by Alyc Helms
I was more on my game by the time the Great Spirits arrived. I still suffered cramps, and I felt like a cow, but with several more allies in my corner I was able to greet our newcomers with gracious equanimity.
It was a good thing too, since I had to greet the other Guardians of China. Feng Huang was the Phoenix, Guardian of the South. Greeting her was easy enough since she was a regular visitor. I could navigate my awe at being in the presence of such a majestic creature. Lao Hu was the Tiger, Guardian of the West. Greeting him was more nerve-wracking. I got the impression that he might eat me even if I didn’t screw things up. Gui Dai was the Tortoise, Guardian of the North, and that conversation ended up taking half the afternoon. I had all the time in the world to mentally rehearse my response while he was making it through his address.
The weirdest thing was having to greet Jian Huo as Lung Huang, the Dragon Guardian of the East, since Jian Huo’s eldest sibling had not deigned to grace us with his presence. The traditional words flowed, but a large part of me wondered what would have happened if I messed things up. Would Jian Huo have cursed my womb simply because tradition and honor demanded it? I thought about asking Si Wei, but I left it alone. I didn’t want to know.
Then there was the qilin. Viridian flames wreathed her slender body, and there was a wildness about her that diverted the eye, as if looking too closely, too directly, would send her fleeing. She woke my deepest girly-girl instincts regarding unicorns. I was ashamed to meet her in my pregnant state, even though I knew that Chinese unicorns didn’t have anything to do with virginity or purity. I was reminded of The Last Unicorn, and Molly Grue’s weeping accusation: Where were you when I was new? … How dare you come to me now, when I am this! For all that I was happy in my chosen life, meeting the qilin made me want to cry for the girl I hadn’t had the chance to be. I never hated my grandfather so much as in that moment. I choked on my greeting; my eyes filled with tears. I was terrified that I’d messed everything up, but she just gave a delicate nod of her head and lowered her twin horns to rest on my belly: her promise that she would not forsake my children as I had been forsaken.
There was also another huxian, but this one was aged beyond time. She was Jiu Wei – nine-tails – and according to Si Wei, she was the first and most powerful of the fox spirits. Even with her advanced age, her amber eyes twinkled, and her silvered hair caught the eye of more than one spirit in attendance. I was utterly charmed by her, and I stayed up late into the evenings chatting and drinking far too much tea with her and Si Wei.
We were such a merry party that it seemed doubly strange that the morning of the seventh day should find us all so somber. After breakfast we gathered in the garden, as we had on the first and fourth days, to await our final guests. Nobody dared mention that it was an exercise in futility. Jian Huo sat on a bench near the entry gate, pensive gaze fixed on the mountain trail. I sat next to him, holding his hand against my belly. Not even that could chase away his gloom.
We waited well into the morning, the clear view into the far-below valley mocking our vigil. Our guests mingled uneasily, trying to show with their patience that they respected Jian Huo’s pain over the great gulf that separated him and his siblings.
Finally, at no signal that I could tell, Jian Huo stood and walked away. The guests breathed a collective sigh of relief that the vigil was over. They began speaking amongst themselves. Si Wei ventured my way, but I waved her off. None of this was my fault; none of it was about me. Didn’t ease my guilt any, and I preferred to wallow in solitude.
I gazed blindly down into the valley for I didn’t know how long before I realized that a front had been building. Low clouds moved in to obstruct the clear view, roiling and rising at a much faster rate than was normal for a meteorological event. I stood, staring for a moment longer to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.
“Jian Huo?” My voice wasn’t loud, but the urgency in it silenced the low murmurs of our guests. He joined me, gaping down at the fog-shrouded valley.
Si Wei was at our side an instant later, her voice low and urgent. “My Lord, have you prepared her to greet them?”
“No. I didn’t… I didn’t think they’d–”
“Men!” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “My Lord, without proper guidance your bride is certain to cause insult. I will offer myself as adviser. In return, you will forgive me the debt I owe you.”
Debt? What debt? This was the first I’d heard of it. I was also a little insulted that they thought I couldn’t hack a few dragons. I mean, I handled my own just fine.
