by JY Yang
“No one is disputing that the Grand Monastery has its own criteria for appointing an abbot, Venerable One.” Mother’s tone was perfectly civil.
“I am not opposed to the boy taking on the role. But if he is to do so, as prophesied, then he must pass the same trial that I, and all my predecessors, went through.”
“The mountain trial?” Mother’s lips curved into an imitation of a smile. “Of course. This is tradition, after all. And what is the Grand Monastery if not traditional?”
Thennjay looked to Mokoya. “What’s the mountain trial?”
Akeha knew the answer to that. But the mountain trial was supposed to be mythical or allegorical. That was what the books in the monastery’s library said.
The Head Abbot addressed him: “Do you know the name of the mountain that overlooks the city, boy?”
“Golden Phoenix Mountain,” Thennjay answered, with slight suspicion.
“Do you know why it is so named?”
Thennjay frowned. His confidence, Akeha realized, came from preparation, and this unexpected questioning unsettled him. “According to legend . . . a golden phoenix led a band of starving villagers fleeing a war to safety. It guided them to this valley and flew into the mountains to nest. They built a settlement that became Chengbee and named the mountain after their savior. That’s the legend.”
“Legends form around grains of truth,” the Head Abbot said. “To prove your worth as my successor, you must go into the mountains, seek out the golden phoenix, and return with two feathers.”
Thennjay’s face folded into a squint. “That’s the mountain trial?”
The Head Abbot nodded.
Thennjay looked to Mokoya for reassurance, but their twin could only shrug helplessly. Was the Head Abbot serious? Who knew. He had ascended to the position nearly forty years ago. No one spoke of this at the Grand Monastery. It was a very practical place, and practicality did not encompass talk of giant, mythical birds.
It was a convenient way for Mother to save face, though, allowing her to cede the appointment of the Head Abbot to the monastery. She didn’t have to admit that she had been outsmarted by a nineteen-year-old Gauri boy.
“Fine,” Thennjay said, as if he had any other choice. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter Ten
“YOU CAN’T JUST say those things to Mother,” Mokoya hissed at Thennjay. “You offended her. She’ll remember.”
“Good,” Thennjay said. “I want her to remember.” At this pronouncement, Mokoya’s face tautened with a mix of anger and worry. Thennjay laughed, but not unkindly. “I want her to remember that I can be a serious threat.”
They were corralled in the room assigned to Thennjay, a disused storage space in the servants’ sector, barely larger than a clothes box. In a spurt of generosity, Mother had arranged for the provision of a single sleeping roll, which Akeha now sat lotus-legged on, watching the other two. Passively, as was expected of them.
The room was very small. Their legs and feet ached with inaction.
“You don’t want her to remember.” Mokoya turned away and paced as big a circle as the room would allow. “You don’t know Mother. You don’t want to be caught on the other end of her grudges.”
Thennjay chuckled again, but this time there was weight in that sound, a history of stones and chains. “Nao. I’m Gauri. I think I know a little about living under the Protector’s grudges.” As Mokoya’s face wrinkled further, he said, “You don’t think I’m taking this seriously?”
Mokoya burst at the seams. “Thenn, why can’t you see that I’m worried about you?”
“Ai.” Thennjay took hold of Mokoya’s hands, held them gently. “I know.”
Mokoya froze at the contact, but only for a moment. Thennjay continued, “Don’t worry about me. It’s going to be all right, I promise.”
“So many things could go wrong,” Mokoya said. “Outside the prophecy. You don’t even know.”
“I’m not afraid. I trust in the fortunes. What is your mother, stacked up against such awesome forces? Only a mortal, like the rest of us.”
Watching them, Akeha’s lungs filled with pressure, as if the air had nowhere to go.
“I’ve decided,” Mokoya said, straightening up, eyes bright and hard as jewels. “After my confirmation, I’m not applying to the Tensorate academy. I want to return to the Grand Monastery.” They tightened their fingers around Thennjay’s. “Mother can’t stop me. I’ll be twenty-one in a few years, an adult.”
