Nha Rui and Tam Dang

Two small locks of hair, one from a girl and one from a boy, were tied together on a moonlit night at harvest time. The Cham say the strongest promise of their two lives began with those locks of hair. This old tale belongs to the Cham, a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa.

The girl was called Nha Rúi, and the boy was called Tầm Dang. Both were orphaned very young, and they grew up side by side on the same hill. At first they were as close as a brother and sister. Then the years passed, the children grew up, and their childhood bond turned into a deep love.

That night, a golden moon spread its light over the hillside rice fields, where the harvest had just come in. Each of them cut a lock of hair for the other. She held his lock of hair, and he held hers. They promised that whatever happened, they would become husband and wife and never be parted. The locks were small, but the promise weighed as much as a mountain.

Tầm Dang wanted fields to plow, and buffalo and oxen, so they could set up a home. He told Nha Rúi he would go on a long trip. People say that in those days a bridge reached from the earth all the way up to the sky. Up in the sky there was a market where even oxen were sold. Tầm Dang gathered all the rice his household had and carried it up to trade for a pair of strong oxen. He meant to lead them home in time to plow for the season. Nha Rúi walked him to the foot of the bridge and begged him again and again to come back soon.

But no sooner had Tầm Dang arrived than a storm broke. The wind howled, the rain poured down, and thunder and lightning crashed. That fierce storm struck the bridge between sky and earth and broke it. Tầm Dang stood in the sky with no way left to climb down. He was stranded, far from home and far from Nha Rúi.

Up there, a rich family kept him and set him to work in the fields. Day after day, Tầm Dang had to do very heavy work, plowing deep and hoeing hard from morning until night. Yet however tired he was, every night he took out the lock of hair from Nha Rúi and gazed at it. Then he looked down toward the faint, distant earth, longing for his home and for the one he had promised.

Down on the earth, Nha Rúi waited and waited, but he never came. She did not weep and wail, and she did not sit still. She knew Tầm Dang was still up in the sky, so she told herself she must find a way to get there.

Nha Rúi cleared the grass, broke open a patch of ground, and sowed a handful of cotton seeds. Strangely, only a single shoot came up. She tended that cotton plant as she would tend a child. She watered it every morning and heaped soil around it every afternoon. The cotton plant grew unusually fast, rising a little higher each day. It grew taller than the roof, then taller than the treetops. On and on it climbed, until its tip pushed up among the white clouds, as if it wanted to touch the sky itself.

Nha Rúi had also saved a white egg for a long time. One day the egg cracked, and out hatched a chick with pure white feathers. As the white chicken grew, it could even speak like a person. It stayed close beside Nha Rúi and became her little companion from morning to night.

Then Nha Rúi sat down at her loom. The Cham have handed down the craft of weaving brocade from generation to generation, and Nha Rúi was a skilled weaver. She spun white thread from the cotton she had grown herself. She took strands of her own black hair, and she dyed more threads a bright red. With the three colors, white, black and red, she sent the shuttle back and forth. Slowly she wove a brocade cloth divided into three panels. On it she embroidered her own likeness, and their story too, so that anyone who looked would know at once. She worked for three long months and nine days. When the brocade was finished at last, it was as lovely as a stretch of evening cloud.

Nha Rúi rolled up the brocade and handed it to the white chicken. The chicken took it in its beak, gripped the trunk of the towering cotton plant, and climbed up nimbly. It climbed through layer after layer of cloud until it set foot in the sky.

The white chicken found Tầm Dang and spread the brocade open in front of him. He saw the young woman embroidered on the cloth, and the familiar strands of hair woven into it, and he burst into tears. He knew at once that this was Nha Rúi, the girl who had tied her hair with his and sworn a promise. From that moment, his heart turned one way only, toward home.

The rich family in the sky had a daughter who wanted to keep Tầm Dang there as her husband. But Tầm Dang firmly refused. He took out the lock of hair from Nha Rúi and said he had made a promise long ago. A promise made, he said, is a promise kept, and he could not change it.

A few days later, Nha Rúi herself gripped the trunk of the cotton plant and climbed up to the sky to find him. The way up was long, and the clouds hung thick and dim. At times she even lost her way. But she remembered their promise and kept climbing, until at last the two found each other again. Together once more, they laughed and cried at the same time, holding each other's hands tight. Nha Rúi took out the lock of hair she had kept all those years. She laid it beside the one Tầm Dang had always kept close. The two locks lay together again, as they had under the moon long ago. Not long after, up in the sky, the couple had a sweet-faced baby boy.

Now only one thing still troubled them: how to get back home together. The cotton plant was no longer there to climb down. But the white chicken had a plan. It ate rice grain, and ate and ate, until it grew enormous. Then it told the whole family to sit in a hammock, and it tied the hammock to its feet. The white chicken spread its wings and carried the little family. It circled through the layers of cloud and slowly came down to earth.

It set them down right on their home hill, where long ago two orphan children had played. In earlier days, a rich man had seized their land. Now he looked up and saw a giant white chicken carrying people down from the sky. Terrified, he hurried his whole household off into the deep forest, and they never dared come back.

That is how Nha Rúi and Tầm Dang came home to the very land of their forebears. They built their house again and were together morning and night. The cotton fields turned green once more, the loom rang again with the sound of the shuttle, and the white chicken still wandered about by the doorstep.

Night after night, when families sit together to hear stories, the Cham still speak of those two locks of hair tied under the moon. Two small locks of hair and a single promise were enough to raise a cotton plant all the way to the sky. They were enough to bring a man back down from the sky to his homeland.