Cricket201905-06

of them and would send one away only to grow frightened of
the next one. They bathed her face, but she had a terrible fever,
and all the great physicians in the country could not heal her
or understand her affliction, for she muttered nervously and
seemed to see visions. She huddled and cried and sometimes
screamed into the air to be left alone.
One day an attendant realized that she was moaning the
word nightingale in her fevered sleep. The attendant alerted
the royal advisers. “She wants the nightingale! Find the
nightingale.”
But the nightingale had long ago departed, and as no
one had ever found him originally, no one knew where to
look. So the advisor Xin Ji gathered China’s most talented
minds together, among them a scientist, a magician, and a
royal architect, as well as several wise councilmen. After some
debate they called in a jeweler and a clockmaker and brought
all the musicians from the court to a secret meeting. They
worked day and night until, three days later, lacking sleep but
glowing with a shared secret, they lined up outside Empress
Wu’s door, and Xin Ji went inside and presented her with a
gift: a mechanical nightingale.
This bizarre bird was much prettier to look upon than his dull-feathered
counterpart. He was encrusted with jewels, his eyes were emeralds, and his
body was gold. His wings did not flap, but when the key on his back was
wound, he could perch in the gilded cage, open his beak, and sing beautiful
waltzes and cheerful airs in perfect harmony and at a perfect tempo. The
people outside the door listened and held their breath.
The empress sat up and stared at the mechanical bird. At first she seemed
fearful, but after a few minutes her features relaxed. The bird could sing for
twenty minutes straight and then needed winding again. The queen remained
relaxed until the bird stopped singing. Then she screamed, “Again!” and Xin Ji
hastily wound it up for her.
From that moment forward, Empress Wu recovered speedily, but she
insisted on having the mechanical nightingale constantly singing. As soon as
its song ceased, she would grow agitated. Thus, several servants were appointed
to keep the bird wound day and night. Such overuse soon began to wear on its