Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix

by Julie C. Dao

  “This way!” Wren angled them to the right as the ice cracked like thunder behind them. Any minute now, the Empress’s soldiers would be in the forest.

  Two horses burst from the trees: Wren’s gray pony and a black stallion with a rider. At a second glance, Jade realized the stallion carried two riders, Koichi in front and Shiro behind, wrapped together in a black cloak. It was a clever trick to make them resemble one large man.

  “Hurry!” Shiro shouted, fear etched into his features.

  Jade gripped the pony’s mane and lifted her foot, feeling Wren’s considerable strength as the other girl propelled her onto its back. Wren leapt up behind her and seized the reins, nudging the pony on after Shiro and Koichi’s horse. They tore through the woodlands, dodging tree trunks, clumps of snow flying off the branches and stinging their faces.

  Xifeng’s men were surely in the forest by now, but there was no noise whatsoever. The quiet frightened Jade more, until she heard a great rushing like the waterfall in Xifeng’s lair.

  “Don’t look back!” Wren yelled, but no one listened.

  The lantern light intensified, glowing yellow, as they whirled to see what chased them.

  A living, coiling black mass poured over the forest floor like hot, poisonous oil. Jade screamed, recognizing the flood for what it was: thousands of slimy black snakes, fat as small tree trunks, slick bodies gleaming. They moved relentlessly forward, heads held high and alert.

  But when the serpents entered the shadows between lanterns, Jade saw their images shift into thousands of masked men, crawling after her on the forest floor.

  “The lantern light shows their true forms!” she uttered, horrified.

  Shiro clenched his jaw. “We can’t take the road home now. With the amount of ground they can cover, they’ll catch up long before we arrive.”

  “The bridge in the thousand lanterns story!” Koichi said abruptly, his eyes widening at Jade, but she hadn’t any idea what he meant or how it could be important now. “Follow me!”

  “I hope you know where you’re going!” Wren urged the pony into a gallop, and Jade clung on for dear life. If she fell, the snakes would be upon her before anyone could save her. The sound of the serpents was like torrential rain, like a plague-ridden flood.

  “Keep riding!” Koichi shouted. “Bridge ahead!”

  He had grown up in this forest, Jade recalled. He knew it well, and in a moment, he was proven right. A slender bridge of light gray wood appeared, curving over a frozen, boulder-filled stream. Koichi and Shiro’s stallion leapt onto the bridge, and the gray pony followed.

  Within seconds, Xifeng’s snake soldiers arrived at the foot of the bridge, stopping on the last bit of snowy earth before it met the gray wood. They gazed up with their hateful ruby eyes.

  One of them hissed, a long, red-black split tongue emerging. “Death comes for Jade of the Great Forest, whether now or later.” It advanced, but no sooner had its body touched the bridge than it burst into the air, flying backward as though it had been flung.

  Jade and Wren gaped at each other.

  A current of uneasiness rippled through the snakes, and then another tried to slither onto the bridge. It met the same fate, for the moment its scales touched the wood, it was ejected backward as though some invisible person stood there, gripped it by the neck, and threw it.

  “They can’t cross the bridge,” Jade breathed.

  Koichi grinned at her. “It’s the story of the thousand lanterns. It gave me the idea.”

  “I don’t understand. There wasn’t a bridge in that story.”

  Before he could reply, several snakes gave up on the bridge and began crawling over the frozen stream. But their plan to surround the bridge on the other side was thwarted. Jade noticed them gliding backward fast and hissing in pain, some returning with missing or shredded scales.

  “They can’t cross the ice, either,” Wren exclaimed. “What is this place?”

  “I played here when I was a child.” Koichi glanced at the retreating snakes. “Come, it’s not safe to talk here. If they can speak, they can listen. Let’s move on.”

  “We need to go to the tengaru clearing,” Jade told Shiro as they nudged their horses off the bridge. “Amah told me I would find answers there. Do you remember where it is?”

  He shook his head sadly. “I’ve never found it again, though not for lack of trying.”

