by Julie C. Dao
The moon shines down upon us, beloved
The water a vast and eternal mirror
A voice whispers from every tender branch
Turn your face from the world’s apple-blossom fragility
And embrace this boundless night
Guma paused in the midst of stitching a plum blossom petal, her nostrils flaring. “Where did you learn that?” she demanded.
“From one of your volumes.” Xifeng gestured to a dusty stack of faded texts in the corner, the meager remnants of her mother's and aunt’s school days. She often marveled at the wealth her grandparents had possessed, to have afforded such things for mere daughters.
“Show it to me.”
The tone of her aunt’s voice made her put down the needle immediately. Xifeng located the volume, one thinner and newer than the rest, and presented it to the older woman. Guma examined it, lips thinning as she ran her fingers over the unembellished back and turned it over to look at the title: Poems of Love and Devotion.
She hastily shoved the book back at Xifeng, as though it had burned her fingers. “Ning, isn’t it time you went to bed?”
Xifeng kept looking at her aunt as the girl put away her work and lit the red tallow candles. She hadn’t realized the sun had set until she felt the candlelight relieve her strained eyes. As soon as Ning was gone, she asked, “Did the poem remind you of something, Guma?”
Her aunt spoke often about the past—mostly to complain about the riches she had then that she didn’t have now—but rarely mentioned her sister. All Xifeng knew of her mother was what she had been told only once: that Mingzhu had been beautiful and brainless and had gotten herself pregnant and abandoned by a nobleman. The pinched expression on Guma’s face suggested she was thinking of her now, but when she spoke, it had nothing to do with her.
“I know that poem. It was . . . told to me many years ago.” She licked her dry lips, her gaze flickering from the text to her niece with something like terror.
Xifeng had seen that fear twice in her life: once, when Guma had hobbled home in a frenzy to shut all of the doors and windows without explanation, and again after she had woken from a nightmare of spiraling black snakes.
There was a long silence.
“It’s time to read the cards,” Guma said.
There was another room on that upper level, one of which they never spoke. It had once stored valuable tools: vats for cooking dyes, bamboo dowels for drying fabric, and boxes of needles, thread, and scissors. Guma had once made a bitter remark that her parents must be rolling in their graves now that she had turned it into a sanctuary for her unspeakable craft.
Not so very long ago, the Hou family had been tailors of rare and cunning skill with clients from across the continent of Feng Lu. Desert dwellers journeyed endless miles, bearing cobweb-thin silks to be woven into veils against the sun. Hunters brought furs down from the mountains for hoods and cloaks, telling tales of beasts the flatland folk had only heard of through legend.
Fanciful stories spread of how the Hou tailors would stitch in luck and goodwill if one paid well; underpay, and they took revenge by weaving in an impossible-to-satisfy itch, a harelip for one’s firstborn, or a jealous husband. Guma’s parents coyly courted these rumors, which brought in money for feasts and music lessons for their daughters, but took care to dismiss the gossip when asked directly. It would not do to own up to such abilities, not when family members had been executed for less in the past. A streak of magic had plagued the Hou blood for centuries, one that only recent generations had managed to suppress through willpower and discipline.
“Hypocrites,” Guma sneered whenever she spoke of her parents, “denying the very gift that brought them their fame.” Where the rest of her family had sought to curb and smother their magic, Guma embraced it with religious fervor.
Now, Xifeng followed her into the room, each of them carrying a tallow candle. It was so small, they barely fit inside together, but Guma had managed to squeeze in all she needed for her secret trade. Dried plants dangled from the ceiling, polluting the air with a venomous odor, and carvings and oddly shaped rocks covered the walls. On a crooked shelf lay a collection of rusted knives and bowls stained with vile fluids. And in the center of this dark den was a blood-spattered table, beneath which Guma had hidden her most treasured possessions.
