Scale-Bright

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  "It's delicious. You aren't eating?"

  "I don't require food. Seung Ngo insisted I cook for you sometimes; she believes eating out too often will destroy your insides."

  Julienne laughs, a jittery little sound. "True, too. I can cook for you next time?"

  "Of course." Realizing her niece is growing discomfited, she gets herself a bowl and fills it with rice. "How much of my life do you know of?"

  "The… general idea." The girl squirms, perhaps trying to reconcile Houyi of the myth and Houyi in the flesh. "That you shot the suns down and were banished."

  "That's correct, but it never needed to happen. The sun-crows flew at the behest of their father Daizeon, who was on sore terms with me. Knowing what would happen he sent his sons to die at my hand. It is Daizeon that now aids the monk."

  Julienne stops eating. "He predicted you'd get involved?"

  "Possibly. He created the divination charts Fukhei is credited with, Jikging as you'd know them, but that was before my time. Don't let it drain your appetite. This happened long ago, and I don't want Seung Ngo to return to find you malnourished."

  "You've never sounded so much like an aunt. Both of you have always been so modern, you let me do almost anything."

  "It has more to do with basic ignorance than modernity. I wasn't born human, she must have told you that, and had no family. She had some—you I believe are descended from Fourth Niece, by way of Second Brother—but circumstances were such that she lost contact with them. Ah, you should be calling Seung Ngo Aunt Number Three." She contemplates the set of Julienne's jaw, the angle of her nose. "Sometimes I wonder if Seung Ngo would have had a more complete life if she hadn't met me. As for aunthood, we're learning by trial and error. Give it another year and we'll be as strict and staid as any proper elder."

  "Is it—am I a burden?"

  "Hardly. This past year has been most interesting." Houyi deposits several dumplings on Julienne's plate. "Now eat."

  When the dishes are wiped and the cloths wrung, Julienne puts her arms around Houyi's waist, tentative, awkward. "I'm glad to have both of you. I wish I was brilliant and interesting and successful so you could be proud of me."

  "You don't have to be any of that; family is not a conditional thing. There's nothing about you that'd shame either me or Seung Ngo. Nothing at all."

  * * *

  The snake turns up three hours past midnight. Out in the corridor there are distant noises from the garden eleven floors down. The music has long subsided—some tenants rented the space for a graduation party—but if Houyi concentrates she can make out individual conversations.

  "Did you find her?"

  "Yes." She returns the box of scales. "Find the River of Unmaking east of Tianmu's mirror palace and follow until you find its western tributary. Keep to that and you'll find a seam in heaven's boundary, between what has been shaped and what hasn't. There stands the pagoda that traps your sister, watched over by Dijun's servants."

  "Lesser things." Xiaoqing bends her mouth. "Fahai is there?"

  "Not when I looked, but there were signs. I'm surprised he can endure heaven—for one such as he, the air ought to be poison. But with the help he has, why not? Dijun won't appear in person unless I am, so you won't be facing a god."

  Olivia cants her head. There's a tint of red to her, a shimmer not quite reptile. Daji's mark. "You're giving me considerate advice for one reputed to despise all demonkind."

  "I don't commit myself to so personal a thing as spite. Those who provoke me I return the favor in kind, nothing more."

  "This concludes our transaction then."

  Behind Houyi the door opens.

  "Auntie?" Then, groggily, "Oh."

  The moment slackens then springs taut. Julienne grips the door until her knuckles turn white. "Does anyone," she says in her salesgirl voice, sing-song bright, "fancy a coffee?"

  Julienne sets to work with the espresso machine. Houyi notes in bemusement that she's using beans she usually hoards with surreptitious determination.

  The snake adds enough cream to turn her cup a milky sludge; Julienne adds enough maple syrup to court diabetes. Houyi drinks immediately, rolls the heat rather than the taste on her palate.

  "Bit late for a social call, isn't it?" Julienne's smile maintains that thin, panic-serrated cheer.

  "I didn't mean to wake you up." The viper's shift in tone and mannerism is astonishing. Houyi has noted it before, but the change is more evident now. "And I did promise I wouldn't impose on you ever again."

