by Yoon Ha Lee
Copyright © 2015 Yoon Ha Lee
Cover art © Mariya Olshevska
ISBN 978-0-692-45850-1
Table of Contents
Introduction
Flash Fiction The Fox’s Tower
Carousel Foals
The Third Song
Candles
The Crane Wife
Raven Tracks
Magician’s Feast
The Mermaid’s Teeth
The Dragon Festival
The River Soldier
The Fox’s Forest
The Melancholy Astronomer
Harvesting Shadows
The Stone-Hearted Soldier
The Gate of Bells
The Workshop
The School of the Empty Book
How the Andan Court
The Last Angel
The Virtues of Magpies
Two Bakeries
The Witch and Her Lover
Moonwander
The Palace of the Dragons
Hibernation
The Red Braid
Sand and Sea
The Birdsong Flute
Two Payments
A Single Pebble
The Pale Queen’s Sister
The Sunlit Horse
Tiger Wives
Dew-Weighted Roses
The Firziak Mountains
The Rose and the Peacock
The Youngest Fox
The Witch and the Traveler
Thunder
The Godsforge
About the Author
Introduction
To be honest, the foxes may have started as a joke.
A few years back, I started writing a space opera novel called (at the time) Ninefox and Suicide Hawk. I later changed the submissions title to Ninefox Gambit—as one of my friends remarked, the original title sounded like it came out of a superhero comic—but the fox remained a central image. One of the characters, a tactician, was called the Immolation Fox and was an all-around devious bastard. This was partly in reaction to the foxwives of Legend of the Five Rings (L5R), a game I played and loved when I was younger, and later had the privilege of writing game fiction for. One thing always bothered me about the setting, however, which was that the foxwives of L5R managed to be cuddly. (Also unlucky.) And if there was one thing I remembered from the fox spirit stories of Korea, which have similarities to the Japanese version, it’s that fox spirits aren’t cuddly.
Naturally, I hypocritically started writing cuddly foxes myself. Maybe it comes from staring at cute fox photos on Tumblr. Maybe it’s the foxaganda.
As for the flash fairy tales, they started because I was looking to make quick cash. I wanted to buy a relatively inexpensive font, so I sold flash fiction at $6 a pop. It was a length I hadn’t previously experimented much with because it was such a hassle. At the time I started submitting, there didn’t seem to be many venues that accepted flash fiction, or paid for it either. I stuck to stories of 2,000 words and up. And even when markets did accept flash, I still had to go to the trouble of sending it in and waiting for a response, which might or might not be an acceptance, and then wait beyond that for the payment. With this setup, selling stories directly to people on reading my blogs on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, the deal was that I got paid in advance and the buyer got the story they got. I wasn’t sure if anyone would go for it—but people did. And furthermore, I discovered that I really enjoyed writing at this length, and that I could usually dash off a draft in a half-hour or less.
Flash fiction is interesting in that you can’t waste any words. It’s well-suited for jeweled imagery, and also well-suited for fairy tales or similar because you can evoke a great deal using archetypes. The fact that these were commissioned stories also meant that I deliberately wrote more upbeat stories than the usual. If you’re familiar with my longer work, a lot of which deals with war, you’ll know that “upbeat” isn’t how it’s usually described. But people don’t like downers, so I default to more cheerful (or at least, not outright sad) stories unless specifically requested. And a few of these I wrote for my own amusement, so there’s a little variation in tone.
There are four new stories in this collection for your enjoyment: “The River Soldier,” “The Stone-Hearted Soldier,” “The Witch and Her Lover,” and “The Rose and the Peacock.” No foxes in those stories, but foxes are tricky enough to maneuver around as it is. I hope there are enough of them in the rest of this collection to satisfy any vulpine-lover’s heart.
The Fox’s Tower
The prisoner had lived in the tower at the center of the wood for moons beyond counting. Even so, the walls were notched with pale crescent marks, crisscrossed into a tapestry of patient waiting. Sometimes dew jeweled the rough-hewn stone floor; sometimes ice obscured the walls’ pale marks, and he wondered if the world outside had forgotten his existence.
There was a single window, set high in the wall, too high for him to reach. It was guarded by an iron grille in the shape of tangled bones and branching arteries. He spent many hours contemplating the grille.
One night, the prisoner heard a fox’s sharp bark. “Brother fox,” he called out, “I would offer you my bones, but I am trapped behind these walls.”
To his great surprise, this fox, unlike countless ones before it, answered in a young man’s voice. The fox said, “I have no need of your bones. Why do you insist on sleeping behind stone?”
The story was an old one, but the prisoner did not expect a fox to be familiar with it. “I offended the lady to whom I had sworn fealty,” he said. “As a punishment, she set me here, to wait unaging until the forest should be no more.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” the fox said. “How would you know whether the forest still exists or not when you can’t set foot outside the tower?”
The prisoner was nonplussed. It had never occurred to him that the forest might not be eternal. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I am here.”
“You must be lonely,” the fox said, “if you are talking to a fox.”
The prisoner could imagine the fox’s genial grin. “Come and join me, then,” he retorted.
