Beneath Ceaseless Skies #197 Read online

  Issue #197 • Apr. 14, 2016

  “The Sweetest Skill,” by Tony Pi

  “Rabbit Grass,” by Kelly Stewart

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE SWEETEST SKILL

  by Tony Pi

  The roar of a tiger awakened me. Not nightmare, not misheard thunder, but a roar great and true, from the caramel tiger on my chest.

  I held my breath. Before retiring to bed I had left the palm-sized candy on my cooling rack, one of a few sugar sculptures I’d failed to sell earlier that evening at the South City Gate. Somehow it had come alive while I slept, more feral than I had made it, more faithful to the shape of the regal beast than any mortal hand could achieve. From that roar, I was sure it could rip out my throat with ease.

  My friend and host—the wheelwright Lun—turned in his bed across the dim room, snoring on.

  Had my magic, unknowingly in my sleep, stirred the candy to life?

  A voice rumbled in my mind with the force of a rainstorm in surge. Two-legged Ao, master of the sweetest skill. I, Tiger, am eager for your help. Will you grant it?

  “King Tiger, Most Formidable and Fair!” He was the only zodiac animal I feared. “Forgive this ragged one his ignorant question, but what can a lowly candyman even imagine he could do for the Immortal General—”

  I’ve no time for honorifics, Ao, said Tiger, padding towards my face, prickling my skin with his caramel claws. One of mine is wounded and in grave danger, stalked by hunters from the Ten Crows Sect. You’ve risen in the estimation of we spirits, and so I’ve chosen you to save her.

  The mention of injury reminded me of how Tiger had hurt my father. My mistrust welled. Sorcerers like Father and I traded favors for power from the animal spirits of the zodiac, the shengxiao. But a year ago, Tiger had asked as payment the life of a helpless man. Father chose to break his word rather than kill. Though I saw Father’s defiance as a noble act, Tiger saw only betrayal. Knowing full well that we candymen relied on our breath to blow bubbles of caramel and fingers to pull them into art, he cursed Father to lose the digits on his right hand, robbing him of his livelihood.

  And now he had the audacity to seek my aid?

  “Is it truly my reputation as a Tangren sorcerer that brings you, or do you choose me because I’m conveniently close?”

  A snarl. We’ve watched you craft your sugar animals with pomp and brilliance. Even when all is in uproar, you stay calm and clever, using the powers you borrow from us to put things right.

  “So did my father, yet you crippled him.”

  Tiger growled and rapped a sticky paw against my sweaty skin. You’re nothing like your sire. He broke his word to me, but you’ve bargained fairly and truthfully with the shengxiao... thus far. Take this task and I’ll grant you any boon of your choosing, should it be within my ambit. What do you chase: fortune, fame, or love?

  I was taken aback. It was always us mortals who begged for the powers of Dragon, or Snake, or another shengxiao spirit to save our hide. To have Tiger in my debt, of all spirits....

  Had I the gall, I would’ve asked for Tiger to restore my father’s lost hand. But it’d be trouble to ask the impossible.

  “If I agree to this, Tiger, it’s to prove that we who bear the name Ao still have honor, though I’m no fool to turn down your reward. Tell me of this woman you wish me to save.”

  She is the Pale Tigress: the City God’s Tiger and sacred guardian of Chengdu. Tonight, the Ten Crows shot her with a cursed arrow, which is slowly drinking away her strength. I can barely hear her heartbeat now. The Crows bar her way to the City God’s sanctuaries, forcing her to flee from them in the mist.

  I gulped. Not a woman in peril, but a tigress? As a newcomer to Chengdu, I knew little of the local lore and had yet to hear tell of such a fantastic beast. I knew City Gods protected their jurisdictions in divine ways, but this was the first I’d heard of a tiger demon in service to one.

  I will not lose her, Tiger continued. You must find her before they do, and take out the arrow.

  There were three City God temples in Chengdu. I knew because all hawkers learned quick where best to sell their wares, and temples meant festivals. If the Crows’ men could keep her away from them, there must be many on the hunt.

  “Where is she?”

