Chapter Text
The boy was almost four when his world ended for the third time.
He was young enough that he’d already forgotten the first two times. He’d been barely a year old the first time, when his parents went off somewhere and didn’t return. By then, the care of him had passed to the entire Wen village, so he hadn’t really noticed. The village was full of geges and jeijies, aunties and uncles, nainais and yeyes. There was a Qing-jie, and a Ning-gege, and one Popo. They all called him A-Yuan.
The second time was a cloudy nightmare of shouting and running and being carried tight in someone’s arms, hearing the fear-rapid beating of their heart and then feeling Popo’s tears falling onto his hair.
That nightmare lasted a really long time, days and days of crying and hunger and no place to rest. The shouts were punctuated by the sound of whips, and demands that made his family tremble with fear.
During that time, Qing-jie went away. When he asked where she was, they told him to be quiet. So he did not ask as, one by one, his jiejies and geges also disappeared. There were fewer aunties and uncles by then too. And no grandparents at all. But they’d all blurred together, and he forgot about the lost ones in the same way he’d forgotten his birth parents.
Later, Qing-jie came back, and after a long dark night with rain and horses, they added a new person. This one wanted to be called Xian-gege, and he brought with him a smile that almost lit up the dark place he led them to. The remaining villagers followed him, and if they were dirtier and thinner and more tired, A-Yuan did not notice. Popo carried him in her arms as always, and the fearful beating of her heart finally slowed when they reached the new place.
Ning-gege was sick for a long time afterwards and the boy had to be very quiet so as not to disturb him. When he finally recovered, Ning-gege was different. His body was stiff and cold and scored with black lines. He was still quiet and shy, but he became very strong and fearless. Or, at least, his heart never beat fast with fear anymore, perhaps because it never beat at all.
Qing-jie spent most of her time with Ning-gege or Xian-gege, who often needed quiet too. But when he wasn’t sick, Xian-gege smiled and laughed and promised to grow new children in the turnip patch. A-Yuan was beginning to suspect that this was a joke, but he knew that Xian-gege could do anything, so maybe there just hadn’t been enough time.
He would never know, because he was almost four and the world ended again. Eventually, he would forget about this time, too. He would even forget his name.
When Ning-gege returned from somewhere carrying a limp and unsmiling Xian-gege, they prepared a safe shelter for A-Yuan, with all their remaining water and food. A few days later, they took the boy to the hidden spot and told him to wait there. Someone would come, they said.
He tried to be good. He really did. He heard distant shouting and the clang of metal, and didn’t move. He thought he heard Popo crying, and it was hard, but he didn’t come out. He waited a really long time, alone in the small space. But when it became dark outside for the fourth or fifth time, and still no one came, he crept out.
There were strangers in the village, a lot of them. They were wearing silk robes with long sleeves and carrying swords. They didn’t notice him because he was tiny and wearing dark clothes. And they were distracted by the hordes of fierce corpses surrounding them on all sides.
The Dead had made their way into the village, which had never happened because Xian-gege put up wards and Ning-gege dealt with any who blundered through. The sound of Ning-gege roaring as he threw fierce corpses into the forest made him feel safe, but he couldn’t hear it now. Where was Ning-gege? Maybe he wasn’t there.
When the boy snuck close enough, he could see that the new people had put up their own wards, so maybe Xian-gege’s wards weren’t there anymore either. The boy had watched Xian-gege set the wards, and could tell that these wards weren’t nearly as strong as his. He wondered why they didn’t ask Xian-gege for better wards. Maybe he was still asleep.
There was no choice but to find Xian-gege and tell him that he needed to wake up and do something. Or maybe A-Yuan could find Qing-jie and tell her to wake him up.
Xian-gege had once said that he’d made a special bargain with the vengeful dead to keep A-Yuan safe. That might have been a joke too, but none of the Dead bothered him as the boy crept from tree to tree, heading for the cave where Xian-gege worked and slept.
He avoided the living people in robes, too, though he was tempted to grab on to one of their legs and hold on until he felt safe. He could always try that later.
The village was utterly in ruins, and he saw no one that he knew. Things were scattered carelessly everywhere, and Popo’s house was on fire. There were people he didn’t know running around, all wearing fancy robes. It took him a long, shocked while to realize that the people were actually tearing the village apart, smashing the things they’d worked so hard to make and tossing them disgustedly aside. As he watched, they set Uncle Four’s house on fire too.
These people were . . . enemies?
He’d heard Xian-ge and Qing-jie talking—well, arguing—about enemies several times. This had mostly been after the angry man in purple robes and the rich gege in white had come and gone. Xian-gege had been unhappy for days after both visits, and A-Yuan understood that enemies were people who made Xian-gege cry.
