Beneath Ceaseless Skies #118 Read online

  When his rhythms had quieted and he lay as though one dead, I stepped out into his obsidian labyrinth to watch the crane that’d drunk from his veins and eaten from my hand. Under its light I revised my definition of contentment.

  * * *

  Lin was beating clothes against river rocks when I found her, side by side with another girl. The sight of me stopped her short, and she let the laundry drop slowly into the washing tub at her feet. She grabbed her friend’s sleeve, yanking nearly hard enough to unbalance the other mortal and send them both tumbling into the river. “Jia. Jia! See? I told you I really did meet her.”

  “I see—oh.” Jia’s eyes were wide. I was not used to appraisal so direct. Even Dijun’s had been circumspect, offered through the filter of his lowered lashes. “I thought you’d gone mad with fever when you told me you met a gorgeous maiden in the blizzard.”

  “I did not say she was gorgeous!” Lin elbowed her friend in the side.

  “From the way you spoke it was obvious you thought she was.” Jia grinned at me. “Which you are, if you don’t mind me saying that.”

  “You are both mannerless,” I said, though I did not mind. Her flattery was not like my husband’s, given for no motive other than that she thought me pleasant to look upon. “You do realize I am of heaven?”

  Lin put her hands on her hips. “I still don’t believe that.”

  Her insolence surprised a laugh out of me. On the few occasions I had appeared before humans, none had ever questioned my divinity; one and all they had prostrated themselves in awe. I bent to the tub and exerted the mildest pulse. The waters rippled and in a moment were seething. “Well? I could boil an entire lake, but I don’t do that to amuse a pair of rude country girls.”

  “An entire lake,” Lin said with a wistful sigh. “To bathe in that during winter.”

  To which, Jia: “To see you bathing in that, winter or elsewise. You’ll invite me, of course?”

  At that the child I had saved from winter turned the hue of cherry blossoms. She flapped her hands at the cooling tub. “The steam.”

  Jia laughed, throaty, full of knowing. Though of mortal girls I comprehended near nothing, I could guess that they were not simply friends. “Are you sworn sisters?” I said when Jia had disappeared to fetch more dirty laundry. “Or lovers?”

  “Aren’t you blunt.” Lin made a face in Jia’s direction. “She’s a lecher, a wanton, and if Mother knows.... You don’t think it strange or—or wrong, or impious, do you?”

  “Why would I? Silly child.”

  She let out a breath long pent-up. “Good. So what’ve you been doing with yourself? It’s been nearly two seasons.” As though we were old friends, with years of climbing trees and mushroom-picking together on scraped knees and running downriver on bare fish-bitten feet.

  Out of me, silence bled from the pinprick she’d made in my shell of empty words, empty acts.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “I’ve been marrying.” For it seemed a process, not a finished result. The idea of its completion filled me with eager dread. “A god.”

  “Oh,” Lin said. “I thought you might have chosen a goddess to wife. Well. I suppose that... that doesn’t happen in heaven. It’d be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Should I offer congratulations? It’s just you don’t seem happy.”

  “I’m not unhappy.” The lie curdled in my mouth. I longed to spit it out, but like all lies it congealed, stuck. “But I do wonder if I could have delayed the wedding.”

  “You could have told him ‘No, you are ugly as a pig’s rear.’”

  “Out of all the gods he is the handsomest.”

  “Then, ‘No, you are doltish as an ox.’”

  “He is intelligent and learned in the scholarly pursuits.” Scrolls in every chamber; all his servants were artists and poets, learning at his feet as he painted portraits of me, composed verses to my loveliness.

  Lin’s brows drew together. “Does he bore you in bed?”

  “You ask too many questions. I suppose Jia does not ever bore you.”

  “She kisses like summer,” Lin said and her gaze became distant, her mind turning fast on its wheels to secrets and embraces.

  Did Dijun kiss like summer? I could not fathom what that even meant. “My husband is kind.” All of heaven said so; lauded his devotion to me. Was even the emperor so good to Xiwangmu? “Daily he labors to please me.”

  “But you don’t look pleased. He doesn’t keep mistresses, does he?”

