Hidden Cities

by Daniel Fox

  For jade, though: the chance of jade was worth a sacrifice. And there were other compensations, more immediate, a full belly and an easy day; and the respect they showed him, all unforced. He knew himself to be an idiot here in the forest, and nevertheless they called him Master Biao and deferred to him as though his little wisdoms were worth far more than theirs, even in their own country.

  He loved that.

  And this, he loved this, that they came to him to say, “We are walking the bounds of our clan claim today. We will meet our neighbors on the heights, and not fight, because they are doing the same. It will be a good thing if you are there.” This was more than a welcome, almost a demand. Be one of us, be one with us.

  Well. He would do that.

  First, he did need to be a doctor. This was Yu Shan’s family compound, but Siew Ren was here. That was inappropriate, Biao understood. Yu Shan’s mother had not spoken for her at the last clanmoot, had not been able to speak for her because the boy himself wasn’t there to be presented and approved. Ancient customs might be no more than token when the young people had known each other all their lives, but still: by clan law he had no claim on her, and she should have gone back to her own family, higher up the valley.

  Yu Shan had brought her here regardless. It seemed as though, in his guilt—too late, in every way that mattered—he needed to claim her any way he could. Which meant physically, her presence in his home; and physically again, his presence at her side, by her bed, hour by hour and day by day.

  Biao thought he would drive her demented, and wondered what the treatment was for that.

  So far, she didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t quite sure that she’d noticed. She was caught up in the immediacy of pain, wrapped entirely in her ruined flesh and skin; she paid no heed to the world even a breath beyond. Or perhaps she hid from it. Better to hurt, perhaps, and not worry how to live beyond that, crippled and scarred. She hated to be touched now. Yu Shan thought that was because any touch hurt her, even his, even the most gentle; Biao thought it was because any touch was a reminder of the world, all of this is waiting for you, the rest of her life, hard and unremitting and worse perhaps than pain.

  Biao was the only one whose touch she would allow. Not even Yu Shan was let doctor her.

  This was his morning, then: that he woke in the little hut he slept in all alone, rather to the scandal of his hosts; he washed with the family at the well, and spoke of this and that, and today they invited him to walk the bounds with them; and then he made a brew and cooled it and went in to his patient.

  Siew Ren too had a hut to herself, because her cries and moans kept people wakeful. There was a handful of children in the compound, but children sleep through anything; it was the adults who lay disturbed and restless in the common house because Siew Ren was far beyond sleep, beyond caring. Pain was a knife, whittling at her, fining her down. Sometimes what it cut away fell out as sound.

  She was quiet this morning. Quiet so far. Yu Shan was there as ever, crouched at that little distance that he’d learned: close enough that he could reach her in a moment, far enough away that she didn’t feel loomed over, about to be touched. If she opened her eyes and saw him there, she wouldn’t flinch away.

  Probably.

  Biao bustled straight past Yu Shan and dropped onto the dry earth floor beside her pallet.

  Her eyes opened, her face twisted in the dim door-light. Lips turned back from teeth: it was her new version of a smile. At least, Biao had decided to read it so. He beamed back down at her, and lifted the lid from the bowl he carried.

  This was the hard thing, night and morning and through the day. All her burns, which meant half her body, must be bathed with this. She must be lifted and turned and touched all over, most particularly where she hurt the most, where her skin was gone and her flesh was raw and weeping.

  She didn’t trouble to try not to scream.

  Every time they did this, Yu Shan would try to help, to hold her; and she would bat him away with vague terrible gestures, wild awkward arms and flopping hands. She would lean sobbing into Biao’s grip, though he found it almost impossibly difficult to hold her and turn her and dab at her all at once. He was sure that he hurt her more than necessary, just through having it all to do himself. But she couldn’t be persuaded, she would not have Yu Shan touch her.

