“This time?”
“You’re a real witch this time,” I said, brushing it off. I glanced at Waldemar. Did he know anything about her human lives? His face gave no sign.
“I’ll leave now,” Waldemar said, and then he left without any real goodbye.
Alissa laughed. “He’s funny.”
“He’s the most impolite familiar I have ever met.”
“I don’t mind. Being polite doesn’t mean anything.” She put her arms around me and she was as happy as I’d ever seen her. “I did it, Silvus! I drowned Waldemar.” She laughed again. “Sort of. I’m not sure I should be this proud of learning to kill someone, but…”
“We’ve seen what the Order is willing to do, so I’m glad you aren’t playing nice,” I said. “When we save your family, you’ll probably have an important role to play, and your love for your sisters will give your magic power.”
“Yes. It will.” She gave me another hug and then drew back. “Silvus…do you mind…if I wanted to be alone now? Is it safe?”
“Dearest, your fifth nights are sacred,” I said. “They belong to you and we will never question that. I put up protection spells already, and I’ll be next door and Jie and Thom are on the other side.” Our rules were strict. Each member of the clan had her in turn, but the fifth night was always hers.
But I had to admit that I was a little surprised she wanted to be completely alone. I expected she would ask me to sleep near her, even if I didn’t touch her. I wondered what she was planning to do with her solitude.
I almost warned her again not to go back into her memories but I could tell that my words wouldn’t stop her from her plans. I would just have to trust that she would stay away from Meg.
Chapter Sixteen
Li Mei
Even though my husband had brought me far more pain than joy and I knew now that our marriage would never be a happy one, and as sure as I was that we would not grow fond of each other by the day as my own parents had, at least his house had the most beautiful garden.
My parents had a small garden, and my mother tended it carefully. But my parents didn’t have the means for a garden such as this. Even under the moonlight, it was enchanting. Sometimes I slipped out of bed, mostly on full moon nights, to look at the reflection in the lily pool, the trees that drooped into the water like maidens washing their hair.
My husband didn’t have a bone of romance in his entire body. He didn’t even care about the changing seasons. My friends who sighed of jealousy when he chose me for a bride had no envy for me now. I tried to put a good face on it, but my handsome husband saw his entire life in piles of coins and other treasures. That was all I was to him. A beautiful object to keep on his shelf and take down every night to play with like a boy with a pet bird or insect.
As soon as the wedding was over I was seized with fear. He had admired me before, but now the admiration was gone. He had me now. There was no need to coddle my female emotions, as he saw it.
His own good looks melted away before my eyes. All I saw there was cold selfishness.
I laughed at my own stupidity now. I had preened over this excellent match, while my dearest friend married a poor man, but they would go fishing together and she seemed to find the bed chamber a delightful place instead of a time to dread.
When he came to the bedchamber at night, I dreaded it now. He made demands, and struck me if I refused. He was not overtly cruel, but it was almost worse. He was indifferent. He smacked me thoughtlessly and if I cried he sighed impatiently. I never cried anymore.
His mother was even worse. She saw me as a servant. This was so different from how my mother and my sisters got along with my older brother’s wife, all of us laughing together so I saw her like my own sister.
A child, I thought. A child would save me. He would love his son. So would his mother. They would see me in a different way. And I would have something to love besides this garden.
I could see the baby in my mind. Every day, the fantasy became more real. I saw myself holding the tiny bundle. First steps and words, games I would play with her and the little songs I would sing to her. I was supposed to wish for a son but after a while I began to see a little girl in my arms, and I could not bring myself to feel any regret for her because she was so beautiful. I tried different names for her, whispering them to see how they felt on my tongue.
But a year had passed, with no pregnancy, and my own body was making me frantic. A whole year! Most women I knew were pregnant in the first year, and I certainly couldn’t blame him.
I felt betrayed. I saw her. In my mind, she was real, but she would not come to me.
I couldn’t do anything but endure it now, but I looked at the moon and prayed for a child. The bright, round moon made me think of pregnant bellies and the round faces of babies, and most of all, a more enchanted life where I had sisters close to me, and a kind mother and father.
Garden and moon were so still and silent that it was hard to believe any god could hear my pleas.
I heard something large and unexpected move behind me—above my head. I turned around and met the eyes of a man in the shadows. No sooner had I noticed him than he leapt down from the roof of my house. I started to scream. He covered my mouth.
“Shh…,” he said gently, and he spoke in a strange language. His voice was so intimate. That was the strangest thing of all.
A man from the west. I had only seen a man like that once before. He came through the village during a festival. He smiled at me and all the other pretty girls, and seemed kind enough but he was very out of place. The other girls were terrified of him so I pretended to be terrified too, but I actually liked to watch how strange he was. He carried a notebook and scratched out his messy writing in it. My father said he was interested in our festival, and maybe he was right, because he left when it was over. My mother thought that he would probably be killed by bandits wandering around like that.
This wasn’t the same man. That man had a beard and dark brown hair. This man was tall with golden hair.
