Part I
One
You may burn bamboo, but it will still stand straight. You may shatter jade, but its color will not fade.
—Book of Odes, 856
Time bore the quality ofa tangled spool of thread. I could not unravel the knots, could not sense where things ended, could not recall where things began.
I started, like always, from what I knew: I was in the palace dungeons, in the capital city of Anlai, my home. My home when I had no ability to choose where I called home.
I had been here for some time now. I had not tried to count the days, which had bled into weeks or months or years. By the chill in the air, and the fur lining of my jail warden’s coat, winter was fast approaching.
Snow would be settling on the branches of Xiuying’s beloved plum trees, which she pruned every spring. The snow would spread across the garden like colorless jewels, catching the winter sunlight and refracting it in every direction. Rouha would be chiseling out exuberant ice sculptures, and Plum would be trying to eat snow. Uncle Zhou would be simmering his favorite winter melon soup, which tasted heavenly on a cold snowy morning.
The taste of life had been sweet, hadn’t it? But it tasted sweetest when it was taken from you.
I remembered the thrill of unfathomable power surging through my veins, that eddy of sheer delight as roiling waves rose to meet my call. Racing through a darkening forest, fighting side by side with my comrades in arms. Knowing my platoon had my back. Knowing I had friends to call my own.
Friends, they said, before betraying me. But we didn’t think about that anymore.
I remembered climbing onto a terrace railing and looking out over the dark expanse of water, the waiting ocean like a well of black, black ink. The recklessness that felt like a drug, better than a drug, the thrill of knowing the waves would catch me.Will you obey me?I’d asked the sea.Will you obey me as you obey the dragon?
And yet, down here in the dungeons, my memories felt as distant as dreams.
The outer door to my prison cell clanged open. I heard the thud of footsteps, even and heavy. Three sets of them.
“Good evening, sweetheart. Let’s continue where we left off last time, shall we?”
My heart began to stutter. A practiced response, a trained step in the choreography. Already I could feel the nerves in my hand tingling, anticipating the pain to come. Perhaps the anticipation was worse than the pain itself, for these days, pain lingered beneath every waking moment. There was the pain of separation: of no longer hearing the dragon’s voice. The pain of dependency; I needed lixia in my bloodstream like a person needed water. Then there were the more insidious hurts, carved into me like scars: the marks of betrayal, of loneliness. Of knowing there could be no happiness for someone like me.
A perversion. A threat to the state. A girl who desired more.
“Get up.”
I did not move. They unlocked the door to my cell and lifted me. Still I did not resist. I felt them clasp chains around my legs, securing me to the interrogation chair.
“Your greed is unending,” the dragon had once told me. “An ocean’s hunger.”
They fit wooden sticks around my fingers, opting for my left hand this time. Slowly, the guards pulled the ropes connecting the sticks, not enough to inflict pain, only discomfort. Ironically, the zanzhi, finger crushing, was a torture method reserved for women, as it was considered more humane than jiagun, leg twisting. But I had endured both.
“Where are the remaining black magic practitioners hiding?” asked Warden Hu.
I tried to speak but no sound emerged. It must have been days since I’d last spoken aloud.
“Give her water.”
One of the guards forced a canteen of water down my throat, and I sputtered, coughing.
“Where are the black magic practitioners hiding?” he asked again.
I cleared my throat. “There are no others.”
“You lie.” He nodded once. My throat tightened with the ropes.
I gasped as the pain came, sharp and staggering. Although the pain was concentrated along the base of my fingers, my entire arm reverberated with feeling. Despite the chill in the air, I was soon sweating.
They released the ropes. I sagged against the chair, my hand throbbing with pain. I stared at the useless appendage as if it belonged to a stranger. My right hand was too sore to use, and now my left would soon follow. How did they expect me to eat and drink? How did they expect me to live?
