Work Text:
Pair by pair — and
suddenly! — west winds
blow wild geese back.
But human bodies,
human hearts,
go down on their own.
“Riverbank” by Xue Tao, transl. Jeanne Larsen
-
When Wan Mei first announced her intention to bind up her hair and study the blade, several of her sisters in the entertainment house went into hysterics.
Madame Bian tried to reason with her. “You spent three years in training. You’ve had an excellent first year; Li Tianqui himself wrote a poem about your dancing! This is a passing fancy. Let it go. By next plum-blossom season you’ll be the most celebrated courtesan in Shantang, and that Taoist cultivator will be nothing more than a memory. When Li Tianqui comes to the house again—”
“Any of my sisters will dance just as well,” Wan Mei said. She took another set of delicate, gauzy robes out of her chest and shook them out. “The blue would suit Yujing-jie better than A-Lan, don’t you think?”
Madame Bian tried again. “Falling in love at first sight sounds very romantic in stories, dear, but it’s not practical. At least you should choose a powerful magistrate or a wealthy merchant looking for a concubine. Not a female cultivator from the Qian Sect, of all people. What use would she have for a courtesan, when she spends all her time slaying monsters and practicing martial arts and— and cultivating spiritual energy through celibacy?”
“I don’t think you have to be celibate to cultivate spiritual energy.” Wan Mei had investigated this. “It’s just supposed to involve a lot of martial arts and meditation. So I’m not going as a courtesan.”
“You don’t even know her name!”
“Fei Jian-guniang, of the Huangshan Qian Sect,” Wan Mei said dreamily, folding the robes and setting them carefully aside. “I heard one of the junior disciples calling to her.”
“Flying Sword Lady is a title, not a name,” Madame Bian said, but she looked thoughtful. “That means she’s not some lower-rank wandering swordswoman, at least, she must be one of their elite… Still! She didn’t even speak to you!”
“She didn’t need to.” She had walked by Wan Mei on the leaf-dappled Willow Bridge, as tall and slim and straight as the sword she carried, and Wan Mei had felt her knees go weak.
The cultivator wore her hair tied up in a simple, masculine knot, held by a hammered silver cuff-and-pin. Her robes were full and flowing, dark green with paler patterns like mountains or water. She had a long, serious face with straight brows and a thin mouth. She might never have worn powder or rouge, never learned to pour wine in the Waterfall Amid Mountains style or danced to please patrons. Six junior disciples followed her, in plain green robes and green hair ribbons on their topknots, carrying swords.
They didn’t come to the Floating Lily House, of course. Cultivators from other Taoist sects sometimes did, but the Qian Sect from Huangshan was known for its righteousness, for doing good in the world when other sects wouldn’t bother; they were the sect that villagers petitioned to drive off malevolent fox spirits or lay to rest low-level walking corpses. They did not spend their time or coin on frivolities like visiting entertainment houses.
The Qian Sect cultivators might consider Wan Mei herself a frivolity, she knew. Still, she had to try.
“This humble one has come to join the Huangshan Qian Sect,” she told the junior disciples guarding the front gate of the sect headquarters at Phoenix Peak.
The junior disciples gaped. So did the senior disciples they eventually summoned, and then one of the sect elders, and then all the sect elders in the Grand Martial Hall.
By then Wan Mei was very tired of bowing and repeating herself, but she had learned in the provincial entertainment academy and then in the Floating Lily House to mask her exhaustion and annoyance with a gentle smile. On her journey to Huangshan she had practiced the masculine bow, with her arms straight and hands overlapping in front of her, often enough that it felt almost as natural as a curtsey. She had even practiced referring to herself in a more masculine style of speech, but it was too easy to make mistakes. The style of humility would suit her well enough, and no one should take offense.
She wasn’t actually sure the sect elders had heard her, though. She straightened from her bow, keeping her eyes politely downcast, and offered, “This humble one is called Wan Mei. She is old to be a cultivator, but she learns quickly. And she has heard that the Huangshan Qian Sect does not discriminate on its disciples’ background.”
“Your age and, ahem, your background are not the only issues,” one of the sect elders said, stroking his wispy white beard. “Do you know any martial arts? Have you demonstrated any stirrings of spiritual energy?”
Wan Mei had anticipated this. She withdrew a fan from her sleeve. “This humble one’s martial skills are very slight, but if any of the disciples should care to try…”
“Senior Brother, you can’t be seriously considering this,” a grey-haired sect elder protested. “Look at her! She’ll break in half!”
“Silk,” an elegant old woman said, waving her own fan gently, “may sometimes be stronger than steel. I would like to see this young lady’s demonstration of skills.” She peered down thoughtfully at Wan Mei. “Is there a particular disciple you came here to challenge?”
The old woman was sitting in the only wooden chair in the Grand Martial Hall, with all the other sect elders standing around her. She wore very pale green robes, and ornate silver crowned her white topknot. Wan Mei swallowed and took a guess. “Sect Leader is both generous and wise. However, this humble one did not come to Qian Sect to challenge any disciples. She wishes only to learn. From—”
She swallowed again. “From, if possible, the cultivator Fei Jian-guniang.”