Jian Huo closed his mouth, considering her offer. “The debt you owe me is great. What you offer in return is small.”
“Yeah,” I piped up. “Plus, I’ve managed just fine so far. How hard could it be?”
They both regarded me as if I’d sprouted two heads, and Jian Huo had a look of dawning horror on his face. He turned to Si Wei with a desperate nod: “Done.”
* * *
The preparations that followed could never be termed frenetic – they were too meticulous for that – but there was a sense of harried urgency to them. Si Wei was in her element.
First, she declared that my clothes and hair were too casual for such an occasion. I tried to argue that the dragons were only minutes away, but Si Wei shushed me and told me that since they had kept us waiting, it was permissible for us to keep them waiting. Si Wei whisked me away to my rooms to dress me, roping in Jiu Wei and Song Yulan to help out. Between the three of them, they lectured me thoroughly on how not to insult the gods knocking at our gate.
Thus it was that an hour later, swathed in brocade robes of green, red, and gold; red hair hidden by an elaborate headdress; face whitened with rice powder and features limned with black, I picked my way down the steps into the garden. My headdress wobbled with every step. I would have been embarrassed by my hanfu, but I was too busy concentrating on not falling down the long flight. Splatting at the feet of your guests was not in the standard greeting protocol.
At least I’d done this twice already. As Lady of Jian Huo’s house, it would be my duty to acknowledge the new arrivals. Until I did they would not be considered guests of the house. Paying attention to Si Wei’s subtle gestures, I maneuvered toward Lung Wang, the eldest among the dragons and the true Guardian of the East. Lung Wang had an agelessness that transcended gender. Of all Jian Huo’s siblings, she looked the least human. Her face was a porcelain mask, her eyes deep pools of turbulent water, or maybe storm clouds chasing across the sky. I bowed low, awe replacing my nervous jitters. I’d grown so accustomed to Jian Huo that I forgot how striking and terrifying he had been on our first meeting. Now I remembered.
My fancy hat didn’t go tumbling across the dragon’s feet, which I took as a good omen. I parroted the lines of the formal greeting, and Lung Wang nodded her acceptance. I couldn’t tell if she approved or disapproved. I’d learned to read Jian Huo, but my dragon was an open book compared to his eldest sibling. Whatever the case, Lung Wang stepped aside, and I moved on to greet Jian Huo’s other siblings, so I suppose it didn’t go too badly.
It was good that I had Lung Wang’s acceptance, because my next greeting was to Lung Tian, and his disapproval was plain as anything. Everything about the Celestial Dragon was martial and masculine – in-your-face masculine. He sneered at my greeting, forcing me into more docile and feminine speech forms to assuage him. I got the feeling that he’d been hoping to get a rise out of me so that he could denounce me. Even Si Wei was bristling by the time Lung Tian accepted my greeting and moved aside for his younger siblings.
The next greetings were less fraught. Lung Jiao, the Horned Dragon, was rumored to be the most powerful of the guardians. He was also deaf, and he followed my greeting only by the shape of the words on my lips. He accepted it with the same, aloof nod as Lung Wang.
Lung Shen, the Spiritual Dragon, was the first of those I greeted to have taken female form. Si Wei had given me the gossip on her. She had been furious
when Jian Huo had sided with my grandfather, and she’d been one of the strongest advocates for his exile, but in the intervening years she had taken a laowai lover of her own. Now she was in the glass-house quandary. While she wasn’t likely to be giving me cheek-kisses any time soon, she was also not likely to give me too much grief. Lung Fu Cang, the Dragon of Hidden Treasures, was also in female form. I gathered from Si Wei that Lung Fu Cang preferred to be female. Both Lung Shen and Lung Fu Cang accepted my greetings with detached cordiality.
