Girls of Paper and Fire

by Natasha Ngan

  “I’m—I’m so sorry,” I stammer, though my words sound empty even to me.

  The woman laughs. “You will be one day, little girl. You’ll be sorry you ever came to this heavensforsaken place.”

  She lets me go and I jerk away, gasping, stumbling up the bank and back toward the party as fast as my dress allows me.

  When I make it back to the floating teahouse where I left the others, it’s empty, and at first I’m relieved that the party has ended. But then I notice movement ahead. Everyone seems to be gathered on one of the central platforms. The music that was playing earlier has stopped, and in its place is quiet—though not the good kind. The tense kind of quiet, when the air gets strange and taut, like elastic pulled too tightly. A few moments later, shouting rises up from the crowd.

  “Hey!” A lone guard hurries along a gangplank toward me. “What’re you—oh.”

  He falters. Rounded ears twitch as he recognizes me. It takes me a moment longer to recognize him as the bear-form guard outside the palace the night I arrived. The sweetness of his features doesn’t seem to fit with his soldier’s clothes, the sheathed sword at his waist.

  “Mistress Lei-zhi,” he amends with a bow. “My sincerest apologies. I didn’t realize—”

  “What’s happening?” I interrupt.

  He looks up. “The—the King wants to add a new part to the celebrations,” he says, and I don’t miss the slight stumble in his words.

  Jeers erupt in the distance.

  “What new part?” I ask as a cold wave of dread creeps over me.

  The guard opens his mouth. Then he gives a small shake of his head. “The King requests the presence of all his guests,” he says firmly, clearing his throat. He reasserts his grip on his sword. “Please come with me, Mistress.”

  I follow him along the walkways to the center of the flotilla. Discarded objects—bowls and plates, silk napkins, the wind-loosened petals of flowers—are scattered among the abandoned platforms, the water around them also bobbing with debris. As we get nearer, I catch some of the words being tossed into the air.

  Rotten Paper. Worthless.

  Keeda.

  “Maybe this is close enough,” the guard starts, holding out an arm. But I shove past him, elbowing my way through the crowd all the way to the front.

  And freeze when I get there.

  A memory, as vivid as the day it happened. A Paper caste woman with eyes full of hatred, and the swing of a club toward her skull.

  The scene before me isn’t similar in the details, but the shape of it is there. Demon guards herding a group of Paper castes in place with swords and spiked axes. The looks on the men’s and women’s, the children’s faces, not anger this time, but fear. And the King, laughing as he paces back and forth to inspect them.

  “… so I thought it only right that we give them a proper royal welcome!”

  It’s hard to hear him over the crowd. His grin is wide and sharp, more canine than bovine, and I can tell the energy of his audience is emboldening him. From the way he’s swaggering, it’s clear he’s drunk. There’s a frenzy on his face, the same crazed sheen I saw a glimmer of earlier, but alcohol has loosened it, and it sits vivid on his features.

  Dread crests inside me. I look round for Wren or Aoki. Instead, I spot Chenna a few rows ahead and push my way toward her.

  “What is this?” I ask breathlessly.

  She doesn’t turn. “The soldiers just got back from a raid in eastern Noei,” she says, and beneath her usual composure is something troubled. There’s hollowness to her voice, a constriction in her throat. Still staring ahead, she continues, “They’ve brought these Paper castes to the palace as slaves. The King is giving them away as presents to his guests.”

  I gape at her. “What?”

  Just then, one of the captives pushes to the front of the group. A dog-form guard swings out an arm to stop him, and the man struggles to get free.

  “Please!” he shouts. He’s middle aged, dark hair fanning into grey. “Have mercy, Heavenly Master—”

  “Ah,” the King interrupts. “So you recognize your master, do you, and yet you dare ask for his mercy?” His deep voice is slurred from drink. “My mercy is for my peers, old man. Not some worthless keeda.”

  The word strikes me afresh coming from the King’s lips.

  “My wife and children are here!” the man tries again, his arms outstretched, face contorted. “Please, Heavenly Master. Have mercy. We have been nothing but obedient, all these years, giving away more than we could spare of our crops to your soldiers, never protesting when our taxes increase. Even now with the Sickness, we comply with every demand. All we ask is to be left alone. Please, Heavenly Master. Let us go home—”

  The King roars. “I will not take orders from a human!”

  With a thunder of hooves, he charges forward. It’s unexpected, quicker than I’d thought him capable of. All of a sudden he seems more animal than human, driven by bovine instinct and rage. Swiping the guard aside, he seizes the man by the neck, lumbers to the edge of the platform and, with an effortless arc of his arm, flings the man into the river.

  The crowd cheers, breaks into applause.

  The balcony ringing the platform hides the man from view, but we hear him emerging in a splash of water, spluttering. A few of the other Paper castes try to break from the guards, but they are quickly forced back into place.

  The King sweeps an arm toward the rest of the Paper caste slaves, a feral grin lighting his face. “Go ahead, friends. Choose as many slaves as you wish. The keeda should know now not to challenge their masters.”

  The demons move forward in a rush of excited chatter.

