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The townspeople light bonfires on the peaks of hills, sending their boys house to house for kindling. In the early evening they build pyres of wood and bone and light them aflame. The children then light boughs of fir from the fires, and bring them to each home so they can relight their hearths.
Ye Xiu opens the door at the sound of a small, muffled knock, and accepts a torch from the hand of a young girl. He steps back inside and hands it to Su Mucheng, who was sitting closest to the unlit hearth.
Mucheng shooes away the tiny six-legged fey horses who have decided to snuggle among the ashes, and she touches the torch to the wood. It catches fire easily, casting warm light on the walls.
She hands it back to Ye Xiu, who returns it to the girl at the door. “Stay away from the burial mounds.” The Battle Mage mutters as she scampers away.
He closes the door, the sound of his boots heavy against the earth and the hay scattered across the floor. “Have you seen my cloak? The good one?”
“Your room, probably.”
“Do you want to come?”
“You know how dangerous the dead can be.” She won’t.
Ye Xiu nods. He understands. They can burn all the offerings to Muqiu that they want, but on the Winter Solstice the border between the human realm and the supernatural becomes thin. It’s easiest to contact spirits then, but it’s also easiest to get stolen or smote.
He heads upstairs to find his cloak, which was folded neatly at the bottom of a trunk. The inside was stitched from grey wolf pelts, good against the cold. He plans on spending the night outside. It’s still bright out, he notes as he grabs a waterskin and the bag of magic components he packed earlier in the day. The kids would be coming back soon.
As if on cue, the door swings open and Ye Xiu comes face to face with a cow skull decorated with beads and dead plants. He blinks and steps back, since the figure towers over him.
Baozi takes the skull off his head and laughs. Luo Ji peeks his head out from behind him, a similar skull under one arm and the other carrying a basket of assorted breads and preserves and jerkies that they probably earned while guising.
“Oh, good. We don’t need to cook tomorrow.” Ye Xiu angles his head, looking directly at the basket. “Is it okay if I take some?”
“You’re going out?”
“Yeah. Where’s the others?”
“Mm.” Baozi taps on his chin. “I think Tang Rou is still at the horse-racing thing. We all split up to guise, so Wenyi and Yifan are…”
Luo Ji changes the subject to something more sensible. “Is bread and jerky fine? I think the preserves might get messy.” He shakes his arm, the basket sliding down into his hand, and he holds it out for Ye Xiu to look.
He takes a small loaf of rye and some jerky wrapped in oilcloth. “Tell them I won’t be here tonight. Maybe not until tomorrow morning. Leave some food out for the spirits; if they come by tomorrow with the blood, have Mucheng sprinkle it on the threshold.”
“Where you going?”
“The mounds. Remember to finish setting up the wards tonight.” Ye Xiu holds the food close against his body, sidestepping Baozi and Luo Ji and heading into the street, down and out of town..
The two of them linger in the doorway for a bit, sharing a look. Was Ye Xiu planning on raising the dead? Or… Dying? Deification? Baozi puts the skull back on his head. This thinking hurts his brain.
Su Mucheng yells at them to close the door, and keep out the drafts. Luo Ji approaches the hearth, careful not to step on the magic creatures swarming around his feet, and warms his hands.
The dead are buried in mounds that sit between the town and the capital city, smaller ones standing as the graves of kings, and the larger ones populated with the bones of commoners. He isn’t quite sure which one holds Muqiu’s body, not that he needs to know.
It’s quite windy on the moor, but fortunately the earth is dry. Ye Xiu pulls at the hood of his cloak, hoping it’d provide a little more warmth for his nose. His breath turns to vapor in the cold.
It’s getting dark. In the dimming light, he can see the traces of ghostly figures, confined to the burial mounds. Come midnight and they’d be free to wander, and Ye Xiu stops for a moment, wondering if the kids put their offerings on the front doorstep or the back window. Not important. The spirits shouldn’t really mind either way, though somebody might try and nab a piece of bread if it’s out in the front.
He takes a seat. The ground is cold, and the grass crunches under his weight. Perhaps he should build a fire later, but for now he watches the sunset and the forms of the dead growing clear.
Few people dare to come out at night during the winter solstice. Ghosts can be unpredictable, and there’s quite a few stories about some poor fool who disappeared, charging through the border between the realm of the living and dead. They say it’s quite beautiful there, but considering you can’t leave, Ye Xiu thinks he’ll pass, at least until he dies.
When the sky turns from red to purple and then to dark blue, Ye Xiu stands up again to search for kindling. The weather has been fairly dry recently, so he supposed any stick or dead grass he finds would work fine.