  A thought occurred to Jade. “Amah’s cloak! Wren, which bundle is it in?”

  Wren pulled out the brocade and they stopped, the men keeping watch while Jade spread the cloth over the pony’s neck. The mere feel of Amah’s stitches beneath her hands almost brought Jade to tears, but her grief subsided when she saw the map: the lanterns sewn around the border, which had been pearl-white when Amah showed them the cloak, were now bright red.

  “How could this be?” Wren asked, paling.

  “This is no ordinary map.” Jade peered up at the trees. All of the lanterns were pure white. Quickly, she repeated the tale of the thousand lanterns as she had told it to Amah and Wren on their journey. Understanding dawned on Shiro’s face, and he, Wren, and Koichi looked at each with mounting excitement. “The tale is a clue! Amah said storytelling is the passing on of secrets. Suppose my mother left me a trail of red lanterns, just like in the story.”

  “We need to go back,” Koichi said decisively. “I told you, Your Highness, I read another version of that story in a volume of old Kamatsu tales. The tale must have crossed the sea and changed a bit in doing so.”

  “Tell us,” Jade urged him.

  “In the version I read, the princess’s betrothed chases her lover through the forest. But his men can’t cross a magical bridge that appears and saves the lover. It was created by forest spirits who took pity on him,” Koichi said. “The story ends the same way, for the betrothed tricks him. ‘Come away from that bridge,’ he says. ‘The princess sent me for you.’ After much persuasion, the lover obeys and is killed.”

  “Koichi,” Jade said excitedly, returning the young man’s ear-to-ear grin, “you may very well have saved us tonight. Let’s return to the bridge. If the musician died near it in the story, the red lantern must be there.”

  “So what does this mean? That the story is real?” Wren asked doubtfully.

  “These woods hold a strange magic,” Shiro murmured. “The tengaru once rescued my party when we were attacked. I find it almost easy to accept, here, that a story may turn out to be real and our salvation.”

  “I once asked Amah if her tales were real or just stories. She said, ‘Why not both?’” The lanterns sparkled through Jade’s tears, recalling the last time Amah had told her about the thousand lanterns. She felt Wren’s trembling hand on her shoulder.

  “I wish our grandmother were here, too,” the young woman said quietly.

  Unable to speak, Jade shook out the brocade cloak and wrapped them both in Amah’s loving stitches.

  The snakes had gone and the bridge was quiet when they returned to it, scanning the treetops. Jade saw the bright spot of red at the same time as Koichi. “There!” they cried in unison. She would have sworn on her life that the single red lantern had not been there earlier, and Koichi agreed.

  His eyes met hers in the gloom. “I wonder if the lanterns were listening, waiting for us to put our stories together. Lead the way, Princess. This story belongs to you and Empress Lihua.”

  After the first lantern, the trail was easy to find. Wren spotted the next one twenty feet away, and then Shiro found the one after that. Warring emotions of fear and sorrow and exhilaration filled Jade’s heart. She didn’t know if these muddled feelings caused the dizzying, surreal sense of disorientation that came upon her, but it felt like the horses were crossing a greater distance than her mind could comprehend, despite not changing their speed.

  In the story, the trail led the princess to the one she loved
.

  But who waited for Jade? Who was left to care for her?

  The trees begin to thin out, and within minutes a great clearing stood before them with an immense crystalline pond, ringed by snow-kissed willows bending their heads into the half-frozen water. “The Good Queen’s Lake,” Jade whispered. “We’ve found it.”

  The tengaru sanctuary nestled in the serene echoes of nature, a place of perfect peace and quiet, with only the song of a snow lark and the rippling of water beneath the moon. No snow touched the grass, and the air, too, was mild without the bite of winter. Jade filled her lungs with it, the grief lifting from her shoulders for a moment. It felt like coming home.

  Shiro pointed ahead. “The tengaru queen lay there, on that island in the pond.”

