What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?
How would that change the way you look at each stranger, knowing that they could be the epic romance across all of your lifetimes?
HE SHICAN
1740
Until I met him, I always thought that fox spirits could only be women.
They say that fox spirits resemble beautiful women because of their astonishing ability to confound and enchant any man they wish, from desolate beggars to legendary emperors. But it is also said that these irresistible spirits are born as mere mortal foxes...the same shy woodland creatures that one might spot peeking innocently from behind a thicket of trees.
But if one of these humble foxes lives long enough to reach a certain age and wisdom, it might begin searching for a human skull. Whose skull it is does not matter; what is important is that the procured skull fit snugly over the fox’s own head, surely not an easy find. And if it does indeed find this well-fitted skull, this old fox might begin to wear it each sunset as it worships the Northern Dipper in the night sky.
And if this fox’s dedication and desire is great enough as it gives praise to the constellation, it might begin to grow more tails, one after the other. It may take eons of this adoration of the stars, but one day, many years after it first entered this world as a blind pup, the fox will attain its ninth and final tail.
With this ninth tail, the fox is reborn, a divine spirit at long last! Meat and blood and cartilage and hair will sprout from its skull as it is gifted human form, able to walk among us in disguise, to enjoy the privileges of our flesh.
Yet, despite its years of devoted worship, when the fox spirit receives its divinity, something inside it inevitably turns evil. Its newfound powers of persuasion and perception could be used for the betterment of society and human progress, but as it turns out, these powers are as easily flipped as a coin.
Perhaps this turn is a testament to the true nature of the fox...or perhaps indeed it is a testimony to the fickle nature of power itself. Because once this newly christened fox spirit enters our fray, with it comes death and disaster to mankind. Beautiful as it is merciless, the fox spirit’s malice is unrelenting, its once feral barks transformed into melodious laughter over the spoils of its power.
Yes, where there has been the folly of man, look for an ambitious fox slinking away.
Believing in fox spirits is not the leap—everyone knows someone who has encountered one. No, the question is not whether fox spirits exist. The question is: If one comes for you, can you resist it?
As children, my brothers and I would wait eagerly as our uncle polished off our father’s stores of white liquor, just to hear him drunkenly retell tales of his dalliance with a fox spirit. When our uncle was a young man studying for the imperial examinations, he was seduced by an older woman of unearthly beauty who consumed him whole like a fat dumpling. By the time he discovered her true identity, it was too late: all of the hard-earned money that our clan had saved for his projected illustrious career he had squandered instead on hedonistic flights of fancy all for the pleasure of the fox spirit.
Needless to say, he never passed any imperial examinations.
Back then I was still the favored son, and after my uncle stumbled into the night my father would always take care to remind me that many men who should have been great blamed their failures on fox spirits.
What should I do if I meet a fox spirit? I once asked my father.
He frowned. If you are an honorable man, you will never come across one.
I am of the humble He
Clan, the eldest of four sons. My given name Shican means Teacher, a nod to the great scholars that number among our ancestral tree. But like many things about me, the name was unearned; really I was a willing student instead.
I was quiet from birth, my mother always saying that I rarely cried, I only observed. She once dropped me as a child and I sustained a small cut on my hand. But instead of wailing like any other infant, I instead stared intently into the blood pooling in my palm, as though it were a new world encased in a dark ruby.
My father, a pragmatic merchant, liked that about me at first. He said that silence is a defining attribute of an honorable man. Father was quiet, too, and he thought that this was a trait he had passed on to me. But my father’s silence and mine were different: his was a satisfied blankness, whereas mine was a curious void eager to be filled.
Had you asked me as a child, I would have said I did not realize I was quiet, because the thoughts in my head were numerous and clamoring. Go, they would say. Go and look for it. I spent those early years yearning for something foreign yet also deeply familiar, like a dog that has never tasted meat.
We lived on the outskirts of our village and each night I could see the trees from my window, swaying back and forth. I must have been around fourteen when I started to sneak out at night to wander those woods. I am not sure what I was looking for. Fox spirits, perhaps, but anything really that poked a hole into the mundanity of my life. I might have asked my uncle to join me with his merry company, but he had drunk himself into the ground a few years prior.