“It won’t be the same place you grew up,” Thennjay warned. “After all, I’ll be in charge.”
“I know. And you’ll need help. The old monks aren’t going to accept change easily.”
Thennjay said, in his low, smooth baritone, “I’ll be glad to have you there.”
He had leaned in, closing the gap between his body and Mokoya’s. Akeha already knew where this was going. It came from a playbook older than the Protectorate, older than human civilization. The confines of the room felt heavy, felt like prison walls.
A smirk cracked through Mokoya’s seriousness. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”
Thennjay wrinkled his nose. “I guess I’m another big fool.”
He moved forward, toward Mokoya’s face. Akeha stood. The other two looked up in surprise, their small moment broken. It was as if they had forgotten Akeha was there.
“I’m going for a walk,” they announced. And they turned to leave, ignoring the small mewl of “Keha?” that sounded behind them.
* * *
Akeha walked, deliberately putting one foot ahead of the other, pointed in a direction they weren’t sure of. The Great High Palace was vast enough that they could wander for days and never recross the paths they trod. Their ambulation took them far from the servants’ quarters, deep into the diplomatic wing. Puddles of yellow light punctured the night darkness, infrequently broken by the passing shadows of palace staff, working deep into unsociable hours. One of them—an assistant to Diplomatic Minister Kinami—smiled patronizingly at Akeha as she passed by. “Wandering about without your twin?” As if she couldn’t imagine that Akeha had desires of their own, a mind of their own. They didn’t reply.
Akeha usually delighted in the night halves of night-cycles. Not because they were darker than the night halves of day-cycles—they weren’t—but because of the solitude they offered: the quiet corridors, the night song of crickets, the masses slumbering in their chambers. But tonight the solitude felt less like a warm cloak and more like a blanket pressed over the nose and the mouth. Thoughts thrashed through Akeha’s mind like dying fish, and like fish they slipped away the moment Akeha tried to focus on them. Instead a parade of images slithered by: a burnt, bloodied man. A girl’s face wet with tears. Mother’s icy, restrained rage. Things that they’d idly stood by and watched happen.
But even as they chased these piscine threads of thought, they knew that a shadowy epiphany, full of teeth and eyes, stalked behind them. They didn’t want to look at it. Didn’t want to think about it.
Back in the room, with Thennjay, Mokoya had slipped and used the feminine “I” pronoun.
It shouldn’t have bothered Akeha as much as it did. Mokoya’s choices were their own. Yet it felt like their twin was pulling away from them, standing at the prow of a ship headed into uncharted waters where Akeha could not follow.
Akeha walked and walked.
The diplomatic wing had a courtyard of its own, an austere stone garden with an enormous black plinth standing in its middle. The plinth was a work of art, titled Reflections upon the Past and the Future. Its ebony surface was polished to glasslike smoothness and lit by a dozen sunballs fixed to the ground. Standing in front of its massive bulk, Akeha’s reflection was superimposed over a void so pure and deep it seemed unending.
Akeha stared at themselves: the shorn head, the genderless robes, the stark facial features that were identical to Mokoya’s. Until a young person confirmed their gender, the masters of forest-nature kept the markers of adulth
ood at bay. They had never imagined themselves any other way. It frightened them to think that this was not true for Mokoya. A fundamental chasm had opened between them, through which many other things could slip.
Their inner voice whispered, conspiratorially, But that chasm’s always been there. You’ve always known it, Akeha.
They stared unblinking at their own face as they recited feminine pronouns like a sutra. I am. I want. I will. And like a sutra, the words came out of their mouth rote and meaningless. There was no connection between what was said and the person in the black mirror.
Akeha bit their lip. A thought occurred to them. In all honesty, it had been occurring to them for some time, and occurring with much greater frequency since Mokoya’s announcement two nights ago. It was a thought that took hold in the back of their mind whenever they looked at Thennjay, at the shape of his body underneath his clothes. A thought they had been trying to drown out, to ignore.
Slowly, as if stepping into the unilluminated edge of a lake, Akeha switched to using masculine pronouns.
