The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Moon Spirit

Rumors can have long tails, and the farther and wider they spread, the more they diverge from reality. Sometimes they cease to be rumors entirely. These expanded stories become shared lore or even myths.

This fact was something Maomao was currently learning on a very personal level. Jinshi, on one of his regular visits to the Jade Pavilion, was at this moment asking her about just such a rumor-turned-legend...

“Do you know the story of the otherworldly beauty who was said to have wept tears of pearl?” he asked, his face absolutely serious. Consort Gyokuyou had to force back a laugh. You just never knew what he was going to say next.

Maomao wanted to reply that she was looking at an otherworldly beauty right this moment, but she refrained. The story the gorgeous eunuch was alluding to was quite an old one. It was said that long ago, there had been a woman in the pleasure district more beautiful than anyone, as lovely as a moon spirit. Did she know, he was asking, who it might have been?

And why was he asking this? Well:

“It’s a personal request from the visiting embassy.”

The envoy’s great-grandfather, it seemed, had passed down stories of a radiant woman in a far land, and interest in this character had never left the envoy. The request was profoundly difficult—indeed virtually impossible—but for this honored diplomatic guest they were obliged to make every attempt they could. Hence Jinshi had come to Maomao, with her knowledge of the pleasure district, to see if she might know of whom the story spoke.

“I understand, of course, that the story is from decades ago,” Jinshi said. “This woman must be elderly at best. Who knows if she’s even still alive?”

“Oh, she’s alive,” Maomao said flatly. Jinshi looked at her, his mouth slightly agape. Gaoshun looked likewise, but Consort Gyokuyou’s eyes were sparkling. Hongniang (naturally) let out a sigh at her mistress’s excessive interest.

Yes, Maomao knew the story of an otherworldly beauty who had tears of pearl. She knew it very well.

“So the story is true?!” Jinshi said.

“True? Sir, you’ve met her yourself.”

Jinshi had been to the Verdigris House—Maomao’s home, as it were—and he would certainly have seen her: smoking her pipe, relentlessly sizing up everyone who came anywhere near the establishment. A cunning old lady...

Jinshi and Gaoshun looked at each other, mildly aghast. They could think of only one person who fit that description. The old madam.

Time is a cruel thing: every woman’s looks fade with it, no matter how beautiful she once was; her heart grows desolate and she becomes obsessed with money.

Gyokuyou’s eyes were still gleaming, but maybe it would be better if she didn’t hear this.

“I’m sure she would come running if the price was high enough,” Maomao said. “What do you think?”

There was an awkward beat before Jinshi replied, “I’m not quite sure that would work.” It was more than a problem of shattering someone’s long-cherished dream. At this point it could practically turn into a diplomatic crisis. If the request was for an ethereally beautiful woman, they couldn’t produce a dried prune.

Jinshi had to know perfectly well that the madam as she was now would not be satisfactory—but he must have thought Maomao would have some answer.

“Surely they understand that time passes,” Maomao said. “And surely they’ve been received in proper style already.”

“About that...” Jinshi told her that many beautiful women had already been summoned and a banquet held, but the other party had shown no sign of satisfaction. In fact, snorting laughter had been the only response.

Who would do that? Maomao thought. Even acknowledging that the east and the west might have different standards of beauty, she felt the women here ought to be suitably impressive.

“If you’ll forgive my asking, perhaps we could send someone to him at night?”

Hongniang scowled at her bluntness, but from a diplomatic perspective, that was one way to address the issue.

“I don’t think that would work either,” Jinshi said, scratching the back of his head and frowning. “The envoy in question is a woman, you see.”

Ah. Now she understood what he was struggling with.

After that, the story really began to come out: the high official in charge of receiving the diplomatic mission had come to Jinshi practically in tears. It was hard enough trying to chase the ghost of a beautiful woman, but they were doing it for another woman. And a member of the same sex was always going to be the harshest possible judge.

As far as it went, Jinshi had the looks to entrance anyone at all, though he was in fact a man. He had everything necessary to ensnare virtually anyone. One could practically think that Jinshi himself had been born for this very moment. But imagine all the trouble it could bring down on him. Suppose the other party fell in love with him and made him a condition of any diplomatic deals. With this eunuch, it wasn’t beyond imagining. Or suppose they demanded a nocturnal visit from him—he didn’t have the necessary equipment. Maybe a woman wouldn’t be as given to such games, but regardless, an ounce of prevention...

