by Alyc Helms
Shui Yin laughed, and Si Wei’s grimace gentled into wryness. “You think that guiding you has been easy?”
“Hey!” I cried in mock protest, glad for the lighter mood. I was also happy to notice that they still held hands. “As for the warnings, he’s just nervous about me getting to know his ex. Who knows what we might gossip about. It makes him jittery. It’s a guy thing.”
“This I can confirm,” Shui Yin said.
“Really?” Her smile was pure fox. “Perhaps you should keep that in mind if you ever get another question. It may be that I have a confession or two you might be interested to hear.”
“Oh no. I will not court my brother’s wrath by encouraging you two harridans to gossip.” Shui Yin released the fox-girl’s hand to scoop up the cups and pot, summoning a servant to dispose of them. He sat back and surveyed the bare table with satisfaction. “There. That should stop your mouths.”
Si Wei looked bereft for just a moment, then she caught my encouraging wink and fixed him with a pout. “But now that you’ve taken away our game, what choice do we have except to gossip?”
Shui Yin was no match for the fox-girl’s wiles. He stammered, looking to me for help. I shrugged; he was on his own. Si Wei had maneuvered herself closer to him, so that when he turned back to her he met the full force of her grin. “Perhaps you should find some other way to stop my mouth?”
I’ll give Shui Yin this, he held it together a lot better than I would have. He only gulped once before meeting her smile with one of his own. He stood and offered her his hand. “Perhaps I should. Shall we explore the gardens while we discuss possibilities?”
As they walked away draped over each other, I allowed myself a tiny two-fisted victory gesture and a whispered, “Score!”
* * *
The success of my brilliant matchmaking scheme meant that I was left alone the next evening. Si Wei kept me company during the day while Jian Huo and the other dragons disappeared to who-knew-where, but as soon as Shui Yin returned with his siblings, the longing looks started. After five minutes of it, I told Si Wei to get lost. Jian Huo kept me company during the banquet, but then he abandoned me as well. I didn’t begrudge him the time with his siblings; I snuggled into my cushions, watching the world go by.
That’s where Lung Pan found me. The sour look hadn’t left her face. “I see you are without your protectors,” she said, interrupting my people-watching. Right on cue, my back spasmed. I grimaced, and the comedy of errors began.
“I am sorry my presence displeases you so.” She crossed her arms and raised her chin, smiling for the first time since I’d met her. No. She wasn’t sorry.
“Not at all.” I struggled to sit up. Smiled as if my body wasn’t ripping itself in two. “Your arrival has brought Jian Huo much joy. I have never seen such happiness as I see in him now that he has been reunited with his siblings. His joy is my joy.” It was the proper sentiment for a wife to express, even though it made me want to cringe. I hadn’t taken into account how much Lung Pan refused to accept me as Jian Huo’s wife.
“You have no right to share his joy. You are a concubine in all but name.”
I went cold, then hot. I’d been with Jian Huo for long enough to recognize the depth of the insult. She wasn’t done bullying, though. “You have no right to call yourself Lung Xin Niang. It is a travesty that all have agreed to out of respect for Jian Huo, not for you. You are not worthy to be called wife.”
“You are wrong,” I said before I could consider my words. I should have just ignored her insults. What can I say? I was pregnant, and I was pissed.
“Prove it.” The challenge came from another quarter. Lung Tian and several of the lesser spirits who most disapproved of me had been watching the altercation. My stomach sank as I realized I’d been set up.
“Wh– what?”
“The Lung Pan has made a statement; you have contested it. She will not yield. You must either concede the point or prove your own.”
“Prove that I am Jian Huo’s wife?” I asked, still confused. That would be easy enough.
“No.” Lung Tian smiled. “Prove that you are worthy to be so named.”
Well, crap.
Jian Huo, Si Wei, Shui Yin, and a crowd of others hurried over to see what the fuss was about, but they were too late. This was another mess I’d have to deal with on my own. My back spasmed again, and I wished all dragons to perdition, especially ones who impregnated me and had rotten siblings.
