Girls of Paper and Fire

by Natasha Ngan

  “How was it?” I ask tentatively, shifting back.

  She avoids my eyes. “He was… rough. More so than usual.” I wince, and she carries on quickly, “But I expected he might be like this. The attack has exposed his vulnerability. He’s angry. He’s trying to reassert some of the power he’s lost.”

  “So the rumors are true?” I say. “The assassins were helped from within the court?”

  She nods. “I heard that he arrested eleven officials on suspicion of being involved with the attack just this morning. He’s out for blood.”

  “Hasn’t he had enough already?”

  In the dark, Wren’s eyes seem to flare as she answers huskily, “Not nearly.”

  Gently, I help her out of her clothes. She’s wearing a tangerine-colored ruqun set with jewels, a slit running up the length of one side of the skirt. But as I pull her robes off, I discover that the slit isn’t a part of the design; the skirt has been slashed clean in two. Only a makeshift knot at its waist was holding it up.

  I swallow, a prickly sensation creeping across the back of my neck. The sky is clear tonight, a moonbeam slanting into the room. By its light, I make out the dark blossoms of bruises on Wren’s skin. There’s one on her shoulder. More along her hips. A huge handprint wrapped around her throat.

  I stare at them, heart wild. Anger charges through me so forcefully I almost retch.

  “How dare he,” I snarl.

  Wren grabs my hands. “Don’t waste your thoughts on him,” she says, lifting my fingertips to her lips.

  “But—”

  “Lei, please. At least not tonight. Not now. I can handle pain—it’s only temporary. And Madam Himura will have a shaman heal me tomorrow.”

  I gape at her. “Do you realize how sick that sounds? ‘Dear shamans, won’t you please give us some magic so we can go back to the King and get broken all over again?’”

  Wren kisses my hands softly. “No one said anything about breaking.”

  We lie down and draw the blankets over us. Moonlight silvers Wren’s face, draws a sharp outline along the line of her cheekbone and the hollow of her neck. My fingers trace it down to the upward roll of her shoulder.

  “Some of the girls are suspicious of you.” I say. “Aoki told me earlier. Zhin saw you leaving your room at night, and they think you might be going to meet someone. A lover. You have to be more careful, Wren.”

  Her brow wrinkles. “They don’t know where I’m going.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Lei—”

  “I know,” I say before she can finish. “You’re trying to protect me.”

  “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

  I sigh. “It’s just, I’d prefer it if you let me decide whether to be protected.” My thumb skims her shoulder, sloping up into the warm dip of her neck. “Maybe I can handle it. Whatever you’ve got going on, maybe I could help.”

  Wren closes her eyelids. Tiredly, she takes my hand and moves it to cup her cheek, her palm on top of mine. She opens her eyes. In the moonlight they are bright—the opposite of her voice when she whispers, “You can’t. Not with this. No one can.”

  I want to press her more. But remembering what she went through tonight—the thought of it makes bile fly up my throat—I stop myself. Pulling her close, I burrow my nose in her skin, drawing her cool, ocean scent into my lungs. She smells like home, like happiness and safety and hope and… love.

  I want so much in that moment to tell Wren how I feel. To offer her the words that come to my lips every time she kisses me now, every time she even looks my way. But I wait too long and my courage fades. Instead I murmur, “Can you imagine a world where we’re free to be with each other?”

  “Actually,” she replies after a pause, “I can.”

  “Then take me there, Wren. Please.”

  She answers, so quiet I barely hear it.

  “I will.”

  I leave her room shortly after, so full of the glowing thrum being with Wren brings, and the promise in her words, that a smile lifts my lips. So when I meet Aoki’s eyes where she’s watching from her own doorway, half wrapped in shadow, arms rigid at her sides, it takes a few seconds for the giddy look to drop from my face.

  Perhaps if I’d not been smiling, I’d have been able to hide it. I could have said we were just talking, the same way Aoki and I still do some nights, though admittedly not as often recently. But I know that she realizes the truth the minute she sees my expression.

