Dedicated, with love, to Kate who held my hand through the entire writing process.
Many thanks also to Tiggy Malvern for wonderful, timely betaing.
Home
It wasn't that she was giving up, but money had run out and her cough was worsening as the nights began to cool. The women at the market all had pity in their eyes and loaded her arms with old blankets and woolen hand-me-downs, herbal tea recipes and offers of their spare rooms. The elderly bachelor who paid her half in food for doing his cooking and cleaning offered to let her stay in his home as well. She refused these, politely but firmly; she liked the shabby little house with its flat, moss-crusted roof and the old trees crowding close along its sides, greedy weeds and creepers endeavoring to sink its walls back into the forest. She felt safe there, isolated and enclosed.
It had taken her nearly a week to free the rooms and cheap, aging furniture from their cloak of dust. The ghosts of footsteps which had led from the door to the low, creaky cot told her this had been the site of teenaged trysts in years past, but those times were gone now. The nearby town still bustled, but the peddlers' stalls and crafters' shops, the bars and inn were all staffed by shrewd, skilled women, and the figures bending to the harvest were those of sun-scorched widows. This far west, the youkai wars had taken a much greater toll on the people, had started sooner and prompted greater atrocities on both sides. But the loss of human life years ago paled in comparison to the horror going on in the west these days. She had begged him not to go, had begged to go with him, but he had refused, calmly explained his gallant, moronic reasoning and had the audacity to summarize it as 'for her.' Their mother had cajoled and forbidden, but she was stubborn and angry and half-broken with the thought of losing him. It was her body that had betrayed her in the end; she could feel her brother's death in her lungs each time they collapsed into painful, wracking spasms.
Three days after she found the odd set of fresh-splintered gouges in the trees by the river path, she woke in the deep night and lay quite still, holding her breath to listen. She became aware of his proximity slowly: a scent of rot and growth, the pressure of his knees on the side of the cot changing the way the thinning fabric held her weight. When she finally moved, she did so all at once, pushed herself up with one hand, snaking the other out to strike at his groin or face or gut. He was too fast, little more than a dark scuffle in the space of the room, until his step back carried him into a dim square of leaf-shattered moonlight. The change in his face as he looked at her was startling, though his expression both before and after it, half-buried in his unkempt beard, defied her vocabulary. Her brain considered and rejected awestruck, for who would feel any such thing for her, rumpled and several days unwashed, crouching half on the aging cot, ready to fight or flee. His mouth opened soundlessly and then he turned and stumbled out, tripping over the chair she had moved and lurching into the door frame. She watched him go, fists blanching, voice unwilling to work.
The next morning she found a spray of tiny white flowers and a pair of small, tart wild plums on the cairn of gray stones under the tree beside the back door. With the weeds pulled from it, she recognized it as a grave.
Several days later she caught sight of him again. She had taken her kettle to fill in the small, fast brook which trickled nearby- it took ten trips to fill her washtub, but filled it was too heavy for her to lift. Her illness had left her frustratingly weak. When she bothered to bathe or do her own laundry, she'd take a steaming kettle and the tub down to the chilly water, but that day she was freshly woken, stumbling through the morning cold thinking of hot Darjeeling. He was crouching across the ford, drinking from his cupped palms. Her quiet steps on the packed earth had not been heard, so she got a long moment to take in the filth-matted length of his hair, his tattered pants, the sun-bleached ruins of his jacket and the lines of muscle and bone underneath. Under the dirt, his hair and beard were blood-red, his eyes the same when they snapped wide to hers. Her greeting died in her throat. He rose slowly, watching her watch him, and faded into the woods.
In the weeks that followed, she glimpsed him several times near the brook, drinking, or crouched on the limb of a certain tree. Some nights she could hear his measured footsteps in the brush outside, and some evenings she felt the woods had eyes as she read by the open kitchen window, rinsed dishes in the yard or squatted tending fish at her small, smoky fire. Once, after a heavy rain, she found his bare footprints in the mud. She let her toes obliterate the traces of his. Another time she looked up, gasping in the wake of a fit of heavy coughing, and caught him watching her uncertainly from the trees at the edge of the long path to town, gone when a second round of coughing finally released her. In the village, she swept, chopped and stir-fried, laughed and gossiped over laundry at the river. She watched the leaves along the paths blaze into death, and felt heavy with secrets.
He was squatting by the forlorn, unmarked grave as the full moon set and sunlight gathered under the horizon. She stood next to him a moment, watching the rise and fall of his back, the run of his fingers over and over one of the smooth-worn river rocks. She set the mug at his elbow. He looked at it, then at her, and his hands shook a bit when he wrapped them around the thick clay. His fingernails looked bitten off, jagged. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but grimaced and took a swig of the fragrant tea instead. She blew at her own, watching him through the steam that rose from her cup. He was perhaps forty, though the layers of grime made the fine lines around his eyes seem much deeper than they probably were.
"Thanks," he said, finally, voice burred and thick with rust. He glanced at her quickly, turned his face away when he saw she was watching him.
"You're welcome," she said, and he drank again, deeply. "There's rice as well, if you'd like to come inside. Or," she decided, watching the tension in his crouch, "we could eat out here."
Strangeness gathered and released the line of his brow as he stared into the shadows between the grave's stones.
"Here," she said, "Wait here," and it was so easy to shift her mug to her other hand and let her fingers fall gently on his shoulder. His muscles locked rigid under her touch. She retreated inside, but he was still there when she returned, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, cheek and hands pressed to the warmth of the mug. She handed him her only bowl, careful not to touch again, and settled next to him on the cold dirt, eating from her small cooking pot. He shoveled the grains into his mouth swiftly, barely chewing. Their chopsticks clicked as the birds began calling to each other, announcing the start of day.
"Ah," he said, when the bowl was emptied "'Th' was good. Was kinda 'fraid I'd forgotten how," he made a jerky gesture with his chopsticks.