  “Kunih save them,” Chenna murmurs, making a quick motion across her brow that I’ve seen her make once or twice before. It must be a prayer ritual from where she’s from.

  I have learnt not to put my trust in the gods. Especially not Kunih, who—like all earth gods—is favored in the South, but my parents taught me to be wary of, for what God of Redemption would not one day turn upon you?

  Instead, I yell at myself. Go, Lei! Help!

  But I don’t move.

  A taloned hand lands on my shoulder. “Come, girls,” Madam Himura orders in her croaky voice. “Time for us to leave.”

  My eyes flick back to the slaves, cowering as the King’s guests inspect them. “But—”

  “Do you wish to join them, Lei-zhi?”

  I falter, and Madam Himura’s smile is cutting, because she knows of course that I don’t. She can guess the struggle inside me, and which instinct is winning. Because no matter how brave I might try to seem, really the heart that beats within my rib cage is weak and broken and scared, and I am just a human girl kneeling before her demon King.

  Dzarja. Traitor.

  I drop my chin as we turn away and head back to where our carriages are waiting at the top of the bank, my belly churning.

  The slave-woman was right.

  That’s exactly what I am.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN WE GET BACK FROM THE PARTY, sleep seems impossible. Even the concept of sleep: of rest, of peace, of—heavens forbid—dreaming. I’m on the verge of being sick. My mother’s absence from the Night Houses list, Aoki telling me the King will call for me soon, the former Paper Girl’s monstrous face, and the terror of the slaves as the demons circled in. Everything about this day has been horrible. And the worst part of it all is the hardest to ignore, because it is within me.

  Is me.

  I stare up at the ceiling, palms pressed to my forehead. The image of the Paper slaves won’t leave my mind, burned onto my retinas like some ghostly afterimage. I cycle over the moment again and again, trying to find some hint, some opening that would allow for a different outcome, even though it’s too late. I could have—should have—done something. Instead I let Madam Himura lead me away.

  The pattering of rain fills my small room. It’s a sound that always reminds me of home, of monsoon season in Xienzo, the earth turned
to mud, Tien both happy because it means there would be plenty of mushrooms to forage and equally annoyed because of Bao trailing paw prints across the floorboards. But home is the last thing I want to think about right now.

  Punish those who disobey me. Rid the kingdom of those who are not faithful.

  The King’s words ring in my head, and I think of the birds I watched earlier, how easily they lifted into the air.

  How impossible it is for me to follow them.

  My parents taught me that if you have a problem or have made a mistake, you should be honest about it. “With us, of course,” they said, “but more important, with yourself. That is the first step to finding a solution.”

  As a child I never would have believed that my parents could be wrong. Yet right now, aware of the problems, aware of all my mistakes, I’m still no clearer on how to address them. How to do the impossible? How to defy the King and help my kin? How to escape from the palace without the risk of Baba and Tien being punished?

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say out loud. “Tell me what to do.”

  The room remains mute. There’s only the soft, wordless whisper of rain.

  Scrambling to my feet, I fling a fur shawl over my shoulders and head outside, suddenly needing air. I tiptoe down the corridor to the door where I saw Wren sneaking out all those weeks ago. I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts that when I open the door and find her behind it, I barely react. I just fall still, my mouth becoming a small O.

  And it is particularly lucky I don’t make a sound—because Wren is not alone.

  I only have a few seconds to take in the scene. Wren, in her sleeping robe, standing close to a tall wolf demon, her head craned back to face him. The wolf: Moon caste, marbled ash-gray fur flowing silkily over angular features, a diamond-shaped patch of white on his long, muzzlelike jaw. He’s dressed in soldier’s clothes. One pawed hand is lifted to cup Wren’s face, like the beginning of a kiss.

  Then the two of them spring apart.

  Shielding Wren behind him with an easy sweep of his arm, the wolf rounds on me. His eyes are a startlingly luminous amber, like honeyed marigold mixed with bronze—just a few shades darker than my own. There’s something vaguely familiar about him, but before I can place it, he bends down until the wet tip of his nose almost touches mine.

  “A word about this,” he whispers, “and you die.”

  He spins around. In a few short bounds, he disappears into the night-tipped gardens.

  Silence, and rainfall, and Wren watching me with uneasy eyes.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen her undone like this, so unsure. The collar of her nightdress has fallen low, exposing the swell of her breasts, and from under it her bare legs are long and glossy in the moonlight. I think of her and the wolf, what intimate moment I might have interrupted. My gut twists.

  After everything today, now this.

  “Lei,” Wren starts, reaching for me.

  I step back. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I can explain—”

  “No thanks. I can work it out just fine myself.”

  My voice has risen, and Wren’s eyes cut to the open doorway behind me. Quickly, she slides it shut before grabbing my hand and pulling me down the steps of the veranda. Rain slicks my skin in an instant. She leads me across the gardens away from Paper House, to a large ginkgo tree whose long branches hide us from view.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she says, and I snatch back my hand.

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “I mean, I know how it must have looked—”

  “You were touching him. He was touching you.”

  Her lips tighten. “Not like that.”

