Paper Mage

by Leah R. Cutter

  “Bing Yu, there are too many people around,” Xiao Yen said, looking for an excuse to not go near the well. The following week was Jing Long’s birthday. Everyone in the city would line up to place offerings around the well, to wish the dragon luck. Preparations had already started. Monks were building a false temple around the well. They had already repainted the altar.

  “Nobody will notice, silly. Come on. I’ll do it first. It’s a good start for you, to show you don’t want to practice your magic anymore.” Bing Yu dragged Xiao Yen to the west side of the well.

  A temporary, brightly painted wooden wall stood on the eastern side of the well. To the south stood walls and an elaborate portico, the gateway to the well. By the end of the week, walls would be added to the north and west sides, too, plus a roof, enclosing the well in its own temple. After the celebration, they’d be taken down again, until the following year.

  Bing Yu pretended to admire the wall on the far side of the well.

  Xiao Yen shrank inside herself, wishing she could disappear like a ghost at sunrise. She didn’t think that spitting by the well would affect her magic. Then she sighed. It would be easier to follow the path Bing Yu set for her than to follow her own path, a path she couldn’t see.

  No one paid any attention to the two girls standing next to the well. The monks were stabilizing the latest column they’d raised on the near side of the portico by attaching it to the existing columns. Then they went to the other side to do the same thing.

  “They’re gone,” Bing Yu whispered to Xiao Yen. “This is our chance.” She looked over her shoulder toward the street. Then, in a smooth motion, she looked toward the well and spat in that direction. A small patch of wet appeared at the base of the well wall.

  Xiao Yen’s mouth went dry.

  “See?” Bing Yu said, grinning at Xiao Yen. “No thunderclouds or lightning bolts. There’s nothing here, nothing to be afraid of but old people’s superstition. Come on. Don’t be a wet goose. Or do you want to be an old maid? Alone, never married, no sons or daughters to look after you in your old age? With only foreigners to call you friend?”

  Xiao Yen didn’t want the life Bing Yu described. She saw it unfolding before her, then folding back up with her inside. The loneliness made her clench her teeth. Even her family would turn their backs on her, once Wang Tie-Tie died, if she continued in her course. The only bright spot was her quiet river, weaving its way through her future, like a shiny silver ribbon. Xiao Yen shivered. Was that all that she could look forward to? Shadows lurked at the corner of her vision, like bobbing plants or dancing birds, but Xiao Yen didn’t turn to look. She’d seen enough.

  In one swift motion, she turned her head and spat toward the well.

  To her horror, instead of landing at the base of the well wall, a gust of wind picked her spittle up and carried over the edge.

  Xiao Yen felt the pit of her stomach drop as she imagined that her spit had dropped down into the well, mingling with the water. She froze in fear. What bad she just done? Yen Lo, the ruler of Hell, would judge her harshly for desecrating the home of a dragon. She clutched her amulet with her right hand, but no prayer came to mind. Her thoughts tumbled over each other. Dread sank into her bones.

  Bing Yu laughed at her expression. “See?” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Xiao Yen turned to look at the well. In her mind’s eye, she couldn’t see a dragon or any magic. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something lurked at the bottom of the well, just out of her sight.

  “I have to go back to school now,” Xiao Yen told Bing Yu. “Good-bye.” Xiao Yen hurried back toward the southern gate. Nothing good was going to come of this. Not even her luck could save her now, she was certain.

  * * *

  The two soldiers guarding the gate of the courthouse compound wore solid, scuffed armor, made of iron and leather. They didn’t stop the fisherman from propelling Xiao Yen through the gate. Xiao Yen was surprised at the size of the crowd that followed them. Though the dragon had stopped its attack—Xiao Yen had seen it fly south, down the coast—parts of the town still burned. She wondered why the townspeople weren’t occupied with water-bucket lines to put out the fires. All she could think was that there was more water in this town than in Bao Fang because it was near the sea.

