Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

by Julie C. Dao

  She felt better as soon as she stepped into the cool spring air. The sky shone bright blue, rinsed clean by the rain, and the town bustled with activity.

  The couple downstairs had thrown open their teahouse doors, and several customers sat bickering about who owed whom in a misguided bet. Two elderly men squatted outside, smoking, and stopped talking to ogle her. One of them released the contents of his nose onto the cobblestones, and she turned away in disgust, only to see a woman empty her chamber pot in front of her house, forcing her small son to squeal and jump out of the way.

  Xifeng strolled toward the square, making a mental list of the things she would never have to see again if she managed to get to the palace. The butcher’s assistant, who had a limp and a lazy eye and still dared to lick his lips at her. The apothecary’s wife beating their servant again, on the pretext that the girl was inefficient when everyone knew it was because the apothecary had taken a shine to her. The delivery men scratching their private parts before digging their hands into tubs of flour and rice that would be sold to families for their supper.

  “Good morning to you,” leered a man coming out of the bathhouse. “What, too high and mighty to return a friendly greeting?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” his friend hissed at him. “Do you want Wei to kill you?”

  She kept her eyes forward, not meeting anyone’s gaze. Some days, she didn’t mind the attention. But today, the card reading still preyed on her mind and she longed to be alone to think, far from the scrutiny of Guma and the townspeople. She turned her steps toward the rolling hills that hugged the edge of the Great Forest, wishing she had a palanquin to hide in like the new concubine.

  Soon, the crowd thinned and the only people she came across were women carrying their washing from the river. A fencing demonstration was taking place on the adjacent field, and Xifeng shaded her eyes to see two men parrying with swords that flashed in the sunlight. They stopped, switched weapons, and continued more slowly. She recognized the craftsman for whom Wei worked, perhaps testing a new blade with a customer. Which meant that Wei was nearby . . .

  Xifeng caught her breath when she saw him. He was bare chested today, gleaming with sweat from fencing. His tawny arms were etched with black markings, ones he had insisted the blacksmith give him with a blade lit by fire, to match those of soldiers in the fierce southern armies. Any girl would have gladly laid down her virtue for him, but he belonged to her.

  His fate entangled with hers—only hers.

  She stepped onto the field with a pressing need to breathe the same air he did. He turned to respond curtly to someone beside him, and that was when she noticed Ning.

  She had seen those movements from the girl too often lately: the flutter of those tilting eyes, head turning coyly over one shoulder, wrists twirling to hide her teeth as she laughed. Wei was dismissive with her, but she behaved as though they were on the brink of courtship.

  The ground seemed to tilt beneath Xifeng, and a great rushing sound began in her ears.

  Not again, please, she begged, standing stock-still, thinking of what had happened last night that she could not remember—and of the serpent man she did recall. There was a twisting deep in the center of her body, like a creature curving around her heart. And then the anger came.

  The field flickered in and out of sight, and another image took its place: the swamps on the southern edge of town. If it was a dream, it felt as real as life. She heard the squelching of mud beneath her feet as she walked. She took in the scent of damp earth and felt a veil of gnats brush her face. Ning followed close behind as Xifeng led her into the maze of festering gray water.

  The creature inside brandished its fangs with delight. Xifeng felt a flash of lidless eyes like beady jewels. It, too, knew what lay hiding in the reeds and the mists: a frame of rope stretched over sturdy branches of cypress and two rows of deadly wooden teeth. Each spike was the length of Xifeng’s arm from elbow to shoulder and had been sharpened to a fine point.

  Stop it, Xifeng pleaded. I don’t want to see this.

  But this was a waking vision, not a dream from which she could rouse herself. And some secret part of her rejoiced at the sight of the alligator trap gaping for prey. She bent down as to a lover, stepping aside so Ning could approach, the blanket of grass slicking wet kisses against her skin. And then the girl stepped on the trigger rope and the trap snapped shut, stilling the air around them. Even the birds went silent.