  Julienne watches the demon, then lowers her gaze to the mug, which she stirs with unnecessary force and focus. "It's just a coffee."

  "It's very nice coffee."

  "Oh, it's a blend from…" Julienne stops herself and chews on her spoon.

  Houyi does not feel true fatigue—she can't—but something very like a headache is beginning to throb. She could evict Olivia, but Seung Ngo of all people told Houyi to acquire a sense of humor. She has one; it fails to glean any amusement from this. A viper. Their niece.

  Julienne looks from one piece of furniture to the next, then finally to Houyi. "Will she be safer if I'm with her?"

  The snake breathes, "What?"

  "Harming mortals," Houyi says, "would be sinful for a god. Yet you wish to play into Daizeon's hand, niece? I've told you the dangers and while I'm not his lesser in arms, direct conflict is just what he wants to happen. To others it will seem I'm getting in his way while he banishes a demon."

  "Auntie, but what if you aren't there—"

  "Am I to let you do this on your own? Your passage would be illegitimate to start with; you aren't a sage, my niece, or a holy woman of any sort. Heaven is not where you belong, not unearned."

  "I'm not taking you with me," the viper snaps. "What insanity has taken hold of you, Julienne? Which of your senses have you discarded—all of them?"

  Julienne sets down her mug with exaggerated delicacy. "I'm not doing this for you."

  "What is this about if not me?"

  "It's about what I want." Her niece gathers herself, straightening. "Auntie. I understand why you don't want me to do this. I even agree. But."

  Houyi sighs. "Viper. Go."

  To her credit the viper obeys. Houyi turns to Julienne, who refuses to meet her eyes. "How and why did you arrive at this plan?"

  "Auntie Seung Ngo wanted to know when the last time was I made a decision because I wanted something, not because I wanted to avoid troubling or bothering anyone. She… wasn't happy with my answer."

  "She has," Houyi says, rubbing her temple, "been reading books about young women and psychology to me. You've chosen an unfortunate occasion to self-actualize, niece, and for one utterly unworthy of your charity."

  "You're right about her. You absolutely are. Only."

  She exhales. "The pathways to heaven are mine to freely cross. Even if it's to oppose Daizeon, you are Seung Ngo's niece, and ultimately that makes it my right by kinship to defend you. Don't hesitate. At the first sign of danger think of me and call my name. I will be there."

  Houyi does not surprise easily, but she's startled when Julienne stretches on tiptoes to kiss her on the cheek. "This will be the first and last time I do this to you, Auntie."

  "You are too young to say that. I only hope that you won't break Seung Ngo's heart."

  2.6

  On her first day in heaven, Xiaoqing's skin cracks and chips like time-beaten clay.

  Julienne inhales. "The air's so clean. I never knew the sky could look like that."

  The air cuts Xiaoqing's tongue and sears her throat. She does not say so. "That's because you've lived in a human city all your life. The demon's country is no less lovely than this and far more exciting besides."

  In heaven dawn is woven by a goddess and a crow. Xiaoqing has never seen them. Their light burns away the clouds, curtains of heat shimmering against the sea-roof of the world where dragons swim. She looks for their whiskers and horns. To this she once aspired: not to become a holy sage
or reincarnate from the demon's order to the human's, but to be the kin of great serpents, to swim this sky by right of being. If she was wise and correct, if she guided humans to virtue and given up the taste for their vitality, she might have earned that elevation. Then Bai Suzhen became her world and her want, and she set all else aside simply to spend long afternoons basking together in the sun, entwined green to white.

  Xiaoqing does not resent. But she imagines.

  They find the river easily enough. Shrubs profligate along its banks, burying garden paths under mud and growth. Julienne exclaims softly over the shallows, where flame gusts blue-white, where the waters are as often platinum and gold as they are liquid.

  "Why did you come, really?"

  Julienne barely glances at her. "Who wouldn't want to see what heaven is like?"

  Xiaoqing has not prepared for it, for this indifference to pinch her every nerve like Bai Suzhen's teeth. "Lied to the archer, did you?" because returning fire must surely salve the hurt.

