Insignia

Edited by Kelly
Matsuura
.

Cover Design by
Kelly Matsuura.

Compilation
Copyright© Kelly Matsuura 2014.

This book was created
in the USA.

First
electronic release: April 2014.

This
edition:
published July
2015.

P
ublished by BWWP
Publishing via Smashwords.

‘
Looking for
Trouble
’ and ‘The Bones Shine
Through with Light’ Copyright© Joyce Chng 2014.

‘
The Red String
of Fate’
Copyright© Holly
Kench 2014.

‘
Black Smoke
and
Water Lilies’
Copyright
David Jón Fuller
2015.

‘
The Ghost
Bride’, ‘The Great Qilin’ and ‘Maidens of the Yangze’ Copyright©
Kelly Matsuura 2014.

‘
The Bones
Shine
Through with Light’ was
first published by M-Brane SF #27 (2011).

‘
Black Smoke
and
Water Lilies’ was first
published in
Ten
Best Pages
(2004).

This
ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors. Stories
are the authors’ original work and are entirely fictional. Any
resemblance to real persons (living or dead) or real situations is
coincidental.

All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means without permission from the authors. Short
extracts for reviews are allowed.

‘
Insignia:
Japanese Stories’ (October, 2013)

Introduction

Part I: Young Adult/ Adventure Tales

The Bones Shine Through with Light

Looking for Trouble

The Great Qilin

Part II: Adult/Literary Tales

The Red String of Fate

Maidens of the Yangze

Black Smoke and Water Lilies

The Ghost Bride

Author Biographies

Welcome to
The Insignia Series
! Each
anthology released is a collection of short Asian fantasy stories,
written by writers with a passion for Asian culture and folklore,
and who support diversity in fiction.
Insignia: Japanese Fantasy
Stories
was published in October 2013 and some of those authors
have returned for this second
Insignia
collection, featuring
all Chinese fantasy stories.

My greatest thanks to Joyce Chng and Holly
Kench
for taking the time to prepare
work for this project.

As with
Insignia
Vol.1
, each author was given
free rein to write in whatever sub-genre of fantasy she chose. The
result is a collection of stories that are distinctive and honest
to each author’s unique voice.

Joyce Chng is
a Singap
orean author who
writes Asian fantasy on a daily basis. I was thrilled to have her
contribute to the Japanese anthology, and would not have done this
Chinese one without her interest. Her stories
The Bones Shine Through with
Light
and
Looking for Trouble
are both fun and slightly-scary Young Adult
pieces.

My dear
friend
Holly Kench is back too
with a beautiful literary piece,
The Red String of Fate
, which is based on an old Chinese belief about
destiny.

I have
included three of my own stories:
The Great Qilin
is a light fantasy YA tale;
The Ghost Bride
is a longish literary piece about the old Chinese custom of
marrying single, adult children after their death; and
Maidens of the
Yangze
is a flash piece about
the myth of the
baiji
dolphins that are
now extinct in the Yangze river.

In July 2015,
I revised this anthology and added a new story.
Black Smoke and Water Lilies
by
David Jón Fuller
is a magical realism piece, set in a
fictional world with Chinese elements.

H
appy reading,

Kelly Matsuura

(Editor
)

‘The Bones Shine Through with Light’ by Joyce
Chng

‘Looking for Trouble’ by Joyce Chng

‘The Great Qilin’ by Kelly Matsuura

Children go to bed with stories of the tiger
demoness who eats knuckle-bones like peanuts. They huddle under
their blankets while images of bones being crushed by huge fangs
spin in their frightened minds.

The tiger demoness prowls in the shadows, a
feline shadow in pools of darkness. In her human form, she is an
old lady, kindly, if you don't really look too closely at her eyes.
Her cold, amber eyes.

She sometimes offers her services as a nanny
to tired farmers. Once the deal is done, the fate of their children
is sealed. While the parents work tirelessly in the rice fields,
the tiger lady comes and feasts on the soft, plumb flesh of her
charges. She keeps the knuckle-bones, stores them up and eats them
later.

Kerunch, kerunch, kerunch
. The
storyteller will always embellish the story with awful sounds.
Kerunch
. Because the tiger demoness relishes the taste, the
texture.
Kerunch
.

Word spread about the appearance of a
strange old lady. She just turned up along the edges of Wulong
village, a lone figure in rags. She found residence in an abandoned
rice shack. People said that they could see smoke rising forth from
a hidden fire. They said that they heard strange noises from the
rice shack.

Tiger demoness, they whispered in the tea
houses. Tiger demoness, they whispered in the bustling marketplace
where the dumplings steamed and candied hawthorn enticed little
children. Parents shooed their children into the safety of their
houses and bade them never to wander near the demoness' rice
shack.

I find myself wandering too closely to the
tiger demoness' hut, my feet crunching too loudly on the fallen
mulberry leaves. Late in autumn, there is a chill in the air.