“Oh, gods,” the grey-haired sect elder said. “Another one?”
All the junior disciples gathered around the edges of the Grand Martial Hall murmured to each other in excitement. Even a few of the senior disciples and the younger sect elders muttered behind their sleeves. Then the elegant old sect leader shut her fan, and everyone went silent.
“You are an intelligent young lady,” the sect leader said to Wan Mei. “Quite intelligent, to seek learning from one of our sect’s bright stars. Fei Jian-guniang does occasionally lead the younger disciples on excursions to exorcise evil beings, although she is not yet of an age to take her own students. However.” She contemplated Wan Mei for a moment more, then said: “Gu Mingque!”
The crowd of disciples parted. The woman from Willow Bridge walked out into the Grand Martial Hall, tall and slim and serious. She stood beside Wan Mei, in front of the sect leader, and bowed deeply with her open hand overlapping the one that held her sword. Her full sleeves brushed the floor. Wan Mei thought she might die of longing right there.
“Disciple Gu Mingque greets Grandmaster,” the cultivator said. Her voice was low and clear, like qin music.
Her personal name was just as elegant as her title. Wan Mei wondered if she wrote it with the character for Bright. She would like to see Fei Jian-guniang write, with her long graceful hand poised on the brush.
“Miss Wan,” the sect leader said, and Wan Mei jumped.
She bowed again, hastily. “Yes, Sect Leader!”
“Demonstrate for us, please,” the sect leader said, “how you might meet our disciple’s attack. A single pass should suffice, I think.” She shook her fan open again and waved it gently.
Wan Mei barely dared breathe. She looked at Fei Jian-guniang. The cultivator’s cool expression did not change as she drew her sword.
If Wan Mei died right now, with that shining blade through her heart, this moment would still have been worth it.
But she did not intend to die. She took up a stance from the opening pose of the Flowing Mountain Stream dance. She imagined herself catching the blade between the ribs of her fan, snapping them closed and gracefully twisting the hilt from its mistress’s hand. No— her fan was thin bamboo and paper, not silk and steel; it would splinter in her hand. Deflection, then—
Fei Jian-guniang flowed into motion like willow leaves in the breeze. She smacked the flat of her blade hard against Wan Mei’s wrist, and then laid the tip at her throat.
The fan clattered onto the floor. Wan Mei swallowed again, very carefully.
A new murmur of whispers sprang up among the juniors. Someone cheered and was swiftly silenced.
“Dignity and humility,” the sect leader said thoughtfully. “Miss Wan, are you learned?”
The sword withdrew from Wan Mei’s throat and vanished into its inlaid sheath. Fei Jian-guniang bowed, still expressionless, and stepped back. She turned again to face the sect leader.
Wan Mei forced herself to follow suit. Her knees were still weak, and her wrist stung, but her voice, at least, was trained to be steady. “This humble one has some slight skill in calligraphy and a passing acquaintance with the literary classics, Sect Leader. A minor talent for playing the pipa and qin, for dance, and for mathematics. She deeply regrets that she has only a little knowledge of the rites.”
“That’s four of the Six Arts,” one of the elders muttered. “And she didn’t flinch.”
“Hm,” the sect leader said, and laid her closed fan down across her knees. “I think you already know, Miss Wan, that you have no talent for cultivation. However, Qian Sect does happen to be in need of an instructor for the younger disciples. You would teach them calligraphy, literature, music, mathematics — and as much of the rites as you know.” A glimmer of humor entered her voice. “Under such terms, would you enter Qian Sect?”
Wan Mei knelt and prostrated herself in the full bow. She kept her eyes downcast as she straightened. “Wan Mei is delighted to accept the Sect Leader’s generous offer.”
“Good, good,” the sect leader said heartily. “Perhaps you’ll even have a few spare hours to learn archery and riding from Fei Jian-guniang, and thereby master all Six Arts.”
“Wan Mei would like that,” she breathed. “Very much.”
Of course, in Wan Mei’s first month in Phoenix Peak, she never even caught sight of Fei Jian-guniang.
Her duties with the six youngest junior disciples kept her busy enough. Two of them were barely ten years old; none were older than thirteen. One girl was a poor scholar’s daughter and the oldest boy claimed ties to minor countryside nobility, but the remainder barely knew a thousand characters between them. Wan Mei wracked her brains trying to remember the techniques her own instructors had used to help her learn new characters, let alone their swift and graceful renditions in calligraphy script. Her throat and hand ached at the end of each day, and her students’ careless brush-waving left her robes spattered with ink.
The children were adorable though. Earnest and clever and intent on their learning, even though she could have measured their attention span by the time it took to burn an incense stick. They chattered to her about the martial skills and spiritual cultivation techniques they were learning from their own dedicated masters; about the senior disciples’ prowess in hunting evil spirits; even, eventually, about their most revered idol among the senior disciples.
“Everyone’s in love with Fei Jian-guniang,” Jing Yan informed her wisely one day. “Just this year we’ve already had three cultivators visit from other sects to try to marry her. Well, one of them said he wanted to fight her, but everyone knew that was pretty much the same thing.”
