by Alyc Helms
My foot hooked something, and the shadow fell back into the brambles, little wisps bleeding off it as the thorns tore into whatever passed for flesh.
Practicality warred with my desire to finally square off against something I could pummel. Practicality won. I didn’t need to beat this thing into the ground; I just needed to send it back from whence it came.
I kicked the creature in the chest-area, knocking it further into the thicket at the same time I opened my connection to the Shadow Realms.
It should have worked. It did work, but the damn thing caught my ankle and pulled me off balance, dragging me in after it. I flipped over and grabbed for anything of substance to hold me in the real world, but the shadow had dragged me too far across.
The clearing turned dark and colorless, like a film negative. The root I grabbed for slipped through my fingers. The tidal pull of the Shadow Realms took hold of me, and as I slipped further in, the forest twisted into a nightmare caricature. The demon scrabbled up my body, back toward the light.
“Jian Huo!” I screamed, because he had to be there still. He’d saved me from falling. He would save me from this.
But there was nothing. No response. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him. There was just darkness that even my eyes had trouble penetrating, and trees howling laughter at me, and claws raking down my back as the shadow I’d been fighting pulled me down further in its attempt to reach the light.
Right. Deal with that thing first, preferably before more arrived. I rolled over and planted both feet square in the creature’s midsection. If it made a sound, I couldn’t hear it over the gibbering trees, but it did stop clawing at me. I did a backward roll up to my knees, then rose to a crouch, not pressing my attack in favor of getting my bearings.
The world had gone cock-eyed – Shadow geographies never quite match the mortal terrain – but I spied a stripe of lighter darkness just beyond the shadow creature that coincided with a break in the trees back in the real world. That was my best chance for a way out, assuming I could wrench myself free. The deeper you sank into the Shadow Realms, the harder it was to break away from the gravity of the place. You needed light, and that thin strip was all I had.
The creature lunged for me. I danced around it, crying out when its claws ripped through my sleeve and across my left shoulder. I slammed my elbow back into its face, hearing a crunching noise where there shouldn’t have been anything to crunch. It echoed my cry of pain, and I repeated the elbow strike twice more for good measure. I couldn’t let it get ahold of me and piggyback out into the real world.
The creature stumbled, and I took my chance, charging at that strip of not-quite-as-dark and grabbing for it like a rope.
The forest flashed back into being around me, so bright that it blinded me. I hit something that had enough give to send us both tumbling to the ground. Jian Huo. He caught me in a painfully tight embrace, painful mostly because of the damage the shadow creature had done.
“Shoulder. Shoulder!” I protested, cringing away in an attempt to make the pain not hurt. First I get shot, and now this. My shoulder was not having a good year.
Jian Huo sat up, still holding me, but only loosely so he could examine the gashes through the shredded silk of my robe. I craned my neck to see them and was disappointed. They burned like they were bone deep, but all I could see was four long, red scrapes, like I’d been attacked by a kitten.
“Have you no sense? When I say we leave, it is for your own safety. Did it never occur to you that a stronger shadow could pull you back across with it? The connection you tap goes both ways, and to a place I dare not follow.” Jian Huo’s hands clenched, his forearms tensed as though he’d like nothing more than to shake me. “Don’t you ever do something so foolish again!”
“I didn’t know,” I said, but it was a weak defense. He’d said stop, and I’d ignored him. “It was only another shadow creature. I thought–”
“What do you think it is, this thing you call the Shadow Realms?”
Well, I knew it wasn’t shadow. Not in the scientific sense of being an obstruction of light. That was just shorthand, an easy-to-spew-out explanation to describe something that defied the laws of physics.
Jian Huo’s lips flattened into a line when I couldn’t answer. “Even so. You do not understand.” His grip relaxed. “‘The ten-thousand things are born of being; being is born of not-being’.”
My confusion was probably obvious, but I said “Huh?” anyways, just in case he’d missed it.
“The place you call the Shadow Realms is a cushion between states of being, the buffer that separates all that is this place from all that is another place. It also divides all that is from all that isn’t. The stuff of not-being.”