  “We in heaven are above impulses so base.” Yet I wished he was not. I stood and shook myself. Beyond Lin I could glimpse a being more paper than skin biding patiently under bamboo leaves. Its whiteless eyes peered at me. Dijun’s creatures had perfected that art of reproaching me in my husband’s place, without words. My throat tightened. “I should go.”

  “Already? I thought you might want to share a meal with us.” Lin drew one of the trousers out from the tub and wrung it. The garment was faded; had never been white. Sideways she glanced, longing, at my robes. Her eyes lingered on the patterned bixi where plum blossoms flowered. “But you wouldn’t want to do that anyway, I guess.”

  “It’s not—” I caught myself. To be flustered before a mortal girl. “I have matters of import to attend to. I will come again, and next time... perhaps you and Jia will like something fine to wear. It doesn’t do for me to be seen in such ragged company.”

  “Oh, you bite.” Before I could step away, Lin flung her arms around me. She smelled of sweat, youth, and rice. “Do come back. Jia and I will cook for you. It won’t be as amazing as anything you eat up there, but it’ll be our best.”

  A few hours later, when I was safely ensconced in heaven, the sky fell and flood claimed the mortal lands.

  * * *

  His servants gave me such obeisance, fit for an empress. There is no corner in his house, no path in his garden, where I might walk without the rustling of paper robes and paper caps as spirits of lutes and zithers cast themselves low before me. An inkstone that’d gained soul and thought would kiss the tip of my slipper, its muzzle pebble-smooth and cold. None of them ever spoke; across their vests was the word silence. Dijun treasured quiet.

  I shattered that when I strode into his study, where he sat at his writing desk bent over loose papers, jade tablets, and clusters of threaded coins. “Husband,” I said, “why did you have your servant fetch me?”

  He looked up, vexation warping his features. Quickly gone; a veil slid shut over that and he was flawless again, as sweet-seeming as he’d been that day by the Huang He. “Xihe! To celebrate—though each time I see you it is a celebration unto itself. Come, see these. I’ve presented them to the emperor and he was most pleased. A work in progress, these divination charts, but I predicted the flood to the hour.”

  A fine trembling began deep in my liver. “You knew this would happen?”

  “Of course, that’s why I sent for you. The cause is still to be determined, a dragon in its death throes perhaps, or two uncouth quarreling gods.” He motioned with his hand, elegant dismissal. “It is beside the point. My labors have caught His Majesty’s interest. At last I may be granted domain, monarch in my own right, and that will elevate you too, my wife. Doesn’t that charm you?”

  “Why did you—” If I retched I would disgrace myself. “I was there, I could have saved mortals. The flood’s only water. At a thought I could’ve vaporized it.”

  Dijun gazed at me, smiled; gentle amusement. “Xihe, you could not have. The flame in you is splendid, but it has limits. Other gods have given succor to mortals. Don’t trouble yourself with it, and I wouldn’t want to see you strain yourself unnecessarily. You are too young.”

  “I could have—” And now I sounded as petulant as he’d made me out to be; I could not have sounded otherwise. He’d done it so neatly, my husband; reducing me to a child.

  It was the shattering of a heavenly pillar. I heard it even up here, the howl of its breaking, the scream of its fall. The flood tha
t’d burst through had drowned the sun; so swift and total that all had been washed away, whether dragon corpse or furious deities strangling one another all the way to the depths. Those that could had saved entire villages and towns through sudden relocations of desert, patches of hill, and walls of earth.

  His Majesty summoned immortals to deliberate on the matter of restoring order. I did not attend; Dijun would have persuaded me not to in any case. Instead I sought out mortal survivors. Xiwangmu had in her graciousness sheltered some at her palace, and there were so many that even the vast compound attained the grimy busyness of the densest mortal towns. Memory of heaven would be sieved out of them afterward through a mesh of fine but specific foods: delicacies found nowhere on earth, herbs like emeralds grown to bring forgetting.

  My observation of the mortal world had always been at a distance; I’d never been this close to this much humanity. The empress’ servants had dressed them in clean clothes, had given them filling meals, but still they clutched each other. None made eye contact with me. They hid when they could, and pressed their foreheads to grass or floor tiles when they could not.