I smell fire, the comforting aroma of
burning wood. I also smell meat. Barbequed meat, like Old Gao's
famous, mouth-watering roasted duck. I peer through the rushes,
feeling my stomach grumble with hunger. Now as winter approaches I
grow hungry often.

Bones. A lot of bones. Hanging in clusters.
Whole skeletons, all grotesque, like miniature
gui
. Ghosts.
The light piercing through the roof shines through the bones,
making them glow. The sight is oddly beautiful.

“The bones tell me I have a visitor!” The
voice. Like a thunderclap, like a gentle grandmotherly caress.

I cry out in terror and scramble for my
life. My heart drums like a mad festival gong.

The strange old lady was odd in her ways.
She sang to bones, they said, secretly in their huts, during the
dark of night.
She sang to bones and they danced like puppets
during Spring Festival shows.

Ach! Afterwards, she eats them! Women
muttered amongst themselves when they met at the local well.
Tiger demoness! Eater of bones! Feh, feh, feh!

I am creeping towards the old rice shack
once more, thrilling and delicious danger coursing in my body. I
want to know more about the old lady. I want to know about the
bones aglow with light. It is colder now; winter is definitely
closer. In the village, they are selling spicy dumplings that warm
the body when eaten hot. The rice is now harvested. Very soon it
will be Winter Solstice.

Fire, and the smell-taste of barbequed meat
in the air. There is singing, like the lullaby Mother uses to rock
my little brother to sleep. It sounds so sad, so poignant.

I poke a tentative finger through the
brittle rush.

She
is stripping meat off bones.
Cooking meat sizzles on hot coals. I watch her fingers, so gnarled
yet delicate, peel off the meat in red ribbons. And for a horrible
moment, I know that she is going to eat the bones. Like peanuts or
pumpkin seeds.
Kerunch. Kerunch. Kerunch
.

I continue to watch. The meat is making me
salivate.

She is done with the bones now, carefully
arranging them on the floor. Her expression. Concentration, as if
she is reading. Her eyes are closed. Her mouth moves.

A
cluck-cluck-cluck
almost scares me
half to death. I look at the rooster strutting in front of me, all
colorful feathers and a brilliantly red, floppy comb.

Will he end up being her dinner?

Li Jian and his farmer cronies complained
loudly about their missing chickens and ducks. This late in autumn,
with the first frost on the ground, they needed the meat and the
eggs; the latter to make salted eggs to sell in the markets and
feed their families. Their families were always hungry.

Meanwhile, everyone prepared for winter.
Mothers brought out the thick winter clothing and mended old
garments. The village would soon become silent, covered with
snow.

Children listened to the stories of tigress
demons feasting on knuckle-bones and felt hungry, sad, and scared.
They slept fitfully though, as the snow began to fall in flurries
of white.

Wrapped in thick fleece, I struggle towards
the rice shack. There is the smell of fire and the tantalizing
aroma of roasting meat. My stomach growls.

When I peek in,
she
is hanging bones.
They swing slightly, stirred by some invisible breeze. They are
white, the color of snow. Tiny
gui.
Tiny ghosts bereft of
feathers and skin. She lifts one bone up, a tiny bone the size of
my finger, and gazes at it. The fire in the rice shack crackles,
casting jittery shadows on the rush walls. More bones, more
skeletons–many of birds.

Don't eat the bones, don't eat the bones, I
think, remembering, shivering, my skin chapped by the cold. I am
hungry. Always hungry.

“I know you are outside, little girl.” The
old woman turns around and her smile is warm, like the fire. “Come
in, come in.”

Tiger demoness!

Trapped, I have no way out. I duck into a
fragrant warmth, redolent of the best food I have ever eaten. The
fire is so inviting...

The bones. The bones. The bones.

“Come, eat.” The old woman gestures with a
wrinkled hand, placing a stick of freshly roasted meat into my numb
hand. I sniff at it. Chicken. I take one tentative bite. Soon, I am
taking larger and larger bites, chewing and swallowing. The juice
is so sweet! I lick my fingers, hungry for more.

“Never easy being an old woman, thrown out
by an un-filial son,” the old woman says, sitting down wearily. I
wince, listening to her knees creak alarmingly. “And food is so
scarce these days.”

“I take what I can,” she continues, sipping
something from a chipped porcelain cup. I realize most of the
things she has in the rice shack are discards. She must have
salvaged the cups and the plates. Here, a bowl of old dumplings.
There, a plate of moldy-looking meat buns. And the bones. Too many
bones.

She hands me another stick of meat. I eat
more slowly now, intrigued by her words. Her eyes are not amber.
They are a faded brown.

“You must be wondering about the bones.” The
old woman smiles, her teeth showing gaps. Yet her smile is genuine.
A grandmother's smile.