Ye Xiu collects an armful of wood, splitting it in half. One to burn, and the other to add to the fire. With a few clicks of the flintstones he brought, a small fire starts crackling. He holds his hands around it, protecting it from the wind, and watches it grow.
The ghosts, which have become more visible in the dark, keep their distance. Fire reminds them too much of the sun and daylight, when they aren’t able to roam. Ye Xiu loosens the ties on his cloak, warming his hands by the flames.
Only when his fingers and nose don’t feel so numb, he begins setting up the ritual. Dried rosemary, mostly, and some quartz. Classic, versatile materials that can work for all spells. He brought a couple bones collected from a dead raven he found and cut up last spring, polished bits of jet scavenged from a necklace he broke, and a scrap of paper from an old manuscript Muqiu wrote nearly ten years ago.
Some of the rosemary goes to the earth, lost among the dry and dying grass. They throw this shit to the grave when they bury bodies, a part of him mutters. He can’t remember if they threw any in Muqiu’s grave.
The ghosts seem to like it, though. They huddle a bit closer to him, though they still keep their distance from the fire, and the closest ones look a little sickly from the light.
Ye Xiu pays them no attention, and gets to work with his offerings. He scrapes up some dirt into a little mound some fifteen feet away from his fire, taking a moment to pick out the dead grass. Around it goes the quartz pointing in the four cardinal directions, the bones and jet leaning against the sides, and some rosemary on top. He grabs a small twig and holds it to the bonfire, and the moment it catches fire he brings it to his little mound, lighting the rosemary.
Then he stands up, rubbing his hands together. He takes a few deep breaths, and bends close to his little arrangement. With a snap of his fingers a spark of magic flies out into the embers, turning it pale grey.
To the naked eye, nothing has changed besides the color of the burning rosemary, but it feels different. The grey flames are less warming and more searching, waiting for someone to reach out to. Ye Xiu unfolds the scrap of paper and drops it in.
The spirits shift and part in waves, giving Ye Xiu distance and making way for somebody among their ranks. The sun has already fallen, and the moon shines brightly in a clear sky.
A ghost steps forward, their figure a bit easier to see in the moonlight. Ye Xiu steps away from his offerings, letting them look them over.
They pole at the bones with a translucent hand, and then smile up at him. At that moment, their appearance becomes clearer, turning from a pale, smokelike wisp into a dim portrait of Su Muqiu.
“I forgot about the mole on your cheek.” Ye Xiu murmured. He almost reached out to touch him, but Su Muqiu jerked away as if it was poison .
“You should talk to me more, then. Everybody’s sleeping during the solstice, what am I supposed to do, throw bread?”
“That’d wake me up.”
“And then you’d run into me. And I don’t know, bad things will happen.”
“... Yeah.” He remembers the bread and jerky he brought with him, and digs through his pockets for the rye loaf. “I brought some bread. Did you eat?”
“I was going to, but then you set this up. You used a blank page from my manuscript, right?”
Ye Xiu gives the bread a squeeze. It’s a little hard from the cold, but he tears off a piece and tosses it into the burning rosemary. “Of course, am I stupid? No— don’t answer that, you’ll insult me.”
“For the record, you are.” Muqiu sits with his legs crossed, pulling a ghostly chunk of break out of the fire. He takes a bite. “This tastes kinda shitty.”
“I didn’t make it.” Ye Xiu takes a bite of the cold bread. “I have some jerky, too, if you want.”
“What kind?”
“Don’t know. My kids brought it back from guising.” He unwraps the oilskin, trying to determine the jerky’s color in the dim light. “Might be pig.”
“Whatever, give me some.”
Ye Xiu tosses a piece to the fire, and takes out another to chew on.
“So what happened after I died? Ten years is a long time, you know. You said you had kids, did you marry some girl?”
“No, I went wandering across the continent and grabbed some orphans. And non-orphans.” He adds, remembering that Tang Rou still has a family, and that Tiny Herb’s famed Priest still sends strongly worded letters about Qiao Yifan.
“Weird. When did that happen? I thought we were promised positions at Excellent Era’s court.” He thought Ye Xiu wouldn’t have time for that, if he was leading the spellcaster’s battalion, like what Tao Xuan promised
“Funny story there. I’d tell you, but you’ll have to promise not to get mad.”
“I’m probably going to get mad if you’re saying that.”
“True. Anyways, they threw me out. Mingkai’s successor had some problem with me.”
Su Muqiu opens his mouth, as if ready to start cursing the successor. Then he closes it, remembering that Ye Xiu still had a story to tell. “Go on.” His voice carries a note of rage.
“Yeah, so they kicked me out. I went and found your old blueprints, for that magic weapon you were working on. I wanted to finish it, except, you know, some materials you can’t get them in Excellent Era.”