“And this emissary, is she really important enough for all this?”

“Perhaps you’d understand if I said she holds the trade junction between the west and the north.”

Maomao nodded. She did understand. It would also explain why the caravan had been of such a stupendous scale this time: everyone involved was hoping to open new trade. They would also be trying to feel each other out. This nation’s territory possessed a wide variety of resources, and one occasionally heard rumors to the effect that some of the raids conducted by the barbarian tribes were instigated by other countries.

That might seem to leave the emissary’s country perched precariously in the middle, yet it had gone centuries without being conquered by any other nation. There was a reason for that. This country, which as a trade hub saw a great deal of intermarriage, was supposed to be overflowing with handsome men and beautiful women. Traveling merchants claimed that even the mud-spattered farmers digging up potatoes in the dirt could have been all-conquering beauties in another land.

So what did the old lady do? Maomao wondered. If someone from a place like that had come away convinced that she was a spirit of the moon, then she must have been quite a sight indeed.

“Perhaps we could mix a hallucinogen in our perfume?”

“Do you do that?” Jinshi asked after a second.

“I don’t, but it seems the quickest way,” Maomao said calmly. Jinshi simply shook his head.

Didn’t think so. That would just be another diplomatic problem waiting to happen.

“I’m grasping at straws, here,” Jinshi said. “Do you have any information about what might have happened during that long-ago visit?”

The touch of desperation in his manner was new to her. He really was at the end of his rope. Gyokuyou covered her mouth with a folding fan and giggled. Did she know something?

“I’ll try to find you something to grasp at, then,” Maomao said, and resolved to send a letter to the Verdigris House.

Several days later, the old madam arrived with one of Jinshi’s subordinates. They were in the same building where Maomao met with Lihaku. No outsider, not even a woman, was allowed to simply walk into the rear palace.

“All right, what’s this drivel about?” the madam demanded, casting an appraising glance around the room. Her eyes said: This was the best you could do? Her movements as she entered were spry and sprightly, as if this woman, already over seventy, could easily live to be a hundred.

“They tell me you once entertained a special envoy from another country?”

“That’s right. Must’ve been a good fifty years ago. That was two emperors back, now.” The old lady smirked and began to talk.

It hadn’t been that long after the then-emperor had moved the capital to its current location. This city had been built on the ruins of something older; it had the advantages of being close to the ocean and a great river. There was some resistance to suddenly turning the city, famous far and wide as a tourist destination, into the capital of the entire nation, but the change ultimately went ahead.

Because it had always been a place people gathered, there was already a pleasure quarter there. The old lady (she hadn’t been so old then) had been considered one of the most prestigious courtesans in the city. Imagine: now, she was less of a blossoming flower and more of a withered branch.

“There was no beautiful palace back then like there is now. The big shots were probably losing sleep over where to receive this envoy. Finally, they decided on some ruins that hadn’t been rebuilt. There was an orchard in the area, with a nice little pond and a building nearby. I think it used to be famous—they used to hold rituals there or something.”

And whom should they summon to perform but this woman, called from the pleasure district. Another dozen or so courtesans were asked to participate as well, but the madam was to be the star. Her accomplishments as a courtesan were one consideration, but the chief reason was her body. The emissary came from a land where many bloodlines had intermingled, and people of superlative physical attractiveness were plentiful. If you weren’t tall and well-proportioned, people from the emissary’s country might regard you as a child even if you were an adult. All the more so if you intended to get up on stage.

“All eyes were on me, and that meant I had a lot of preparing to do.”

The reception was to be held in the orchard at night, and a great deal of effort was expended getting rid of any insects. But they were eliminated down to the last worm on a leaf, the madam said, so that there would be no bugs flying around at all. Every possible impediment was removed so that the view from the banquet would be as majestic as possible; even the phase of the moon was calculated.

Every possible factor was accounted for—but no matter how hard the officials worked, there are always those who are bound to get in the way.

“So the day arrives, and some prankster has had a joke with my outfit. I couldn’t believe it!”

