THE FORTUNIST

38. Wuxhia

“A vast percentage of the Tai Forest is very much unexplored.”

🕳️🕳️🕳️

Fowella thrums the strings of the lyre upon her laps. Her voice wafts through the room as she sings a popular love song about a woman in a toxic relationship.

“What would you do to keep me?
What would you do to have me back?
Like one without direction,
I'd jump right back into your arms.
My friends may shake their heads
And walk away for my mistake.
You're worth a million friends
So I'll discard them for your sake.”

Wuxhia is discovering a part of his mother he never knew existed. She had always been so reserved and conventional but Wuxhia can finally tell that that she is something else when it is just her and Xihan. A side she never shows to her servants, to her son, even to Bala who was her favorite.

She is carefree with Xihan, easy going, unafraid to speak her mind. Wuxhia wonders if it is love or trust. How can Fowella still have any for her husband who refused to give her another child and then proceeded to kill her servant substitute?

He had stopped wondering over the next couple of days. He won't waste his head on questions he cannot answer. He is satisfied instead in knowing this intimate part of Fowella. Not her as a Lady, not her as a mother, but her from the most intriguing perspective, as a wife.

She never did or said things one would expect her to do or say and while she is difficult to please, she pleases others with such tremendous ease.

If she finds it weird that he had taken Jahrys to be his personal servant after singlehandedly orchestrating the murder of Jahrys' brother, she said nothing. If she finds it curious that he did not have Wuxhia by his side while he planned to steal the title of the royal house, she said nothing. She hadn't even said anything about when she thought his handwriting resembled Wuxhia's or about the fact that he had told her the Fortunist he had encountered all those years ago was a woman after decades of keeping it secret. "Thank you," was all she had said with a smile, as if he had been doing her a favour.

Is he doing her a favour by deceiving her? There are times he just wants to tell her that he is her son hiding in the body of her husband. She would probably just thank him again and not mind. But Fowella must never know. Even when Wuxhia had been doing a good job keeping his distance, he had negated the efforts that day he entered her room unannounced and she hadn't been a bit surprised. She hadn't tried to nag him about why he was avoiding her before.

She finishes her rendition. "Do you remember how I got this lyre?"

"No." It is the safer reply to her questions. Again, if Fowella found that unnerving, she made no point to express it.

"It was among my first conquests. I was ten. A girl disappeared and her guardians kept insisting that she had left a letter and ran away. All that was on the letter was this song and everyone concluded she must have eloped with a man. But I went to the Land of the dead to find her. It turned out her guardians had killed her and buried her under their house along with this lyre. She wanted me to have it."

Wuxhia never says a word whenever Fowella talks about her numerous past encounters with spirits of the dead.

"It's the only song I play on this lyre," Fowella says as she replaces the instrument in her souvenir collection. "I never asked if she wrote that letter or if her guardians forged it. I never asked if she truly loved the song. But I can go there right now and find her, and make her tell me. She's not a puzzle I can't solve."

"I should go."

"Wait!" Fowella hurriedly says. She avoids his gaze. "One more story."

"You should tell them to your servants."