"But if you can get out," Mei Hui went on, as if she had not noticed Qiu Yue's distraction, "then do so. As quickly as you can. Don't leave before the tests, though; he will come after you. You're the only one to have made it this far."
Qiu Yue bit the inside of her cheek as she turned back to Mei Hui. They stared at each other for long seconds before Qiu Yue found her voice again, hesitant: "Why did you let me pass the test? You didn't weep."
"Because I think you're a clever girl," said Mei Hui. "I don't think you would have come this far just for the sake of marrying my son. Being a magistrate's wife is not as impressive as they'd make it sound, and especially not in some tiny village like this." Her mouth twisted, and though she was smiling, there was nothing fond or kind about it. Her eyes were distant, fixed on a point over Qiu Yue's shoulder. "When I saw your face, I knew that you were cleverer than that. So, I wondered, why would a girl like that come here, and subject herself to my son's ridiculous demands?"
"Mei Hui, I—"
"I don't want to hear it," she said, but she did smile a little as she did, as if that could take some of the weight out of the snap of her voice. It didn't. Qiu Yue still found herself flinching, and Mei Hui's face did not soften further beyond that one small smile. "A woman should keep some mysteries for herself. There are many reasons why you might come trying to court the attention of a man like him, and I don't need to know them. In fact, I should not know them; if I did, I might be obligated to speak to my son. Do you understand?"
Qiu Yue bowed her head and nodded. "I understand," she said.
"Good," said Mei Hui, and she rose to her feet. "Good-night."
She swept from the room with a dignified grace. Qiu Yue watched that with some envy; she wondered if she would be able to match that, in her age. As she stood there, the fox came up to her and touched her elbow with one delicate hand.
"Come, my friend," she said. "You need to rest, and tomorrow morning, I will tell you the last thing that you need to know, to bring this to an end."
Something about her expression was solemn. Qiu Yue wanted to ask, just as she had wanted to justify herself to Mei Hui, but in the end, she simply nodded and let herself be led to the guest room. She did not sleep when her head touched the pillow, but lay watching the shadows on the wall, and wondered if any of them were the fox, and what else she might need to do.
*~*~*
In the morning, Qiu Yue's body felt heavy and her eyes gritty, as if she had pressed handfuls of sand to them the whole night. She was certain enough that she had slept, if only a little: she could remember dimness and shadows, and then abruptly the room was full of pale dawn light and the fox shook her shoulder, saying her name. Though she was dizzy from her lack of sleep, she sat up obediently, her hands folded over her knees, and the fox sat across from her.
"There are two paths we might take today," the fox said. Her face was still solemn, and for once there was no trace of her laughing confidence. Instead, her eyes were sharp and dark, as if she could look straight into Qiu Yue's heart and see all the uneasy thoughts she'd had, the way her gaze had lingered across the fox's strange beauty. "You might take up the veil again and wait for me, and I will handle the issue. I will tell that man what he wants to know, and it will burden him in ways he will never be able to fully understand.
"Or, I can tell you the thing that he seeks, and that burden will fall upon you." She cocked her head at that, and she looked very nearly apologetic, which was a strange expression on her face—still Qiu Yue's face in a way, though the passing days had made the features shift and change into something uniquely the fox's own.
Qiu Yue wet her lips in a quick gesture. Her hands felt cold. She was not very certain she succeeded at that. "He wants to know the name of the fox-god of the mountain."
"So he does."
"And you know it."
"So I do."
Qiu Yue closed her eyes for a moment. Tired as she was, the gesture hurt. Part of her simply wanted to lie back down and tuck her knees up to her chest, the same way she would sleep as a child after bad dreams. Part of her wanted to reach out and grasp the fox's hands and draw her in, so that they could lie curled up together. When she opened her eyes again, though, the fox was still there, watching her with an odd sort of sympathy.
"You said," Qiu Yue said, and her voice had gone down to barely a murmur now, "that a name is a spell of its own, and to name something means that you will have power over it."
