The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 6 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The Dancing Water Sprite

What am I even doing this for? Maomao asked herself, pouting as she prepared the cloth-wrapped package. It was the sort of thing she used when purchasing medicinal herbs. She didn’t grow and harvest everything herself, after all. Sometimes she turned to a specialist, the same way one would get one’s mochi from a place that made nothing but pounded rice cakes.

Maomao looked for Sazen, and found him listlessly sweeping the foyer of the Verdigris House. He’d slept for several days straight after Maomao had gotten home, but as he started to look healthier, the madam began to work him harder again, and meanwhile Maomao was making him study apothecary’s work in his spare time.

“Could you watch the shop for me? I’m just going to the next village; I’ll be back this evening,” she said, leaning out the window.

Sazen flinched and rested his chin on the end of the broom. “You mean it? And is watching the shop all I have to do?” Under Maomao’s relentless tutelage, Sazen had become a pretty competent worker, but it seemed he was still leery of having to take over for very long.

“Take down any of the herbs hanging from the ceiling that have dried and powder them. Preserve them just like we always do.”

“Yeah, sure thing.” Sazen leaned the broom against the wall, then reached under his shirt and scratched his belly, which Maomao rewarded with a glower. She could see the dirt getting underneath his fingernails.

“And make sure you wash your hands,” she added.

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

“Under your fingernails too!”

Yes, Sazen was a quick study, but he could do with a little more interest in hygiene. Plenty of their customers would complain if he wasn’t. Maomao would have to keep reminding him.

I wonder if I’m still in time for the shared carriage, she thought. Renting a carriage all for oneself was expensive. Carriages came to the capital several times per day to deliver provisions, though, and since they unloaded their cargo here, they had room to serve as shared rides on the return journey. It took time and was about the most uncomfortable way to travel, but it had one unquestionable advantage: it was cheap.

“You going somewhere, Freckles?” Chou-u asked, revealing front teeth that were starting to grow back in. His loyal henchman Zulin was beside him. Maomao gave them both a sour look, then pushed past the children and out of the apothecary shop. “Hey, you are going somewhere, aren’t you?” Chou-u called after her. “Is it the market? If you’re going shopping, I wanna go too!”

He grabbed Maomao the cat, who had been sleeping in the foyer, and used her paw to poke Maomao the human in a Take-me, take-me gesture. “Nrah!” the cat objected.

“I’m going to the woods,” Maomao finally said. “It’s a boring spot in the middle of nowhere.”

“The woods! I wanna go to the woods! Take me! Take me! Take me!” The cat’s poking became a veritable slapping. The feline Maomao was no happier about this than the human one, kicking her legs until she freed herself from Chou-u’s grasp.

Instead, Chou-u flung himself on the ground. Maomao would have thought a kid would be over throwing tantrums like that at ten years old, but maybe his pampered upbringing had left him behind on maturity. He seemed ahead of his years in some ways; Maomao could only rue that this wasn’t one of them. Zulin was preparing to imitate her “boss,” but Maomao grabbed her by the collar and stood her up straight before she could make it to the ground.

“I’ll report you to the madam,” Maomao warned her, at which point Zulin froze and shook her head vigorously. Evidently her heart hadn’t been in the tantrum; she’d just been following Chou-u.

“What’s all the racket out here?” The madam appeared, looking tired. Zulin flinched.

“I’m going to go get some herbs. He would only get in my way, and you know it.” She pointed at Chou-u, who was still rolling on the floor.

The madam squinted at Chou-u, then let out an exasperated sigh and said, “Oh, take him, already.”

“What?” Maomao asked, her unhappiness written on her face. She’d been sure that the madam, an eminently practical woman, would see that there was no reason to bring a troublesome brat on a work trip.

“What? No way! You mean it, Gramma?” Chou-u sprang triumphantly to his feet.

Zulin started to bounce up and down in imitation, but the madam held her down with a hand on her head. “Not you.” Zulin’s head drooped in disappointment. Unlike Chou-u, who seemed to cop special treatment at every turn, she was an apprentice. If she were to be allowed to go with Maomao and Chou-u, it would set a bad example for the other trainees. Zulin had been essentially a bonus who came with her older sister, but if she didn’t prove eventually that she could do something to make money, she would certainly be shunted directly into courtesan’s work.

Chou-u patted his despondent lackey on the back. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to bring you a souvenir!”

“And who’s going to pay for this souvenir?” Maomao interjected immediately.

Chou-u ignored her, instead continuing to Zulin, “You’ll be able to go outside one day. Just hang in there—I’ll buy you out eventually!”

Maomao almost choked. Where had he learned to talk like that? And did he know that most of the customers who said that sort of thing were shiftless good-for-nothings?

The madam, ignoring the jabbering kid, nudged Maomao.

“And why am I taking him, exactly?” Maomao growled at her.

The madam stuck her hand into her collar and scratched her collarbone. “You were gone for an age there. You know how Chou-u was acting while you were away?”

Well, of course she didn’t. Probably shouting and playing, like he always did. He was pretty close to Ukyou the manservant; he could get along fine without Maomao.

“Believe it or not, he was depressed,” the madam said. “Think about it. The boy comes here with no parents, and then even you leave him. Anyone would be upset.”

“Not what I expected to hear from a monster of an old lady who would gladly buy a little girl from a procurer,” Maomao replied, the sarcasm thick in her voice. Until Luomen had adopted her, she’d been left alone in a room, ignored no matter how hard she cried. And when the infant Maomao had realized that crying never got her anywhere, she had ceased to do it. It might have been one reason her emotional expression seemed so subdued.

She didn’t specifically resent anyone for that; for that matter, she didn’t personally remember it. The woman who had borne her had work to do, as did Pairin, who’d been the one to give her milk. At the time, the Verdigris House had been on the edge of collapse, and Maomao had been the object of some anger. She considered herself lucky no one had simply strangled her.

“If they’re being sold by a procurer, then their fate is already decided. It’s their parents’ karma, and not my problem. But I raise them and educate them so they can do useful work—don’t you think that’s awfully kind of me? Remember, if they grow up to be dumbasses who can’t do anything, they’re not going to stay here.”

“And what about Chou-u?”

“Figuring out what to do with him is your business. I’m just keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t die. I do get paid for my trouble, after all.”

Uh-huh. Maomao wondered solemnly exactly how much the madam was getting out of this.

“As for your transportation, you can skip the shared carriage. I’ll arrange one for you. You should be grateful,” the madam said.

“Gee, awfully generous of you. I’m not paying fare, you know.”

“It’ll help cover the potatoes,” the madam replied, then headed for the menservants’ room. Maomao watched her go, tilting her head in puzzlement.