I am. I want. I will.
Their heart quickened in their chest. The words rolled and clicked in their mind, sharp and electric.
I want. I want. I want.
Akeha had not grown up amongst men. There were male monks, to be sure, but they were not men as Kuanjin society considered men. There were no men in the Protector’s family, and few amongst those she allowed close to her. Men were creatures of distant fascination, with their broad backs and tanned cheeks, and Akeha had never considered that they might be one of them.
They imagined themselves dressing like a man, with their hair tied up like a man. It felt different. Not right, exactly, but there was something there.
I want. I want.
I am.
Akeha’s limbs trembled with the rush of adrenaline. This was it, the answer they had been looking for, scrambling to find over the past few days, ever since Mokoya dropped her basket of secrets. A new horizon unfolded, shining with ten thousand unnamed stars. New possibilities, new understandings, new ways of being. They should have thought of this earlier. Why hadn’t they thought of this earlier? It was like cutting themselves open and finding another creature living inside, nested in their blood and bones and guts. Fear and excitement seized them in equal parts. I should tell Mother, they thought. He thought.
Tell her before I change my mind.
* * *
Mother was in her sanctuary, contemplating the twined branches of cherry trees in the garden. Like Akeha, she was someone who hardly slept, and she preferred the company of one of her concubines when she did. Akeha approached her from the back, studying her silhouette. Looking at her, it was easy to imagine Mokoya in thirty years’ time, sitting gracefully in a courtyard like this, silk dress cascading around her. Face identical to Mother’s.
Far more difficult to imagine what the future held for him. If it held anything at all.
Akeha had spent the winding journey to the sanctuary softly chanting I am, I am, I am, trying to get used to the sound of it on their tongue, his tongue. Each utterance sent a shiver through him, until he, they, felt stuffed so full of anxiety they might take flight, earth-nature of the Slack losing its grip on him. They had blocked out all other thoughts, intrusive thoughts, distracting thoughts, by filling their mind with the cadence of I am, I am, I am. I am.
Faced with Mother now, courage deserted them, and they stood frozen several yields away from her, unable to speak.
Mother turned around and stared at them with the curious demeanor of a raptor. Her attention was like sunlight concentrated under curved glass. Akeha’s skin burned, and sweat collected in the small of their back.
“You did not come all this way to stare mutely at me,” Mother said.
“I want to be confirmed. Like Mokoya.” His tongue failed him, slipping back to the easy groove of the pronouns they had used since they were able to talk.
“Of course you do.”
Akeha sucked life-giving air into his lungs and focused his thoughts very precisely as he said aloud, using the right pronouns this time: “I want to be confirmed as a man.”
Mother stared at him for an agonizing second. And then she burst into laughter.
Akeha stood where they were, reminding themselves to breathe. Breathe, or they would get dizzy, and their skin would catch on fire.
Mother smiled without showing teeth. As if she would ever do something so inelegant. “It has been a long time since I’ve had a son.” She tilted her head. “To think that it would end up being you.”
“Was this—” Akeha licked their lips, bringing moisture back into their mouth. “Was this unexpected of me?”
“Unexpected?” Mother laughed again. “How can it be unexpected, when I had harbored no expectations for you in the first place? You were no part of my plans, child.”
Akeha bit his lip so hard he tasted metal in his mouth. With the lip throbbing, he asked: “Do you object to this?”
“Of course not. Why would I?” She folded one leg over the other. She seemed strangely relaxed, even cheerful. It was not what Akeha had expected. “This has been a day of delightful happenings,” she said. “I was presented a worthy adversary in that Gauri boy, who will soon come to power to oppose me. And now the spare child has finally chosen his own path.”
A tremble ran through Akeha.
Mother glanced up at the canopy of trees, lights shining across her face. “Despite everything, the fortunes find ways to surprise you. I look forward to the days to come.”
Akeha breathed. And breathed. It was the only thing he could do. Keep breathing.
“Have you told your sister?” she asked.
My sister. Akeha exhaled. “No. I have not.”
