Name : Le Nguyen Ngoc Han
Class : 4D (2025)
Question: National legends and folklore can take us on a journey through history and culture. Retell a famous folklore from your own or another Commonwealth country in a surprising way.
Tam Cam: The Story Never Told
I am Cam, and I was born in Vietnam’s Nguyen Dynasty where women were expected to obey, endure, and remain silent. In order to give me the best possible life, my mother vowed to help me gain a better position in society by whatever means possible.
In my fragmented memory, my childhood was not filled with laughter or lullabies – it was filled with expectations. Every day, I watched my mother’s eyes, sharp with jealousy, darting towards our neighbour’s daughter, Tam. She was everything I was not – quiet, graceful, adored – even when she did nothing at all. Maybe it was because she had a complete family.
My mother was a widow. People looked at her like overripe fruit – discarded, unwanted. And perhaps they were not wrong.
By some twist of fate, Tam’s father married my mother, and Tam became my sister. At least, that was what people called her. But my mother never saw her as family. She saw her as an obstacle. And so, I learnt to see her that way too.
When they were married, I thought I had finally gained a father but he died eventually. I was used to being left behind. Tam was not. I remember wanting to comfort her, not as a rival, but as a sister. I knew I was not supposed to but I did it anyway. That was the first time I went against my mother’s word. My emotions were mixed – guilt with a sprinkle of happiness – and I could not sleep that night. My mother’s expectations were bound. I could not escape but yearned to also be a sister to Tam.
Then came the first time I hurt Tam.
We had been sent to the river to collect fish. Tam, clever as always, used her patience and skill to fill her basket. Mine remained nearly empty. My mother’s voice echoed in my head — cold, insistent – distract her, trick her, take what she earned. So I did. I split her basket, scooped up what she lost, and ran home. That evening, my mother praised me.
“She needs to feel what betrayal tastes like,” she whispered, eyes gleaming with triumph.
I saw Tam crying by the riverbank, clutching her empty basket. I was engulfed with shame. I had made Tam sad. But on the heels of that shame was another emotion, pride for I had made my mother happy. And that counted for more.
Years passed. Then came the day of the royal festival.
This time, it was different. The prince was searching for a bride. Every maiden of age between fifteen and seventeen was summoned to attend. Even girls like me had a chance to be seen. Tam too, to our dismay.
I remember wondering how a prince could ever marry a plain, peasant girl. Tam unknowingly answered that question.
She was supposed to stay home that day. Her clothes had been slashed by my mother’s scissors, and she was forced to sort a pile of rice mixed with beans, grain by grain. She quietly accepted her fate. But somehow, by some miracle – perhaps divine, perhaps just her stubborn light – she arrived at the palace anyway.
She wore a white ao dai, modest but striking. She did not speak loudly, did not try to impress. Yet the crowd moved for her, parting ways like a river splitting into two in the face of an unyielding rock.
Even I could not look away.
When she left the festival, she lost a slipper – hand-embroidered. The prince found it and declared, “she who fits this slipper shall be my queen.”
We all tried. My foot was too big to slide in. My mother returned with a blade.
“Shave your heel,” she said without hesitation. “No one will know A little pain is nothing for a future queen.”
I hated it. I hated what my want for love made me do but it felt like the only way. I carved my foot to fit someone else’s destiny. The prince lifted me into his carriage. I thought I had won.
Until he noticed the blood. He turned back. And found Tam. They married.
My mother’s voice became colder, sharper. “You failed,” she hissed.
Despite my pleas for my mother to accept my fate of not being queen, my mother refused. She tried to kill Tam multiple times so that I could become queen.
Tam died, then returned.
Again and again.
A bird, a tree, a ghost. I began to believe she could never die. Just when I decided to give up being queen, Tam returned not as a ghost, but as queen once more. Her eyes were colder than marble. Her kindness was gone. The girl I once despised had become a woman I could not touch.
I tried to reach her, to tell her I was not her enemy. But she looked at me like I was dirt beneath her feet. I wanted to scream, to explain that I was only a girl who did what she was told. That I never meant to hurt her. I just wanted to be seen.
But no one saw me. Not even her.
That night, I wrote a letter, not to Tam, but to my mother.
“I’m sorry I was not strong enough, smart enough, beautiful enough. But I’m tired of being your weapon.”
I saw a white heron outside the window, something I had never seen before for it has always been too high up in the sky. But today I saw it and thought of freedom.
Tam found my body. She did not cry, I know.
They say she made fish sauce from my corpse and fed it to my mother. They say she smiled as she watched and asked my mom “How was the taste of your daughter’s bone?” They say my mother went mad. She laughed, screamed, wandered into the rice fields, and was struck down by lightning.
At the end of it all, I wondered if I deserved to be hated simply for wanting to be loved, to be seen, to be respected?
The story of Tam Cam has been told countless times. But not mine.
I am not really the villain of this story.
I am merely a pawn in my mother’s game.
I am merely a daughter who wants love.
And this is the story never told.
MJR World of Words 