by Prue Batten
‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’
Belle tried to sit straight despite the violent pain. It lit a fire inside her with its angry heat.
‘Treat me with a little respect, please. You play with me, you prevaricate, you bully me. Why do Celestials not care for mortals who hold them in high regard?’
‘You have regard for me?’ Kitsune gave a laugh loaded with irony. ‘Ah Ibo. We do care. It is why we engage with mortals. Think about yourself. Remember how arrogant you were when we met? How you decried everything around you? You have changed. I have seen compassion in your heart. Do you think that would have happened if we hadn’t talked? Do you think you might have been able to find clues to your escape if we hadn’t passed the time?’
Belle had no reply because it was true; the Celestial had posed any number of possibilities and Belle had sifted through them, finding ways and means. The Fox Lady took one of her hands, brushing off the ever-falling petals. Her fingers were warm but still Belle was uneasy, at a loss.
‘But you knew I would be injured, to the death they say. Why did you not tell me that it was a possibility?’
‘Would it have made any difference to your actions? Besides, Celestials never reveal outcomes. They merely present variables. It is always up to the mortal to decide and if such a decision incurs damage, it is not up to us to foreshadow. It is Fate if you like.’
‘Fate!’
Belle flinched as a pain sliced through her shoulder blade, her chest and into her heart.
‘Tell me, Fox Lady, have pity. Am I going to die? I hurt so badly…’
The Fox Lady didn’t answer; instead her eyebrows drew together as if she was annoyed, as if her back were against a wall. Or so Isabella fantasised in her pain.
‘So,’ Belle could barely keep the disgust from her voice, ‘such regard for we mortals that you can’t answer a simple question. I tell you, if I die I will curse you and all like you…’
‘Ibo,’ Kitsune chided. ‘Such words do you no justice.’
‘And what justice do you do if you cannot answer me? Bah,’ she spat. ‘Perhaps this then, tell me this. Why the Lady Chi?’
‘That I can answer. When you met her, your compassion matured and I can tell you also that she has a role to play yet.’
‘You say.’
‘I do.’
Belle gave a hollow laugh.
‘Do you speak the truth to me at last? Perhaps you feel pity for me…’
The Celestial kept rubbing Belle’s hand as the pains deepened and with each brush of the fingers, the agony would fade to a distant echo, giving Belle time to think. She sighed.
‘Kitsune, you have been a support and a guide to me. I don’t deny it. I am sorry. I spoke out of turn.’
She drifted for a moment, the Orchard enfolding her so that she almost forgot what she was trying to say. But then,
‘Please, I beg you.’ Tears gathered. ‘I miss my mother.’
A vision of Adelina appeared in Isabella’s mind and her heart compressed so heavily, she took her hand from the Celestial’s grasp and rubbed at her chest, a gasp emerging.
‘My mother… She and I… Please. Not yet.’ The tears trickled and Belle brushed at them and whispered. ‘Not yet…’
She couldn’t bear to look at the woman for fear of what the Celestial’s face would display. She waited – but there was nothing, only silence and slumping against the tree, she finally opened her eyes.
The Celestial had gone.
*
The pain.
A sword cleaving her in two.
Maybe she was back in the Han and they had sliced off her feet.
She drifted into consciousness again to find the man… Who was he? P…Poli. That man… He was fingering the back of her shoulder.
‘Here.’ He thrust something wrapped in a cloth into her mouth. ‘Bite on this.’
Her arms were held tight – Nicholas on one side and Ming Xao on the other.
*
She screamed.
Again and again.
An odd cry as she bit down on the cloth, a cry that bubbled from her soul to flee along the ravine walls and then race back to her own ears as if the Caointeach howled at the approach of Death. She jerked against the imprisoning hands but they pinned her down harder as Poli’s fingers gouged near her shoulder blade. Blood ran down her arm and she hated the man, hated him.