“Keep your brush vertical, and hold your elbow off the table,” Wan Mei told her. “What happened to those cultivators?”
Jing Yan shrugged, dislodging her tied-back sleeve. Wan Mei dived to the rescue before the girl dragged the long sleeve across her ink-slab again. “Thank you, Instructor Wan,” Jing Yan said politely. “Fei Jian-guniang beat them, of course. One of them said he was looking for a wife, not a champion, and he went home. One of them dropped his sword and peed himself when Fei Jian-guniang attacked. And the last one got all excited about Fei Jian-guniang beating him and started talking about ropes, but the other senior disciples took us away and so we never heard if he got tied up. But he went home, too.”
“Ah,” Wan Mei said. “Your senior disciples acted correctly, I think. Remember, horizontal strokes first, then vertical.”
Everyone in Phoenix Peak appeared to know she had come to be near Fei Jian-guniang, even those who hadn’t been in attendance at the Grand Martial Hall that day. Her students took it in stride: what person of taste wouldn’t fall instantly in love with Qian Sect’s bright star? The servants and senior disciples appeared perfectly polite but faintly pitying. They had seen would-be suitors come and go, too. Wan Mei was certain they were making bets on how long she’d stay.
They didn’t matter. The sect leader had accepted her. Her students listened to her. And someday, eventually, she’d earn a chance to exchange words with Fei Jian-guniang.
Her chance came three days after the Hungry Ghost festival.
Ghost Month was the busiest time of year for a cultivation sect. It was the month when the gates of the underworld opened and spirits roamed freely. The festival itself was almost a minor note between four weeks of sending disciples out to appease restless ghosts, strengthen spiritual barriers, and distribute protective talismans. Half of the elders and almost all of the senior disciples left Phoenix Peak, and Wan Mei’s students and the other junior disciples stayed up late into the night after their lessons ended, copying new talismans by candlelight.
Without any spiritual energy to infuse the talismans, Wan Mei kept herself useful by grinding cinnabar ink, cutting sheets of yellow paper into hand-sized strips, and collecting thick stacks of the completed talismans for the next cultivator who came to resupply. She was sitting on the floor in the Hall of Erudition, parceling up the next packet and struggling mightily to contain a yawn, when a scuffing footstep on the porch outside announced another visitor.
“Almost ready,” Wan Mei said through her yawn. Her string was fraying, and it took concentration to tie.
“Take your time.” The cultivator’s voice was tired, but still clear and resonant as a plucked qin.
Wan Mei lost her grip on the string. She looked up, gaping ridiculously, then scrambled to her feet in a flurry of sleeves and skirts. She was tired and startled enough to curtsey instead of bow. “Fei Jian-guniang!”
“No need.” Fei Jian-guniang put her hand out, as if to steady Wan Mei, then appeared to think better of it and dropped her hand back down to her side. Her right wrist was bandaged beneath her long sleeve. “My apologies for startling you, Instructor Wan.”
She looked almost as tired as she sounded. She was wearing clean green robes, with her hair smoothly bound up and her posture as beautifully straight as ever, but her skin was very pale and her eyes bruise-shadowed from lack of sleep. Three faint pink lines ran down her cheek, like the healing marks left by claws.
Wan Mei forgot herself again. “You’ve been hurt. Have you seen a physician? I’ll run and find Elder Hu—”
“No need,” Fei Jian-guniang repeated. She winced a little and added more swiftly, “My injuries were very slight. Mostly from carelessness. Elder Hu would only complain about being woken up, and make me drink bitter medicine to sweeten my nature.”
“I cannot believe you were careless,” Wan Mei said.
“Well— tired, at least.” Fei Jian-guniang looked down at the bundles of talismans on the floor. “Instructor Wan has been working very hard. You must be tired, too.”
“Not at all! I’m used to late nights.”
A corner of Fei Jian-guniang’s mouth crooked up in a devastating little smile. “And early mornings, too?”
“Those are harder,” Wan Mei confessed. “But of course I don’t mind! The children— I mean, the junior disciples are very sweet and very earnest. It’s a pleasure teaching them. And Ghost Month is so busy for everyone here. I just wish there was more I could do to help.”
“Hm.” Fei Jian-guniang looked down at her for a moment. Her eyes were so dark, depthless, framed with long lashes and the very faintest beginnings of lines. She had a sprinkling of sun-freckles over her cheeks, and her lips were chapped and dry.
Wan Mei had a pot of soft, creamy rouge back in her small quarters. She wondered if Fei Jian-guniang would wait for her to fetch it. If Fei Jian-guniang would sit, straight-backed and graceful, to let Wan Mei brush rouge onto her lips.
“I didn’t think you’d stay this long,” Fei Jian-guniang said.
Wan Mei startled. “What? Oh— Why not?”
“I haven’t come to see you. Well, I mean, Ghost Month started just a week after you came, and I’ve been gone so much…”
“And you thought if you left me alone long enough, I’d get bored and go home?”
Fei Jian-guniang only looked expressionless from a distance. This close, Wan Mei could see the tiny lines tightening around her mouth, the flash of chagrin in her eyes. “Most people do, when they can’t immediately buy or win what they want.”
