The Emperor's Cricket Cage

Far beyond the blue mountains, in a land where the rooftops curved like wings and lanterns swayed in the evening breeze, stood a great palace. Inside the palace lived an emperor who was proud of many things, but proudest of all of his collection of crickets. He kept twenty-two crickets in twenty-two small cages, and they sang to him as day turned to night. The cages stood in a row on a long shelf of red wood, all carved with dragons, lotus flowers, and tiny moons. The one who looked after the crickets was a small girl named Mei, and she was the only person in the whole palace who did not speak loudly.

Mei was eight years old, and her task was the quietest in the whole palace. In the morning she gave the crickets fresh slices of melon and filled their tiny bowls with water. In the afternoon she swept the floor around the cages with a soft bamboo brush. In the evening she listened carefully, for a good cricket keeper must hear whether any of them are sad or tired. Mei listened so well that she could tell each cricket apart by its song alone. She had given them all names inside her own head: Tea-Spark, Great Pearl, Moss-Voice, Bamboo-Hem, and many more. No one else knew what they were called.

The emperor's favorite was a great cricket called Goldsong. Goldsong lived in the finest cage, made of ivory and gold thread, and he sang loud and clear like a small bell. When the emperor wished to sleep, Goldsong's cage was placed beside his bed, and his song rang between the walls. The whole court said: 'No cricket sings as beautifully as Goldsong.' Mei nodded politely every time she heard it, for she was a polite girl. But she knew something nobody else in the palace knew, something she had noticed one evening as she walked past a pot of jasmine.

In a corner of the cricket room, behind a pot of sweet-scented jasmine, Mei had found something all her own. It was a tiny cricket, barely larger than a grain of rice, that had hidden in a crack in the floor. It was brown as tea and had two delicate antennae that moved like blades of grass in the wind. When Mei leaned close, she could hear a sound so faint it was almost not there: zri-zri-zri, as thin as a silver thread. She held her breath for a whole minute just to be sure. It was not the wind. It was not a mosquito. It was a song.