I really don’t want to take him, she thought. She was heading for a place the man last night had described to her. Maomao had gotten him to tell her what he knew about the woman in the picture—where Chou-u’s “master” had seen this woman with white hair and red eyes. She was curious, too, about the story of the painter’s encounter with another such woman in Shaoh all those years ago, but for now she had other things on her mind.

It was more than six months ago that the painter had seen the woman in a village where he went to get pigments. He claimed she truly looked like an immortal.

“He said she danced on the water,” the man had told Maomao. The scene was so uncanny that the painter thought he must have dreamed it, in part because he’d wound up at the lake while thoroughly drunk. He collected his pigments, but by then it was late, so he had stayed the night at the village. Before he knew it, it was morning, and he was sleeping in a nearby shed.

By then, the master felt sure this was no dream. It reminded him of the woman he had seen long ago, and he seemed to take it as some sort of sign. That was when his ridiculous talk of moving west had started.

Maomao knew the village the painter had gone to; she’d been there several times to purchase medicine. The perfect excuse for her to go there again. She gave the bubbling Chou-u one more glare and sighed.

After an hour bouncing and rattling along in the carriage, they arrived at a village near a forest. It stood along a river and reminded her in spirit of the quack’s hometown. It mainly produced rice and vegetables, and the freshly planted paddies reflected the sky like giant mirrors.

“Wow!” Chou-u exclaimed, leaning out of the carriage and watching the scenery go by. This wasn’t one of those fancy carriages like the nobility rode in; it was more of a wagon—there were no curtains and no coverings; there were even raincoats stashed on board in case it started raining.

“Careful, Chou-u, don’t lean too far. Don’t come crying to me if you fall out,” called Ukyou, who was sitting on the driver’s bench. The madam had been as good as her word—she’d rented a carriage, but she’d stuck Ukyou with driving it.

What’s the story here? Maomao wondered, looking at Ukyou with some annoyance. It wasn’t that she had any specific beef with the thoughtful chief manservant, but something kept nagging at her as she watched the fields roll by. The paddies were indeed stunning at this time of year. The sky was blue with no hint of rain. The land looked as sapphire as the sky, and there was something mysterious and intriguing about the blue-clad world.

Chou-u tugged on Maomao’s sleeve. “Hey, Freckles. What’s that?”

He pointed to a couple of small hills of sand; in each stood a stick connected to each other by a braid of twisted rope. They appeared to stand by the path of the river that ran alongside the rice paddies.

“I think it’s intended to mark off sacred space,” Maomao said. She didn’t know much about it herself, but she knew it had something to do with some sort of folk religion. It was supposed to create a barrier to keep bad things out. The shape of the rope was a little unusual, though—maybe a local variation on the superstition.

Then, though, Maomao leaned out herself to get a better look. Huh? The rope really didn’t look anything like the other times she’d seen them. She thought they used to be simpler—but this year the rope was more twisted than usual, and strips of white paper had been woven into it. It struck her as a bit more sophisticated than before, but she also knew you didn’t just go changing the shape of cultic objects on a whim.

“We’re here,” Ukyou said. Maomao hopped off the carriage and looked into the woods. “I’ll hang around the village,” Ukyou informed them, pointing to what appeared to be the only place in town for some refreshment. They probably at least had some moonshine on hand. “What do you want to do, Chou-u?”

“Hmm...” Chou-u glanced back and forth between Maomao and Ukyou, then trotted over to Maomao.

Ukyou chuckled. “Think I’ll go knock back a round, then.” He headed for the drinking establishment.

Chou-u was clutching Maomao’s robe for some reason. She was afraid he would pull her belt clean off, so she took his hand instead and pulled him toward the village chief’s house.

“This place sure is empty,” Chou-u said after a quiet moment. It was true—there was really nothing there—but there was also no need to say so out loud, and Maomao gave him a rap on the head.

They headed for the last house in the village, a tumbledown place with vegetables dangling from the eaves. They were probably drying them out to preserve them—a fine idea, but at this time of year, you had to be careful or mold would start growing on the vegetables before you knew it. Next to the vegetables was a braided rope, like a smaller version of the one they had seen earlier.

Maomao figured it had been three years since she’d been here last. Her service in the rear palace had kept her away for a long time, and she hoped the village chief still remembered her.

“Hello?” she called, knocking on the door. Chou-u imitated her with a solid thump, and Maomao shoved down his head angrily, just as a young woman emerged from inside.

“Yes? Who is it?” the woman said. She was quite pretty for someone so far out in the country, and she was dressed in an outfit that looked plain but durable.

“I’d like to see the chief, if I may. Tell him the disciple of Luomen the apothecary is here,” Maomao said, identifying herself not by her own name, but by her father’s. Most people would hardly believe her if she claimed to be an apothecary. Getting a few years older might help with that, but Maomao felt she had no reason to boast of being an apothecary, so she stuck with a name the chief was more likely to recognize.

The young woman called into the house and a middle-aged man emerged—the chief’s son, as Maomao remembered. He must have remembered her too, for he said, “Ah, yes,” and nodded. “I’m afraid my father caught a severe cold last year...”

And had died of it, sadly.

“I see,” Maomao said. Far be it from her to ridicule him, to say it was only a cold. Left unchecked, a cold could quickly get worse and become pneumonia. Her recollection was that the former village chief never took medicine—he was a gregarious personality who was fond of saying that anything could be cured with a good drink and a good sleep. His philosophy had made him a bad customer, but Maomao nonetheless had never disliked him.

“I insisted he should see a doctor, but—well, it’s a moot point now,” the son said. Then: “Sorry. That’s enough sentiment. You’re here to go into the woods?”

“Yes, sir.” Maomao gave him the amount she always paid, but he shook his head.

“Keep it. You’d better get in there before the sun goes down.”

“I’m certainly grateful, sir...” Maomao couldn’t help wondering, though, what had inspired this change of heart.

She was about to put the coins back in the folds of her robe, but Chou-u stuck out his hand. “Freckles! You should use that to buy me candy instead! C’mon, do it!”

“You’ve got your own income,” she said, stashing the coins safely where they belonged and turning toward the forest.

“Lots of snakes this time of year. Be careful,” the new chief said.

“Of course, I know that. And they make excellent ingredients.”

“Not these snakes,” the chief replied, pinching the rope that dangled from the eaves between his fingers. When Maomao looked closer, she saw that each end of the rope was shaped a little differently. It narrowed at one end, while at the other it got thicker and the end was split. It almost reminded her of a snake. In fact, it looked very familiar. “If you kill a snake, the villagers might attack you,” the chief said.

“Attack me? What in the world for?” The idea was virtually incomprehensible to Maomao, whose first thought on seeing a snake was usually how tasty it would be grilled up with a nice soy sauce glaze. For that matter, once before when she had captured several snakes here, they’d actually thanked her for taking care of the pests.