I had surely never seen a man like him before, but for some reason he seemed familiar. It was the strangest thing. Of all the men I had ever seen in my life, he was more foreign than any of them, but his face made me think of a boy in town that used to make me feel warm and flushed.
No. You have to get away from him. Whatever is going on, it couldn’t be good.
I tried to struggle against him and he said something a little more harsh toward me and picked me up with one arm so my legs dangled, like I was a child. But he was so tall and strong that he could do it, and somehow he even managed to climb up the gate and get back onto the roof.
I was about to scream and then I saw the pistol at his waist, and a knife as well.
My mother was worried about that western man would get himself killed, but I’m the one who’s going to be kidnapped—maybe by one of his friends!
I wondered now if the first man was there to look for beautiful girls to kidnap and steal home to his own country.
But I could hardly think at all, really. It was so strange that I was stunned into a terrified silence. He scurried down the length of the roof and jumped down.
I heard one of the family servants cry out and I tensed. Now I would be saved.
“Stop! Stop! Bandits!”
The whole house began to come alive with shrieks and doors shoved open but even as this was happening, the man was running and my house was getting farther away. He leapt onto a horse, still holding me, and started riding so fast that I thought I might be sick from the jostling.
“Put me down! Please!”
He didn’t listen for a long moment, and then he shifted me so I was sitting on the horse sideways just in front of him, his arm holding me tight.
I looked at him. He looked at me, his teeth gritted. “You are my wife,” he said, in very poorly inflected Mandarin.
“No, I’m not! Who are you?”
Clearly, he didn’t understand a word I said. “I�
�m your wife?” I said, trying a word he knew.
“You are my wife,” he repeated.
Someone told him how to say these words, I thought. He doesn’t even know what any of them mean.
Maybe bandits claim a woman as their wife when they kidnap them. What do I know of these men?
There seemed to be no use in fighting. I knew how strong he was, and nothing I said would persuade him when he didn’t know my language. He rode and rode and it seemed like a long time, but time seemed distorted. Two other men were waiting for him in the moonlight. He jumped down and handed me off to them, and then he got back on the horse. The other two men tried to stop him from going, but he shouted something at them and kept riding. He looked angry and I had a deep sense of dread.
One of the men was Chinese. “You’re safe,” he said. “They won’t hurt you.”
They exchanged words and the other westerner got on a second horse and rode after the first one. He shouted something at the Chinese man that sounded like an order. I coughed on the dust the hooves kicked up. I was left with the Chinese man, and he was clearly not a higher class sort. He had a scruffy beard and his hair was tied back in a very loose ponytail with stray hairs flying every which way. His clothes were dirty. He was almost as tall as the westerners. He looked at me and I was all too aware that I was alone with him and I was young and beautiful. I wished very much that I wasn’t.
I was always very proud of being beautiful and I couldn’t help but resent my husband when he didn’t seem to love me. My father used to say I was too proud. Now I knew he was right. My beauty would get me in terrible trouble.
But as soon as the fear shivered through me, he looked away and seemed almost shy. “Come rest,” he said, motioning me toward a tent. “I won’t hurt you either.”
Inside the tent, a bed was arranged with a few soft pillows and a warm blanket, and there was a lantern and a pot of tea with cups. I was surprised to see any hospitality at all from these bandits.
He grabbed one of the blankets and swept it around my shoulders. “I’m Jie Yuan,” he said. He offered me a cup of tea. “They just call me ‘Jay’.” He smiled wryly.
“That man said I was his wife…”
“The other men are named Rayner and Silvus,” Jie said. “They were your husbands in a past life. They came all the way from England just to find you and take you home.”
My eyes were so wide I couldn’t seem to blink if I wanted to. “How do they know such things?”
“Silvus is a sorcerer.”
“Do they know things like that? In the west?”
“No,” Jie said. “They aren’t normal men. Neither am I.” He swallowed. He seemed to be struggling with something. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I was holding the tea cup but couldn’t drink. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t know it would feel this way,” Jie said. “But I wouldn’t hurt a woman.” He abruptly stood up and left the tent.
I found myself wishing he was still there to talk to, but I was also terrified of him. It seemed as if some outside force was driving him to want to hurt me. At first he stood just outside the tent, like a guard, but then he started walking away and I feared he would leave me all alone with the sounds of the night, for some beast or even more fearsome bandit to find. I opened the tent flap. “Don’t leave me here!”
“I need to hunt,” he said. “Otherwise I might hurt you. Silvus and Rayner aren’t here to stop me. I won’t go far away so I can still protect you if there’s any trouble.”
“Why would you hurt me when you don’t want to hurt me?”
“I made a bargain with them,” he said. “They’re demons who drink blood to live forever, and they made me one of them, so I would live forever too, and help to find you.” He wouldn’t look at me. “It was just two weeks ago that I became one of them, and…it’s making me want to hurt you. But I never would.”
Of all the strange feelings, I almost felt sorry for how tormented he seemed. My husband certainly didn’t care if he hurt me, and he didn’t seem to have feelings either. This man had a lot of feelings and he was trying to fight them to keep me safe, which seemed much more romantic—as long as he won the fight.
