A Magic Steeped in Poison (The Book of Tea #1) (100)

In the pale moonlight trailing through our windows, my father looks much older than when I left him. Haggard lines are worn deep into the crevices of his face. He looks worse than after we buried Mother, as if he hasn’t slept since I’ve been gone.

“Ning?” he asks, and his voice is as rough as his appearance. “Are you a ghost?”

I kneel at his side, taking Shu’s hand in mine. Her head is turned away from me, but she seems to sense I am near. She turns to face me, eyes glassy and unseeing.

“Mother?” she rasps out. I can smell the sickness on her breath. Her lips are cracked and bleeding.

“It’s me,” I tell her. “It’s Ning. I’ve come back.”

“Mother.” She begins to cry. “You’re back … I missed you so much.”

I look up at Father, alarmed. “How long has she been like this?”

“A few days now,” he says, shaking his head. “On and off. I try to get the fever down, but it returns. There have been a few nights I’ve found her wandering outside. I’ve had to tie her down, to keep her from leaving…” He chokes back a sob.

That’s when I look at her wrists and see the red marks there. A swell of anger rises inside me, then I notice his red-rimmed eyes, the stains on his tunic from blood, vomit, and who knows what else.

I force myself to channel my fury at the poison. My father did not cause this, and all the angry words in the world will not bring my mother back. But I might yet be able to save my sister.

“I think I have the antidote,” I say to him. “I can purge the poison from her.”

“Tell me.” He grips my arm, some clarity returning to his gaze. “Tell me what to do. I will help you.” He doesn’t question me like he usually does. He stands, awaiting instruction.

“I need lí lú and licorice root,” I tell him. “As well as Mother’s spring tea leaves.” I know we have tea leaves from more recent harvests, but there is nothing that would compare to the leaves she prepped with her own hands.

My tea ware still remains on the shelf in the main room, covered in a layer of dust. Returning back to our room, I look around our home with new eyes. Compared to the luxuries of the palace, the surroundings are worn and tired. No delicately carved screens, no incense emanating from braziers that can be lit day and night.

But the woven knot I made for luck still dangles by the window, bleached pale from the sun. There’s the crack in our mirror, from the time Shu and I were chasing each other and I fell against it, knocking it over. The worn pattern on the doorway where the bead curtain rubs against the frame, the one Shu always imagined looked like a dragon, calling it our door guardian. Something squeezes in my chest.

A hand sweeps the bead curtain aside again as my father steps in, bringing over everything I’ve asked for from the storeroom.

I touch my own tools. The bamboo, the wood, the pot with my fingerprints on the curve and the misshapen lid that never quite fit right. But it’s all mine. This is where I’m from. I had to come back before I could move forward, the astronomer said.

I place the ingredients into the bowl. The moon reflected in the sea. Each component of the poison has its own mirror in the antidote.

Dried lí lú, thin strands, smelling of soil. Slowing down the heart, opposing the invigorating properties of the white peony root, weakening the grip of the poison.

Licorice, sliced into thin pieces. Mitigating the toxicity of the yellow kūnbù.

Pearl powder, the missing component. Shu had thought it was coral, balancing and stabilizing the antidote, difficult to obtain so far inland. But it was something even more rare and unexpected. For the pearls have fallen out of favor, and the General of K?iláng designed a poison that would not harm his own people. I tasted it in the shared cup, recognized its power in strengthening hidden magics.

Allowing it to steep, I turn instead to the tea leaves brewing, lifting the lid off the pot. It smells like spring, like sprouts emerging from the soil, reaching for the next sprinkle of rain. I pour it over the medicinal ingredients. When I bring the bowl to my lips, I can almost feel the brush of white wings against my cheek.

The soothing warmth runs down my throat, spreads through my entire body.

The Shift comes easily, without need of the dān, even while Shu is lost in her dreaming. Because she is my sister—I was there on the day she was born, our connection built upon our intertwined lives. I can see her these past few weeks, poring over Father’s books, with her chin cradled in her hand. Pulling herbs from the garden in secret, watching for me and Father to appear over the hill. Furtive scribblings on slips of paper, shoved into a drawer or tucked underneath a basket. Not jasmine, not ginseng. The poison does not respond to bleeding …

But she found something that resonated with the small bit of lí lú she ingested, and she suspected the white peony root to be the culprit. There was no way of getting word to me without Father becoming suspicious, so she stitched the hidden message into the embroidery.

The poison made her confused, made it difficult to focus. She saw strange images sometimes, heard whispers in an empty room. Figures emerged from the mist, dreams crossing into reality: birds with human legs, butterflies with blinking eyes on their wings. A giant serpent with golden scales, hissing her name.

The pearl powder courses through my body like lightning, sending me through her memories and into the present, where I find her wandering through a grove of trees.