by Peter Fang
“Aw—Gāisǐ1!!” Manfred tried to reach his broken foot. His fingers inched over the dirt-filled boot and tugged on the shoelaces––-a fresh spasm of pain shot through the boot as he bent forward. He bit down his lips to swallow the pain and untied the shoelaces. His foot was swelling quickly and he had to untie the boot to release the pressure from building up. All was lost, he thought. Even with a spell, it would take him at least several minutes to heal. June would be long gone by the time he managed to get up. He was waiting for the queen’s voice to pepper him with insults and threats, but it was strangely quiet.
Through the cloud of pain, he sensed that June was standing behind him. He turned and saw a tall silhouette––-it was indeed June. Manfred pointed his gun at her, but June was faster; there was a sharp pain in his palm, and his pistol flew away, taking half of his hand with it.
“It’s over…stop fighting. Listen to me. You need to rid of your parasite.” June closed her eyes and whispered a spell to rouse the poison in Manfred’s wounded hand.
A sharp pain immediately spidered up Manfred’s arm. He looked down and saw his skin peeled away, strip by strip. He rolled on the ground as the pain boiled inside. Moments later, something pushed from his stomach and crawled up his throat.
“Stop!” Manfred screamed. “Don’t do that; you will kill me!”
The pain suddenly stopped. Manfred looked at his hands and they were intact. Even more surprising, he could not hear any queen’s voice inside his head.
“Come with me,” urged June. “You are like a father to me. Leave this world of suffering and come with me––-please?”
Manfred finally mustered the energy to turn and face her. Against the bright moonlight, he could only see her silhouette. “No, we can’t,” he replied.
“Why not?”
“I—” Manfred’s voice croaked.
June sighed. “She’s beyond help. Meredith is dying. Nothing we can do…not even with the queen’s help.”
Manfred snapped, “You are wrong! I can keep her alive with the special spell.”
June cried, “Alive? You call their condition alive? Can’t you see what your son turned into? The spells have poisoned their bodies and their souls. They will only get worse and you know it.”
“I know where I did wrong with the spell. I will change them back once I get the disease out of their bodies.”
“It’s too late. The poison has taken root inside of them; they have become the disease! Queen is just using you like she did with me—slaves!”
Manfred deepened his tone. “Queen warned me about this. She said you would start saying nonsense once you started to evolve. You have to give up now while the queen can still help you. Give me back the Elder box.”
June groaned. “I see that her words have set roots in your mind. But you already know the truth, don’t you?”
A breeze flowed through the forest, and June lifted her head to taste the frost in the air. “Do you know what it was like to feel the freedom again? To be your own person and not worry about Queen’s voice inside your head? I can’t go back to that, and I can feel your mind agreeing with me.” She saw Manfred wincing as he tried to sit up to face her.
“You are hurt––-I’m sorry.” June made small steps forward but stopped quickly.
Manfred’s voice cracked, and tears welled up in his eyes. “Come back with me, June. I can ask Queen to forgive you.”
June coughed, and dark blood spurted from her mouth. Drops touched Manfred’s face, burning his skin.
“June, let me help you! There will be unimaginable pain before you die.” Manfred stared at June as he watched more blood pouring out of her mouth.
June shook her head and swallowed her blood. “That’s why I need you to come with me. Follow me so you can set your soul free.” Her voice shifted into a crescendo before collapsing to the ground. It was a sign that she would soon turn into a jing. “Read the spell backward, and you will have it in your mind, but Queen will not recognize it when she talks to you. Once you read the spell backward, it will stay hidden inside.”
“No, June, don’t do it—”
“It's up to you now. I have been cultivating this spell for a while—a gift to you. It will slowly grow inside you, feeding off every word that the queen speaks to you and creating the needed counterspell against her. One day, when it is time, I will be back to release it for you.” June held out the Elder box; it was one of the boxes that had the queen’s ashes. June started to chant with an indecipherable song; the wooden box unfolded its top, and a set of large, insect antenna unfurled and started to vibrate vigorously.
Manfred felt a spell surfaced inside his mind. He tried to counter it with his own spell, but it was too late.
“Don’t resist; it will only make it more painful…now you will read it backward…”
Manfred fought to resist, but he was powerless. He already saw the phrase in his mind––-a three-letter phrase. His mind read it back before he could stop it. He then saw the phrase fade away.
“Wait—” Manfred dropped to the ground, clenched his head, frantically scratching and reaching for something out of his grasp.
“Farewell, Manfred––-” With a slice of her sword, her neck swung to the side and a stream of dark blood gushed out. Her arms extended straight down in spasm, and her slender body collapsed inches from Manfred. Ten-inch long centipedes crawled out of her body, and it quickly decomposed into ashes. The wooden box retreated its wings, dropped to the ground and rolled next to Manfred.
Manfred breathed heavily as he watched June’s rigid body slowly change back to human form. The moon poked through behind the cloud; its chilly light swept across the landscape, hitting the girl’s corpse. Her once pearl-colored skin quickly wrinkled and dried into a leathery hide.