  They dismounted and approached the water. The island was flanked by two gray bridges identical to the one in the forest. One led to where they stood and the other arched over the Good Queen’s Lake to a gate of silver iron. Within the bars, a single tree shimmered in the moonlight.

  It was the strangest, most beautiful place Jade had ever seen, and as untouched by the world outside as the monastery had been. It was hidden, she guessed, by some magic—protected by the same craft that governed the trail of lanterns and had allowed her party to travel so quickly. I could hide here forever, she thought, and Xifeng would never find me.

  She imagined bringing Abbess Lin, the monks, and the village elder here, where they would be protected, build a new monastery, and pretend the world outside didn’t exist.

  Something enormous moved on the island, breaking into her reverie.

  Wren moved forward with a blade in hand, but Jade’s feeling of coming home grew stronger as the smell of white jasmine rose from between the trees. She couldn’t explain why it did not frighten her—she only knew that the fragrance was both beloved and familiar. She touched Wren’s shoulder and moved to the foot of the bridge.

  “Hello?” she called tentatively. “I am Jade, daughter of Lihua of the Great Forest.”

  The movements stopped. In the long quiet that followed, Jade could feel the creature’s astonishment. And then it moved again, this time rising until its head stretched above the trees.

  A pair of huge gold-flecked eyes peered at them through the drooping branches of the willows, blinking out from the face of an enormous dragon.

  Amah had taught Jade to revere the dragon beyond all heavenly and earthly entities. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight of the magnificent being.

  For one wild, heart-stopping moment, Jade thought that one of the Dragon Lords had descended from the heavens to stand before her. But upon closer observation, she realized this was not a god. For one thing, the dragon had only four claws on each leg where a god would have had five. For another, it seemed gentle and shy, rather than regal and imperious.

  To say that the dragon was blue would have done it a disservice. Its body held a hundred different shades from pale frost to deep navy, swirling across its iridescent scales. The long whiskers, curving deerlike antlers, and flared ridge along its back were of sunshine gold, and its lithe body ended in a serpentine tail and moved sinuously like water flowing to its destination.

  The dragon regarded Jade with intelligence, but did not speak.

  “Are you now the guardian of the Great Forest?” she asked, and it bowed its elegant head, its breath like a summer wind.

  “Then the tengaru did leave,” Shiro said softly. “Honored One, will you allow us to stay tonight? Enemies are on our heels, and the princess has come seeking answers.”

  The dragon blinked its gentle eyes at him benevolently, then gazed at Jade’s cloak.

  “You recognize this.” Jade spread the brocade on the ground and saw that the embroidered lanterns had changed color again, this time to ocean-blue like the dragon’s scales. Briefly, Jade explained to Shiro and Koichi what her nursemaid had told her about the map.

  “It shows enemies? How will they appear?” Koichi asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Jade admitted.

  Wren, who had been examining the map closely, gasped. “Wait, look here.”

  A tree stitched in bright forest-green thread had appeared beside the Good Queen’s Lake. They all looked up at the shining silver gates across the pond.

  “The tengaru told us that was the last apple tree on Feng Lu, which they had guarded for ages, waiting for someone worthy,” Shiro recalled. “I was part of the last Imperial envoy to pay respect at the gods’ shrine, which once had a ruby apple belonging to the Dragon King.”

  “Each god gave a treasure that represented his kingdom. The Dragon King must have chosen an apple,” Jade said with wonder. Somehow the apple tree, a symbol of the Great Forest, had ended up here after the gods’ alliance ended. Thinking of the Serpent God whose jealousy had poisoned that friendship, she told Koichi and Shiro about the poisoned comb and her vision of Xifeng associating with the fallen deity.

  Wren’s nostrils flared. “He wants Xifeng to build him an army, as if Feng Lu hasn’t already been torn apart enough by war and bloodshed.”

  “There’s an old theory that the gods never took their relics back to the heavens,” Shiro said thoughtfully. “They removed them from the shrine, but left them behind on earth. If that is true, the existence of the apple tree fits.”