“Ah,” Wan Mei said, thinking of the customers who’d visited Floating Lily House. “Yes.”
They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Chen Boyang came staggering-tired down from the front of the Hall of Erudition with his arms piled high with untidy heaps of talismans. “Instructor Wan, here’s the last for tonight, I’m sorry it’s such a mess, but— Fei Jian-guniang!”
The boy folded into a bow, spilling the heaped talismans in a yellow-and-cinnabar flutter over the floor. He gaped in dismay.
“It’s all right,” Wan Mei said. “Go back and get some rest, Boyang. I’ll take care of it.”
“But they’re all over, Instructor Wan…” He looked close to exhausted tears.
“I’ll help,” Fei Jian-guniang said, and knelt smoothly, setting her sword aside. “Go rest, Disciple Chen.”
Overawed, the boy backed away.
Fei Jian-guniang’s long, slender hands gathered up talismans into neat stacks of twenty; cut string; bound the stacks with the pattern that would make them easy to release at need. Wan Mei stole glances at her as they worked together. Her profile was flawless as white jade. She counted talismans silently, her tongue between her teeth, and Wan Mei had never seen anyone she wanted more.
“I hope,” Wan Mei said quietly, “that I haven’t made you uncomfortable, Fei Jian-guniang.”
“Not at all. You haven’t kept badgering me to fight in some misguided notion you’d win; or hung around to watch me sparring; or tried bribing the servants to sneak some alchemical love potion into my food. In fact, I started to wonder whether you’d come to Huangshan for me at all.”
“Oh, yes!” Wan Mei exclaimed, and then blushed at Fei Jian-guniang’s slight smile. “But I’ve had that sort of attention myself. Back in Shantang, when I was at the entertainment house. It isn’t romantic at all, it’s just obnoxious. And it isn’t about you, it’s about the person he — it’s always been a he, in my experience — imagines you are. I didn’t know who you are, really, so I had to come to Huangshan to learn. But I don’t mean to ask for anything you aren’t happy to give, Fei Jian-guniang. After all, you have to learn who I am, too.”
“And who is that, Instructor Wan?” Her dark gaze met Wan Mei’s, perfectly steady. It drew the breath from Wan Mei’s lungs.
“A… very frivolous girl, I’m afraid, Fei Jian-guniang. And a stubborn one. But patient, and hard-working, and clever.”
“I’d noticed that,” Fei Jian-guniang said softly. “Call me by name, please. You know it? Gu Mingque.”
“I could never!” Wan Mei said breathlessly. “But… may I call you Older Sister?”
The white-jade cheeks tinted faintly pink. “You may.” She looked down at the clean floor and the tidy stacks of talismans. “I’ll take these to the other disciples. You should get some rest.”
“Yes, Jiejie,” Wan Mei said, with her heart in her throat.
Her reward came as a swift-flashing smile, and then a ducking head, and Fei Jian-guniang’s voice gone dusky-soft: “Good night, Wan Mei.”
They saw each other a little more often, after that.
Every day the Underworld’s open gates let hungry ghosts come streaming out seeking food and entertainment, and their rising yin energy stirred up spirits, demons, monsters, and other assorted yaoguai. Qian Sect’s senior disciples came and went constantly from Phoenix Peak. A few of the oldest junior disciples went out with them and came back with bloodcurdling stories of ravening ghosts with needle-like hair or putrid mouths, water ghouls who drowned fisherman, wild mountain spirits who led travelers astray. Wan Mei shuddered at their stories, praised their courage, and kept an eye on the gate for Fei Jian-guniang—Gu Mingque—to return.
She never used Gu Mingque’s personal name, of course. That would be the height of familiarity, and she didn’t feel that bold. But without the title between them she did feel closer. She sometimes let her lips linger a little on the word “Jiejie” and saw Gu Mingque’s ears turn pink, as if she’d remembered that Wan Mei hadn’t actually been adopted into the sect, and that “Older Brother” or “Older Sister” could also be a term of very nonfamilial endearment.
They ate together, twice, in the sect’s big dining hall. Gu Mingque stopped by the Hall of Erudition another day, and taught the junior disciples the strokes of a new talisman for binding wandering spirits. Afterwards she went out into the quiet rock garden with Wan Mei and shaded her eyes as she gazed up at the sun. “I’ve been too nocturnal this month,” she observed. “Well, only a week to go and then we all can breathe again. How would you like that archery lesson?”
“Now?” Wan Mei asked, startled. “But— You should be resting. And the children…”
“They’ll stay busy with that new talisman for at least a few incense sticks’ time,” Gu Mingque said. “Come with me.”
She took Wan Mei to the archery field and picked the lightest bow for her. They laughed together when Wan Mei could barely string it—“My students would be so embarrassed if they could see their Instructor Wan now!”—and then Mingque-jie put her arms around Wan Mei to teach her the proper stance, and Wan Mei nearly melted on the spot.
Mingque-jie’s reserve concealed an appealing shyness, she found. Her seriousness masked a dry wit and an endless compassion for the youngest disciples, for the hapless villagers who sought the sect’s help, for an orange, two-tailed cat spirit she brought back from one of her hunts. “He killed a couple of rat yaoguai infesting a village’s rubbish heap, and then nearly got killed himself when one of the villagers caught sight of him,” she told Wan Mei. “But there’s no malice in him. Once that injured paw heals, he’ll go off on his own again.”
