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Taehyun sets out away from his village with the sun noon-high in the hottest season, more fruit in his sack than he has fingers, and his parents’ whispered blessings. What was once grass has already yellowed and dried when his feet land on top of it, and keep landing until the settlement he’s called home is nothing more than a dot in his vision, barely recognisable.
There is honour in being chosen, they say. There is no honour in picking offerings for creatures such as those, they also say, ferocious in their protectiveness.
The honour lies in the order that has come for Taehyun, deeming his energy refined enough for it to be exchanged for prosperity to the lands. Still, it is his respect for the foxes, material and non, that has drawn ire.
“You are our greatest huntsman,” the village boasts, “you should be skinning them and selling their hide.”
Perhaps. It is not a question of ability; Taehyun graciously accepts what spirits give, and thus far every spirit has accepted what he’s given as well, their refined energy beyond what the physical form could hope for. There is no sovereignty dispute. The question that does arise, for them, is that of entertainment.
When will they learn. When will he learn.
So Taehyun follows the call when it comes for him more than he follows the order. He will find the army, yes, once what he has to do is actually done and accounted for. The highlands have welcomed the dead, and soon they will welcome him, he hopes, fingers too rough to bear with proper form when he basket-weaves and collects their skulls.
“I’ll set you free,” the fox has promised.
It is worth it, to try. Even if it amounts to nothing.
—
The juice from the crushed grapes drips through the slope at the side of the altar and down over the edge. His hard work. The sugary sweetness wasting itself on the soil.
Taehyun is still fifty li away, so he notches an arrow, step slower now, surer. “Get away from there,” he says.
The figure responsible startles. He’s clumsy when he turns, open, defenseless. More fat to the cheeks than a thief ought to have.
Taehyun did not yell the first time, nor does he the second. He trusts the environment to shape his voice into a resonant wave — if it doesn’t, he trusts the weapon to communicate all that’s needed. “Step away.”
The man — boy — stumbles, almost tripping on his clothes in his haste, clothes that appear to have been put on as clumsily as every other movement made by him.
They’re barely a body’s length apart now.
“Do you recognise what this is?” Taehyun asks.
“I wasn’t stealing,” the boy says, some of the consonants forming unsure.
This kind of place, this deep in the woods, never has its hoard of silence — yet Taehyun swears all sounds halt for a second at the assertion. A sign, then. From the fox? Is this a test of Taehyun’s strength, is it about how fast he can refill the altar with everything he’s promised to offer, is this about patience?
He stands tall. “I believe you.”
“Where did you come from?” he asks the boy later. No, wrong opening question. “What’s your name?”
The boy blinks, slowly and as though in a daze. “Yixing. I’m from here.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not.”
Taehyun bites back what he wants to say. “Sure.” He turns. “With me, then.”
He can hear hurried footsteps. “Where are we going? Why are you taking me with?” Yixing’s voice is, surprisingly, full of wonder. Like it didn’t cross his mind that he could refuse.
Taehyun shoots him a look. “To replace what you stole.”
“I wasn’t stealing—”
—
The shimmer on the quick-moving waters of the river betrays the still-high temperatures despite the oncoming harvest. The slice of the moon hangs bigger, heavier in the nights. Yixing has refused to leave no matter how many times Taehyun has told him — demanded, then implored — so, but should this be a test, it is not that of patience. Yixing knows navigation, scurries up the trees when the foliage is too thick to see the sky properly. He names the constellations like they’re old friends and cardinalate are as though he has imbued himself with them, a hand on Taehyun’s shoulder and a ‘that’s south, not west’ when he steps wrong.
It is not unpleasant to be around him. Yixing is antipathetic to competition he hasn’t started himself, accepting loss with a duck of his head and a smile and blaming the longer hems when he loses a race, like Taehyun isn’t next to him every time he lifts himself up on branches like pivoting towards rough, blackened bark without stopping to consider the consequences of gravity is breezy. The skin on his palms remains soft.
Yixing also proves as adept a hunter as he, the nervous energy that would be so disparaged at any village’s training grounds scattering in the face of a goal. He brings back prey triumphant, at twice the rate Taehyun can, and he would suspect an audacious deal with the forest spirits if it wasn’t working out in his favour: pelts adding up, a great number to be sold at the nearest market, for when they finally find one, and all the food making up for everything lost on the shrine that day. On other days, Yixing vanishes. Those days are unwarned for, and as sudden as anything else he does.
This is one of those days.
“Have you strayed?” Yixing asks him.
Taehyun looses the arrow from a rabbit. When he looks up, nobody is there.
—
Taehyun asks him not to lie far more often than a man should of someone they travel with. Taehyun mentions a legend, stories spoken inside homes to pass the long winter nights, and Yixing laughs and says, “No, that’s not right.”
“How could you know, ah? You weren’t there.”
Yixing’s mouth forms a stiff line. Startled, always, like the first time. “It’s the version of the legend where I’m from.”
“So you lied!”
“Huh?”
“When we met.” Taehyun waves a hand, pokes him lightly in the hollow between his collarbones. “You lied! You said you were from there. We share the same legends as that place.”
Yixing’s laugh, this time, is tinted with nervousness. He scratches behind his left ear, but doesn’t offer anything more; only the silence, the departing tide of two stories superimposed. This is not the first time.
“You make me lose before I’ve begun,” Yixing complains when Taehyun tells him no, they can not trade valuable pelts for overripe fruit, soon to go bad. They do not need them, much as Yixing’s tongue seems to ache for sweetness.
“You’ll get over it,” Taehyun replies, but without looking at him; should he look, he’ll cave. A branch grows as though from nowhere and he almost trips. A pelt is snatched from his hold. Yixing’s presence no longer crowds against him. Giggles echo for a few seconds and then he’s fully gone and Taehyun is left shaking his head.
Yixing returns a full say later, brighter and happier and with an armful of persimmons. Nails dig into the knotted muscles of Taehyun’s forearm as he forces a quarter of them onto his lap. “Had to find some for you,” he says, breath not heavy enough for how quickly he must have run. “They’re good. Eat.”
“I’ll eat you,” Taehyun grumbles.
Yixing looks honestly perplexed. “Why would you eat me? I don’t think I’d taste good.”
“Not— ah, can you keep just one for me? Have the rest.”
Yixing brightens at the permission. “Yes!” His breath hitches and before Taehyun can register the anomaly of that he feels warm lips on his cheekbone.
He blinks, and they’re gone as soon as they came, almost a phantom touch. Yixing does not look at him. The light melts down his side and the back of his head, face shadowed when he hunches over to bite one with his right hand and to set a second persimmon aside with his left, setting it tucked against the trunk of a tree like it should be protected from the elements.
Taehyun pays no attention to it the entire rest of the day, too busy training, counting down the days until they arrive at the capital; the birds, still, leave it unpecked, waiting. When he does bite it, it’s in gratitude of the fruit and in resentment of what he’ll soon have to forfeit.
Yixing is immediately there, touching the space between his furrowed brows. “When will you learn?”