“And how might I do that?” I glanced back at the younger dragon. “To Lung Pan’s satisfaction, of course.”
Her mouth worked, and I hoped she would make some sweeping statement that I could never prove it to her satisfaction, which would have gotten me off the hook, but Lung Tian was cagier than his youngest sibling. He spoke before she could voice any impractical terms.
“The matter must be decided by a disinterested third party. I will offer myself as an objective arbiter, since I was witness to the challenge.”
I smiled in acceptance of this, to mask my inward seething. Witness? Set the whole thing up was more like it. Lung Pan wasn’t cunning enough to plan this on her own.
“The Lung Xin Niang must be accomplished in many ways, but most importantly she must have grace, wit, and honor.” He twitched his robes close, as though my lack of these was catching. “Tomorrow we will have three trials to test these qualities in you. If you pass to my satisfaction, then Lung Pan will recant her words, and you shall receive the blessing of dragons.”
To his satisfaction. Well, that nixed it right there. Like that was ever going to happen. I tamped down on the urge to wipe the smug look off Lung Tian’s face; in his mind, he’d already won.
Instead, I rose. My cheeks ached from all the fake smiling. “I have every confidence that you will be a fair arbiter in this matter, just as I have every confidence of my own worthiness. Agreed.”
Taking Jian Huo’s arm, I forced him to escort me out of the room. Shui Yin and Si Wei trailed us. I didn’t stop until we got to our private chambers. I needed to lie down before I fainted from the back spasms.
I sagged onto a long, low couch, lying back and taking deep breaths. It took a few moments, but the spasms subsided. The ringing in my ears and fuzzy whiteness at the edge of my vision went away. I cracked an eye; three alarmed faces looked back at me.
“I’m sorry. What did I miss?”
Jian Huo knelt beside me and took my hand. “Only me asking you a similar question. Several times. What happened?”
I grimaced and tried to rise, but he pushed me back down. Worried that the cramps might return, I obeyed. “I don’t even know. I was just sitting there having some people-watching fun, and then Lung Pan came over, and I grimaced at the wrong time, and she decided it was because of her and not because I’m a fucking pregnant woman, and then she got nasty and called me a concubine, and I got defensive and told her she was full of it, and I’m pretty sure Lung Tian set the whole thing up anyways, and–”
“Does she ever take a breath?” Shui Yin whispered to Jian Huo.
“Not that I can tell,” he muttered.
“I am so sorry, my Lord.” Si Wei twisted her robe in her hands. “I should have been there to guide her–”
I couldn’t let her take the fall. “It’s not your fault, Si Wei. It’s not her fault, Jian Huo. They knew what they were doing. They weren’t trying to get me to insult them; that’d be dirty pool. They got me to put my money on a hustle. Pan set up the shot and Tian sank the ball. So it wasn’t even Si Wei’s responsibility to keep me out of this trouble. They tricked me into it fair and square.”
“If I say I believe you, will you stop torturing the concept of metaphor?” Jian Huo asked. Si Wei sighed her relief, and Shui Yin looked impressed. “What happened is past, in any case. We are now left to determine how to get you out of this challenge.”
“Uh… no. We need to figure out how I’m going to pass it.” All three of them opened their mouths to argue, so I struggled to a sitt
ing position. Note to self: nothing stops arguments faster than a pregnant woman flopping around on a backless couch.
“Lung Pan said some pretty nasty things, but she only said what everyone else is thinking, including all of your siblings, except for Shui Yin.”
“And that is only because I find thinking to be very strenuous.” At Jian Huo’s glare, Shui Yin pointed at me. “What? She’s the only one who gets to be inappropriately funny?”
Ignoring my new apprentice in comedy, I took Jian Huo’s hands in mine. “Look, I know that this is ridiculous. I know that I am worthy to be Lung Xin Niang. I know this because I know you, and I know that you would never ally yourself with someone who wasn’t worthy.” I spared a brief glance at Si Wei. “I know that I can be graceful and witty and honorable.” I glared at Shui Yin, and he closed his mouth on whatever smart-ass remark he’d been about to make. “And I know I don’t have to prove it to Lung Tian or Lung Pan. I just have to prove it to everyone else, and then Tian’s ‘objective arbitration’ won’t mean squat.”