Lung Ying, the Winged Dragon, who often served as his siblings’ messenger to the human world, gave me the first real smile I’d seen from any of them. He was double-take handsome – a younger, more roguish version of Jian Huo. Si Wei sighed beside me, and I fought back a grin. I wasn’t the only girl around here with a thing for dragons. My greeting to Lung Ying lasted several minutes longer than any of the others because he kept changing the traditional phrasings so that we ended up bantering. It reminded me of some of my sessions with Fang Shih. With a rueful smile, I ended the exchange with a promise that we would speak at much greater length during the coming days.
As I faced my next and final dragon, I wished that the exchange with Lung Ying had lasted longer. Lung Pan, the Coiling Dragon, glared at me with undisguised hatred. Si Wei had warned me that Jian Huo had been close with his youngest sibling, and that Lung Pan had taken her brother’s choice as a personal betrayal. Her youth showed in the way that she was barely able to make it through the greeting. She had no facility with the complex verbal manipulations of Lung Tian. She growled her responses through clenched teeth while the other dragons and many of the spirits looked shocked at her overt rudeness. Speaking with her made me feel years older than her, even though I knew that she was older by aeons. I tried to play down the severity of her rudeness, but I think she recognized that she had lost face in our encounter, and that she was in my debt for not calling her on it. It only made her glower more.
With all of the dragons greeted, I turned to the assembled guests to announce that the gardens and house were open for their enjoyment.
Before I could, a shout from one of the guests drew everyone’s attention: “Another is coming!”
Oh, god. No.
I wanted to groan, tear out my hair, hide my face deep in my robes. “Another” could mean only one being: Lung Di, Jian Huo’s fellow exile. Si Wei and I shared an aggravated glance. Jian Huo looked furious, as did most of his siblings. Only Lung Wang and Lung Jiao appeared unconcerned, and with Lung Jiao I wondered if it was because he was deaf and hadn’t heard the shout.
Jian Huo and his other siblings strode to the gates. I wished I could just follow the old mantra of never getting involved in family quarrels, but the formal greeting period had not been closed, and I was the arbiter of such things during the formal greeting. Sitting this one out would be a catastrophe in the long-term. Lung Jiao regarded me with studied indifference, and I wondered if maybe he did know who was coming up the mountain and was waiting to see what I’d do.
Taking another breath, I called out in carrying tones, “Stop.”
Lifting my robes a fraction, I teetered through a startled throng, no longer quite as concerned about my wobbling hat. Everyone stared; even Jian Huo seemed to be looking at me as for the first time. I made it to the gate and looked down the path. Perhaps a hundred feet off stood a handsome man. Looking at him, I would never have guessed he was guilty of any of the things Jian Huo had described to me in our time together.
“Who comes to the House of Lung Huang and his Bride?” I called the traditional opening.
“It is Lung Di, Dragon of the Underground and brother to Lung Huang. I come to offer blessings on the womb of Lung Xin Niang,” he responded.
I let a beat pass, then two. This was the moment when I would invite him to the house and the festival. I dared not glance around to see what I should do, not even to Jian Huo or Si Wei. This was my decision to make, and I had to make it myself or appear weak. Another moment passed, but I wouldn’t let myself be rushed. I’d been performing for years; I knew how long I could hold a crowd before I began to lose them.
Of course, that knowledge didn’t help me with my decision.
If I invited Lung Di to stay, then I could kiss any hope of a cordial relationship with my husband’s other siblings goodbye. They would be livid and would take it as a sign of my poor judgment. But if I refused him entry then they might also take issue with my choice, condemning it as arrogance. Who was I, a human, a laowai, to refuse a dragon anything, even an honorless one? On top of that, there was the whole Sleeping Beauty issue. Smart people sucked it up and invited the evil fairy to the christening. Could I risk making an enemy out of Lung Di, when it might be my children who would pay the price?
The man below shifted; so did the crowd. Jian Huo looked ready to pop a vein. I was running out of time.
Would letting him into our home be so terrible, if it meant that our children might grow up in safety? Jian Huo would be furious. Even in their shared exile, he never sought out his brother. The one thing he had left, the one thing that kept him from despair, the thing that he held strong to and that differentiated him from his brother, was his honor. It was what made it acceptable for his other siblings to visit, even though they never had before this day. It was all he was. I couldn’t invite dishonor into his house. I couldn’t do that, not even for the sake of our children.