Dead bugs, she said, had been rubbed into the clothes she was supposed to wear. Even at that young age, though, the madam was unfazed by the likes of this; she hid the stains with cleverly placed accessories and a gossamer outer cloak and got on with the job. The audience praised her to the skies, and whoever had wished her ill must have been gnashing their teeth and ruing the entire situation.

“Grams, you’ve told me that story before. A lot. Isn’t there anything new you can add?” Maomao fought back a tired yawn.

The madam’s fist snapped her out of it. “If you think you’re cute, you’ve got another think coming,” the old woman huffed. Then she picked up a cloth bundle by her feet and opened it on the table to reveal a drawing. It was on a piece of thick cloth stretched in a wooden frame, and it was done in rich colors rather than black ink. Moreover, it was in the western style, the colors provided not by water but by oil.

The scenery was depicted in layers of light blue; a full moon, somehow at once obscure and clear, reflected in the surface of some water. In the center of the painting was a woman with a flowing scarf. She was surrounded by delicately painted motes of light, perhaps reflections from the moon.

It was the first time Maomao had ever seen the painting. The old lady must have cherished it.

Maomao looked at the face of the beauty in the painting, then stared at the withered old woman across from her.

Then she sighed.

She looked once more at the moon spirit in the picture, then again at the dried-out, money-grubbing miser.

“Got something to say, girl?”

“Nothing at all.”

She didn’t have to say it for both of them to understand: time was cruel.

“Grams” composed herself and went on: “They say that the emissary commissioned this painting after he got back home, if you can believe it. He never set foot in this country again, but he sent it along with one of the caravans.”

Ah... So they painted her to be more beautiful than she was.

“Did you say something?”

“Nothing at all.” The old lady not only had devilishly sharp ears, but an intuition to match. “You just did the same job you always did, right, Grams? Did he really like you that much?”

“Can’t say I understand it myself, but the interpreter said he called me a moon goddess or something.”

Maomao didn’t say anything.

“Careful the way you look at people!”

The old lady was capable of being objective. She might have been sold into courtesan’s work, but she doubted she really deserved that kind of adulation.

Maomao ran a hand through her hair and pursed her lips. Even if they could produce a woman who looked exactly like the one in this painting, and then have that person meet the diplomatic mission, it was hard to imagine they would truly be satisfied. Something would always be missing. The fact that they were trying to impress a woman this time was going to make things harder than before.

“Grams, did the visitor compliment anything specific about you at the banquet?”

“Not sure how to answer that...”

“Something. Anything.”

Maomao received a smack for her trouble; she’d let her attitude get too casual. The old woman was telling her not to act too blasé when there were men around, even if they were eunuchs.

“Well, it’s not a very good memory for me,” the old woman said. “There was that awful prank, and then the place was full of bugs. It was the worst.”

“Bugs?”

“That’s right! They said they’d gotten rid of them all, but when you set up torches outside, insects will flock to them.” She looked downright despondent.

They talked a little longer after that, but not much came of it.

In the office of the Matron of the Serving Women, Maomao showed the painting of the madam to Jinshi and Gaoshun. They could only groan.

“Shall I attempt to find someone who looks like this?” Gaoshun asked Jinshi.

“Might as well try.” They had no other ideas, for the moment.

Hoping to be helpful, Maomao said, “At the time, the madam was about 175 centimeters tall.”

“Rather tall,” Jinshi remarked.

“Yes. Long arms and legs look especially good when performing a dance.”

The madam was much smaller now than she used to be, although she was still taller than Maomao. To be quite honest, it was going to be difficult to find someone so large who also looked just like the woman in the picture.

“Might I suggest finding someone who’s the right height, even if her face doesn’t quite look like the picture?” Maomao said.

“Are there really that many women like that around?” Jinshi asked. Not only tall, but beautiful as well; it was a high bar.

“The envoys aren’t going to be short themselves. If the woman is too small, it will never work,” Gaoshun said. He evidently agreed with Maomao’s stratagem. His remark confirmed that the women of this other land were large; they might take someone of Maomao’s size to be no more than a child.

Just now, though, Gaoshun had said “envoys,” plural. What was that about?

“But they’ll be picky about her appearance too!” Jinshi said, somewhat hotly. That made it sound like the envoys themselves were good-looking. Foreign beauties—Maomao wondered if they might look anything like Consort Gyokuyou.

The two eunuchs sat trading grimaces. Maomao stared at them.