She spread the contents of a small oak box on the table as Xifeng watched: nineteen rectangles of fine yellow wood, depicting images in burgundy-black ink. They showed emperors and empresses, crowned dragons, barren rice fields, and a monk raising a skull above his head. Xifeng could not read them herself, but she knew they concealed depths of meaning, each layer of truth peeling back to reveal an even more convoluted answer. And the messages shifted again when combined with other cards.
As she studied the images, her aunt limped around the room, lighting more candles and a large pot of incense. With the door closed, the poison-sweet fumes wrapped curls of thick, heady fragrance around her. Xifeng hated the smell, which made her light-headed and prone to strange dreams while awake, but Guma insisted on the incense for every reading. Whether it was because she enjoyed Xifeng’s discomfort or needed the scent for her art, she never made clear.
The foreign deck of cards had come to Guma many years ago. Since then, she had given up the traditional wooden sticks preferred by most seers, favoring blood truth. She had taught Xifeng that the spirits of magic were reluctant to release answers without a blood sacrifice first.
Guma shuffled the cards and turned them facedown, reaching for a knife. Seizing Xifeng’s left hand, she flipped the palm upward and sliced the base of her index finger. Xifeng did not flinch when the blade bit into her flesh, knowing how Guma detested weakness. The incense seemed to help, blurring the pain as a line of blood spilled randomly across several cards.
Guma turned the bloodied rectangles over with a smile. These were the same six images the spirits selected for Xifeng whenever the cards drank her blood. And drink they did, for the droplets had already begun sinking into their grain.
“I told you,” her aunt gloated, tapping the first card, which showed a withered field. Beside it, the second card depicted a steed with a sword embedded in its heart. “The barren rice field means hopelessness, unless paired with the horse as it is here. When the spirit is gone, the body nourishes the empty earth. You are resourceful. You will find a way around hopelessness, and create something out of nothing.”
More familiar words. More promises of talent, of a greatness Xifeng longed for desperately but could not find inside her, no matter how hard she looked.
She worried her lip between her teeth, bending over the horse card to hide her doubt from Guma. The point at which the blade entered the steed’s body seemed to gleam. She imagined its heart bursting upon impact, the lifeblood spilling from its body, and felt the urge to lower her lips and drink before it was wasted.
Lifeblood, the essence of the heart, contained the most powerful magic in the world. Guma had taught her to revere the heart, for even that of an animal was enough to perform complex spells. Depending on the skill of the wielder, one could summon and communicate with others who knew this forbidden magic, or even cast a glamour over oneself to compel and attract.
Xifeng moved on to the next two cards. One showed a lotus opening beneath the moon, and the other displayed a man with a dagger in his back, shreds of flesh clinging to the blade.
“Fate finds you alluring,” Guma said, tapping the lotus, “but do not be fooled. It is you who are its slave. Let no one stand in your way. If they face you, your beauty will entrap them. If they turn away, you will stab them in the back.”
A scowl creased Guma’s face when she saw the fifth card. On it, a handsome warrior rode into battle with a bloodstained chrysanthemum, a keepsake from his lady. The slope of his shoulders was like Wei’s, and Guma pushed the image away without comment. This card was the reason
she didn’t punish Xifeng more severely for seeing Wei, for it foretold that he would play some important role in Xifeng’s life, whether her aunt liked it or not. The bamboo cane stung but did not stop them from meeting in secret, and Guma knew it.
Sacrifice.
The word seemed to echo in the darkness as Xifeng studied the warrior’s bloody flower. That was the meaning of this card, Guma had explained once. A relinquishing of something—or someone—dear, as payment for greatness. Xifeng tore her eyes from it, unwilling to think just now about what or whom she might have to lose.
And there it was again: the sixth card, showing the back of a woman’s head, uncrowned, the dark spill of her hair like a stain.
“The Empress,” Xifeng said.
Guma watched her through narrow eyes as she took in her future. This card reigned above all others; this sliver of wood showed Xifeng’s true destiny. This was the greatness for which she would have to pay. An undeniable energy hummed through her fingers when she picked it up, but still she hesitated, searching in the ripples and waves of the woman’s hair for some sign of truth.