The crowd was beginning to whisper, but when I opened my mouth, they hushed.
“This is a house of honor. You have tired yourself to no purpose. You are not welcome here.”
I had a brief moment to register the surprise and fury on Lung Di’s face before I turned my back on him to face the crowd. Their faces also showed surprise, although I’m pretty sure that if Jian Huo weren’t so stuffy he would have kissed me right then. Even Lung Tian and Lung Pan looked bowled over.
“Friends, I thank you for your greetings and welcome you to our house. Please feel free to make it yours as well until such time as we must say our farewells. May friendship and goodwill flow between us.” And with those words, I was done. I swept back through the crowd and up into the house, Si Wei and the rest of my abbreviated entourage following in my wake. The last thing I saw before ducking through the doorway was Jian Huo’s face, and the fierce pride and love in his eyes. Whatever the cost, I’d made the right choice.
* * *
“So, tell me about this debt you owed to Jian Huo.”
It was after the banquet, and Si Wei and I had spent most of the evening learning a complicated drinking game from Shui Yin, as Lung Ying had instructed us to call him. Part of the game called for the revelation of embarrassing confidences, rather like a Chinese version of Truth or Dare. I sucked at it, and I had spent most of the night spilling every awkward moment I’d ever lived, much to the entertainment and amusement of my two companions. I didn’t mind because I was in full matchmaker mode. If ever two individuals needed to hook up, it was the fox-maiden and my husband’s handsome young brother. Si Wei had cottoned on to this, but Shui Yin was proving to be oblivious as only a guy could be.
At my words, Si Wei caught her breath, and Shui Yin wouldn’t meet my eyes, indicating that perhaps I’d overstepped the bounds of the game with my question. I’d finally won a round, and this was my only hope of getting the story out of anyone, so I just smiled and waved away their discomfort.
“Oh, c’mon. It’s not like Shui Yin doesn’t know, and probably everyone else here except me. Plus, the debt is forgiven now, so the water is under that bridge. And you know me, it’s not like I’ll understand any of the ramifications, or that I’ll ever hold it against you. So what’s the what?”
My unique butchering of Cantonese proved to be the huxian’s undoing. Si Wei smiled in spite of herself and nodded her assent. She opened her mouth, struggling to find the words. Shui Yin took her hand, and I tamped down on the urge to jump up and shout “Score!” Two birds and all that.
“It was many c
enturies ago. I was,” she paused again, then forged on, “I was Ba Wei – eight tails. I had much power and was second only to Jiu Wei.” Her voice grew quiet, and I could tell she was blushing even in the dim light. “I wanted to be first.
“There was a man, a powerful man. I went to him and courted him and made him more powerful. With my aid, he became Emperor. But he was also a cruel tyrant, and when I was with him I became one too. Together we developed new forms of horror to unleash on the world, but we went too far. His generals rose up against him. He lost the Mandate of Heaven, and I was discovered and cast out. The generals cut off my tails. They left me to die.
“I went to every spirit I knew, everyone who I had ever had dealings with, but in my quest for power, in my attempt to supplant Jiu Wei, I had mistreated them all. They turned their backs on me.” She paused and became lost in reflection.
“All except Jian Huo,” I guessed, when she didn’t go on.
“I have never understood it. You know as well as I how highly he values honor–”
“He also values pigheaded stubbornness,” I cut in. “I imagine that even with all you’d been through, even with everyone turning you away, you just kept going. Am I right?” She nodded, delicate brows knitted in thought.
“You think that this is so? I had always assumed he gave me shelter so that I would be in his debt. I always assumed that he thought little of me.” Her mouth twisted somewhere between a frown and a bitter smile. “He was quick to warn you away from me.”
“Naw,” I brushed aside her concerns with a wave of my hand. “If he despised you, he’d have left you to rot. I doubt the debt meant half as much to him as it did to you, otherwise he wouldn’t have let you off so easy.”