"The hands don't forget," she said. "Not entirely. Would you like some more?"
She lifted the bowl from his fingers and piled more rice into it. He held her gaze as she handed it back, and said, haltingly, "I meant. Thanks for taking care of him," he nodded at the ash marks where she'd burnt the incense, "but thank you for the food, too."
"It's nothing," she smiled. "Thank you for letting me stay at your house. I'm Zhao Xinxia."
"Sha Gojyo," he smiled in return, a flash of how charming he might once have been seeping through his cracked lips, "Been too long since there was a pretty lady in that house."
She looked away to hide her expression, over at the fresh spray of flowers decorating the grave, down at his callus-twisted feet, and the frost-kissed weeds. He smelled of sweat and earth and drying leaves, metallic and pungent. Shining planes of sun were beginning to slant through the trees.
"Ah," she said, "I have to go to work. Here," she placed the little pot by his elbow, and rose, "finish that so it won't go to waste. And if you need anything- Anything. Take it from the house. You're welcome to it."
He was watching her when she stopped by the door. She said, "I haven't asked about you at the village."
He nodded, slowly.
"You can just leave the dishes there, I'll get them this afternoon," she added, then, with nothing else to say, she turned and walked inside.
When she returned from town, the house and yard were empty, and a rabbit with a freshly snapped neck was lying on her back doorstep next to the neat stack of empty bowl and pan. It was still limp and warm when she picked it up and she wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders, picturing his long, thin fingers moving in the soft fur. She accidentally punctured the intestines in her enthusiasm, before she could dredge her grandmother's butchering lessons from the shadowy recesses of her girlhood memories. She stood for a long time watching blood pool on the cutting board, then gathered up the soiled bundle of flesh and fur and buried it out among the trees.
Rabbits, pheasants, and geese kept appearing every few days, though after the first they arrived bled, gutted and cleaned. She often deliberately cooked more than she could eat; if she left the covered pan on the doorstep, the leftovers would be gone by morning. Her woodpile began restocking itself while she slept. At night when she rubbed liniment into her soap-dried hands, or breathed the smoke prescribed her by the village herb woman, she sometimes caught the distant thock of metal on wood, ringing between the trees. On her next payday, she bought a razor and a pair of scissors, and smiled mysteriously when the peddlers teased her about her marriage prospects in the village. The oldest boy there was some four years her junior, and likely to be drafted if he grew much more before the officials next came to town.
She took to carrying the scissors and a bar of soap when she went to fetch water from the river, but one afternoon, coming home from work, she found him struggling with her comb by the low burning fire in the front yard. He didn't ask for help, but the frustration in his face, and the way he winced when his voice cracked greeting was enough. She spent the evening cutting the mats from his hair, combing and trimming and evening out the ragged remains. He relaxed very slowly under her hands, silent as she chatted about the weather, hummed meandering little tunes, chided him for shifting on the hard-backed chair every few moments. Trimming his beard enough for him to shave revealed the gaunt hollows under his cheekbones, the fine square of his jaw and the curving rake of parallel scars across his left cheek.
"Did you get those in the war?" she asked.
"What?" he said, startled, skittish, and she touched them lightly before his fingertips brushed hers away, remembering their path.
"Oh," he said, distant and still, "No. No, I had them before."
She busied herself trimming the other side of his face, scissors flashing, and resumed humming, low and soft, to fill the silence. She fetched water and retreated back to the cold river to let him bathe, slapping his pants against a rock, picturing how the suds might cling to his shoulder blades. She fried duck and cabbage while he sat by the fire, wrapped in a blanket, trimming his toe nails with her sharpest knife. There was less haste to the way he ate now, though his ribs showed through his freshly-scrubbed skin. She held his face still as she shaved it with the wicked straight razor, smelling him clean and soapy, with a strengthening hint of salt water, counting his pulse as it raced under his jaw. She remembered shaving her brother's face in their tiny bathroom back in Chongqing, and bit her lip against the cramping in her lungs because she was almost, almost done.
He stroked her back tentatively while she finished coughing, and she said, "Stay here tonight. It'll be cold," but he said, "It wouldn't be safe for you," shrugged his damp jacket back on, and walked out into the dark. She did the dishes and banked the fire, and stood for a long moment watching the forest before she went inside. She left the blanket folded in the crook of a tree.
The next day she found herself scanning the trees for him while she pegged out her employer's laundry, thinking at odd moments of his hands or his scars, or the growing pile of furs and feathers she was amassing. It had been a warm autumn, but she worried over the oncoming cold. She thought by midwinter she'd have enough hide to make some kind of soft, warm boots.
That afternoon, the old man she cared for suddenly sickened. She stayed to nurse him as he languished with fever, improved, then collapsed into a corpse as she slept on the kitchen hearth. Helping the herb woman prepare him for burial and the funeral itself stole another few days. It was nearly two weeks before she could reasonably insist on returning home, but in the end she was given a small wood stove, and his daughter and her sullen son's help in hauling it back to the house.
"Thank you so much, Liu-san," she said again as they rounded the last curve in the long path.
Liu Meirong was tall, wide-hipped and generous. At the funeral she'd moved through the chaos of mourners like a dragon boat.
"It's the least I can do for you, way out here by yourself. Have you thought of getting a dog? Our little black bitch is expecting puppies in a few weeks."
Xin smiled and inclined her head politely, "Please don't trouble yourself about me. I prefer the quiet. And I'd love to see the puppies when they arrive."
The mule snorted and flicked an ear, mincing and eyeing the trees until the boy touched its flank with his long switch to make it settle. With all the leaves down, she could see her little house from quite a ways down the path. It had none of the coldness of abandonment in the windows anymore. She breathed easier just being near it.
"How's your cough doing these days? You always look so pale and delicate. We all worry about you at the market."
