Scale-Bright

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  "This only happens after sex."

  Julienne touches her face. "But… not every time. It's just a nightmare." She knows it is not. She knows it is more.

  "None of my girlfriends ever said sleeping with me gave them nightmares."

  "It isn't really about you." Meant as reassurance.

  "Not about me! Is that supposed to make me feel better? I can put up with your mood swings—I try—but this." Elena springs out of bed, as though she can't stand another minute of sharing it with Julienne. "I'm booking a flight."

  "Not back to Sydney?"

  "I've always hated Hong Kong. Two months in and I couldn't stand it. I stayed for you." More tears. "I can't do this."

  She disappears, all hundred and eighty centimeters of her so bare and pale. A sound of her desktop booting up. Julienne stays for a time on the mattress that has absorbed their heat and sweat, and considered putting together an apology. A diversion that begins with her mouth at Elena's breast, that ends with them back on these sheets. She's learned all the ways in which Elena can be distracted, the places that make her pant and fall to her narrow pointed knees.

  The same cannot be said of Elena with her. Reciprocation is often more coincidence than intent. This fact juts out so sharply that Julienne can't apportion all the blame to her own pensiveness, her own anxieties. It's an odd moment. In previous relationships the cause of dissolution always seemed obvious: her.

  So she gathers her clothes, puts them on and fetches the few toiletries she's left here in cautious optimism when she should have known better. Elena's always acted as though they were starring in a tragic romance, every gesture exaggerated for a nonexistent camera, every disagreement loud for an imaginary audience.

  Out of Elena's flat she goes into a day of biting air and wind tunnels. There will be phone calls in a few hours. Julienne will have to consider whether to answer them, but that is for later.

  * * *

  She joins her aunt at Kowloon Station. Hau Ngai leans against the wall, a long-tail jacket slung across one arm. A dove-gray cummerbund is buttoned neatly over a shirt snow-bright. "You're picking up Auntie Seung Ngo in a tuxedo?"

  "It's conspicuous, but she likes to be surprised. You are early."

  "I didn't want to keep you waiting."

  "Ah," Hau Ngai says, "the tall girl, I take it."

  "She's shorter than you are." Julienne eyes the platform, then turns back to her aunt. "You look stunning. None of this came off the rack? The fit's superb."

  "What is made for women to wear is generally incompatible with my shoulders." The god extends her arm. "Mortal girls enjoy being princesses, don't they?"

  Julienne flushes. "Are you going to tease me about crushing on you for the rest of my life? It's not my fault I didn't know you were an in-law."

  Hau Ngai laughs, and it is such a fine, rare sound Julienne wishes she could bottle it up for Seung Ngo. "I'm only offering you my arm, child."

  Despite that she slots her hand into the crook of Hau Ngai's elbow and feels a peculiar little thrill. "I did grow up watching mowhab too. Not the same kind of princesses."

  "But whether warrior maids or noble daughters, they inevitably fall into the arms of a strapping boy daihap. It is not a story to console you." They board the train. "Do you want to talk about Elena?"

  She doesn't, least of all to Hau Ngai, who will ask something too sudden, give an insight that pierces too sharp and too far, revealing that it was Julienne's fault after all. It's not that her aunt-in-law has ever been unkind, but the archer god doesn't believe in white lies and elisions. "My friends always tell me not to date westerners." The plush seat is a happy relief from the hard plastic of the MTRs. Hau Ngai remains on her feet.

  "They are an odd lot, certainly, and godless—or rather they've a frenzy for worshiping spirits that don't exist."

  "You mean... none of them are real? Not God? Not the Greek ones?" She blinks and comes to what seems a logical conclusion. Hau Ngai is said to live on the sun, though Julienne's never pried for specifics. "Does that mean there's a reason Apollo is a sun god and an archer?"

  "Probably. They misapprehended my gender and believed I required sacrifices to protect their cities. Which I couldn't in any case, being preoccupied at the time."

  "What about Artemis?"

  "I taught Seung Ngo marksmanship. It took a small horde of demons—and then, an ambush—to best her. She's deadly. You should ask her to show you sometime. I can assure you, though, that she never turned anyone into a deer. Were a man to catch her bathing unclothed she'd have simply slit his throat."

