Children of Basilis begins with a legend.
Around the year 1920, there was a beatiful mare named Basilis. Supposedly she won three consecutive race championship things in England, but was eventually tamed by a beautiful young girl and taken to Japan.

In the year 1925, Basilis is the property of a rich man who paid this exorbitant price (worth 10 houses) to acquire her. He spends a lot of effort and money on the mare, but no matter what, the mare will not allow anyone to ride or tame her--no one, that is, except our heroine (in Chinese her name is Hong Yeh..."hong" as in red, "yeh" as in leaf), who is the man's horse trainer's daughter. She rides Basilis out every day.

The master's nephew ("Dan" = bland?) returns home after an absence of two and a half years. His mother was the master's younger sister, but his father was a foreigner of no name or known reputation. His mother ran away to marry his father, and had him; but his father passed away. The master took his sister and her son back in, but mistreated (I infer) the boy. When he grew up, the master gave him a job in another city (the job had to do with tying up all the nasty loose ends for the uncle's business), found him a wife, and packed him off. After two years, he is back, leaving his wife and business. His uncle hates him, and gets angry to the point of abusiveness.

Meanwhile the girl gets pissed at the uncle's abuse of his nephew, and shoots off her mouth about him when she's with her father and some of the other people who work for the uncle. The uncle overhears her, though, and comes after her. Her father makes a show of kissing ass, trying to make the uncle leave her alone, but to no avail. She thinks he's going to hit her, but it turns out that the old lech wants her. He tells her to be "his woman," saying that she's beautiful and he'll give her a lot of freedom. He also says that her father knew about his intentions this whole time, and doesn't think much of using his daughter to climb the social/financial ladder.

At this point they're interrupted by the nephew, who punches out his uncle. He is then disowned and kicked out of his uncle's home. The girl feels horrible because it's her fault. He tells her he's going to another house they have a certain distance away, and that she can find him there ("it's the perfect distance away for Basilis' daily exercise"), and she eventually goes to see him. They fall in love (or rather, have been in love for more than two years...since before he went away) and spend three days together, after which they decide that they'll run away to Tokyo together and start a new life.

The girl goes home to return Basilis, in a slight quandary because she is choosing the nephew over Basilis (she really loves the horse...esp since she's the only one who can get close to her), only to find that in her absence, her father kept quiet about where she went and the uncle charged him with horse theft. He has now been taken by the authorities. The girl is indignant and demands that her father be released; Basilis is back. The uncle refuses to withdraw the charges unless the girl tells him where she went; and once she does, he says he will only release her father if she agrees to stay with him as his mistress (?). She agrees and forces him to call and release her father immediately.
Next she writes a letter to the nephew, telling him that she is going to go with the uncle for her father's sake. However she also says that she'll find a way to escape and will meet him under this tree that they usually trysted at, so they can go to Tokyo together as planned.

Before they leave, she hands the letter to a servant and asks him to deliver it for her. An older servant, seeing her leave with the uncle, rushes off on a horse to tell the nephew that she's gone. The messenger tries to give the old servant the letter to deliver, since he's going anyway, but the old servant takes off before he hears him.

On the train, the girl feigns faintness and stops the train. While the uncle is looking for a doctor, she escapes. She reaches the tree and sits waiting for the nephew. Suddenly Basilis appears, riderless, before her, with the nephew's hunting rifle strapped to the saddle.

The girl rides Basilis and finds the nephew, who has been thrown and is severely injured. He is short of breath, and gasps, "I'm sorry...next time...rebirth...we'll go together to Tokyo..." before he passes away. The girl, in fury, turns to Basilis and is about to shoot the mare with the rifle (angry because she is the cause of the nephew's death), but stops herself (i think Basilis is crying...) and, in tears, embraces the horse instead.

It turns out that this girl is the great-granddaughter of the first girl in the legend. The girl from the 20s became pregnant by the nephew and gave birth to a child; she was unable to raise the child on her own and married a wealthy man. The man, when the girl's child was 15, raped the child. The child, Zhu Xia's grandmother, became pregnant and had Zhu Xia's mother, who escaped from the twisted family and married someone else. She had Zhu Xia, and then passed away. By the time Zhu Xia went to live with her grandmother, all her other relatives were dead.

It seems that, at a time of financial need, when they owed a large sum of money to a bunch of scary creditors, Zhu Xia was nearly driven to prostitute herself. Unable to bring herself to follow through with it, however, she contemplated suicide. She was on the roof of a building, preparing to jump, when she noticed through a window in the building across the street a young sculptor who was working on a life-sized clay figure of a woman. Fascinated, she decided to go over and find out what he was doing. (or maybe some other reason, i don't really remember) The sculptor mistakes her for a model sent by the agency, and tells her to strip. She goes along with it, and he pays her a large sum of money for every day she poses for him.
Eventually they become lovers, and the sculptor teaches her everything about sculpture and the art of sculpting.

At this point in the story, the girl is trying to get the commission to do a sculpture of a "new Basilis" for this hotel. (The hotel's name is Basilis.) The hotel owner, Liou Du, is opening another branch in Paris, and she wants to make the sculpture for that one. She basically says she'll do _anything_ to get this commission, because sculpting Basilis is her "fate."

Later the story deepens, as you find out that Liou Du is also a descendant of the nephew of old; he's the [great?]grandson of the nephew by his wife (the one that was chosen by his uncle). Thus he and Zhu Xia are both "children of Basilis," in a sense, and maybe that's why they feel drawn to each other...?

The rest of the story gets pretty convoluted...the original sculptor (Zhu Xia's teacher) has become an alcoholic but is still in love with her; he refuses to let her go, and doesn't want her to get the commission for the hotel sculpture.
Meanwhile the hotel owner has a fiancee, who has her own reasons for wanting to hurry the marriage along and who hates Zhu Xia and wants her out of the way.
Then in comes the nephew of the hotel owner...which really throws Zhu Xia into some new confusion because she starts thinking about the reincarnation bit...if she's the girl (Hong Yeh)'s reincarnation, then who is the nephew (Dan)'s reincarnation? The hotel owner or his nephew? It seems like the nephew would be it...but then again............

Overall, I thought the series would be interesting when I started it, but it got progressively worse (ie more confusing and then there was sex, which I didn't really want to read about...)...and then....GAAAH~~~!!! *bricks fall on jen's head* SAD ENDING LA!!!!

Anyway, if you want to read Chiho Saito, I would suggest reading Kakan no Madonna or some of her Love Stories collection, or maybe a few of her earlier works (they're more innocent and cute.). That's all =)

Go back to anime & manga...