Music in the Soul Can be Heard by the Universe
by Meredith
Long ago during the Ming Dynasty, in the year of the Dragon, there lived the Wei family. They had a very big house on an enormous amount of property. Their house was just gorgeous. It was almost fit for the emperor. It had a big red roof to keep away evil from the house. On this big property laid a small, but useful, factory. In the factory, father and, sometimes, mother made silk.
The Wei family had just been blessed with a new addition to their family of three girls. At last, a boy!
There was Ho, who was six years old, had dark black hair, the color of a night sky. She was very slender and had a big heart for giving.
Qing, who was eight, also had a beautiful appearance. She was as slender as a medium sized tree and had dark black hair that was as, silky as silk threads itself. She too had a big heart for caring. She was also very kind.
Ling, who was twelve, was not big at all but tall enough to be almost a half foot taller than her sister Qing, who was as tall as the emperor's throne. She had silky black hair like her sisters.
The sisters looked so much alike they could be triplets but of different heights.
Ling was the only one who was disappointed with the arrival her baby brother, Ming. Ming was the cutest child the Wei's had ever seen. He was the first born son to the Wei family. At that time, the son was the most important figure in the household. He had hardly any hair and had body like a large watermelon.
Since the mother, Wei Tai Tai, was busy with Ming and had become quite tired, most of her jobs were assigned to Ling. One of Ling's new jobs was to go down to the Yangtze River to do the family's laundry. She had to wash the clothes and then rinse them. She did that about five times to make sure they were really clean, otherwise her family would get sick from the germs.
One other job that was given to her was to help her father make silk. In order to make silk she had to get many, many basketfuls of fresh mulberry leaves and no other leaves. Then she had to bring them into the factory to be eaten by thousands of silkworms. When the worms were big enough she moved them away from the mulberry leaves to another basket to spin their cocoon of silk thread. She then had to boil the cocoons. When the silkworm had finished spinning its cocoon, she put them in many bags and sent them to another silk spinning factory for the workers to spin them into thread and cloth.
All this long intense work made Ling hate Ming even more. Her sisters, Qing and Ho saw why their sister was so sad. They persuaded her as best as they could to like Ming. They showed her that her parents gave Ming the best baby toys they had, since he was so important. The toys happened to be Ling's for when Ling was little, her parents gave her all they could, since they were so happy to have a child as wonderful as she. To help Ling complete her jobs, all the girls did the work Ling was supposed to do so it went much faster and was much more fun.
One day, Qing gave Ling the plainest flute that she had made. Ling didn't really like it all. It had only one small star as a decoration. About a week later Ling's parents had to go to a village meeting. Ling was to babysit her brother and sisters. Not too long after she had put her brother and sisters to bed, Ming awoke and started to cry. Ling fed him a small bowl of rice to see if he was hungry. But he refused it.
She played with him but he kept on crying. She put him to bed but he didn't go to sleep. Then Ling had one more idea. She could try playing a sweet lullaby upon her flute.
Magically, he fell asleep after she had played the first verse of the song on the flute. The flute played such a beautiful song as if it were sent from heaven. She was so happy that he had fallen asleep. While holding him, she started to love him. That night, as she went to sleep, she heard the tune of the song from the flute in her head and in her soul. In the dark night sky, she saw a small, but magnificent little star. She knew what it meant. From then on she loved her new baby brother.
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.