"It's improving, thank you. Jiang Huiling's remedies are most effective." In fact, she hadn't had a coughing fit for several days, and the night before had abruptly dreamed of her brother's face, whole and smiling and sending a spike of guilt deep into her flesh.
The boy backed the cart up to her front door and swung down to help his mother wrestle the heavy cast iron stove inside. A whiff of musk and drying leaves seemed to hang in the still air of the living room.
"You can leave it anywhere," she began, then checked herself, "Ah, but what am I thinking. It's far too heavy to move by myself."
"Best to move that old stove and put it in there," Meirong nodded across at the unused kitchenette, "You can run the chimney through the vent."
"Oh, yes, excellent idea," she said, brightly, wringing her hands a bit. She set about moving her few dishes well out of the way, and soon they had the wood stove and chimney in place, and Liu was sitting at her little table while the tea steeped.
"I can take that old stove for you," Meirong was saying, "I can sell it to the metal traders next time they come down the river and get you some money."
"That would be very kind of you." She bowed slightly in her seat thinking that the chairs and table seemed less rickety than they used to.
"You sew very well," Meirong said, examining the warm, thick shirt she'd been working on, "Is this for you, honey? It's awfully big."
"Oh," she said, "I- for my fiance," she could feel her face coloring, "Though, I suppose it would be good for me to wear over other layers."
Meirong's face went soft and pitying. "How long ago did he leave for the war, again?"
"Nearly a year ago," she said, not looking up from the cracking tabletop.
"And you following him all this way," Meirong said. "You really are brave, though I daresay I might have done the same with my Guoxian, if it weren't for the kids."
She sighed, and they sat silently for a moment, listening to the restless tromping of son and mule in the yard.
"Well, with everything lately, I just don't have time to sew myself anymore," Meirong said, after draining her teacup and placing it squarely on the table in front of her. "How would you feel about doing some piecework for me, in your spare time? I heard that Jiang-san had asked you to consider working for her as well, and I can't offer you cash but I can keep you stocked with rice and preserves for the winter."
"I- That would be good. Yes, I can come and pick things up tomorrow, or-"
"Oh! Not so much rush as all that. It's been a long week-" Meirong's voice closed off for a moment and she folded in on herself, thick forearms resting on the table.
"Yes," Xin said, quietly, and from outside, the mule made an impatient noise and the cart rattled alarmingly. Meirong smiled at her crookedly and rose from the table.
"Best go. You keep warm now, you hear? It's almost the snow-season."
She and Meirong made short work of the bowing and demurring and then they were off, the mule stepping swiftly, head and ears up. She let out a great, sobbing breath the second they were out of sight and felt her muscles loosen for the first time in days. The ashes in the fire-pit were cold, though his blanket was gone from its place in the tree and those on her cot were folded differently from the way she'd left them. She swept the grave free of fallen leaves, lit a stick of incense and set about rinsing the cups, thankful that Meirong's son had fetched her enough water for the night. Her mind felt fuzzy, her sinuses congested with pressure, her body hot and restless. In the gathering dark, she sat at the table, leaning her head on her palms.
"You're back," he said from the doorway.
"Yes," she said, rolling her head to look at him.
He was suddenly very close, kneeling, hand tightening on the chair-back. She could hear him breathing deeply, scenting her.
"You came back," he said again, to himself, and she lifted a hand to his smooth cheek, his warm neck, his shoulder. He allowed himself to be touched for a moment, eyes slipping half-closed, before inhaling sharply again and rising. She rose after him, one hand fisted in his ragged jacket, the other curling into the fabric at his waist. She tucked her head under his chin and his chest rose and fell in short, controlled jerks beneath her.
"My employer died. I couldn't get back sooner."
His hands landed on her shoulders, where they rested a moment, uncertainly, before gently pulling her away from him.
"Stay. It's cold."
"You don't understand what you're asking," he snarled. His canines glinted wetly in the glow from the open stove door, face half-hidden under the ragged fringe of his hair. She watched a shiver move under his skin, felt an answering one work up her back. Her eyes narrowed.
"I'm asking for you to stay," but he had stepped away from her, and she'd already let his clothing slip from her hands, and then he was gone.
She dragged the cot near the warm stove, and didn't cough as she shook out the blankets. Lying in bed, she thought of the raw length of him, curled in on itself, back against rough bark, and of curling against her brother's bare back and she burned with conflicting, unwelcome feelings.
He was easier to track in the snow, the fresh, powdery flakes muffling her already near-silent movements. She was wearing less than she probably should have been, not wanting bulk to hinder her range of motion, but she couldn't feel the cold. She was too much part of the dark trunks and the spaces between them, and he was just upwind, crouching, sniffing at some track.
She didn't get a chance to close with him. A double-bladed silver staff was suddenly in his hands, so much a part of him she accepted it without surprise. He lashed out at the sound of her approach without even glancing at her. She dodged his sweep fluidly, sent up a blinding spray of white with one foot and darted left, strategies forming and reforming in her mind. Out of the glitter hanging in the air, chain sang and an arc of light parted the space by her ear. It was coming back almost before she recognized what had happened and she barely blocked in time, whirling, hand coming up automatically to stop the blade with hard-focused qi. The wicked edge bounced harmlessly off her palm and clattered to the ground. She craned around, the fierce crescent under the heel of her boot, and looked at him across the clearing. The staff dangled limp in his fingers.
She said, "You can't hurt me."
"How did you do that?" he asked.
"The same way you summoned a weapon, or nearly," she said, eyes tracing the silver chain snaking through the snow. Her foot dropped to the ground as the strange polearm dissolved from his hand. He sat down with a dull thump and a spray of powder. She approached cautiously, stalking on the balls of her feet.