  The court sergeant, who stood guard at the door of the main hall, did stop them. He interrogated the fisherman, all the while watching Xiao Yen. His armor was more polished; the metal rings bound across his chest held a dull shine. His face was as grim and gray as a drawn sword. The bridge of his nose jutted out from where it’d been broken and improperly set, and a long scar followed the contours of his jaw. His eyes peered out with fierce intelligence beneath mere wisps of eyebrows.

  The fisherman had bound Xiao Yen’s hands behind her back with thin twine as they’d walked. Now he turned Xiao Yen around to show them to the sergeant. The crowd stared at her as though she was a freak on display at the market. People whispered behind their hands to their neighbors. No one smiled or lowered their eyes politely when Xiao Yen looked at them.

  The sergeant tightened the knots on her bonds and grunted. When he turned her around, he spoke to her for a moment in Tuo Nu’s dialect.

  She replied in her own tongue, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  Everyone in the crowd seemed to catch their breath at the same time. The sergeant drew himself up taller and looked more fierce. He barked an order at the fisherman, then disappeared inside the hall. The crowd muttered to itself. Xiao Yen looked at her feet. She couldn’t reach her calm, but the constant wind she heard in her head was almost a comfort.

  The sound of wooden boards being piled together came from the hall. Xiao Yen surmised that shutters were being removed from the tall windows. A bell rang out, calling the court to order. The sergeant reappeared, took hold of Xiao Yen, and pushed her into the building. The crowd followed.

  The hall was rectangular, with tall windows rising almost to the ceiling on the long sides. A battered railing separated the crowd from the accused. It didn’t make Xiao Yen feel any safer. An imposing wooden desk made out of dark-colored oak stood at the front of the room. Above it hung a black-and-red plaque with golden characters inscribed on it: “justice outweighs human life.”

  Xiao Yen stiffened when the judge entered and sat behind the desk. This man had no innate power, just that granted by the court. She couldn’t tell if he was corrupt or not. He was fat. His eyes were set so far into his face that he gazed out of rolls of skin, like a sleepy baby peeping out of piles of blankets and pillows. The look he gave Xiao Yen was of deliberate intelligence. His nose proceeded sharply down his face, skinny and at angles to everything else. His lips, too, were thin, and set in a neutral line. He wore a fine silver robe, with a white dragon embroidered across his large belly. His black judge’s cap had silver rope edging the flaps that came down over his ears. The sharp contrasts in the colors matched the contrasts in his face.

  The sergeant forced Xiao Yen to kneel and bow before the judge. She kept her head lowered while the sergeant spoke to the judge in a voice that sounded like churned gravel.

  The judge replied in her language, using cultured, educated tones. “What is your name?”

  “Fu Xi Wén,” Xiao Yen replied, giving her formal name.

  “Fu Xi Wén, you have been accused of being an evil mage, of casting a spell on the dragon, making it rise out of season, then directing it to attack Khuangho. I want to hear the fisherman’s testimony, then you will be given a chance to speak. I warn you. If you move in a suspicious way at any time during these proceedings, I will have you whipped. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, honorable judge,” Xiao Yen replied, holding herself very still.

  The fisherman spoke for some time. The judge translated for Xiao Yen. A small hope nibbled at the edges of Xiao Yen’s despair. The judge wanted her to understand, so maybe he really would listen to her side as well. The fisherman didn’t embellish his
story much, though he did claim that Xiao Yen’s eyes had flashed bolts of light at the dragon.

  Finally, the judge asked Xiao Yen to speak.

  “I didn’t call that dragon,” she started. Her knees hurt from kneeling on the hard floor for so long, but she didn’t dare move.

  “Did you stop by the side of the road, and move your arms in a magical way?” the judge asked. His voice sounded stern.

  “I stopped by the side of the road to meditate,” Xiao Yen replied.

  Some onlookers in the galley of the court who understood Xiao Yen’s language translated her words for their neighbors, while others jeered. “Meditate? How do you move and meditate? Everyone knows priests meditate by staring at their navels.”

  “What about you, Han Jao? Don’t you meditate by moving? Thrusting?” Crude laughter filled the room.

  The judge banged on his desk, then yelled at the court in their native tongue. The laughter gave way to an uneasy silence. The judge then repeated his words in Xiao Yen’s language.