  Today, when it was done, when she was lying back and lying still, settling into the steady embrace of her pain again, Biao felt an unaccustomed twist of sympathy for Yu Shan, like a knife in the gut. He did not ordinarily rate himself a kind man, or a generous one; perhaps he was being a doctor, thinking as Tien would, seeing the world her way. At last, Tien would say. Seeing two patients, both in need.

  Biao said, “Yu Shan. When Siew Ren has drunk her tea and eaten what she can,” another brew and a bowl of congee with certain herbs in it, which he would prepare and Yu Shan feed to her spoon by spoonful, a duty she allowed, “come walk the bounds with your clan, with me.”

  He shook his head, but Biao was ready for that. His voice rolled on almost without pause. “For her sake, Yu Shan, not for yours. Let Siew Ren rest an hour or two without you hovering above her. Your desperation is an obstacle to her recovery.”

  It was cruel, which worked well with his new sympathy: balance over all, this way and that. Yu Shan gazed up at him for a moment, then unfolded his limbs and stood slowly, towered above him, nodded with a brutal care. No words: he seldom had anything to say anymore. That nod was effort enough, almost praiseworthy.

  Biao stepped back to let the young man blunder out into the day. One last glance at Siew Ren, who didn’t move, he didn’t expect her to: pain enclosed her like a shell its nut and she lay utterly still, encompassed within it, but her eyes were on Biao. See what I do for you, how I work for your comfort? Even in this dimness she could read that, even though he stood against the dazzle of the door-light. Her gratitude might be useful to him yet.

  Not all the clan would come to walk the bounds. Biao had known cities where this would be a fair-day: ceremonies and games, dragon boat races on the river, food and music and other pleasures outside the walls all day and half the night. Not here. In the mountains borders were worth fighting for. This was not even a way to keep peace with the neighbors, only to establish where the fights would happen.

  Ordinarily, at least, that was true. Things were … no longer ordinary. Even a stranger to the island, even Biao could tell. He knew the reputation of the clans, from legends of the imperium and soldiers’ gossip together; and he knew too that they were aware of change. Their children had gone away to fight for the emperor, to fight together for the emperor. Some had come back hurt, blood-bonded each to each in a way no clansfolk ever were before.

  Inevitably, some had not come back. Some of their own, some of their neighbors’ children. Not many, but in a way that only made it easier to mourn, knowing that everyone held the same few missing faces, the same names in their minds and memories.

  Some of the clansfolk were not even carrying weapons as they made the slow march up to the traditional mootpoint, high, where the trees failed and the rock grew more barren and debatable.

  Their neighbor-clan was waiting there already by the time Biao arrived, blowing hard and almost grateful to Yu Shan for staying with him. Almost was not quite, and he wasn’t really sure that the boy was there in fact. Only the shell, perhaps, the simple physicality of him, empty and mute. Even that was a comfort when he walked barely faster than you wanted to, a slow trudge up the endless slope and you could actually seize hold of his arm and find an inexhaustible strength in it, the strength of stone if only stone could climb.

  The mootpoint was flat rock, an unexpected platform here on the forest’s edge. Of those who made the climb, half were young and hurt; and it seemed that the young ones had come up largely to see their blood-kin from the next valley, whom they had fought beside just days before. After so much hugging and whispering and showing scars, it would have been hard for their elders to glower an
d snarl at one another with any conviction.

  At first they stood in two groups, while the young folk mingled. Then one individual recognized another across the gap, with a nod and a grunt; someone took a step forward and saw it matched, and was committed because stopping now, stepping back now would be ridiculous; soon the two clans were so mixed that they set out to walk the bounds in a single band.

  A single band and Yu Shan, perhaps. Even he walked with others, though, and not all of his own clan. Biao wasn’t actually sure this would do him any good, but he could see no harm in it. No possibility of harm.

  “Master Biao.”

  She was not quite a stranger: one of those who had traveled with them on the road, slipping away to her own people where the path divided. He had advised her how to treat the wound she carried, a deep gash to the shoulder. He hoped it had been good advice. He thought he’d said what Tien would have said, more or less. That was the best he could do.

