Scale-Bright (14 page)

At once he came to me and frowning asked, "This is not a riddle or a metaphor?"

I smiled at him; felt safe in doing so, in the impossibility of my demand. "I am being entirely literal."

His long lashes beat slowly as he regarded me. "That is a tall order."

"What treasure worth having is not purchased dear?"

Did I want to be purchased; did I want to be treasured? So thoughtlessly I gave that taunt. But he'd have risen to the task regardless, for the idea of marriage appealed to his need for recognition; it would secure his manhood and therefore his godhood. He might have a splendid mansion now, and all the knowledge he'd gathered, but what of that? All in heaven did. A goddess to wife gave him something to possess, something to master. This nebulous sense of having and achieving would grant him the beginning of status.

In days, so few and so short, he brought me the crane. It was garbed white, the color of death. It was crowned red, the color of weddings.

Dijun knelt to present his gift, not from humility but necessity; he was nearly as pale as its feathers, his eyes glittering above bloodless cheeks. "It fed from my arteries, to have light without heat."

I did not let on how well the bird pleased me; its beak like butchery, its talons like anger. Expectant, it stretched its long neck in my direction. "Is it to feed from mine also?"

"Then it would be no gift." His eyes fluttered shut and his head lowered, as though it could no longer bear the weight of being.

Weakness inspired if not tenderness then bravery. I would remember: I was the one who let him into my arms, I and no other. His head was heavy on my knee, his breath stuttery in my palm. Dijun was so breakable that I could have strangled him with my bare hands and exhumed his heart with my nails. Older, wiser Xihe would have done that and ended our misfortune before it could begin. She would have known he'd predicted me and laid down his fragility in my lap, an exquisite trap.

I was not old. I was not wise.

Night fell. We stood on my highest balcony, he and I. Having been satiated on my orchard the crane preened and did not fight when I cast it high. Its light burned silver-white and blotted out the stars. More beautiful to me, by far, than Dijun ever was or would be.

* * *

We did not immediately wed. There were dates to consider, auspices important even to us who were divine. Lacking mother, father, or older kin it was up to me to give myself away in marriage. I felt an accomplice to a robbery of my own home.

That was moot; on the day of my transition from goddess to bride my mansion dissolved to mist, to await shaping by the wishes of the next immortal granted this patch of land. As though that would be recompense, Xiwangmu invited me to her palace where cloud-girls dressed my hair in spirals, pinned it under a buyao heavy with fire opals, and draped my face with a silk veil the color of my lychees. The hue smoothed out the creases of my disquiet until I realized that I would be half-blind until Dijun lifted that trifling bit of cloth, his right as my groom. My own hands were not permitted such.

The cloud-girls assured me that I would be the envy of every goddess and Dijun the envy of every god.

Our nuptials were presided over by the emperor himself, beneath a sky of phoenixes and qilin. One table for gods, one for goddesses; both plied with nine courses of dishes that renewed themselves without cease. A celestial scribe stood in attendance, unspooling an endless scroll, his hand and brush a hummingbird blur to record my entry into the country of wifehood. Dijun held up my veil far enough for me to eat, feeding me pearl-dusted abalone, shed longma scales, iridescent shark fins. Our guests praised his diligence and husbandly virtue: not yet properly wed and already so adoring, so excellent! How fortunate I was, best-blessed of all brides.

He did finally lift that whisper of silk all the way, once my cloud-girls retinue and I arrived at his home.

Stepping over the threshold should have been my metamorphosis, sailing high over the cataract of ceremony and the roof of conjugal feast. It was not, and his home was nothing like mine. A garden easily as vast, with its own lakes; in place of fruits and trees stood obsidian, sculpted expertly—his own work, he murmured in my ear—but they did not move, did not grow. They would not taste sweet if they tasted of anything; they would cut my mouth, draw blood from gums until my palate understood only hurt.

In the enclosure of the marital bed we sat, sipping wine until the celebrants were done wishing us luck and fertility. I'd have liked to have seen more of his house, which he had built like a honeycomb hexagon by hexagon, hanging each wall with long scrolls of verse and proverb, lining each corner with black vases. We finished the last drops. It would have to wait. This night would be passed by means other than wandering from chamber to chamber, touching and admiring new things, meeting with his servants.