  It’s how she looks when she talks about the Demon King. Radiant. Lit from within.

  Without a word, Aoki pivots on the spot and slams the screen door shut behind her. The sound has bite in the quiet of the hallway. I lurch after her, not caring in that moment who might hear. She backs away as I enter her room, and I falter, stung.

  The look on her face. I never would have believed she could look at me that way.

  “Please, Aoki,” I say, my throat narrowing. “You—you can’t tell anyone.”

  Her laugh is hollow. The scowl warping her mouth makes her look ugly, so unlike my sweet friend, the girl whose laughter lifts my soul like sunshine. She usually seems so young, full of lightness, her insides practically effervescent. But there’s something about the way she’s holding herself right now, as if she’d aged years in the blink of an eye.

  “Is that how little you think of me?” she says, and there’s hurt in her voice, too. “I thought we were friends. That we told each other everything.”

  “How could I have told you about this?” I cry, flinging my arms wide. “I know how close you are with the King! You wouldn’t approve—”

  “Of course I wouldn’t! We’re Paper Girls! We’re not meant for anyone else.”

  My fingers tighten into fists. “He made that choice for us. How is that fair?”

  “It’s not about fairness. It’s about duty.”

  “Gods, you sound just like Madam Himura.”

  “Good,” Aoki flings back. “That means I’m doing my job well.”

  I scowl at her. “No. It means you’re not thinking for yourself.”

  Aoki stiffens, anger rising from her like heat-shimmer on wet stones. Her eyes are fierce, and I realize what she’s going to say a second before she speaks.

  “I love him.”

  The sentence hits me with a physical weight. Silence stretches between us, a dark, pulsing thing.

  I just about get the words out. “You hated him, once.”

  “I didn’t know him then.” Aoki softens, voice curling like a sleeping cat’s tail, and she kneads her hands in front of her, wide eyes glowing in the dark. “He’s good to me, Lei—kind and caring and fair. He’s even said he’ll consider making me his queen if I continue to please him.”

  I almost choke. “His queen?”

  Her cheeks flush, and she shrinks back. “You don’t think I’m good enough for the throne?”

  “No! That’s not it—”

  “Because he could, if he wanted to. Instead of a Demon Queen, he could have a Paper Queen. I could be his wife.”

  My jaw slackens. Scenes from the past few months plow into me, one after the other: Aoki’s eyes brightening when she talks about the King; what she told me that night at the koyo celebrations; her excitement at the executions; the look on her face every time the bamboo chip arrives and her name isn’t the one on it. Like mine for Wren, Aoki’s love for the King has been building over the months. I’ve just been so wrapped up in my own feelings that I didn’t realize it.

  I’m supposed to be her best friend, and I didn’t even notice she was falling in love with a monster.

  It takes me a while before I can speak. I lift my chin, looking her straight on. “You’re too good for him. You deserve more.”

  “More?” Her irises are shiny. “What could be more than being his queen?”

  After all the words we’ve thrown at each other, the silence that follows is horribly loud. It grows, stretches, spirals out, a physical distance, building feet and miles an
d whole countries and lifetimes between us, between me and the pure, beautiful girl who once blushed at the mention of just a kiss and worried that she wouldn’t be enough for the King.

  “I should go,” I say eventually in a constricted voice. I wait in case she disagrees with me. But her expression is just as defiant as before.

  I turn to the door, eyes prickling. As my hand lifts to slide it open, her voice sounds behind me.

  “You really love her?”

  There’s a flash of the Aoki I know in her voice: tender, compassionate.

  I spin round. “Yes,” I reply eagerly, offering her a smile. I step forward. “Oh, Aoki, I’m so sorry—”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  The rest of my sentence tumbles away. In an instant, coldness returns between us, as jolting as a wave of ice water. Her look is so hard it’s painful to hold, and I falter back toward the door, one arm wrapped across my chest, like a shield.

  “At least I chose who I fell in love with,” I say roughly.