  Ning screamed—or was it the creature?—and Xifeng felt horror and anguish and obscene joy at the sight of her collapsing on top of her destroyed legs. She held her shaking hand above the mess of flesh and white bone, feeling the warmth that still radiated from the girl’s broken body. From deep within her, the voice spoke.

  She will never again look at what belongs to us.

  “No,” Xifeng moaned aloud.

  She will never again want what is ours.

  “No!” she shouted, heart surging. When she lifted her head, the swamp was gone. She was kneeling on the field with everyone watching her, the men with their swords limp at their sides, the women openmouthed, Ning’s face stunned and her legs whole and intact.

  And Wei himself crouched before her, hands on either side of her head, lips repeating her name. Still Xifeng could not respond, and without another word he scooped her up into his arms and carried her away from the crowd of shocked faces.

  Xifeng felt better when they entered the sun-dappled shade on the edge of the forest. Her heart slowed as the breeze cooled her feverish face. Wei set her down gently against a tree and knelt before her, concern softening his savage features.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She put a hand to her cheek, surprised to find it wet. “I saw something horrible. A vision of death.” She bit her trembling lip and felt his eyes go to her mouth immediately. He was so aware of her every movement, even the whisper of her lashes against her cheek. “It happened last night, too, when Guma read the cards for me.”

  “The cards.” Wei shook off the words like gnats. “I thought I smelled her demon-scent on you. She’s made you ill again with her sorcery nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense,” Xifeng protested, though she could hear her own uncertainty. Nightmares of pain and death had tormented her for years, visions woven by the creature inside her. But Guma’s incense had always had the curious effect of bringing these terrors into day, blurring her dreams with reality.

  “If you want to believe something, believe you should be free of her. Why stay?”

  Xifeng felt the truth in his words, but at the same time, she remembered Guma stroking her cheek so tenderly. “She raised me, and I have a duty toward her,” she said softly. “She’s the only mother I have.”

  “Mothers may be strict with their children, but they’re not cruel to them,” Wei argued. “She’ll never love you, no matter what you do.” He put his arms around her, and she leaned her head against his comforting bulk. “Let me take you away from here. Please.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Does it matter, as long as we’re together?”

  She raised her face and pressed her mouth against his hard, unsmiling one. He tasted the same way he smelled, of sweat and smoke and metal. He kissed promises into her lips, gentle at first, then fiercer, wilder. She let his unspoken words roll across her tongue and fit her body against his in tacit agreement. He belonged to her, no matter what anyone else said—no matter what anyone else wanted. The cards knew it. The universe knew it.

  “I love you,” he said.

  One breath. Three simple words.

  He had always been there for her—her escape, her sanctuary. He knew her better than her mother ever had and her aunt ever would, and he offered his heart to her freely. But her heart only gave a coy silence when she asked it about him. And whenever her own promises of love lingered on her tongue, the voice would com
e from within: Remember you are meant for another.

  She had never told him what Guma believed the cards predicted: that Xifeng would one day be the Empress. And if this destiny came to light—if, one day, she sat on the throne—only one man could sit beside her, and it would not be Wei. No matter how she tried to deny it, she felt surer, each time the warrior card appeared, that the sacrifice the spirits demanded from her was Wei.

  But if the prophecy turned out to be wrong, then she would have given up the only light in her dark life . . . for nothing. Which would be the greater sacrifice: the crown, or the person she cherished most in all the world?

  She held him tightly and ran her lips over his cheekbone. The taste helped her forget the disturbing thought that plagued her in the dark and quiet: that she might never be free to love as others did.

  “I’d cross the sky and bring you the moon, if you wanted me to. I would be a free being if not for you.” Wei buried his face in her hair and breathed through the strands, a fish ensnared in a dark net. “I’ve loved you since the day I first saw you. You were eight and I was nine, and it was the coldest morning we’d ever had. You had a brown scarf on your head to keep out the chill.”