“You doubt.” Guma’s voice was flat, displeased.
“No,” Xifeng said hastily, feeling faint under her severe gaze. “I don’t dare question the spirits of magic. It’s just . . . difficult to imagine such a future for myself.”
“You question my interpretation of the spirits’ message, then?” No one grew angry faster than Guma whenever she suspected Xifeng’s skepticism. She snatched the Empress card from her niece’s hand, mouth twisted with fury. “Any other girl would kiss my feet if I told her she would be Empress of all Feng Lu one day. But you spit in my face with your doubt.” She raised her sharp, bony hand to strike her.
Xifeng cringed. “Please, I don’t doubt you! If you say I’m to be the Empress, then the Empress I will be.” That calmed Guma a bit, though her mouth remained downturned. She straightened the cards in a sullen silence, which Xifeng knew could last for days if her aunt wished to thoroughly punish her. “I’ve grown used to our way of living. I have trouble imagining myself owning servants and silks I might have once embroidered for finer folk. That’s all.”
“The cards have always told us your fate lies in the Imperial Palace.” Guma clenched her teeth. “Why else would I fill your head with poetry and calligraphy? Why would I bother teaching you the history of our world and the politics of kings? Other women dream of warm houses and sober husbands for their daughters. I dream of life at an Emperor’s side for you, and this is how you treat me. With suspicion.”
Xifeng kept quiet as her aunt continued ranting at her. Had she been braver, she might have asked Guma to reconsider the meaning of the fortune. Perhaps the card meant she would serve the Empress, not be the Empress. It would make more sense, not to mention it sounded much less terrifying. And it would explain how Wei could still be a part of her future—perhaps the sacrifice merely referred to giving up her old life, and not him at all.
But the danger of Guma’s drawn-out silence kept Xifeng quiet. She felt too unsteady to argue, anyway, surrounded by the caustic stench of the incense. She blinked her blurry eyes and noticed that one other card held a droplet of blood, not yet absorbed.
“Guma, there’s a seventh card.”
“Don’t be foolish. There are only ever six, and that one doesn’t have enough blood to be yours.” Still, she seemed curious, so Xifeng flipped it over.
The card showed a slight boy on the cusp of adulthood, pale and oddly delicate. He wore peasant garb and carried a traveling pack, and his eyes were fixed on the stars above. So intent was he upon the heavens, he did not notice that his foot hovered over the edge of a cliff.
“What does this mean? This boy?” Xifeng’s head swam. She felt herself swaying in her seat, and gripped the edge of the table to steady herself.
Guma’s cruel eyes took in the card. She turned it over, silent and intent. The drop of blood was gone, as though it had never been there at all. “This is the Fool, the card of infinite potential. This boy means luck.”
Excitement slithered down Xifeng’s spine. In the musky haze, anything seemed possible. Only moments ago, she had questioned her aunt’s reading of the Empress card. But now, she didn’t know why she had doubted. A normal reading only ever consisted of six cards, yet she had been granted seven. Surely, that was a sign from the gods themselves. The woman painted on that sliver of wood was her and no other; that was the shape of her own head. “The spirits favor me completely, then,” she said drowsily.
But Guma’s harsh voice broke into her revelation. “Not your luck . . . someone else’s. This card shows a stranger born under a lucky star.” As quick as she had been to dismiss the card, she now glared as though it were Xifeng’s fault. “Someone plots against you, against everything we strive for.”
Xifeng’s stomach churned as her eyes refocused on the boy’s face. The artist had given him such long lashes. They cast a shadow like the fringe of treetops against his skin. If she pulled off his hat, would she find a waterfall of hair to rival her own? “An enemy disguised,” she uttered, and it seemed the words did not come from her lips, but from the card itself. Guma went very still. “A snake in the grass. A dark world in the cave.”
The room twisted further, and images swam before Xifeng’s eyes: a sea of waving yellow grass, and a snake like a disturbing ink stroke on paper. It glided toward the mouth of a cave with unnatural grace, the movement like dark silk curving around a man’s beckoning arm.
