The Red Bride

i.

The phoenix soars above painted mountains and deep gray gorges, riding the wind currents that chase the swirling river eddies below, that dip between rice paddies and little houses, that ruffle the hanging leaves of praying willow trees. Her feathers glitter under the sun with prisms of fire and jade, and she lets out a ferocious cry, one that echoes and shakes and transforms until the people record in history the strange day that the thunder came without the rain.

ii.

The drafts of wind carry the phoenix over a vast golden plain, where dust lives and grass dies under trampling hooves and straw soles. The plain is quiet except for whistling stalks, scampering brown rabbits, and a splash of bright red in the center of it all. Ten men march across the plain, carrying a red marriage sedan on their shoulders. The paint of the sedan must have once shone, but now dust coats the sides, and the overbearing heat of the sun melts the colors, only the roof displaying the beauty of what once was.

The phoenix circles overhead, studying the carved portrait of herself on the western wall and the soft crying coming from within. She lands on the roof of the sedan, closes her eyes, and lays an egg that falls through the wood ceiling into the hands of the crying bride sitting below.

The egg warms the clammy hands of the bride and, in surprise, she lifts her heavy red veil, peering at the smooth object in her hands. It is a solid stone of of the purest white jade, and when she brings it closer to her face, she sees that a flame flickers within, a flame that seems to grow hotter, though not painfully, and whose tendrils race through the jade's veins, up to the girl's fingertips and through her blood, racing and racing until her heart becomes a hearth, and until every ounce of her boils with the fear and rage of a young life sold.

The bride stands, her silk robes cascading, and she lifts her fingers from the jade egg to the wooden wall in front of her.

Her tears sizzle and dry; the butterfly pins in her hair loosen and her locks tumble in waterfalls down her shoulders and back. The fire prickles at her skin and turns the red paint around her to black, turns the wood to melting ashes and smoke. The egg sings against her heart as the carriage shrinks and shrivels, and the bride, a girl of just sixteen, stands among her ring of fire, her chin lifting and her feet floating above the dusty ground.

The ten men flee, but not before the flames riding the desiccated summer grass overtake them, and high, high above, on her warm breeze, the phoenix smiles.

The girl flies, her wedding robes becoming wings, and her coal eyes narrowing as she lets out a ferocious cry. 

On the ground, the only sign of what once had been is a last, untouched piece of wood— a red-and-gold depiction of a legendary phoenix.

iii.

Once, long ago, just after the slaying of the nine false suns, a beautiful woman named Chang'e swallowed a pill of immortality and flew to the moon. When she arrived, she vomited the pill's encasement, which then took the shape of the jade rabbit that would become her immortal companion.

iv.

Now the bride, aided by her jade egg, sets her bridal sedan aflame and rises upward. She takes residence on the surface of the sun where the warmth births a phoenix chick, forged of fire and jade, risen from the ashes of a young life traded.