In spite of this, the siblings lived comfortably and quietly: Xiao Dan was dedicated and hardworking, skilled with his hands, and Qiu Yue was equally clever and quite beautiful besides. The only trouble was that Qiu Yue was rapidly approaching a marriageable age, and it was clear that none in the village would be willing to ask Xiao Dan for his sister's hand. A brother was not the same sort of thing as a parent; tradition was uncertain how to treat their situation.
"They might ask me, instead," Qiu Yue said with exasperation to her brother one night, as she mended a tear in his sleeve and he occupied himself with the repair of their sandals. "I might have something to say about it."
"You should," Xiao Dan agreed. His voice was even, but there was a privately amused tilt to his mouth. "But if no one is wise enough to ask you, I am hardly going to say yes for you."
And so time passed.
One autumn morning, Xiao Dan awoke and could not rise from his bed. His normally ruddy face had gone pale, and though his skin was cold to the touch he was drenched in sweat. He lay there and breathed in shallow slow pulls as Qiu Yue tended to him. Though neither of them spoke about it, they recognized the symptoms as the same as the illness that had carried away both of their parents.
"I will go out to the mountain and forage today," Qiu Yue said. "I am old enough and strong enough. You will continue to rest, and that way you will recover."
Xiao Dan smiled as if he believed that, and he nodded. "I will wait for you," he said. "There will be tea when you return."
"You will continue to rest," Qiu Yue said again, more sternly than before, and she took up the pack that her brother wore daily and headed out, down the one path of their village, and out into the forest that surrounded it.
Occasionally, merchants from the greater cities would find their way out through the forest, to this village—and once every five years, the magistrate came as well, to see that the place was still running smoothly—and all of these people whispered among themselves about the forest. Qiu Yue herself did not particularly like these men who came from beyond the forest, with their soft round faces and their soft heavy clothes, but they liked her, and she had heard their stories many times. Apparently they believed that ghosts and worse lived in the forest: hungry tigers, angry ogres, a thousand and one creatures that wanted nothing more than to tear into the flesh of a rich man. It took everything she had to not laugh in their faces, and sometimes even when trying, she did not quite manage not to.
What she knew, and what everyone in her village knew, was the forest was nothing terrible or terrifying. It was simply very old, and thus it deserved proper respect and dedication, like any elder. For men who came bumbling through with their horses and their wheeled carriages, their heavy clouds of perfume and their obvious disdain, it was true that the forest was a strange and terrifying sort of place.
But Qiu Yue, and for her village, it was home. The forest yielded wood for their fireplaces and for their buildings, and it had animals and vegetables both for food. The paths could be difficult, but Qiu Yue had walked them many times in her life: first following her mother, then her brother, and then alone. The forest felt like an extension of her own home at times, as if she might simply turn a corner to find her parents had moved to a different room, far away from the one she shared with Xiao Dan, but still alive. Still fine. Daughter, there you are. It's been so long! Come and sit, and tell your parents of the things that you have done since we have last seen you. Let us hear you sing again.
She tried to ignore that feeling whenever she could.
Today, she stuck to a more familiar path—the one where she could easily look over her shoulder and see the way straight back to the village. Even with the lowest tree branches closing in on the path, there was still enough light to see the buildings. There were other paths she could take, slightly less weathered, certainly more wandering, and most of them more treacherous. Those would often yield more in return for the effort made to traverse them, but today Xiao Dan was sick. Today, Qiu Yue only wanted to gather what she could as quickly as possible and return to her brother's side.
Perhaps as the season turned colder and need grew greater, she would risk traveling those alternate paths.
When, and not if. She was already thinking of Xiao Dan's illness as continuing, and that stuck in her chest like physical pain. When the illness had come for their father, he had lingered for over a year. She could barely remember that: only hushed voices and averted eyes, the sound of her mother's weeping, and the bitter smell of smoke and herbs. It had been worse with her mother. The house had smelled of medicine for weeks, growing more cloying with each passing day. The light had left her mother's eyes long before they had closed forever.
