Descendant of the Crane(63)

She laughs and wades through the flowers. “Even the birds are telling you to wake up.”

It’s late summer. The irises are in full bloom. Their bladed foliage grabs onto the layered skirt of her ruqun. She tugs free and comes to loom over him, folding her arms. “Now you’re just pretending.”

Her father’s very good at pretending. They’ve spent hours rummaging through his costume chest, donning different kinds of garb. She’s watched him transform into an artisan, a merchant, a courier right before her eyes. He may be a king, but he can play the other roles too.

With a dramatic sigh, she uncrosses her arms and plucks an iris. “Wake up and smell the flowers.”

She tickles him under the nose. She prods his cheek with the end of the long stem. He continues to sleep. The sun continues to shine. It beats down on her back. Reflects off the emerald koi pond nearby. Everything is a bright, prismatic haze.

“Father?”

Wake up.

Please, wake up.



They tried to wake him.

Akira tried, that was, poking and prodding at a series of vital energy points on the body. Hesina sat frozen. Someone had callously rearranged her insides and mixed everything up. Half of her would have betrayed the world to hear her father’s voice again; half couldn’t accept this boy, who looked no older than herself, as a father of any kind.

Which half was better, and which was worse? Hesina didn’t know. Past became present as they failed to wake her father, but unlike before, she experienced no grief. No denial. How could she deny something already denied by the laws of nature? If anything, she felt anger.

She shouldn’t have had to relive this nightmare.

Blood rushed to Hesina’s head as she staggered to her feet. Her father wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t alive either. He couldn’t comfort her. Couldn’t explain why his heart was beating months after it’d stopped. Nothing had changed; it was all up to her.

Mechanically, Hesina returned to the coffin side. Examine the body, Hesina, she ordered herself. So she did. She checked her father’s clothes, her motions rough and jerky. A thought slithered into her mind, and she pushed apart the silks covering his abdomen.

The incision was gone. The stitches were still there, but his skin was smooth and even in tone. As if the dissection had never happened.

Darkness fuzzed like mold over Hesina’s vision. A face that hadn’t aged. A body that hadn’t decomposed. A scar that had healed without a trace.

Was there a difference between immortal and abomination?

Stand, Hesina, she ordered herself. So she did. Her knees wobbled as she pushed to her feet. Akira followed seconds later.

Speak, Hesina.

“Is—” Her voice came out like a wisp of smoke; she tried again. “Is there an antidote?”

Akira shook his head. “The poison shouldn’t even exist outside of arcane theory.”

Yet here it was, in existence. “But there’s an antidote in theory?”

“In theoretical theory.”

Her head swam. Theoretical theory. It was the kind of ridiculousness that the imperial alchemists had entertained in their search for the elixir of immortality. Then it struck her like a knife to the chest—the elixir of immortality. To the relic emperors, immortality was neither a myth nor a means of tricking children into studiousness. They’d believed it was real, and it could be attained with the right combination of ingredients.

But none of the emperors’ alchemists had derived it. And the Eleven had dissolved the guild, deploring the epic waste of resources. That had been three centuries ago—though what did three centuries mean to an immortal? How long, exactly, had her father been alive? Did he have other children? Was she immortal too?

The questions existed in a swamp: venturing into one meant losing herself to the downward suction of all the others. The night around Hesina warped as she dragged her gaze to the body. Without an antidote, she didn’t know how, or when, her father would ever speak again. It could be years. It could be never.

Consider the logistics, Hesina, she reminded herself as her hands, arms, shoulders shook. Logistics.

She couldn’t bring the body back to the palace and risk discovery. She had to keep it in a place no one would think to look: here.

She took up her end of the coffin lid. Akira took up the other. They lifted. They lowered. With Akira’s help, Hesina clambered out of the pit, seized one of the discarded shovels, and began reburying the coffin.

Thud went the first shovelful of dirt onto the zitan lid. The loamy scent of it filled Hesina’s mouth, packing onto everything she’d tamped down: tears and bile. Grief and revulsion.

Thud.

Her father was immortal.

Thud.

The face she’d known all her life was a lie, aged forward by a sooth.

Thud.

How? Thud. How?

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It took them an hour to refill all the dirt. By the end, Hesina’s hands were an abraded mess. Yet she barely registered the pain as they returned to the palanquin and headed back toward the palace. Broken skin could heal. Maybe even hearts. Not trust.

Stay calm, Hesina. But the mental trick had lost its effect. As they reached the terraces, Hesina’s stomach surged like a fist, punching her lungs. She grabbed for the palanquin’s side.

“Go on without me,” she gasped to Akira. Then she ordered the bearers to set her down.