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  “Two tears fell from the butterfly’s eyes and landed on the stage of the altar, where you put incense and flowers. Suddenly, a lovely fox fairy sprung up out of the ground. She said, ‘Why are you—’ ”

  “What did she look like?” Wang Tie-Tie said, interrupting again.

  Xiao Yen jerked her head up. She’d gotten too involved in her story. “The fox fairy had a broad forehead, like a melon. She painted her eyebrows far above her eyes, with thin, graceful strokes, like gull wings. Her nose was tiny, almost like she’d forgotten to put one on her face. But if you looked closely, you could see it was as sharp as a broken rock. Her golden eyes reminded the butterfly of warm summer afternoons. Her lips were the color of ripe plums. She wore ivory silk that had circles of bamboo embroidered in light green, and—”

  Wang Tie-Tie interrupted Xiao Yen again. “What did her teeth look like?”

  Xiao Yen paused, then asked, “Are a fox fairy’s teeth like an immortal’s teeth?”

  Wang Tie-Tie replied, “It is so.”

  Xiao Yen continued. “Her teeth were like fine white jade, strung together like impossibly perfect jewels.” She paused for a moment, forgetting where she’d stopped. She bit her lip. Was that enough description to satisfy Wang Tie-Tie? She hoped so. “The fox fairy asked the butterfly what was wrong. The butterfly told his tale of flying for days to see the dragon, only to have the dragon laugh at him and send him home. The fairy wrinkled her brow, thinking for a while, then she said, ‘I can help you.’

  “The butterfly was very excited. ‘Can you make me a friend to play with?’ he asked, dancing along the top of the altar.

  “The fairy smiled at him, a warm, real smile, the kind you feel in your belly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I can make you not miss them so much.’

  “The butterfly was puzzled. How could she do that? He would always miss having friends, wouldn’t he? But fox fairies sometimes do things their own way.” Xiao Yen paused again. Wang Tie-Tie sat fanning herself, not looking at Xiao Yen, so she went on.

  “The butterfly agreed, and the fox fairy changed him into a beautiful white-and-black-striped flower. His petals were as soft as swan feathers. Black stripes ran from the outside of the flower toward the center in harsh, straight lines. The edges of the petals were fluffy. In the center of the flower hung two black stems, shaped like teardrops. That was what was left of the butterfly’s tail.

  “He was still different. There wasn’t another flower like him in the entire garden. But he was a flower, like all the other flowers, and so he wasn’t alone anymore.

  “And that’s the tale I heard.” Xiao Yen ended her story with the traditional ending and stared down at her hands, afraid to face Wang Tie-Tie.

  The silence dragged on. Xiao Yen sneaked a look at Wang Tie-Tie. A half-smile crept slowly across her aunt’s lips, though the rest of her was as unmoving as a stone. Abruptly, Wang Tie-Tie snorted, then started laughing. Though her laugh was quiet, it sounded like the dragon laugh Xiao Yen had imagined. She shivered.

  Wang Tie-Tie stopped laughing and turned to Xiao Yen, her eyes terrible and beautiful. “Yes, I am a horrible dragon, aren’t I?” Wang Tie-Tie laughed again and shook her head. “Maybe someday you’ll understand that I’m doing this because you must learn to stand by yourself. You, alone, must be taller than if you stood on the shoulders of all your family.”

  How could she grow that tall? Why did she have to? Xiao Yen didn’t understand.

  “Family isn’t always a blessing,” Wang Tie-Tie said, her gentle words carrying sorrow as they spoke themselves in Xiao Yen’s ear. “And when you do your famous deeds, you may have to be far from here, far from your mother and sister,” Wang Tie-Tie’s voice grew stern. “And why must you do famous deeds?”

  “So Zhang Gua Lao will notice me.”

  Wang Tie-Tie prompted. “And when he notices you . . . ?”

  Xiao Yen dutifully finished Wang Tie-Tie’s sentence. “Zhang Gua Lao will give me an immortal peach so I can give it to you.”

  Wang Tie-Tie always responded in one of two ways at the end of this litany: either she laughed, clapped her hands, and called Xiao Yen a good girl, or she tested Xiao Yen’s resolve. This time, she did the latter.

  “You don’t have to bring the peach to me,” she said in a wheedling voice that reminded Xiao Yen of Ling-Ling.