The new chief gave her a tired smile. “It was my father’s last will, you see. Just before he died, when he was very weak, he summoned a shaman.”

He should’ve just called a doctor!

This shaman had given the former chief an incense that would ease his pain, but in exchange he was instructed to disseminate a teaching in the village. That, Maomao realized, was where the unusual “sacred” ropes must have come from.

“See, long ago, a snake god used to be worshipped around here. That was the reasoning,” the current chief said, still smiling sheepishly. His expression suggested that you couldn’t argue with an old faith, but his smile was strained.

“What do you do with the venomous snakes, then?” Maomao asked. Vipers were the farmer’s natural enemy. If one of them bit a person, they were all but done for.

Still smiling that strained smile, the chief whispered, “I’ve been killing them, secretly. I know some of the faithful wouldn’t approve, but what am I supposed to do?” The chief had appearances to maintain. The young woman, probably his wife, was eyeballing the visitors. It couldn’t feel good to watch her husband have a private conversation right in front of her.

Maomao had the permission she wanted, though, so she had no further business here. She decided it was time to make herself scarce.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said.

“Yep!” Chou-u said.

“Ah, there’s one more thing you should know,” the chief said. “It’s not just snakes—apparently, birds are off-limits too. Not that you could probably catch one without a bow and arrow.”

“This shaman sounds pretty demanding. You couldn’t even slaughter a chicken with a rule like that.”

“The prohibition is only on flying birds.”

Maomao spread her hands and shrugged—it made no sense to her. Instead she headed for the woods, with Chou-u right behind her.

“Aren’t you done yet, Freckles?” Chou-u asked, sitting on a stump with his legs dangling.

This is why I didn’t want him here.

Brats like him got bored so quickly. The trip over was all well and good, but it had been obvious that Chou-u would be dead weight sooner rather than later. Maomao felt sure that the old lady had forced her to take him with her so the little rat wouldn’t get in the way of the menservants doing their work. Lonely, her ass!

Maomao ignored Chou-u’s chattering, instead clipping some grass growing by the root of a tree—these were unusual, and she couldn’t resist grabbing them. She only needed the fresh buds, but she would worry about the details later.

“Heeey! Freckles!”

“Pipe down. You’re the one who wanted to tag along,” Maomao said as she shoved some herbs into her bag.

Chou-u braced himself on his hands and leaned forward, looking at Maomao in annoyance. “But I’m tired!”

They hadn’t walked far, but with the overgrown grass and fallen leaves, the footing was difficult. It would be fatiguing for Chou-u, who was still partially paralyzed. Fair enough—but Maomao wasn’t about to cut him any slack for it. If she took it easy on him now, he would expect her to do it all the time.

“Just wait there, then,” she said. “I’m going farther in.”

“What? No way!” Chou-u let his mouth hang open to show his annoyance. “You’re just gonna leave me here?”

“You said you were tired.”

“Ukyou would give me a piggyback ride!”

“Sorry, but you’re too heavy for me. See you.” Maomao promptly started off. Chou-u grimaced, then jumped down off his stump. He did prefer to be with people, like the madam described. When he was in the pleasure district, he could frequently be found with the menservants or the girl children.

The forest was gloomy on account of the dense growth, and he heard a fluttering sound like flapping wings. It was accompanied by a hoo, hoo—maybe it was a pigeon?

“I’m coming! I’m coming, already, just don’t leave me here!” Chou-u called, and started after Maomao, dragging his leg. Maomao, keeping one cold eye on him, continued into the woods.

The place was full of different trees. Many were broadleafs; the place must be rife with nuts and berries in the fall. Conifer forests were better for making paper, but in Li, most such places were located in the north.

As she went along, Maomao spotted a raspberry and popped it in her mouth. Chou-u found another and copied her, which was fine, except that it left his mouth sticky and red. Maomao swallowed her annoyance and wiped his lips, knowing that if he wiped them on his sleeve, the color would never come out.

With each raspberry he ate, Chou-u smiled ruefully. “These are sour,” he announced.

“That’s because they’re not ripe yet,” Maomao said.

It evidently wasn’t going to stop him from eating them. “Hey, Freckles! Can you eat these mushrooms?” he asked, pointing to some small fungi growing on a desiccated tree trunk. “Are they, like, eat-able?”

“They’re not very good, I’m afraid. And they’re not even poisonous.” In other words, they were of no interest to Maomao. Chou-u’s shoulders slumped disappointedly.

They sounded lighthearted, but Maomao hadn’t forgotten why she was here. Eventually she found a marsh (along the way to which she’d discovered some bracket fungus, which made her very happy). Cattails grew along the banks. The pollen of these plants, known as puhuang, had medicinal properties and could be used to aid clotting and as a diuretic.

There was an island in the middle of the marsh, and meanwhile a series of the sacred poles and ropes were set up at the border between the trees and the marsh, for places with water had long been said to be gateways to the other world. That might also explain why there was a small shrine on the island in the lake. The lord of the lake lived there; Maomao had heard that it took the form of a large snake.

There was a hut on the edge of the marsh for the person tasked with tending to the shrine, and that was where Maomao and Chou-u headed. The hut was built on stilts, to keep it clear of the water when there was a heavy rain—but in recent years, the marsh had begun to recede; marks could be seen on the stilts where the water had been. Maomao had heard that even the spot where this small house stood had once been part of the marsh, which might have explained why the ground was soft and muddy and difficult to traverse. They took advantage of a succession of stepping stones to make the journey easier.

Beside the shack was an even smaller structure from which cooing could be heard—pigeons, Maomao suspected. At first she thought maybe they were being kept for food, but then she remembered what the chief had said—if his words were to be believed, it was forbidden to eat them. In which case, maybe they were pets.

Chou-u was inspecting the high-water marks with interest. Maomao went up the stairs that led to the hut and peeked inside. The person inside noticed her, too, for a hirsute old man shortly emerged from the house. Maomao had dealt with him before, and he seemed to remember her as well.

“Haven’t seen you for ages. Thought maybe you’d gone off somewhere and got married,” the old man said.

“Sorry, not yet.”

“And yet that’s quite the young lad you’ve got there!”

The old man hadn’t grown any more delicate or civil while she was away, Maomao saw. He was an old acquaintance of Maomao’s adoptive father Luomen; they had been doctors together once in the capital, long ago. This man was supposed to be quite skilled, but his somewhat unorthodox personality, combined with a misanthropic streak, now saw him living a hermit’s life out here in the boondocks. He claimed to spend his time picking herbs and looking after the shrine, but his duties didn’t seem to extend very far. There was no boat in the water, suggesting he didn’t get over to the island much.