Jian Huo was a master of many things; it seemed exposition was not one of them. I shifted, wishing I could just enjoy being this close to him, surrounded by the scent of sandalwood, but my need to understand trumped my libido. “So how was I supposed to know that the Shadow Realms would try to eat me just now? That’s never happened before.”
“Because we are close to my realm.” His fingers traced along my scrapes, cooling the abraded skin. Absently, I figured. His gaze was caught at some point beyond my shoulder. “What do you think we guardians are guarding against? At the beginning of creation, we nine set ourselves as sentinels to guard the divide between all that is and all that isn’t. You have only ever walked the borderlands between your world and the place you call Shadow; whereas my realm touches much closer to the frontiers of the divide.” His brow furrowed and his flattened lips tugged into a frown. “There are other places that are closer still.”
He jerked, coming back from wherever had made him so pensive. His grip tightened. “You must promise never to touch that place while you are here. You are not strong enough to face it.”
I nodded my agreement. Between the awfulness of being sucked away and Jian Huo’s dire glower, there was no way I was going to try something like that again.
“Good.”
And then he pulled me into an embrace. Nothing to it, just a concerned master hugging his startled student. I returned the hug, and it stretched on longer than a hug between master and student should.
Jian Huo stiffened, pulled back with something that sounded almost like a clearing of his throat.
“It is getting late, and you should soak those scrapes in the spring before they become infected,” he said, rising and helping me up. He didn’t linger over holding my hands as he had over the hug. He turned away, and, for once, he was the one who led the way back. I trailed behind in silence, wondering what the hell had just happened.
* * *
An hour soaking in the hot springs cleared my head on the matter, making me brave enough that I decided not to avoid dinner that evening. Not that Jian Huo would have let me. We were reading Su Shi that week, a particular favorite of his. He would have hunted me down if I had skipped out on our after-dinner critique.
Better for all involved if I demonstrated more emotional maturity than a twelve-year-old.
“Jian Huo, we need to talk.” I said after the dinner dishes had been pushed aside.
“Were we not just doing that?”
“Not about salt monopolies during the Song Dynasty. About. Uh…” Now that I’d come to the edge, I couldn’t seem to make myself jump. Jian Huo took care of the matter for me.
“You wish to know if I am attracted to you.”
I gaped. And here I’d been expecting an hour of conversation that danced around the subject. Why did he choose now to be direct? I closed my mouth and nodded. “Yeah.”
We sat in silence, me waiting for Jian Huo to continue, and Jian Huo… well… who can say what he was thinking? My turn to prod.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Is it true?”
He turned and leveled a look at me. I had no trouble at all reading that. The intensity of it twisted my gut… and places lower and more interesting. My internal Keanu
Reeves took the opportunity to slip out. “Whoa.”
Jian Huo blinked. The intensity of the moment before was gone. He turned back to watching the moonlight play silver over the travertine pools that snaked down the valley. “Even so.”
My brain scrambled to give my mouth better material. “Bu– wha– hah… Why?”
My brain failed at life.
One shoulder hitched, dark hair shirring across brocade at the movement. “Who can say what sparks such things or why they fan to flame? You amuse me. You intrigue me. You are not unintelligent, despite your tendency to rush ahead and to prattle nonsense. Indeed, I believe those qualities may be part of your charm, but, in the main, it is because you were right. We both are very bad at practicing not-doing. So it was with your grandfather. So it is with you.”
“Please don’t tell me this is about reliving your affair with Mitchell,” I blurted. Because… ew.
“I agreed to train your grandfather because honor bound me to do so. What passed between us was… complicated. I agreed to train you out of choice, and what has grown between us is unique.”
Amazing, how few words he had to use to make me want to melt.
“What do we do?” I asked, because the training montage that was my life had just taken a turn for the interesting.
“We do nothing.”