  As soon as it’s out I want to take it back. But I can tell by the look on Aoki’s face that it’s too late, and I hurry from her room before I make it even worse, tears blurring my eyes as something splinters deep in my chest.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SCREAMING WAKES ME THE NEXT DAY. Instead of the usual gong, and too early, the dark still shivering with almost-burnt-out candles and traces of moonlight on the floor. A horrible raw sound that tears through the night on broken wings. Not even screaming. Wailing… wild and untamed.

  The sound is close. It’s accompanied by shouting, sharp words, and the rap of talons on the floor. Madam Himura.

  Something is happening to one of the girls. That’s my first thought. My second is—

  Wren.

  I lurch outside, sucking in a hiss at the coldness of the floorboards on my bare soles. The other girls are already up, looking out from their doorways, faces tight with apprehension. From the room opposite, Aoki meets my eyes before quickly turning her cheek.

  “Please!” a girl screams. “It won’t happen again, I promise!”

  Halfway down the corridor, Mariko is sprawled on the floor. The robe of her nightdress hangs open, revealing the heavy curves of her breasts, the pale flesh of her legs. She struggles, hanging on to where Madam Himura is gripping her hair to drag her down the hall.

  “Let’s just hear what she has to say,” Mistress Eira pleads. She’s crouching, trying to get between Mariko and Madam Himura.

  The eagle-woman swings out with her cane. “You’re too soft on them, Eira!” she snarls, and Mistress Eira doubles over as the cane cracks across her back. “I told you before, when Lei refused the King. You show them the slightest bit of leniency and this is how they repay you!”

  “Blue!” Mariko cries. Her eyes are crazed as she seeks her out of the watching faces. “Blue, help me!”

  Blue stiffens in her doorway. A glimmer of something passes across her face, but she doesn’t move.

  Wren steps forward instead. “Madam Himura,” she asks steadily, “what is Mariko being punished for?”

  Madam Himura’s yellow eyes flare. “For being a slut! She was found by one of my maids last night, legs spread for a soldier.”

  I’m reminded suddenly of Wren’s words that night in the isolation room. She said that the guard outside my room had slipped away to meet a girl. Was it Mariko?

  “I’m sorry!” Mariko sobs, her face splotchy and red. “I won’t do it again!”

  “Of course you won’t,” Madam Himura retorts. “Because you’re never coming back to the palace.”

  Mariko freezes. “Wh-what do you mean?”

  A wheezing laugh escapes Madam Himura’s throat. “You think you can defy the King in such a way and an apology is all that’s needed to make up for it? Foolish girl!”

  I wince, instinctively reeling back as she turns her attention to the rest of us. She glares around with her cutting eyes. The layered feathers on her humanlike arms ruffle open as they spread into the beginning of wings, making her seem twice her usual size.

  “Come, the rest of you,” she commands coolly. “You’re about to discover what happens to paper that turns rotten.”

  Using her wings to steady herself against Mariko’s struggles, she drags Mariko down the corridor. With no choice but to follow Madam Himura’s orders, I pad behind them with the rest of the girls and our maids. Mariko’s maid, a plump dog-form girl called Vee, is sobbing so hard she has to stuff her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.

  “It’s all right,” Lill whispers, helping her along. “It’ll be all right.”

  She looks up, meeting my eyes where I’m watching over my shoulder, and it hits me that it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her lie.

  We trail Madam Himura to an empty room. She throws Mariko down the minute she gets inside. “Get Doctor Uo,” she directs one of the maids as we file in with reluctant steps.

  Mariko thrashes on the floor. “Please!” she begs. “I can’t leave, not before I see Kareem! Where is he? Where did you take him?”

  Madam Himura glares down her hooked beak-nose. “Your soldier is being dealt with by General Ndeze. He’ll be stripped of his title and banished from the palace. That’s if the King is feeling generous.”

  Mariko dissolves into wails.

  “I can’t watch this,” I breathe to Wren next to me.

  “We have no choice,” she replies.

  “I don’t care.” I take a step forward. Wren hisses at me, but I ignore her, rounding on Madam Himura. “Why can’t we take lovers?” I ask her loudly, throwing out an arm. “The King has his pick every night, and when we leave, there’ll just be a new set of girls for him to play with.”

