Disturbing as it is that the mó mirror our bodies, I find it worse that they also mirror our physical needs: hunger, thirst, lust, exhaustion. The only difference is that they feast onourflesh and drinkoursouls.
The worst? They don’t evenneedthem to survive. To them, our flesh and souls simply taste like honey. Like sunlight. Like sweet morning dew. I know this because one of them told me as she drank my father’s soul. I will never forget her smile and the way she licked her lips, the casual cruelty of her laughter while I watched.
I force myself to stand very still as the mó closes the distance between us. His smile is almost lazy as he lifts a hand and runs it down my cheek. I suppress a shiver at how warm his skin is, how human he appears despite being a creature of yin, of darkness and night and moon.
The mó catches my shudder and inhales, mistaking it for desire. His eyes—deep red like those of all beings from the Kingdom of Night—darken with want.
Two can play at this game. My maiden’s outfit has tricked him into lowering his defenses. He thinks me a powerless mortal girl—not a trained practitioner who is capable of putting up a fight.
As the mó lowers his mouth to my throat, I strike.
There are three key differences between mó and mortals. One slash to the major artery on his neck reveals the first: instead of blood, out pours a substance resembling black smoke. Mó’s ichor is poisonous to mortals, known to cause paralysis and pain. I pivot away, and my second crescent blade—Poison, named for its talisman—bites deep into his neck.
The mó lets out a snarl, an inhuman sound reminding me of just exactly what he—it—really is. As he jerks away, my lips curl in grim satisfaction. It’s too late: poison has begun to spread through his veins.
The third crescent blade I select, which I’ve named Striker, is reinforced with a talisman that gives it extra power as I drive it into the demon’s chest—into the soft spot between the ribs. The second difference: in the place of a mortal’s heart, the mó have cores of dark magic.
The demon’s scream sounds uncannily human, but I grit my teeth and follow him like we are in a twisted dance as he stumbles back, trying to extricate himself from my blade.
My blade has cut through his core. I will my gaze to never stray from his face as his flesh cracks like porcelain, melting away into the smoke and shadows that make up these creatures. I savor the fear in his eyes, the ichor dripping down my blade, and for a moment, I’m ten years old again, crouched in the kitchen with my mother’s prone body in my arms, shielding my baby sister from the sight of the woman who was not a woman drinking my father’s soul. For a moment, the eventsof that night unwind, but I shake them off and know that I am not a helpless child anymore. I am powerful, and I am the hunter.
I twist Striker one more time, and the blade finishes its work. With a guttural scream, the demon’s body dissolves in a swirl of shadows, a melting face, a pair of glowing red eyes, twisting horns and pointed ears—its true form beneath its beautiful mortal skin, and echoes of the dark energy that once made up its core. In a last gasp, it rushes toward me.
I force myself to remain still. When I blink again, there is only wind in my face, the faint rustle of the willow leaves and wisteria at my back.
The final difference: mortals have souls, but demons don’t. Few of our souls make it to reincarnation, but the mó simply dissolve, leaving nothing of what they once were in this world.
I exhale sharply and examine my hands. My fingers tremble as I clean my blades in the water, careful not to touch the ichor steaming from their steel.
One day, I will be strong enough to no longer be afraid.
A flick of my wrists and Poison, Striker, and Shield are back in my sleeves. The water runs red, soaking me up to my waist and staining my dress, but I can’t help thinking there is a twisted beauty to the sight of the light lotuses drifting white against the crimson. My stomach tightens, though, at the sight of how meager their numbers have become.
I wade through the bloody water and harvest them, counting each one: six precious flowers, six months of my mother’s life. I will brew them tonight and store them—one vial for one month. Harvest them too early or store them for too long, and they lose their effectiveness.
This should be enough to last Ma for the next season.
These trips have come to define my life, as though my existence is meted out one season at a time, one vial of elixir for each cycle of the moon. Just one lotus can replenish the life energy of an injured practitioner, even bring someone back from the brink of death. They are rare. And with the ever-darkening night, they are dying out.
That’s why this is my last trip for the next few months. I can no longer depend on light lotuses to sustain my mother’s life. I need something stronger, something that will mend a half-devoured soul. Something that exists in the fabled realm of immortals, across the border in the Kingdom of Sky.
I cradle the lotuses against my chest. Tonight, though, this is enough.
I tuck them carefully into the concealed pockets in my bodice. Then I turn away from the blood-soaked spring and the dead human body and wade back up to the bank.
My sister will be so upset that I’ve ruined the dress she made me.
—
It’s nearing dawn when I return home. Unlike most other villages, Xi’lín did not fortify its walls in the war against the Kingdom of Night. Instead, my father and the other village practitioners set up magical wards all around the periphery to keep out anything non-mortal.
Nine years later, our village still stands, one of the last in the Central Province. The mó attacked our province first, breaking the wards between realms so they could take down our emperor and his army in the Imperial City. Thedevastation quickly spread throughout the province as the demon armies fed on us and our soldiers. But I’ve heard rumors that life remains somewhat normal in the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Provinces, especially far out toward the borders of the mortal realm and the Four Seas of the dragon realms. As the months turned to years and the mó remained in the Imperial City, folks in the Central Province began to migrate to the outskirts of the kingdom.
I enter our village through the pái’fang, feeling the faint swirl of spirit energy as the wards’ magic brushes against my skin. Inside the gate, the rows of clay houses with their gray-tiled roofs and curving eaves sit silent on either side of the dusty road. Once, hawkers would have been setting up their tarps along the streets, ready to receive traders from the Silk Trail that wound through the Kingdom of Rivers.
Now the Trail is gone, as are most of the Xi’lín villagers. I don’t know why Bà didn’t just pack our bags and migrate south toward the sea in the early days. But I’m still here. I tell myself it’s because I’m not strong enough to take my mother and my little sister beyond the protected borders of Xi’lín on a journey through the mó-infested province. Yet there’s another reason, one that I’ve kept to myself. Leaving feels like abandoning the last traces of Bà that remain in this world. Leaving feels like giving up.
My house sits on a corner, with an old plum blossom tree bent over it. My father loved this tree; he named both me and my sister after it. And it saved my life when I was born.
