Kode

Recollection

   Father struck me with his staff. I had failed to recite the Xui incantation for purity. It felt like nails were driven into my jaw and a taste, salt and metal, lingered in my mouth. I lay there, drowning in father's shadow on the training room grounds. Anger over my failings was weakness, yet it growled within like a great panther baring its fangs, hungering to pounce and tear and rip flesh asunder. Blood.

I allowed rage to consume me, claiming my staff from where it lay on the bamboo tiling and swinging with all I was, all I could muster, towards him. Towards my own father. This weakness, this failing, did as father always said it would.

My staff splintered to pieces in my hands as the Xui monk before me set his towering body into one swift strike with his own. It did not feel like a staff. It was a steel blades honed edge, cleaving straight through my would-be weapon, tearing into my chin just to throw me back to the ground in a heap. The pain raged like a demon, slashing me with claws every moment, inside and out. The panther, in an instant, had been thoroughly tamed. My vision clouded with tears as I lay as no more than a doll in a heap. A doll.

I said, "Forgive me."

Father swished his staff to his side, "Seka, a woman, would not weep as you do," He produced an effigy depicting a man from his sleeve, fashioned from old straw. He tossed it to my feet. "Hold it."

A weeping Jou doll collected sorrow. Spirits took pity on their holders and warded off harm. Father sold them to the passing pilgrims and merchants from frontier cities as protection on their journeys. I made them. I did not deserve otherwise until I could prove it. I had to. Seka would not outdo me—heir to clan Mezore. No room for defeat, none for cowardice.

I hardened my heart and inhaled as many times instructed, trapping the air and feeling my spirit stir in its husk of flesh and bone. I channeled my pain, my sadness, my discontent, and drew the fruit. Hot, scarlet, energy pulsed through my veins. I seized the doll, looked father directly in his coal eyes, set to sockets chiseled from bone and tight, battle-maimed, earthen skin. His dire brows, storm clouds, were set downwards as they usually were when he was off-put. When a storm brewed. When he was disappointed.

My anger, my sorrows, my will. I poured them into my palms to bear fruit, as was the Xui way. This combination burned. My palms blazed, searing red as a ripe apple. They hissed and spewed smoke and embers as the Jou doll took to flame.

Father's eyes, for the first time since I could remember, widened. His storm clouds lifted and his mouth fell ajar. Something foreign to his lips, a smile, as he knelt beside me—setting his staff down and a calloused hand to my head.

He said, "Good, Kode. You have done well."

I smiled back. Euphoria, beaming sunlight sparkling through gloomy, festering, fog. The pain in my jaw, the blood in my mouth, the splinters biting at my palms from the shattered staff, were gone. I felt only joy, and longed, however briefly, to embrace father. A fleeting, weak, thought but I did not care. At last. At long last, after all these years, I made him proud.

"You are ready," He said. "Tomorrow, when the sun rises above the mountains, you will go to find the Painter. Venture through the Jiao forests, as I once did, and take nothing with you. Put foul spirits to death. Do not bend. Not to them or anyone but your Lord."

I nodded eagerly, "Yes father."

"The journey will be perilous," he knelt with both legs to the ground, folding his hands into opposite sleeves of his robe. "Trust, follow, nothing but your heart. Stay near to Xui shrines along your way, and keep your mind sharp as a well-built blade. The Painter will forge you to be feared, as befits a worthy heir to the Mezore family."

I had set off the following day. The hollow feeling as I left was nothing compared to my pride. My still-glowing elation.

Nothing compared to the fear consuming me in the present.

My hand dove into the wicker basket upon the altar and clasped an offering, a necklace stringed from old black pearls. I spun and thrust it outwards, towards Lelou. "Begone from this place!" I bellowed at the many-colored mists as they gradually took form.

"No, Kode," said Lelou. "I am lonely. It pains me so much to bring you harm." Her body took shape again, teeth like sewing needles beared towards me beneath her void black eyes. Stained crimson.

I threw the necklace at her. It phased through her unearthly body, simply stirred the mists comprising it. She reached for me, cocking her head and forcing my back to the altar. Her breath was colder than winter wind. It rasped from her throat, the croak of an ill frog. I caught a time-eaten vase at my eyes edge and snuck a hand towards it. I felt if I were to move it any faster than a crawl she would surely lunge at me, bite open my throat. Sacred sands and ashes were often stored in vases as offerings. This was the only way.

"Let us have tea, Kode," Lelou rasped. "Tea at the palace where the brook ends. Zhin is expecting me back. He can join us after the battle." Her mouth opened further than any should, her jaw separating, her upper row of needle teeth facing skywards towards swirling grey clouds and an uncaring sky, "eyes" just barely watching from their upright position. Her mouth had no end in its darkness. I wanted to scream, but I was paralyzed. Her breath had froze me solid.

Father shouted, "Again!" Somewhere in my mind.

I flung my hand to the vase and undid the lid. Lelou rushed me, gurgling and hissing, arms flailing—grasping for me. Her nails were honed like blades. I could nearly feel their stinging bite. I shattered the vase against the ground, an ashen cloud billowing over old stone. It singed my nostrils. Acrid. Sharp. Lelou screamed and wailed, magenta flames licking, engulfing, her phantasmal body. The shrieks pierced my skin and spirit, howling through the wood as I pressed myself as close to the shrine as possible, batting my eyes away as the woman burned and swirled away into nothingness in my peripheral, along with her horrible, piercing, cries.

"Why, Kode?" Her voice boomed from all around.

Silence.

The skeleton hand released my heart, yet it beat like a war drum and kept me pinned to the shrine. I melted to the ground, gasping for air and wrapping my arms around my legs until I was no more than a ball—cold, afraid, and alone. I sobbed into my robe, clenching at its thick grey fabrics and cursing myself for being this way. For letting fear consume me. I wished father would strike me and spare me this dishonor. To tell me to get up again and move on. Yet I could not. Did not.

Something crunched within the forest, spurring me back to my feet. Instincts claimed me again. It was a dry crunch, a stick or branch breaking for certain. Had I only a weapon to use I could at least be content in this situation, but this journey was sink or swim. I had to provide such things for myself. In this I failed.