Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction (5 page)

“She’s so ugly,” the concubines remarked earlier behind the fluttering of their fans.

One yanked on one of my ears as hard as she could. “Rabbit ears? How could the foolish Prince have married a freak?”

“She’s mute!” sniggered another concubine. “She won’t be able to tell him of anything we’ve said about her.”

I had no dowry, nor family to send a bride price to. If the court had any objections, they were all dissolved by my indispensable ability to brew the Elixir of Life. After the wedding banquet, the Prince tossed me onto the bed of our crimson wedding chamber before throwing his muscular body onto me. I squirmed, but my breath raced with curiosity and rapture as he peeled my gown off me. I cried in shock when he squeezed my breasts with his large hands. Was this how humans copulated?

He pinned down my legs with his hands. “As my wife, you must bear my sons for my lineage. And of course, you will concoct the Elixir for me everyday.”

That was our wedding night. Everyday, I brewed him a draught of the Elixir of Life, much as I did for Chang’e on the moon. At least, life here was more interesting. The Prince often took me for walks in the majestic gardens, strolling by my side past turquoise waterfalls and blooming lilies and cherry blossoms. His robot attendants often accompanied us, buzzing and whirring with every little movement they made. But I did not bear only the duties of being his wife. I had to bear the tortures of his concubines as they sat sewing, plucking at their lutes, or simply gossiping.

They yanked on both my long hair and rabbit ears when the Prince was not present. It did not help that I was shorter than most of the concubines.

“What has the Prince seen in her? If she’s part-rabbit, why hasn’t she been sent to the slaughterhouse?”

“Has your husband gotten you pregnant, Rabbit-Freak?”

How could I answer? They laughed and pointed at me when I opened my mouth, but I could only force out coughs every time I tried.

“No?” They all tittered, their voices like the clanging of a thousand goat-bells. “You should get pregnant soon, stupid girl! If you don’t, one of us will take your place!”

Had I still been a rabbit, I would have been able to bounce high, been able to come stomping down on them with my large, powerful, broad feet. By instinct, I pounced out of my chair, trying to kick at them. Although my small, delicate human feet was treasured and eroticised by my Prince, it only made a fool of me when I couldn’t jump more than a few inches up in the air.

I collapsed onto my back.

As the concubines all tittered and jeered at my expense, an epiphany flooded through me. Without my services, my ability to concoct the Elixir of Life, my worth was nothing. I may no longer be in the form of an animal, but I was neither a human.

§

It did not matter how often my husband and I were in bed together. I remained barren because I am a rabbit by nature. Not just any rabbit, but the Moon Rabbit. The Prince did not understand why I could never conceive, but mythological immortal creatures, such as myself, cannot bear mortal children. When I could not have a son, he left me lying alone in bed for several nights, sometimes for weeks at a time. Although I welcomed the solitude of having the comfort of a bed to myself, I did hear moans and screams from neighbouring rooms. In these cases, I tightly pressed my large rabbit ears against my human ears.

Even when these concubines gave birth to sons, the Prince outlived everyone, due to my Elixir of Life. He saw every concubine and her offspring grow old and grey and die. On the other hand, the Prince and I continued to live.

He was obviously growing tired of me. He had the cooks in the kitchen plagiarise my recipe for the elixir. I could tell they attempted to make it because I could smell the slight scent of lavender from the liquids they were brewing. However, my Prince always complained of varying degrees of bitterness, and preferred the taste of my elixir. In addition, since the cooks were mortal, their attempts to sustain the Prince’s eternal life failed.

“Why do you continue living?” demanded the Prince when he realised that I never grew a strand of grey hair. But then he would recline on his divan and heave a great sigh as he glanced out into the gardens from the window. “But then again, you are my lifetime companion. If you stop making the elixir, who else can make it?”

Even after he no longer demanded intercourse from me, at least I knew I was useful.

§

Due to longevity, the Prince continued to rule China for the next several centuries.

