Serpentine (10 page)

She’d been enjoying the feel of his palm against hers, but her heart dropped with that last word, her stomach clenching. She shuffled back on all fours away from him.

Irresistible.

Temptress.

Seductress and murderer.

Kai Sen scrubbed a hand across his face, but not before she saw the stricken expression on it.

“You’re a monk, Kai Sen. Aren’t you sworn to celibacy?” He liked her because he had no choice. She liked him because she was a fool.

He snorted. “I’m no real monk, remember?” It was jarring to hear the bitterness in his voice. “So why should I abide by their rules?”

“Well,” She dug her hands deep into the dirt, “I’m not who I seem either.”

“If you’re trying to scare me off, it’s not working.” He stared at the open book, the drawing of the serpent demon leering back at him. “You can see and hear the ghosts because you’re different, too, aren’t you?”

Her arms pimpled, as if a cool breeze had swept across her, and she shivered. She wanted to slam the book shut.

“I do know one thing for certain.” He lifted her chin with gentle fingers so she would see him. “Whatever power you have, whatever gift, you didn’t choose it. Just like I didn’t choose to be clairvoyant. When I saw you for the first time, it felt as if something snapped into place. It wasn’t a coincidence that I found you asleep in the forest that morning, Skybright. I was drawn to your presence.” His gaze was filled with warmth, with concern. “I’ve experienced many unusual things because of my … ability. But never this.”

Skybright shook her head. “We don’t even know each other, Kai—”

“You said that before. Ask me anything then,” he said with a grin, a note of challenge in his voice.

“Where were you born?”

“Xi Men. In the twelfth moon.”

“What’s your favorite pastime?”

“Jumping.”

She laughed. “What?”

“I like jumping. Leaping off the ground. Or from high up.” He shrugged. “I like the freedom in the movement, the rush from the motion.”

“Don’t you have a less … strange hobby?”

It was his turn to laugh. “Oh, so I’m being judged now?” He sprang to his feet in one swift move. “You tell me something you like to do first.”

Skybright rested her chin against her knees, thinking. Her entire life revolved around serving Zhen Ni—what did she do for pleasure? “Singing. I like to sing.”

“You do have a pretty singing voice. I hope to hear more of it.” Kai Sen began backing away from her, the sunlight a bright halo around his frame. “I’ll jump across the creek.”

“No. You’ll get sopping wet!” The creek was wider than the length of two men.

But Kai Sen was already racing toward the water, and he shot straight up when his foot hit the creek’s edge. Skybright covered her mouth as he flew over to the other side, landing gracefully on both feet. He turned around with a boyish grin on his tanned face.

“See? There’s no feeling like it.” Kai Sen leaped back across the creek with ease, using the few stones that protruded above the water, and sat down beside her. “I enjoy carving too,” he said after a pause. “Making things from wood—if that’s more acceptable to you.”

She smiled. “Your favorite dish?”

“Cold noodles with bean curd and sesame paste. You?”

“Braised pork chops with rice.”

“I’m hungry now.”

“I almost forgot. I brought something to thank you.” Skybright unwrapped a handkerchief, revealing four steamed red bean buns. “Cook just made them this morning.” They each took one and ate in silence, both savoring the treat.

It wasn’t until they had polished off all four that Kai Sen finally said, “You set up that ancestor altar for the ghosts, didn’t you?”

“They asked me to.”

“That was kind.”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” she replied. “They were lost … forgotten. Just because they were poor in life doesn’t mean they should spend their afterlife in hunger.”

Kai Sen considered her for a moment before saying, “For as long as I’ve seen the random spirit bound to our realm, it’s never occurred to me to help them.”

“Our circumstances are different,” she said. “I only began seeing spirits recently. You were just a child and given away because of it.”

He bowed his head and began pulling stray blades of grass from the earth, his shoulders tensed into a straight line. “Weren’t you frightened, Skybright?”

“Not really,” she replied. She remembered then what he had said to her the previous evening, right before he had kissed her:
I never feel as if I can speak of my past with the other monks.
She suddenly understood that there was the cheerful Kai Sen, full of teasing banter—the confident young man that the monks knew—and this one before her, hunched as if trying to fold inward to protect himself, still nursing the anger and heartbreak of being discarded by his own parents and taken into a monastery that would not fully accept him. She wanted to touch him, to somehow ease his pain and sorrow.

Finally, she said quietly, “I’m an orphan too, Kai Sen.”

His head snapped up.

“It seems so frivolous to say. Because I know it doesn’t change anything for you. But my mother abandoned me. And I had never given much thought to her—”

“Never?” Kai Sen said incredulously.

“No. It had seemed pointless to wonder, but now … ”

But now, I wonder.

“I’m sorry, Skybright.” He slid his hand across her back and pulled her into him, so that they leaned together. “The monks say that those who can see the dead have one foot in this realm and one in the underworld.”

“Is that how you feel, like you’ve got one foot in our world and the other in hell?” She knew Kai Sen was fully human, nothing like her.

Kai Sen caressed her arm with one hand, in a distracted way. “I don’t know, to be truthful. I only know that I’ve always been marked as different.” He lifted his chin in that unconscious way of his, and Skybright traced his birthmark with a light finger. He froze, seeming to hold his breath.

“And do you think your … clairvoyance is connected to this?” she asked.