Dijun removed jewelry from my head and loosened my hair; each coil fell before him with a sigh. He peeled the complicated robes from me, fastidious as flaying, and when there was nothing more to expose he undid his own.

Seized with an urge for tidiness I gathered the clothes, folded them away on the round table at which we would share breakfast come morning. I caught a glimpse of my nakedness in a mirror, sheathed in nothing but the lingering warmth of his hands. His reflection watched me, and I watched it back—spousal scrutiny mine by right—examining the sweep of his eyebrows, the heavy fringe of his eyelashes, the sure lines of his jaw. I waited for them to ignite in me a reaction stronger than the remote pleasure of viewing an exceptional orchid bloom.

When I turned around, his patience had expired.

He panted into the crook of my neck, whispered flame into my breast, chanted my name into my belly. My hands sought purchase; knowing not what to do with them I arranged them on his sides, where under my fingertips his blood throbbed, an animal fighting to break loose from a net of ligaments. When he pressed me into the sheets my muscles coiled against the coming finality of our union, and I told myself: calm. There was delight to be found in the dictates and practices of desire. Set aside fear; it could not be so terrible.

And it was not. There were moments when his touches surprised, made me shudder from a sharp impersonal thrill. He did not cause me harm. But it obtained over the minutes a mechanical repetition that I soon found unbearable. I wanted to be done; I wanted to be gone. The longer it went, the less I felt like myself; to be opened like this, to be bared inside-out. The lamplight was as voracious as he, and neither left my skin with a secret to keep.

Above me Dijun shuddered, his mouth sealed against what I did not understand, his perfect face blank and slack. Sweat beaded on his brow and pattered onto me. I turned my cheek so it might not slip into my mouth. He bent to whisper in my ear, hoarse, that I was his.

When his rhythms had quieted and he lay as though one dead, I stepped out into his obsidian labyrinth to watch the crane that'd drunk from his veins and eaten from my hand. Under its light I revised my definition of contentment.

* * *

Lin was beating clothes against river rocks when I found her, side by side with another girl. The sight of me stopped her short, and she let the laundry drop slowly into the washing tub at her feet. She grabbed her friend's sleeve, yanking nearly hard enough to unbalance the other mortal and send them both tumbling into the river. "Jia. Jia! See? I told you I really did meet her."

"I see—oh." Jia's eyes were wide. I was not used to appraisal so direct. Even Dijun's had been circumspect, offered through the filter of his lowered lashes. "I thought you'd gone mad with fever when you told me you met a gorgeous maiden in the blizzard."

"I did not say she was gorgeous!" Lin elbowed her friend in the side.

"From the way you spoke it was obvious you thought she was." Jia grinned at me. "Which you are, if you don't mind me saying that."

"You are both mannerless," I said, though I did not mind. Her flattery was not like my husband's, given for no motive other than that she thought me pleasant to look upon. "You do realize I am of heaven?"

Lin put her hands on her hips. "I still don't believe that."

Her insolence surprised a laugh out of me. On the few occasions I had appeared before humans, none had ever questioned my divinity; one and all they had prostrated themselves in awe. I bent to the tub and exerted the mildest pulse. The waters rippled and in a moment were seething. "Well? I could boil an entire lake, but I don't do that to amuse a pair of rude country girls."

"An entire lake," Lin said with a wistful sigh. "To bathe in that during winter."

To which, Jia: "To see you bathing in that, winter or elsewise. You'll invite me, of course?"

At that the child I had saved from winter turned the hue of cherry blossoms. She flapped her hands at the cooling tub. "The steam."

Jia laughed, throaty, full of knowing. Though of mortal girls I comprehended near nothing, I could guess that they were not simply friends. "Are you sworn sisters?" I said when Jia had disappeared to fetch more dirty laundry. "Or lovers?"

"Aren't you blunt." Lin made a face in Jia's direction. "She's a lecher, a wanton, and if Mother knows... You don't think it strange or—or wrong, or impious, do you?"

"Why would I? Silly child."