“I’m sure he knows he’s better off with Jiejie,” Wan Mei said, offering her fingers to the purring cat. “Have you thought of a name for him yet?”
Mingque-jie looked faintly embarrassed. “Well, he’s orange,” she said. “And I found him in a loquat orchard. So I thought Pipa, perhaps, but I’m not very talented at poetry or names…”
“I think Pipa is a lovely name,” Wan Mei said firmly. “And you’re very grateful for the name and the rescue, aren’t you, Pipa?”
Pipa purred and nudged his head against her hand for ear scratches.
After that Mingque-jie left Pipa with Wan Mei when she had to leave Phoenix Peak again. The junior disciples were very impressed by Pipa’s bandaged paw and his two fluffy tails, and they begged a little time from their mathematics lesson to try catching mice for him. Pipa watched them disinterestedly, his yellow eyes narrowed and his tails tidily curled, then leapt down off the porch and pounced on an escaping mouse to show them how it was done.
And then Ghost Month was over. Villages all over Huangshan sent the little paper lantern-boats floating down streams and rivers to guide the wandering ghosts home. Qian Sect disciples came trickling back with new stories and a few new injuries. Mingque-jie wasn’t among the first of them, but she came eventually. Her left sleeve was burned all the way back to the shoulder, and her arm scorched and blistered as if she’d reached into a fire.
The disciples who’d accompanied her bragged about the story: Fei Jian-guniang facing down a fire spirit that had gained self-awareness in a swordsmith’s forge! Mingque-jie herself said very little. But she sat on the firm wooden bedstead in her open, peaceful quarters, with a fishpond burbling outside the latticed window and the wind rustling in the bamboo, and let Wan Mei change bandages and apply the salve that Elder Hu prescribed.
“Jiejie doesn’t need to pretend it doesn’t hurt,” Wan Mei told her softly, smoothing the greasy ointment over blistered skin. She could feel the tension in the hard muscles beneath her hands. “If you want to cry out, no one will hear but Pipa and me.”
Pipa crouched at the foot of the bed, his tails lashing, his yellow eyes fixed on the stained coils of white linen bandages they had unwound from Mingque-jie’s arm. He didn’t look up at the sound of his name, but after a moment he settled his paws and began to purr.
Mingque-jie’s forehead shone with sweat, but her mouth curled up in its crooked smile. “My mother never cried out when she was in labor with me. I should be ashamed to do less.”
“Was Jiejie’s mother a cultivator, too?”
“She still is. Elder Qian, titled Zhuhuo-nu, the next sect leader after Grandmaster Qian. I don’t think you’ve met her yet?”
“No,” Wan Mei squeaked. She took a steadying breath. “I suppose then that Jiejie’s father married into the sect?”
“No,” Mingque-jie said, her smile widening. “He’s heir to the Gu Sect over in Jishan. My brothers live with him. Phoenix Peak gets all the girls. We have a tradition of female leadership, you know.”
“Like the Floating Lily House,” Wan Mei said. “Madame Bian was the second-generation owner there. Nearly all the entertainment houses in Shantang are run by women. We have to look out for each other.”
“Yes,” Mingque-jie said. She hesitated. “Do you miss it?”
Wan Mei thought that over while she wiped her fingers clean and took up a fresh roll of bandages. “I miss my sisters,” she said finally. “And my pretty clothes, and my art. I was a dancer, with scarves, sleeves, fans… oh, anything. I was very good.”
“I can believe it,” Mingque-jie murmured.
Wan Mei colored—prettily, she hoped. She could feel Mingque-jie’s gaze on her. She kept her head bent and her eyes lowered on her work. “We used to entertain at parties. Sometimes we would have wine and music and poetry until dawn. I enjoyed the music and poetry, but wine gives me a headache. I’m glad we don’t drink too much of it here.”
“Mm.” Mingque-jie hesitated again. When she spoke her voice was oddly awkward, as if she’d had trouble finding the words. “Did you… have anyone you particularly liked? A patron, or a special friend?”
“No,” Wan Mei said. She knotted the bandage, tucked the loose ends in, and raised her head to meet Mingque-jie’s gaze. “All of my sisters had patrons they liked—handsome young scholars, or generous merchants. I had plenty of admirers, but no one I admired in return. I thought I was cold. Then I saw you on Willow Bridge and I knew I wasn’t.” She quoted:
“Though the sky is vast and endless,
There is but one sun.”
Mingque-jie’s lips parted. She drew a long, shaky breath. “And so you gave up your sisters and your home and your art, for… for that?”
“If you’d spent your life cold, and then Heaven gave you one blazing chance to feel the sun’s warmth, would you turn away?”
“No,” Mingque-jie said. “I wouldn’t.”
“Well, then,” Wan Mei said. She gathered up her salves and bandages. “Get some rest, Jiejie. I’ll come back in the evening.”
“Yes,” Mingque-jie said slowly, pulling her robe back up her shoulder. “Thank you, Wan Mei.”