  Xifeng listened, astonished. “That was ten years ago.”

  “You were with her, and she was pinching and scolding you. You were shivering, but still you took off your scarf and gave it to her, to make amends. You wrapped it around her and tucked the ends in so she’d stay warm. I saw you and I wished it were me you cared for.” Wei’s kiss seemed to burn her, to smoke out the truth about her awful visions and the thing inside her.

  “It is you I care for,” she said, pulling away with a shaky laugh. “But I’m not as good as you think. When I saw Ning with you earlier, I imagined doing something terrible to her.”

  His eyes crinkled at her. “You were jealous.”

  “Be serious,” she snapped. “I imagined killing her, Wei. I wanted her dead. I saw it happening clearly in my mind.” Wei always blamed the incense for her visions, claiming Guma drugged her, and she clung to that pitiful strand of hope. The alternative was too awful to contemplate. “What kind of person am I if I could see myself doing such horrible things?”

  “It was only in your mind.” He caressed her cheek, now dry. “The bad thoughts you think and the evil dreams you dream . . . those come from Guma. But the tears you shed are your own.”

  Xifeng clung to his words like a rope in the sea, overwhelmed by the love for him that she couldn’t express. “You see only the best in me. You make me believe I could be good.”

  “You are good. I don’t need sorcery to know I can give you a better life.” Wei rested his chin on top of her head. “We could go to the Imperial City, like you’ve always talked about. We’d have food, rooms protected from the winter chill, and fat, contented children.”

  “That sounds heavenly,” Xifeng whispered, with a soft laugh at how simple his needs were: a hearth, a home, a wife, a child. His innocence tore at her heart. He was so sure they would always be together. But she masked the truth with a smile, to save him from pain, and wondered if it would only hurt him more someday. “I like the sound of a life away from here, with you.”

  “Have I talked about running away for so long that I’ve finally convinced you?” Wei asked, delighted. “I’ve only mentioned it every year since we were thirteen.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  With each passing year, he had grown more persuasive, and stronger and angrier, too. Xifeng had watched him practice with the swords he made, picturing Guma’s throat laid bare beneath the graceful deadliness of his blade. It had been a comforting thought on those nights when she lay curled on her side because sleeping on her whipped back was too painful.

  Wei’s fingers ran down her cheek to her collarbone, and she felt him suddenly tense. He was staring at the crisscross wound above her heart, revealed by her tunic shifting. She tried to tug the cloth back over it, but he stopped her. His jaw tightened, eyes sparking as he took in the huge, angry red cut on her skin. In the light of day, the injury looked horrific, grotesque.

  “Did Guma do this to you?” he asked, his voice low, taut.

  “Wei . . .” Xifeng began desperately. She had always taken care to hide the beatings from him—a simple task, since Guma took care never to mar Xifeng’s face. But now he tugged the tunic from her shoulder, revealing countless bruises along her arm and side. He turned her roughly, fingers grazing the jagged scars on her back from Guma’s cane. When he looked into her eyes again, the tender lover she knew was gone, replaced by the man who had once beaten the life out of a thieving attacker with his bare hands.

  “Why did you never tell me she hit you?” He trembled with fury. “She is dead! I’ll kill that witch in her sleep.”

  “Wei,” Xifeng begged, but he shook her off.

  “Better yet,” he said, with a ferocious smile, “I’ll break her good leg and we can watch her crawl away from me. She can live out the rest of her life on the cold, hard ground like she deserves.”

  Xifeng couldn’t help recoiling, despite having fantasized about it often. Picturing Guma hurt and twisted on the floor was different from hearing it spoken in Wei’s ruthless voice. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if her aunt survived, and what kind of revenge she might concoct in that room of spells and secrets.