He picked up the wooden box and got up slowly. His hand and broken ankle were starting to heal. He wiggled his four new fingers germinating out of the wound. Manfred cringed at the arousing, tingling sensation.
“Good job, Manfred,” the queen’s voice surfaced inside Manfred’s mind. “What a waste this is with June! I invested so much in her, treated her like my blood child, but she just didn’t have the strength in her to hold it together. You and Meredith treated this runaway like one of your own, and this is her way of showing gratitude? Well, we shall move on. Get rid of her body!”
“Yes, Queen.” The pain in his arm was fading; Manfred was able to form thoughts again.
“What did you two talk about? All of my sensors were dull at the end.”
Queen’s question caught Manfred by surprise, but he could not recall the conversation he’d had with June. What happened after they caught up with June? Did I kill her? Manfred couldn’t remember exactly how she died.
“She...didn’t say anything. She looked at me and just...took her own life.” Manfred stumbled with his last few words. It was disturbing to him that a part of his memory was gone. He pounded on his head and tried to will his memory back, but a migraine forced him to stop. He clasped his hands around his temple and fell to the ground.
“Stop!” the queen’s voice rattled inside Manfred’s head. “She put a spell on you. Probably tried to get you to go with her. It does that to your memory. The more you try, the more painful it gets. The pain will subside.”
“There’s one more thing my Queen, I––-”
“Yes, I know. Keep honing your craft and you can save your wife, Meredith. But do not forget your duty to locate blood children and make more crafts.”
“My Queen, you can always count on me; I want to be with my family. They are the only thing I have left in this world.”
“And you shall, but you need to trust me,” whispered the queen.
Manfred felt the familiar spell taking hold of him. He didn’t mind, even if he somehow knew the queen was using him. He could not abandon his hope on his son, Baobao and wife, Meredith.
“By the way, I felt a ripple from a little boy in Chicago. Zhang Fei caught him a few wee
ks ago.”
“Zhang Fei? That’s number sixty-sixty,” said Manfred.
Queen sounded elated, “I—tasted the little boy’s soul, but it was different this time; there was an echo that came from the northwest. That’s our signal that something important lives here. Whenever there’s an echo from a location, that’s where we need to go.”
Queen felt ripples from magic artifacts that captured her ancient enemies’ descendants. Over the years, Manfred and helpers before him made countless artifacts and placed them across the country—like a spider web. Ripples sometimes create echoes that inform Queen where she should go next in her endless pursuit of reconstitution and revenge.
The queen’s voice tightened. “Yes, go look for your precious ingredients in the forest, but careful with the dosage for Meredith; you see how it is already changing her.”
Manfred hesitated, but his voice brightened up. “Thank you, my Queen. Thanks for looking after my family.”
“It looks like your wounds have healed; the parasite in your body still has life left. Now get to work.”
The queen’s voice fell silent.
Manfred slowly rose to his feet. His frail body felt weighed down and every move conjured up a wave of needling pain in his joints and muscles. He tried several steps but had to stop to catch his breath. He looked around the forest and could not believe that all twenty-one of the zombies were defeated. He searched for any animals—anything, but there was only silence. He stood still and waited until the moon peeked through the clouds. Hours went by, and finally, there was quivering in a nearby bush. It was a large female raccoon with three kits.
“Time to raise some helpers.” Manfred threw darts from his fingers, and the raccoon family fell to the ground.
The forest’s dark floor broke with a silver line. Moonlight shone down from above. Manfred looked up at the moon and vaguely recalled something important June had said, but the vestige of that memory barely tickled his mind. He stuck his finger into the dirt and cast a spell, then stepped back and waited. Moments later, the ground moved, and a giant worm broke the surface. It was the ancient worm named Lão Chóng. He sat down next to it and petted Lão Chóng on its head, then started to hum an ancient song. Lão Chóng replied with a wave of hums––-it was a subsonic undulating tune that humans couldn’t detect, but it was music to Manfred’s ears.
After the last verse, Manfred clapped his hands. “Be at peace, raging souls…”
Manfred stood up, moved his ankle, and stretched his fingers to test their strength. Satisfied with the result, he ordered, “Lão Chóng, recite the germination spell. Those raccoons will help us clean up this mess. We have a lot of work to do.”
Lão Chóng hummed; a swarm of flies crawled out of its skin and formed a black cloud. The cloud followed the scent and found the dead raccoons. The cloud spread and crawled into the carcasses.
The carcasses convulsed.
3
Grit in Grindstone
1985, Seattle. Manfred fanned out his fingers and let them linger in space. There was a swarm of raven-colored mosquitoes, so small that they resembled specks of dust. One after the other, they landed on his fingers like miniature planes.
Manfred was proud of the swarm of bloodthirsty bugs that he raised to search for the blood children. He had been releasing these mosquitoes all over the states. First, they traveled up from California, getting signals from these mosquitoes to sample their blood. They slowly followed the scents up the Pacific coastline until they arrived in Washington State. A pure blood child would allow the queen to take over the child’s body as host after she found all the ash boxes. It had been a long and painful journey, but they had managed it so far, and with each passing day, the queen sensed her destiny of reconstituting herself was drawing nearer.