So he spends the night telling the ghost about his travels from the past two years, moving from kingdom to kingdom with a merchant, a runaway countess, and a stowaway in the cart. Muqiu finds his adventures in Tiny Herb and its neighbor Royal Style quite hilarious, how he stole a young warrior out from under Fang Shiqian’s nose and a scholar out of the royal university. In Tyranny he found a Cleric-in-training, and out to the west, near Void he bullied a thieving Ninja into submission. They became family, like the children Ye Xiu never thought of having but never regretted. And as his surrogate family grew, so did Muqiu’s miraculous umbrella, from blueprints and a rough frame into a fully functioning weapon.
In Wind Howl he ran upon their national hero, a slinger said to be the son of a god, and dragged him along for their adventures. The guy complained endlessly about how he was abandoning his husband and his dogs, but he honestly didn’t seem to mind, collecting little trinkets to bring home. He went back after a few months, and Ye Xiu hasn’t heard from him since.
When he returned to Excellent Era, a rebellion was in full swing, and they made him the face of it. Reluctantly, he took up the mantle, if only to protect the country from possible invaders.
The monarchy fell and then returned with Qiu Fei as its ruler. Ye Xiu voices his pride for his protege, and his faith that he’d be a good king. Su Muqiu, though he’s never met the kid, agrees.
As for himself? Ye Xiu thought the court was boring. There wasn’t a need to pull the new Excellent Era from the dirt. Su Mucheng joined the family, and they all moved out to a quiet town where they could offer justice undisturbed.
“Mm. So what will you do next?”
Ye Xiu covers his mouth, pondering the question. “Go home, maybe. They’ve been nagging me to visit for a while.” More than ten years, to be exact.
“Will you stay?”
“Probably not. I’ve become attached to our little band of Happy wanderers. Maybe we’ll start adventuring again... If it means I can speak to you more often, perhaps we’ll winter in Excellent Era.”
“Yeah.” Muqiu looks down at the offerings, and how the rosemary is beginning to burn low. “You might want to relight all this.”
“No need. Let it burn out.”
“I’ll be whisked back to the masses once it does.” The ghost seems a little nervous about that.
“Don’t be so worried about getting lost. I know how to find you.”
“Only once a year?”
“Better than none. And eventually I’ll join you, when I die.”
Su Muqiu doesn’t reply, but eventually his shoulders relax, indicating his acceptance. “You should go sleep, then. If you want to return in time to sprinkle blood at your threshold, you’ll have to rise at dawn. And add more sticks to that bonfire of yours. I’ll keep watch until I go.”
“How sweet.” Ye Xiu pulls his wolfskin cloak tighter around himself, tugging the hood over his face. “Then you won’t mind if I sit closer to the fire? I still have some rosemary left, if you like.”
“If you don’t mind.” Muqiu stands up, his figure appearing blurrier as the offerings turn to glowing ashes.
Ye Xiu pours the last of the rosemary into the bonfire, and lies down with his back to the fire. Su Muqiu floats closer to the larger fire, and settles down close to Ye Xiu’s face.
“Goodnight.” The ghost’s voice is a little distorted.
Ye Xiu buries his nose in the fur of his cloak. “I’ll find you next winter.”
In the morning he wakes up to the ashes of the bonfire, still smoking, and the cold, long-dead remains of his little mound of offerings. The bones are charred, as is the jet, but the quartz is still usable, so Ye Xiu takes it with him.
He makes it back home in time to meet the farmers with their pails of fresh blood. Holding back his cloak, he scoops up a little of the blood with his bare hand, and sprinkles it on the doorframe. He thanks the farmer, who moves on to the next house, and Ye Xiu opens the door.
Mucheng was about to go out front, and she jumped a little when Ye Xiu entered the house. He takes his shoes off. At the hearth, An Wenyi is cooking breakfast. He looks up when Ye Xiu takes a look at the pot.
“What happened to your face?” He reaches out to inspect it, but Ye Xiu backs away. “Where’s the mirror? Go look for yourself.” He calls Mucheng over to watch the pot, and follows Ye Xiu.
They have one mirror in the house, a plate of smooth polished bronze hanging near the front door.
There’s a patch of discolored skin on his cheek, ashen pale like dead bodies are. Ye Xiu rubs at it a few times to make sure it wasn’t something weird from the moor. It wasn’t. What a dumbass, he mused. Muqiu knew it wasn’t safe for the living to touch the dead. The mark would probably stay there forever, or at least until he dies.
“It’s fine.”
Wenyi’s reflection seems to relax a bit, though he’s quite put off by Ye Xiu’s uncharacteristic affectionate smile. “What is it?”
“Just a kiss from the dead.”