I’ll kill you…
‘Got it! Got the bastard!’ He held up a gore-covered splinter, the metal tip of the arrow. Taking a flask he poured liquid into the wound. ‘Brandy. It will disinfect. Belle, Belle! Can you hear…’
She preferred to slide away from his voice to a comforting blackness but was jerked into white-hot pain again as the infidel slapped her face. Nicholas’s eyes filled with wrath and Belle knew if he hadn’t been holding her, he would have leaped upon Poli and pummelled him to pieces.
And then I would kill him…
Vomit swelled in her mouth and Poli grabbed the stick from between her teeth, holding her head and gentling her as she puked her insides out.
‘Better?’
But she would not acknowledge him, her head dropping back, eyes closing. Something cool was placed on the wound and bandages draped over her shoulder, across her chest…
I am naked!
She didn’t care. Wanted to sleep.
Go away. I am done.
*
‘Lady Ibo, it is I.’ The mellow tones of Chi Nü drew her from her agony. ‘I will sit with you while the horses are prepared for we must leave as soon as possible.’ The Celestial smoothed the hair away from her forehead. ‘You were brave beyond belief, Ibo, but you must know the truth. Your life is in balance.’
‘The Fox Lady,’ Belle replied. ‘I asked her but she wouldn’t answer me.’
‘Here,’ Chi held a cup of liquid to Isabella’s lips and she sipped greedily.
So thirsty.
‘You spoke to the Fox Lady? When?’ asked the Celestial.
‘Before. Before he took the arrow out. Did you see her?’
‘No.’
Chi’s brows creased.
‘You think I imagined her.’
‘No, I do not. You slipped far from us for a little while and the Fox Lady appeared to you when she was needed. Your brother thought you had died and was wretched, but his friend seemed to know much of wounds and he and Ming decided what must be done to bring you back.’
‘But not enough.’ Belle sipped more of the liquid from Chi’s little cup. ‘Not enough to save my life. And as for the Fox Lady, she prevaricated as Celestials always do. I needed her truth and she would give me none!’
‘Ibo, I do not prevaricate. Time is what you need, that is all. If we can get you to the enchanted Orchard of which they speak, all will be well. Do not fret.’
She bent and kissed Belle’s forehead.
But Isabella did not believe her.
***
Every step the horses took seemed to drag for Nicholas – every moment spent on tracks under the spreading canopies of alpine trees a moment too long. Poli had said they must shortcut; must use a track off the mountain range rather than journeying to the Celestine Stair. It was a risk, but the Stair was a long way to the east and time was crucial now, for Belle as much as Adelina.
He tried to create a map in his mind, the better to envisage where they were, but every image dissolved under the welter of concern for his sister-cousin and far-distant family.
Chi Nü’s knee brushed against his as the horses found the rhythm of the journey, oblivious to the seething emotions of their riders. He didn’t mean to but he found himself examining the lady’s face, wondering at her apparent calm. She was about his age, he thought, but then surely a Celestial was ageless. And how could she accept her plight so readily – never to see, to be dependent on the whims of others around her.
‘But Nicholas,’ she smiled and he jumped, forgetting her ability to hear his mindspeak. ‘There is no point in bemoaning what is. It
has happened. Better surely to deal with it in the best way I can than make myself feel worse by dwelling on it. If others around me, people like yourself, see fit to support me, would it not be ungracious to sit in a corner and fester? Would it be stupid not to take help when it is offered.’
She turned her almond-shaped eyes toward him and two alarmingly attractive dimples appeared at either side of her mouth. Silken wisps of hair fell around her face and the collar of her heavy quilted robe accentuated the fragility of a graceful neck.
‘But then perhaps I state the obvious,’ she murmured. ‘You have your own disability and I do not believe it has stopped you once in your endeavours of the past year – even if you have festered. Just a little.’ The dimples appeared again. ‘What you don’t know Nicholas, is that I am blind through my own stupidity. I neglected my duties as the Celestial Weaver and my peers were angry.’
‘Angry because you neglected a bit of weaving.’
‘Not ‘a bit’, I am afraid. I was the weaver and maker of all Celestial garments and as long as I spent all my time observing the world of mortals, the Celestials went without clothing. For my observations I lost my sight.’
‘A harsh punishment to be sure.’
