I touch my own tools. The bamboo, the wood, the pot with my fingerprints on the curve and the misshapen lid that never quite fit right. But it’s all mine. This is where I’m from. I had to come back before I could move forward, the astronomer said.
I place the ingredients into the bowl. The moon reflected in the sea. Each component of the poison has its own mirror in the antidote.
Dried lí lú, thin strands, smelling of soil. Slowing down the heart, opposing the invigorating properties of the white peony root, weakening the grip of the poison.
Licorice, sliced into thin pieces. Mitigating the toxicity of the yellow kūnbù.
Pearl powder, the missing component. Shu had thought it was coral, balancing and stabilizing the antidote, difficult to obtain so far inland. But it was something even more rare and unexpected. For the pearls have fallen out of favor, and the General of K?iláng designed a poison that would not harm his own people. I tasted it in the shared cup, recognized its power in strengthening hidden magics.
Allowing it to steep, I turn instead to the tea leaves brewing, lifting the lid off the pot. It smells like spring, like sprouts emerging from the soil, reaching for the next sprinkle of rain. I pour it over the medicinal ingredients. When I bring the bowl to my lips, I can almost feel the brush of white wings against my cheek.
The soothing warmth runs down my throat, spreads through my entire body.
The Shift comes easily, without need of the dān, even while Shu is lost in her dreaming. Because she is my sister—I was there on the day she was born, our connection built upon our intertwined lives. I can see her these past few weeks, poring over Father’s books, with her chin cradled in her hand. Pulling herbs from the garden in secret, watching for me and Father to appear over the hill. Furtive scribblings on slips of paper, shoved into a drawer or tucked underneath a basket. Not jasmine, not ginseng. The poison does not respond to bleeding …
But she found something that resonated with the small bit of lí lú she ingested, and she suspected the white peony root to be the culprit. There was no way of getting word to me without Father becoming suspicious, so she stitched the hidden message into the embroidery.
The poison made her confused, made it difficult to focus. She saw strange images sometimes, heard whispers in an empty room. Figures emerged from the mist, dreams crossing into reality: birds with human legs, butterflies with blinking eyes on their wings. A giant serpent with golden scales, hissing her name.
The pearl powder courses through my body like lightning, sending me through her memories and into the present, where I find her wandering through a grove of trees.
“Shu!” I call, but she does not seem to hear me. I follow her into the mist, running after her through the forest, like I’ve done so many times before. The trees are shadows, rustling beside us as I give chase.
She stops at the bottom of our favorite tree and turns back, beckoning me to come closer. She’s already climbing when I reach her, ascending quickly. We used to play this game as children, daring the other to climb higher. I can see her feet dangling above me.
Shu waves. “I’m up here!”
My hands touch the bark. It feels real against my palms. I start to climb, finding the next branch, pulling myself higher and higher. But still she remains one step ahead, just out of reach. I know, with an awareness of the goddess whispering to me, that if she breaks through the canopy, she will be lost to me forever. I climb faster.
I hear a whistle, like the winds of an approaching storm. That discordant, piercing note I heard when I saw myself reflected in the eyes of a general.
Above us, a dark shadow descends. As it comes closer, it draws itself together into a dark, undulating form. A serpent with a long, forked tongue and fangs curving from the corner of its mouth. The red points of its eyes bleed hunger.
Shu perches on a branch to my right, frozen in fear before this creature that has haunted her since I left.
I should have been here to protect her.
Branches and leaves fall around us like rain.
I feel the brush of the serpent’s hunger against my mind, like that of the three-headed snake I tore out of Ruyi. It looms overhead, red eyes appearing like polished orbs; I can see my reflection within them. It sees me and wonders what I am.
You…， it hisses in recognition. It does not speak aloud, but instead its voice rings through my head. I’ve seen you before. In the palace. Every word it utters is like a sharp pinprick of ice, driving itself into my skull.
But when it speaks, it gives me glimpses of what it is as well. It attached a piece of itself to the arrow that pierced Ruyi’s side, creating the three-headed monster that feasted on her essence.