Realistically, she knew it had been longer than that. In her heart, she could only remember the way her mother's hand went cold, and the way her brother's voice sounded when he did not weep. The smell of the herbal medicines had lingered in her clothes long after the funeral rites had been completed.
She was so distracted by her thoughts that she did not notice the fox until she tripped over her.
Foxes were rare this far out in the forest, but Qiu Yue had seen and heard them often enough, odd laughing voices in the dark and flashes of warm red fur in the shadows. They liked to scavenge in what trash was left out, and more than once, Xiao Dan had come home muttering in distaste about traps that had been chewed through and raided by foxes. Despite this, Qiu Yue had never seen one up close.
She was a thin fox and very small. Her fur was shaggy in patches: a thick ruff at her throat and a magnificent brush of a tail, but only thin sleek covering on her large ears and along her long legs. One of these legs was completely tangled up in a snare trap, and the fox was attempting to chew through the ropes. She looked up at Qiu Yue, and her narrow golden eyes were surprisingly keen. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the fox let go of the rope and sat up.
She said, in a voice like a human woman's, "Human child, set me free."
Qiu Yue, who had grown up hearing stories of mountain spirits—though this was certainly her first time encountering one—did her best not to stare.
"This isn't my snare," she said at last. "It belongs to one of my neighbors, and I can't go cutting through their property like that."
One of the fox's ears twitched. She didn't otherwise move, staring at Qiu Yue with unblinking focus. "Human child, please, set me free."
"That would be good for you," Qiu Yue said, and she kept her voice as calm as possible, though her heart was racing. There was a trick, her neighbor's grandmother liked to say, in negotiating with spirits, including animals that spoke like humans. One should not simply give in right away—there were so many things a spirit was capable of that a human was not. One could wish for gold, or for health, or even eternal life, and depending on the spirit and the stakes, these things could all be granted.
At the same time, one should also not drag it out so long that they tried the spirit's patience. One did not want to end up failing a test of kindness. They are completely capable of handling themselves in small situations, such as you or I would find them in. They want to reward both cleverness and kindness, so one must handle oneself carefully.
Qiu Yue had never particularly thought of herself as inclined to kindness, but she found herself hesitating out of a strange sympathy. Her brother liked to say that perhaps their names should have been switched, or that perhaps she should have been named Stone, instead of Autumn Moon, for how firmly she could set herself in place. She said to the fox, "If I do this, my neighbor will be quite upset. My brother is ill now, and we cannot afford to alienate anyone."
The fox said nothing. Qiu Yue wondered if she had already reached the end of her patience. Qui Yue crouched down and slid the pack off her shoulders, which gave her a little more mobility. She took the knife that was strapped to the side of it and then rolled forward onto her knees. The fox continued to say nothing, though she saw both of those pointed ears swivel forward.
>
"I am not very kind." She cut through the knots that held the fox's leg tangled. They were thick and tight, and she ended up having to saw a little just to get the fibers to part. Her neighbor would be proud to know his ropes were so well made. "So if in return, you could at least keep me from getting into trouble, I would appreciate it."
Once the last of the ropes were undone, the fox stayed where she was. Both of her ears twitched, and her watched Qiu Yue, who stared back.
"Go on," she said. "You wanted to be set free, didn't you? It's all right. I didn't mean that you had to do anything for me."
She turned to put the knife back into its proper place. The edge was slightly blunted from the effort of cutting through the rope, but it would still do for what she needed it for today. If Xiao Dan was still asleep when she returned, she would sharpen it first before she set about anything else. He had never liked the noise it made; she could at least do it when he was not awake to notice.
When she was done, she turned and found that the fox was still there.
"You should be going," she said. "If my neighbor catches you here, it won't matter that you're free or not. In fact, I should be moving, too. We'll both be in trouble otherwise."