"But you-" he blinked at her. "Don't wear a limiter, unless-"
She grasped his hand, and pressed it up under her shirt, just above the belly button, helping his cold fingers find the three metal rings hidden beneath invisible scars. "Grandfather worked in the labs at Houtou. I've had it since I was a baby."
"Then you-" he breathed, the metal under her skin moving with his fingers.
She kissed him hard enough to taste blood and his sweet steel-and-seawater scent rose all around her. And it wasn't like it had been, wasn't like it had ever been, snow-blind and clinging to him with nails and heels, skirt rucked up and catching on his fly, his cock throbbing hot inside her, drowning out the itching ache plaguing her and the stretch and burn and fullness might've hurt if it weren't so good. She growled and writhed on top of him when he didn't last long enough, and then his rough fingers filled her gently, stroking with the frantic roll of her hips until she fell back into herself. She blinked at her pale skin against paler snow. His breath rushed into her hair as his palms dragged through the beads of water on her thighs.
"It's cold out." His voice vibrated through her sternum.
"Let's go back to the house, then," she said, and pulled away only far enough to kiss him, licking his mouth, finally feeling the icy crystals clinging to his jacket. When she rose, he came with her, head bent close, rubbing his rough cheek against hers, down her neck. She leaned into him, stroking his back under his thin jacket, curving her cheek into his soft, damp hair, first one side, then the other.
It was hard to resist the urge to run, to chase and be chased and the wildness of the trees she'd nearly forgotten, living so long in the city. They didn't even make it all the way back to the house before they were touching again, kissing with a clash of amazed reverence and wild abandon. He smelled of sex and her, a hint of blood staining his clothes from some past kill. It was maddening as the warmth, the fact of his flesh, the slick skin taste of his mouth.
They tripped over something and landed hard, laughing at the glittering light, feeling nothing but each other. Feeling not enough of him, and an abrupt jolt of pain as she jammed her elbow between round, ice-slick stones. Her pained breath and sudden tension froze him, and he was heavy and solid, flesh close, not close enough.
“Inside,” someone suggested and they rose and stumbled and grabbed each other and drew each other through the door.
The house was hot, far too hot, her wet clothes suffocating so she stripped them off and flung them over a chair. The worn cloth covering his body parted like lint under her fingers. Naked to the low firelight, the night and his gaze, she felt deeply powerful, giddily alive. She knew everything of this moment, another iteration of an ancient dance; his touch reverent on her breasts, hips, her mouth, her skin built to welcome him. She sought out and found his tenderness, his wildness, the places on his throat and spine that made him arch and moan, mapped the angles and curves and years of him. His hands surprised her with their skill, knowing without asking what to give her, when, how. And she was surprised again by the frantic rightness of him sliding inside her, and each long thrust rocked her with wordless, blinding sensation. She thought of music as his shudders rippled into her, and laughed and sighed and chanted his name breathlessly.
She woke and immediately missed his skin against hers; her bare limbs drifting through the tangled nest of blankets found only traces of his heat. She rose, shivering, and went to build up the fire.
He was crouching by the grave, dusting it free of smudged snow. She warmed, watching him, admiring the line of his profile.
"Did you know him?" she asked, pinning a sandalwood-scented stick between two stones and lighting it with a flaming twig borne from the stove.
"No," he said, flatly, palm resting against a round rock. "I found him in the road with his guts hanging out. Died before I could get him back here."
She was unsure of how to comfort him, or if he needed comforting. He leaned into her calf like a cat as her fingers tangled in his hair. She watched the ribbon of smoke curl toward him until he looked up at her.
“Hey,” he said, palm landing cold on the back of her thigh, “you shouldn't be out without a coat.”
“Neither should you,” she smiled. “Come back to bed.”
She liked to wake with the dawn, to sit with tea steaming and listen to the deliberate cadence of wood being split, to watch his back and arms in his new jacket, the unconscious faces he made with effort. And when he came inside, stamping off snow, she'd smile at him and start serving breakfast, or pull him down into their nest of blankets to feel his muscles hot under cold skin.
He liked to tell rambling, discursive stories as she sat knitting or reading in the dim light from the stove, his hand smoothing down her back in long, slow strokes.
“I met them once. The monk and the kid, the ones who went west to fix it. Actually, they kinda saved my life. He was a real asshole about it too. Pretty bastard, but an asshole. And the kid- weird little monkey. Scary strong and wouldn't shut up. Well, anyway, I knew this guy named Banri. Youkai. Lived here with me for a while, actually. So, he got into some trouble with these temple thieves, and I ended up staying as the hostage while he took off, right-”
“You knew he was going to take off?” she interrupted.
“Uh. Yeah. 'S how he was. I- Don't ask. And, hey, don't look at me like that. I was a kid.”
“I'm a kid.”
“Are not. Anyway, so, those jerks thought he was coming back until I started laughing right in their faces. So, they roughed me up a little, and that kid just busts in the door and starts kicking their asses. Turned out the temples were looking for those guys. If I hadn't been tied to a chair that dirty monk probably would have shot me too. As it was I had to do some fast talking to get out of there. Anyway, I find out later that it was Genjo Sanzo Houshi-sama himself. Crazy, huh?”
“Mm,” she hummed, “We fled before that genocide reached Houtou. Lots of people fled. You're lucky to have lived.”
“This was before all that. Years before anyone started eating anyone else.”
And she said, “Ah.”
They sat in silence for a while, before he asked, “Where did you go? When you left Houtou-“
“East, mostly. I still don’t understand why. The ambush party mistook my brother and I for human children.”
He leaned his head against her shoulder. Her hands continued knitting without her conscious direction, the glossy wooden needles scraping.
“I used to wonder what it was like. Growing up looking... normal,” he said.
“Looking and being aren’t the same.”
“Yeah.”
“I wanted to tear them limb from limb,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut, “He stopped me. I was eight, and he was nine.”
“He was smart.”