  "That's a bit—final."

  Hau Ngai shrugs into her jacket. "Your aunt is not very forgiving toward men, Julienne."

  Julienne tries to imagine that. Auntie Seung Ngo has always struck her as sweet, domestic and feminine to Hau Ngai's martial austerity.

  In the arrival hall, billboards dapple the ground with advertisements for rest-and-showers, restaurants, tourist information. Directions white on indigo and white on red, everything a gloss, the announcements spoken in a voice like polished brass. Julienne likes the airport. It's busy without being crowded, peopled without being personal, a place of transitions—

  Her thoughts quaver. She stops. Wan sunlight sieved through latticed roof splatters at her feet, patterning her skin, circling and feline.

  "Is something wrong, Julienne?"

  "Nothing, Auntie."

  They meet Seung Ngo at an arrival gate, amongst a flurry of luggage-laden trolleys and passengers. Hau Ngai takes Seung Ngo's hand, sweeping a solemn bow over it.

  "You should've let me know you were dressing up." A little pink, Seung Ngo laughs. "I'd have put on something to match. And a corset."

  "I don't think we should discuss you and corsets in public." Hau Ngai gives Julienne a sidelong look. "I fear I'll be wearing variants of this for the rest of the week."

  "Would you like me to check in at a hotel for a week, Aunties?"

  "Impertinent child." Seung Ngo lets go of her wife. "And how are you, apart from disrespectful?"

  "I'm fine." Julienne tries to smile. "Fresh from a break-up, but fine."

  There's a long, delicate pause. She's often seen this hesitation from both her aunts.

  "It's nothing, Auntie. Please don't trouble yourself over it." They shouldn't have to tiptoe around her. "I saw it coming anyway. Elena wasn't good for me and I wasn't good for her."

  Hau Ngai's phone rings. She excuses herself.

  "Julienne." Seung Ngo clasps her shoulder. "You can tell me anything. Or Hau Ngai, for that matter. I realize she's intimidating—she can't help that—but you don't have to be afraid of her."

  "Thank you, Auntie. But there's nothing to talk about."

  "Child, I know I'm not here nearly enough, but we've been family for nigh on two years."

  Without meaning to Julienne glances at Hau Ngai. She is probably out of earshot, but who knows what kind of hearing an archer god has? "I don't want to bother you with every little broken nail. It's all just melodrama. Not even as fun as TVB serials. You've bigger things to worry about."

  "I'll be the judge of that. Do you know, you sound like me. When I first met Hau Ngai this is nearly word for word what I said—that my concerns were mundane mortal things while she was a god, and surely none of what I had to say, none of what I had to think, could be worthy of her time and attention. Can you guess what she did?"

  Hau Ngai is attracting looks—a woman so statuesque in formal suit is a sight anywhere. She pays them no regard. The conversation however can't be going well, if her expression's anything to go by. Julienne observes and after half a minute becomes certain Hau Ngai is actually not blinking. "Kiss you?"

  "That came later." Auntie laughs. "She wouldn't admit it now—not in company—but she kissed me first. Back then, though, she just told me that of course she wanted to listen, if I was willing to talk. I told her, oh, everything I suppose. All about my life. You see?"

  "I'm not as brave as you are. And I
've turned enough people away by being hysterical. Or not hysterical enough." Her living relatives were never able to bear how quiet she was, how ungrieved, at her parents' funeral.

  "My child, my niece, you aren't going to turn me away short of committing mass murder—and even then… well, you know who I'm married to. Remember, if not for you I'd still be bound to the moon."

  Hers was only a small part. It seems so long ago that a stranger approached her, calling herself Hau Ngai while claiming her wife was Seung Ngo, and told Julienne a very peculiar story. Will you burn this rope ladder for your grandaunt? An offering, as for the ancestral dead. Is your wife a ghost then? Flesh and blood, and beautiful. And then they entered her life, giving her everything. "I'll try, Auntie. I don't want you unhappy."

  Auntie Seung Ngo holds her in cool, long arms. "This isn't about me being happy. But it is a start. Until then, why don't we go shopping? It's my turn to spoil you."