The fox did not respond, but that night, as the prisoner started to drift asleep, he felt the soft touch of forsythia petals on his skin. And in his dream that night, he embraced a man in a red coat and black gloves and boots, whose teeth were very white. He woke expecting to find the man’s fingers still tangled in his hair.
On the next day, the prisoner waited for the fox to return. He heard nothing, not even a bark. But at night, he smelled the sweet, mingled fragrance of quinces and peaches, and once more he dreamed of the man in the red coat.
On the third day, the man knew to be patient. He spent his time counting all the crescent marks, although there were so many that he kept having to start over. That night, maple and gingko leaves fluttered from the window in a dance of red and yellow. “A night is a lifetime, you know,” the man in the red coat said in his dream.
On the fourth day, the sun was especially bright. The crescent marks seemed paler than ever, almost white against the stone. When nighttime came, snowflakes landed in the prisoner’s cupped palms. He fell asleep to the sound of a fox barking four times.
On the morning after, the tower still stood, but nothing was inside it but the illegible crescent marks, and soon, they, too, would fade.
for chomiji
Carousel Foals
The breeding of carousel horses is like and unlike the breeding of more ordinary steeds. Carousel horses have their bloodlines, their registries, their stud books. The breeders, who must demonstrate skill with bonsai and acrylics, Fallabellas and broad-backed destriers, select
the dams for their kindly temperaments and strong backs. It is no small thing to bear the hopes of a child, and the breeders take their responsibility to produce suitable carousel horses very seriously.
Carousel mares generally birth their foals at night, surrounded by the herd’s comforting circle. The neighs and whickers of carousel horses sound like calliopes and whimsical chimes, and the spindly-legged foal comes into the world surrounded by music.
The breeders sand and paint the foals’ carved ribbons and saddles, gild their manes and protect them with a final clear coat. Some are painted white as clouds, some are painted bright bay or dapple gray, some are painted black as coal. Some are decorated in festive pink, some in pale yellow, some in ocean blue.
The foals learn to prance to carousel rhythms from their mothers. Finally, the day comes when they must leave the herd to be mounted on a carousel of their own. They cry for their mothers, of course; it is the way of things. But when the children run to greet them, petting their muzzles and clambering into their saddles, giving them secret names, the foals remember what their mothers taught them, and whinny to their new friends.
for dormouse_in_tea
The Third Song
It was midway in the morning of the world, in the great middle desert, and a woman knelt beneath a tree beneath the wide, wondering sky. Her eyes were wet, her throat was dry, her feet as rough as the sand.
Sing to me, the woman said to the sky. It showed her dry, clear, blueness and dry, clear air, and never a song at all, for this was before the sky learned the rain-song, the storm-song, the thunderbird wing-song. And the woman went thirsty.
Sing to me, the woman said to the tree. It showed her pale, deadly spines and pale, threadlike roots, and never a song at all, for this was before the tree learned the leaf-song, the fruit-song, the oasis wind-song. And the woman went hungry.
Then a crow came out of the west wind, the evening wind. He was blacker than burnt wood, blacker than unbroken night.
Sing to me, the woman said to the crow. He showed her the fluid of her eyes and the marrow of her bones, for this was what the crow knew. As he drank and ate, the crow sang her the mystery of her muscles, the wonder of her womb.
Under that beak, those talons, the woman died. In her womb, the crow found an egg-child, pale and wondering. The crow carried the unborn egg-child away and placed it in a nest in the tree, under the sky. Then the sky learned rain and the tree learned fruit and gave them to the egg-child to drink and eat. From the rain, the fruit, the crow’s lullaby, all things came to be born. The crow had no song left for himself, and so in the evening of the world, he finds its echoes in eggshells and carrion, in his own raucous croak.
first appeared in Lenox Avenue Jan./Feb. 2005
Candles
When I hand you a candle, I don’t expect you to burn. I don’t expect your hands to glove black (ashes are my favorite fashion), and I don’t expect the smoke to be your perfume.
A candle isn’t an eye. A candle isn’t a jewel. And a candle isn’t a star. It can’t show you where the wolves scratch poetry in the chambers of your heart. It can’t buy you wine pressed from winter promises. It can’t tell you where your maps are marked with dragons, or dreams, or dust blowing black in the dark.
One chance wind, one chilly word, and a candle gutters out. You can no more rely on it than you can rely on bells to keep the hours after the sun slams shut. A candle is the poorest foundation on which to construct any lasting connection.
Yours has flinched into shadow. But look: I have brought you another, as hot as crushed kisses. If you become its wick, it might last longer.
The Crane Wife
Once a peasant woman found a crane with a wounded wing in the woods.
“It is a hungry winter,” the woman said to the crane, “but it must be just as hungry for you as it is for me.”
“The highborn claim that my flesh is excellent,” the crane said matter-of-factly. “I should not like to deprive you of that delight.”
“You think rather too highly of yourself, friend crane.” But the woman was smiling, and she shared her rice and water with the crane.