“Perhaps. You know, he and I… When I- came of age-“
“Shhh,” he murmured, “Instincts. Love. Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes” she said, “maybe,” and buried her face in his hair.
There were always things she couldn’t help. Leaving the city had made some of them worse; the wild urge to strip naked and run, to sink teeth and draw blood and rip flesh, the instincts of a hunter crowding the recesses of her skull. Sometimes she would have to put down her cleaver, walk outside, and breath deep lungfulls of snowscent. Often, when he came home with a freshly killed deer, his eyes would be dilated, his movements tense with controlled strength, his cock jumping eagerly under her hand. She craved the scent of his adrenaline as he stripped her and pressed her into the blankets, loved his poorly-leashed urgency as he stroked her body, pressed his lips to the three tiny rings, sent his tongue twisting down her skin until she arched into his mouth and screamed.
“I haven’t heard you coughing for a while,” he said, as she bent to put another stick of wood into the stove. The house was filled with wavering candlelight and the scent of frying onion.
“Yes. I’ve been feeling much better.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched him glance at the snow brushing gently down the window.
“Traveling is very difficult at this time of year,” she added, eventually, turning to look him in the eye.
“Yeah.”
“And I have a great deal of mending to finish for Liu-san.”
He blinked at her, then refocused on the hide he was scraping, smiling down at the soft tissue streaking the newspapers. “Yeah.”
She watched him for a moment, feeling soft and fierce, then turned back to the stove.
“When I- had to leave,” he told her, “at first I traveled around a lot. It was rough, having to teach myself this kind of stuff, survival stuff, and not knowing who I might run into, or when. Who would be trying to kill me, who would smell good enough to…“
She nodded, reaching for the cubed venison on the cutting board. “The army patrols can’t have helped. You didn’t bother with a disguise?”
“’Course. But you can’t dye your eyes, and they always notice sooner or later. Eventually, I decided it was better to be somewhere I knew, easier to hide if you know the terrain and all that.”
She thought of him existing in a space between civilization and wilderness, memory and present, human and not. She could not understand such a space as it had existed before it contained both of them. She thought of the house as a warmth inside a snow storm, arched over by protective trunks and unmindful winds, of the flex of his ass under her fingers. She thought of safety and loyalty and forgiveness. She knew the mistakes in this as she thought of them and stirred with vicious flicks of her wrist.
“What will you do tomorrow?” she asked.
“Chop wood. Stretch hides. Distract you from your sewing.”
“Oh?” she said, warm challenge creeping uninvited into her tone. “I can’t have that. It might be best if I try to work it out of your system ahead of time.”
He was suddenly close, hands folding around her waist, mouth wet on her neck.
“In the mean time, could you clear the table, please?” she asked, sweetly.
He chuckled wickedly into her skin, pressing his hips against hers. “You’re right. We haven’t done it on the table yet, have we?”
She laughed. The curry did need to simmer a while.
“You have a glow about you lately,” Meirong told her as she sat in the Liu kitchen helping the village women make thousands of tiny dumplings for the solstice festival. “And I think you've finally put on weight. Makes you look like a different person.”
“If I didn't know better, I'd say she was in love,” Shu Ying put in, smiling impishly at her over the bowl of pork mince. Everyone looked at her expectantly. Ying's fourteen year old daughter glared openly.
“Life in the country must agree with me,” she said, mildly, twisting another dumpling shut. She was fairly sure didn't blush as her neighbors burst into giggles.
“It is good to see you really smile,” Jiang Huiling told her. “I'm glad you decided to winter with us after all.”
“I- I suppose I had to... settle eventually,” she said, not thinking of her brother's dark hair brushing his collar, of Gojyo blowing his bangs out of his eyes.
“Time,” Meirong said. “It takes time.”
“You can't betray him just by living your life, dear,” Huiling told her. “He'd want you to be happy.”
“We've all lost someone,” Ying added.
The were quiet a long moment. Meirong opened the steamer and started plucking out the finished dumplings. Steam rose in a twisting column and dashed itself against the ceiling beams.
“I do miss sex, though,” Ying finally said.
“Mom,” her daughter said in a strangled tone, and the kitchen rang with laughter again.
“Ah, my wedding night with Guoxian was amazing,” Meirong sighed. “I always thought he had the most beautiful ears.”
“Ears?” Ying said, her voice high, “You always were strange, Meimei.” She ducked Meirong's half-hearted swat. “Now, I used to run Wulong absolutely ragged in the bedroom. Poor man claimed he never got a decent night's sleep in his life.”
The good-natured teasing died off abruptly as small, quiet Zhang Lizhen rose from her bench and walked stiffly from the room.
“Oh,” Ying said, “I always manage to put my foot in my mouth don't I?”
“Is she all right?” Xin asked.
There was an uncomfortable pause for several dumplings. Ying's daughter scraped the last of the sweet filling from the bowl and put it in the sink.
“She had a- Well,” Ying began.
“She was raped,” Huiling said, bluntly. “By a youkai. About five years ago, when the army was still cleaning out the mountains to the west.” She fixed Xin with her dark gaze, “Maybe you're a bit too young to remember how things were, before. Or maybe they weren't as bad in the south, in the city. But here, you were never safe. Couldn't walk alone from one house to the next. She was a virgin.”
“What happened afterwards was harder,” Meirong said quietly as Xin struggled to think of a reply. “She got pregnant and her man left her for a clean woman.”
“What happened to the child?” Xin asked before she could think better of it.
“We killed it as soon as it was born,” Huiling told her as if it were the only possible answer.
Xin was subdued during the festival, walking to the cemetery with the Lius, since there was no Zhao tomb in the town. At the banquet she spoke only when spoken to, and her cheeks felt strained when she smiled. The walk home was long, her lantern washing the still snow in dull orange light. She wished it were much longer.
