by Sean Wallace
“It’s only light and dark.”
“I know that – but I see memories. I see a thousand goblin warriors throwing themselves against the burning ramparts of the city. I see them pulling my men into the flames. And there’s nothing I can do. I didn’t destroy them. They’re still here, watching us.”
Almost I could see their red eyes and clawed hands. For all his army had saved, 10,000 men had perished in the war. Goblins shook spears which rippled like ocean waves above their heads. I had not been there, yet I could almost see. He lived with such visions in his waking mind. How did he endure?
I got up and blew out the candle, banishing the shadows. Returning to bed, I pressed myself against his back and whispered in his ear. “They’re gone now.”
He was crying.
Over time, we learned what sparked the grim memories. Bonfires. Shadows under a full moon. Then, our sons in armor. Oh, were his nightmares fierce after Biron’s first day in armor. If I could have changed the world, altered the course of sun and moon, rewritten tales of destiny that had been put down by great unseen hands, our children would never have learned to fight. But they were the children of a King and must learn the ways of arms. Evrad insisted on this. Even after waking in the night and telling me that the faces of his men dying over and over in his dreams had changed, and were now the faces of our children.
Over time, nights became easier. With children to occupy him – first a son, then two daughters, and two more sons – he went to bed happy and weary. He did not notice the shadows so much.
Thus peace ruled the land for our children’s time, and our children’s children’s time, and will rule beyond. Just like in the stories.
I sit by a window, my gray hair braided behind me, my withered hands resting on a worn blanket. Evrad is also old, but he wears his age, his gray, and his wrinkles like a prize. He still rides out, straight as a statue in the saddle, and I still wait for him.
Behind me, a door opens and closes softly. Our youngest son, Perrin, attempts to not disturb me. I don’t have to look; I am my father’s daughter, and I have acquired some of his sight over the years. My father is long dead.
Perrin comes to my chair and kneels on the rug. This puts him at the height he was as a boy. I look on him as if he is a boy come to beg a favor. But he is a man, with a beard and his father’s bold eyes.
“Mother? I’ve almost finished. But I have one last question.”
My other children have become warriors, diplomats, husbands, wives, parents, leaders, and healers. Perrin, while he dutifully learned swordplay and manners along with his siblings, has become none of these. He is a scholar, historian, chronicler. A bard.
He has been writing an account of the great War of the Fortress and the turning of the age. I’ve read parts of it – what he has seen fit to show me – and hardly recognize the events and trials I lived through. It reads like the old stories.
“Oh?” I say. “Why not just invent an answer? It won’t sound any more outlandish than what’s there already.”
“I’ve written no lies—”
“No, of course not. But you’ve painted the truth with bold colors indeed.” Gah, that’s something my father might have said.
He looks away, smirking. Like I might have done, kneeling at my father’s chair. “I have a question about a thing I am not sure even happened.”
He paused, wincing in difficult thought, trying to speak – my son the bard, tongue tied. I might have laughed, but he looked to be in pain. Finally, he said:
“When I was young, quite small, a noise woke me, and I was afraid. I thought to go to your chamber to seek comfort. The passages were very dark. I crept along the walls like a mouse, fearful of losing my way in my own home. Then, I heard crying. I turned a corner and saw a lantern. In the circle of light I saw you and Father sitting on the floor. You held him in your arms, and he was crying. I thought his heart would break. And I realized – he was afraid of something, more afraid than I was or had ever been. That sight . . . terrified me. I ran back to my own bed. I trembled under my blankets until dawn, and never spoke of it until now.
“Tell me: What I saw – was it real? Did it happen?”
Evrad and I have even managed to keep our troubles from our children. Mostly. He walks in his sleep rarely these days. No reason anyone should know.
“Yes. It happened that night and many others. The horrors of that war have haunted him for many years. It may be that the enemy left him with such visions as revenge, as a final defiance. Or perhaps it is the price for victory.” I shake my head. I have invented many excuses, but the simplest is probably the truest: his memory haunts him, and there is no one to blame.