They went inside, where the old man took some dried herbs down off the wall and laid them on his crude table. “Here. Take what you need—but what you see is what I’ve got.”

When Maomao needed an herb that was out of season, or some unusual plant, it was quickest to buy it from this old man. He even had puhuang, laid out on a mat made of cattail leaves.

The man settled himself into a chair with a “Hup!” and leaned forward. Maomao had heard that he was more than ten years older than Luomen—and he hadn’t gotten any younger in the three years since she’d seen him last. He still knew how to dry herbs, though, and to a good quality. In good quantities too, despite his dotage.

“I’m impressed you were able to gather so much,” Maomao said. “Here I was glad just to find you hadn’t gone senile.”

“Ahh, spinsters always have the sharpest tongues.”

“No worse than yours,” Maomao replied, earning a guffaw from Chou-u. She glared at him as she wrapped the herbs she needed in a cloth.

“It’s not all that surprising. I’ve had help lately,” the old man said.

“What, one of the village brats? Pretty good work for a kid.” Maomao deliberately looked at Chou-u as she said it; he stuck out his lip at her in a What? gesture.

“Naw, naw. Someone I picked up in the capital a bit back. Very capable. Look, speak of the devil...”

They heard footsteps coming up the stairs. “Hey, Gramps! I got the stuff you wanted! Huh? Guests?”

The newcomer’s voice was cheerful—and familiar. In walked a young man with a sack swinging in one hand and a scarf wrapped as a bandage around one eye.

That’s why I recognize that voice!

It was Kokuyou, the pockmarked man who, last Maomao knew, had been looking for work in the capital.

“But wouldn’t you know it, everyone said they didn’t want a doctor with such a creepy face!” Kokuyou said, sounding, as ever, as if the cascade of his misfortunes simply rolled right off his back. No sooner had he seen Maomao than the voluble man had started in chatting.

“Do they know each other?” Gramps had asked, to which Chou-u had replied, “She practically collects weird guys like him.”

In brief, after arriving at the capital, Kokuyou had gone from clinic to clinic, looking for somewhere to begin his practice as a physician. Each time, they would ask him about the patch over his eye, and like an idiot, he would give them a straight answer and show them his scars. The ignorant doctors chased him out, admonishing him never to come back lest he give them his illness. The less ignorant doctors understood the disease was no longer contagious, but even a physician was ultimately running a business. They had no compelling reason to hire a shifty-looking man with an eyepatch.

Gramps had been whipping his old bones into town to deliver some herbs a doctor had ordered from him, and it just so happened that at that very moment, Kokuyou was being chased out of the same clinic. Gramps might have been a misanthrope, but he had an eye for medical talent. As age gradually slowed him down, he’d been thinking about finding a helper. He quizzed Kokuyou on his medical knowledge, and was surprised to discover the man knew more than Gramps would have expected—and so here he was. A man with an eyepatch would be less conspicuous here than in the capital, and anyway, the elderly physician had explained things to the village chief.

“Ha ha ha! Life can sure be tough, huh? But anyway, at least I get to eat!”

Gramps got a good helper, and Kokuyou—well, he was Kokuyou. Both of them seemed happy enough.

If I’d realized, maybe I would have asked him to join me, Maomao thought with a twinge of regret, but she couldn’t go back in time. Even if she had brought him to the shop with her, the madam would only have worked him like a dog, the way she had Luomen. Maybe Kokuyou was better off here. Besides, Sazen was finally starting to get his feet under him, and Maomao didn’t want to dent his confidence.

Kokuyou put his herbs on the table. “Fresh from the forest!” He grinned.

Chou-u peered up at him, then made a face like a particularly dumb-looking squirrel and stuck out his hand. “What’s under the eyepatch, mister?”

“You want to see?” Kokuyou said, and then with a word of warning (“It’s pretty gross!”), he lifted the eyepatch.

“Oh, yuck!” Chou-u exclaimed (politeness was not his strong suit) and pounded Kokuyou on the shoulder. “Too bad for you, mister. You could’ve been pretty popular with customers, if it weren’t for...that.”

“You said it! And here I like to think I’m good with people,” Kokuyou replied.

“Our girls might’ve liked your face, too! Darn shame.”

Our girls. Nice, Maomao thought, but otherwise she ignored their chatter, instead taking an appraising look at the herbs. She squinted at one of them, a large leaf she didn’t recognize. “What’s this?” she asked.

Kokuyou broke away from bantering with Chou-u long enough to say, “That’s an ‘incense’ leaf.”

An incense leaf—in other words, tobacco. The madam and the prostitutes loved to smoke, but somewhat surprisingly, the practice hadn’t caught on among the common people for the most part. Once, Maomao had repaired a damaged smoking pipe and had tried to return it to its owner, for she simply assumed it must be important to him.

Tobacco was a luxury item; it was addiction that kept the otherwise stingy madam smoking. Luomen informed Maomao that too much smoking was bad for your health. In any case, as far as Maomao knew, the leaves were usually imported, and she’d only ever seen them in a pulverized state, so she hadn’t recognized the plant when she saw it.

“They’re not actually that hard to grow,” the old man interjected.

“Oh?” Maomao asked, studying the leaf with great interest. She was thinking that if she could get this to grow in their garden, it might prove a profitable side business. She doubted, though, that these two would simply cough up some seeds for her. She might at least be able to get them to share some of the leaves, but she questioned the wisdom of further entrenching the smoking habit among the courtesans by providing them with a cheap source of tobacco.

It couldn’t hurt just to float the idea, she figured. She asked, “How much would you sell these for?”

“They’re not for sale,” the old man said, picking up the leaves and bundling several of them together before hanging them under the eaves.

For his own use? Maomao wondered. But she hadn’t seen any smoking paraphernalia in the house, and she’d never seen the old man smoking.

As if in response to Maomao’s unspoken question, the old man picked a jar up off the floor and set it on the table. He opened the lid and a distinctive odor came wafting out.

“Jeez, Gramps, that stinks!” Chou-u said, dramatically holding his nose. It didn’t stop him from peeking inside, though, where he discovered a brown liquid. “You’re not gonna ask us to...drink this, are you?”

“No, and you’d better not. It’d kill you dead. It’s got incense leaves steeped in it.”

“Ugh! Why would you have something like that around?” Chou-u asked, sitting back down on a wooden box on the floor.

“We use it to keep the snakes away,” the old man said.

Maomao clapped her hands: tobacco leaves were poisonous if eaten, and she knew the toxin affected insects. For the first time, it occurred to her that it might also work on snakes. Bugs were one thing, but snakes she always tried to catch—she never would have thought of trying to drive them away.