  "I wanted to know how they live, away from Hong Kong. Their reality. What it is like for them. I want to understand them—they're family, and you can't begin to fathom how important that is."

  "Humans weigh themselves down with attachment. No wonder your existences are spent on grief and misery."

  Julienne stiffens and for a moment Xiaoqing imagines she has made a puncture. But when the human speaks it is quiet. "People are very lonely. I used to think I'd do anything—be anyone—so I'd have somebody who would stay with me. Just so I wouldn't feel like a failure, just so my flat wouldn't be so empty all the time."

  "How many," Xiaoqing finds herself asking, "lovers have you had?"

  "Some." Julienne straightens. "Not counting you."

  The river twists and climbs, narrowing and curving to accommodate footbridges that go nowhere, stone walls that enclose nothing. Miniature boats swim against the currents, toothed and finned, sometimes bamboo, sometimes wax.

  A palace gleams in the east, faceted and crackling with lightning. They've got the right river, at least: Xiaoqing asked Daji for a map, but the fox laughed and said that heaven is not to be charted. As many rivers as there need to be, younger-sister, and as many hills and mountains ordered by the alignment of sun and stars, by the mood of the soil and sediment.

  When Xiaoqing wipes her mouth there is blue-black froth on her hand. By the time the sun-chariot sets, her bones are lead, her muscles bruised from friction against tendons and meat.

  Ahead of her Julienne passes under a moon gate and disappears. In her wake Xiaoqing sees not the river they have been following but a dining table crusted in pearls, phantoms of women playing tiles. Panic whips through her, but the displacement retreats and there is Julienne looking over her shoulder, puzzled, waiting.

  Her knees are weak. She is weak.

  "You must be tired," Xiaoqing says, holding herself upright on the vertebrae of her pride. "Shall we stop?"

  They find shelter in a pavilion of fabrics that whisper among themselves, under a paper roof of folded animals: turtles and hares, cranes and frogs pecking one another in rustling susurrus. She lies down on a bench woven of lantern tassels.

  When she wakes it is night, and each blade of grass thrusting into the pavilion is limned in frost. Julienne averts her eyes when she realizes Xiaoqing is alert.

  "You don't have to do that," Xiaoqing murmurs.

  "Do what?"

  "Pretend you aren't looking at me."

  Julienne clenches her hands: at last, a reaction. "How can you be this conceited? But you'd be, wouldn't you? You can be as beautiful as you want, as effortless as you please. I don't know why you bother with makeup."

  "Why not? I'm no more able to reshape my form and face than you are. Many demons are hideous. Have you seen Zyu Batgai when he was a pig?" She frowns and shakes her head. Just when she thinks she's begun to understand Julienne, the mortal would say something baffling. "I don't know what so aggrieves you. I'm going to hunt. Do you want anything?"

  Very deliberately Julienne says, "I'm sorry, but people don't eat raw animals."

  It is a barb obviously hurled, transparent in purpose and tactic. It should miss, but it does not. Xiaoqing has never had cause to find her nature shameful.

  But no human she's ever chosen was allowed to know what she is. All she gave them was a name, a few weeks, a few months. They were transitory.

  The starlight blazes gold, delineating each blade of grass and clod of dirt in precious metals, and burning her eyes with the salt and heat of tears. Quickly she learns that there's no prey great or little to be had, and the brittleness of her flesh gets no better. She spits venom onto a rock, turning it to a mirror, and takes off her blouse to discover a line between her breasts that has opened to her true self. Snakeskin thrusting through a gap of human flesh.

  Xiaoqing buttons up with shaking fingers. She's never lost control of her body before, and though she forces all her power into that thin seam, it does not seal.

  * * *

  Julienne remembers this terrible invulnerability: it is like having Hau Ngai's energy inside her, divinely strong, and nestled within it the knowledge that this isn't really hers. That it will expire and she will return to dull ordinariness, to being just herself—frail and frightened.

  But this strength, though unearned and unrightful, clears her head and keeps her content, so much that Olivia's presence no longer hurts. Like this she will never need another pill. No tinted bottles lining up at the vanity, no appointments in fluorescent-lit clinics.