Wan Mei made it outside and over the bridge above the fishpond before she had to set down her things and just… breathe, remembering the muscles in Mingque-jie’s bared shoulder, the trim curves of her breasts beneath her silk undergarment, the sharp wings of her collarbones and the cords of her throat. The dark shine and lovely scent of her unbound hair. The way her mouth tucked up into one corner when she smiled, and the way she’d looked when Wan Mei left.
As if, almost, she wanted to call her back.
No. Wan Mei wasn’t going to let her hopes climb that high. It was one thing to acknowledge to herself and to the world that she loved one woman, Huangshan Qian Sect’s Fei Jian-guniang. It was another thing entirely to let herself pretend that Gu Mingque might return her feelings.
It wasn’t, perhaps, entirely hopeless; but that was all.
The junior disciples couldn’t focus that morning. They’d finally recovered from a month of long days and late nights, and their energy bubbled over. Shen Qiuhao doodled menacing yaoguai at the bottom of her calligraphy practice. Cui Hong and Mo Songtao, the two youngest boys, sparred with their writing brushes when they thought she wasn’t looking. Cui Xiang, who had turned ten and joined her brother among the junior disciples just at the end of peach blossom month, draped herself dramatically over her writing desk and wailed, “Why can’t it be Mid-Autumn Festival now?”
“We can’t have Mid-Autumn Festival without a full moon, and last night was still a crescent,” Wan Mei pointed out. “Keep your back straight and your voice low, please, Cui Xiang.”
Cui Xiang sighed but obediently pried herself off the desk. Wan Mei swept her gaze over the rest of her students, each more restless and distractible than the next, and considered summer days and ten-year-olds.
They had been working hard.
“Even Sect Leader Qian can’t make the moon fill any faster,” she said. “But… If we put our writing brushes away this afternoon, that might help the time pass.”
That certainly got their attention. “Instructor Wan is generous and good!” Jing Yan chanted. “Now?”
Wan Mei looked at the shadows through the latticed windows. It wasn’t yet noon. The juniors had been up at dawn for sword practice and cultivation training though, and she’d had them for two hours already.
They weren’t learning much now, she had to confess. Maybe a change of venue would help.
“Boyang, go to the kitchens and ask Mistress Zheng to pack us some baozi and pickled vegetables. Cui Hong and Cui Xiang, tidy up here. The rest of you, come with me. We’ll all meet at the mountain gate in one incense-stick’s time.”
The children tumbled over each other in their eagerness to obey, at least until Jing Yan, the oldest girl, remembered they were cultivators-in-training and urged some sense of decorum into her fellows. Cui Xiang and her older brother Cui Hong stayed behind to clean the Hall of Erudition, while the remaining three tagged at Wan Mei’s heels.
She took them first to the storage rooms behind the Hall of Erudition. There, wrapped in hemp fabric and stored in cedarwood chests, the sect kept its teaching instruments: qin, zheng, xiao, and a pear-shaped pipa.
Wan Mei touched the pipa gently through its soft hemp wrappings, thinking of the two-tailed cat spirit that shared its namesake. Was he sleeping now in the sunlight at the foot of Mingque-jie’s bed? Was she sleeping, too?
Maybe she would enjoy a quiet excursion with the junior disciples.
No— Elder Hu had said she should rest. Wan Mei could bring the pipa back to her quarters that evening, at the time for changing her bandages, and play privately for her then.
Maybe that, finally, could help Mingque-jie see in Wan Mei something worth more than her other admirers had offered.
The thought buoyed her through helping her students re-wrap instruments for safe transport. The three oldest students — Chen Boyang, Jing Yan, and Shen Qiuhao — were already novice students of the seven-string qin. The ten- and eleven-year-olds were still learning the basics of musical theory with the end-blown xiao flute. They left the massive 25-string zheng, which was better played indoors for a sufficiently cultured audience anyway. Wan Mei herself wore the pipa on her back.
Chen Boyang and the Cui siblings were waiting at the gate, loaded about with wicker baskets and bamboo-stem bottles. The senior disciple on guard duty looked at them with some amusement. “Are you taking the children on a picnic, Instructor Wan?”
“These junior disciples are going up the mountain to perform musical cultivation, Senior Brother,” Jing Yan informed him coolly. She tugged at the twisted hemp strap that held the well-wrapped qin to her back. “Instructor Wan has generously offered to teach these juniors a few of the songs that she performed to great acclaim in Shantang. On the mountain, among the osmanthus blossoms, perhaps these disciples will awaken the songs’ spiritual power.”
The senior disciple’s brows rose. “All right, Junior Sister,” he said. “Good luck, and don’t go further than the waterfall. Good afternoon, Instructor Wan.”
Wan Mei bowed and shepherded her students on. She waited until they were climbing the rocky path between thick screens of silvery-green bamboo before she looked down at Jing Yan. “I don’t recall saying anything about musical cultivation or entertainment-house songs, xiao-Yan.”
“The senior disciples should respect Instructor Wan,” Jing Yan said stubbornly. “Anyway, we’re cultivators and we’re going to play music outdoors, so that counts as musical cultivation, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll leave those definitions to your instructors in cultivation techniques,” Wan Mei said. “Let’s take this path. What a pretty view!”