“It’s the best we can do with all this nonsense about not killing snakes. We have to be careful—wouldn’t want to cause any problems. But we also don’t want to get bit while we’re out picking vegetables, and I keep pigeons to boot.”

The old man was practically frothing; Kokuyou maintained a smile as he made tea. Chou-u’s eyes sparkled as he saw steamed buns emerge from the cupboard.

“Nobody gave two shits about this shrine for decades! Now they won’t shut up about some messenger of the snake god appearing. It’s a little late for them—the bridge to the island is good and broken,” the old man said.

“Ha ha ha! Shamans are the worst, aren’t they?” Kokuyou agreed cheerfully. Was there, perhaps, just a hint of personal animus in his jollity?

Maomao, meanwhile, found herself wondering about something. Last will and testament of the previous village chief or no, she questioned whether anyone in a small village like this would actually be so hesitant to kill a snake. Was it actually because a snake deity was once worshipped here?

“Was this shaman really that persuasive?” she asked coolly.

Gramps snorted. “Hah! Funny you should ask. The truly faithful say she changed form.”

“Changed form?” Maomao had heard of foxes transforming, but a snake?

Isn’t it enough that foxes can do it?

She gave them a confused look. Kokuyou opened the window of the hut, and Maomao found she could see the marsh and the shrine. Gramps looked out the window and rubbed his scraggly beard. “I didn’t see it myself. But they claim the shaman...”

They claimed the shaman had danced across the surface of the water to reach the shrine.

That’s got to be...

“It was said that proved the shaman was the god’s messenger.”

And there you had it.

...the shadiest thing I’ve ever heard!

Shady it might have been, but if it were true, then the “pale woman” the painter had witnessed could have been real as well.

“This shaman didn’t happen to be a young woman with white hair and red eyes, did she?”

“No, no. She was a young woman, all right, but nobody said a word about her looking anything like that.”

Chou-u was agog. “That’s amazing! How did she walk on the water?”

“It’s easy,” Kokuyou said. “You just have to take the next step before your foot starts to sink. Then you do it again, and again. One step at a time.” The lie seemed to come very easily to him.

“Awesome!”

Maomao bapped Chou-u on the head as a warning not to be so gullible, at the same time glowering at Kokuyou. She had just been starting to think of him as friendly and harmless when it turned out he was capable of something like this.

“Don’t tell me you really believe she could do that,” Maomao said.

“Hell, of course not. But...ahem.” The old doctor continued scratching his chin and looking outside. He seemed conflicted. “Once, when I was a young man, I saw that very thing.”

“You saw someone dancing across the surface of the water?” Maomao cocked her head. Chou-u copied her, as did Kokuyou, for some reason.

“Yeah. Back before I left the village. You know, it used to be the duty of the shrine maiden to serve the snake god.” The old man’s family were in fact distant relations of the village chief, and the young women who served at the shrine were of the same bloodline. Gramps had just said that the shrine had been all but abandoned for decades—but there was an explanation for that. “They came hunting for girls for the rear palace, and then there weren’t any young women around here anymore.”

What could one say? It was as simple as that. With that, rituals that had been passed down by word of mouth for generations disappeared, and the shrine fell into disuse. It was just about then that the previous village chief had taken over. Since the chief before him had been a man of scant faith, he allowed the shrine to sit unused, until it became decrepit, and even the bridge to the shrine’s island rotted and collapsed. Then Gramps returned to the village and became the keeper of the shrine, even if only nominally, living here in this hut.

“Didn’t the shrine maiden come back to the village after completing her tenure at the rear palace?” Maomao asked.

“Heh. She always was a good-natured girl. Why should she come back to a place like this?”

Fair enough, Maomao thought, picturing Xiaolan, who had been her friend at the rear palace. Xiaolan’s parents had sold her into service so as to have one less mouth to feed. She’d understood the reality—and had known that even if she went home, there would be no place for her. Instead, after leaving the rear palace, she had found work to support herself. A young woman with a half-decent head on her shoulders could probably have found any number of ways to earn a better living than the one she’d had in a village like this. There was more than one way in which the rear palace could be said to give its women a leg up in life.

“The former chief was all laments before he died, but my feeling was that if he was going to complain so much, he should have asked a doctor for help,” Gramps said.

“Ha ha ha! That’s funny. Yeah, some people are that way, huh?” Kokuyou chortled, but the old man gave him a gentle jab to the head. It wasn’t that funny.

Maomao gazed outside. “I don’t see a boat. How do you get across? I assume you have to check the condition of the shrine periodically.”

Gramps drew a circle on the table. “Boats anger the deity, evidently. There’s even one particular area set aside for fishing—although all you’ll ever catch is loach, so it’s not exactly worth the effort. So the shrine just goes unattended. You’re welcome to go see it if you’re interested—just not by boat.”

“What is this, some kind of riddle?” Maomao asked. How was she supposed to get to the island without using a boat? Did he think she could walk on water?

“What, you thought it would be easy to get to a sacred place?” Nonsense-spouting old man. “Kokuyou, you take them. There should be a better view of the island on the far bank than here. And weed the fields while you’re at it.”

“Aw, what a chore,” Kokuyou said, but he grabbed a hand scythe nonetheless.

“The tobacco grows over there. You can’t have any leaves, but if there are some seeds, you can take a few. Your payment for doing the weeding.”

Maomao scowled at the old man, who seemed intent on turning the screw at every opportunity—but she also picked up a scythe.

Maomao’s little band headed around to the far side of the marsh. Something that looked like lotus leaves floated on the surface of the water. Chou-u had been scared of Kokuyou’s scars at first, but demonstrating that he had considerable adaptability if nothing else, he and Kokuyou were already fast friends. Chou-u was even wheedling piggyback rides out of the young doctor, although unlike the menservants, Kokuyou swayed a little under Chou-u’s weight and it looked dangerous. Maybe only being able to see out of one eye threw off his sense of balance.

“There it is, over there,” Kokuyou said, as a bridge connecting the bank to the back side of the small island came into view. The bridge was rotten, though, and there wasn’t much of it left. Maomao looked at it in disbelief: even the foundation was coming apart; it hardly looked like it could support a wooden board.

Kokuyou, evidently much on the same page as Maomao, produced a wooden board from somewhere. “Here we go,” he said, placing it across the rickety foundation.

“Is that safe?” Maomao asked, feeling a growing sense of unease as she watched him.

“Ha ha ha, sure it is. You’d be surprised how sturdy this thing is.” To demonstrate, he jumped up onto the board—which promptly gave way, dumping him into the marsh with an “Oops!”

“What are you doing, man?” Chou-u said, reaching out to help pull Kokuyou to his feet. With a glorp, though, Kokuyou sank deeper. A thrill of fear ran through the group.