  * * *

  Houyi is being followed. She has been since Kowloon Station and her wife did not miss the fact. By unspoken agreement then they've divided the labor, Chang'e to keep an eye on Julienne and Houyi to the rest.

  She waits at a threshold between mortal earth and banbuduo, an entry gained after another bargaining with Daji. The creature dogging her isn't far behind; it too may straddle the line between worlds.

  The earth browns and dries, as it was in the decades following the rising of the ten suns. Above her the sky blazes cloudless and around her a scorched valley rises. Grime covers her robes; on her cheeks sweat has dried to hard salt.

  Gaunt-cheeked bandits close in with gleaming blades and gleaming eyes. A line of them on a cliff-face overhead, bent on their knees, arrows against taut strings.

  There's blood on her, and hunger straining against her ribs. Her clothes sag loose against limbs gone to skin on bones. This was her death, eons ago.

  She could have told the master of this spell that it lacks much; that it doesn't compare, even a fraction, to that of Nuwa's fox.

  Absently she kills the men she killed those uncounted mortal lifetimes past. She did not hesitate then; she has less cause now and they shred like waxed paper, like dry bamboo—bloodlessly tidy. Her knife goes through the boy who fired the fatal shot into her breast. But much as others, he returns to his feet stutter-start, hand to the curve of bow: steady, the way she taught the original.

  Houyi whips about and drives her blade into the forearm of a bearded, thick-set man. The sound he makes is the creak of wood not meant to flex, wood bent to the threshold of breaking.

  The illusion dissipates. Borderland fog rolls over them, colorless, damp without odor.

  Houyi removes the knife and slides it between two wooden ribs. There's resistance and this is not an ideal tool, but she has both patience and strength. "Most of your kind know better than to bait me."

  The creature's face is crossbred between man and art. Poreless and polished, carved rather than born. He, or it, does not answer.

  "Ah," she murmurs, "you'd be more afraid of fire."

  Her control of it is poor—this has never been hers, the sun-heat she's absorbed over the sentence of punishment and duty. The wood spirit blackens. Smoke pours between its green teeth.

  It takes more effort to stopper the power than it took to release it, and when some of the flame's gone she feels an easing in her muscles, as of a swollen lymph node going down. "You may have been commanded to silence."

  The spirit looks at her with square eyes.

  "But few saw the moment of my death. Few watched it so closely, so well, as to pass the vision on for reenactment. I would say perhaps two." Her wife and the god who plotted her downfall with such determination he sacrificed his ten sons. "Will you burn for your master, then?"

  A sandpaper tongue flicks out. "No," the voice a croak before the spirit ignites.

  Houyi is on her feet before the combustion can reach her. She's certain she could not have done that; there is only ashes where the wood spirit was, mingling with the mist in clumps and eddies. The sun-father, by all accounts, chides his servants harshly.

  She leaves banbuduo behind. This would have to be settled elsewhere.

  * * *

  Under a tree all knife-edges Houyi stands. The soil was earth once, but it is now blades, fallen fruits and roots of the Fusang. She does not flinch when a leaf falls; it cuts the air and would have left a long red line between her eyes. Perhaps it would have blinded her.

  She is a god. Vision would have returned in a day or two; so it has been when she takes the chariot. There were times when her sight burned out and her hands melded to the reins, her skin crisping until she lost the membrane of eyelids, the webbing between fingers, the lining of lips. They took days to regrow, diaphragm and lungs twisting in her chest. She considers it just for the crime of killing nine sun-crows.

  It is the tenth and last that Houyi now wait for as chariot, crow and goddess descend.

  The crow gives her a three-legged bow before taking his leave. He knows when to be absent.

  The goddess Xihe is not cut by Fusang when she strokes its trunk. Winter simmers around her, the mother of suns. "In my presence you ought to be on your knees," Xihe says.

  Houyi can feel her eyes begin to dry, her mouth begin to parch. "Were it to satisfy you truly, I'd kneel and put my head to your feet. It is the least I can do."