And I thought I was confused before. So close, and yet… I pursed my lips, considering the best way to seduce him. He was ancient. Nothing I could devise would surprise him. Might as well not even try for subtlety. I sucked at it anyways.
Decision made, I drew my legs out from under the table that sat between us and crawled around it. It wasn’t some amazing sex-kitten-tigress crawl. More of a “get this damn table out of my way” crawl. Jian Huo cocked his head, brow twitching at my progress.
“Why nothing? If you’re into me, and I’m into you…”
His eyes flicked down. I followed his gaze. The “V” of my robe gaped open, revealing… not much, really. But revealing nonetheless.
Jian Huo reached out and tugged my robe closed. “And here I had hoped our reading and discussions had improved your understanding along with your grasp of the language. I will be clear: you are my student. It would not be honorable to take advantage.”
I sat back on my heels with a huff, our knees almost touching. “I don’t recall signing an academic code of conduct. The only thing I agreed to was not to leave until these shadow things aren’t a danger.”
“Nevertheless, as long as you are Lung Xue, it would not be honorable,” he insisted.
“Aren’t there circumstantial exceptions?”
The burble of sound that came from him might have been a chuckle, but it was a resigned one. Jian Huo had given up before starting. That just wasn’t in my character.
“What possible circumstances could forgive taking such advantage?”
I bit my lip and looked down at the rich brocade that stretched taut over his knees. I reached out to trace the form of one of the little carp that gamboled across the surface. This was me, being subtle. He didn’t push my hand away. “What about the old ‘we got drunk and tumbled into bed together’ excuse? That’s a classic. You like the classics.”
“On tea?” He had a point. Jian Huo practically drowned me in the stuff in a vain effort to improve my palate. Blacks, greens, oolongs, whites. It made me have to pee, and sometimes woke me up in the mornings or kept me awake in the evenings, but so far I hadn’t ever copped a buzz off of it.
“Point taken. What about the old ‘I snuck into your bed in the middle of the night and you just thought you were dreaming’ excuse? Releases you from all culpability.”
“I do not dream so deeply that I cannot discern the truth of you from my nightly imaginings.”
My finger paused in its tracing. Wait. Did that mean that he’d already considered this – us – in carnal detail? I looked up. That look was back, the one that was almost embarrassing in its intimacy. I couldn’t hold it; my gaze dropped again. I flattened my palm against his knee, fingers curving around to brush the pile of hair that coiled beside him. And once I’d had that brief contact with silk, it wasn’t enough. His hair fascinated me, and if he kept saying “no”, who knew when I’d have another chance like this?
I slid my fingers deep, losing them in the black. My hand trailed down through the strands, and it was like touching Shadow, if Shadow were something thrilling rather than terrifying. So not like Shadow at all, really. More like a thunderstorm.
I marveled at the tiny shocks and cool damp that played along my fingers. It was just hair. How could “just hair” feel like this? Jian Huo had fallen silent. “How about the old ‘What was I supposed to do, your honor? You should see the way she eats a banana’ defense?”
He caught my wrist, pulled my hand from his hair. I looked up and was snared by his eyes. Nothing mortal there. Dragon. And for reasons that made no sense, he wanted me.
Jian Huo lowered my hand to rest on my lap. That hunger in his eyes receded, packed away with a control I would never have been able to manage. “The eyes of heaven are upon us, but even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t take you to my bed. You are my student. Would you ask me to dishonor that bond?”
Well, hell.
“No,” I conceded, scootching back so that distance could stand for willpower, because I didn’t have much of the latter at the moment. His breathing eased. I hadn’t even noticed it was strained. It made me feel a little better, that I wasn’t the only one finding this hard.
“Fine. We can do it your way. But if you were looking for an incentive to get me to work harder, boy did you ever find it. Those shadows better watch out.”
Jian Huo rose. I folded my hands in my sleeves, fingers digging into each opposite elbow to keep myself from grabbing him again, or from touching the coil of hair that tumbled past me with his movement.
“Let us hope that is the case.” He nodded, and I don’t think it was my imagination that his movements were more abrupt than usual as he strode away, leaving me alone in the pagoda.