“I don’t suppose this is one of those b-bottomless swamps, do you?” Kokuyou asked, still smiling.

For a second, neither Maomao nor Chou-u said anything, but after the instant of silence, everyone burst into activity. The more Kokuyou struggled, however, the deeper he sank. Just as he was up to his neck in marsh water, Maomao managed to find a robust-looking vine in the woods and drag it out, so the man could use it to pull himself free.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack, mister,” Chou-u said.

“Ha ha ha! Sorry about that,” Kokuyou replied, scratching the back of his head with a muddy hand. (Thus the one remaining clean part of him got as dirty as the rest.)

Maomao grabbed a bucket of irrigation water from the nearby field and brought it over—after which she took the path of least resistance, namely, dumping it over his head. Kokuyou shook himself off like a wet dog.

“Oh yeah... The old guy told me that it was around this marsh where they say kids get spirited away,” Kokuyou said.

“Yikes,” Chou-u said, not looking pleased. There was no telling how many people were buried down in the muck.

Maomao looked at the decaying bridge. “They really didn’t take any care of it.”

“Maintenance costs money. I guess there’s something about the composition of the mud here that does more damage than ordinary water.”

The marsh might not be bottomless, strictly speaking, but it was certainly deeper than Kokuyou was tall. Replacing the foundation regularly would have been nothing short of a problem. Elements of the foundation could be seen extending well beyond the marsh, implying that the marsh had once occupied that entire area.

A panoply of wild plants grew all around the shrine on the small island. They were bright and colorful, suggesting that they might be flowers, but it was hard to tell from this distance—the one thing that was certain was that it was a color one rarely saw in this area. Birds flew over frequently enough; maybe the seeds had made it down here in some poop.

“All right, let’s get down to business,” Kokuyou said, sounding energetic despite still being speckled with mud in places. He was suddenly wearing a reed hat. (Where had he gotten that from?)

The field was bristling with weeds; Maomao was about to say exactly what she thought of that, but Chou-u beat her to the punch: “Ugh!” he exclaimed, his shoulders slumping. After that, she felt she couldn’t say anything. Instead, she dutifully went about weeding, keeping her eyes open for any tobacco seeds. But there weren’t any.

Wily old bastard, she thought, resolving to be sure she wrung some seeds out of him before she went home.

Kokuyou hummed cheerily as he went about the job, and Maomao felt compelled to help out. Chou-u, who seemed not to have had any intention of helping to begin with, went around collecting pebbles and drawing in the dirt.

For a while, they focused on their work. The humidity was high in the marsh. The muddy soil looked rich in nutrients, but by the same token, they would cause roots to rot in a hurry. That might have explained the dash of sand mixed into the soil of the field. Thankfully, it made the weeds easy to pull out.

“Hey, did you know?” Kokuyou said. He had stopped humming, but he almost sounded like he was talking to himself.

“What?” Maomao said.

“About the shrine maidens they used to have in this village.”

Maomao gave him a perplexed look. How would she know anything about that?

“Gramps told me that their job was to placate the great snake spirit. But the maidens were originally slave girls.”

Maomao didn’t say anything. Chou-u was still drawing, oblivious to their conversation. Kokuyou continued, whispering so only Maomao could hear, “I guess the river used to flood here a lot. Until they developed flood control, the fields used to get inundated every year. Even the houses were underwater sometimes.”

What did people do in those olden times when they were powerless in the face of catastrophic natural disasters? They engaged in meaningless behaviors.

“It’s said they bought slaves to use as sacrifices. That was when there was money to spare, of course—when there wasn’t, they probably chose some poor village girl.”

So “shrine maiden” was just a pleasant epithet for a human sacrifice.

“But then...”

One day, a shrine maiden possessed of spiritual powers appeared. She even, so it was said, danced across the water in the sight of all the villagers.

“Gramps” has really opened up to this guy, Maomao thought. All these stories were new to her. The old man must have been privy to this lore because of his family’s connection to the shrine maidens. It seemed strange that at the same time, he was also distantly related to the village chief.

“I guess that meant that if you didn’t possess those powers, you could expect to be sacrificed sooner or later,” Kokuyou said. Whether you were sacrificed to the god of this or the lord of that probably didn’t matter much to the person suffering the ritual. “But then just when she thought she’d escaped, she gets sent to the rear palace instead!”

Thus, given not to the master of the lake, but the master of the land.

No wonder she didn’t want to come back. Maomao saw now why the young woman had never returned, as the old man had told her. Who could blame her if, indeed, she felt some anger at her hometown?

Maomao gazed distantly at the water. The surface rippled, but to judge by Kokuyou’s state after falling in, it was mostly mud down there. She picked up a stick lying nearby and jabbed it into the water. Once it sank into the muck, it was hard to pull back out.

“Less of a marsh and more of a bog. The flood measures might have dispersed the water flowing into it, but maybe the shrinking marsh has made it muddier,” Maomao said. She stood up from where she had been crouching. “Do you know when the marsh started shrinking?”

“I guess I don’t. You could try asking Gramps,” Kokuyou said.

Maomao scratched her chin and stirred the mud as best she was able. She suddenly discovered Chou-u was standing beside her, also stirring. “You drop something?” he asked.

“No,” Maomao said.

It rained a lot at this time of year—the water level probably wasn’t at its peak yet. That meant the marsh would only be even more muddy during the dry season.

Suddenly, Maomao jumped to her feet.

“What’s the matter, Freckles?” Chou-u asked, looking at her, but she ignored him and ran off. “Hey, Freckles!”

“Huh? What’s going on?” Kokuyou asked. Maomao didn’t answer him; she made a beeline for the hut where the old man lived. She didn’t want to stand and chat with the two of them—she was desperate to test the idea she’d had as soon as possible.

Even as she ran, a smile came over Maomao’s face.

“Boy, where’d that come from? What’s she think she’s doing?” Chou-u grumbled, but he and Kokuyou followed along just the same. Chou-u must have gotten tired of running partway there, because when they arrived at the shack, Kokuyou was carrying him on his back.

Maomao vaulted up the stairs and knocked on the door. No sooner had the old man opened it than she burst out, “Give me some tobacco seeds!”

Gramps was slurping some noodles, looking almost as if he were eating his own beard. “Is that what you’re here about? If there weren’t any seeds in the field, too bad.” He began to chew his mouthful of noodles noisily.

Maomao had been expecting something like this, but she had an idea. “What if I told you I could identify the notorious shaman?” she whispered.

The man’s unpleasant chewing stopped and he set down his chopsticks. “Kokuyou, c’mere. Take this and go entertain the kid.” He pulled a ball off the shelf and tossed it to Kokuyou, who failed to catch it and had to run outside after it, Chou-u trotting behind him.