  "It must sting, to let your pride be subsumed by your sense of justice. Even to His Majesty you can barely make yourself bend." The goddess' hand lifts, slow grace; touches.

  Cooking flesh always smells sweet.

  Houyi does not flinch as the skin of her cheek gives way to blisters. Her voice does not catch as the bridge of her nose peels and reddens.

  "What does your wife have to say about this?"

  She has to swallow before she can speak, her throat like sand. "Nothing in particular."

  "You don't tell her, then, that you allow yourself to be subjected to this. Finally a thing that violates that sacred wifely trust—your gluttony for penance." The goddess steps away. "I often ponder how far you'd go to serve this little perversion, what you'd do on my demand."

  "I have a sense of proportion. I will not accept more reproach from you, or anyone else, than is just."

  "And your offense was grave. I had ten children once; now I have memory of nine arrows, nine scorch marks, and this one final son. It's unbearable that you are as useful as you are or I'd see you roast always. Out with it, then."

  Houyi does not touch the places where she's been seared. They will, with luck, heal and fade before Chang'e can see them. "Dijun's servant sought to test me but turned to ashes before I could question him. As for the monk Fahai, another of your husband's creatures guided him into banbuduo to hunt demon flesh."

  "That hardly suffices."

  "Associating with a mortal who consumes demon meat to prolong his life is hardly appropriate for any god, let alone one of your husband's rank. It'll add weight to your case when you petition the emperor."

  Xihe glances seaward, where her son is a blot in the waters, his wings black as a storm's arrival. "I'll never offer you absolution, archer."

  "Nor have I asked for any. It's not my habit to request what I do not deserve."

  "You bargained for a year of freedom from duty."

  "To expose your husband's dishonor."

  "A poor lie, archer. You wanted it so that like a lovestruck bride you may be at your wife's side constantly."

  Houyi does not mention that she rarely has the chance to see Chang'e. "She has a niece who requires care and I'm obliged by kinship to provide. It doesn't interfere with the problem of Dijun. I'm certain to discover enough to shame him. You'll have every legitimate reason to dissolve the marriage."

  "It will be that or I shall have to tear his throat open before the court and bathe my son in whatever comes out. You can't imagine how it galls me to require you for anything, but I despise him more thoroughly than I do you."

  The goddess bends t
o one of the fallen mulberries, picks one large enough to fill her palm. Between her fingers the fruit's skin brightens, metal in fire. With her nails she breaks off a piece, and forces it into Houyi's mouth.

  She accepts, for this too is correct, part of her atonement. The fruit is acid-tart. Scalding the inside of her mouth it is heady, heightening her hurts until she is on her knees.

  Xihe pins her against the roots, which are facets, which are lacerations in Houyi's back trickling as crimson as Fusang. Another piece of mulberry is pushed between her cracking lips. "In my youth I was as forgiving as I was foolish," says the goddess.

  Houyi's heartbeat roils. Her breath snaps tight and she looks up at Xihe through a sunset haze. Behind the goddess the sea has gone to oil splats, the sky darkening to inkstains.

  "Don't faint, archer. Haven't you always been arrogant of your discipline, your uncomplaining acceptance of pain? This fruit is for your good. As you are now no skill at arms will shield you from Dijun's fire, should it come to that. Once you've swallowed this, seed and skin, you will be impervious to him. For a time. So eat, archer, and waste not a drop."

  "Another year," Houyi whispers against Xihe's wrist, which she grips in a slackening hand. "When I've finished this hunt for you, when you have what you've desired all these centuries. Another year."

  The goddess' face has become smears. "Perhaps."

  2.2

  Julienne has always liked the harbor, but lately she seeks it with a frequency that startles her, as though these walks have been scheduled for her by someone else. She would go through her day between the glass cases, taking jewelry out and putting them back in. Occasionally the pieces she extracts from nests of velvet and resin will enter felt boxes, to be taken home like pets newly adopted. Then a need for the sea would seize her, and out she goes.

  Sometimes she searches the pavement and thinks it doesn't feel right, that the signatures and handprints of celebrities do not belong down the Avenue of Stars. Today she looks into the sky. For clouds or storms perhaps; this morning there was an amber cloud alert on forecast.