The boy did not cry. This was too big to wrap his mind around.
He needed to find Xian-gege and wake him up.
The recess in the rock wall that everyone called Demon Subdue Cave was on the other side of the village. Qing-jie had wanted to change the name, but Xian-ge seemed to think it was funny. Thinking about why this might or might not be funny was not getting him any closer to the cave entrance, but it did help stop his shaking. A little.
What passed for dawn in the village had already started by the time he finally made it to a spot wedged between two rocks, from which he could see the entrance to Demon Subdue Cave. It was quite clear that he wouldn’t be able to get inside, because the cave was sealed.
And the courtyard in front of the entrance was teeming with people. They mostly wore robes of purple or grey, but there were a few in gold or white. They stood in little colorful clusters, drooping a bit. They must have had a hard night, fighting off the Dead.
They all seemed to be watching the angry man in purple, who the boy was now absolutely sure was an enemy. He looked like he was ready to explode with anger, face almost the same color as his robes. He was shouting at the place that had been the entrance to Demon Subdue Cave, but was now seemingly a solid wall. He was holding a sword in one hand. The other was sparking with purple lightning.
As the boy watched, the man screamed, “Wei Wuxian! Get the hell out here,” and lightning lashed from his hand to the sealed entrance. There was no effect. The purple man hit the seal again and again, until he was breathing so hard that he was crying.
A man in grey with his hair in elaborate braids said, “Sect Leader Jiang. Jiang Cheng. Stop this.” He was carrying a sword, too, an enormous one that sang with resentment, but he didn’t swing it. Instead he shook the purple man by the shoulders yelling, “Jiang Cheng, stop.”
An old man in white joined him in pulling the purple man away. He clearly didn’t want to go. If he hadn’t nearly exhausted himself with his efforts, the purple man would almost certainly have hit them with the purple lightning too.
Things quieted down after that. The enemies sorted themselves out by robe color, and took to resting in turns. They used the ruins of the village to make small cooking fires. The smell of cooking reminded the boy that he was hungry, but in the daylight he did not dare leave his hiding place.
Every now and then, a small group would stalk to the sealed Demon Subdue Cave and try something. The seal resisted a variety of sword attacks. Talismans were sent flying; so many that the seal began to look like it had been decorated with paper. A man in white played a small flute, like Xian-gege’s, but white instead of black, and held at a different angle. The Cave remained firmly sealed.
The boy worried about Xian-gege. There was no way to get to him to wake him up. Then he realized that maybe Xian-gege was awake, and inside the Cave planning something. Maybe the rest of the villagers were in there with him. That was a comforting thought, and the boy decided to wait right where he was. He eventually fell asleep, a little heap of dirt and rags wedged between two rocks.
He woke to noise and confusion. It was full night, and there were hordes of fierce corpses attacking the men in the village. The darkness resounded with men shouting over the clashing of swords. There were occasional fierce bits of music and, somewhere, the buzz of lightning. With no other plan than to get away from both men and fierce corpses, the boy crept away from the village, until the night folded around him and the noise was faint in the distance.
He was very thirsty by now, and when he came to a little brackish pool, he drank deeply, even though he’d been told not to drink from the pools in the Burial Mounds around the village. He was hungry too, and remembered the stash of food that had been left for him in the hidden safe spot. But he now had no idea where that was. He fell asleep again there, burying himself in the mud at the edge of the pool.
In the morning, his stomach hurt and he didn’t feel very good. He was also completely lost. He thought that he couldn’t have gotten far away, though. The battle noises had quieted, but there was still the occasional shout or crack of lightning, and he followed it back toward the village, stumbling a bit. But everything had been flattened and he couldn’t find the way to the little shelter.
He knew that he needed to eat, but he wasn’t actually very hungry anymore. The village was still crawling with men. He really didn’t feel very good, and when he found a tree with a hollow spot, he climbed up to it. It was just his size, and he fitted himself into it like a coat, safe and warm. The climb had exhausted him, and he fell asleep again. This time he didn’t wake up.
So when, later that day, the seal on Demon Subdue Cave was defeated—or perhaps merely opened itself—he did not run inside to try to wake Xian-gege. It was just as well, because the Cave proved to be utterly empty except for scattered bits of paper and a fair amount of blood.
The boy didn’t hear the man in purple screaming in rage as his purple men pulled him away. He did not hear the argument between the men in white and the men in gray as they decamped. He did not see the men in gold carefully gathering up all the scraps of paper in the cave and carrying them away.
He also did not see more men in gold carrying the bodies of the villagers—his aunties and uncles and Popo, but not Ning-ge, Qing-jie or Xian-ge—into the cave in which there were no more demons to subdue, and tossing them into the pool in the very back, the one that ran with water that was red like blood.
.