Descendant of the Crane(62)

Vertigo washed over Hesina. She forced her attention down from the hole to something beneath it.

A rim of silver, half-buried in loam.

She brushed away the dirt—and jerked her hand away as if she’d been bitten. Her breath came fast. “Akira. Look.”

Moonlight embossed an etched vine and trumpet-blossom motif. Swirl for swirl, line for line, the design was the same as what graced her mother’s wedding lock, like one in a set. One in a pair.

The realization—that this was the other wedding lock, given by her mother to her father, protecting the secrets of a coffin instead of a chest—rocked Hesina onto her heels. She glanced to Akira and found him studying her, as if the lock was no surprise.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Akira said quietly.

But Hesina knew.

It was because she had to make this choice on her own.

Her heartbeat was a gallop, thudding in her ears. Her fingers shook so badly that she spun past the 0 on the first try.

0.

Ba-dum.

0.

Ba-dum.

0.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

The lock dropped into the mud.

Akira moved to the foot of the coffin. Hesina placed her hands on the head. She wasn’t ready to do this. She never would be.

But then she envisioned Lilian’s candlelit face again, and her jaw set. She couldn’t ignore the significance of the matching lock. She had opened her mother’s chest.

She could open her father’s coffin.

Together, on the silent count of three, they lifted, revealing her father’s legs, torso, neck, face.

His face.

Hesina’s thoughts took off like startled birds. Her extremities numbed, and Akira saved the coffin lid from crashing down. He heaved it to the side as she stammered, “This…this isn’t right.” She shook her head, mouth dry, gaze unfocused. “This can’t be.”

Then her gaze focused, but not on her father. He wasn’t there. In his place was a young man wearing his silk hanfu, everything about him perfectly preserved.

This is a dream.

Hesina pinched herself. The boy remained.

Grave robbers.

But he wearing her father’s clothes, her father’s mandalas, and worst of all…

Akira caught her shoulders as Hesina stumbled back.

…her father’s face.

The angles were softer. The hollows weren’t quite so prominent. But there was no mistaking it; the boy wore a younger version of her father’s face.

Hesina quivered in Akira’s hold. “Tell me we’re seeing the same thing.”

“We are.”

She whirled to face him. “You suspected something all along, didn’t you?”

His grip around her shoulders loosened.

“When?”

For a second Akira seemed on the verge of letting go. Hesina was glad when he didn’t; he held her wits in his hands.

“When I realized the poison was actually a mixture of fifty,” he finally said. “Some come from vents deep in the Baolin Sea. Others…I’ve never encountered, only read about their properties in theory books. The same goes for this particular mixture. It’s something of a legend. Intended to kill a legend.”

“To kill a legend? What legend?”

Akira took a measured breath. “To kill immortals.”

Immortals…immortals? As in the immortal sages? If so, Hesina knew all about immortals. Children’s tales. Tutors’ slogans. Giant cranes and moons and suns that consumed daughters. Her brain prattled off useless information, guttering to a stop when Akira spoke again.

“I’d assume…” He trailed off. His eyes flicked down to where Hesina had wound both hands into the front of his cloak. She didn’t let go. She didn’t care how it looked as she clung to him, her breath clouding with his in the narrow space between them.

“Tell me.” She meant it as an order. She spoke it as a plea.

Akira drew another breath, no longer so measured. The space between them suddenly seemed like a ravine. She stood on one end and he on the other, his voice so very far away.

“I’d assume the poison would still destroy things, even if it failed to kill. If it broke the illusion work wrought by sooths, it would explain his current appearance. He must have stopped aging the moment he became immortal. The face we’re seeing now must be his true face…”

If it failed to kill…became immortal…true face…

Failed to kill.

Failed to kill.

Hesina released Akira.

She knelt by the coffin’s side, the ground seeping damp past her skirts, and pressed her cheek over her father’s chest.

There was a heartbeat in her temples, a heartbeat in her throat. But the heartbeat that filled her ear was not her own.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.





NINETEEN





WHEN WE MAKE UP STORIES ABOUT THE THINGS WE CAN’T SEE OR GRASP, WE ARE SIMPLY LYING TO OURSELVES.

ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON SUPERSTITION


IT’S GOOD ENTERTAINMENT, BUT NEVER EDUCATION.

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON SUPERSTITION

“Father?”

A dragonfly lands on his nose, but he doesn’t twitch. Seconds later, a magpie swoops by, and white droppings splatter dangerously close to his head.