"Mulan is gone!"

My mother's voice jolted me from a sound sleep, and I half-sat, murmuring, "Wha--" Her words didn't penetrate until I looked down at the table by the bedside and saw, not the conscription notice, but the lotus blossom comb I'd put in her hair that afternoon.

I picked it up with numb fingers, breathing, "It can't be."

My leg screamed in protest as I hobbled to the room and the cabinet where I stored my armor, flinging it open, praying to find it all still there-

Nothing. The doors banged hollowly against the sides, and the cabinet mocked me with its emptiness.

I ran then, ran as I had not in years--outside to the rain-soaked yard, calling her name. "Mulan!" I shouted, splashing through puddles. "Mulan!"

My bad leg finally gave out under such abuse, and I fell to my knees, then to my belly in the mud. The lotus comb flew from my hand and splashed to earth only a few feet from the wide-open front doors, banging slightly in the wind.

"No," I whispered. But she had done it. My reckless, courageous daughter had taken my armor and slipped away in the night to take my place in the Imperial Army. An offense punishable by death.

Li's feet pattered the muddy earth, and her arm came around my shoulders. "You must go after her," my wife cried. "She could be killed!"

She started to get to her feet again--to run into town? To raise the alarm? I caught her hand, clutching it tightly. A lifeline. "If I reveal her--she will be."

She let out a long, soft breath, and knelt with me in the rain and the mud, both of us choked with fear for the most precious creature in our lives.