Nguyen and the Monkey in the Painted Coat

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Riding home through the cold pine fog on the back of her young buffalo May, a girl named Nguyen hears a small shivering cry somewhere among the dark pines. The frost has come down cruel over Da Lat, and the cherry trees stand bare and gray, and the grandmothers say the pink blossoms may not come at all this year. Nguyen slides down and follows the sound, and finds a baby langur in a painted coat of gray and gold, fallen behind its troop, too little and too frightened to climb. She holds out her mittened hands. The little one only scrambles further away over a cold stone. The fog presses closer, and its shivering, little by little, begins to slow.

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Nguyen, a warm-hearted girl of seven, was riding home through the cold pine fog on the back of her young buffalo calf May, whose name means cloud, when she heard it: a tiny, shivering cry, thin and frightened, somewhere in among the dark pines. The frost had come down cruel over Da Lat that winter, and all along the misty hills the cherry trees stood bare and grey, for this year, the grandmothers said, the pink blossoms might not come at all. But now something small was crying in the cold. May stopped and turned one soft grey ear toward the trees. "Something little is out there, May," Nguyen whispered. "And it is terribly cold."

High above the pine tops, a glossy black raven crossed the grey morning sky, turned one slow circle over the girl and the little buffalo standing still in the fog, and settled on a frosted branch to watch, the way it does just before a story begins.

Now, Nguyen's grandmother had told her the old secret of the valley, on many a cold night by the clay hearth, with the pine smoke curling sweet. "The mai anh dao, our pink cherry blossom, is a shy and knowing flower," Grandmother would say. "It will not open for riches, and it will not open for wishing. The whole valley will only burst into bloom at dawn when somebody gives away a small warmth freely, and asks for nothing back." But the frost this year had been so long and so cruel that even Grandmother had stopped watching the bare grey trees.

Nguyen slid down from May's warm back and followed the little cry in under the pines. And there, huddled small on the frosty needles at the foot of a great old tree, she found it: a baby douc langur, the monkey in the painted coat, grey and gold, with rust-red legs and a snow-white tail and a small golden face wet with cold. Somewhere in the freezing night it had fallen behind its troop, and now it was alone at the bottom of the great cold mountain, too little and too frightened to climb.

"Oh, you poor painted thing," Nguyen breathed, and she reached out her two mittened hands to gather it up. But the little langur was too afraid. It scrambled away from her, up over a root and onto a cold stone, deeper into the fog, and there it clung, shivering harder than before, further from her warmth than ever.

Nguyen tried everything her quick heart could think of. She held out her hands and breathed warm air into the space between them. She hummed the soft song her grandmother hummed. She came slow, and slower still. But the little one only trembled and shrank, and the fog pressed colder, and its shivering, little by little, began to slow. And Nguyen knew, the way children of the high country know, that a little one grown too cold to shiver is a little one beginning to fall asleep in the wrong way.

Nguyen's eyes stung and filled, and her tears were hot on her cold cheeks. The mountain was so big, and the frost was so deep, and she was one small girl very far from her own warm hearth. "I cannot get warm enough for both of us," she whispered. "I want to go home. And I don't know how to save you."

The story goes on in the video.