Jinshi looked at her, puzzled. “What is it?”

“Oh, no... I was just thinking we have someone quite suited to the part.”

“Who? Some courtesan from your brothel?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid there’s no one tall enough at the Verdigris House.”

A beauty almost two meters tall, though? Maomao could think of one. She stared hard at Jinshi. Gaoshun noticed and started doing the same. “Oh!” he said as the pieces fell into place.

There was a long beat.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” Jinshi demanded, beginning to sound irritated.

A beauty—a beautiful person—of 175 centimeters or more? Yes, Maomao could think of one.

Interestingly, the site of the previous banquet was on rear palace grounds. It had been all but abandoned at the time, but the rear palace had grown since then, and the area was now in use. Maomao was a little fuzzy on the history, but stories said that this land had once been inhabited by a different people group who were now gone, wiped out by infectious disease. The tribe had possessed an advanced architectural culture, and had left behind the outer walls and the sewer system that now served the rear palace.

One explanation held that when the area’s current inhabitants had arrived from afar, they had brought with them the disease that had wiped out the previous population. Maomao had asked her old man about it, but he’d told her she mustn’t repeat the story to outsiders. It was only a theory, after all, and certain people might not like it.

The location of the banquet, in any event, was a peach grove in the northern quarter. There was indeed a pond along with a building that looked like an old shrine. Even now, the place could easily serve as the location for a banquet.

As Maomao meandered through the area, she heard lively footsteps behind her. Turning, she found her vision dominated by a young woman leaping at her with open arms; the lady proceeded to crash into her and fall on top of her.

“Ha ha! Maomao! What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the very same question.”

Maomao knew this girl; the slightly ditzy tone gave her away: it was Shisui. She was open and friendly, as one might expect of anyone who could make it as Xiaolan’s gossip buddy. Maomao didn’t want to speak for anyone else, but Shisui certainly seemed to be enjoying life in the rear palace.

“There was something I had to do here,” Shisui replied with a smile, pointing toward the grove. The slightly unkempt stand of peach trees was bearing small fruits just then.

“You mean like get a snack?”

“No! Here.” Shisui jogged over to the orchard and came back with something. “Look!”

She dropped what appeared to be a withered leaf in Maomao’s palm. It was oddly heavy, though, as if something were tucked inside it. Maomao unrolled it and took a long look: sitting on the leaf was a pupa. It was a fat little bug, and cute in its way, but an insect was an insect. Maomao looked at Shisui skeptically. “Maybe you shouldn’t. People usually only use these for pranks.”

“What? These cute little guys?”

Maomao gave Shisui back her bug. The other woman took it as tenderly as if it were a human child and put it in an insect cage. The cage was of fine make, but heavily used; Maomao wondered where she’d gotten it.

“This place is amazing,” Shisui said. “So many bugs I’ve never seen before.”

“Oh, really?” Maomao replied flatly. She might have sounded more engaged if they had been talking about medicine. Frankly, she just didn’t care about bugs as much as she did herbs.

“And this bug here, I was really amazed to find one. I’d only seen it in books before. It comes from another country across the sea.”

That other country was a place that had once sent merchants here to trade. There was always a possibility that trade goods from another place might carry with them some of the local insects. These had happened to find a congenial home in this new land and had settled in.

Maomao, her interest piqued by that information, took a fresh look at the cage. In addition to the insect Shisui had put in it a moment ago, there were several cocoons as well.

“So it’s some kind of butterfly.”

“No, it’s a moth. They’re normally nocturnal, so I guess all the grown-up moths are hiding.” Shisui squatted on the ground and picked up a fallen twig from nearby, then sketched a moth with large feelers in the dirt. “They’re really beautiful. They have white wings, so they shine at night.”

“Huh,” Maomao said. Come to think of it, the old madam had said that the insects around here had been exterminated for that banquet long ago—had that included the moths? Pretty though they might be, bugs were bugs.

“You should try coming here at night sometime, Maomao. With the moonlight drifting down over everything, it’s just gorgeous. It’s like you’ve gotten lost in a sacred peach grove.”

“Spare me the hyperbole...” Maomao suddenly stopped, sprang to her feet, and inspected Shisui’s insect cage again. “Tell me—these moths. Do they reproduce as soon as they come out of their cocoons?”