When she woke from dreams with darkness pressing blank against her eyes, she often found herself clutching at Gojyo, desperate for the weight and warmth of him, and he would wake, or half-wake, and tighten his arms around her.
“I had a brother, too,” he said, once.
“Oh?” she asked, very quietly.
“He tried to protect me. I guess he did protect me. You know, it’s kinda unfair. I’ve never saved anyone’s life.”
“Me neither,” she said, and he curved his head down to kiss her face, gently, his lips landing on her right eyebrow.
“Was he halfbreed also?” she asked, measuring his breath.
“No,” he said, “full youkai.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ah. I only knew him when I was a little kid anyway. Looked for a while, after he took off, but I gave up.”
“He left you?”
“Had to. He killed someone to save me.”
She let her fingers creep up his neck, and trace the smooth ridges of his scar.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those.” And, whispering, “It was our mother.”
She could feel his eyelashes, dry, lying closed against his cheek.
“That was a long time ago,” he said, as if testing the words for their weight.
She could only agree, and pull him closer.
Cloud-muffled twilight was closing in on the world when the distant ring of a gunshot woke her from a light doze. The fire had burned low, and the house had cooled with the draft through the cracked window. Though it was hunting season, some urgency sent her to her feet, bundled her into coat and boots and spun her out into the falling snow.
Dusk made her a ghost among the branches: silent, transparent. She smelled his blood long before she found the trail, drips and ribbons of it pinking a softening churn of footprints through the woods. The breeze carried gunpowder and the tang of unwashed human, the cold ozone of rising rage. Inside her, a threshold, pressure unbearable like it might split her skin if she can't- if she doesn't-
She woke with him heavy on top of her, bathed in the scent of blood and foul, angry qi like a burning motor. He was saying her name.
“We have to go,” he said, snow caught in his eyelashes, “one of them went for help before they tagged me. We have to go.”
“They hurt you.” She pressed a hand over the wound on his lower back, feeling the raw swirl of disrupted energy and flesh, the wrongness of embedded metal. Sent herself curling into him to mend it, reconnecting the broken without thinking. He tensed against her, hissing through his teeth until her hand closed on deformed lead and tender new skin.
He said, ”Xin-” faintly, into her neck, and breathed. Snow fell on the trees, the leaves, on cloth and flesh with a chorus of tiny, hissing impacts. She glanced down at the thing still clutched in her left hand and shuddered through the memory of his heart twisting, bursting, his pulse ceasing under her fingers. A limp, white child. The Liu boy.
“What did I- What did-”
“I stopped you,” he murmured, his hand coming up to cover her eyes, his body shutting out the cold, “Don't look. Don't think. We need to go.”
The town only seemed populated; as the monk and his disciple approached they could make out the uniforms and the strident, angular motion of the figures in the streets.
“A barracks town. The fighting must have shifted farther south than we'd thought,” the disciple said, softly. “What shall we do?”
“You're the brains of this operation,” Gojyo muttered, arm shifting from her hold as he reached up to pull the bandages down over his eyes. Xin sighed, checked to make sure the cloth wasn't going to slip off and resettled the hood of his cloak over his shaved head.
The officer in charge of the encampment — a general by his insignia - did not order his men to release them as they were questioned. She balanced against the soldier's hold and did not take advantage when his grip slacked minutely. She did not think of dinner yesterday, of teeth sheering through raw muscle.
“Master hasn't spoken in over fifteen years,” she told them. “He will not break his silence for you. However, I would be pleased to answer your questions, and offer what humble service I can.”
The general turned away from Gojyo, who stood straight and serene in his stolen robes, face deliberately relaxed. The man was of middle height, balding, a bureaucrat flayed ragged by his unexpected field service.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? This is a war zone, you know. Did your master come to try and subdue the beast?”
“Ah,” she said, “Master is Jikan Shi of Puji Si Temple. He wanders as Merciful Kannon directs. I am merely his attendant. Please call me Setsu. I was unaware the fighting had shifted so far east. Are we in great danger here?” She widened her eyes in what she hoped was a convincing parody of fear.
The general stepped back and ran a hand over his face. “Civilians,” he muttered, his tone loaded with a weariness beyond contempt. “You may rest here the night, and tomorrow I'll have someone escort you to safety.”
He nodded to the soldiers, who hustled them outside before releasing them. She attached herself to Gojyo's elbow, feeling the muscles of his forearm cord. She willed him to stay calm, to walk quietly between these callow, arrogant boys long enough to get to whatever accommodations they had. She could feel the itch of rage just under her navel, hot blood pooling in her stomach. If he lost it-
They were put in a one-room house at the edge of town, which held only a wide, low kang: a hollow, mud-brick platform, cold to the touch and covered in fraying mats. A sullen boy of ten or so arrived to build a fire in it around sunset, casting them suspicious glances from under his page's cap. He returned twice, first with a simple, small meal of rice and chick peas, and later to linger at the door frame, eying the place where their folded knees were touching.
“You're not monks,” he said, at length.
“Can I help you?” she asked, keeping her jaw from clenching.
“He's close,” the boy said, his eyes narrowed to black slits in the half-light. “He's coming here.”
“Who-” she asked, her voice retreating from the question and hiding in her throat. The boy didn't answer anyway.
“How do you know that?” Gojyo asked suddenly, and she had to clamp her hand over his arm to keep him from stripping off his bandages to look.
“Anyone could come-” she hissed, batting at his hands.
When she looked back, the boy had slipped into the night.
Xin slept very little, waking every few hours when they shifted too close together and pulling herself away from Gojyo’s touch.
The boy refused to look at them when he brought them their morning portions of rice. His narrow blue eyes skittered sideways to the plain stone walls, his hands withdrawing into the too-long sleeves of his jacket.
“Come with us,” she said, impulsively.
“Ah-“ Gojyo began, but she pinched his thigh viciously to quiet him.