He grasped her hand, pulling it gently from his throat. “Yes, I do.” His expression was guarded, lacking its usual mirth. And somehow, she knew she was the first person he had ever allowed to touch his birthmark.

“One ghost said that there’s a breach in the underworld, that they escaped early,” she murmured.

“It’s true. The hungry ghosts are already wandering, and the Ghost Festival doesn’t start for a few days yet. The monastery has been on alert. Our abbot is concerned by the stories travelers are bringing from across the provinces.”

Skybright stiffened. “What stories?”

“Peasants and nobleman alike have seen … oddities. A man twice the height of any mortal with a bird’s head and black wings sprouting from his shoulders. Children without arms and a hand where their mouths should be—”

She shuddered and he leaned in to kiss her softly on the cheek. Skybright smelled again his subtle scent of camphor wood.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone on.”

“No. I’m glad you told me.”

Kai Sen rubbed his forehead with one hand, his weariness palpable. “The abbot has sent notices to nearby towns and villages, warning the people that all wards for their homes should be in place. That no one should go out at night, especially past the thieving hour.” He reached over to grasp her hand. “Be especially careful, Skybright. I don’t know what it means that spirits show themselves so clearly to us both.”

She stared at their hands, fingers twined, and wished she could be truthful with him. Or tell him she didn’t like him, never wanted to see him again. Make things easier for them both. But she enjoyed his company too much, and his kisses, to give them up.

“Promise you’ll keep safe?”

She gripped his hand. “But what does it all mean? Are the demons real?”

“I’ve not seen them myself, but the sightings have been too numerous. If there truly is a breach between our realms, any demon or monster can come into ours from the underworld.” Kai Sen stood and helped her up with a gentle tug. “It means that the monks are going to war.”

They took leave of each other reluctantly. Skybright accepted another chaste kiss on her cheek, although she wanted nothing more than to push Kai Sen to the ground and kiss him again like they had the night before, with his arms tightly wound around her.

Her head swam with everything they had discussed—the little information she could gather on the serpent demon, the early appearance of the hungry ghosts and a breach in hell into their own world. Kai Sen had said they might not see each other again for some time, and this had filled Skybright with a sense of longing and dread. More than she should have felt for a boy that she had just met—that she barely knew.

The cheerful sunshine and blue skies seemed a mockery of what was happening around them, what would surely come again at night.

That evening, Skybright lay awake in bed, listening for the return of the hungry ghosts. But there was nothing except for the chirping of crickets. She thought back to what Kai Sen had read to her about serpent demons. If this was what she truly was, there was no way of changing it. But she could try and control when she shifted. Grabbing her hand mirror and stuffing it into a knapsack, she peered into the silent courtyard awash in moonlight, then sneaked quietly out the servant entrance after unlocking the door with her key.

She shouldn’t be going into the forest so often. But she had to find out more about who, or what, she was becoming, had to find a way to control her shape shifting. She couldn’t risk someone discovering her as a serpent in her bedchamber—she needed to know how to change back. And deep down, if she would admit it, the wilderness called to her.

Running, she was drawn back to the creek where she had met with Kai Sen. The three quarter moon sat high in the sky, giving enough light that she could see what she was doing. Quickly, Skybright undressed, glad for the warmth of the summer air, yet her bare skin still tingled at the thought of being so exposed in the wild. She folded her sleep clothes neatly and placed them in a pile on a stone. The familiar ritual soothed her jangled nerves.

Skybright then sat on the sparse patch of grass near the bank with her legs extended and the knapsack she had brought beside her. She concentrated and recalled that unbearable heat, imagined the feelings that struck her when her tail emerged, the writhing of her flesh, the soft whisper as scales covered her skin.

Nothing happened.

Again, she tried to change into serpent form, imagining the hotness rising below her waist, that sensation of severing then melding together. Something shifted, and she jolted up. Her tail emerged within a few breaths, and she shuddered to see it twisted in front of her, so long it touched the creek’s edge. Darting her tongue out, she thought that she could still taste Kai Sen in the air, the lingering scent of camphor wood from his clothes, the distinctive salt and tang of his skin.

She retrieved the hand mirror from her knapsack. The passage Kai Sen had read mentioned venom. She opened her mouth, her forked tongue flicking out. Her heightened vision and the moon let her see her reflection perfectly. Grimacing, her upper lip pulled back to expose curved fangs where her incisors had been. Skybright shrank back from the mirror, but forced herself to look again. The fangs were the length of a finger joint, deadly sharp. With her mouth closed, her face appeared unchanged. Hand trembling, she slipped the mirror back inside her bag.

To distract herself, Skybright focused on what she could sense in her serpent form. No nocturnal creatures scampered around her, like she had felt the other night. Not even the leaves rustled. It seemed impossible that the forest, usually so filled with hidden movement and life, was at a complete and hushed stand still. She ignored the strange quiet and tried to will herself back into a girl. This was what she needed to be able to do, if she wanted to survive. She had always been asleep when she changed back and had no inkling what it felt like.

She imagined her scales vanishing, revealing human flesh, visualized her serpent length shortening and splitting in two. Something faint whirred in her chest, but nothing happened. Skybright squeezed her eyes shut and tried harder, picturing herself with bare legs. The scales of her serpent coil rippled, but the sensation halted when she felt the pounding of many feet from a great distance, like a faint echo. She flipped over and began pushing herself through the trees toward the noise. The vibrations became stronger and stronger, until she glimpsed many torches weaving between the trees.