  She hides at Fledgling—

  A long wooden handle struck the candy tiger off my chest. Before I could yell out, a second hit crushed the sculpture against the ground.

  Lun dropped the wheelbarrow handle from his bandaged hands and helped me sit up. I could smell the stink from the healer’s salve under those dressings. “Are you all right, Ao? I thought your tiger candy was going to maul you!”

  “I’m fine, and he wouldn’t have.”

  Lun meant well. I couldn’t fault him for thinking he was saving me. The young wheelwright was one of the few in Chengdu who knew I was a sorcerer and how I had shaped a dragon from river water to battle an arson. Lun helped me put out the fire but burned his hands while heroically fighting the flames.

  We had become fast friends thereafter. He insisted that I come stay with him here in the back of the shop where he worked, instead of crowding into a poor house with other wandering peddlers. I was grateful for it.

  I grabbed my shirt. “Have you heard of the Pale Tigress?”

  Lun’s voice fell to a whisper. “She’s the ghostly tiger that prowls the night, stalking criminals, demons, and children who misbehave.” The shadows couldn’t hide that blood was quickly draining from his face. “I thought it was only a tale my mother made up to scare us, till I saw the Tigress herself when I was twelve. We were beastly vandals then, my brothers and I, and had snuck out on the night of the Double Ninth Festival. It was on Jewelry Street she found us, ghastly white with eyes that burned blue in the gloom. She stared at me, through me, like she only saw the marrow in my bones. I wet myself, though I wasn’t the only one who did. We vowed that if she let us live, we’d walk a path of virtue for the rest of our lives. Only then did she slink away into the shadows. From that day forward, instead of smashing things under cover of night, we began fixing things by day, for those in need.”

  So that was the Pale Tigress. She must’ve seen the good in Lun and set him right. What a noble act, to save a life from being lived wrong.

  Standing between the Ten Crows and the Tigress would surely place me in danger, but we pao jianghu, vagrants who walk the margins of the world, knew peril as a way of life.

  I knelt by the crushed sugar figurine. I hoped Tiger could still hear me through it. “I accept, Your Fierceness. I will save the City God’s Tiger.”

  “Y-you’ll what?” Lun said.

  * * *

  I hadn’t the time to heat up caramel, which meant I had only two leftover candies, still on their drying-sticks, to conjure with: a dog and a pig. I grabbed a knife from my belongings and cut a thin bleed near my elbow, gritting my teeth against the pain. With drops of my blood I dotted eyes onto the two animal figurines. This small sacrifice was needed, should I want to craft an enchanted creature from water.

  “Tiger was telling me something when you, um, interrupted,” I said to Lun. “Does ‘Fledgling’ remind you of any place close by?”

  He nodded. “Fledgling Bridge, over the Golden Water River. That’s where children and their parents go to feed geese and koi.”

  I pulled the caramel dog and pig free of their bamboo sticks. “Take me there.”

  * * *

  I followed Lun off Wheelbarrow Lane and southward through the chill. The infamous Sichuan fog, especially with the light of the half moon seeping through, made for an eerie
nightscape. Glows in the distance were likely patrolmen with lanterns, but it could well be Crows’ men on the hunt.

  A month ago on the road to Chengdu, many travelers had cautioned me that the city wasn’t all hibiscus and brocade. Situated as it was at the western edge of the empire, strange dangers found their way to Chengdu, be they from the sky-raking mountains down the Tea-Horse Road or on the waters from the great ancient irrigation project. Those warnings had never prepared me for a tiger-demon and her rescue.

  At least we knew where the Tigress was hiding. Lun navigated through the streets as only a native of Chengdu could, taking us swiftly and unseen towards the Golden Water River that flowed through Greater City.

  I thought about appealing to Magistrate Gongsun for help. The Ten Crows Sect had failed to assassinate him only three nights ago. He would surely want to foil this ploy, even though I wasn’t sure why the Crows sought to slay the Pale Tigress. But it was too far to fetch the judge and the hour too late to rouse him.

  The Fledgling Bridge, a covered span with a single stone arch and a peaked pavilion with flying eaves, was small compared to other bridges that straddle the burbling Golden Water. Shrouded as it was by mists and shadows, for Lun and I to learn if anything lay here, we’d have to cross the bridge. What would we find, I wondered: a tigress dead or dying, or killers in wait?

