the bamboo and looked at it closely, running one hand over the wood. When she spoke, her voice was low and thoughtful.
"And my feet must be in contact with the wood all night?"
"Above it and on it, yes."
She nodded and took a small knife from the folds of her dress. She carved off two slivers of bamboo and slipped them inside her shoes. When she put her shoes back on, she wriggled her toes against the bamboo fragments and smiled her crooked, clever smile.
"Shall we go inside? The evening grows cold, and I would talk to the man who will be my husband."
The two were married the next day. In the fullness of time, they had a daughter with her mother's crooked smile and her father's strength of will. And, perhaps proving that the gods have a sense of the whimsical, she became a tightrope dancer. She would balance and spin, high above the floor of the circus ring. She dazzled the crowds, night after night and week after week and month after month, with her grace and skill and perfect balance.
She was "The Girl Who Never Falls". She took pride in this, and resolved to never lose the name the crowds and the Ringmaster had given her. But fate, as fate tends to do, noticed her pride and resolve and placed a stumbling block in her way in the form of the Ringmaster's son.
The dancer had signed a contract saying that she would not marry, as long as she worked for the circus. But when she saw the Ringmaster's son, so tall and handsome, she ached for him enough to forget her pride. She knew that she would be fired if she ever fell from the highwire. And she knew, too, that falling was the only way to be free to marry the man she loved.
Her last night on the tightrope, she was breathtaking. She danced as though her feet were hovering above the thin wire. She danced away her pride and her resolve and she danced her surrender to her fate. She danced for love. And when she dropped from the wire, it was with the slow drifting inevitability of a falling leaf. She hit the net to the disappointed groan of the crowd. But one voice - just one - was raised in delight, and it was the only voice that mattered.
She married the Ringmaster's son, and in the fullness of time they had a boy child. And (once again proving the whimsy of the gods) he grew up to become a weaver of nets to catch fish.
The moral of the story is this: It would have been much faster to catch fish with the bamboo pole.
User Reviews
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-12-19 19:32:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
UM auto +2
Submitted by Kopesh (user info) at 2005-01-17 06:22:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice one....
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 12:12:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-01-16 08:28:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I really liked this.