  She seemed fit enough, at least, arm in a sling but healthy otherwise, a good color and keeping pace.

  It was a pity that he couldn’t remember her name, but she expected that, or she read it in his face.

  “I am Chia.”

  “… And we were together in the jade store, you helped us with your good arm when we had to move to higher ground, although the effort left you bleeding. I remember perfectly. How is the shoulder now?”

  “It’s good, thank you.” She raised it in the sling, higher and more easily than perhaps she should have done, so soon with such an injury. Perhaps it was just youth and health; or perhaps they were right, these youngsters, that they would heal faster and better if they only came home.

  Tien might have known if that was true. Biao was out of his depth but hiding it, riding it, as he had done all his life. Using it.

  “Keep using the herbs as I have shown you,” he said, “and work the flesh there, work the arm if you don’t want the scar to stiffen it.”

  “I will, Master Biao.”

  “Good. Come to show me, in another week. You know where I am staying.”

  “With Yu Shan, yes. With Siew Ren … If I am allowed to, I will come.”

  “I’ll tell the watchmen to expect you. You and your clan-cousins, I’ll say you’re under my care. They respect me, I think.”

  “Of course. You may need to come to us, even so. Though after today …” She looked forward, she looked behind, to where two clans walked almost as one; she shook her head, smiling, bewildered. “It isn’t usually like this, you know. It isn’t meant to be like this. We walk our side of the ridge, they walk theirs, and it’s a lucky day if we only throw hard words at each other. A rare day. Usually it’s stones. Maybe your coming will be good for all the valleys, Master Biao. Maybe they will let us all come to you.”

  A voice called her name, a young man’s voice, and she skipped ahead. Biao felt almost benevolent, watching her: almost as he thought he ought to feel.

  There were others to talk to, other hurts to ask after, other healings to marvel at privately and nod over in public as though they were to be expected, as though they were all his own work. There was perhaps even the far distant dawn of hope for Siew Ren. These others had not been so badly hurt, not by a long way, but even so …

  He might say that to Yu Shan. He might not. Better perhaps to let the boy build his own hopes from what he saw about him, so that if those hopes failed he would at least not blame Biao.

  There were ridge paths through the forest, breaks where rock thrust high and the trees fell away and they walked under cloud and sunlight, under a sudden warm shower of rain.

  The elders were talking about jade: how thin the old seams were, how hard it was to find fresh. “They say jade is the tears of the dragon. Well, she is free now, what does she have to weep over …?”

  Biao was already used to such talk, already bored by it. His eyes moved to follow a couple of youngsters straying high up the mountainside, beyond clan territory: two lads easy together, out adventuring …

  Lads caught in a sudden stillness, staring down into a hollow.

  Lads turning, waving madly; their voices following a little later, as though it took time even for sound to tumble over these stony slopes.

  Voices calling, long broken wordless cries. They might have meaning, clan-talk, some tongue of the valleys, but Biao could not distinguish it.

  The healing young had to help one another, in a sudden upslope scramble; it was their elders who reached the lads first, saw what they saw, stood in the same still place, somewhere dreadful.

  Biao came up last, puffing and gasping, snatching at a hand when it was held out to him and only realizing after he’d grasped it that it had been meant to hold him back, to say no, don’t look, you don’t want to see this.

  By then he was expecting bodies, death. What else?

  He used that resistant arm just to haul himself up those last few steps, against the hot ache in his legs. Frowned at its owner, I am Master Biao the doctor, don’t try to deny me; and pushed his way through to the hollow’s rim.

  And looked down, and saw death indeed, and not at all what he was expecting.

  IT WAS wet down there, darkly wet, and that was more than rain. There was blood in it, which the rain wouldn’t allow to dry. Biao could smell it.

  So could the gathered flies, in all their number.

  There was a body, yes. Just the one, and that was dark too, wet too, strange. Too long and skinless, skinned: not human, something animal, but what animal here grew to such a potent size …?

