She sat up carefully, hoping for a few minutes alone to collect herself, but Xiao’s eyes opened immediately.
“I don’t think we’ve slept like this since those years in NeeNee’s caravan,” he mused quietly.
Jin nodded, unable to find any words.
“Hasn’t changed much, has it?”
Impatient with him – of course it had changed! – impatient that her father was dying while she trudged slowly up a mountain chasing a myth, impatient with Gang who had dumped this mess in her lap, Jin got up without replying. She pulled the cloak Nanami had made her more tightly around her shoulders and walked away.
She didn’t get far before Xiao caught her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and snagging her in close.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Jin struggled to answer.
“Worried about your father?”
Jin turned her face into his shoulder, finally accepting the comfort that came with his strength and warmth. “Yes, and other things,” she admitted.
Xiao rubbed her back lightly, and Jin sorted through her thoughts.
“Do you think that my brother was murdered? That my mother deliberately tried to make me a ‘useless’ goddess to protect me?”
Xiao rested his chin on top of her head. “I have no special ability to tell when one speaks the truth, but I thought you did.”
Jin closed her eyes, trying to bury her doubt. “It sounded true. But – I just don’t understand. How could I have not known that? Maybe Gang was mistaken.”
Xiao didn’t reply, but her magic picked up his thoughts, so Jin knew he was skeptical. He thought she was in denial.
“Do you think NeeNee knows?” Jin closed her eyes. “If she does – if she believes that – that must be why she insisted on raising me away from the court, and maybe why Papa let her.” She then tried to peer at Xiao’s face, but she couldn’t see much besides his chin.
“There is little that NeeNee doesn’t know,” Xiao conceded. “But I’m sure she had her reasons for keeping it from you.”
Jin hissed her frustration, then her next concern. “Why did Gang reveal it? Why now?”
“He said he didn’t cast the death curse, and that he would do all he could to keep you safe. I assumed that was also true, since you then immediately began to make plans?”
“Yes. Yes. I’ve been thinking. It must have been Salaana or Karana who cast the death curse, don’t you think? Surely not Guleum.”
Xiao squeezed her. “I also doubt Guleum cast it. He’s not even full-grown.”
Jin leaned into him, accepting his comfort. “Yes. It would break my heart if it were him. But... if it is Salaana or Karana... well, that frightens me.”
Salaana and Karana were full siblings, children of the Goddess of Lightning. Salaana was the Goddess of Justice. Jin knew her better through the eyes of her worshipper than as a sister – she was a well-known goddess, a champion of innocence and very harsh with all others. She was the patron of magistrates and prefects, but even they only called on her in dire situations. Salaana would take the tongue of a liar, the hand of a thief, and the life of a murderer without regard to their circumstances. If Salaana had cast the death curse, Jin was afraid to learn the reason. But even if Salaana had cast it, could she really be right to kill their father?
Karana was the God of Destruction. Destruction and death of course went hand in hand, but it clashed with Jin’s impression of him. One of Jin’s few clear memories from before her mother’s death was of “feeding” Karana a meal she had made of grass and mud. Karana visited at least once a year when she lived with Neela. He had helped with her swimming lessons and convinced Neela to let Jin stay with the painting master. It hurt to think he might have cast the curse and forced her to acknowledge a side of him that Jin tried to ignore. Like many immortals, Neela had insisted on watching the burning of Xiling, the former capital of Zhongtu, which Karana had razed to the ground a few hundred years ago. Jin had never really understood why he’d done it, but she still had nightmares about the screams of the people and the smell of burning flesh.
“Either Salaana or Karana would move against us if they cast the curse,” Xiao observed.
“I know,” Jin whispered. “I feel like the world is not the one I knew a few days ago.”
Xiao snorted lightly, and she broke free of his embrace to look at him. “Say it,” she commanded.
His full lips pouted well. After a moment, he whined, “The world was never the one you knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever starved?”
“Of course not. Have you?” she threw back at him.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”
“Pfft. When?”
“Regularly. Whenever Zi got mad at me. Sometimes I hated the fact I could not die from hunger.” Zi was born of twilight and Hei of shadow; like his parents, Xiao needed nothing to sustain him. But it was extremely uncomfortable for any immortal to go without food or drink.
Jin felt cold. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What could you have done?” Xiao shrugged. “That’s probably why Neela didn’t tell you about your brother. There’s nothing you could do about it. It just hurts you.”
Jin spun away from him, hurting for him and grasping at anger to cope. “So are you saying Gang just wanted to hurt me? That you just want to hurt me now?”
“No! That’s not why I told you – I was just trying to make you accept reality. As Gang was.”
Jin held on to the anger for a few more moments, then took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Xiao.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t be sorry?”
“I – look, I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it. It just sort of popped out. I don’t want you to think about it either. We’re both upset and stressed.”
Jin suddenly snorted. “I can’t believe a few days ago I was agonizing over whether or not you’d let me take lovers.” She had expected him to laugh too, but he became very quiet instead. “Xiao?” she asked when the silence stretched too long.
“You want to take lovers?”
