Because You Love to Hate Me(54)
“Fitting punishment,” the goddess replied.
Something hissed beside her ears, tugging at her scalp. Mei Feng swatted at her hair, but it had disappeared. She grasped the thick body of a snake instead, and it writhed in her palm, sinking its fangs into her wrist. “No,” she said, and heard hundreds of serpents hiss in unison, felt them wrench against her head. She tried to go to the goddess, to plead again for her innocence, and slithered toward the immortal, only realizing then she no longer had legs.
The Goddess of Purity smiled a serene smile. “Fitting punishment indeed.” She conjured a large, bronzed mirror and held it toward Mei Feng. “You are now as ugly and horrifying as you were once beautiful and alluring.”
Mei Feng gaped at the image reflected back at her. Her face had turned a putrid green, lumpy with warts. Her eyes had become sunken holes, the orbs pure black. They stared back at her without any trace of humanity, of feeling. Black snakes writhed where her long raven hair had been, undulating, fangs bared. She reared back from the goddess, dropping the mirror; it thudded to the ground.
“Beautiful Phoenix doesn’t seem such an appropriate name any longer,” the goddess said. “You will go by Mei Du from now on—Beautiful Venom. Although there is nothing pretty about you, is there? I do enjoy the irony.” The goddess turned her wrist in a flourish, and the mirror disappeared. “I thought I would let you gaze upon your own face this once, understand what you have become. But as a word of caution, I would avoid your own reflection from now on.”
Mei Feng slid forward, throwing herself at the hem of the goddess’s dress. “Please, lady!” she rasped. “Have mercy. I have done nothing wrong.”
But when she looked up, the goddess was already gone, and the snakes hissing against her ear was her only reply.
Mei Du fled in grief and terror after the Goddess of Purity inflicted her punishment. Not knowing where to go, where she could hide, she slithered through farms and terraced fields, passing small villages or finding herself lost in large towns. Disoriented and confused, she left destruction in her wake.
Stone statues of her victims marked a macabre trail of her travels. They were young and old and from every class—their only similarity the horror forever etched into their grey features. One peasant woman had dropped to her knees, hands ripping at her own hair. A young scholar had been turned to stone with his arms thrust out, hands splayed, hoping to ward off an unspeakable evil. A small boy of seven years had collapsed onto his side, legs drawn into his chest in a fetal position, mouth agape and eyes shut tight.
But it had been too late.
What was seen could not be unseen, Mei Du learned, when it came to the power of her gaze.
It didn’t take long for her infamy to spread. Soon, mobs were chasing her, wielding spears and axes, the farmers carrying heavy spades or pitchforks. Their legs were no match for the power and speed of her serpentine coil, but sometimes they managed to corner her, and she had no choice but to look in their eyes to survive. It never took more than three people turned to stone before the crowds would retreat, screaming curses and obscenities, or moaning in sorrow and fear.
They cast flaming torches at her, burning the green scales of her serpent body and blistering the thick, pocked skin of her torso and arms. Expert archers shot at her from afar, puncturing her abdomen and back. She wrenched those arrows out and threw them aside. Her wounds healed almost instantly. Mei Du’s curse had been to live in this mortal realm, not to die. Her punishment was to suffer in her monstrosity and solitude, to cause death and wreck havoc, inflict tragedy and terror.
Months slid into years, and the years slid into oblivion. In the beginning, she missed her home, her family, wondered if they grieved for her, grateful that they would never know her terrible fate. But then her loved ones’ faces began to blur and fade, as did the details of her mortal life. Sometimes a small memory would emerge, like desert winds revealing a long-forgotten treasure in the sand—the fragrant scent of jasmine tea, a lone lotus perched on a deep green leaf in a tranquil pond, or the sound of laughter drifting over a high manor wall—stirred something wistful within Mei Du’s chest. These shining, scattered moments from another life always left her feeling bereft.
As time wore on, those remembrances disappeared. And as people continued to hunt her with sticks and knives and axes, as they continued to taunt her with curses and slurs, she began to look each and every one of them in the eyes instead of averting her gaze. She took pleasure in turning their contempt into stone.
Mei Du knew that she would live long, reviled and hated.
It was as the goddess had wished it.
Then, that fateful day, the one prophesied to slay her finally found her. Mei Du crouched motionless behind a thick pillar; there were ten in the abandoned temple, rising to the tall roof like sentinels. The red and gold paint on them had long since flaked off. She wanted a glimpse of this glorified hero who the mortals were convinced could end her. The dust dissipated to reveal a young man not yet twenty years, holding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other with a majestic eagle etched upon it. Both the sword and shield gleamed, polished to a mirrored shine.
But it wasn’t this that caught Mei Du’s attention, not the young man’s height nor the taut muscles of his bare arms—it was the faint glow that limned his frame. There was no mistaking it. The God of the Sea had held the same inner light. This young man was no mere mortal; he was divine, or touched by a god somehow.