She reshouldered her pack and got to her feet. As she walked away, the fox finally rose as well to trot along after her, and then up to walk by her side. If her leg pained her—and it certainly looked like it should, with the fur matted and the skin raw where the ropes had cut in—the fox gave no indication of pain.
"Do you truly only want to avoid trouble with the people of your village?" the fox asked, after they had walked a short distance. Qiu Yue glanced behind herself and saw the ropes lying discarded in the path; she could only hope that she would be back in her own home by the time anyone else came along to check it—or that there would be others out and about, to disperse the possibility of her guilt.
"That's right," she said. "I don't think I would particularly like to be rewarded the way people are in stories. That seems like too much trouble."
The fox opened its mouth. It made a noise that sounded more like a human laugh than a fox's chatter. When Qiu Yue looked down, it was looking back at her, its eyes wider and even brighter than before.
"You could become a queen," the fox said. "I know where there is gold buried deep in the heart of the mountain."
"A queen seems like too much work," Qiu Yue said. "Who would I even rule? My brother? We are already a partnership. My village? We've done well enough without a leader for years. Why would I change that?"
"You could know all the secrets of the forest and the mountain," the fox said. "You would be the wisest human that ever lived. People would come from all over the country just to hear you speak."
"My village is not large enough for that many people," Qiu Yue said. "And besides, what would I even want to say to strangers? They have their own lives. I have mine."
The fox laughed again. "You could have a full belly for the rest of your life, and live in comfort, if you only knew how to ask," it said.
"But I don't know how to ask," Qiu Yue said. "And I have never been hungry. Just because we are not rich here does not mean that we are incapable of taking care of our own. I have heard enough stories, you know. I am not going to ask for things when I don't know what all the conditions are."
"I like you," the fox said. "You're clever with your words."
"Thank you," Qiu Yue said. It had seemed obvious enough to her, but the praise was still a pleasant thing to hear.
"Your neighbor will not know what happened," the fox said. "To him, it will only look like some animal chewed its way to freedom. The cuts will not be clean enough to look like a knife. But that was not of my doing. If you'll allow it, I will stay by your side until I can fully repay my debt to you."
Qiu Yue stopped walking. She looked down at the fox. The vision of her brother, too pale and weak to get up, rose like a ghost in her mind. He'd been there, patiently waiting, and now she had to directly consider the possibility of his health. She took a deep breath and the words almost made it out, but at the last moment she bit them back. Wait and see if he gets better, first. Give him a month. He's strong. He might overcome it.
But if after that...
"Very well," she said. "My name is Qiu Yue. Shall I call you something?"
"Don't give me a name," the fox said. For a moment she saw her tongue, lolling out long and pink against the sharp points of her teeth. How she managed to speak with a jaw like that, Qiu Yue couldn't begin to guess. "A name is a spell on its own. Just 'Fox' is fine, for now."
"All right, Fox," Qiu Yue said. "Then it's nice to meet you."
*~*~*
Xiao Dan's health continued to deteriorate through the following weeks. His spirit did not, though; Qiu Yue found herself more often than not trying to push her brother back to his bedroll in the mornings.
One morning, two weeks after the first, he made it about as far as the doorway before his legs gave out entirely. Qiu Yue, making breakfast, heard the fox's chattering barks before she heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. When she rushed over, Xiao Dan lay with his face pressed to the floor, his breathing rough and shaky.
"Oh," he said, as Qiu Yue knelt and pulled his arm over her shoulders. "Little sister, that fox you've adopted is quite loud."
"She has more sense than you do," Qiu Yue said. Her voice was as sharp as a knife. "You need to be resting."
"I have done nothing but rest," Xiao Dan said. He kept his face turned downwards, but Qiu Yue saw the way his lips twisted. It looked tired and bitter. Their mother had smiled similarly after she'd grown ill. "Every day now, you go out, and every day now, I lie flat on my back to contemplate our ceiling. Even if I argue, what can I do? I am helpless to my own body. I have tried to pour all the sleep I can into it, and it refuses to understand."