  Neither Lin nor Jia was here. They’d been by a river. Floods, even mundane ones, were not things mortals could outrun.

  Cloud-girls, the very same who had dressed me a bride, greeted me and informed me that Xiwangmu was occupied with assigning goddesses and acolytes to finding space for the survivors; to seeking out those still stranded on earth. I wanted to ask why I hadn’t been sent for, why I hadn’t been included. Shame thickened my mouth. Unable to speak past it I allowed them to lead me to an isolated pavilion, away from the refugees; away from anything that mattered.

  They sat me down among blue lotuses; they held up tresses of my hair, exclaiming at the softness and luster. Covering me in their raindrop-beaded braids they mistook my quiet for wifely pining. “He will soon be with you, goddess.” “Doubtless he thinks of you every moment.” “No man may turn his gaze from loveliness like yours.”

  I would have laughed in their ice-tipped faces. I would have sharpened my scorn and with it dissolved them to wisps of fog, two cupfuls of water. “You find me pleasing, then.”

  “More than pleasing, wondrous Xihe. Oh, if you weren’t made as you are, prone to scorch us with your divinity...”

  “...in throes of passion, we would clasp you between us and show you, for all that you are a wedded wife. We can keep secrets, as we keep rain and thunder, storms and lightning, within our bellies.”

  “I won’t harm you.”

  They glanced at each other, challenging; one knee-walked forward. I bent, obliging, and she took my face in cool hands, pressing sunset lips to mine. I waited, wanted, for it to stir me in some way. It should have. Why wasn’t it? Her waist like a wasp’s, her eyes more enchanting than my husband’s, her kiss inviting. In the end, awkward, I thanked her and prevailed upon them to bring me stationery. They got me the best, but if they had put before me uncured hide and a rusty knife with which to carve upon it I would not have cared.

  So long and closely I had guarded the thought of this behind my teeth, concealed it deep between the ventricles of my heart, that when I began to draw the chariot it startled me how solid it was, how sleek its shape and lines. Here the dragons would be yoked. There I would sit, the reins taut in my hands. I’d fly so fast, so far. None would keep pace with me.

  Once the ink dried I rolled the paper tight, as small as it could get, and clutched it to me as I returned to Dijun’s mansion. Calling the crane I brought it to the corner where my orchard tried to grow. So few of my trees and bushes would thrive on Dijun’s land, but the handful that did I nursed with all my strength. The flowers and fruits were so prone to bursting into flames that his servants did not dare approach them, for their garments caught easily and my husband disdained slovenliness. I wedged the scroll in the crevice of an orange tree and bade it seal shut.

  His courting gift had grown so large it no longer fit in my arms, but it tried to nest there, nuzzling me for warmth as I fed it the ripest of what I had. Stroking its back I wondered if in a thousand years it might learn thought and woman form. Or even sooner; the crane had had an unconventional provenance. Then I would have a companion, a mercurial girl with yellow irises and crimson eyelids, robed all in white. I smiled into the crane’s feathers, which smelled of tangerines. Perhaps it would be like having a daughter of my own. “Would you like that?” I murmured. She would fly with me, and unless she wanted to I would never make her wed. My crane-child.

  Dijun came back from the palace exuberant. He did not pass the details to me, but once he’d dismissed the servants he pulled me against him, clasping his mouth to mine. He tasted of victory; his tongue fed me loss.

  Each time I would turn tense then uncoil in stages, yielding into softness that he’d take for desire. He would suckle at my breast while I thought of flight and limitless skies. A tedious chore to get through; nothing more. I had even learned to gasp and tremble, for I did not want to face again the anxious brittle questions—Do I not please you? which hid What is it that you think of; has another man caught your eye? So learned and lovely, my husband; yet so afraid that I would slip loose of his arms, dance free of his house.

  The crane snapped forward. Dijun jerked away. His blood, viscous-hot, dripped from the crane’s beak.

  “Ah,” he said, holding his hand away from his silks. “Tame to you, fierce to all else; my gift to you has been most perfect to your tastes.”

  Sourness rolled over my tongue, the first stepping-stone on the path of silence; silence as he spoke and drew me into a trap where I could not breathe, could not be heard. I tried. Oh, my older self, my mother-self, I tried. “It was born of your blood.”