"And there is the crux of it," said the fox. "That man believes that he can have power over the whole of the mountain if he has it. And he will, in a way, but it will come at a price."
"And what price is that?" Qiu Yue asked. Her mouth felt stiff, like she could not quite properly form the words. Her hands tingled; her body ached. She wanted to take the question back, but bit her cheek before she could.
"Even a fox must take a spouse," said the fox, and though she was still wearing her human shape, she also looked entirely like some strange wild creature. There was a dim shadow on the wall, and Qiu Yue thought she could see the outline of pointed ears and tails—nine of them—between one blink and the next. "To know the fox is to accept it into your heart. One of you will have to bear that weight."
Qiu Yue was quiet at that for a moment. She swallowed and looked down at her hands. "And how terrible is that weight?"
"More terrible than you can know," the fox said. There were teeth in her voice and her smile, but she sounded sad under that. "It is a terrible thing, to love a god."
Qiu Yue continued to stare at her hands. They were strong and scarred from life on the mountain. She thought of her mother's voice, soft and fading: We named you after the moon that only appears in the autumn, the soft shape revealed through the emptying branches. Our blood and bones have made the mountain.
"So?" the fox said. Her face was beautiful and sharp; she looked less human and more vulpine now, her jaw sharpening into a muzzle, russet creeping into her dark hair, her teeth sharp and her eyes bright with an unvoiced fever. "What will you do?"
Qiu Yue looked up.
She had made her choice.
*~*~*
Later, she would hear the story told as such:
There once lived a greedy magistrate, who had neither heart nor head for ruling, and yet was given charge over the villages of a mountain province. He set himself up like a king and he grew fat and comfortable.
But in doing so, he neglected to pay his proper respects to those creatures whose authority ran deeper and older than that of humans. In time, the fox-god of the mountain took notice, and when the magistrate decided he wished to take a wife, the fox-god disguised herself and came to him. He set to her three tasks: to dance naked and unstung among angered hornets, to make a dead woman weep, and then, to submit to him before their wedding-day. The first two of these tasks the fox-god passed without trouble, for she was old and powerful and clever, and for the last—
For the last, that was a rudeness that not even the gods could ignore. The fox-god looked at it as the coercion that it was, but she followed the letter of the magistrate's demands: she dressed in her bridal finery and she came to him singing, the way that a proper bride might be expected to do. He welcomed her to his chambers and immediately began to tear the clothes from her body. But as he did, she transformed, her body contorting, her clothes fading to ash and dust in his hands. In an instant she went from woman to fox to angered god, and as the magistrate fell back and writhed in fear—for in the end, he was a fool and a cowardly one—the fox-god of the mountain looked upon him, and in her disdain, she opened her mouth and laid a curse upon him: that as he had acted like a worm, so he would become one. A thousand years a worm, and then, perhaps, if he learned humility in that time, he would be allowed again to take human form.
And so, the greedy magistrate was punished, and in his place a different one was appointed. And though she was an old woman, long in years, she was thoughtful in head and heart as the former magistrate was thoughtless,
so under her rule, the mountain and its villages flourished, and so continued ever-after.
"What a ridiculous story," the fox said, when Qiu Yue finished telling it. She had stretched out, in her fox-form, by the fire, tilted so that the flames could warm her belly. Her head pressed against Qiu Yue's knee. "I did no such thing."
"It makes a better story, though," said Qiu Yue, and she reached to pass her hand lightly over the soft fur of the fox's back. In her other hand she had a cup of slowly cooling tea, and she was half-distracted, listening for her brother's footsteps at the door. "And anyway, to the rest of them, it only ever looked like one person accomplishing everything."
"Perhaps so," the fox said. She opened an eye to look at Qiu Yue and she smiled, her tongue sliding against her sharp teeth, before she closed it again. "Turning him into a worm was a nice touch. I should have done that for real."
"Done what?" Xiao Dan said, from the doorway, and then, immediately, "Never mind. No. I don't want to know. If a fox thinks it's a good idea, then it's not one that I want any part of."