Qiu Yue said nothing at first. She drew her brother to his bedroll, and she pushed him down into the blankets. At first he resisted, and she wondered if she still had the patience to handle that defiance—but then his knees bent, creaking, and he let himself be put down. Qiu Yue knelt beside his bedroll and pulled the blanket over him.
"That's fine, if all you can do is rest," she said. "I am strong, my brother, and I can make sure that there will be enough to eat for the both of us and the fox."
"You've started feeding it, too?" Xiao Dan frowned at her, his eyes dark. A little frown pulled at the corners of his mouth, though whether it was despair at his own failing body or disapproval, Qiu Yue could not guess. "But you still call it 'Fox'."
"Names have significance," Qiu Yue said, because she could not easily say, The fox itself told me not to give it a name. "She helps me catch birds and rabbits, whenever there are any to be found. It's important for you to eat meat right now, Brother."
Xiao Dan snorted and turned his head away. The gesture pulled the muscles of his neck tight. Qiu Yue could see the ropey tension there, but she did not dare reach out or say anything. The room seemed to go darker for a moment, the walls contracting as if with a sharp, indrawn breath. Qiu Yue herself remained as still as possible, and Xiao Dan was like a statue.
"I'll bring you breakfast," she said. She got to her feet.
"Qiu Yue," Xiao Dan said.
She did not say anything, but neither did she turn, nor walk away. Xiao Dan's head was still turned away from her, but on her feet, she could see his profile now, sharp and outlined by the small amount of light in the room. She could see that his lips were still twisted in that smile, though now it looked self-deprecating instead of bitter. Long seconds passed. Eventually, he sighed and simply rolled onto his side, presenting her with his back.
"No," he said. "Never mind."
Qiu Yue hesitated. She bowed to Xiao Dan's back, knowing that he wouldn't notice, and not entirely certain he would even care. She went back to the kitchen and did her best to catch her tears in her sleeves as she finished with breakfast: rice porridge with salt, with an egg for Xiao Dan, and none f
or herself. She set aside the other egg for the fox, who had come into the kitchen with her, and now sat at her feet.
"You're troubled," the fox said.
Qiu Yue put Xiao Dan's bowl and a cup of tea onto a battered slab of wood. It worked about as well for a serving tray as anything else they owned. She bit the inside of her cheek, in the exact same spot she'd bitten so many times before, and it tasted both raw and sharp. There was a bubble of pressure in her chest that felt like it might be laughter or worse. "Of course I am," she said. "My brother is ill. I thought that perhaps he was strong enough to recover, but he only grows worse. Why wouldn't I be troubled?"
The fox wound her way around Qiu Yue's legs like a cat. As the weather outside had grown colder, the fox's coat had grown thicker, and now it was very nearly twice the volume it had been when Qiu Yue had first brought her home. Qiu Yue stood still and waited for the fox to finish, and when she did, she sat by Qiu Yue's feet.
They looked at each other without speaking for a long while. Finally, Qiu Yue said, "About the debt."
"I thought so," the fox said. She lifted a foot as if she meant to scratch at her ear, then said, "In a week's time, there will be a merchant caravan from the city. It will not sell you the medicine you need, but it will carry you back to the city if you can convince them it will be worth their while."
"And that's all?" Qiu Yue raised an eyebrow. "I can't afford to take the time to go to the city. And I don't have the money to convince anyone to carry me along anywhere, let alone to give me what I need. I know what my brother's illness is, and I know that I cannot leave him alone. He'll push himself too hard. It'll only make him worse faster."
"Ah," said the fox. "You're already doubting me. Didn't I say I would pay you back? If you can convince the merchant to take you along, then I will take care of the rest. The money and your brother's welfare will be settled just fine. I promise you."
Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8 Page 7