As he mindspoke, Nicholas looked down at Isabella who listened to Chi’s words.
‘I’m alright, Nico.’ Her voice was so weak. ‘Cease worrying.’
‘Listen to her, Nicholas. No amount of chafing will better the situation. Isabella knows what is at stake and is conserving her energies.’ The Lady Chi shifted in the saddle. ‘You wondered where we are, did you not? I think we move down toward the Luned Forest and if that is so, you will soon see a blaze of colour because they say the forest is Autumn and Spring in one.’ They rode on for a moment, the horses’ hooves making no sound on the densely layered pine needles, but the saddles creaked and every now and then a horse would snort. ‘And if I may,’ Chi Nü said and again her knee brushed Nicholas’s and a frisson danced between the two. ‘The Luned is a place of enchantment and trouble and may slow us down; it would be best to avoid it. I think your friend Poli may agree with me.’
‘If you are a Celestial from far away, I am surprised you know of the forests in Trevallyn.’
‘Ah, did I not just say I had spent overlong observing mortal life? It was not merely the Han that piqued my interest.’
Those dimples…
‘Why are we so interesting?’
She made an all-encompassing gesture with her hands, turning her head as if sight was hers.
‘Look around. Five people. Four mortals, all vastly different but through intimate reactions to events, cast together in a life or death journey. How could that not inspire interest?’
‘Do you say that dispassionately?’
‘Oh no! I am passionate. I ache for the life of one we have just lost.
‘I am sorry, that was a stupid thing for me to say,’ Nicholas found this woman enlightening, enlivening, even with Belle in his arms, and he could tell that she enjoyed listening to Chi as well. There was the faintest blush on her cheeks, as if a brush filled with a soft pink tint had feathered across that pallid skin. ‘But you say five people and four mortals? Do you count me as a mortal as well? Because if you are a Celestial, I am sure you are aware of my own background.’
‘Indeed. I am aware. But you see, your Otherness is less to me rather than more. You react to everything as a mortal would – nearly always. You may be the son of an Other, but like your Uncle Phelim you would prefer to be ordinary rather than exceptional. I find that interesting.’
‘To me, Lady Chi,’ Belle spoke. ‘Nicholas will always be exceptional. Who else would have set out to find me as he has?’
Nicholas and Chi both started because for one brief and very odd moment, it had been as if they had forgotten she was there and Chi answered for Nicholas.
‘Me exceptional? he says. You jest! Do you feel a little better, Belle? he asks. No pain?’
‘No pain.’ She blinked as a sudden shaft of midday sunlight spilled onto her face. ‘But better? The same more like. But Lady Chi, you said you would tell of the Fox Lady.’
‘I did, and so I shall.’
In a voice that seemed to gather all the companions into its circle as they moved on, she told of the legend and it seemed to Nicholas as if even the birds listened, for all around was such measured quiet.
‘Many long years ago in the Han history, there lived an emperor – Lao Mi. He was given to hunting and feasting – spending much time in self-indulgence to the exclusion of his family. He had a wife and she had given birth to a son, the heir to the Han, a lovely little boy to whom any normal father would be devoted.
But Lao Mi was a dilatory father, believing the rearing of the child should happen in the women’s court and whilst he maintained he loved the child, he rarely visited, always pre-occupied with finding the most elusive trophy in the wild, the rarest animal or bird that could offer up furs and feathers for the beauty of the Court.
So the little boy grew for six years, aware of the magnificence of his father, of the man’s legendary bravery and skill as he hunted exotic creatures; but wanting desperately for his father to notice him, to see how well he shot his bow, how he was learning calligraphy and could read. Things the little boy thought an emperor should be able to do. But still Lao Mi rarely visited and the little boy was sad and did not understand.’
Chi Nü ran a hand over her forehead smoothing out the creases that had formed as she described the little emperor’s distress and Nicholas found he warmed to her compassion.
‘The little emperor became very ill with a fever,’ the Celestial continued. ‘And the Lady Empress sent a message to Lao Mi saying his son and heir was at great risk with his health. But Lao Mi had heard that the legendary white fox was ranging through the mountains and the one pelt he had never secured was that magnificent snowy fur.
