“Not all spirits are violent,” explained Kuro. “They’re like us; they vary in disposition and temperament.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, turning back to the noodle shop as the lock clicked and Lei pushed the door open, ushering us inside. Kuro and I entered first, followed by Winter.
“Baihu once told me,” Kuro replied, and I felt a twinge of surprise, followed by jealousy. Baihu was nothing like Qinglong. She had always sought to maintain balance between realms, and even now, with the veil torn, she hadn’t attempted to cross into the human realm. Was it our ban on black magic that had first cast spirits as beings of malice and evil? And in perceiving them that way, had we somehow made it a reality?
I cleared my throat. “The Ivory Tiger seems—”
“Liu Sky!” Lei shouted. “Get down!”
I whirled around just as a seemingly dead corpse picked himself off the street and, with supernatural strength, proceeded to pitch an axe at Sky. Sky, standing outside the noodle shop, ducked just in time, the axe barely grazing his shoulder. The old man’s hair had gone to gray, and his face was as wrinkled as a dried prune. And yet, when he saw the axe had not met its mark, he charged at Sky, sprinting as if he were a boy in his prime.
Sky anchored his stance, raising his sword, but Lei beat him to it. With practiced aim, Lei hurled a dual-sided knife at the man, who choked as the blade sliced cleanly across his throat. The blood that trickled out was the color of black tar.
The old man fell to his knees, chortling. I couldn’t tell if he was choking or laughing, or both. His yellow irises fixed on mine as he died. As if he saw me, and knew what I was.
Someone like him.
Someone ready to die.
“Get in,” ordered Lei, shaking me from my stupor. He bolted the door behind us.
None of us, it turnedout, knew how to cook. There was noodle dough sitting on the kitchen counter, yet no one who knew how toknead it. Then there were chicken eggs in the basket by the fire, and no one who knew how to cook them. Laughing at our incompetence, Lei endeavored to learn.
Meanwhile, I escaped to the storage room, craving solitude. Being in Lei and Sky’s combined presence grated on my nerves like the shrill whine of a whistle, leaving me agitated and on edge. I shut the storage room door and sat in the dark, seeking focus and calm. An idea was simmering in the back of my mind, like a pot left over a low flame.
“We’re human, each of us,” Lei had told me. “But I believe we’re more than our worst moments. It’s our best moments that have the power to define us.”
“Remember yourself.” My mother’s advice had enabled me to escape the spirit realm. “Remember your humanness, and you will be able to return.”
What was humanness? Was it a condition of being, or was it inherent somehow? Was it possible to lose one’s humanity, or was that like water losing its wetness? How then did human vessels die? It was when we lost our qi, yes, but more than that, it was when we lost our will to live.
What gave us our will to live, then? Joy, perhaps, and hope. Where did those feelings stem from?
“The future is always a source of comfort,” Lei had once told me. “It’s the past I despise.”
I found now that I did not agree. It was my memories that offered the essence of me, that brought me invaluable comfort, that reminded me of who I was. I thought of my mother in her moments of lucidity, teaching me how to swim. Xiuying braiding my hair. Rouha and Plum stuffing their faces with dumplings, asking me to tell them the same story over and over.
“What happened to the cowherd and the weaver girl?”
“They lived happily ever after,” I said, having changed the story for them.
“What happens after happily ever after?”
“Every day, they wake up and choose happiness.”
“Like us,” said Rouha, her mouth full. “We do that too.”
The door burst open, yanking me from my thoughts. Sky leaned against it, panting, his face stricken and white.
“What is it?” I asked him, reaching for my sword.
“Nothing,” he said, color slowly returning to his face. “Don’t go off alone,” he added roughly. “We thought you’d been taken.”
I’ve been in here for all of five minutes, I wanted to argue. But I saw the strain on his face, which likely matched my own. Holding my tongue, I strode past him to the kitchen.
Dinner was boiled eggs—underboiled—and noodles—overcooked. Still, after life in the army, I was not one to refuse food.
“Look what I found!” announced Kuro, emerging from the cellar with a bottle of sorghum wine. “It’s a proper meal now.”