“Gosh, you don’t mince words. I guess they must. Apparently the adults can’t eat, so they die pretty quickly.”

Maomao gulped heavily, then fixed Shisui with a look. “Can you tell the difference between the males and females of this species?”

“Yeah, for the most part...”

Could this be the key?

She might just have figured it out. She might know what it was that had so enchanted the emissary during the madam’s dance. Recreating it would require a good deal of legwork and one sacrificial victim.

“Shisui!”

“Huh? What’s going on?”

Maomao took Shisui by the shoulders and told her there was something she wanted her help with. Maomao thought to herself that her face must have been a terrible thing to behold.

The banquet was to be in five days’ time. It would have been ideal to hold it even sooner, but the sudden change in location to the rear palace’s northern quarter necessitated time to prepare. The idea of holding the reception in the isolated northern area naturally elicited some resistance, but when the objectors were told that this was in the interest of granting a cherished wish for their visitors, they grudgingly accepted it.

The ban on men in the rear palace was temporarily lifted in the northern quarter. Not many ladies lived there anyway, and some of the disused halls could be turned into temporary dormitories for the few days they would be there.

Now it turned out to be an especially good thing that the recent discovery of a corpse in the northern quarter had been kept quiet. It would have served no one to have unsavory rumors circulating.

What with such trouble being taken to put on this banquet, it was decided that the upper consorts might as well attend, but some measures were to be taken for the sake of modesty. They, and in fact all the attendees, would be seated not out in the open, but in modified carriages, so that they could enjoy the proceedings from behind screens that would preserve their privacy. The carriages themselves were to be arranged around the pond.

Some officials even said this might be better than an ordinary banquet; it was easy to set up bug-repelling incense in a carriage, and within its confines one could, to a certain extent, relax. The curtains would be rolled up most of the time, but having walls on three sides meant considerably less concern about who might be watching you.

The consorts were inside the carriages, but their ladies-in-waiting were outside, and it was clear that everyone’s attention was focused on the place of honor, where there stood two carriages, each occupied by a golden-haired beauty with eyes the color of the clear blue sky. It was only upon seeing them that the courtiers realized there were two envoys, rather than one as had been widely assumed. While the two women looked very similar, they were neither twins nor sisters, but rather cousins, descendents of the same grandfather.

Not far away was His Majesty, flanked on either side by the upper consorts.

Now I get it, Maomao thought, her mind reaching back to Gaoshun’s story from a few days earlier.

Partly in deference to the occasion, the envoys were wearing western dress. Maomao had thought for sure they would appear in traditional western dress, but their clothes were from even farther west than that, billowing skirts cinched about the waist.

The carriages were certainly looking like a good idea for the banquet seating. Even considering that standards of beauty differed across places and times, these women were otherworldly in their loveliness. Some of the officials all but fell over themselves when they saw the visitors (whose outfits emphasized their chests), but the envoys’ bodyguards gave them sharp looks to prevent them from getting any ideas.

Guess you really can’t rely on less-competent officials, Maomao thought. In the matter of beauty, the upper consorts of the rear palace were certainly a match for the envoys. But the visiting ladies, with their unusual hair and eyes, had the advantage of provoking curiosity. True, there was Consort Gyokuyou, with her red hair and green eyes and the whiff of exoticism that came with being a foreign princess, but she was a known quantity. The envoys, who were completely new to everyone here, aroused much more excitement.

What was more, Jinshi had no intention of making a spectacle of the consorts; he wasn’t going to let them be used to make the envoys shine in comparison. That was one reason for the screens on the carriages, not simply to hide Gyokuyou’s condition.

It was possible to sense a political motivation for sending women as envoys. Being women didn’t mean they were any less capable, but Maomao was exasperated at the air of superiority that one of the envoys exuded. It so happened that the Emperor’s current favorite consort was also a woman with foreign blood.

Maybe the mirrors they sent the consorts were partly intended as a provocation. And that wasn’t the only challenge the envoys posed: they might have come on the pretense of diplomacy, but they were also, in effect, making sure His Majesty saw them. They must have great confidence indeed in their appearance.

Why were there two of them? Some went so far as to suggest that they hoped to cast their spell not only over His Majesty, but also on the Emperor’s younger brother. It was quite common for two brothers to marry two sisters. No wonder the officials were so worked up.