”Why?” asked the boy, squinting at her suspiciously.
“Why stay here if you know it’s coming?”
He glared at her levelly, thin lips twisting in his too-thin face.
“You couldn’t even protect yourselves. Not from him.” He took a stride toward the door, and paused, back rigid. “Go north at least a day before you cut back west,” he said, “If you see a strange white bird, run.”
The pair of cadets escorted them south and east, instead, back the way they’d come. Xin worried her lip and tried to picture it, the demon who’d killed thousands, who had obliterated every force the army had thrown at it. Back in Chongqing she’d traced it on a map, plotting the disappearances of entire companies as her neighbors began wearing the colors of mourning, charting its path down from the Himalayas, its aimless wandering in the west. She imagined it would smell like a predator, like shreds of rotting meat caught between teeth. It was disturbingly easy to picture the pallid boy’s scorn twisting into blood-splashed anger, his small body transfixed with claws and teeth. She suspected Gojyo was angry with her, or the soldiers, or the boy. She wondered if he’d insist they go back for him.
Gojyo halted abruptly, yanking her back with his grip on her elbow. The two soldiers following them nearly walked into their backs. His head was up, his nostrils flared slightly.
“What is it?” she said, all her senses snapping to full alert.
It was a strange spoor, so of the forest, of earth and rot and rock that she hadn't noticed it among the normal smells of winter. But now that she'd picked it up, it was unmistakable, scorched and faintly musky, with a hint of summer greenness. Whatever it was was approaching them from upwind, as if it either hadn't sensed their presence or was completely unconcerned.
“Let's go,” one of the guards said, shoving her with the butt of his rifle.
“Master has... sensed something coming,” she told them.
The one who shoved her paled, “Something.”
“Something powerful.”
“Oh,” he squeaked, taking a step backward.
The other guard looked back and forth between them, and swallowed, his prominent adam's apple bobbing. “We should warn the general.”
“Yes,” the first guard said, and the pair retreated in disarray, jogging back up the slushy road.
Xin ignored them, scanning the woods for movement, straining her ears for the slightest sound. The odd scent was getting stronger.
“Gojyo,” she said, putting her back to his, “take the blindfold off. Now.”
One second the guards were up and running, the next, one was sprawled half in the briars edging the road, unmoving, the second screaming weakly and clutching at the bowels spilling from his gashed stomach. That was not the direction the wind was coming from. How had it gotten around them so silently?
“Shit,” Gojyo said. “Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Shit.” Shakujo sang into his hands.
They waited as the guard's screams faded into gurgling moans. Gojyo's back was tense behind her. Her qi vibrated with readiness just beneath her skin.
It came at her first, springing from the brush with slashing claws. She hardened her qi in time to avoid being torn open by its talons, but the blow still sent her reeling backwards, and she felt muscle and rib bruising under the surface. She dodged its next swipe, barely, touched its arm as it passed and threw enough bursting qi into its elbow to shatter the joint. Her energy bounced harmlessly off the thing's vast youryoku. Inches from her face, its razor fangs were bared in a smile.
Wings buffeted her and then she was launching herself out of its reach as it hissed and batted at the small white dragon flapping around its head. It managed to catch the dragon's long tail and flung it off into the brush, straightened slowly and looked her in the eye.
The thing looked like a youkai, but the scent, the overwhelming youryoku and unearthly golden eyes marked it as something far, far more dangerous. Its face was oddly devoid of real feeling, an animal expression.
When it moved, it was almost too fast for her eye to follow, but Gojyo was between them, suddenly, getting Shakujo's pole between its teeth, and landing a hard right hook to the side of its head. It snarled in fury as Gojyo threw himself backward and sprang after him.
Watching it, Xin could see the itan's movements had slowed just slightly, the claws not curled for real killing blows. It was toying with him. It was playing, and the second it lost interest, they were both going to die.
She tore her pack open, tore the front of her robes open and fumbled her sharp cooking knife out of its sheathe. She grit her teeth and placed the tip against her stomach, then pressed it through the skin and up under the edge of her implanted limiter.
She wrenched the first ring free of her flesh and fell to hands and knees, trembling as her muscles twisted, grew, realigned, her bones groaning longer, thicker, skin stretching. Every harsh inhale flooded her brain with information: scents of blood and earth, old spoor and new snow, Gojyo's body, adrenaline sharp, mixing with the itan's alien musk. Sounds rang in her head: wind on branches, footsteps, the grunts and labored breathing of the combatants, heavy impacts. She felt for her knife, claws scraping in the frozen dust, until she realized, and brought her hand to her abdomen. She felt carefully for the next implant, tensing as her sharp claw caught in the fresh wound. Her flesh parted too easily, her hands made clumsy and strange, but she could barely feel it as she dug out the second ring, adrenaline surging and crashing under her eyelids.
The world rippled and sprang to life with energy, the familiar lines of force within her body suddenly extended outside her skin, and she could touch the distance to the trees, taste it. The forest hissed infrared when her eyes snapped open, breathing living qi from every surface. Scent and phantom touch whispered the history of each patch of ground, each stone, and rising through the confusion came the hot waves of youryoku crashing off the itan, the scent of Gojyo's desperation. She could feel the nauseating hum of the final implant within her, twisting unclean into her veins, her nerves, holding her back from the forest, from battle, from the near-panic rising from her mate.
She hooked a claw through the little ring and pulled.
Everything
slowed
down.
Transfixed by the satin crackle of paper, the clear hot light, too bright and empty-full of force; flesh, mind, dissolved in silver inkblots which grow trees, feed sun-fire, hammer heart-blood and s/he dissolving away into the exhalations of mountains, forest, wind, clarity that doesn't know but is and is and is.