“I -well, you know. I’ve never fallen in love. I was hoping... down the line... if I met someone... I mean, aren’t you going to sleep with whomever you please?”
“Whomever I please? I never – the point is, marriage is a sacred union. It is meant to be monogamous.” He shook his head. “My parents invented marriage, Jin!” His left hand began to chop through the air, punctuating his words. “Of course I would honor it! I mean, I know you think I’m lazy and irresponsible, but this... this... it’s like who I am. The product of the first marriage. A living symbol of love.”
“I–” Jin examined his expression closely, wishing the sun had finished rising so that she might see more clearly, “- well, I know all that, but... we’re not in love.”
Xiao looked at the ground. “No. We’re not. Did you have someone in mind?”
“No! I just...”
To her surprise, Xiao reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it gently. “Maybe we shouldn’t get married.”
“But our parents–”
“I don’t care about pleasing them.”
“To break a vow means to give up your immortality,” Jin murmured.
Xiao hesitated. “That might not be so bad.”
Jin pulled away slightly to look at him better. “Are you so unhappy then?”
“I’ll fetch breakfast.” And he was gone.
Jin covered her face with her hands as uncontrollable giggles escaped her. When they finally subsided, she peeped through her fingers at their camp.
The fire had died to small orange coals, their glow half-hidden under the gray ash. The smell of smoke from the fire mingled pleasantly with the cold, sharply fresh air, reminding Jin of travelling in the Cold Peaks with Neela. Neela preferred the southern coastal areas, but Jin had loved everywhere the
y travelled equally. She began stoking the coals and added two small pieces of wood. It would be more than an hour before Xiao returned so they might as well be warm.
Nanami sat up as Jin worked, and Jin could feel her eyes on her.
“I was also surprised that Xiao wants a monogamous marriage.” Nanami finally said, and Jin almost dropped the stick with which she stirred the coals.
Jin looked at Nanami out of the corner of her eye. “I guess we got pretty loud.”
Nanami looked down. “Sorry. I couldn’t really help but overhear. And he told me as much when you went to get dinner last night.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Jin griped, partly because she felt guilty for hurting Xiao. She had not understood why Xiao felt so frustrated with the match, as she had once told him that she wouldn’t interfere with his pleasures. But now, remembering that conversation, she recalled his sarcastic gratitude. Jin had supposed he meant to imply she couldn’t interfere with what he did, but now she realized it was that it hurt him she didn’t want a monogamous relationship with him. “I know he likes you. I thought...”
Nanami looked gobsmacked. “Likes me? More like hate. He is furious that I trapped him.”
Jin nodded. “Yes, but only because it meant something to him. Xiao rarely loses his temper. He generally just laughs everything off.”
Nanami frowned. “I’m not sure – I think something about the kidnapping triggered him. I don’t think he was moved.”
Jin tapped her temple. “I’m not as good at listening to thoughts or feelings as my grandmother and father, but some comes through. Xiao isn’t just angry at you – and the anger comes from other feelings.”
Nanami stared at her, and Jin couldn’t help but hear her thought too.
“No, it doesn’t bother me,” she told Nanami. “He’s like a brother.” She wrinkled her nose. “We had to get betrothed for our parents, but I thought... well, you heard my expectations.”
Nanami bit her lip and looked far away. Jin tried to hear her thoughts, but they were a bit confused. “What are you thinking about?”
“I – well, I don’t know. It’s just, you say you love Xiao, but aren’t you a little too hard on him?”
Jin was shocked and a little offended. “In what way?”
“You’re very unsympathetic about his addiction, and pretty demanding. I mean, he did volunteer to go on this quest with you. Shouldn’t you be a little more... grateful?”
Jin almost scoffed, but Nanami’s words unsettled her, which might mean they were right. “I’ll reflect on it. I’m going to wash up now.”
Nanami nodded, and Jin moved away. When she returned, she had thought of a safer topic and asked Nanami to tell her about the Great Warrior.
“The Great Warrior – the First, I always called him. He wasn’t like anyone else.” And the being Nanami described did indeed seem peerless.
Nanami had ample time to tell the story of the ice duel he had had with her father before Xiao returned, nearly two hours after he left. Jin immediately smelled the strong fumes of fermented rice on his breath.
Jin clucked her tongue. “You stopped to drink?”
“I just had a little while our food was made,” he said, unwrapping hand rolls filled with salmon and daikon sprouts. “It would have been rude to refuse.”
“No one offered you sake for breakfast,” complained Jin.
“Ah, but it’s lunchtime in O’o.”
Jin crossed her arms. “Well. You didn’t need to go so far.”
“Salmon is my favorite,” he countered and took a massive bite of his roll.
When they resumed their hike along the stream, the going became more difficult as the snow deepened. Finally, they reached a sheer, ice-covered outcropping that was an impossible climb even for Nanami.
“We’ll have to go around,” suggested Xiao, and the two women agreed.
They had just managed to crest it from the side when Xiao, in the lead, sighed. “I guess this was a dead end. We should have started with the seer.”