But one day, the Westerners came. They were big, bearded men in their giant ships, yanking treaties from thin air, imposing expectations on a culture foreign to them, and commanding for land. Even when the Boxers tried to eliminate them from the country, the Westerners only proliferated, luring and trapping many able-bodied men inside opium houses, and building great walled cities for themselves, which may as well be pedestals upon which they could jeer at the Chinese for not meeting their alien standards of civilisation.

“Well, wife, what do you think I can do to regain the glory of China?” The Prince would ask me this as we sat in the lounge. I felt his fingers slip beneath my chin. His eyes met mine.

“You were from the moon.” His voice was gentle. “Tell me, when I met you, were you a princess there?”

I shook my head.

“Well, perhaps I should go imperialise the moon. Prove to the White Demons that I am superior to them.”

My eyes widened at the thought of this. Chang’e was still on the moon. If he went to try and take over the moon, he would kill her!

I shook my head.

“No? Why not?”

I scribbled on a piece of paper that I extracted from a pocket hidden in one of the layers of my skirt. Notes were my method of communicating to him when my eyes and gestures could not convey what I thought.

It’s impossible
, I wrote to him.

“Impossible?” The prince shot up from his seat and struck me across the face.

I toppled out of my chair, a silent scream ripping from my throat as I clamped my hand to my cheek. I coughed and hacked on the shriek I could not produce.

“You have neither say nor opinions in what I do, wife!” yelled the Prince. “Whose side are you on? I will imperialise the moon and prove myself as a fine ruler and drive these White Demons out from my people’s homes! Just watch! I will!”

As the Prince assembled a troop of robots to accompany him to the moon once again, Dragon God appeared by my side. “Look, Yue Tu, I have warned you that the world is a terrible place. Whatever crimes that humankind has committed, they will only repeat and repeat.”

Tears dripped out of my eyes. I rubbed at them with the silk sleeve of my hanfu. “But, Dragon God, was it wrong of me to want a taste of a life more exciting than my own?”

Between his claws, Dragon God conjured a crystal ball. “Life will continue on. The Westerners will only continue imperialising China. Then, the Western World will fall crisis to its own trials. China will become divided amongst its people, and Japan will come to conquer China. China will go through great turmoil and disharmony, all while rebuilding itself, and will return as a world power. But then the West will come again, and the cycle will repeat, over and over.”

“What must I do?” I continued swatting at my tears. “I only wanted to be human.”

“Save Chang’e. And if you do, I will lead you to the path of Nirvana.”

Clutching my mortar and pestle, I rode on Dragon God’s back, and we flew to the moon, arriving there before my husband could reach it.

“Chang’e!” I cried out.

She was reclining on her divan in her pagoda. When she saw me, she sat up in a shock. “Yue Tu? Where in the world have you been for all these years, leaving me in such boredom? And why do you still have rabbit ears if you’re in human form?”

“Chang’e, just shut up and stay in your pagoda! I’m trying to save you from a Prince!”

“Oh, a Prince?” That seemed to be the only word her ears perked up at. “Is he handsome?”

“No! He’s coming to imperialise the moon and kill you! Now shut up and stay there! He won’t be able to see you since you’re a mythological creature! But if he takes over the moon, you’re as good as dead!”

With my mortar and pestle, I concocted a poison for the Prince. When he arrived, his eyes widened with surprise at the sight of me on the moon. I held out the glass bottle with the new, clear-coloured concoction for him.

“A new elixir?” sneered my estranged husband. “What makes this different from the others you’ve made me throughout hundreds of years of our marriage?”

I scribbled a note to him:
This is one you can drink, and you will never need another elixir.

“Really? So I won’t need the trouble of seeking you to concoct any more for me?” He frowned and crossed his arms. “Now, how do I know you are not poisoning me?”

I expected this question. After all, after falling out of love with me, with the invasion of the Westerners, the many betrayals left and right within the court, and the mass conversion of peasants to Christianity, he was expected to be paranoid. But I would end all of his paranoia with a single sip.

As a mythological creature, I would not be affected. I downed a gulpful and smiled at the foolish Prince.