  “But shaped by your request.” His edged regard grazed over my skin, fine and honed, and my stomach clenched; had he felt in me that disinterest so near to unwant? Then he chuckled, loudly false. “Let it be. It is nothing. Shall we dine together? Matters of court have kept me so occupied and I’ve missed you, in all ways.”

  In his presence even celestial repast turned to dust in the mouth.

  * * *

  Once, Dijun incinerated three of his servants for having mislaid his tablets. Spirits with origin in instruments were made of wood; remained wood, bamboo, and camphor. Soon they became ashes and scented smoke. I did not love them, I would never care for them. Yet I knew it was the fear of him that made them dog my steps, report my every move to him in scrolls left by his desk at dusk.

  One morning I summoned them and showed them fire. “I will be in my garden,” I told them, “to tend my plants. I will not have moved, gone anywhere, spoken with anyone. Do you understand?”

  They looked at one another, at me.

  It was so easy for courage, or cowardice, to fruit cruelty. Discarding Dijun’s lessons of control and restraint I opened my hand. Blue heat ambered; paled to white. Soundless even now, they shrank away. “Are you mute? Have you no language? Answer me!”

  I singed and seared them. And they finally spoke with throats meant for music, with voices meant to be heard: every word a note, all of them together a song. They said yes. They called me mistress. They swore obedience.

  Mount Kunlun reared high enough to elude submersion. I did not entertain illusions; others would have already combed every shadowed pool for mortals. Were Jia and Lin alive, they would have been found. Even so I searched, rattling the minutes in the abacus of my skull, tallying them into the hours I had until Dijun returned home.

  The fish-kite was a yellow slash in the sky’s watery murk, whipping at the end of a tether wind-pulled taut. I followed it, and thereby discovered the twins.

  They genuflected in a fall of bronze headdresses and rustling scales and introduced themselves as Nuwa and Fuxi. They orated and moved in perfect harmony; smiled simultaneously, perpetually at peace in their oneness. Sister-brother, wife-husband, sharing a single snake tail that served as stomach and tool of perambulation.

  Sheltered in their
immense coils, Lin and Jia lay asleep. “We have put them to dreams,” Nuwa said; Fuxi continued, “full of easy prey and quiet so they would not alarm and flee. We smelled a goddess on them and have kept them safe. Are they for you?”

  “They... are.” I risked touching their scales. “What are you?”

  “We are of a kind.” “Disaster has ever been our domain, and it came to us that we are wise to mending the heaven-breach, of restoring mortalkind to this earth. This we would set to for a little boon. Will you grant us this, or bring us to one who may?”

  It wasn’t for me to grant anything, and they were so large that I could not imagine carrying them back to heaven, let alone with two mortal girls. We managed by and by, and I directed them to Xiwangmu—she had authority I did not, and I wanted least to be given credit for Nuwa and Fuxi. Dijun would never forgive it. Lin and Jia I entrusted to Guanyin. Under my husband’s gaze, I was not myself, not my own. The girls, who knew themselves so well, did not need to witness that.

  The twins wanted permission to marry. To his credit—or some said discredit—the emperor swiftly gave them that, so long that they did not procreate. They accepted that clause serenely, and set to baking clay that would become humans full-grown: no need for infancy and childhood, no want for the slow process of pregnancy. Fuxi took up my husband’s charts and made them fit for mortals so they might predict and avoid the next calamity. Nuwa sheared off the tip of their shared tail, which in aplomb grew into a second snake, black on gold. This creature she coaxed to fill the roaring gulf the broken pillar had left. In days it hardened, scabbing over that wound in heaven’s sea.

  There remained only the matter of the extinguished sun.

  The shape of Dijun’s thought on this became evident when he reminded me that in both of us an illimitable flame burned, that we had a duty, and did I not miss our courtship? I avoided him. I considered cuckolding him so he would cast me aside. It would be scarce challenge to find a fisher boy, seduce him, and rut with him, if the idea did not clog my throat with disgust. Dijun excited me little enough; other men interested me even less. Had the cloud-girl inspired some want in me, some longing at all, I would have invited her into my bed and flaunted her before my husband.