Sadly for any plan the envoys might have had, the Emperor’s reclusive younger brother was not in attendance at tonight’s banquet.

As for Maomao, she wasn’t with Consort Gyokuyou, but was making preparations elsewhere. The food-tasting was over; the guests had moved on to enjoying drinks and snacks while watching the performances.

It was the night after the full moon; there were no clouds, so the moon was reflected on the pond, as if there were one in the sky and one in the water. With the stage constructed with the pond behind it, the shimmering torches looked a bit over-the-top.

The musical performances boasted quite an orchestra: the huqin, the erhu, the yangqin, and the straight flute, along with an arrangement of gongs called a yunluo. There were other instruments, too, ones Maomao didn’t recognize. Most musical performances in this land featured relatively few instruments, but they seemed to have gone all out for the visitors.

Sword dances, skits, and other entertainments were performed along with the music. Maomao stole a glance at the envoys. Both were laughing, but while their faces resembled each other, the one on the right appeared almost contemptuous in her amusement.

Maybe she’s saying this isn’t exactly what she’d hoped for. Maomao didn’t think that the envoy had come here expecting to see the lady who had so enchanted her great-grandfather; she probably didn’t believe there was any woman in the world more beautiful than herself. In fact, she was overheard to say it was “a shame” that the upper consorts were to be seated in carriages and hidden by screens. (Let’s not mention exactly why she thought it was a shame.) Maomao could see the other envoy’s face darken at that.

Both of the women spoke the language of Maomao’s country, but the calmer and more composed envoy had less of an accent than her companion, who seemed to keep her speech to a minimum, as if afraid she might say something she shouldn’t.

A few moments earlier, the prideful-looking envoy had leaned out of her carriage. The servants nearby had scrambled to offer their hands, but she had refused and had exited the carriage herself. She was wearing high heels and a long skirt, which excited much murmuring among the onlookers, but she appeared supremely confident, not remotely perturbed by the chattering. She was used to this. The way she walked almost seemed meant for display.

“Good evening, sire.” The murmuring only intensified as the woman stopped, of all places, directly in front of His Majesty’s carriage, where she curtsied slowly, her sculpted features appearing to glow in the moonlight. Her skin seemed so pale it might be translucent, and the gold of her hair shone. “Here you are seated so far from us though you have put out this lovely banquet. One could wish you were a little closer to us, that we might converse.”

Despite her slight accent, she spoke quite smoothly—a perfectly respectable command of the language for a diplomat. The Emperor’s bodyguards seemed at a loss for what to do. When he saw the envoy take a polite step back, however, the Emperor appeared to decide she had no malicious intent, and instructed his guards to stand down.

Yikes, look at this, Maomao thought, glancing at the carriages of the four ladies that flanked that of the Emperor. She almost thought she could see the trouble brewing. Consort Lishu might not factor into this episode, but she could only imagine what Gyokuyou and Lihua were thinking. She wasn’t sure how Loulan might feel about this, but to approach His Majesty so boldly was nothing if not indecorous. Geez, this is giving me the willies...

Hongniang was standing outside Gyokuyou’s carriage, her face tight. Her pride as chief lady-in-waiting refused to let her appear anything but composed, but secretly she probably wanted to grind her teeth and clench her fists.

The envoy slowly approached His Majesty’s carriage, looking coquettish. She was stopped—not by the guards, or the Emperor, or any of the consorts, but by the other envoy.

“I think it’s time you came back and sat down,” the other woman said gently. “They’ve gone to all this trouble to put on a lovely performance for us. The least you could do is enjoy it.” Though they wore similar outfits, the calm envoy had a blue hair ornament, while the other woman wore a red one.

The woman with the red accessory looked less than pleased, but the envoy with the blue accessory whispered something in her ear and she was finally induced to go back to her carriage.

I wonder what she said, Maomao thought. She was feeling anxious. She thought she understood now why the other country had sent two envoys. To her, though, it didn’t matter what gender the envoys were, or how many of them there might be, or why they were here. Her priority now was to do her job successfully.

She entered the building and spoke to someone inside. “How’s it going?”

“We’ve done all that we could.” The answer came not from the person Maomao had spoken to, but from Gaoshun. His eyes looked oddly vacant, and his face was pale, as if he’d seen something that ought not to exist in this world.