Before crossing the Pacific Ocean, she spent hundreds of years in China searching for her ashes and the keys to open them. One by one, she located them and slowly regained her spirit from the human flesh from her blood children. Along the way, she also tried to hunt down her old enemies’ descendants.
Manfred walked over to an antique sewing machine, bent down and whispered into a golden box hidden under the machine. Moments passed; then with a familiar shudder, she woke from her slumber. There was a vibration inside the slit––-its movement stiff and slow, still waking from her sleep. Manfred could hear the queen awakening inside the compartment. The queen––-one that gave him life, the one he served to keep his family alive.
“Time to eat?” The queen paused and sniffed the air around her. “Let me taste it—” her voice quivered. “It’s been many moons since a taste of a blood child––-It’s been too long.”
The sewing machine uncloaked into a morbid creature. It was a mix between a spider body and human torso. It stretched its legs and slowly moved towards Manfred. The golden box hung below the creature’s belly. It lowered itself and revealed a small slit. The queen’s spirit was entrapped inside.
Manfred flicked his fingers and the mosquitoes hovered in the air. One mosquito glided down into the slit and the needle-like claws of the queen’s arms clamped down into the mosquito and crushed it in half––-the mosquito offered no resistance. Moments later, she extended her arm out from the slit, and another misquote glided down onto the claw. This continued until all of the mosquitoes were eaten by the queen.
The queen pitched a scream that numbed Manfred’s ears. Manfred had not heard her scream since that battle with June, and he knew they had found another special one.
“Finally! Pure blood children!” the queen shrilled. “There are two this time! Their blood is pure, not like that half-breed, June.”
“Two?” Manfred slowly sat down on a chair. “This has never happened before, right?”
“It has, but it was before your time. I have to let you know that only one shall be the blood child.”
“My Queen, I beg for your forgiveness, but why can’t we have two?”
“The curse will kill both of them—if their parents don’t get to them first. I only have the ability to save one.”
“The curse still exists…but which one should we choose?” Manfred murmured.
“You are asking the question I don’t have the answer to––-there are things too precious to decide only by their blood. I need to see them—bring each of them to me, separately, when they are both more than twenty-five. The choice will be obvious once I meet them.”
“Of course, my Queen.” Manfred bowed.
“There is another wrinkle I felt when I tasted their blood,” the Queen continued. “They both know someone that is my enemy.”
Manfred stood up. “Who?”
“I can’t see that yet, so we need to be there before something happens to the children. We can’t go inside their house, but we can place an artifact inside to protect them. Let’s just hope that they will survive.”
Queen’s body suddenly raised, she paced on all fours, then settled near the center. “Quickly, we need to perform the ritual before the blood dries. It will tell us where they live, and by what ages to pick them.”
Manfred retrieved two boxes from a casket and placed them carefully inside a large circle of wood sticks and feathers. The two boxes were the Elder and the Weave. He lay the two boxes next to each other. Their tendrils and arms slithered in and out of their air holes.
Manfred then took out some remaining mosquitoes from a satchel and let it fly towards the two wooden boxes. The Elder and the Weave caught the mosquitoes with their tentacles and pulled them inside. Soon, the Elder extended out his antennae and fluttered. They vibrated its fine hairs in a dizzying pace until the sounds could no longer be heard. The Weave also came to life. At the end of each small tentacle were miniature human hands that were capable of making artifacts. They pulled strands of milky webs from tiny holes and started to sew together a miniature Chinese dollhouse.
The dollhouse was first completely white, and the textures were rough; then as time passed, colors emerged and the s
hapes started to set. It had large wooden posts near the entrance and roof-supporting truss surrounding the house. The roof was covered with tiles and the edges reached upward into the sky; Chinese calligraphic writings dotted across the wooden post and on the red beams buttressing the structure. Inside, there was a small courtyard and two dolls, each shaped as a small child, each a girl.
Queen hummed as she waited.
After about an hour, the two boxes stopped and retreated back into their sedated state.
Queen murmured, “The two dolls depict the girls’ souls; I can see where they live through their eyes, and their lives are about to change for the worse. We don’t have much time left before the curse possesses their parents.”
“Why not pick them now?” asked Manfred.
She sighed. “It will be a while before we can pick them; they are too young and weak. Use a proxy to deliver this dollhouse to their residence. Once inside, it will give the blood children strength to survive; it can’t be removed until it has served its purpose to protect them, or we fail.”
The queen coughed. “I am tired, anything else?”
“My Queen—” Manfred stopped short of speaking his thoughts, but he finally forced himself to muster enough courage to ask. “We—chatted about this before. Meredith’s health is getting worse, and I have tried everything, but nothing is working anymore. I—wish for my Queen to help.”
There was a long silence, and then the queen raised her voice just enough to be heard. “Yes, I noticed that. You don’t think I know what is going on with her? Her body has poison. I have done what I can by giving you all of the spells, but I can’t afford to exert any more energy on a lost cause. We just found two blood children––-they can help me heal faster. The faster I heal, the better chance there will be time left for your wife. Once the blood child is chosen, we will kill off the other, and use the remaining for powerful spells. We could bring your wife back to full health.”