  There. On a rock beside, another dark wet thing, a head: intact and terrible, tongue lolling between vicious teeth where the jaw hung slackly open.

  “I didn’t …” His voice sounded wrong, all manner of wrong against their silence. But someone had to speak, and it might be the right of the stranger. He swallowed, and tried again. “I didn’t know you hunted tigers, in these hills.”

  “Stone tigers,” someone answered him. “And no, we do not hunt them.”

  Now he saw, yes, the banded fur was green between the black, the pure color of imperial jade. No doubt the eyes too, no doubt they would match the eyes of these people around him, these shocked people, some of them weeping now, some raging in their silence.

  Rare beasts become mystical: meaningful to those who live among them, almost mythical to those who live elsewhere. Biao had never expected to see a jade tiger, had barely ever imagined they were real. An adjunct to tales of the emperor: why would they need to exist, outside the stories? What would sustain them, more than the credulity of peasants?

  What would they need to sustain them, more than that?

  Here it was, though, dead and skinned, and of course the clansfolk were appalled. Yu Shan was trembling visibly. Biao remembered some story that he and Siew Ren had seen a jade tiger, somewhere in these forests. The emperor too, but that mattered less; the emperor was not here.

  Of course Yu Shan must see this as an omen. So did everyone, no doubt.

  Perhaps they were right. Perhaps they were all right. If it was an omen, though, no one there knew what it meant.

  Biao did what he had always done, stole the moment. Took it to himself.

  Stepped down into the hollow, where none of the clansfolk had quite dared to tread.

  Blood in the mud that soaked his shoes, but they were wet already. Flies and stink in the air; breathe shallowly through the mouth, try not to swallow anything.

  He turned his back to the body, to the head. Lifted his eyes to the people grouped above him, lifted his voice and said, “This, now, this is a horrible thing. You will want to know who has done it, man or monster, demon maybe.” If jade tigers prowled these hills and there was a dragon in the strait, who knew what other creature might not rise from stories and be true?

  Someone, he thought, ought to find out. In case it came down from the high hills and wanted to hunt in the valleys.

  Voices rose, not directly against him, not directly in response but stirred by hi
m—not us, not any of us, not your clan or ours, we would not, could not …

  They must have their own stories of tiger-killers, dangers to the beasts. Nothing lives that does not die, except immortals and even they face dangers. Even the dragon could be chained. There would be stories.

  Biao sent these people away, into their own story. “Go you, all of you now. It is a horrible thing, but I am a doctor and good can come of this. There are organs I can harvest here, to make medicines; this magnificent creature can be as generous in death as she was in life.” He was guessing at everything: what kind of stories they would tell one another about the tiger, what gender the tiger was. Skinned, it was hard to know what was missing. The way the carcass lay, sprawled on its back with the legs fallen open, he should have been able to tell but there was only a hollow there, a dark gathered pool.

  It was a pity not to have the penis, if the beast had once been male. A jade tiger’s member, guaranteed by the creature’s head: the value would have been incalculable. If he had been allowed to take it, if he had been allowed to sell it, if he could have found his way to the proper marketplace and spread the word that he had such a thing.

  On this stranded island, among these stranded people, that was a long chain of doubt. More likely someone would have claimed it for the emperor. Who else could own the harvest of a stone tiger, than he who owns the stone?

  There was no penis that he could see, and he was reluctant to dip his hand into that pool and feel for it, at least while anyone was watching. It was still possible that there would be no harvest at all, that they would let Biao take nothing. People were muttering among themselves, eyeing him askance. Stranded, he thought: without tradition, because who would ever kill a jade tiger? It was unknown, unknowable.

  Being a doctor worked in his favor, if it was a favor to be left in a pit with a stinking fly-blown corpse. Even these people knew that tigers were a great source of health and strength. Being a stranger should have worked against him, except that it set him apart from clan obligations. Two clans watched him here, and they watched each other too; joined in outrage, still neither one would let the other take possession of the carcass.