Free The Red Thread by Dawn Farnham

he had seen the thunder character for his name. This was not his real name, but an assumed name. Zhen had told Qian that he had been given it by a lady friend because of his extraordinary sexual prowess, but Qian did not believe him. Qian had learned something of Zhen’s Taoist philosophy, knew he had spent time in a Taoist monastery and that thunder was one of the eight kua , the elemental forces that made up the hexagram of the I Ching oracle. But it didn’t matter to Qian. His own nickname, given to him by his elder sister when he had been a sick young boy, meant ‘modesty’, and Zhen had made fun of him for its girlish overtones. Qian did not mind this, either.
    Zhen grunted, turned face upwards and yawned. ‘Morning, miss, is it daylight?’ he mumbled between stretches. Qian put on his straw sandals and climbed down from the cot. He ran quickly along the narrow corridor to the air well and looked up. Nothing but a gloomy light was visible but, to his delight, it was raining. He ran quickly back and waved to Zhen to come.
    In the air well, the rain fell with raging force, bouncing off the stone walls and gurgling down a drain that was rapidly becoming overwhelmed. They looked up, and the water streamed off their faces and over their bodies, soaking them within seconds. Zhen motioned to Qian to wait and ran back to the kitchen area. When he returned, he called to Qian to take off his clothes. The rain was so strong he had to yell over its din. Pulling him to the side, he rubbed his back with the wood ashes and oil he had mixed in a bowl and put a big dollop in Qian’s hand. Then he tore off his own filthy clothes and rubbed himself from head to toe in the mixture. Qian rubbed his back, and then they both stood, faces upturned to the force of the rain as the dirt ran away down a hole in the floor. They stamped on their dirty clothes.
    For the first time, Qian saw Zhen’s body. In comparison his own looked puny, although he was not weak. Zhen’s arms and shoulders were strong and muscular, his chest broad and smooth narrowing to a flat abdomen and slim waist; his limbs were long and well shaped. To Qian’s eyes, he was as perfectly formed as a man could be, and Qian felt momentarily envious. He noticed the pale red, blue and black tattoo of Guan Di on Zhen’s chest. On the road to Amoy, where they had met, eating, not bathing had been their first priority. On the junk no one undressed, no one washed—unless getting doused by volumes of seawater or standing in the rain could be considered washing. For the moment they were both lost in the happiness of this unexpected and refreshing downpour.
    Other men were coming now, and before they could be swamped by human bodies, they scooped up their clothes and ran naked, whooping and laughing, up the corridor and jumped on their wooden cots.
    As they dried off with small cloths, Qian watched the play of muscles under Zhen’s back and buttocks and, to his horror, found himself becoming aroused. He rushed to throw on his only other cotton trousers and loose top and sat back against the wall, quietly drying his queue. Zhen had noticed nothing and, dressed now himself, was hanging up their wet clothes around the cots, where they steamed quietly. His face was strong jawed, his forehead unblemished and perfectly formed, but there was something indefinably pretty in his face too, his lips perhaps. They all combined to make him a good-looking man, and Qian knew Zhen turned women’s heads. Qian’s own forehead was bumpy, and he knew his ears were too pointed, making him look a bit like a weasel. Zhen’s eyes were not so narrow as his, more almond-shaped, but in moments of anger they became dark slits, making him appear hard and cruel.
    Zhen set off to the kitchen for soup, rice and tea, which the coolie bosses supplied until the men could be moved on to work either on the island or, in most cases, in the tin mines of Malaya or