  “Oh, no, Aunt, I want to give it to you,” Xiao Yen replied. It was her duty to do whatever the head of her household told her to do, even giving up her family, if she must.

  Wang Tie-Tie fanned herself a couple of times, then put the fan on the table, stretching her left arm out toward Xiao Yen. She rubbed her forearm as if it itched.

  “I’m so tired of this life. I want to get off the wheel of death, rebirth, and sorrow, to have some peace, and more time to pray for forgiveness,” she said in a melancholy tone. She folded her sleeve back toward her elbow, and rubbed the wrinkled, startlingly white flesh.

  Xiao Yen had never seen her aunt’s naked arm before. She didn’t recognize what she saw at first.

  Some of Wang Tie-Tie’s wrinkles formed straight lines. No, not wrinkles—scars, scarred lines, whiter than her flesh. Lines that crossed each other. Lines that resolved into the character for “possession,” often branded on horses, to indicate they were owned by a lord or the Emperor.

  “My father and my husband were well matched in their temperaments,” Wang Tie-Tie said, speaking under her breath, so quietly Xiao Yen could barely hear her. “They treated me like merchandise, not like a daughter or a wife. Now, I am old. I need another lifetime at least to let go of the hate I’ve held. I still pray, every morning, that I will be able to forgive them. And myself.”

  Wang Tie-Tie looked at Xiao Yen and spoke to her as if to an equal. “You don’t have to give me the peach. Not if you’re in a situation like mine and you need it for yourself. Not if your life has turned to bitter ash and you cannot survive the regret and hate.”

  Xiao Yen responded fervently, addressing Wang Tie-Tie’s scarred flesh, no longer using her duty-bound voice. “I will do famous deeds so you can leave this world of tears. I will bring you an immortal peach.”

  Wang Tie-Tie pushed down her sleeve, her melancholy banished. “Good.” She looked at Xiao Yen, her fierce eyes dissecting Xiao Yen like a butterfly under a knife. “You’ll learn Zhang Gua Lao’s type of magic. You’ll be the best at it. You’ll be the one offered the choice. And when the offer comes, if you don’t want the peach yourself, you’ll remember Wang Tie-Tie.”

  Every word bored into Xiao Yen’s skull. She knew she’d never forget the still afternoon, the fan lying on the platform, the smell of the blossoms opening in the heat, the silent scars, and Wang Tie-Tie’s eyes drilling holes into her and hooking ropes there, ropes that only Wang Tie-Tie knew how to pull.

  “I’ll remember,” Xiao Yen replied, shifting in her seat.

  Wang Tie-Tie stared for a moment longer, then laughed. The sound sent a chill down Xiao Yen’s back. “Yes, you’ll remember,” her aunt said. “And you’ll learn to stand on your own, away from the center of your family, as poor as that will make you. It’s the only way you’ll be a good paper mage. You’re lucky to have me for an aunt. No one else would teach you this. No one else has been as alone as you must be, locked away for only one person’s private pleasure.”

  Wang Tie-Tie rose and announced, “At the end of the hour of the Rooster, you may come back into the household and be with your mother and sister. Not before.” She walked out of the garden without looking back.

  Xiao Yen watched her aunt leave, the empty pit in her stomach growing wider. Alone again, and for so long. Xiao Yen steeled herself to wait some more, refusing to cry for herself. She would do her duty, as she’d been taught. She’d help Wang Tie-Tie end her pain. And hope that she’d never be taught to hate as her aunt had been.

  * * *

  Xiao Yen had already passed the two arrows, thinking they were skinny, broken branches, before she realized what she was seein
g.

  “Stop!” she called. She made her horse turn around and go back. The arrows protruded from the back of a man wearing a gray merchant’s coat. She surmised he was recently dead as not many flies rose from the body as she approached.

  Before she could get off her horse, Udo came up and asked, “Why?” He said other things she didn’t understand, but she guessed the gist of it: it was dangerous to stop, unhealthy for the horses, and they didn’t have time. The same things Udo always said whenever she asked him to stop.

  “I study defense,” Xiao Yen said, gesturing in the direction where she thought the dead man’s camp lay. After three weeks on the trail under Bei Xi’s tutelage, she could communicate much better in his language.

  Bei Xi and her guard, Gi Tang, rode up. Before Bei Xi spoke, Udo made another long speech. Xiao Yen didn’t try to follow it. Instead, she dismounted, draped her reins in a nearby bush so her horse wouldn’t wander off, and approached the body.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d seen a dead body. Criminals were hung on Bao Fang’s walls as a warning to others, and beggars were allowed to decompose outside the city’s gates. But this was the first occasion she’d had to study one.