  “Well,” I say with a scowl, “your wolf certainly seemed to think what you’d been doing together was bad enough to threaten to kill me. Or did you miss that part?”

  “He doesn’t mean it,” Wren replies. But there’s a flicker of hesitation in her voice, and she rubs one hand at the base of her throat, a nervous movement I’ve never seen before. “Lei, he was scared. If anyone finds out he was here…”

  I glare at her. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

  “I know you won’t.”

  She speaks the words with such purity that whatever retort I’d been planning drops away. “You… you trust me?” I say, clutching my wet shawl tighter at my neck.

  Her eyes soften. “Of course I do,” she answers, a whisper that I draw in like nectar.

  I step forward, my feet sinking a little into the muddy ground. “Then tell me who he is.”

  “I can’t.” She reaches for my fingers again, but I jerk away. “Please, Lei,” she pleads. “This is bigger than me. It’s not my secret to give away.”

  I shove the wet hair from my face. “He’s someone important in the palace, isn’t he? The wolf.”

  Wren nods.

  “How do you know him? What were you meeting about?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Is he who you’ve been sneaking out all these times to see?”

  “Not… every time.”

  I let out a bark of mad laughter. “There are others?”

  “No!” Wren corrects hurriedly, shoving the wet tangles of hair from her face. “I mean, I don’t always meet someone.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  She looks at me tiredly, as if to say, You know I can’t tell you that.

  “You lied to me,” I say into her silence.

  It comes out childish and petty, and I hate the way my voice sounds. But the meaning of it, the feeling behind it, is anything but. I’m trembling, half from the rain and the cold, and half from something else, some wild, desperate sensation that’s been snaking through me since the moment I stumbled upon Wren and the wolf.

  Raindrops cling to my eyelashes, slick my lips. I lick them away. “I asked you if you were meeting someone. That night, when you brought me food. You promised me you weren’t.”

  “Because I wasn’t! Not in the way you were asking.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  This pulls a growl from her. “Lei,” Wren sighs, almost angry, “there isn’t anyone else.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’ve already said that,” I say, but then I catch on to her turn of phrase.

  Anyone else.

  And I suddenly comprehend what she’s trying to tell me.

  That there is someone.

  “Oh,” I breathe, as a dizzying sensation wings through me. “You mean me.”

  She comes closer, her stare so hot it’s burning, scattering the raindrops away. Eyes fixed fiercely on mine, she lifts a hand toward my cheek.

  I stagger back. “I—I have to go.”

  Even as Wren opens her mouth to retort, I’m already spinning on my heels, making for the house. I lurch blindly, soaked by the rain. The gardens are dark and the path is slick beneath my feet, and I skid on the wet cobbles, careening back, arms windmilling.

  Wren is there in an instant. She catches me, fingers wrapping round my shoulders. “Please calm down.”

  I let out a choked laugh. “How can I? You know what would happen if someone found us! We—we can’t, Wren. Me and you, this…” My eyes skitter away. “It’s not right.”

  “Because we’re both girls?” she asks, and there’s hurt in her voice.

  “No! I don’t care about that.” I pause, realizing only as I speak the words aloud how true they are. I’ve had time to think about it since understanding my feelings for Wren in Zelle’s first lesson, and each time it comes back to what Zelle told me about love and lust. How natural they are. How simple it should be. That’s just how my attraction toward Wren is: natural, and simple.

  If you took away the minor issue of us being the King’s concubines, of course.

  Something breaks a little inside me as I tell her, “Not because we’re girls. Because we’re Paper Girls.”

  Wren shakes her head, still fixing me with that bold, defiant gaze. “Is it what you want?�
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  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Her expression is fierce. “It’s the only thing that matters.”

  The air between us vibrates, electric. Wren’s hands are still circling my arms, and her touch sears me, sends my pulse racing.

  She pulls me nearer.

  Our lips are a heartbeat apart.

  “We’re Paper Girls,” I say again, like this is explanation enough—and it is. It explains everything, because it defines everything. The one terrible, inescapable truth.

  “So?”

  “Madam Himura and Mistress Eira made it clear to us from the start.” I’m whispering, even though the night is rain-locked and the garden is deserted. “What we want has nothing to do with it. We’re only here for the King.”

  Under wet lashes, her dark eyes spark. “You fought him, Lei. You told him no, a man who is never told no. Even though you knew you’d be punished. You, more than anyone, understand that what we want is important.” She takes a breath. “When the world denies you choices, you make your own.” Her fingers skim to my wrists; she draws me even closer. “This is my choice.”

  Rain patters all around us. It traces tiny beads down Wren’s temples and cheeks, clinging to the curve of her full lips. Her night slip is completely soaked through, revealing her to me, a cruel promise of what can never be mine.

  Anyone could find us out here.

  So what? part of me screams. Give them a show. They can sell tickets for all I care! But another part of me remembers the slaves at the party. Of what might happen if I humiliate the King again. Not just to me, but to my family.

  Punish those who disobey me. Rid the kingdom of those who are not faithful.

  I flinch, hearing the King’s threat as if he were standing right behind us, bull eyes bright and raging, glinting like daggers in the dark.