They climbed higher. The bamboo grove gave way to twisted pines and precipitous crags over startling views of misty valleys. The fresh breeze tugged at their long sleeves and skirts. Wan Mei kept an eye out for the children, but they were as nimble as young goats going up the steep, narrow path.
Mo Songtao pulled the bamboo xiao out of his belt and attempted to play Meeting on Mount Langya, until Chen Boyang took the xiao away from him and made him carry the lunch basket instead. Chen Boyang was a much better musician; the mellow, melancholy notes of the familiar song wound into the breeze to tug at the heart.
Wan Mei wondered what she should play that evening for Mingque-jie. Ambush From Ten Sides, to showcase her skill? White Snow in Early Spring, to cheer Mingque-jie after a dreary day? Or perhaps Wild Geese on the West Wind, which she’d always thought the most romantic of songs, and one of the few that didn’t imply tragedy…
“Pipa?” Cui Xiang said in surprise, at the turn of the path ahead. “Did you come out to play with us?”
The disciples came to a ragged halt. Wan Mei edged her way forward. A cloud seemed to have shadowed the sun. “Pipa, why are you here? Did something happen to Fei Jian-guniang?”
Crouched on a protruding rock, with his tails waving gently in the breeze, the orange cat narrowed yellow eyes at her.
“Should we go back?” She wasn’t really expecting a response. Pipa hadn’t ever spoken before.
He didn’t speak now, either. One of his tails tapped against the rock.
Cui Xiang stepped forward. “You can come with us if you want. Here—” She stretched out her hand.
Wan Mei saw the cat’s pupils widen. She saw muscles tense under sleek fur. She slapped Cui Xiang’s hand down and shook out her long, flowing sleeve like a curtain between the cat and the girl.
Claws sliced like sabers through her sleeve. Wan Mei made a small, startled sound, just from the surprise of it, and threw up her other arm with its trailing sleeve to shield her face. She stumbled back into her clustered students on the narrow path.
“Instructor Wan!” Cui Xiang yelped. “Pipa!”
“That’s not Pipa, that’s a yaoguai, get back—” Shen Qiuhao’s voice went high and breathless. “Boyang, you have the xiao—”
Chen Boyang tried a flurry of notes that Wan Mei didn’t recognize: a cultivator’s combat song. But his breath control was poor, his fingering shaky. Wan Mei felt a current of air sweep past her, tangling her hair and robes, and then die into stillness as it met the chilling sound of the yaoguai’s laughter.
“Little cultivators,” it hissed, in a voice like dried leaves and crumbling stones. “Silly little cultivators. Scared little cultivators. Tasty little cultivators.”
Wan Mei lowered her sleeves. The thing on the rock above them couldn’t be mistaken for Pipa anymore. It crouched on four legs and clutched the rock with clawed paws like hands, but it had no skin to cover its red muscles and white tendons. Its tail was a whip of bone. It was as big as a dog, or a child, and its teeth were long and sharp and yellow.
It showed its teeth when it saw her face. “Stupid little human. No spiritual energy. Eat you anyway.”
“It’s a rat yaoguai,” Jing Yan said, her young voice very precise and cold. “It’s absorbed spiritual energy from eating human rubbish and carrion – maybe corpses – and turned into a spiritual being. It will try to absorb our spiritual energy, too.”
Chen Boyang’s song went shriller and faster. Another gust of wind surged past them, stirring up pebbles. The rat yaoguai hunkered down lower on its rock and laughed again.
“Run,” it invited them. “Chase.”
Pipa had killed two rat yaoguai in a rubbish heap, Wan Mei remembered. She had never imagined those things could look like this. She had never considered how brave Pipa must be.
She did not feel brave herself. Her hands were very cold. They fumbled on the knot to release the hemp straps that held her wooden pipa to her back.
“Don’t run,” she said. “You’ll slip. You must walk very quickly and very carefully. Don’t look back.”
“Instructor Wan,” Jing Yan said. Horror touched her voice for the first time. “You’re not a cultivator. One of us should—”
“Oh, yes,” the yaoguai sighed. “Scared little cultivators. Taste so sweet.” Its yellow teeth parted and its long red tongue protruded, drinking in their fear.
“Please,” Wan Mei said, very quietly. “Bring your seniors. Bring Fei Jian-guniang. Anyone.” She shook the pipa out of its fabric wrappings, dumped it in Shen Qiuhao’s arms, and bunched up the long strips of the carrying swathes beneath her sleeves. “Please go.”
Footsteps scuffed back along the path; she couldn’t tell whose. The yaoguai crouched lower, laughing, ready to spring.
“Ya!” Cui Xiang screamed. “You dirty rat! Stay away from our instructor!”
A steamed bun struck the yaoguai squarely between the eyes. It snapped and missed.
Handfuls of lunch pelted the yaoguai as the other students joined in: baozi, pickled radish and mountain greens, bamboo-stem water bottles, even the wicker carrying basket. The yaoguai spun and snapped. Its long bone-whip tail struck the basket and sliced it in two.