  Xiao Yen didn’t know what she was looking for, so she tried to memorize all the details: the stillness of the corpse, never mistaken for sleep; his head twisted to one side, covered by his bleeding hand; and his bare feet, impossibly pale against the dark ground. A belt lay next to him, like a disemboweled snake, the money and trinkets gutted.

  Gi Tang also dismounted. He ignored Xiao Yen while he walked around the body. Then he sniffed the air in the direction Xiao Yen thought the camp would be. She sniffed as well: the air smelled of mud, the dry lichen growing on the tree trunks, and a faint undercurrent of blood. Without a word, he walked in that direction. Xiao Yen followed him.

  “Xiao Yen!” Bei Xi called.

  Her tone held enough worry that Xiao Yen stopped, took two steps back toward Bei Xi, and said, “I have to do this. It’s my duty.”

  Bei Xi didn’t reply. She stayed on her horse and looked down at Xiao Yen, her concern apparent in her eyes. Xiao Yen crossed her arms over her chest and stared back. She wasn’t three years old. Bei Xi broke their gaze and looked away. Xiao Yen turned and started walking again.

  Bei Xi called after her, “Be careful! Don’t be long.”

  Xiao Yen didn’t turn around a second time. She now understood why Jhr Bei, Bei Xi’s younger sister, hadn’t stayed with her older sister. Bei Xi vacillated between overprotecting and ignoring her charge. Xiao Yen didn’t know which she disliked more, when Bei Xi smothered her, or when she spent all her time laughing, talking—and, Xiao Yen presumed, flirting—with Ehran. Maybe Fu Be Be was right about courtesans. Bei Xi’s behavior was so improper, especially for someone from the court.

  A cracking sound alerted Xiao Yen to where Gi Tang was. She hesitated about going any closer to him. When they camped at night, she avoided the barbarian guard. He spat every time she walked past, and more than once had pulled his knife halfway out of its holder and scowled at her. Yet, she had to see this camp, see what defenses they’d had, and if possible, why they hadn’t worked. It was her duty.

  As Xiao Yen entered a clearing holding three torn and slashed tents, Gi Tang kicked a corpse in the face. Teeth flew, light catching them as they scattered. Xiao Yen gasped, horrified. Though the Buddhists believed the body was like an old shell, discarded and unimportant once the soul left, most merchants believed if a body wasn’t whole when it was burned or buried, the spirit wouldn’t rest. They persecuted the Taoists who used human bones, generally dug up from graveyards, in their magic and elixirs. Xiao Yen tried to reassure herself that Gi Tang was a barbarian and didn’t know what he was doing, but the grin on his face told her he’d desecrated the body on purpose. Xiao Yen shuddered and forced herself to look away.

  The earth around the camp was packed and baked, and didn’t hold many footprints. The rest of the bodies lay in their tents. She speculated that they’d had a single guard circling the camp, the man near the trail. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d been asleep and had woken and run, leaving his boots in his tent. The fire pit held no embers. If they’d banked a fire to last all night, it would have still been warm.

  The tents were like hers, dark oiled leather, low to the ground. They weren’t cheap, and would have fetched a good price if they hadn’t been purposefully ruined. Xiao Yen bent down and peered in the doorways to look at the bodies. In both the first and the second tent there hadn’t been any struggle. The men had had their throats slit in their sleep. Whoever had done this had been professional, and quiet. The last tent was empty. Any goods the men carried were gone.

  Xiao Yen heard Gi Tang leave. She walked in the opposite direction, into a small clearing beyond the first. The remains of a second camp were there, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the night before or not. No fire.

  She went around the perimeter of the second clearing, thinking. The attackers must have been well provisioned, otherwise they would have stolen the merchants’ tents and clothes. Fresh horse droppings spotted the second clearing, so the attackers had been on horseback. Why hadn’t the merchants posted a guard? Arrogance? Stupidity? Or had they felt themselves safe? Had there been a second camp, and had it attacked the first?

  Xiao Yen had more questions than answers. She walked back to the first camp, then paused. She wished she could do something for the bodies, but she wasn’t strong enough to bury them herself. Gathering enough wood for a pyre would take too long. Udo would never allow it.