I lean forward and rest my hand on Perrin’s shoulder. “You must not write of this. You must not add this to your chronicle.”
“But – it means the hero’s journey is not ended. It adds all the more to his victory, that he has continued to struggle and continued to win—”
“The hero must be strong, more than human, and when he becomes King, his struggles should be over. That is the end of the story. That is the law of stories, Perrin, however else the rest of us must live. If people saw him any different – some spirit would go out of the world, I think. People would believe in him less.” I sit back and take a tired breath.
“Believe in him less because he is human?”
“Just so.”
I watch Perrin thinking. As a child, his questions went on longer than any of the others’ did. He was the one who wanted to know why different birds had different songs, and why water could not flow uphill. He exhausted my ability to make answers. Even now, I hope he has no more questions.
“I understand, I think,” he says at last. “The war ends, the age ends, the story ends.”
“So the children can make their own stories.”
He nods, and wonder of wonders I think he does understand. “One more question,” he says, and I brace. “Which was harder? The battles leading into the new age, or the ones after?”
Strange. Looking back now, I only remember the ones after. The ones before happened to someone else, in another age.
I click my tongue and think of what my father might have said. “That’s not a fair question. It doesn’t matter which is harder, because no one will ever know of the battles after.”
Shadows writhe across the floor and climb to the ceiling. They swim around the bed and my sleeping lord. One is like a laughing mouth, another like a reaching hand that touches the slope of his shoulder.
“Get away from him.” I have drunk too much wine and my vision is spinning. I throw the cup. Wine flies in a spray of droplets across the floor. The silver cup drops with a ringing noise. The sound of swords striking or inhuman teeth gnashing in a cry of victory.
“He is mine!” I cry, standing. “You cannot have him.”
Blood rushes in my ears like laughter. I want to scream, I open my mouth to scream, and then—
“Dear heart? What are you doing?” Sitting up, he rubs sleep from his eyes, his brow furrowed with curiosity.
“It’s the light,” I say in a fey mood. “You were right all along. The demons have come for us.”
He searches the room, his eyes gold in the candle’s glow. His face is calm, but he takes a trembling breath before saying, “It’s only light. Come to bed.”
“I must win you back. You fought a war and won. Now it’s my turn. I will win you back!”
I clench my fists at my sides. My jaw trembles with an unsounded scream. My King watches me. Soon, the wrinkled brow eases, the tired face softens into a smile. To see him smile so, at night – but then, I must look amusing, in a rage, wine spilled around me, shift falling off my shoulders.
He says, simply as grass in summer, “I know you will. Come to bed, love.”
I go to him, wrap my arms around him and kiss him, deeply, longingly. His hands press against me, inviting and warm. So warm.
He pulls away for just a moment. “I know how to chase
away the shadows,” he says, and blows out the candle.
A SWEET CALLING
Tony Pi
Red paper lanterns, strung high like persimmon moons, welcomed customers to the market street. I announced my next performance of the sugar opera to passers-by, hoping to draw the curious to my stall. But if the row of candy zodiac animals in front of me couldn’t lure them in, perhaps my show would.
Taking a dollop of warm caramel, I fashioned a straw-thin spout and blew into it to inflate a bubble of sugar. An elderly couple stopped to watch, while two boys gaped in amazement as I pulled limbs and long ears from the hollow, golden shell to make a rabbit. Satisfied with my handiwork, I stuck the candy-hare on to a bamboo stick and dabbed on molasses eyes.
The elderly pair complimented me on the show and bought two caramel monkeys I had on display. I thanked them. I had arrived in Chengdu with very little money, but hoped to make a small profit by the end of the night. For each creation I sold at the festival, I earned a coin. Such was the simple life of a candyman.
Few customers, however, lingered as long at my stall as Lun the wheelwright. It wasn’t my sugar-figurines that caught the lad’s eye, but the winsome lass ladling out yuanzi dumplings across the street.
“You want to win her heart, Lun?” I held the caramel rabbit forth. “Give her this. I guarantee she’ll adore it.”
Lun wavered. “I’m grateful, Tangren Ao, but suppose I say the wrong thing?”