  When Olivia points out fruits by the wayside and says, off-handed, that they can cleanse away mortality, Julienne goes still. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"

  "Nothing."

  Hau Ngai told her that she will feel no thirst or hunger here, which is true, and that she is not to touch anything edible in heaven: not even water, rain or dew or lake. "What about you? Isn't that what demons try to do all the time—eat virtuous monks to achieve immortality?"

  Olivia laughs, but its pitch doesn't ring true, ring joy. "I'm approaching two thousand. My kind live for a very, very long time and it takes a lot to kill us."

  "I'm not eating those." They don't look normal. Longans the size of watermelons.

  "Suit yourself."

  But the seed has been planted and watered, and the roots flourish. Julienne tamps down on the speculations that rear and hiss and ask what it'd be like to live unaging as her aunts do. To have poise without trying, to have beauty without effort. To be impossible.

  Hau Ngai prohibited this.

  Julienne mulls on the reasoning behind it. There must be one, and she doesn't think it is because her aunt guards the divine state with any particular jealousy. She sinks into this question so deep that she doesn't notice anything wrong until Olivia collapses to her knees in the high singing grass.

  "Are you all right?" Immediately she feels a fool; Olivia obviously isn't.

  "Aren't you cold?" Olivia's teeth chatter.

  "A little," she says, puzzled, as she divests herself of her jacket. The weather is mild, even pleasant, autumnal. There's frost glazing the leaves and crusting bright on the fruits, though she hasn't felt that. She puts the jacket around Olivia and zips it up. "Is it because you're cold-blooded?" No tactful way to put it.

  Olivia has curled fetal, hoarding heat between her chest and knees. "I've walked through ice courts in hell." She chafes shaking hands together. "This shouldn't be happening."

  "I could build a fire." She doesn't know how or have the tools.

  "It won't help. I just… need a moment."

  Julienne doesn't see how a moment could make Olivia better. "We'll find somewhere to rest."

  There's no pavilion this time, but in a pine's shade they find a platform bed carved of a single iron slab, curtained in tortoiseshell combs linked together, teeth-clicking. It unsettles Julienne, but Olivia doesn't look as though she's up to going any further.

  Julienne lies down beside the snake. She meant to keep
a distance, but Olivia turns around and tugs her close. "You're warm."

  "I'm at normal body temperature." But when Olivia's forehead nuzzles the crook of her neck, Julienne's pulse leaps. She pushes her mind away from the thought of that day in that hotel room on that bed. A tactile memory. "Are you feeling better?"

  "I will be." Olivia sighs into Julienne's collarbone. "Did your lovers ever tell you that you're without compare?"

  Elena said only that she cleaned up well. They communicated in English since Elena speaks maybe two sentences of Gwongdongwa, and that phrase always bothered Julienne. The Australian liked her to look good when they were together in public, and that meant twenty minutes picking out an outfit Elena would approve, twenty more piling on the makeup that had to look natural and elegant. Elena despised eyeliner too thick, eyeshadow too vivid—tawdry she called them, no class. "They weren't liars."

  "You mean that they were boors. I've met demons who could seduce monarchs to their deaths. To me they are nothing. But you."

  "What kind of compliment is that?"

  "For a year you forgot me. I remembered."

  She doesn't speak after that, subsiding into something not quite like rest. When they are up and moving again Olivia's eyes are brilliant, clear. She marches tireless and rigid.

  The second time Olivia falls, she tells Julienne to stay away.

  "You can't even stand on your own," Julienne says.

  "I haven't eaten." Olivia's panting races shallow and fast. "I haven't eaten and my belly believes it's been starved for decades. You smell like strength and passion, and every wonderful and delicious thing that ever was. I slowed my heart and my blood to stem my hunger. It wasn't enough."

  Fear palpitates in Julienne's wrists and punctures that bubble of invulnerability. Standing there over Olivia's heaving shoulders she asks herself what is she doing there, what was she thinking, this is insane. She isn't in a story and she has no place in one—a legend, a narrative in which only those larger than life like Olivia and Bak Seijuen can possibly be real, be true.