“The Serpent God,” Xifeng murmured as the snake took the shape of a thin, unnaturally tall man. “The true god of us all.”
A voice spoke inside her mind, gentle and familiar, one that had spoken at the edge of her hearing many times before but never so clearly. The moon shines down upon us, beloved . . .
The images melted into each other, but Xifeng could still sense Guma there, sinking to her knees with her hands outstretched in prayer . . . or apology.
Something shifted in Xifeng’s chest. She had heard its growl of fury earlier when she saw Ning looking at Wei, but this was something else, something new: a lazy, satisfied preening, like basking in sunlight. If she closed her eyes, she might even be able to see the creature’s spiraling coils through the cage of her own ribs.
Embrace this boundless night, the voice said tenderly.
“Leave her,” Guma hissed from where she still knelt. “Let her be!”
Xifeng felt herself falling, heard the crack of her forehead against the edge of the table. Right before she sank into unconsciousness, she thought she saw the strangest thing of all: her aunt bending over her with tears in her eyes . . . as though she loved her.
Xifeng closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
Xifeng woke the next morning in the room she shared with Ning. She lay still, head aching as she blinked away a disturbing dream in which she’d swallowed a snake whole. She could still feel it writhing down her throat, choking her, and shuddered as Guma limped in and placed a bowl of steaming broth beside her.
She struggled to sit up. “I’m sorry I overslept. What happened last night?”
“You don’t recall fainting?”
Xifeng winced at a stabbing pain above her heart and tugged at the neck of her tunic, gasping at the sight of the bright red crisscross on her skin. It had been etched by a sharp blade.
“I had to drain you of some lifeblood. There was too much magic coursing through you.” Guma tilted her head. “You truly don’t remember what happened?”
“The card you showed me—the Fool, the boy who looked like a girl in disguise—he . . . or she is my enemy.” It wasn’t a question, but still Guma nodded. “And I’m not to know who she is? Or when I will meet her?”
“The spirits of magic were warning us. We must stay vigilant. Trust no one, understand? Nothing can stand in your way when you earn your place in the Empress’s inner circle.”
She lowered herself painfully onto a stool, examining each of her niece’s features in turn.
Xifeng often felt as though her eyes, nose, and mouth were all separate entities instead of parts of a whole—possessions whose worth Guma assessed, like pearls and combs and silks. Who would endure more pain if she broke her nose or scratched her eye—herself, or Guma?
“You’ll be safer in the palace.” Her aunt’s voice held the same fear as when she had seen the volume of poetry.
Xifeng remembered Guma falling to her knees the night before, pleading hands outstretched. “Who was the man I saw in the vision?” Three words appeared in her mind, but she dared not say them aloud: the Serpent God. Guma had spoken the phrase once many years ago, when Xifeng had woken from a nightmare and described what she had seen.
“He’s someone you would do better to forget.” Guma swiftly changed the subject. “The spirits of magic only give hints and instructions through the cards. It is for you to take your destiny in your hands. If the Emperor won’t send for you, you must go yourself.”
Xifeng sipped her broth. Away from the plumes of incense, the notion of becoming Empress seemed ridiculous once more. But why should it? she asked herself. Thanks to Guma, she had better than a lady’s education, and she was certainly beautiful enough.
“I will finish the pink silk by myself today. Brush your hair, wash your face, and take some air this morning. You look haggard,” Guma said distastefully, shuffling toward the door. “And cover your head from the sun. We can’t have you getting as dark as a common farm girl if you’re to go to the palace. The Empress and her ladies never have to go out into the sun.”
Xifeng rubbed her bruised forehead and rose from her pallet with a wince. The basin of water confirmed that she did look ill, so she scrubbed her face well and pinched her cheeks to make them pink. The problem with her looks was that people expected her to maintain them, Guma most of all. Any careless morning in which she did not wash or brush her hair properly, and she would be deemed lazy or slatternly.