I thrust the re-stoppered bottle into the iron palm of Prince’s robot escort. Nodding with satisfaction, the Prince boarded his firebird-shaped ship. In a flame, he and his robots flew up into the air, turned, and launched off back to Earth, abandoning me on the moon’s surface.

I felt cold, rather empty and blank now that he was gone. But at least I was not unhappy.

“That felt a bit anticlimactic to those many years of being a human,” I stated.

Dragon God chuckled. “Is that a bad thing?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. It was quite an interesting experience.”

“Well, now that you have known of human life, and understand the suffering underlying all of existence, I will lead you to the path I have promised.”

Out of thin air, the Dragon God opened a portal for me. The stone stairs, surrounded by bamboo, lead up to a clear blue sky.

“Now, Yue Tu,” said the Dragon God with a grin that showed how all of his dagger-like fangs glistened by the glow of the portal, “lead the way to Nirvana.”

About Jo Wu

Jo Wu attends UC Berkeley, where she is majoring in molecular cell biology and minoring in creative writing. Her works have appeared in various magazines and the anthologies
Gothology II: Misery Loves Company
,
Thrones of Desire
, and
Underneath the Juniper Tree’s Best of 2012
. She’s also an internationally published alternative model under the alias Carmilla Jo. Please visit her at
http://jowu-timeispoisoned.blogspot.com
, and/or follow her on Twitter: @Jo_Wu_Author.

Operation Toba 2049

Kris Williamson

~ Malaysia ~

The small events hall at the Putra World Trade Centre was packed. Few talked, but the various news broadcasts from tablets and phones created the sense that the room was full of conversation. Words bounced around the room—ultra plinian, tephra ejecta—the content of this digital conversation was largely lost on those listening but not the severity of the impending disaster.

Faridah sat near the back, scanning the crowd for any familiar faces. She had been waiting there for an hour already but had not heard her name called over the piercing intercom system.

“Yang!” Daus called after spotting her in the crowd. As he hurried over, Faridah stood to hug him, losing her seat in the process. “Hear anything yet?”

“No,” she lamented while wearing a long face. “But Suzi, one of my coworkers, had her name called. I’m glad you’re finally here. I can’t stand this waiting around. I need to vent my frustration somehow!”

Daus looked at her momentarily before pulling her body to his. He whispered assurances into her ear, knowing full well that they would not be okay if her name was not eventually called.

§

Ria flipped through the channels quickly before settling on TVPM, where the familiar face of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Hussein Tun Khairy, discussed his government’s plans for helping all Malaysians get through the crisis in a “fair, efficient, and impartial” manner. He closed his speech with his usual race-based refrain about Malays never disappearing from the face of the Earth, a reference to an old folk legend that took on a new meaning after nearby Sumatra Island became seismically unstable.

She rolled her eyes as he spoke, shouting back to the television set. “You’re not even in Malaysia any more! What are you going to do from Australia? Send a team of kangaroos to save the rest of us? Coward!”

She turned off the television, cursing quietly about the hopelessness of the majority of Malaysians and Indonesians who had yet to be evacuated. From the other room, she could hear her two younger siblings playing
oo som
. Ria walked over and watched the kids momentarily before telling them to shower.

“Sis, why don’t you go to school any more?” the youngest asked. After being ignored, other questions came to mind. “When will mommy come home tonight? Late again? Where is daddy?”

Ria shrugged her shoulders and helped her little brother to his feet. “Go shower now. But don’t use too much water.”

It was always an uncertainty when or if another water truck would replenish the public water tank that sat next to the neighbourhood playground. The filthy water was all they had since water services simply stopped several months earlier. Water interruptions had always been a regular part of life in Malaysian urban areas. But then, at least, there was always the assumption that eventually it would be restored after problems arising from political dramas and infrastructural failures were addressed.

Ria realised that she had not showered in at least two days. She was unmotivated, having lost her faith in people since the mass evacuations across the region began. Her boyfriend left with his family to Thailand before the border was sealed off. She only found out from the family’s maid, who had been left behind.