With the interlopers cleared out, the old man motioned Maomao to sit. She seated herself in a chair and looked out the window at the marsh. “Let me venture a guess: when this shaman appeared, it was the time of year when the water level was dropping.”

The painter had seen the white-haired, red-eyed woman about six months ago, give or take—that would be the season of little rain. Less water in the marsh would mean more bog.

“That’s right,” Gramps said.

“And the shrine maiden did her dance at roughly the same time of year, am I right?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Maomao moistened her finger in the water jug, then started sketching a map on the tabletop: a circle representing the lake, after which she added the little island and the bridge. Gramps must have found it hard to see the water map, because he offered her a brush and paper. Crude materials, but still easier to see. Maomao started writing.

She pointed to the bank nearest the island, the farthest point from the river that fed into the marsh. “Was that about where the rain dance was performed?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the physician said. The place could be seen from the window of the hut they were now in.

“This shrine maiden or shaman or whatever she was invoked the blessing of the great snake god and walked across the water. What if I told you I could do the same thing?” asked Maomao.

The old man squinted at her, clearly skeptical. “That’s enough silliness out of you. If I might say so, I don’t think you have the figure to attract the snake god.”

“Gee, old man, I didn’t realize you were such a devout believer.” Their eyes met. Maomao smiled, trying to provoke him. If she was right, this old man knew something, something he wasn’t telling her.

It was almost as if he could read her mind. “Luomen would never operate on an assumption that way,” he said.

“That’s exactly why I want to investigate the marsh: to substantiate that assumption.”

Gramps gave her a glare, but got up as if inviting her to follow him. “You’re not one for having a little mystery in life, are you? Not that I’m one to talk. The thing to do at a moment like this is just to believe that immortals and shrine maidens really exist.” The old man almost spat the words out, but then he called to the pair playing with the ball outside, “Go buy somethin’ that’ll pass for dinner!”

He gave Kokuyou some change. Evidently he didn’t think the ball would distract them for long enough. “Now, listen, kid; this schlub is always getting ripped off. Sorry, but do you think you could go with and keep an eye on him?”

“Sure! Just leave it to me,” Chou-u said, and went after Kokuyou again. Maomao and the old physician stayed where they were until the other two were out of sight. Then the doctor said, “Let’s go.”

He brought her to an area of the marsh that had been fenced off. Floating plants grew on the surface of the water. Maomao frowned at the boggy ground, taking off her shoes and holding up her skirt as they went. Gramps, for his part, hiked up the legs of his trousers.

The water was dark and cloudy.

“The shrine maiden walked from here to the island. If you can manage the same thing, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” Then he dropped his voice to a menacing whisper and said, “Before the shrine maiden, the young women who were brought here were called sacrifices, and they were drowned in this marsh. Tied to weights and sunk into the fathomless depths alive. My great-grandmother told me how she tried to cover her ears as the girls cried and sobbed their last, every attempt at struggle dragging them closer to their doom. No guarantees you won’t end up the same way.”

It may have been a revered custom, yet it must also have been a terrifying sight for the villagers who witnessed it. And then they felt remorse for what they had done and begged forgiveness, though it meant nothing by that point.

Stone pillars stood around the marsh, constructed of similarly sized rocks piled one atop the other, with the largest of all standing on top. Cairns of some type, perhaps.

“So, how exactly did the maiden cross the marsh?” the old man asked.

Maomao took out some rope she’d brought from the house along with a couple of thin wooden boards. “All right if I borrow these?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Thank you.”

She punched three holes in each board and ran the rope through them to create what looked like crude sandals. They weren’t very impressive, but she put them on, thinking, Paddy sandals would be perfect right about now. Paddy sandals were footwear used by people planting rice fields—but wishing wouldn’t get her anywhere.

The old man was watching her curiously now, but for the time being she kept quiet. She rolled up her robe to keep it clear of the ground, then wrapped a rope around her body, tying the other end to one of the stone pillars. Then she began.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Gramps asked.

“Substantiating.”

Maomao put a foot in the marsh—or more properly, she almost kicked against it, the impact causing her foot to bounce back. The old man was startled, but Maomao was already taking her next step, kicking forcefully. She did this again and again, working her way across the bog.

She was, indeed, walking on water. It wasn’t quite the way Kokuyou had suggested, but she took each step before her foot could sink, then repeated the process. It was enough to keep her on the surface.

“How’s that? I can walk on the water.” Maomao grinned, full of confidence.

The old man touched his beard, astonished. “That’s something special, I’ll give you that.” He picked up a long stick lying nearby, took a step into the marsh, and plunged it into the water. There was a hard, sharp sound. “But you don’t have to go to all that work. There are more of those cairns in the marsh.” He struck the large stone pillar again.

“What?” Maomao said, flabbergasted. In her amazement, she stopped moving her feet—which promptly sank into the bog. Gramps ended up having to pull her out.

“How’d you do that, anyway?” Gramps asked the mud-covered Maomao after he’d extricated her.

Maomao took off her “shoes” and looked at the marsh, tired. “When you’ve got something that’s not quite liquid and not quite solid, it has some special properties,” she said. It might have been easiest to demonstrate if she’d had some potato starch on hand. Mix that into water at a specific ratio, and you could pick it up with your hand—but it would soon flow out between your fingers.

This marsh was very similar. That was why Maomao had asked Gramps what time of year it had been when the maiden danced across the water. And Maomao had put on her improvised footwear because she’d judged there was a little too much water in the mix to do otherwise.

She’d figured that some of the “sacrifices” had noticed that when the marsh shrank and the ratio of mud to water changed, you could walk over it. But she hadn’t been quite right.

“A gimmick like this? That’s not very fair,” she said.

“The stone pillars sunk in the marsh are grave markers for the dead sacrifices,” the old man replied firmly. They were buried such that even in the dry season, they weren’t visible. Ten of them, or maybe a little more—intimating the number of women who had been drowned.

“Long ago, when the time for the next sacrifice was decided, the son of the village chief told the unfortunate girl about the grave markers.” Then it was the young woman who had the “lord of the lake” on her side, and she became the shrine maiden. “That was more than fifty years ago now.”

The previous village chief evidently hadn’t known about the stones. It looked to Maomao as if the only one who was aware of them was this man here. She glared at him: he’d known all along, and he’d kept quiet about it. Why would he do that, except perhaps if there was something he felt guilty about?

“Was the shaman a woman with white hair?” Maomao asked again.

But again, the doctor shook his head. “Haven’t had anyone like that around here.” However, he did have something else to add. He began speaking, telling Maomao about how by sheer chance, in the capital he’d run into the former shrine maiden who had been sent to the rear palace. She’d had a granddaughter by then.

