“Wait.” There’s a knot in Fanli’s throat. He breathes in, steadies himself. Swallows. At last he says, so quietly Luyi has to lean in to hear him: “And search the rivers.”
At dawn, they finally pull my body out from the water.
A small, somber crowd has formed on the riverbanks. One unsuspecting child catches a glimpse of my corpse and bursts into loud, inconsolable sobs.
Death knows no mercy; it has robbed me of all my beauty. My skin is bloated and starting to slough off, dark veins running under the surface like mountain creeks. Angry red marks are etched into my wrists and ankles from the rope. Strands of wet, black hair cling to my cheeks like seaweed. My lips are colorless and cracked, my eyes closed.
Fanli makes a sound I didn’t know a mortal man could make.
Those watching have the sense to move out of the way. And just in time too. He falls to his knees beside me, cradling my corpse. He has never cried before, not even when he was held captive by the Wu, when they tore his back into strips of raw flesh. But he weeps now, his shoulders trembling.
The air is completely silent. Even the birds have stopped singing.
“Fanli, please…,” Luyi tries, taking a step forward. He is brave for it; I do not think anybody else would have dared utter a word. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Perhaps she was swept away by the currents— Perhaps it was an accident—”
Fanli hugs me tighter, his hair spilling free from its knot and tumbling over his shoulders, tickling my face. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse, that of a dead man, somebody who has already lost everything there is to lose. His eyes are crimson. “It was no accident.” He had tried to warn me.You must watch out for KingGoujian.But he had miscalculated; he thought Goujian would wait longer to act. He thought we would have more time.
A chill settles in over the crowd.
Luyi looks at him uncertainly. “What—what do you mean?”
But Fanli doesn’t hear him, or doesn’t care. He turns back to me, and strokes my hair gently, so gently, brushing it back from my ruined face as if afraid to hurt me. He does not let anybody else approach. He does not speak. He just kneels on the cold, damp dirt, holding me, the river rushing on and on behind him.
A day passes. Two. Three whole cycles of the moon chasing the sun away, of him losing his mind with grief. He doesn’t eat or drink or sleep, and refuses any company, any comfort.
“You have to take care of yourself,” Luyi tells him tentatively one morning. I can tell he has practiced this many times over, attempting to find the perfect combination of words. But of course, no words could ever be right. “Please, Fanli,” he says, his tone low and pleading. Fanli has not responded. Perhaps Luyi mistakes this for encouragement, because he continues, “It cannot go on like this. She wouldn’t want—”
It is as if Fanli has been brought to life, jolted by lightning. All of a sudden he moves, swift as a serpent, and in a violent flash, he has Luyi pinned to the ground, one hand fastened around his neck.
Luyi’s eyes widen. He struggles uselessly, beating at the dust. Fanli digs his knees deeper into the sides of his stomach, bracketing him with his body. “Fanli—Stop— Have you gone—completely insane—”
“Do not speak another word about her,” Fanli says with soft vehemence, his pupils dilated. “Do not presume to understand what she wants. You cannot know. None of us will ever know.”
He lets Luyi flail a while longer, until the flesh under his fingers has gone stark white, before he finally eases his weight off Luyi’s body and lets go. Luyi bolts upright, coughing and gasping.
“Fanli,” he chokes out at last. “Just talk to me. Hit me, if it’ll make you feel better. I cannot…” He makes a helpless gesture with his empty hands. “I hate seeing you this way.”
Fanli doesn’t even look up. “I regret it now.”
Luyi stills. “What?”
“I regret it,” Fanli repeats, his voice rusty with disuse. “I should never have trained her. I should never have let her go to the Wu.”
“But—she saved the kingdom,” Luyi says. “She saved us all. She will go down in history as a hero.”
Slowly, Fanli lifts his gaze. His face is hollow, haunted, his eyes black as the darkest night. Luyi flinches. “And who was there to save her?” Fanli rasps.
Luyi cannot seem to find a reply.
He laughs then, a harsh, wild sound. He laughs until tears flow down his cheeks. “Isn’t it funny? I used to dream of changing the world. Of working for the greater good. But what good is the world,” he asks, “if she is gone?”
That evening, Fanli accepts a shallow bowl of millet porridge. He must be starving at this point, but he drinks it like it’s flavorless, like it’s just air to him. Sustenance, and nothing more. I watch the relief spread over Luyi’s face. He thinks that Fanli is starting to recover. That perhaps he will move on past this, and return to his old self.
But I know him all too well.
Desperate, I visit him in dreams. It is the only place I can go for him to see me.
We’re standing in a meadow of some kind, with ten miles of peach blossoms stretching all around us. Vivid pink petals bloom from the slender branches. A pair of white butterflies flutter past in the blue sky, weaving their way around each other.