* * *
Akeha told Mokoya the next morning, on upper-forest day. “I will be confirmed as a man.” It was said, it was done, there was no turning back.
His sister said nothing in return. She pretended she was not upset. But that night, as Akeha lay in bed as though sleeping, she left the room they shared and did not return until the next morning. He did not ask where she had been, letting his mind fill in the blanks. Forbidden visions came to him of her and Thennjay entwined in a collusion of sighs and gentle touches. The images refused to leave his mind, no matter how he tried to cast them out.
The same thing continued to happen over the next two nights.
On the third day, lower-fire day, Thennjay left for the trial, accompanied by a guide from the monastery who would leave him at the foot of the mountain. Akeha spent the following days meditating, in preparation for the changes he was about to undergo. Mind empty, body blank, free of all emotions and base desires. It was a struggle. He felt too soft, too malleable, as though the slightest pressure would melt him.
Mokoya still did not return to their shared room.
When she finally came back, it was lower-earth day, the fifth day since Thennjay left. As the sun rose for the second night-cycle she sat in front of Akeha, her legs folded under her, hands placed loosely in her lap. Akeha burned with questions for her, rude and forward questions fueled by vulgar curiosity: What was it like, to lie with him? Were his hands strong or gentle, did he smell of earthy perfumes, did his flesh tremble against hers? But he remained silent.
“I want to marry him,” she said.
“You’ve just met him.”
“I know. But I love him.”
“Mother won’t allow it.”
“I don’t care what she thinks.”
“He’s going to be a monk. They don’t marry.” Akeha tilted his head. “Unless you think he’ll change the rules for you?”
Mokoya sucked in a breath, her brow crumpling into ridges. “I . . . no. He would not.”
“But you want him to. And it’ll probably happen, too. You’re so special, things always go the right way for you.”
She shakily got to her feet, teeth bared at Akeha. “I don’t know why I came here,” she snapped. He tried to apolog
ize, regrets bubbling in his mouth, but it was too late. The wall of her back disappeared through the doorway and did not return.
The next day, Thennjay returned from the mountain, bearing two ornate feathers the length of his arm. They gleamed dully in the sunlight, warm and yellow, topped by a teardrop-shaped plume that shone in a thousand colors. When asked about the details of his journey, he merely smiled and shook his head, bound now by the Grand Monastery’s tradition of secrets. He had completed the trial, and that was enough.
Mokoya met Thennjay at the entrance pavilion, pressing her hands into his as they spoke. Akeha watched them from a distance. Mokoya’s face was turned away from him, the words her mouth was shaping hidden. He looked at the two of them and saw a perfect circle in which he had no place.
A thought had hounded Akeha since he spoke to Mother about his confirmation. As he watched his sister embrace the man she loved, the edges of that thought crystallized into a solid plan of action. He knew what he had to do.
It was upper-fire day, the start of the new week. The week of their seventeenth birthday. The week their lives would start anew.
Chapter Eleven
IN THE ROOM HE had called home for the last eight years, Akeha was packing. He had put together some clothes, simple toiletries, a few days’ provisions, and enough money that he could be comfortable, but not so much that he might be robbed. He intended to travel south, where the winds remained mild and the snows did not come, so he didn’t need winter clothing. And he had enough confirmation medicine to last him a month before he had to look for more.
His body ached. His reshaped hips felt loose where the confirmation doctors had shifted bone, and soreness coiled in flesh both old and new. The doctors had assured him that the discomfort was normal, part of his body learning to speak the new language it had been taught. In time it would forget it had known anything else. In time, he too would forget what it felt like not to have this body, not to have had this life.
It would just take time.
His chin itched with fresh growth, dark hairs pushing through the skin for the first time. He hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. Growing a beard might help him slip through the northerly regions where the shape of his face was still familiar, framed on walls in the official portraits of the Protector’s family. Or not. The doctors had called forth a thick mane of hair from his scalp, and it now sat on his head in a tight bun. He had decided that he would cut it short, in the style of southern men, once he was on the other side of the Mengsua Pass.