Burning Tigress (40 page)

"Of course there is," she snapped. But then she continued, her words slow and careful. "But I think... there is relief, too." She took a deep breath and set her feet to swinging again. "I never realized how freeing disgrace could be." She flashed him a weak smile. "I'm a fallen woman now. I could have saved myself in the mission, but not now—not here alone with you."

Her smile faded, and he could see the reality of her situation slowly sink into her consciousness. Even though he had brought these thoughts to the fore, even knowing he had made her see the truth, her sudden cloak of sadness brought tears to his eyes.

"I'm a fallen woman," she murmured. "No respectable man will want me, and no dignified woman will accept me. Good little girls will be told to curse and spit at me; little boys will be free to tug on my hair or clothing and their parents will just laugh." She shuddered. "How cruel the righteous can be."

"You can still go back. I will take you to the mission. You can—"

"Become one of them? Forswear everything I feel to become a nun?" She turned to him, and he was stunned by the fury in her eyes. "I will have to swear that you are an evil man, Ken Jin. I will have to confess that what we did together was an act of depravity. You will be vilified. I will be castigated."

"Don't think about me. I will be—"

"I know where you'll be!" she snapped. "You're going to have your dragon cut off in some insane act of self-destruction, and so you think I should too. That I should become a nun, deny everything we did, and make it into something heinous."

"No!" How quickly his temper rose to match hers. "What I plan has nothing to do with you!"

"Are you so sure?"

"Of course!" But then he fell silent, wondering if he spoke the truth.

She must have sensed his weakness. Or perhaps, as a Tao master, she saw when he left the path of truth. "It all works together, Ken Jin. You cannot pretend one action doesn't touch another, that one part of you isn't a piece of the whole."

He looked away. Or, more accurately, he looked down. He did not want to think too deeply about what he intended. He did not want to dwell on the slice of the knife or the painful three days afterward. Three days when he would not be allowed to eat or drink or urinate. Would his dragon still be part of him then? Would...

"I'm not talking about your castration." Her voice trembled on that last word, but she did not stop. "I'm talking about everything. Your family threw you out."

"I survived. Tan Shi Po took me in."

"Until she and Kui Yu were taken to prison."

He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of yet another failure.

"Your employer's daughter pursued you, and you lost everything. Again."

"It was my choice as well."

"So, we are both at fault. Both—"

"Disowned. We are both disowned." He lifted his gaze to hers, regardless of the hot burn of humiliation in his face. "Why do you press this? What do you want, Char?"

She shook her head, obviously struggling with her answer. "I want you to be whole, Ken Jin. I want—"

"There is no whole for a disowned man! Do you not understand that? Without my family, I am a broken piece of an altar decoration, a thread cut off and discarded from the full tapestry. I am nothing!"

"But don't you see?" she countered, grabbing his hands and holding him to her. "You aren't broken, and you aren't discarded. Not unless you want to be."

He stared at her, and he could see she didn't understand. "A Chinese man is not just himself alone. His ancestors watch over him; his descendants care for him."

"So, since you don't have one you will cut off the other?"

"Yes!" he snapped. "It was my destiny thirty years ago, and I used treachery to avoid it. I told my brother that I was going to a fair without him. I pretended to brag, saying I would eat sweets and see a great magician. Then I let him sneak in the cart in my place and pretend to be me. I let him walk into the surgeon's tent expecting a show instead of the knife."

"You were eight years old!"

He shook his head. "I knew better." He straightened. "And now I return to the path I should have walked."

"You can't," she pressed.

"I can."

"You can't!" she repeated with more force than he'd ever heard from her before. "You can't become an eight-year-old boy again. You can't ignore what you have learned and done and been these last twenty years."

He meant to argue. He meant to claim that he could indeed be what he once was, but she was right. He was changed, and not even castration could erase the last two decades. He sighed. "I must return to the middle path. I must find peace."

She reached for him, stroking his arm. "Perhaps to be whole, you must look ahead instead of behind. Forget the past. Forge ahead to a new future. Create your own clan and your own ancestors."

He almost laughed at her silliness, but refrained because she would be insulted. "I cannot simply make up new ancestors."