Maomao looked inside. When she saw the figure within, she felt the blood drain from her own face. Yes, she knew quite well now why Gaoshun looked so disturbed. Standing there was something that ought not to exist in this world. Something that might have stopped the heart of someone with less grit than Maomao. “I think the banquet will be ending soon,” she said.

“Very well,” Gaoshun said, placing a dark cloth over the figure standing inside, as Maomao had instructed. She heard a bell ring, whereupon she took the figure’s hand.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, and headed toward the stage.

The guests of honor would be the first to leave when the banquet was over. Because the seats were also carriages, the guests didn’t have to go anywhere; the carriages would simply start moving. As they began to roll away, music floated through the air. Everyone else was obliged to keep their places until the guests of honor were out of sight.

The carriage wheels clattered along. Maomao guided the figure in the dark cloth between the peach grove and the pond. The other carriages faced the pond, their view of this spot obscured by bobbing willow trees. Only the envoys could see Maomao and the figure. They weren’t going to intercept the envoys’ carriages; they would simply happen to be on the roadside as the guests passed by. They just had to stand by the orchard—no problem at all.

The envoys noticed Maomao and the figure. Just as they were about to dismiss them as nothing more than a couple of maids, Maomao pulled off the dark cloth.

Black hair, tied up in two loops and crowned with a pearl-studded tiara, floated through the night sky. A hair stick gleamed on one side of the figure’s head, a hairpin glinted on the other, and the hair that wasn’t tied up on the figure’s head cascaded down the back.

The figure’s lips were thin, but shone red, and their long eyebrows led down toward almond-shaped eyes accented in green; between those willow-branch brows was an elegant flower mark. The trailing hem of their outfit—a white dress with long sleeves and the neck cinched shut—danced in the wind. The figure seemed to have appeared out of the moonlight.

Maomao tried to study the reactions of the envoys without looking up. They seemed startled; she could see the color of their eyes even in the faint moonlight. Perhaps they saw someone with perfectly ordinary black hair and black eyes. Yet although such features were quite common in this country, the person before them now was a beauty from whom it was impossible to look away.

Maomao, her head still bowed, dropped the black cloth on the ground. At the same moment, she squeezed the figure’s hand. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the silhouette in the envoy’s carriage started. If the woman in the next carriage back could see this, chances were she was having the same reaction. Simply looking at this figure was enough to make you feel like your heart was in a vice, like it might burst at any moment. As if you had been violently poisoned.

The guards were likewise frozen, but the carriage continued to roll slowly forward. They’d arranged this with the driver ahead of time—found someone who was largely immune to these sorts of things and ordered them strictly not to look. On a straight, clear road, they could probably drive a good ten seconds with their eyes closed.

Maomao wasn’t sure she approved of the way the guards let themselves be stupefied, but she knew Gaoshun and the others were ready to rush out should anything happen.

In the midst of all this, it began.

A scarf fluttered, and faintly glowing lights drifted closer. The beautiful person walked forward, the white dress seeming to float. Maomao made to release the figure’s hand, but she felt them catch her fast.

That son of a...

Maomao was left with no choice but to walk alongside, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. The second carriage was already passing by, the second envoy making a very similar face to the first.

Each time the scarf billowed, the number of pale, floating lights grew. Sometimes they would settle on the figure’s tiara or shoulders, multiplying all the while.

The carriages didn’t stop. Maomao knew the bodyguards were looking their way, astonished, but so long as the envoys remained in their vehicles, the guards could do no more than look.

Dozens, hundreds, of tiny lights surrounded Maomao and the figure with its inhuman beauty. The carriages stopped in front of the pond, and the envoys leaned out toward them. At that point, the figure finally let go of Maomao’s hand and she quietly withdrew.

The beautiful figure stood there waving the scarf against a background of bobbing willow trees, dancing lights, and the moon reflected on the water.

This, perhaps, was what the envoys’ great-grandfather had seen all those years ago. Those present could hardly believe the figure was of this world. It was as if one of the celestial nymphs had lost her way and descended to earth, and the distant whistling of the flute sounded like the music of the heavenly realm.

As everyone watched, the beauty raised their hand. Their red lips curved into a smile more alluring than anyone had ever seen. The wind caught the scarf, and the willow branches shook as if to conceal the nymph. The motes of light went everywhere.