* * *
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”
“The dragon that can be seduced is not the eternal dragon,” I muttered in response.
Time had passed. It was hard keeping track how much in this place, where the days bled into each other. Cantonese, Mandarin, a smattering of other languages and dialects. Literature, calligraphy, politics, history, wei-qi, though I never improved enough in that to give Jian Huo any kind of challenge. Gung fu, which I did improve at. This week was British folklore and the literary movements based on it. I’d barreled my way through Briggs, happy to be reading in English again, and then we’d circled back to the Pre-Raphaelites.
But wherever my education wandered, it always came back to the Tao. Always the fucking Tao. I knew at this point it wasn’t a pronunciation thing, but hell if I could figure out what it was. I would though. I would. My libido depended on it.
“Even so,” Jian Huo said, unperturbed. It took me a moment to realize he was replying to my words, and not my thoughts. He was pretty good at ignoring my disgruntled rumblings, just as I was good at pretending not to notice the few times I’d caught him watching me in ways a Master probably shouldn’t be watching his student. They were rare moments, but they were reassuring. I hadn’t imagined that night in the pagoda.
I’d gone over interpretations ten thousand times; once more might just kill me. I tried anyways.
“It’s like infinity in mathematics.” We’d been working on math, too. If nothing else, time with my Dragon Master was great prep for my GED. “It’s not a rational number. You can’t calculate or express it, so you add a limiter, like infinity minus one. But that’s not infinity. It’s just a math game you play to try to calculate using an incalculable concept.”
Jian Huo sat at his desk, enameling a tiny gold carp with green and red pigments. One hand held his sleeve back, the other poised the applicator. Everything about him – his hanfu, his postur
e, the dark fall of his hair, and the serenity of his face – looked like a painting itself. He paused in the act of dabbing the carp’s eye into being, tilted his profile toward me.
“The eternal Tao is not mathematic.”
“I didn’t say it was. It’s a simile.”
“Metaphor.”
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, I get it. There’s this… all this stuff of creation.” I thumped the floor boards, flipped the hem of my short robe. “And that’s the Ten Thousand Things. But then there’s something bigger that encompasses all those things and is also more. God, Brahma, Unity, the Creator. All those names are incomplete reflections that can’t name the whole, because even the names are still part of the Ten Thousand Things, and the whole is nameless. You can’t use something within a system to describe something that transcends the system. That’d be like a two-dimensional creature trying to describe space.”
“So you have said, and many other variations of the same.” He set his brush down and examined the little carp. It looked fine to me, ready for firing. He must have concurred. He lifted the mount, carp and all, and rose to his feet with a rustle of brocade.
Another failed attempt. Another crash and burn. I threw up my hands. “Then I give up. I quit. I’m not going to get it. I might as well pack my bags and leave tomorrow. I can’t get it, ‘cause it’s not something that can be got.”
He stilled. Turned toward me. The carp wobbled on its mount. He steadied it so the paste wouldn’t be jarred before firing. “You… quit?”
“Yeah.” I folded my arms, chin jutting. I wasn’t really serious, but it felt good, even as a small act of rebellion.
“What of the shadows?”
“How are they different? You said yourself, they can be legion as easily as they can be one.” I blinked, realizing this was just another impossible puzzle he’d set me to solve. Asshole. I glared at him, my face growing warm. “It can’t be done, which you knew from the beginning. I’ll never defeat them all.”
“Why?”
Sometimes it felt like he didn’t even listen. “You said yourself: they’re part of the buffer zone. I was doomed to lose the moment I summoned them. I can fight a thousand shadows, but there’ll always be one more because they’re shadows, they can’t be enumerated like things of this world can. And I can repeat the words of the Tao ten thousand times, but I’m doomed to fail the moment I open my mouth to speak. I’m not going to get it because the thing to be gotten isn’t something that can be expressed. So if I’m doomed to fail before I start, what’s the point? I’m just wasting everyone’s time. Right?”