  “Though you are a foreigner, Fu Xi Wén, these people will treat you with the same respect as one native born. I will have order,” he continued, almost muttering under his breath. There was another pause before the judge directed Xiao Yen to continue.

  Xiao Yen didn’t look up. She felt heartened. “I’d stopped to look for my center, for my peace.” Xiao Yen paused. The stillness in her core was unreachable, but just for now. A slight wind sounded under all her words. Her calm was still there.

  Shouting started at the back of the room. The sergeant ran from his place next to the judge to investigate. His gravelly voice rode over the others for a moment, then the other voices drowned his out.

  “Silence!” the judge yelled.

  Even Xiao Yen understood the foreign word.

  “Sir, sir,” called another voice. Xiao Yen recognized Tuo Nu. He spoke to the judge in their own language.

  The onlookers gasped as a whole, then fell silent. Xiao Yen hid her smile when she heard the new voices. Not only Udo, but Ehran as well had come to her defense. There was a moment of consultation between the brothers and Tuo Nu, before Ehran began to speak. He spoke clearly and slowly in his language.

  Xiao Yen wondered for a moment, then realized it was better that Ehran, not Udo, speak. He looked more like someone from the Middle Kingdom. His words would be more easily believed. Tuo Nu translated.

  “Honorable sir, please excuse this disturbance. But when I heard you were wrongly accusing the great dragon slayer Xiao Yen, I had to come. She killed the rat dragon, the one living outside of Khan Hua, by making it fly into a cliff. When she saw your dragon rise out of the sea, she didn’t run or hide, or try to protect herself. Instead, she went into a deep trance, to raise her powers, so she could make your dragon fly into a cliff as well. She would have succeeded, if someone hadn’t disturbed her.”

  The judge paused until the whispered translations of what Ehran said were finished. Then he said, “You are foreigners here. You do not understand our ways. That rat dragon of which you speak was an abomination. I’m glad that it has been slain. But our sea dragon is no An Ao. Even though it breathes fire, it isn’t evil. It’s a part of the cycle of our lives. To kill it would be to kill our town, our way of life. If it doesn’t rise in the fall, there are no winter rains. Long ago, we negotiated a peace with our dragon. You have broken that peace, woken the dragon out of time, in the wrong month, with no offerings, no direction for where it should go. It needs to be lulled back into the sea.”

  Udo spoke now. He told everyone how clever Xiao Yen was, and that she could send the dragon back to the sea.

  “Why should we trust your mage to send our dragon back into the sea, and not send it against Khuangho again?” the judge asked.

  “You can hold me as hostage,” Udo said.

  The judge paused and considered for a moment.

  “Besides,” Tuo Nu added in the language of the Middle Kingdom, “who else can you afford to send?”

  Xiao Yen kept her surprise from spreading to her face. Tuo Nu would charge the town for his services? Why? Didn’t he consider this his home?

  The judge cleared his throat. “Fu Xi Wén, the court will address you. You may rise,” the judge said.

  Xiao Yen stood slowly, her knees stiff from having knelt for so long. She had to bend her head back very far to see his face, almost as much as when she’d stood before Bei Xi in her natural form. Xiao Yen stood motionless, mindful of the judge’s warning that he’d whip her.

  “I charge you with attempted murder. The only way for you to dispel the charge against you is to do the court’s bidding, which is to convince the sea dragon to return to its home, and not to rise again until autumn.”

  Xiao Yen bowed her head, accepting the charge.

  “Why won’t you deal with the dragon? You’re a much stronger mage than I am,” Xiao Yen said, hurrying to keep up with Tuo Nu as he walked along the winding main street of Khuangho.

  Udo kept up easily on the other side, also harassing Tuo Nu, like two peasants beating up on a merchant, trying to get a better deal. Three court soldiers marched after them. The judge had decided to not lock them up, but to let them roam the town, as long as they took the soldiers with them. He knew that no one would help the foreigners escape.