  Nothing, it seemed, but a stray brown Chongqing dog curled in sleep.

  Had the Pale Tigress fled to the estates on the southern shore, or was she skulking north towards the Prefecture City God Temple?

  Or perhaps she was above.

  With Lun’s help, I pulled myself up onto the roof of the covered bridge.

  There she was, lying a-tremble by the pavilion cupola, a dire beast the hue of white peony blooms under the shade of a leafless branch.

  A tiger. A ghost. Both.

  An arrow was stuck deep in her left flank.

  I treaded carefully towards her across the mist-kissed tiles. I’d never seen a tiger up close, much less a supernatural one such as she. Grand and beautiful the Tigress was, with coal stripes that seemed to sway and drift upon her snowy fur. She embodied danger and grace in an admirable balance.

  But she was bleeding where the arrow had pierced her. I wanted to examine the wound but didn’t dare go nearer.

  Her whiskers quaked as she scented me. She flinched and opened her jaw in a muted snarl.

  In her present torment, she could well think me her foe and kill me. But if she had once looked into Lun’s heart and found good, perhaps she could peer into mine and find goodwill.

  “Lady Tigress, I beg you not to eat me,” I said softly, drawing her piercing gaze. “King Tiger of the shengxiao sent me to help you. Please, hold still while I see to your wound.”

  She lifted her head to better see me. Those bright eyes not only beheld me, they devoured me.

  A shudder rattled my bones, but I managed another step closer, and was relieved that she allowed it.

  Carved upon the blackened shaft of the arrow were strange symbols that resembled birds and worms. Half of the arrow was buried in the Tigress’s flesh.

  I didn’t know the anatomy beneath a tiger’s hide. I feared that if I tried to pull the arrow free, I’d do more harm than good.

  But perhaps a healer, like the itinerant doctor who had seen to Lun’s burns, could extract the arrow safely.

  I peered over the side. “Lun. Is your doctor still in town?”

  “Doctor Yan? Yes, she is. She’s staying with the moxibustionist on Pepper Street.”

  “Fetch her quick, or we might lose the Tigress.”

  “But what do I tell her?”

  “Whatever you need to. She’s from the Jianghu like me, isn’t she? That means she’s met far stranger things in outlaw country.” I produced the caramel dog figure, poured a sip of my soul into it, and tossed it gently down to Lun. “You won’t be alone.”

  He nodded and hurried back north.

  I returned to the Tigress. Her breathing had become more labored, her exhalations tainted by the tang of blood. How strange, to kneel so close to a man-eating beast and live! But she was a servant to the City God, and I meant to comfort her.

  “My name’s Ao Tienwei,” I whispered to the Tigress. It hurt me to see her in such pain. “I’m a candyman from the east. You know, the kind that blows up globs of molten sugar and moulds animal figurines from them? I know a little magic too, so don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

  The stripes on her pallid fur seemed spectral, hypnotic. But before I was able to examine her closer, I heard the sound of flapping wings. I stiffened. Didn’t the rumormongers claim that the Ten Crows employed three-legged crows for spies? I couldn’t see any birds through the mist, and hoped it worked the same the other way around.

  Lun should’ve reached Pepper Street by now. I closed my eyes and sent my consciousness out in seek of the candy dog in his care. By bonds of blood, soul, and the signature of my style I found it and stirred it into motion.

  I, Dog-I, squirmed free of a fold in Lun’s shirt so I could use my eyes of dotted blood.

  An old man stood in the doorway of the moxibustion clinic, rubbing his eyes. “What’s your business with her at this godless hour?”

  “There’s been a terrible injury,” Lun said. “It’s not far. I beg you, please wake Doctor Yan.”

  “Lun, is that you?” called a woman’s voice. “It’s all right, Master Xiong. I wasn’t asleep.” A striking woman, garbed in a ruqun embroidered with subtle floral patterns, stepped past her host. “What’s happened? Tell the truth and I will help. “

  “It’s, it’s complicated. My friend Ao, who got visited by the shengxiao Tiger, who wants him to save the Pale Tigress, who got shot by the Crows, who—”

  “Oh? Not a human patient?” She seemed intrigued.