  An idea came to her. She kicked out the sticks holding the tents up so they collapsed over the bodies, like earth-colored shrouds. The third tent she dragged over the body desecrated by Gi Tang. Then she took out a single sheet of paper, divided it into three pieces, and folded simple long boats from each portion, one for each tent. She used one of her precious matches to burn them. The match, also known as a “lady finger,” was slim and tapered, longer than Xiao Yen’s fingers. While the boats burned, Xiao Yen prayed for the ghosts of the murdered men to cross the Yellow River and go to the next kingdom, and not stay and haunt this one. She wished she was like Udo and Ehran’s first magician, the one who could enchant cloth, so the bodies wouldn’t be discovered by some Taoist on his quest for eternal youth.

  Udo didn’t ask any questions when she came back. Someone had covered the body near the trail with an old, torn blanket. Gi Tang was already mounted, looking satisfied. Xiao Yen tried to dismiss the thought that came to her: that barbarian soldiers, like Gi Tang, had camped next to the merchants, and had killed them. Not for money and goods, but for spite. She shivered, and resolved to make a stronger defense that night, maybe a tiger again.

  Bei Xi’s and Ehran’s horses stood close together, and they leaned toward each other, flirting. As Xiao Yen mounted her horse, Bei Xi’s laughter rang out. When Xiao Yen turned to look, both Ehran and Bei Xi looked in her direction, then looked away. Xiao Yen assumed they’d been laughing at her. Bei Xi laughed too much with Ehran, and some nights Xiao Yen saw them leave together. It wasn’t proper behavior for a woman, even a courtesan.

  Xiao Yen was too worried about Ehran to blame him for Bei Xi’s behavior. Though he was still heavier than most men his height, he’d lost weight. He no longer looked fat and healthy. His eyes had sunk into his cheeks. Black circles ran under them. He always rode at the back, always tired. He refused to listen to Xiao Yen’s suggestion that he might be sick. He wouldn’t pay attention to her, or take her concerns about his health seriously. He only teased her, or laughed at her, as Fat Fang, her classmate, had.

  Bei Xi laughed again at something Ehran said. Xiao Yen wondered if Bei Xi was trying to teach him the language of the Middle Kingdom again. Xiao Yen hoped not. Bei Xi used archaic language, words so old and formal not even Wang Tie-Tie used them. If Ehran learned their language from Bei Xi, no one would understand him.

  Xiao Yen turned forward, then glanced down. The sunli
ght coming through the trees was too dappled to cast strong shadows. Since the night three weeks ago in the clearing, Xiao Yen had never seen Bei Xi in a strong light, so she’d never been able to check Bei Xi’s shadow again.

  Xiao Yen had checked her own shadow, often. The blue tinge she saw sometimes disturbed her. She wasn’t magic, was she? Her creatures cast blue shadows as well, but their shadows were also tinged with black. Her creatures were strictly magical, only able to affect the magic realm. Why weren’t their shadows solid blue?

  Bei Xi and Ehran laughed some more. Pangs of loneliness assailed Xiao Yen. Bei Xi could talk with Ehran. The only person Xiao Yen could talk with easily was Bei Xi, and more often than not, Bei Xi just wanted to teach her something. At least the first thing Bei Xi had taught Xiao Yen, the knot magic, was a comfort. Xiao Yen often pulled her practice string out of her sleeve and tied knot after knot, growing them together then shrinking them down. Knot magic took less effort than paper magic, though Xiao Yen did sometimes review the steps necessary to fold creatures while she rode. She’d found that she couldn’t stay in her quiet space while riding. She’d nearly fallen off the first time she’d tried. Instead, every time they set up camp, she practiced some aspect of her magic, and escaped to her quiet space whenever she could.

  As the trail opened up at a clearing, Bei Xi called out, “Let’s race!”

  Without looking back, Xiao Yen kicked her horse and cantered across the clearing. When she reached the far end, she made her horse wheel around. Though Xiao Yen sometimes still felt nervous about the beast she rode, at least she could make it do her bidding. She no longer worried about hurting it inadvertently. She called her horse “Sunset Flying Roan,” after one of the famous ten chargers Emperor Tai Zhung had owned.

  Xiao Yen had expected Bei Xi to be on her heels, but she and Ehran were still on the far side of the clearing. Bei Xi encouraged Ehran to run with her, but he just smiled and shook his head, looking down at his reins.