Every night that I could, I crept a bit farther into the woods. It always struck me how the very nature of light, and lack thereof, completely changes a place. During the day, the woods near our village were bathed in warm sun and full of twittering birds, cheerful and inviting. But at night, the air smelled strange and the trees took different forms.
It was not long before I discovered that there were other boys from our village who also walked the woods at night, for reasons I dared not fathom. So at first I would stay far away, and if they did notice me, we simply acknowledged each other from a comfortable distance.
For a year I walked the woods and observed the other boys. I noted that they would often pair up and disappear. Some of them I actually did recognize,
particularly one named Zheng, whose father did business with mine. He had even come to my father’s business quite a few times and we always acted as though we shared no nocturnal activities.
Zheng was a few years older than me. He had a long, elegant nose, clever eyes and upturned lips. He and his father were lumber traders; I had heard his father had him working manual labor with their woodcutters, and I believed it. Zheng was strong and sturdy, with broad shoulders and swarthy skin, a bronze contrast to us other alabaster sons of the merchant class. When he came to our store, he would occasionally catch me staring at him and furtively smile back, which would send me running upstairs.
I began to suspect that Zheng was timing his midnight walks to match mine, and I kept a regular routine to encourage him. One night, I did not see him at all. I walked in the woods to where the trees were denser than the moonlight and sat there, waiting. Somehow, I knew he would come.
And he did. Zheng emerged from the shadows. He sat next to me in that effortless confident manner of his, leaning against a peach tree.
I cleared my throat. Are you also looking for spirits?
Surprised by this, Zheng laughed. Looking for spirits is pointless. They only come to you if they want to be found.
Then why do you walk the woods at night?
Zheng did not reply, but instead reached above him toward one of the tree’s branches and plucked a large peach. Its bold fragrance startled my nose and its burnt hue seemed to illuminate our surroundings. He took a sumptuous bite, smacking his lips as its syrup rolled down his chin. He handed it to me.
As I took a bite, running its juices over my tongue, he reached over and parted my robes at my waist. In the still, cool air, I was exposed. As he leaned down to take me into his mouth, I continued to eat the peach, my eyes closing as sticky sensations washed over me.
Afterward, Zheng and I walked back to our village together, side by side. As we reentered the clearing, I felt like I had finally stepped into a new world. Zheng grinned at me, and I smiled back.
But there was a lone figure waiting for us at the edge of the village. My father. He looked at me, then at Zheng, and then back at me. Zheng quickly departed as I slowly followed my father back to our home.
From that night on, my father never spoke directly to me again. Zheng and his father never came back to our business. Some nights I would hear my mother trying to gently persuade my father to be lenient, but this was in vain. Many sons who lay with other men go on to bring great fortune to their clans, she would say, but my father was unmoved. I suppose I understood. I have never blamed him.
When my brothers and I turned of age, my father handed his company to my younger brother instead of me. At eighteen, I hugged my tearful mother goodbye and mounted my old horse, leaving my village for one far away called Tiaoxi, where I opened a small inn.
In the following years, I still walked the wilderness many a night in search of fox spirits. And yes, I often settled instead for the mortal comforts of another man’s embrace. But when I finally did meet one, it was not a creature of the night.
No, the fox spirit stood there before me in the radiant light of day.
His name was Jiulang.
二DONG XIAN
4 BCE
A few months after the Princess Feng Yuan was accused of witchcraft against our Emperor and ordered to commit suicide, a rumor spread like summer mold throughout the Endless Palace that there would soon be a shift in the Court. Shift was an alarmingly odd word, so my colleagues and I did what we did best as low-ranking imperial clerks: jockeyed with what little influence we had.
Luckily for me, I’d always been told that I wielded a rather large influence, and I was particularly adept at jockeying with it.
I started with my usual stable boy, because there is always a surprising amount of intrigue to be gleaned from whom is riding with whom. The irony was not lost on me as the fair youth straddled me with his limber thighs, bucking up and down as though I were his noble steed galloping over rough terrain.
Please, my lord, he moaned as he held on to my shoulders for dear life. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was pleading for, and I certainly was no lord. But being addressed as one felt good, and I in turn did know a face of ecstasy when I saw one. Hence, I thrusted deeper inside him until I could feel my essence about to overflow, and then I flipped him face-first onto the mat in my chambers and pounded his pink plum until it was quivering around my happily depleted influence.