It took her a long time to remember his name. The age of his body, the black of his pubic hair occurred to her again and again, as if they had some ungraspable significance. The complex layers of his scent were half-drowned in the acrid stench of fading fear, and she stroked his back, stroked his face, stroked his qi untangled and healed his cracked ribs and willed him calm and still. His body trembled against her.
She became aware of speech slowly. Someone was saying something but the words held no meaning. He drew back to look at her, finally, pulling his face from the crook of her neck.
“You're you,” he babbled. “So fucking beautiful,” and kissed her, his taste exploding in her hindbrain, his fingers running up and up to the points of her ears, his tongue exploring the points of her canines. She choked on the intensity of it, the thousand new ways to taste, smell, touch him, until she had to cry or scream or laugh or come or do something, anything to relieve the pressure. Her talons ripped holes in the back of his robes - those robes were wrong on him. She wanted them off. Wanted his skin on her skin, his hands sliding up under her shirt, his kisses dotted across the intricate leaf-whorls marking her stomach.
“It's gone,” she told him, though she didn't know what she was referring to. “Gone.”
“Idiots,” the boy she'd nearly forgotten about said.
His hair shone blond in the afternoon sunlight, a fresh drop of blood sliding down the side of his nose from the perfect red chakra in the center of his forehead. The sutras fluttering on his shoulders were too brightdark with sense-memory to look at. He was cradling a young man in his lap, his fingers resting on a heavy gold diadem weighing his forehead.
She sat up slowly, clinging to Gojyo, stroking him and pulling him close and upright, unwilling to lose contact with him but needing to know what had happened.
“Is that-”
“The Seitan Taisei,” he said.
They sat in silence a long time, breathing, Gojyo's arms tight around her, snowmelt seeping into her pants.
“What are you?” she asked.
“What are you?” the boy shot back, mouth twisting sourly.
“Youkai,” Gojyo said.
The boy rolled his eyes at them, “Obviously.” He went back to raking his fingers through the Seitan Taisei's thick dark hair.
“How did you... stop him?” Xin tried.
“I didn't do anything,” he shrugged, the sutras on his shoulders flaring briefly with power and settling.
“Where'd you get the sutras?” Gojyo asked, resting his chin on her shoulder, “Those army issue?”
“No,” the boy said in the exasperated tone children use when they're being patronized. “They were at Houtou. We tracked his... path all the way back there. I picked them up.”
“Those are- Kyoumon. Aren't they,” Xin asked, struggling to recall the Houtou of her childhood. She thought of children’s' shouts echoing in the courtyard, the dark secret passages into the servants' quarters. She wondered how much of it was still standing.
“I didn't choose this,” the boy said, bitterly, “And it's not like you can help. You're not even real monks.”
She could feel Gojyo shaking slightly, as if he were trying to suppress laughter. She leaned forward and nipped at his forearm. He jumped, growled, and bit her back, gently, on the neck.
“Kyuu,” moaned a pile of snow by her elbow. It butted its little head pitifully against her thigh.
“Oh. Oh! It's you!” she said to the white dragon, “Thank you for helping me before. Are you hurt?”
She gathered it carefully into her lap, mindful of her claws. It hissed in pain, but did not fight her as she stretched out its broken wing and called up the energy to heal it. Gojyo's warmth against her back helped, the rhythm of his breath steadying her. Healing came easier without her limiter, too, the qi's deviation from its proper paths now glaringly obvious. She let her senses extend back into Gojyo's body, finding and repairing his cuts, the slight sprain of one ankle, then finished healing the half-knitted skin where she'd ripped her limiters free. She found she could reach all the way across to the other two, could tell without touching that both were uninjured, and the itan deeply asleep. Its youryoku was dampened, spun tightly onto the golden limiter on its head. Suddenly exhausted, she reeled herself back into her body and let her head loll back against Gojyo's shoulder. The dragon burrowed into her chest, wiggling inside her robe where she'd torn the front, wrapping its tail around her waist. His scales were cold against her skin, her robes heavy with snow and mud, and she was starting to lose feeling in her feet.
“You keeping that thing?” Gojyo asked.
“It seems he's keeping me.”
“Lucky dragon,” Gojyo muttered. The blond boy was studiously ignoring them, but she reluctantly pried his hands off her breasts anyway.
“So, what d'we do now? Keep heading west?” he asked her, “Won't be easy without your limiters.”
“First, sleep. Somewhere. Warm, preferably.”
“Right.”
Getting up took much more effort than Xin really wanted to expend. She cradled the dragon to her bare stomach with one hand, leaning on Gojyo to keep her feet.
“Looks like we owe you one, kid,” Gojyo said. Xin added, “Thank you for helping us.”
“It was nothing,” he said, scowling down at the demon sleeping in his lap.
“What do you intend to do with him?” Xin asked, gently.
“Tell him to shut up,” the boy snorted.
Gojyo laughed, and, after a moment Xin did too, letting her hair fall forward to hide it.
The boy glared at them, then looked away. He touched the diadem again, mouth twitching at the corners.
“Morons,” he said, quietly. “I have to get him far away from the army. Somehow.”
He suddenly looked very young, and Xin sobered, elbowing Gojyo to quiet him.
“You shouldn't let him sleep in the snow like that,” she said, “He might get hypothermia.”
“You'll just have to let me help carry him,” Gojyo announced. He balanced Xin on her own feet, crouched down, and grinned at the boy, “I'm Gojyo by the way, and this lovely lady's name is Xin.”
“Anjir,” the boy said, grudgingly, “Why should we go anywhere with you idiots?"
“Hmmm,” Gojyo grinned, hoisting the Seitan Taisei up and slinging him over his shoulder, “Because we've got your pet?”
“He's not my pet. Hey! Don't walk away when I'm talking to you, damn it.”
Anjir scrambled to his feet and stormed after Gojyo, cursing. Xin trailed after them, scenting the wind, hiding her smile and watching the sutras sing harmonies with the trees.
Author’s notes here.