“Why, what do you see?” asked Jin, trying to peer around her companions.
“The spring is frozen. It’s surrounded by snow.”
But Jin had managed to see past their shoulders and gaped. “Snow? That’s jasmine! This must be it.”
The spring was burbling freely, not a trace of ice, contrary to Xiao’s claim. White jasmine blossoms dotted the greenery around it so thickly that it almost – almost – looked like snow. But instead it looked like summer. A large block of white quartz was exposed on the mountainside; a door had been carved into it.
“Why, you are right! And I see a little temple back there,” exclaimed Nanami in surprise.
Xiao blinked. “I see it too. Was it an illusion? Why did Jin see through it?”
Nanami shrugged. “I’ll go first, in case of booby traps.”
And so Jin stood back with Xiao, watching Nanami cautiously approach the flowered area. A moment later, she was walking back to them. Her lips parted in surprise, but she quickly pressed them shut and spun to face the spring.
After the tenth time that Nanami tried to reach the spring, only to walk away from it, she admitted, “I’ve never encountered magic like this. I can’t even tell there is any, except that it keeps turning me around! There’s nothing I can do here.”
“I will try,” said Jin, “I could see through the illusion, after all.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” said Xiao.
“No, let me try alone.”
He grabbed her elbow. “Jin, I’m here to protect you. I know it looks pretty, but it must be dangerous.”
Jin looked at the flowers again. “Maybe the protections are made to allow those who truly need the key to find it. In the end, this is my quest.”
She began walking, and Xiao started to follow her, but a moment later she was alone. She looked back and saw Xiao had been turned away much as Nanami had. Jin shrugged and continued.
The temperature rose pleasantly as she approached the spring. The snow disappeared quickly, and Jin paused to hang her thick water-cloak on a convenient pine tree burl. The alluring scent of jasmine was brought to her by a soft breeze, and Jin smiled unconsciously. As she walked, her view sharpened, as if a haze were burning away, and she suddenly saw an old man with white hair balancing on a rock within the spring. He was on one leg like a stork, his other knee bent so sharply that his foot was planted on his inner thigh. His arms reached up to form a vee, his palms supplicating the Heavens. Jin made her way to him eagerly, picking her way through the jasmine.
Her steps faltered when she was just a few paces from the man, and her throat went dry. Though his hair was indeed as white as the flowers around them, it was thick and full, framing a youthful face of startling beauty. He had full lips and a straight, delicate nose in an oblong face, made masculine by a strong chin and straight white brows over his closed eyes.
Jin was accustomed to beauty, however, and it was not his face that made her mouth go dry. He wore loose, undyed hemp trousers, but his torso was totally bare. It was a thing of valleys and ridges, and sweat beaded on it, slowly making its way down his trim stomach to the waistband of his pants.
She had a bewildering impulse to touch her lips to his chest and taste it. Before she could analyze or understand such a bizarre notion, his eyes snapped open – they were gray fire, and drove every thought from her head.
Chapter 4: How Bai was Recalled to the World
BAI felt someone enter his garden, and he felt a surge of excitement and annoyance.
Excitement because isolation was sometimes tedious.
Annoyance because it would be a lost mortal whose desperation to survive had allowed them to stumble into this place. His magics only let in those whose essence was distilled to a single, all-consuming purpose. They had in fact been keeping out a thrill seeker all morning.
He would spend the next week nursing them to health and hearing about the wo
rld from their very limited perspective. It would be both too little and too much information. He would be tempted to leave his mountain and see how things had changed for himself, but he was better here, with no great attachments, and no need to take another life. So he braced himself and opened his eyes.
The most attractive woman he had ever seen stood before him. Her dress blazed in his white garden, a sunset of orange and violet, splashed with pink embroidery. A red sash about her waist, revealing a figure that even Zi would envy. Her hair, chestnut with hints of cerulean, was swept back from her heart-shaped face, and what a face it was. Lips the color of crushed plum blossoms, slightly pouty in their fullness, and eminently kissable. Her eyes were liquid gold, tilted up, with thick dark lashes.
He, who had disdained to take a lover for nearly fifty millennia, suddenly remembered the fierce joy of joining with another, and for the briefest moment imagined pulling her close and making passionate love to her amongst the jasmine.
He was horrified, then suspicious. He looked at her more deeply, trying to see her essence, to find her core.
It was like falling through fire – red, orange, yellow, and blue flames devoured him, burning brighter and fiercer as he fell.
He felt she was earnestly trying to show him her essence, even as he looked for it. He finally tore himself free and tumbled inelegantly into the spring.
He pulled himself out with much awkward splashing, ignoring her offered hand. He sputtered, “What are you?”
Those golden eyes blinked. “I am the Goddess of Beauty.”
In a flash, Bai understood. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
The woman shook her head. “No, I am the arbiter of beauty. I can make things more or less beautiful.”
“Exactly my point,” returned Bai.
“I don’t understand,” and Bai could see that she didn’t.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice turning gruff.
Vows of Gold and Laughter (The Immortal Beings Book 1) Page 9