Afterward, as he was licking me clean, the stable boy mentioned that he had been charged with a new horse.
Whose horse? I asked, instantly alert. This particular stable boy groomed the Emperor’s own prized horses, so undoubtedly this new horse would belong to someone in the Emperor’s inner circle. My suspicions were confirmed when the fair youth said that he had never met its owner, clearly someone too important to be in the same vicinity as a servant.
The horse is armored, though, the stable boy said as he slipped back into his robes. He nearly tripped over an unbothered Miaomi, who was preening her blue fur in the sunlight.
Armored? I responded, stroking the palace cat’s chin as she idled by me. You mean it’s a soldier’s horse?
He nodded as he tamed his tousled hair back into a servant’s bun. A massive stallion, no less! From the Far North. Red as wet rust. A real stunner.
I gave the stable boy’s shapely backside a thankful spank as he left my chambers, my mind bubbling. Whatever this shift in the Court was, it involved a soldier. Perhaps someone returning from battle?
After a quick wash, I found a scrap of food to feed an impatiently mewing Miaomi. Early on in my residency at the Endless Palace, I’d started feeding leftovers to the slinky stray cat whenever she came by my quarters, and eventually she was returning every day during my afternoon break to claim whatever bits of meat or rice that I had saved for her.
I had no idea where this blue cat actually lived, but that day I needed to send her on her way earlier than usual. I grabbed my robes. Now that I was armed with my stable boy’s exclusive intelligence, I knew exactly who to see next.
A little to the left, Lord Pang groaned through gritted teeth. Now, here was an actual lord, far outranking me, but as I had come to discover since my arrival at the Endless Palace two years prior, many powerful men have a penchant for being overpowered.
I had him pressed against the silk screen door of his office, no doubt creating a curious shadow to any passersby outside in the halls of the Imperial Army administerial offices, but I had few qualms. I saw Lord Pang in his office regularly at his behest, and it was likely his subordinates
were accustomed to curious shadows whenever I visited.
Deep inside the lord, my fingers gamely shifted to the left, and sure enough I felt that magic little node hidden within all men. I pressed down upon it, eliciting another stifled moan from the older man, tapping in rhythm with each of his spasms. He leaned his face in toward me as though to kiss me, but I slapped him ferociously across the cheek as hard as I could muster. He gasped with glee as I backhanded his other cheek and spat on him, leaving his face red. Then I hooked my imbedded fingers and swirled them inside him as he pleasured himself, until I felt that dependable warm splatter land upon my exposed chest coupled with a stifled cry from above.
Lord Pang let out a satiated sigh as I withdrew from him, and he slumped down onto the floor of his office. Out of his pocket he pulled out a clean cloth, which I gratefully used to wipe myself down as I slipped back into my robes. What were you saying earlier, Dong Xian? A new soldier in Court? Despite his heft, he had a high nasal voice that grated upon my ears. The pasty older man certainly was a far cry from my vibrant stable boy, but he was just as game to trade information for my influence.
Yes, my lord. I am wondering if you have processed anyone returning from battle as of late? I handed him back his handkerchief. I have reasons to believe that they have something to do with the rumored changes in the Endless Palace.
The lord shook his head. Dong Xian, if there was a soldier who commanded such sway over the Court, they would not come under my purview.
I was at first disappointed, with soiled fingers for naught. But I realized that there was indeed a clue here, even if I had overlooked it before. Sway?
Having securely retied his robes, Lord Pang sat down behind his desk and waved me off. Think bigger, Dong Xian. My office handles the bureaucracy of the little people. You are encroaching upon a circle in the very upper echelons of the Endless Palace, perhaps even within the orbit of the Dragon Throne.
As I hurried back to my duties on the far other side of the Palace, I was so excited that I nearly tripped more than once. Here I was in possession of a lead that very likely pointed directly toward the center of our universe, the Emperor himself. I felt like I had finally discovered the hidden pathway toward my ultimate destination.
It was finally time to pay Old Yang a visit. But first, I needed to procure a jug of decent wine.
It had been a few weeks since I had visited with my teacher, Yang Xiong, the elderly court philosopher who normally talked in abstract musings wrapped in witty riddles. While at first balking at his esoterica like most of the Court, after a few dreadfully dull sessions I mercifully discovered that once he had had some liberal pours of yellow wine he reentered the common tongue of us plebeians...as a bit of a gossip, actually. As my mother once told me, there are few knots
that strategic wine cannot unravel.