At that instant a bronze gong sounded the end of the music, and a shower of blossoms came raining down. No sooner did the onlookers wonder where the petals had come from than the nymph was gone. The white scarf fluttered slowly to the ground, and the lights drifted away.

One of the envoys got out of her carriage, wondering what had happened. She must have been the more, uh, proactive one.

I knew this would be a problem, Maomao thought. They should have gotten out while the getting was good.

The envoy spotted Maomao and cornered her. She was almost a head taller than the diminutive palace woman, and her sharp facial features gave her an imposing beauty. She was speaking quickly, amidst a flurry of gestures. She was clearly asking after the vanished nymph, but in her excitement she had slipped into her native tongue.

Maomao simply pointed upward, toward the moon hanging in the sky. She waited a beat, and then she said the name of the goddess spoken of in that far western land. She wasn’t sure if her pronunciation was quite correct, but her point seemed to get across. The envoy’s jaw dropped, and it was like some glittering thing inside her had been crushed into dust.

The other envoy came over and took the agitated woman by the shoulders. Maomao bowed her head slowly, then turned and left as if nothing at all had happened.

“Things seem to have gone well,” said Gaoshun, who was waiting in the building on the far side of the pond. He was with several other officials, each of them holding insect cages containing a slew of large moths, their wings not quite blue and not quite green—the same ones whose caterpillars Shisui had been collecting.

With her help, Maomao had spent the intervening days getting ahold of as many of these insects as they could find. Not the larvae, but every adult and even every cocoon that looked like it might soon hatch. No effort had been made to exterminate the insects in the peach grove this time, either, so there had been even more of them than she’d expected.

Maomao remembered the painting the old madam had shown her, filled with dots of pale light. This was the truth behind them.

That’s a coincidence if there ever was one.

The old lady said she had been the victim of a prank, and she’d also said there had been a huge number of bugs. The prank had allegedly involved grinding the dead insects into her clothes.

Some bugs use a special smell to attract members of the opposite sex, a fact Maomao had been known to take advantage of when collecting them for medicinal ingredients. She suspected the insects rubbed into the madam’s clothing had been females, and the ones that had flocked around her had been males. The old lady, Maomao was sure, had gone to the edge of the pond and had been waving her scarf trying to drive off the insects. Nothing more than that. But to at least one observer, she had looked like an ethereal moon spirit cloaked in light.

Coincidence can be a force to be reckoned with, though.

It was this event that had cemented the madam’s status within the pleasure district. Who could have guessed that the prank would backfire so spectacularly?

Thus, Maomao had leaned on Shisui to find the female bugs among their collection, and had used their odor to perfume the clothing. Shisui had been quite helpful all around, in fact; Maomao would have to find a way to thank her.

It was obvious what would happen when a whole crowd of the male moths congregated around the smell of the females. What this transcendent effect would do to someone who was already breathtakingly beautiful. And under a near-full moon, no less. It put her in mind of the “hibiscus under the stars.”

“Yes, I would say so. Was this what you wanted?” Maomao looked at the carriages across the pond. The envoys were gone, and the other banquet attendees were slowly trickling away. It had taken no small effort to set things up so they wouldn’t see anything. That moment, after all, wasn’t something everyone should witness. It might render some people gibbering wrecks, never again able to do their jobs.

It could, just possibly, bring the country to its knees.

“I did what you told me,” came a voice laced with annoyance. It was Jinshi, wrapped in a cloth and soaking wet. He’d let his hair down, leaving it looking rather unusual.

His performance had been exceptional. Then he’d had to work his way from one side of the pond to the other, underwater, wearing heavy clothing. It must have demanded substantial physical strength.

As for exactly what they had done, perhaps you’d be so kind as not to inquire further.

“We’ve done all we can. However it turns out, I hardly care.” Jinshi was rubbing his face, producing a red splotch of rouge on his handkerchief. “My hair is still wet!” He sounded a bit put out. Normally the solicitous old lady Suiren would have helped dry it for him, but she wasn’t here.

Gaoshun looked steadily at Maomao. He was always trying to get her to handle things; it was such a headache. At that moment, though, all the other officials present were looking at her too. She wished they wouldn’t regard her with such pity.

Let him dry his own hair! she thought, but finally she took a fresh towel and began wiping Jinshi’s head.