Silver Phoenix (10 page)

Cindy Pon

She flailed her arms but found only air as she was dragged into the water. She clawed the embankment. The loose dirt provided no hold, and with another tug, she was below the surface. Whatever gripped Ai Ling pulled her down through the murky depths fast.

She could do nothing but watch the sunlight on the lake’s surface grow dimmer. The last small breath she had drawn dwindled to nothing, even as she willed it to last. Fighting her terror, she looked down and saw dark, slithering shapes beneath her. Hundreds of shapes skulking below, tittering.

She could hear them. That was the worst part. Worse than drowning.

Suddenly her descent ended, and she was left suspended upright in the dark depths. The pressure in her ears made her head throb. Her ribs felt crushed, her lungs compressed with the burning need for air. She struggled against drawing one breath, knowing there was nothing but fetid water if she did so.

The sinister thing writhed, like a massive eel, its body as thick as a man’s, its length endless. Luminous eyes, glowing emeralds, stared at her, unblinking. She thought it had a long snout, but she couldn’t be sure.

The creature’s tail curled up and around her until her entire body was captured in its sinewy lengths. Yet those eyes never moved, floating in the water a short distance away.

Ai Ling. Your family is in ruins because of you. Because of your
38

S I LV E R P H O E N I X

selfishness. Your pride. Your stubbornness. Your mother has not stopped
weeping since you left.

It spoke without speaking. She struggled against its powerful grip, but the effort was lost, as if she had never tried.

Her lungs spasmed for breath. Water seeped through her vision, filled her nostrils, her head. She refused to succumb to the darkness, to the monster that clutched her.

But she must breathe.

Just as she was about to surrender, to draw a mouthful of water, Ai Ling felt a hotness below her throat. Her lungs filled with air. She looked down at the pendant, burning like a star.

Images emerged in the depths, clear and bright, one object at a time. She blinked, focused. First a four-legged washstand holding a white ceramic bowl, followed by a rectangular desk stacked with books. Then her bed on the raised carved platform. Ai Ling’s throat clenched at the sight of the familiar and beloved objects from her bedchamber.

Her mother appeared last. She was sitting on the bed, head bowed as she sobbed into her hands. She looked so small, frail, and dejected.

Tears escaped from Ai Ling’s own eyes, bled from her core. She tasted the salt of them in her throat, even as the pendant flared hot against her skin and replenished her with breath once more. She cried with her mother until the fath-omless lake was fi lled with her tears.

You have left her with nothing but a broken heart. With a debt that
39

Cindy Pon

cannot be paid. You could have married Master Huang to help your
family. But instead you shirked your duty and ran away.

The voice was like glass shards coated in honey.

The slithering forms, all murmuring their disapproval in some ancient tongue, shifted in the abyss around her. But Ai Ling understood.
Selfish. Ungrateful. Useless.
She wanted to tear off her ears, gouge out her eyes, anything to stop the voices inside her head.

And your father. He loved you so well. A useless daughter. Your father
said you were special. Your father lied.
The last word seemed to snicker and shriek. It tore through her mind, reverberated in her skull, and echoed into infi nity.

Her father appeared, wearing his favorite dark blue robes.

He raised one hand toward his daughter, a look of love and concern on his face. Ai Ling wanted to speak, reach her hand to him.

Then the whites of his eyes began to move as hundreds of maggots squirmed, falling from empty sockets, until his entire body was a writhing mass. His skin peeled away to expose raw flesh, then decayed to mere bones. The skeleton dissolved to silver wisps of dust, streaked away before her horrifi ed eyes.

Your father is dead. Go home.

Ai Ling bit her tongue so she would not scream. You lie, she shrieked in her mind. But part of her believed it.

Go away. Go back.

The muscular tail squeezed tighter, smothering the precious 40

S I LV E R P H O E N I X

air she had been given. It crushed her until she was nothing.

Nothing but darkness and hot salty tears.

Ai Ling felt someone tap her cheek. She opened her eyes and winced, her sight seared by the bright blue skies. A young man’s face appeared above hers.

“Are you all right?”

She gazed into his strange amber eyes—a color she had never seen. They were fi lled with concern.

No, she wanted to say, I’m not all right. My father is dead.

I may as well be dead to my mother.

She wanted to curl up and cry. And sleep. Forever. She shivered, even as the strong afternoon sunlight warmed her wet clothes and damp skin.

“Get me away from here,” she whispered. It was all that she could muster.

Ai Ling felt herself gathered into strong arms as the stranger lifted her.

She leaned into him, trusting him completely in her grief and exhaustion. She shut her eyes and once more lost grasp of the world around her.

41

C H A P T E R F O U R

Ai Ling awoke to the sound of twigs crackling on a fire. The orange glow licked beneath her closed lids. She didn’t want to open her eyes.

A shuffling noise to her left. Curiosity overrode fear. She peered from under lowered lashes and saw the young man kneel before the fire, stoking it with a stick. The fire fed and grew. Ai Ling basked in its warmth.

What had she said to him? Ai Ling couldn’t remember.

She tilted her head, wanting to see his face. Her movement caught his attention, and their eyes met.

Strange amber eyes. She remembered now.

“You’re awake,” he said.

42

S I LV E R P H O E N I X

Ai Ling looked toward the fire. Dusk neared. She could tell by the light and the birds singing above them. Cheerful.

Just as they had been before she was pulled into the lake.

Had she dreamed it? She touched her still-damp clothes and didn’t answer him.

“I found you on the water’s edge,” he said. “You were half submerged. When I tried to pull you out—it was as if something was pulling you in.”

He stirred the fi re again, and the fl ames leaped. His brow furrowed.

“The water was clear. Shallow. There was nothing at your feet. Yet I used all my strength to drag you out.” He sat down on the ground and rested his arms on raised knees.

“You saved me. There is no proper way I can thank you,”

Ai Ling said.

He leaned forward and smiled at her. It altered the lines of his face. “She speaks.”

Ai Ling shifted with care and sat up, drew herself closer to the fire. She reached for the jade pendant without thinking.

She squeezed it tight in her palm, remembering the breaths of life-saving air that had fi lled her lungs.

“You’re shivering. Do you have more clothes?”

She shrugged, caught off guard by his concern. Her hand found her worn knapsack, which she had been using as a pillow. Could she trust him?

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll turn around.”

43

Cindy Pon

Ai Ling saw his back before he even finished the sentence.

Under different circumstances, she would have sought privacy in the thickets, but she was in no mood to leave the safety of the fire as daylight ebbed. She pulled out a blue cotton tunic and trousers, sewn with care by her mother, then peeled the clothes from her body. Her gaze never strayed from the young man’s back as she changed. She laid her wet clothes down fl at near the fi re.

“I’m done,” she said.

He turned toward her, and she studied him. He had a high brow, tall nose, and a proud, serious face. His clothes were travel worn, but well made. She guessed him to be about eighteen or nineteen years. He had saved her life. Perhaps it would be safer to stay with him, at least through the night.

“I am called Ai Ling,” she said.