“Courtship, like any craft, needs practice. Compare her to the moon; they love that. Quickly, before nightfall brings more admirers to her stall.” I’d seen her turn away two suitors already, a willowy scholar and a brocade merchant with a fat purse.
The lad took the gift and trudged across the stone road, yielding to peasants, horse carts, and even a stiltwalker who passed before him.
I tried not to smile. I would surprise them both with a little magic when he showed her the rabbit: wrinkle its nose, waggle its tail. They’d dismiss it as a trick of the crimson light. But in sharing that moment of delight, perchance they’d fall in love.
Spring’s a delicious time to meddle!
“Make a lóng next!” demanded the pesky boy, who had yet to buy anything.
“Dragons are hard, kid.”
“Bet you don’t know how,” said his snotty friend.
“I said hard, not impossible. After my break, I’ll show you.”
I sat, shut my eyes, and hurled my senses into the sugar-rabbit across the way.
I spied through dotted eyes at the world grown vast. Lun’s stammer thundered in my pulled-candy ears. The yuanzi girl’s lips curled in a grand smile. But there came an odd cracking sound from near her soup-pot. The girl glanced down and shrieked.
Lun backed away but stumbled, and I – rabbit-I – fell from his hand. My vision spun, but I caught a glimpse of flames before the impact against the cobblestones shook me from the candy-shell and back into my body.
I blinked open true eyes.
A monkey shaped from fire hunched on top of Lun, setting his shirt alight. Lun grabbed for it but winced as he clutched only flame.
The crowd fled in panic.
“Roll, Lun!” I cried as I bolted into the street. “Smother the flames!”
Lun obeyed, but the fire monkey pressed its attack.
I grabbed the ladle from the yuanzi girl (with muttered apologies) and scooped soup from the pot, slinging the hot broth at the fire-beast. The splash doused only its tail, but before I could dip the ladle for more sweet soup, the monkey darted away with all-too-human strides.
“Lun! Are you all right? What happened?”
The lad winced and blew on the burns to his hands. They’d blister, but he was lucky his wounds hadn’t been worse. “The fire under her pot just came alive! Is it because it’s the Year of the Monkey?”
“Doubt it.” It moved too like a man to be a wild spirit. Could it be an elemental conjuration under a puppeteer’s sway?
The monkey clambered up the stiltwalker’s wooden legs, its flaming paws raking the startled performer’s flesh. Climbing on to the man’s shoulders, the beast leapt on to a riddle lantern before the man toppled over.
People cried for the city guard.
I called to the frightened yuanzi girl. “Please, look after Lun!”
The girl remembered to breathe and hastened to Lun’s side, concern clouding her face.
I dashed to the fallen stiltwalker and untied the stilts from his legs. Motes of burning paper rained down on us as the fire monkey leapt from one lantern to another, then another and another, until it landed on the thatched roof of the yuanzi girl’s family teahouse. With mad glee, it set the thatch ablaze, and the flames regenerated its tail.
I cursed. Our troubles had just begun.
Lun raised the cry of “Fire!” while the girl screamed for everyone to get out. Patrons poured out of the teahouse, but those in nearby establishments heeded the call as well, knowing the blaze would eat through the row of wood and thatch buildings like a child through a skewer of candied haws.
Proprietors filled buckets with water from the bronze vats outside, but how could they tame the rooftop fire?
I left the stiltwalker and flitted between terrified citizens towards my stall. I saw the boys Pest and Snot run off with fists full of sugar zodiac animals, leaving only a pair of Oxen-on-a-stick and a half-gnawed Rooster in the dust. Greedy brats!
With the teahouse roof vigorously ablaze, the monkey hopped across a string of lanterns to my side of the boulevard and ignited a new fire. Wide streets normally prevented flames from leaping the gap, but tonight, a web of lanterns crisscrossed all of Chengdu. The monkey conjuration could travel the high paths and set fires wherever it pleased, and no man could hope to intercept it.
Even the animal seemed deliberate, as the abundance of the Monkey sign would cast suspicion on an angry spirit, or worse, someone who played with that shape.