The harmony of the Court need be recalibrated, Old Yang said bluntly, as we sat in the shade of the courtyard foliage shielding ourselves from the sun, thankful for the massive tree that towered above us. Yang’s private garden was the traditional thinking place of the Emperor’s philosophers, and its intimacy allowed us to speak more freely.
I dutifully refilled the elder man’s cup, waiting for more morsels. He took a hearty gulp. Strange times, now. Accusations of witchery afoot. Consorts and eunuchs scheming. The wind-water balance of the Endless Palace is inauspicious. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed!
I had a sudden recall of the Princess Feng Yuan prostrate in front of the entire Court, begging for mercy from the Prime Minister. Inauspicious is a word more terrifying than famine. Dynasties have fallen from even the prediction of inauspicious times.
No clemency was shown to the Princess Feng Yuan. She was stripped of her numerous titles and exiled to a faraway ruin. Once one of the most respected women in Court and lavished with the most decadent riches, it was there she was given a final gift: a gold silken rope with which to hang herself.
This was the macabre conclusion to a scandal that had struck the Endless Palace like a southern typhoon. Rumors and hearsay are the currency of bored officials, and we were all wealthy that month. Perhaps it was the sheer downfall that made this affair so profound: the Princess was by all accounts a virtuous saint, renowned for her humility and selflessness. For her to suddenly be exposed as a witch...it was all so deliciously morbid.
But the whispers within whispers, the dangerous truths that no one dared to speak aloud but instead only shared through knowing glances, were that these allegations were of course egregious lies! What had really happened was that the Princess Feng Yuan’s lifelong rival, the Grand Empress Dowager Fu—grandmother to our Emperor—had finally triumphed in the two women’s decades-long game of switching hands.
But truth doesn’t matter here in the Court, and ethics are rarely rewarded. To survive here, we move to the current of the ocean, knowing we cannot dictate the waves.
Yes, as far as I was concerned, these machinations were meant to stay distant maelstroms. When I first entered the Court, I promised my father that I would keep my head low and work diligently. That is the honor that wreaths the Dong Clan: greatness through our austerity. Beyond it being a favor to my father, I think that is why the celebrated philosopher Yang humored a green teenager like me with not much to contribute to his sort of conversation. As a friend of my father’s, Old Yang knew that my people were austere and rejected extravagance, and that was his credo as well.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious.
One’s station in the Endless Palace was not necessarily carved in stone, but rather could be as fluid as ripples on a river. One simply had to be in the right
place, closer to the center, to create an impact with far-reaching effects.
By the center, of course, I mean the Emperor.
Thus, in the two years after I swore my life to the Court, I became a devoted student of it as well. Through my own brand of carnal research, I studied how it flowed, because everything in the Palace—from the lowest scullery maid’s morning duties to a private audience with the Prime Minister—flowed around the Emperor.
Yet, direct access to him was near impossible; I had never even seen him in person. The Endless Palace lived up to its name, as it covered 1,200 acres of sprawling land, lake, and hill and had a population of hundreds. All of us who lived on these sacred grounds had one singular life purpose of selflessly serving the Emperor and his Dynasty of the Han.
Yes, despite its size and splendor, the palace was a labyrinthine prison, with endless traps around every corner. To be seen as overtly reaching beyond one’s station was ill-advised.
There was one person, however, in my immediate orbit who had a regular audience with the Emperor. And perhaps this person could help me connect the dots among an accused witch, a mystery soldier and the Emperor.
Teacher Yang, I interrupted the philosopher, who was still droning on about wind-water imbalances. But how does the Emperor fare in these uncertain times? He consults with you regularly, yes?
Yang Xiong paused and made rare eye contact with me. In the years since my father introduced me to the old philosopher, I had made sure to tread carefully and respectfully with him, especially since my very first interactions with Old Yang had been particularly embarrassing. I had been waiting for a chance to invoke the Emperor out of concern...not opportunity.
The philosopher was quiet for a moment and I prayed my face looked properly concerned.
Finally, Old Yang, choosing his words more carefully than before, said, The Emperor is an exceptionally bright and promising leader. Much like with his father and grandfather before him, my conversations with him fill me with hope for the Dynasty of the Han. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