Jian Huo considered this, then rose and sat beside me. “Very well, what do you need?”
Releasing his hands, I motioned the others to pull up some chairs. “Well, first I need to know what kinds of challenges I’ll be facing, and then we’ll need to figure out how I’m gonna pass them – and by passing, I mean nail them to the ground and dance on their dusty remains.”
“Are you sure that you can do this?” The words were from Shui Yin, but they all looked varying degrees of skeptical.
“Are you kidding?” I flashed them my most brazen grin. “With ‘Team Missy’ at my back, Lung Tian doesn’t have a prayer.”
* * *
I didn’t have a prayer.
I thrust open the door of my room and stripped off the complicated hanfu that ‘Team Missy’ had insisted I would need to wear for the first challenge. They underestimated how much Lung Tian wanted to grind me into little humiliated pieces. Rather than proving my grace through some “easy” trial like catching and releasing a live butterfly with chopsticks – Jian Huo and Shui Yin’s pick – or writing some complicated calligraphy – Si Wei’s choice – Lung Tian had challenged me to a dragon dance.
Which meant I was supposed to fight him. In my condition. Hence the quick costume change and the raging fury.
Unlike my teammates, I had expected something like this. Maybe not this extreme, but I didn’t expect Lung Tian to pull any punches simply because I had a belly the size of a beachball. I let them talk me down because I trusted their knowledge of Lung Tian better than my own judgment. Now I knew better, and I knew that today would be even more difficult than we’d planned for the night before. I yanked my modified shaolin robes out of the wardrobe. I needed to calm down and center if I wanted to get through this. That’s when the wetness whooshed down between my legs.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
I sank back against the wardrobe, staring at the spreading wet patch on the floor as though wishing would make it go away. It remained, a straw on the camel-high pile of problems I was facing. Was I allowed to call things off on account of having to give birth? I suspected Lung Tian would just love it if I asked.
One of the main problems about living with an exiled dragon in a pocket spirit realm in the middle of China was that the pre-natal care sucked and birthing information was non-existent. Television and movies hadn’t prepared me for the realities of being pregnant; maybe that meant they were similarly misleading about the labor part. I centered my chi and did a quick body check, trusting my own senses over what I’d been conditioned to expect. I didn’t feel much different. I’d been having back spasms since the night before, but nothing I hadn’t already decided I could cope with. It wouldn’t be any worse than fighting through the pain of an injury, and I’d done that before.
Fine. I could do this. But if that bastard tried to make me run a footrace against a horse, I’d figure out a way to curse his family line with birthing pains. I had precedent on my side.
Taking a deep, centering breath, I cleaned myself up and donned my simple trousers and robe. I spent the walk back down to the garden going through the mental exercises necessary to make sure my chi was aligned. That in itself was a revelation. I sensed the energies flowing around my children. They were composed entirely of determination – probably to get out. I wove those energies into my own, bolstering the places where I felt weak. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I was able to acknowledge and let go of the pain that blossomed with every back spasm. I doubted I could win, but maybe I could hold my own.
The assembled spirits watched me waddle down the stairs to the garden with varying levels of interest and excitement. The older dragons looked on with polite interest, but Lung Pan glared as if I would forget her dislike. Shui Yin gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up – somebody needed to take that boy in hand – and Si Wei gave an encouraging nod.
Lung Tian awaited me in the dragon circle, but before I could enter, Shanghai’s guardian strode into the ring.
“This is preposterous,” Song Yulan snapped. She shot a glare over her shoulder at Jian Huo. “Grandfather, if you will not stop this, then I will.”
Grandfather?
I did a bit of glaring myself. Jian Huo folded his hands in his sleeves, impervious to all the dirty looks he was getting. “I have already tried to dissuade Missy from this path. It is her choice.”
Song Yulan arched a brow at this side-stepping, but she must have known it was pointless to argue with Jian Huo when he was in hand-sleeve mode.