  I needed to help out poor ineloquent Lun. With sticky paws the-dog-I-was clambered onto Lun’s shoulder and sat. This show of magic ought to convince her.

  Doctor Yan tapped my candy-shell with a calloused finger. “I see. This will be an unusual case. Wait here, I’ll need my herbs.”

  Confident she’d soon be on her way, I returned to my body, just in time to hear voices below, the yelp of a dog, and the sound of scampering off the bridge. The Tigress must have heard them too, and she tensed. I started breathing as shallowly as I could. There were many footfalls, then the voices of several men.

  A commanding voice quieted the rest. “She couldn’t have gone far, not with that arrow in her. You and you, stay on the north shore and head east. You two, go back to the men she slew and ensure the bodies disappear. You four, follow me. We’ll scour the south.”

  “And me, uncle?” asked a taut voice.

  “Wait here, Wuda. If you hear reports of a sighting, relay the message to those on the wrong shore. Got it?”

  A round of ‘ayes’. They raced away.

  How long before the man they left here realized he ought to check up top? Or what if the Crows’ men happened across Lun and Doctor Yan?

  The man paced below. Odds were, we’d be discovered soon. I was no match physically for a hunter, so I’d have to rely on wits and magic to protect the Pale Tigress.

  Luckily, I still had one candy left.

  I took the pig-shaped caramel in my right hand. The simplest of the zodiac animals to make, it only needed a steady stream of breath to inflate the body round and pinches to shape flat ears and a snout. Once it grew fat, add stubby feet and finish the tail with the vital curl. I seeped another measure of my soul into it.

  Pig, O Mother Sow, I cried with my mind’s voice, this shaper of sweets asks your help with a trifling matter. Will you hear me?

  The shengxiao spirit grunted in greeting. Oy, yes, oy, maker of treats. Just the sound of your voice makes me crave a snack. But hweh, what doesn’t?

  The man below will kill us if he finds us, Mother Sow, I explained. But what aspect of Pig’s power could I call upon? Hunger? Fat? No, I needed strength. Your aspe
ct as boar. I need the strength of your tusks, the brute in your rage.

  The man below inhaled deeply, then sniffed twice. Not long after, a scrape sounded on the other side of the pavilion cupola. The Ten Crows man was climbing onto the roof. Had he caught a whiff of blood, fur, or caramel in the air? It mattered not; I couldn’t mask our scents.

  I lay down beside the Tigress. The cupola would shield us from view until he came around it, and then we were dead.

  Savor the scraps of my magic as you will, but feed my appetites in return, said Pig. What manner of coin do you hoard; with what delights do you barter?

  I could hear the man Wuda’s steps circling the cupola. Pig’s power would save us, but what to offer her as payment? Once before, I had accepted a spirit’s aid without knowing what he would demand in return, and suffered for it. Would I risk falling into the same trap?

  I do this in protection of the City God’s Tiger, I said. For the sake of all Chengdu, lend me what I ask now, but save the haggling for when I survive.

  Pig snorted. You’re with the City God’s grunt? Auspicious night! The fur of the Pale Tigress hides the key to a Chengdu treasure. Promise now that you’ll learn and tell me that secret, and the power of the boar is yours.

  Her fur hid a treasure? I questioned the wisdom of stealing the City God’s secret. Men had been cursed for less. But if I said no to Pig and we died because of it, I feared the treasure would fall into the wrong hands.

  Wuda of the Ten Crows was in mid-leap over the cupola, sword in hand.

  Done! I cried.

  I felt the pig candy in my hand fatten with the wild boar’s furious might. As the man landed I charged him, and with the force of a monstrous swine I struck him full in the jaw.

  The impact crushed my caramel pig but knocked my foe out. He dropped his sword and fell. I realized too late that I’d hit him too hard, and that he would tumble off the sloped roof and noisily into the water. I grabbed his sleeve with my free hand, but he was heavy, too heavy.

  Wuda slipped from my grasp and crashed into the water with a resounding splash.