  “So does the legend that the one who reunites the relics will bring peace to Feng Lu once more,” Koichi said. “Perhaps the apple tree is meant for the same person.”

  They all turned to Jade.

  “It can’t be,” she said, furrowing her brow. “It’s a fable of gods and heroes, and I’m just a girl raised on stories. All I want is to see Xifeng cast down. I want revenge for what she’s done to my father . . . and what Kang did to Amah.” Painfully, she told Shiro and Koichi of the fate of Hana and the other women. Shiro’s lips twisted with grief, and his son touched his shoulder, fighting back tears. “I would have lain in that pool, too, if not for Amah,” Jade added.

  Wren got up and paced furiously. “Kang is mine. You may have Xifeng, Jade, but he is mine for what he did to my grandmother.”

  “Your Highness, you are Empress Lihua’s daughter and a descendant of the Dragon King. The revenge you seek for your family may have more to do with saving Feng Lu than you think,” Shiro said, his voice thick with sorrow. “Xifeng can never turn from the darkness now. She was my friend long ago, but I saw her struggling even then. The woman she is now is nothing close to the girl I knew.”

  “She believes she can’t bear a son and secure her throne while I live. She blames me for what she brought upon herself.” Jade gazed up at the dragon, whose eyes held mute sympathy. “Whoever unites Feng Lu will be fierce and strong. They’ll have to be more like Wren than me.”

  Wren said a curse word Jade knew Amah would slap her for. “Only someone fierce and strong would run to Xifeng as you did. Don’t cheapen my grandmother’s sacrifice with self-doubt. She didn’t give her life for that.” She softened her voice. “She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t believed you had a chance.”

  “Xifeng fears you,” Shiro told Jade. “You don’t want power, but you still have a greater claim to Feng Lu, and she’ll never be sure of the throne until you’re dead.”

  The dragon rose, causing a great wind to rustle the trees, and indicated for Jade to follow with a movement of its head. She obeyed, her mind a whirl of troubled thoughts as the creature led her to the silvery gates, where it stopped and waited for her to enter first.

  When Jade stepped inside, she found it impossible to take her eyes from the apple tree.

  It was extraordinary at a glance, glowing like a lantern, like no other living thing in the Great Forest. One side had the fragrant pink-and-white buds of springtime, and the other was wreathed in snow. No apples grew on its branches, and when she touched the pale gray trunk, she realized that all of the bridges they had cros
sed that night had been made from this tree.

  Her fingers found strange, curving grooves in the velvety bark. She leaned closer, and her breath snagged in her throat when she recognized the drawings: a maiden in a crane feather cloak, three princes standing in a field of rice, a girl with a fishbone in her hands, a blazing phoenix, and a man picking an apple. The images felt as dear as friends, as beloved as family.

  Amah’s stories, yet again.

  Jade fell to her knees. She felt the doubt melting away, the uncertainty of whether it was she for whom the apple tree was meant . . . for here were the tales told by someone who had loved her, etched into the tree of the Dragon King, the god of gods himself.

  “Five stories, one for each of the gods and kingdoms,” said a soft voice behind her.

  Jade whirled to see an elegant woman standing by the gate. The streaks of silver in her jet-black hair gleamed as she approached, moving gracefully in silks of water-blue and sunshine-gold, matching the colors of the dragon.

  “Hello, Jade,” the woman said.

  “Hello, Mother,” Jade whispered. Somehow, her lips knew the truth before she did.

  She and Empress Lihua were the same height, and even this small kernel of knowledge about the woman she loved without ever truly knowing threatened to break her composure. They even had the same face, though Jade’s was a softer, more rounded version. They stood eye to eye, drinking each other in. Up close, the former Empress’s body appeared filmy and transparent—a spirit only. Her fingers reached for Jade’s cheek and went right through her skin.

  “I knew you would come,” Empress Lihua said, smiling, and Jade thought she could listen to her voice forever, like a melody played over and over. “I knew you would follow the lanterns here. I would ease your grief for Amah if I could, but only time can do that.”