  Her eyes widen. “What did you say?”

  “Maybe if the King weren’t such a cruel, disgusting excuse of a leader, we wouldn’t look for comfort elsewhere—”

  Though I knew it was coming, the crack of her cane still takes my breath away.

  I double over, clutching my jaw. The metallic tang of blood fills my mouth. Wren pulls me back before Madam Himura can strike me again, but her attention is distracted just then by the doctor’s arrival.

  Doctor Uo looks as though he’d just woken up. His robes are mussed, his hair matted. “What’s going on?” he asks, scratching at one curving boar tusk, blinking out from behind his round spectacles.

  Madam Himura points to Mariko. “This girl has forfeited her place in the palace. She must be branded.”

  The doctor’s expression is as blank as when he was inspecting me. “I see.” Mariko scuttles away as he crouches down in front of her. “Someone hold her still,” he commands, and I’m thrown back to the assessments shortly after I arrived, the helplessness I felt as the doctor stripped me.

  I massage my jawbone, smearing blood across my sleeve.

  Madam Himura waves at the waiting maids. “Help the doctor!”

  They move forward reluctantly. Mariko lashes out when they get close, catching Lill in her ribs with an elbow. At once, Madam Himura whirls forward and slaps Mariko so hard it sends her cheek into the floor with a sickening crunch.

  “Struggle all you want, girl,” she spits. “You’re just going to make the scarring worse.”

  It’s not until the next moment, when Doctor Uo takes a knife from his bag, that I understand what is happening.

  The doctor holds Mariko’s face still. “Someone quiet her!” he orders as she starts to scream.

  A maid brings over a wad of fabric. The doctor stuffs it into her mouth, muffling her cries. He raises the blade to her forehead.

  The first incision heightens her shrieking. But by the last, her sobs are silent.

  When he finally moves away, I see the bloody strokes of the character cut into Mariko’s forehead: Lan.

  Rotten.

  “Now everyone will know what you did,” Madam Himura hisses. She turns to us. “Remember this, any time you think you can defy the King.” Her eyes land on me. “You will not ge
t away with it.” Then she flaps an arm, barking, “Back to your rooms! You have classes to get to. Don’t think this has changed any of your duties.”

  I hesitate, and Wren draws me away. “Don’t push it,” she whispers.

  “What’ll happen to her?” I ask in a weak voice as we head down the corridor.

  The rest of the girls are silent. As Blue shoves past her, practically running, Chenna stares down at the floor, her lips forming silent prayers. Zhen and Zhin walk hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. I try to catch Aoki’s eyes, but she’s staring glassily ahead, absently picking at the sleeves of her robes.

  “Mariko’s marked now,” Wren explains under her breath. “She won’t ever be able to get a job, be married. She’ll either starve to death or find work in the only places that’ll take her.”

  “Prostitution houses?”

  She nods, and I press my lips tight, battling the urge to retch.

  When we get back to our rooms, I knock on Blue’s door. She doesn’t answer, but I go in anyway.

  She’s standing by the window, staring out. Morning light filtering through the half drawn shutters frames her outline in pale gold. There’s something so painful about the stiff way she’s holding her body, as though to keep herself together. As though she’d fall apart—literally, piece by piece, limb by limb, joints unraveling in an inelegant dismantlement—if she released herself even the tiniest fraction.

  “Blue—” I start.

  She interrupts, quiet. “Go away.” Her voice breaks on the words. She repeats it, louder, with a jerk of her neck: “Go away!”

  “I’m here,” I say, moving closer. “I just wanted you to know. If you ever need to talk or anything, I’m here.”

  Blue spins round, her face streaked with tears, her eyes manic. “I said, go away!” she shrieks, and lurches toward me.

  I stumble out, not stopping until I get back to my room. Inside, I stagger to the window and gulp in air, fingers shaking where they’re twined around the latticed woodwork. It takes me a long time to get my breathing to slow, and even then I can still hear the ghost of Mariko’s screams.