Like a Tangren making candied monkeys in plain view of the teahouse.
Had the arsonist planned it all, choosing the Lantern Festival to wreak the most havoc without getting caught? But who’d harbor such calculated hatred, and how would I catch him?
The mystery taunted me like a devious lantern riddle, but I hadn’t the time to mull over clues. I couldn’t stand idly by while Chengdu burned.
My father had taught me the secret of sweet possession. Each generation of Tangren in my family would push the bounds of our magic the way we’d inflate a candy-bubble. Spying was our earliest power, then animation, and last year I discovered water-shaping. To fight the fires, I’d need that new skill now, and also water and golden caramel to conjure with.
With mandated fire stations every 300 steps, the fire-fighting force soon swarmed the street with buckets, but the number of blazes daunted them. Lun, with cloth-bandaged hands, pointed out the monkey to incredulous men.
At my stall, I pulled a glob of hot caramel from my pan. Years of practice making the scalding heat bearable as I palmed, twirled, and blew on the gooey lump to cool it.
To battle such hungry blazes spreading by rooftop, I’d need a storm’s worth of water, maybe from the Jinjiang River nearby. The sun had set and the River Bridge Gate was shut, but I had no choice. I tucked a bamboo stick behind my ear and ran southward, rolling the sugar ball between my palms to keep it soft. In my haste I nearly collided with a dour-faced official who glowered and barreled past me, roaring orders to the fire-fighters.
The walls of Lesser City loomed ahead, too high to climb. But if I chose the right animal, it might be no obstacle at all.
Only twelve primal shapes could contain an elemental conjuration: the animals of the shengxiao zodiac, the foundation of every Tangren master’s repertoire. Goat, Rabbit, Pig; Tiger, Horse, Dog; Snake, Rooster, Ox; Monkey, Dragon, and Rat.
I had to call the Dragon, rider-of-mists and bringer-of-rains, the most dangerous of all.
I shaped a hollow in the caramel with my fourth finger and stretched it funnel-lo
ng. Snipping away excess candy with a bite, I blew into the thin sugar-pipe, making the bulbous end expand, but this time I laced the breath with half of my soul like Iron-Crutch Li of the Eight Immortals.
My hands recalled the Three Joints and Nine Resemblances of the dragon-shape, drawing the soft shell long and plucking limbs, antlers, and frills of golden sugar. On the dragon’s head I molded a chimu lump, without which it could not fly.
I twisted off the airpipe. Almost done save the final touch. Breaking the bamboo stick in two with my teeth, I jabbed a sharp point into the back of my hand and drew blood.
Dragons only come alive when you dot their eyes.
I settled on the dirt in the shadow of the wall, hoping my body would be safely hidden here, and called to the spirit of Dragon.
O Sacred Dragon, hear me! I, the insignificant Ao Tienwei, humbly ask your aid.
A voice like thunder echoed through my head. You are not one of mine, Water Rat, though I know you from your tributes of art, it said, calling me by the sign of my birth year. What will you ask, and what will you give in return?
Lord Dragon, Chengdu burns and I must quench the flames. Water I have in plenty, but not strength enough to fly. Legends tell of your dominion over water and sky. If you would lend me your power, I’d soar and save the city, bringing you new worship and reverence.
It considered it. Your proposal pleases me, Water Rat. Fly with my blessings.
A thousand thanks, Sacred One.
I lobbed the blood-eyed Dragon underhand into the air and cast my consciousness inside, becoming the small caramel creature. Starlight on my chimu lump pulled me towards the new moon sky, and I floated over the wall and down into the river.
I bobbed thrice before sinking into the frigid depths. I felt my sugar-body begin to dissolve, and welcomed the simultaneous sensations of drowning and fading. That was the trick to elemental possession; my first tries failed because I fought those fears when I should have embraced them. As my senses seeped from hardened candy into sweetened water, I asked the river to accept my offering in trade for a moat’s worth of water. The river savored the candy and gave me what I asked, but left to me the shaping of the river-water.