On the next day, the crane was still there. “Aren’t you worried about wolves?” the woman asked.
“I am a prey animal,” the crane said. “One might as well meet one’s end with a certain dignity.”
“Dignity nothing,” the woman said. And she shared her meal with the crane again.
On the third day, the crane cocked its head at the woman and said, “You know, my cousins tell stories of a crane wife. Are you doing this because you’re in need of a wife? I would think that there are easier ways to get one than by wandering in the woods.” The crane flexed its wing experimentally.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the woman said tartly. “I helped you because you ought to fly again, not because I wanted to take you home and tie you to a loom.”
“You’re assuming that the two things are mutually exclusive,” said the crane. “They say crane wives make excellent lovers, you know.”
“I see your vanity is intact,” the woman said. But she did have to admit that the crane was likely to be beautiful in any guise it took.
“I shall just have to prove it to you the old-fashioned way, then,” the crane said, undeterred. “Now, which way is home?”
for Nancy Sauer
Raven Tracks
The thing to know about ravens is that they don’t leave tracks the way other birds do. It is not just a matter of raven feet, of tearing raven talons.
Rather, ravens leave their thoughts scattered sideways in out-of-print books, in footnotes that should not be there and that are written in extinguished languages. Sometimes they discuss the number of coins it would take to imbalance a businessman’s greed. Sometimes they dissect (pitilessly, that goes without saying) the libretti of operas where too many characters wear black. They find it presumptuous.
At other times, ravens leave feather-imprints in corroded steel. Saying that everything decays, but even doomed things can fly for a little while.
Ravens leave snarled adages in traffic jams and scratch oaths old and terrible into 1s and 0s. (Ravens are not atheists. They know their own lineage too well.)
Curiously, ravens are scrupulous about leaving souls unmarked. It turns out that any weavework scars and appoggiaturas of grace you find are what you put there yourself.
for dormouse_in_tea
Magician’s Feast
Once, in a far land, there lived a magician whose great passion was not her studies but her food. In her youth she had applied herself passionately to her studies, but her particular school of magic emphasized asceticism and long hours of meditation. However, once she left her teachers and founded her own tower (she was enough of a traditionalist to prefer a tower, and humane enough to call it out of the earth’s bones in a remote location where it wouldn’t trigger seismic disturbances or ghost-plagues), her discipline began to slip. Away from her teachers and her solemn fellow students, it was not long before she began dreaming up feasts of custard and roast goose, couscous and eggplant, quail eggs and minty lemonades.
Traders soon learned of the new tower from far-wanderers and dream-seekers. The first ones brought the usual goods favored by magicians: whirring jeweled orreries, dried plum petals gathered from cloud-veiled peaks during the new moon, crystals brimming over with their own iridescence. Although the magician was too kind to say so outright, none of these tools of her trade interested her much. She bought some of this and that so that the traders would see some profit for their journey, and bid them come back next time with exotic foods.
The traders went away well-provisioned and laden with the kinds of small gifts that only a magician could provide, such as charms of trebuchet-warding (very useful in certain siege-ridden parts of the world), bat-binding, and may-your-sewing-needles-never-break. And then the magician settled back into her existence of meditations broken by the occasional galloping thunderstorm, and the even more occasiona
l fantasy of chicken stuffed with rice, jujubes, and chestnuts, or tea-of-quinces.
The magician was not entirely idle during this time. Her mechanical servants gathered rarities such as firefowl eggs (the yolks had an unfortunate tendency to overcook) and mistfruit and the milk of dragons. At first these foods pleased her, but after a while her palate grew jaded and even these palled.
A year passed and the traders returned. This time there were three-fruit marmalades and rose liqueurs; a herd of plump, comically nearsighted goats ready for the slaughter; kumquat pickles in jars painted jewel-bright. The magician took in the goats but did not have the heart to roast them.
The traders had yet one more surprise for the magician: a jar of chopped dried pepper, piquantly red and to be handled only with gloves. (The magician had plenty of those.)
“A pepper?” the magician said, a little dubiously. It wasn’t that she disliked spicy food—she liked it very much indeed—but she wasn’t sure how far a single pepper would go.
“Its taste is very subtle,” said the oldest and wisest of the traders. “But chop it fine and sprinkle a little of it over each meal you wish to make special, and someday it will reward you.” More than that they would not say.
Years upon years passed. The magician experimented with the pepper, and found its taste so subtle that she could not detect it at all. Nevertheless, each year when the traders stopped by, she made use of it in preparing the welcome dinner so that they would not think her unappreciative.
At last illness came upon the magician, and she knew that death would overtake her before the traders came again. Moved by whimsy, she made herself a simple meal and seasoned it with the mysterious pepper. But this time, when she ate, all the memories of those previous dinners came back to her: not just the savor of roast boar or rare slices of beef alternating with candied ginger, but the traders’ convivial stories of seas where squid danced paeans to the kelp-gods, and the way they had laughed at the antics of her mechanical servants, and the pleasure of company after long months alone. And so it was at the end of her life that the magician finally understood the true value of what the traders had brought to her in their yearly visits.