She let out a breath long pent-up. "Good. So what've you been doing with yourself? It's been nearly two seasons." As though we were old friends, with years of climbing trees and mushroom-picking together on scraped knees and running downriver on bare fish-bitten feet.

Out of me, silence bled from the pinprick she'd made in my shell of empty words, empty acts.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"I've been marrying." For it seemed a process, not a finished result. The idea of its completion filled me with eager dread. "A god."

"Oh," Lin said. "I thought you might have chosen a goddess to wife. Well. I suppose that... that doesn't happen in heaven. It'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Should I offer congratulations? It's just you don't seem happy."

"I'm not unhappy." The lie curdled in my mouth. I longed to spit it out, but like all lies it congealed, stuck. "But I do wonder if I could have delayed the wedding."

"You could have told him ‘No, you are ugly as a pig's rear.'"

"Out of all the gods he is the handsomest."

"Then, ‘No, you are doltish as an ox.'"

"He is intelligent and learned in the scholarly pursuits." Scrolls in every chamber; all his servants were artists and poets, learning at his feet as he painted portraits of me, composed verses to my loveliness.

Lin's brows drew together. "Does he bore you in bed?"

"You ask too many questions. I suppose Jia does not ever bore you."

"She kisses like summer," Lin said and her gaze became distant, her mind turning fast on its wheels to secrets and embraces.

Did Dijun kiss like summer? I could not fathom what that even meant. "My husband is kind." All of heaven said so; lauded his devotion to me. Was even the emperor so good to Xiwangmu? "Daily he labors to please me."

"But you don't look pleased. He doesn't keep mistresses, does he?"

"We in heaven are above impulses so base." Yet I wished he was not. I stood and shook myself. Beyond Lin I could glimpse a being more paper than skin biding patiently under bamboo leaves. Its whiteless eyes peered at me. Dijun's creatures had perfected that art of reproaching me in my husband's place, without words. My throat tightened. "I should go."

"Already? I thought you might want to share a meal with us." Lin drew one of the trousers out from the tub and wrung it. The garment was faded; had never been white. Sideways she glanced, longing, at my robes. Her eyes lingered on the patterned bixi where plum blossoms flowered. "But you wouldn't want to do that anyway, I guess."

"It's not—" I caught myself. To be flustered before a mortal girl. "I have matters of import to attend to. I will come again, and next time… perhaps you and Jia will like something fine to wear. It doesn't do for me to be seen in such ragged company."

"Oh, you bite." Before I could step away, Lin flung her arms around me. She smelled of sweat, youth, and rice. "Do come back. Jia and I will cook for you. It won't be as amazing as anything you eat up there, but it'll be our best."

A few hours later, when I was safely ensconced in heaven, the sky fell and flood claimed the mortal lands.

* * *

His servants gave me such obeisance, fit for an empress. There is no corner in his house, no path in his garden, where I might walk without the rustling of paper robes and paper caps as spirits of lutes and zithers cast themselves low before me. An inkstone that'd gained soul and thought would kiss the tip of my slipper, its muzzle pebble-smooth and cold. None of them ever spoke; across their vests was the word silence. Dijun treasured quiet.

I shattered that when I strode into his study, where he sat at his writing desk bent over loose papers, jade tablets, and clusters of threaded coins. "Husband," I said, "why did you have your servant fetch me?"

He looked up, vexation warping his features. Quickly gone; a veil slid shut over that and he was flawless again, as sweet-seeming as he'd been that day by the Huang He. "Xihe! To celebrate—though each time I see you it is a celebration unto itself. Come, see these. I've presented them to the emperor and he was most pleased. A work in progress, these divination charts, but I predicted the flood to the hour."

A fine trembling began deep in my liver. "You knew this would happen?"

"Of course, that's why I sent for you. The cause is still to be determined, a dragon in its death throes perhaps, or two uncouth quarreling gods." He motioned with his hand, elegant dismissal. "It is beside the point. My labors have caught His Majesty's interest. At last I may be granted domain, monarch in my own right, and that will elevate you too, my wife. Doesn't that charm you?"

"Why did you—" If I retched I would disgrace myself. "I was there, I could have saved mortals. The flood's only water. At a thought I could've vaporized it."