Wan Mei gathered her breath. “Go now,” she begged her students, and she threw out the fluttering fabric strips beneath her sleeves.
As a combat tactic it wasn’t much. Sleeve dancing was meant to be showy and graceful and slow, framed around dramatic poses and precise movements. Wan Mei disregarded everything her own instructors had taught her and fell back on the silly sleeve-battles she’d fought with her giggling sisters on their way to lessons. Snapping fabric could hurt, at the right angle and speed. And it could confuse, delay, blind the infuriated yaoguai to the fleeing students behind her…
The yaoguai squealed in fury and bit wildly at the hemp streamers. It caught one and yanked. The hemp tore. Wan Mei retreated two steps, three, not daring to look behind her. Loose scree tumbled away beneath her foot and down the mountainside.
She hoped that, after all, her students had run.
“Stupid human,” the yaoguai snarled, tearing off another arm’s length of hemp. “Eat you first. Eat little cultivators anyway.”
“You’re the stupid one,” Wan Mei said breathlessly. She toed back, searching for the edge of the cliff. The rocky ground gave way beneath her shoe; she kept her balance. Her sleeves fluttered in a dizzying screen. “A yaoguai daring to come onto Phoenix Peak? To threaten Qian Sect disciples? They’ll slice you open. They’ll cut you apart. They’ll send you down to the Oil-Cauldron Hell, and you’ll be boiled for ten thousand years—”
The yaoguai snarled and leapt at her. Wan Mei smelled its carrion breath and saw its red maw gaping, its yellow teeth yawning wide, and she ducked down into a tight ball on the very edge of the mountain path.
The yaoguai’s tail-whip cut her shoulder. Its scream hurt her ears, as it plunged over her head, over the cliff-edge, and fell.
The cultivators found Wan Mei only a little further down the mountain path. She’d reached the shade of a pine tree before she had to sit down, shaking, on a friendly flat rock positioned at just the right height. Her shoulder was bleeding, but she didn’t dare use her shredded sleeves to bind it. Who knew what kind of filth was on that yaoguai’s claws?
“Instructor Wan!” a breathless voice called. She looked up.
Jing Yan and the other students were red-faced and panting, but they weren’t alone. The gate-guard was there with his halberd. So were three senior disciples, carrying swords.
And Fei Jian-guniang, Gu Mingque, running with her burned arm still bandaged, and her hair unbound, and a desperate hope replacing fear in her lovely face.
Wan Mei slid off her rock.
“Jiejie,” she said. “You came just in time. I would like to faint now, please.”
“You can do anything you like,” Mingque-jie said, wrapping her strong sword-arm around Wan Mei’s waist. She smelled of sweat and salve and camellia hair oil, and maybe Wan Mei didn’t need to faint just yet, after all.
They sat together on the rock. The senior disciples went looking for the yaoguai’s corpse. After a moment of hushed huddling Wan Mei’s students followed them. Cui Xiang looked back frequently, her eyes alight, until her older brother pinched her and whispered “Leave them be!”
“I fear your students will think I’m not worthy of you,” Mingque-jie said, very low.
Wan Mei’s heart hadn’t yet recovered from the yaoguai or from the warmth of Mingque-jie’s arm around her. She swallowed, dry-mouthed. “Any Qian Sect disciple would have done it.”
“You are not just any Qian Sect disciple. A-Mei, when I heard you were in danger for my juniors’ sake… I realized I had begun to feel the sun’s warmth already, and I could not bear to lose it. To lose you.”
Her arm tightened around Wan Mei’s back. She tilted up Wan Mei’s chin with bandaged fingertips. “You’ve worked hard to learn who I am. I am grateful I still have a chance to do the same.”
Wan Mei smiled giddily up at her. “Grateful enough for a kiss?”
Mingque-jie’s lips parted, then curved. She leaned closer.
“Instructor Wan!” Cui Xiang came panting down the mountain path with the other juniors at her heels. “We found that dirty nasty rat yaoguai dead on the rocks, but Senior Brother cut off its head just to be sure— Oh, were you busy? Stop pinching me, Brother!”
“We’ll go back to Phoenix Peak,” Jing Yan said, pulling the two squabbling Cui siblings after her. “Take your time, Instructor Wan! Fei Jian-guniang, please make sure she takes care of her shoulder…”
“I’ll take her to Elder Hu immediately.” Mingque-jie stood, sweeping Wan Mei up in her arms.
Wan Mei squawked. “You shouldn’t be carrying me, Jiejie! I can walk.”
“Yes,” Mingque-jie said. “But you don’t have to.” She looked down at Wan Mei, and her lips curved again with that faint, irresistible smile. “As soon as you get your shoulder treated, we can continue our conversation.”
“Ah,” Wan Mei said. She leaned her head back against Mingque-jie’s shoulder. “How wise you are, Jiejie.”
She could feel the quick lift of Mingque-jie’s breast, the resonance of a chuckle through her bones. That laugh alone was worth everything that came before.
She’d have to wait a little longer to find what might come next, but that was all right. She knew how to be patient.
And Gu Mingque was, as she’d hoped, worth waiting for.