"How unkind, brother-in-law," the fox said. "I thought that marrying your sister was a good idea, too, what do you say to that?"
"I say that I have thought she has done many foolish things, but that she is better making her own decisions, rather than listening to mine." He came and he sat down carefully. The worst of his illness had passed finally, aided with rest and the medicines that Mei Hui had paid for, blessed by a fox's breath and boiled into a thick tea. Qiu Yue sometimes worried that the traces of the mountain fever would plague him for the rest of his life—but then, she told herself, that rest of his life would be longer than a few slow and painful weeks. And she was satisfied with that.
He looked at her though, and he smiled, a wry quirk to his lips. "I suppose, though, better a fox than a magistrate. What would we do with all that space?"
"Raised chickens, perhaps," Qiu Yue said, and both Xiao Dan and the fox laughed.
"Now there's a story you could tell," Xiao Dan said, and he held out a hand. Qiu Yue handed him a fresh cup of tea. "The story of how a king's palace became a chicken's coop."
"They are similarly foolish," the fox said, and Xiao Dan shook his head.
"They are men, and men are not so bad as birds."
"That is what you might think, human man."
And as they bickered, comfortable low voices, Qiu Yue drank her own tea and smiled at the fire.
It was good, she reflected, to be home.
Riding Red
Charles Payseur
Red frowned as he looked down at himself, at the dress Big must have picked out. It was shorter than he would have liked, coming down well north of his knees, with a bright red ribbon that cinched at the waist and dangled to tickle his thighs. The dress was plain white, just a bit gauzy, and he wore a padded bra underneath to give him the illusion of a modest bust. A bright red cloak completed the look, tied over his chest with another bow of red ribbon. He looked ridiculous. A bit hot, but mostly ridiculous.
"This is never going to work," he said, turning slowly, not really sure he wanted to know where Big got the outfit.
"Of course it will," Big said, standing nearby, mouth hanging open slightly as he regarded Red with an obviously hungry expression. Red took a deep breath. Of course it was him wearing the dress. Big lived up to his nickname, standing easily six-foot-five and as wide as an oak, his bare chest like a collection of smooth stonework. Smooth for the moment, at least. As a shifter, Big could sprout fur and a muzzle, razor-sharp teeth and long claws. Whatever his form, though, his ice blue eyes and lean, honed body were the antithesis of small.
"At least, it had better," Big said, and shoved the basket he had been carrying since they left town at Red, who eyed it skeptically. "I spent the last of our money on the dress and this basket of baked goods."
Red ran a hand over his face. Of course. Well, it wasn't really a surprise. They had been running low on funds ever since they had failed to sell their "security system" to that family of bears. It seemed like forever ago that they had scored big fencing that shipment of stolen bricks to a village of little pigs. One staged "big bad wolf" attack had convinced them all that hay and sticks were no adequate way to build.
"So what's the plan?" Red asked, figuring work was work. It would be nice, at least, not sneaking out of inns in the middle of the night with unpaid tabs. Or selling fake magic carpets and genie lamps to gullible tourists and lost princes.
"There's a rich old woman who lives in the woods," Big said. "Rumor is she's getting on a bit in years and brain power. Easily confused. No family to speak of." Big smiled.
"And?" Red asked, rolling his eyes, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.
"And wouldn't it be rather convenient if it turns out she has a long-lost granddaughter to bequeath all her money to?"
Red closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Long-lost granddaughter?" he asked.
"Yeah," Big replied, grinning now, obviously proud of himself.
"You said she had no family," Red said. "Which means, I'm guessing, no children. Which means, most definitely, that she'd know if she had any grandchildren."
"Details," Big said, waving his hands as if they cast a spell to fill in the holes in his plan. "She's old. Confused. You show up, claiming to be her granddaughter, waving cookies and scones in her face. She's probably desperate for someone to give her money to. It's in the bag."