Grandfather?
“Then I will fight for her,” Song Yulan said, lifting her chin as she faced Lung Tian again.
Whoa. I abandoned my glaring to step into the circle. “I can fight for myself.”
She didn’t break her staring contest to answer. “You’re in no condition to fight.”
Another cramp crawled its way from the small of my back around to my abdomen, making it harder for me to argue with her, mostly because I was trying to breathe through the urge to scream.
Lung Tian covered my silence. “This is a test of her fitness, not yours, Guardian. She must fight for herself.”
“If I were her champion–”
“You are not.” Lung Tian had to raise his voice over the collective gasp from the crowd. “Nor would it speak well of either of you if you agreed to such a compact for so frivolous a reason.”
Frivolous. He thought sticking up for a pregnant woman and her unborn kids was frivolous?
What an ass.
But the cramp had passed, and I wanted to get started before another one came. I touched Song Yulan’s arm. “Thank you. Really. But I’m OK. I need to see this through.”
She glared at all three of us – Lung Tian, Jian Huo, and myself – before throwing up her hands and returning to her place among the lesser spirits and guardians.
I stepped into the place that she’d abandoned, facing off against Lung Tian. I was like Ralph Macchio standing up to the Cobra Kai bullies. Wax on, wax off, baby.
“Let’s do this.”
Lung Tian did not leave me much time to think after our initial bow. He slipped into Tiger, assaulting me with a barrage of strong blows and kicks. Given his superior strength and my condition, I didn’t want any of those blows hitting, so I tried to flow like water around them, meeting his Tiger with Crane.
I danced aside from his strikes, using his own momentum against him, spinning out of his way so that he was left staring at the circle’s edge, me standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned to face me, I gave him my biggest, shit-eating grin. I heard several snickers from the crowd. Crane, with her innovation and sense of humor, was my best and favorite form, as I imagined Tiger was his. As long as he kept coming at me with fiery directness, I could keep away from him with watery creativity. He switched to Snake.
Snake was about patience: the wait and the strike. Lung Tian slid around the circle, waiting for me to exhibit a weakness.
I matched his movements with my own stalking pace, not Tiger, but Leopard. I had to move us out of these forms. If I had another back cramp, it would provide the opening he was looking for. I attacked with a series of my own quick strikes to distract his analysis of my form. I wasn’t strong enough to gain any ground, but as long as he was in Snake, I didn’t need to be. I just needed to keep him off kilter so that he couldn’t recognize that my cramps were coming with growing frequency and pain. I got the feeling that he didn’t have much patience for the earth-bound Snake. He switched forms again.
That left me in a bind. Earth generates metal, and the form that followed Snake was Dragon. That meant that in order to overcome him I’d have to become the fiery Tiger, and I didn’t have the strength or the skill to beat him as Tiger. Instead, I transitioned to Dragon as well, figuring that if I could outwait him, I could transition back to Crane.
We stood in the center of the circle, our breathing deep and meditative. I was banking on him being more impatient than I was, on him wanting to kick my ass, and on the hope that I could transition to Crane before he could get a blow in as Tiger. What I had forgotten to bank on was that I was still in labor.
The muscles of my spine twitched in the beginnings of another spasm, this one much worse than the previous ones; it rippled from the small of my back all the way around to my abdomen, stronger than the worst menstrual cramp I’d ever had. I closed my eyes against it. Lung Tian transitioned to Tiger and lunged at me, but I’d dropped to my knees from the pain. His kick swept over my head, ruffling my wispies. I opened my eyes to see Lung Tian blinking at me in surprise.
“You yield?”
Now that the cramp had passed, I could think again. From the outside, it must have looked like I was conceding the contest.
Opportunist that I was, I nodded. “I do. I have seen the end of this contest. You are faster and stronger and more skilled than me. You would have struck me before I could have changed forms. There is no grace in drawing out a losing conflict, therefore I yield to you.” I didn’t add that I didn’t need to win the fight in order to win the contest. I hoped the implication was clear.