He wrote to the empress that he thought his son was in good hands, and continued to gather his hunting party together, leaving the Imperial Palace as the first snows of winter began to fall.
The little emperor shook with his overpowering fever and the Empress became distraught as she tried to keep her son warm, the snow falling more heavily and the air bitter and frozen. The court physicians informed her that she needed to wrap him up and light many braziers if she did not want him to sicken further. All the woollen rugs and furs in the palace were brought to the child’s room and still he chilled, so that his breath slowed and his chest barely rose and fell.
Chi’s horse stumbled and she stopped speaking for a moment but in Nicholas’s mind, the young boy lay there, innocent, bereft that his father hadn’t wanted to visit him, his health failing more by the minute.
Sitting herself firmly in the saddle, the Lady Chi talked on.
‘The Empress sent an urgent message to the Emperor, a courier riding through a blizzard to deliver it high amongst the peaks and passes of the Goti Range. The message was perfunctory: ‘Your son is dying of a fever. By the time you return, he will have departed for the Celestial Fields.’
The Emperor quizzed the courier who told him the child shivered and shook and seemed to be dying of cold and the Emperor was distraught. He turned his hunting party round and leading them all from far ahead, began the arduous and dangerous journey to return to the palace.
As he rode around a bend in the track, he saw the white fox and whipping out his bow and nocking an arrow, he raised it and aimed at the animal which had stilled in the middle of the path. Its amber eyes bore deep into the Emperor’s soul and his hands shook. In a moment the wild animal had raised itself onto its hind legs, lengthening its body and shape-changing into a lovely woman whose fur robe was the magnificent pelt the Emperor so craved. All he could think was that if he killed this fox-woman, he would have a thick skin in which to wrap his son to keep him warm and alive but also that he would have succeeded in his heart’s desire of killing the mythical white fox and that by doing so he would bring fame to hi
s name for aeons of time.
‘If you kill me,’ said the Fox Lady, the one they call Kitsune, ‘you risk great melancholy in your life and for many Han lives hereafter.’
But the Emperor’s lust, something he justified by the knowledge he could use the fur for his son, was greater than his fear of an Other, a great Celestial. He aimed the bow at the fox’s heart and let the arrow fly. It met its mark and Kitsune changed again to a fox, lying in the white snow, a red stain trickling across the track. As her life eked away, she fixed ghostly eyes upon the emperor and he felt more fear than he had ever known, his own heart jumping and his breath coming in great foggy puffs.’
The Lady Chi ceased her story, sensing a change in the atmosphere, turning her head questioningly toward Nicholas. Poli had led the company to the outer edge of the forest and they halted their horses on a plateau, looking out over the umber, scarlet and green Luned Forest to the west, further westerly still to the waters of Veniche and in the far, far distance to the south east, the honey-coloured humps of the Barrow Hills.
‘Our destination,’ said Poli and clicked his horse on. ‘Too far. I am worried at the distance. We must push harder and ride until it is too dark to see. Chi Nü, I thank you for your story, will you tell us more?’
She turned toward Nico and Belle, her lips tilting before she continued, understanding, Nico thought, that the telling eased the tension in the air.
‘Kitsune shape-changed again in her last moments, standing graceful and tall, terrifying in her stark loveliness. ‘Lao Mi, you have condemned your son to death by your selfishness. By the time you return, he will have entered the Celestial Paradise without ever having the love and attention of his father. And by murdering the white fox, an Other, you have cursed the Han. No woman will ever give birth to a girl-child from this day forth. The Han will shrink as it becomes a province of men – very old men. Women will become creatures of legend. You, Lao Mi, will be the emperor who killed the Han.’
As she uttered these final words, she shape-changed back to a fox, yelping in pain until finally her last breath gushed out and she died. Lao Mi wasted no time in skinning the animal and galloping back to the Palace so that he could wrap his son in the fur and hold him, telling him he loved him. But he was too late; the little boy had indeed passed away.