The former shrine maiden had asked him, what was the state of the great snake god today? The physician explained that even without a shrine maiden, improvements in flood-control technology meant that the river and the marsh no longer overflowed their banks. The snake god became simple superstition, his shrine went to ruin, and no one now visited it.

“I can’t help thinking maybe it would have been better if I’d told her the shrine was doing well, that thanks to the great snake, we were safe from floods. Even if it wasn’t true,” he said.

The former shrine maiden had been incredulous at what the old man told her. It was as if all the shrine maidens who had gone down to the depths had died in vain. The thought enraged the woman.

“Not long after, she and her granddaughter came to the village. The former shrine maiden said she served a new snake god, and that was when she had her granddaughter cross the marsh.”

A new snake god? Maomao thought of the white sacred ropes, the snake deity, and the white-haired woman the painter had seen. She picked up the pole and plunged it into the marsh, seeking out the cairns as she worked her way toward the little island. The old man was right; this was a more reliable method than the one Maomao had tried. As long as your feet were steady, you could make it.

She hopped over to the island. It was home to the dilapidated shrine, rampant wild grasses—and flowers with small, red petals blowing in the wind. These flowers didn’t live long; some of the petals were already dropping, leaving bald plants behind. Had they been planted here, or had some seeds just happened to drop in the area? All Maomao knew was that the plants should not have been here.

“Poppies?” she heard the old man say, and from his tone, she could tell he was discovering them for the first time. Maybe he hadn’t been over to the island before, even though he knew how to get there.

“May I ask you another question?” Maomao said.

“Go ahead. I’ll tell you anything now.”

“How is it you know about the grave markers?”

Gramps smiled. “You know I’m related to the shrine maidens—which means I’m a slave’s son. It’s not unusual for the powerful in a village to get involved with the slaves.”

He’d said it was the village chief’s son who had told the former shrine maiden about the existence of the burial pillars. That would seem to imply the chief had gotten a slave woman with child—and that child was Gramps.

“When the chieftain tired of this slave, she was passed on to the next villager, until finally, when starvation threatened, she was used as a sacrifice.”

For there to be grave markers, there had to be someone to put them up—to cut the rock and pile stone upon stone over the course of years. Not to mention, to then carry the stones to their location across the other markers already in place.

“This marker just in front of the island is the last one. It saved my little sister from drowning...” the doctor said.

Then instead, she had been sent to the rear palace. It was not the village chief’s daughter who had gone, but the offspring of the slave woman and whomever she had been “passed on to.” When the child came back decades later, she discovered that the villagers who had murdered her mother and used her own life for their ends had forgotten all about the local deity and the women who had been sacrificed as shrine maidens to it.

Maomao looked at the tobacco leaves on the far shore. “Did you, perchance, get those from the former shrine maiden?”

“I did. But not the poppy seeds. She gave the tobacco to me as a sort of souvenir, asking two favors in return.”

“And will you tell me about those too?”

“Yes—it’s time I told someone. The water level’s still high right now, so they’ve stayed hidden, but when the autumn comes, the tops of the grave markers will peek out. I was able to keep everyone off the trail until last year, but I don’t think I can manage it anymore.”

The shaman would be revealed as a fraud.

“The first favor was this: that I stay quiet, even knowing what I knew.”

The injunctions against the villagers killing snakes or birds were probably the shaman’s small form of revenge. This old man might object to her methods, but he chose to look the other way.

“The other...” The elderly physician looked at his stilt hut. “The other was that I give her free use of my pigeon coop.”

“Pigeon coop? What in the world did she want with that?” Maomao asked, tilting her head in confusion. Come to think of it, she’d heard pigeons cooing in the village too. Did they normally keep free-range birds?

“Don’t kill flying birds”...

Compared to the rule about snakes, this admonition almost seemed like an afterthought.

Maomao worked her way back across the grave markers toward the hut. Several times she almost slipped on the slick stone, but she was in a hurry to get to the pigeon coop.

As she approached, her nose prickled at its distinctive odor. Inside, there were several dozen birds with dark-greenish feathers. They flapped excitedly, surprised by Maomao’s sudden arrival, but she ignored their reaction. Instead, she grabbed each one and tossed it aside in turn.

“Hey! Leave the poor birds alone!” Gramps sputtered. So he thought of them as something more than food—but that was also immaterial to Maomao at that moment. Finally she found what she was looking for. She grabbed one bird around the back and flipped it over, plucking off the thing attached to its leg: a piece of twisted white string. It was grimy in places; she guessed it had gotten dirty while the animal was outside.

Maomao left the pigeon coop and undid the string. It turned out to be a single piece of cloth, embroidered with characters that really did look like a scribbled snake.

I know I’ve seen these before, Maomao thought. They looked much like the embroidery on the fire-rat cloak she’d seen at the used clothing store. If you knew what you were looking at, you could tell it wasn’t just a random pattern—it was a code, based on characters from the western reaches.

Maomao thought back to the fortune-teller from the western capital—how she had used a pigeon feather instead of a brush to write with. For some time now, Maomao had been grappling with the fact that the White Lady somehow seemed to be everywhere at once in this country. Surely the young woman couldn’t actually travel so widely? Her albino appearance might make her seem uncanny, but she couldn’t actually use magic like the immortals were said to do. Practically the reverse, in fact—with skin so sensitive to sunlight, she wouldn’t be able to spend much time outside in bright regions.

So it wouldn’t be the White Lady herself who moved about; Maomao assumed she directed confederates instead. The problem with that hypothesis was information: in order to release the lion from its cage or make contact with Consort Lishu’s half-sister, the White Lady would need a way to exchange information quickly between the western capital and the Imperial capital in the central region. Even the fastest horse would take more than ten days to reach the west from the capital, and coming back would take nearly as long, even if one went by boat.

How had she solved that conundrum? These pigeons.

“Hey, Gramps, does the former shrine maiden herself come to visit the pigeon coop?”

“Her granddaughter does. She took a few of them with her, said she was going to use them for a curse or something.”

“Aren’t you eventually going to run out of pigeons?”

“No, they come right back to this coop when I release them. Unless an animal—or a human—gets them first.”

In other words, she could communicate, taking advantage of these pigeons’ aptitude. Maomao closed her eyes, thought for a second about what she should do, and then looked at the old man. It was possible harm would come to the former shrine maiden and her granddaughter. They seemed like they might be connected to the White Lady.

Maomao clicked her tongue. “Want to work with me this time, Gramps?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Maomao wasn’t entirely bereft of decency. She could just go straight to Jinshi without saying another word to the old man, but she chose not to. Instead she began to negotiate, feeling out how far he would go, where in the middle he would meet her.