  She knew Wei never made idle threats. He wore conviction in the set of his jaw. So she said the only thing that could spare a life—either Guma’s or his own. “Take me away from here. I want to go with you.” There seemed, to Xifeng’s ears, to be an odd echo to the words, as though she had spoken in unison with another. Yes, a voice whispered, set us on the path to destiny . . .

  Wei’s eyes refocused. “Do you mean it?”

  “No more beatings,” she said decisively. “No more blaming and lecturing, no more nights without food and sleep.” And no more rare gestures of kindness, she added to herself, with quiet sorrow. No unexpected caresses, no hints of approval.

  But the words could not be unsaid, and Wei had already accepted them.

  He helped her to her feet. “Go home and pack a bag. We’ll meet here tonight,” he told her, his eyes blazing. “And if you are not here by sundown, if she tries to stop you, I will come. And I will destroy her.”

  Xifeng went home after cleaning the grass stains from her legs as best she could, though Guma would still know; she always knew when Xifeng had been with Wei. But Xifeng reminded herself that this might be the last beating she would ever receive. She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so frightened.

  “I am leaving,” she spoke aloud. “I am never coming back. I am free.”

  The words felt dangerous, like skirting the edge of a cliff. But she had chosen to jump, to truly begin her new life—just as Guma wanted. If the Emperor won’t send for you, you must go yourself. And, if Xifeng did not go, Wei would follow through on his deadly promise and kill her aunt.

  Upstairs, Guma and Ning sewed together in silence. It took Xifeng a moment to understand the girl’s fearful, cringing posture: she was afraid Xifeng would tell Guma that she had been on the field flirting with Wei.

  “You look better.” Guma’s eyes cut to a spot above Xifeng’s ankle, which Xifeng felt sure she had scrubbed. “Ning tells me she saw you fainting when she was running errands for me.”

  Ning hunched over her sewing like a cowering rabbit, but Xifeng felt no hint of her earlier anger; the girl was only a child, after all, who didn’t know better. “Yes, it happened in the market,” she lied, and Ning snagged her thread in surprise.

  “Take care, you stupid thing,” Guma scolded. “Waste thread and you’ll have less to eat.”

  Ning mumbled an apology, her face bright red as she shot a grateful look at Xifeng.

  “The sun was too hot for me,” Xifeng added, turning her aunt’s attention back on herself. “With your
permission, I’ll rest a bit before cooking supper.”

  The woman’s nostrils quivered, sniffing for truth and reason. “Ning will cook,” she said at last. “Get the rest you need.”

  Xifeng nodded obediently and padded away. It seemed unusual to return from meeting Wei and not be beaten, but she sat on her thin, worn pallet for a time and Guma did not come. So, as silently as she could, she lifted a corner of the pallet and dislodged the floorboard beneath it.

  The rough cloth sack had been hidden there for five years, ever since Wei had first urged her to run away. It contained a thin rolled blanket, extra clothing, and a bronze box she had found many years ago in one of the abandoned rooms of the house. She liked to imagine the objects inside had once belonged to her mother: a jeweled dagger made for sharpening pens, and an amber wood hairpin adorned with a circle of jade as green as the forest.

  She would smuggle a little food later, when Guma was asleep.

  “I knew you were up to something.”

  Xifeng whirled around to see her aunt, eyes flashing with rage as she limped into the room, each uneven step filled with menace. The bamboo cane dangled from her fingers. It had been scrubbed clean of blood from the last beating.

  “I’m leaving,” Xifeng said as steadily as she could, her palms instantly damp at the sight of the cane. “I’m going to the palace like you want. I’ll do everything you want, but on my own.”

  “Will you? How obedient. How dutiful.” Guma’s mouth stretched in a garish imitation of a smile. She stood over Xifeng, placing the tip of her cane on the ground. A stranger might believe she needed it to support her leg, but Xifeng knew too well that Guma’s muscles were poised to bring it down upon her. “I presume you won’t be going alone? You’ll take that lumbering ox Wei, to have something to rut with?”