She smiled. "Of course not. But you can create your own family altar. Write down the names of the people who still love you."

He snorted. "Ancestors are not so easily accepted or discarded."

"Then neither would their descendants be. Surely someone loved you. Someone would still claim you."

His grandmother. He knew this but did not admit it. Charlotte must have seen the thought inside him, though, must have sensed the softening in his heart at the memory of his father's mother.

"There
is
someone, isn't there?" she pressed.

"A woman does not go on a family altar."

"Says who?"

"Says me." And all the ancestors before him.

"Well, you're wrong."

This time, he did laugh. It was a clean sound, bursting from him. It brought lightness in its wake, and peace—a small, beautiful measure of peace. Then his laugh faded and they sat once again, side by side in silence.

Finally she sighed. "You're still going to Peking, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Unless you wish to go back to the mission."

"No. You'd just go on to the Forbidden City without me, and then we'd both be miserable."

He felt a smile tug at his lips. "I have no desire to see you miserable."

"I have no desire to see you castrated."

He laughed. "You need not watch."

"You need not do it at all."

Silence again settled between them, but it was not so heavy this time. Especially when he turned his hand palm-side up and her hand slipped into his. As always, their qi quickly harmonized.

"Will you still teach me?" she asked.

He smiled. How could he deny her anything? "If you still wish it."

"I do."

He was silent a moment. "How much do you wish to practice? Do you want me to take your virginity?"

She hesitated. "I've lost my reputation now. Everyone will expect that I'm... that I'm not..."

"But what do
you
want, Char?"

She sighed. It was a quiet exhale, a breath that he felt rather than heard. "I want to keep that part of me pure right now."

"Very well," he said. Then he gently disentangled their hands and drew his fingers up her arm.

Her body was exquisite, her trust in him divine. The moonlight made her skin glow like the finest pearl, the stars sparkled in her eyes, and the evening air became perfumed with her sweet scent. She was the evening: the moon, the stars, even the sweet water that trickled nearby. When he touched her, he touched the world. When he kissed her, he kissed eternity. And when she began to vibrate with yin power, he knew he could bring her to Heaven.

And with every caress, every kiss, and every gasping moment, he felt eternally blessed.

In this fashion, they passed every day and night until they arrived in Peking.

* * *

Triple Happiness! Great fortune!

A son is born to Wen Gao Jin!

Joyous celebration! Heaven's blessing!

(Attached, a bill for expenses dated November 19,1895. It includes expenses for the midwife, child's clothing, and the fourteen-day birth celebration, already completed one week before.)

Acupressure can be used as an adjunct therapy in the treatment of migraine pain and the underlying cause of this physical disturbance. First, massage your head as if shampooing your hair. Second, place your thumbs underneath the base of the skull on either side of the spinal column. Tilt your head back slightly and press upward for two minutes while breathing deeply.

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Chapter 16

Charlotte had never been in Peking. She'd never seen the dragon tiles that decorated the Forbidden City, never even conceived of the huge pagoda temples that punctured the landscape, but she recognized wealth when she saw it. And she knew the neighborhood they drove through had to be one of the very best.

"Who lives here, Ken Jin?" she whispered from beneath her coolie hat.

"Wen family son number one," he answered in the Chinese style. When she frowned, he elaborated. "My older brother, Gao Jin. Not the acupuncturist."

The eunuch, then. "But I thought they all lived inside the Forbidden City serving the Emperor."

"Most do. My brother was honored for exceptional service."

She remembered. "For killing those missionaries—"

"No," he corrected, though his tone remained cold. "For bringing the news."

She rolled her eyes. As if any simple messenger would be so honored. "Is he a Boxer?" She had heard stories of those revolutionaries. Joanna saw them as the Chinese form of freedom fighters, but Charlotte wasn't so sure. They seemed to have a great deal of antiwhite sentiment. It could be dangerous for her to—

"I will keep you safe." His quiet words soothed her even before she realized she was worried.

She smiled and took his hand. He returned her grip, and they continued riding behind the slowest donkey in China. "So, your brother was given permission to live outside the Forbidden City," she said after a few minutes.