  Four or five people trailed after the soldiers, onlookers from the court, staring at Udo and Xiao Yen. Ehran had his own soldiers, as well as his own crowd. He’d purposefully drawn them after him by producing dice and starting a game of chance in the common area of their inn. Though Khuangho was a seaport, and saw foreigners occasionally, the people still stared. Xiao Yen figured that more of the crowd stayed with Ehran for three reasons: though Xiao Yen was a foreigner, she didn’t look like one; she was an unknown mage, with possibly dangerous and unlucky powers; and she stayed close to Tuo Nu, a known mage, that the people in the town probably didn’t want to anger.

  “I must be paid for my work. And they can’t pay me enough,” Tuo Nu said.

  All the fires had been put out. Merchants had opened their shops again. The wine seller they passed had attracted many boisterous men, and the noodle shop next door was also doing a brisk business. Only a few children played in the street though, and Xiao Yen didn’t see any farmers or fishermen hawking their goods, or any scholars. It was like the first day of ghost month, when no one bought or sold anything for fear of making the just-awakened ghosts jealous.

  “Why would you charge so much?” Xiao Yen asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Tuo Nu said.

  He turned off the main street into a narrow alley. The walls along either side were high and well maintained, made out of solid stone. Some of the gates were painted bright red, but most of them weren’t adorned. About halfway down the street, Tuo Nu stopped and unlocked the plain wooden gate to his compound. As soon as it was open, Udo pushed himself past Tuo Nu, going in uninvited.

  Tuo Nu looked after him for a moment, his mouth open. Then he shrugged, shook his head, and turned to Xiao Yen. “Won’t you please come in and have some tea?” Tuo Nu said, making a low bow, like a courtier.

  Xiao Yen accepted with the barest incline of her head and floated across the threshold like a courtesan.

  Tuo Nu rented rooms in a shared compound, with other tenants. White and yellow pebbles covered the courtyard. A few weeds sprang up between the rocks. Wang Tie-Tie wouldn’t have approved at all.

  A one-story wooden building lined the courtyard walls. It was divided into several apartments. Slate tiles led from the gate to the center apartment. A broad wooden stoop ran in front of the building, and the roof extended over it. Two young children with dirty faces played in the southern corner. They squealed and ran inside the closest door when they saw Udo.

  Tuo Nu invited the soldiers into the courtyard, but locked the gate against the other people who still followed them. One of the soldiers stayed next to the courtyard door. Tuo Nu led Xiao Yen and Udo up the path to the corner rooms on the sou
thwest side. He opened the door to a dark room, then walked across and untied the shutters, letting the sun spill in.

  The walls and floor were made of a pale wood, with many knots. Xiao Yen smelled pine trees. Wind blew through the rooms, a constant roar, like the ocean. The apartment was small, only two rooms—a general sitting room with many pillows scattered around a low table under the southern window, and a sleeping room, separated by a white silk curtain painted with a large blue-and-white vase holding brilliant red peonies.

  On the shelves next to the window stood dull-silver foreign mugs, a dark green clay frog, and a small painting of four of the eight precious things of a scholar: books, money, pink flowered herbs of immortality, and clouds of good luck. On the opposite side, a shelf held a painting covered with a piece of dazzling yellow silk, that Xiao Yen assumed was a portrait of a god that Tuo Nu prayed to. Small empty cups stood under this painting, along with the ashy remains of incense.

  Though the room was full of sunlight and wind, it reminded Xiao Yen of Master Wei’s room, a room for study and consideration. Like her little room at the school. She suddenly missed it, and swallowed hard to beat down the lump in her throat. Then she took a deep breath. She could have a place like this too. She’d chosen her peace.

  The two remaining soldiers arranged themselves on either side of the door. Udo continued to hassle Tuo Nu, asking him why he couldn’t subdue the dragon, why it had to be Xiao Yen.

  Finally, Tuo Nu turned to Xiao Yen and said in her language, “I’ll explain it to you. I doubt this foreigner will ever understand.”

  Udo opened his mouth to say something more. Xiao Yen looked at him and held up her hand. He shut it again.

  “My magic . . .” Tuo Nu hesitated, then started again. “My magic is different from yours.”

  Xiao Yen already knew that, having tasted the Wind of God.