Plot Summary
The Fifty Year Sword is essentially a mature-audience ghost story, in the disguised form of a children's book. The events of the book take place at a woman's 50th birthday party in an orphan's foster home, told from the point of view of Chintana, a kind yet sullen seamstress who is struggling with the recent divorce from her husband over an affair, the mistress, Belinda Kite, of which is ironically the birthday girl whose party Chintana is attending. A storyteller is invited by a social worker to entertain the orphans. He brings with him a long, black box. The storyteller entertains the orphans by explaining his adventures of obtaining the contents of the box: His Fifty Year Sword, a weapon that never fails to cut but shows no wound until the victim's 50th year of life. He recalls a suspenseful, epic journey through mystical rocky trails and soundless forests, bent on finding an otherworldly swordsmith to satisfy a dark, never explained personal grudge. He then opens the box, revealing a seemingly bladeless sword, and he waves it in the air at the candles. Just then, the mistress and Birthday Girl, who has barged in toward the end of the story, gets annoyed at the storyteller and tells the children the whole thing is a bunch of hogwash, and sets out to prove it. She takes the hilt of the sword, and slashes it around at herself in any and all places in order to disprove the man's story, much to the horror of the children and the bemusement of the shadowy storyteller. The suspense grabs the reader even more as the storyteller finishes and Chintana and the other guests go outside so the Birthday Girl can toast herself as her 50th year of life begins at the stroke of midnight.
As they take the toast, and the clock hits midnight, signaling the 50th year of Belinda Kite, Belinda falls to pieces, as she has sliced herself in all discernable locations. Chintana, in a fit of empathy, runs to Belinda and holds her as the different discernable entities of her human body fall off. Chintana, at this point, likens holding her together to a series of stitches and the pressures and cuts that can tear it apart. How does one know how much it will take before it tears?
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