"And why grand-daughter, anyway?" Red asked, indicating the dress. It wasn't that it looked bad on him, really. He was on the thin side and despite being twenty-five years old—only a little younger than Big—with the dress on and his long, golden hair braided, he knew he looked much younger. But he could have passed for a younger man just as easily.
Big gave a nervous chuckle. "Uh, because she'll be less threatened if you're a woman?" he asked more than said. Red pursed his lips, then turned slightly and slowly pulled the dress up, revealing more of his thighs.
"I just think you wanted to see me in a dress," Red said, and Big cleared his throat. Even with the macho hunter exterior and the professional conman attitude, he was definitely blushing. Big made a small, hungry sound in his throat as Red got the fabric to the soft curve of his ass, which was covered in the tight lace of a woman's undergarment that Big had insisted completed the ensemble.
Red sighed and let the fabric fall back to his sides. Instantly, Big was up and to him, solid arms wrapping around Red's smaller frame.
"Having second thoughts?" Big asked, and Red nearly laughed but for the frightened expression on Big's face. For such a strong man, he was surprisingly sensitive. Red suspected there was a story there: some hurt that had worked itself so deep that Big hardly trusted himself. Maybe it had to with his curse, with being a werewolf. Big certainly never talked about it. But Big was also the gentlest, the most caring man that Red had ever known. Perhaps not the best at planning, but still...
Red knew when to admit defeat. "Just don't you dare tell anyone about this," he said.
Big grinned a second before he pressed his mouth against Red's, all hard muscles and soft lips and heat. Red felt himself stir in the confines of his panties. And if he enjoyed the sensation of the way they cupped him, what of it?
"Well, let's do this," he said after breaking their kiss. Work was work, after all. Afterward, there would still be plenty of time for fun.
*~*~*
Red knocked on the door to what was probably the largest house he had ever seen. Tucked into the woods, it blended in with the nature around it, and even had a stream running right through the middle of it. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, and yet something about it gave Red a bad feeling. Obviously, the old woman was wealthy, but if she was taking care of someplace this big all by herself, he didn't understand how she could be failing mentally. All the same, he knocked and waited, the smell of mostly-fresh baked goods rising from the basket he carried.
After a few moments, the door swung outwar
d, revealing what was definitely the oldest person that Red had ever seen. Her face was a maze of wrinkles, her eyes small, dark orbs peeking out from the folds of her forehead. She was short, but it was possible she just seemed that way, bent nearly double with a heavy cane supporting her. Her hair was stark white and her mouth a toothless grin.
"And what can I do for you, dear?" the old woman asked, and Red put on his best smile and bobbed with feigned excitement.
"Granny!" he cried, and reached down, wrapping his arms around her in a quick hug. "I'm Sonya, your granddaughter!"
"Are you now?" the old woman asked, staring up at Red, whose smile never slipped. He couldn't tell if she was skeptical or just working the idea over in her mind, searching her memories to see if she had a granddaughter. Before she could think too hard, Red pushed forward the basket.
"I baked you some treats from home," he said, and at that, the old woman's eyes widened a bit.
"Well then, you come in and tell Granny Esmeralda all about yourself." Stepping aside, Esmeralda guided Red inside the lavishly decorated home. Every wall seemed adorned by artwork, and in every corner, there sat some sculpture or piece of furniture that Red guessed would bring in enough money to feed him and Big for months. Years, maybe.
He was led to a large sitting room where the floor was actually bisected by the stream, a bridge the only way to cross from where they entered to where a number of couches sat near a pair of ornate stained-glass windows depicting what looked like some battle with a dragon. And next to those was a pair of doors so large they seemed made for giants, heavy and wooden and barricaded. As Red took in the scene, however, his eyes were drawn away from the décor and to a young man sitting on one of the couches, who stood when they entered.
"You know, I never remembered having grandchildren," Esmeralda said, walking with Red across the bridge, "but it seems as of today I have two. Now tell me, as I can't seem to remember, are the two of you related?"
Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8 Page 12