Still, I glanced around behind me for anything in the tent that I could use to fight him. When my eyes darted, he suddenly dashed away from me.
I ducked back into the tent and wrapped the blanket tight around me. Demons who drink blood.
None of this could possibly be real, I thought.
They want to take me to…England? To be…Rayner’s wife? Or Silvus’? Was he saying I was their two different wives in two different lives?
If this was real, I wondered what I could do. I didn’t know anything about the west. I wouldn’t know the language or the customs or anything at all. Did this mean I used to be from England in another life? No, it was too strange.
I imagined one of those strange men in my bedchamber doing the things my husband did to me and I couldn’t imagine that either. It was terrifying.
On the other hand, my husband was erased from the picture and I would never have to see him again, and there was relief in that. I certainly had never enjoyed one happy day with him. Could this truly be worse?
It could. You know it could. At least you had a garden, and your pets…
I heard what sounded like screams in the far distance, and even though I hated to leave the tent, I needed to see what was going on, and Jie hadn’t come back. I walked out to the ledge that overlooked my home and the whole house was lit with flames. The screams were coming from my husband’s family and servants fleeing to the road.
That’s why he rode off. Rayner.
He wants to hurt them. I don’t understand.
I started screaming too. “My birds! My birds are trapped in their cage!”
Jie had appeared behind me almost silently. “I told him not to do it,” he said. “I tried to tell him. He doesn’t like this country and he said that your husband hurts you. He was so angry that Silvus couldn’t calm him down.”
“He intends to kill my husband?”
“I think so.”
I stood there staring at the house going up in flames, thinking about my birds and the garden and oddly, nothing much else. I could see the tiny forms of the servants scattering off. I was glad they were safe, as they were mostly kind to me.
I couldn’t muster any feeling for my husband. My body bore all the memories of him, invisible scars. I knew it was my duty as a wife to do what he asked, but I had always expected him to adore me—not to force himself on me and strike me if I wasn’t willing.
He thought he had so much power because he was a wealthy man, and now this foreign man will kill him.
I didn’t know what was happening, really, except that nothing would be the same again. I couldn’t expect any of the old rules to apply. And in that moment, I felt my entire soul hardening up, vowing that I would never be caught unawares like I was on my wedding night and when I woke up in that strange new house for the first time. I couldn’t fight these men but I was never going to bend for them either. I would not even try to be a good wife. Never. Never again.
“They were such sweet birds…they didn’t deserve to burn to death…I don’t think Rayner is a good man.”
“He’s not,” Jie said.
My fists clenched. “If Rayner makes me his wife, I know I have no power, but tell him that I will never be any man’s wife by choice.”
“Rayner feels you already are his wife,” Jie said. “But I’ll stop him. I won’t let him have you. I don’t even know your name…”
“Li Mei.”
“You’re too beautiful for a man like me,” Jie said. “Or a man like him, either.”
“I wish I wasn’t beautiful at all. I don’t suppose he would have kidnapped me, then. He would have just gone home.”
“I don’t think he would,” Jie said. “I’m not sure he thinks you’re beautiful, so much as…”
“He doesn
’t? Then why—” I don’t think Jie meant to make a clever retort, but I still ended up feeling ashamed. Rayner doesn’t want a Chinese girl. He wants an English girl. I see.
“He thinks of you as a different person,” Jie said.
I huffed and went back to the tent.
I waited tensely for some time before Rayner and Silvus came riding back. Rayner was holding the large, ornate birdcage that held my birds in one hand. I could hardly believe he was able to carry it.
How did he know to save the birds?
I saw all this through a crack in the tent flaps but once he got down off his horse, Jie was arguing with him, their voices growing more heated, and I shrank back again. Silvus seemed to be trying to mediate between Jie and Rayner, but of course I couldn’t understand anything they said.
The argument died down, and Rayner said something in a fierce tone, and now he was walking to the tent. He shoved the flap open and crouched in the door with a lamp in his hand. There was already a lamp in the tent, so he had a good look at me, and I had a good look at him.
He was not an ugly man.
Just strange. Much too strange.
Maybe I couldn’t blame him for wanting an English girl either, since I must look as strange to him as he looked to me. He seemed so foreign that it felt wrong to admire him. The look he gave me was not what I expected at all. All the anger had rushed out of him and he just looked weary and almost tender. “Your…name…Li Mei?” he tried.
I nodded. “Li Mei,” I whispered back, trying to suggest the tones of our language to him. I remained closed off to him, but he had saved the birds.
“Lisbeth,” he said, moving closer to me, and I knew he was saying a name. Just by the way he said it, the way he looked at me. The word had a weight of yearning and love that I had never heard in my life. “Lisbeth…” He looked at my face and then grazed more slowly down my silk sleeping clothes before settling on my bound feet in their small night slippers and his eyes narrowed. He said some words like a curse. I pulled my feet under the blankets. He was still talking and I thought he was angry that my feet were bound.
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