Chapter Text
And then, as though things were not dire enough already, her guardian—her true guardian—opened his mouth and started talking to her.
As a gentleman’s daughter, Mulan had been raised with care—insamuch as that was possible with such a hapless girl, Fa Li would sometimes wail. She could weave a length of cloth passably, if you ignored the bumpy bits, and serve tea without spilling, but she tripped over her own two feet more days than not and she could never, ever hold her tongue.
In only one way did Fa Mulan live up to her ancestors’ expectations: no matter what the provocation, her guardian was never so ill-mannered as to say a word. Children’s guardians were meant to stay quiet and out of trouble, and so they shifted into rats, dogs, and, in the most particularly spirited children, rabbits. But when safely away from adult eyes, they whispered and giggled to each other and their humans, each pair sharing secrets and jokes.
Mulan’s never did anything of the sort. He curled around her shoulders as a gray or brown snake most days, leaving her hands free for weaving or completing her chores around the farm. When she practiced her calligraphy, he bent closer in interest, scales shining black, but otherwise he seemed content to doze his days away.
On her thirteenth birthday Mulan woke up, only to be overwhelmed with the knowledge that her guardian had finally settled. She waited a minute to consider her options before she peeked. She had been born in the Year of the Tiger, and wouldn’t that be something! But then again, a rooster would probably be more useful, and who could even be sure that her lazy guardian had even bothered to change? He was probably a snake still, his only significant change the color of her skin.
She looked down at the mat where her guardian slept and screamed.
He was a very small dragon, which was probably fortunate—Mulan had no idea where they would even keep a full-sized dragon, much less what the neighbors would say—and mostly red in color, except for a yellow belly and patches of blue and black. He startled to her scream and blinked at her, a little accusingly, before her parents and her grandmother burst into the room.
The silence was broken by Grandmother Fa’s Cri-Kee, chirping anxiously.
“I know,” said Grandmother, sounding illogically pleased, “pret-ty impressive, isn’t he?”
“Mother, please,” managed Fa Li. Her husband said nothing.
Over the course of the morning, an explanation presented itself. Everyone knew that guardians reincarnated themselves in the old families, and it seemed her father had had a great-great uncle, Fa Deng, who’d similarly had a dragon as his guardian. His fate had not been pleasant: an ignominious career in the military ended by a beheading while caught deserting.
“While I live, I won’t have such misfortune brought on my daughter,” Fa Li pronounced, frowning. “Do something!” she commanded her husband, but only half-heartedly; she knew as well as he that once a guardian had settled, there was no use in asking him to change.
An idea struck Mulan suddenly. “Well, I could—“
Her father frowned. “Yes, Mulan?”
“I mean—no one’s seen Khan yet since we bought him, have they? And Xiao Hong had her guardian settle as a horse last year, and no one said a thing. Wouldn’t—wouldn’t it be easier if I just pretended Khan was my guardian instead?”
“Ancestors be praised for my clever daughter!” said Fa Li, smiling for the first time that day. ”That is exactly what we shall do!” Fa Zhou, however, didn’t look as convinced.
“It is more difficult than you can understand to maintain a pretense day after day,” he said, very gently, but Mulan only shook her head.
“Better that than having everyone stare at me whenever I go out,” she said. People already whispered about Fa Zhou’s headstrong daughter and how she couldn’t seem to be a proper daughter; it would only be worse when she added a guardian as outlandish as a dragon to the mix. “I’ll ride out with Khan this afternoon.”
Despite her father’s reservations, no one in the village seemed to doubt how her guardian had settled. Some of her friends giggled a little and speculated how difficult it would be to take a horse with you everywhere—“Even in your marriage palanquin!” said Xiao Chen and laughed. Through it all the silent dragon rested against Mulan's back, hidden by the fall of her hair.
After a month or two, talk in their sleepy village shifted to how Xiao Chen‘s guardian had settled into a monkey, and Yi Bao’s into a pig, and as time went by, Mulan herself began to forget that her true guardian still slept curled around her neck.
Until now, in the bamboo forest that overlooked the Wu Shu camp, where he was making himself very loud and very panicky and very difficult to ignore. He crawled up along a stalk of bamboo and shouted, ears thrashing back and forth in agitation: “Girl, you crazy?”
Mulan, who had been expecting an address more along the lines of “insolent child, return home at once before you dishonor your ancestors further,” stopped cringing and stared at him.
“Excuse me?” she said before she could think better of it. “You can talk?”
“Can I talk?” he said, looking as offended as only something the length of her arm could. “Can I talk? Yes, I can talk! Not that you’d know, Miss Can't-Be-Bothered-To-Say-A-Thing. Would it kill you to drop me a line once in a while?”
Her guardian—her lazy, useless guardian who had never said a word to her before—was chastising her for never speaking to him. But why not? Her world was already spinning out of control; why shouldn’t this, too, be turned upside down? Mulan knelt before him and focused on keeping her voice steady.
“I understand you are angered, great guardian—“
“Angry? Angry? You bet I’m angry!”
It was quickly becoming clear that the dragon’s preferred means of communication was aggrieved and often repetitive questions.
“But,” Mulan interrupted, “ It’s the only way to save my father.” And, she added privately, to prove to herself that she had some use, that something worthwhile could be discovered within her. “I pray you’ll understand.”
The dragon gave her a beady-eyed stare. “Now who said anything,” he demanded, “about going back home with our tails between our legs? Well, figuratively in your case.”
“I, uh, I thought—“
“You thought wrong! We,” and the dragon’s mouth turned upward in the widest grin Mulan had ever seen, “are going to make you the star of this army! Now,” he pursed his lips considering, “Now—go ahead and make a note of this—here’s what we’re going to have to do to teach you to be a man—“
Try as she might, Mulan couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice. “You know how to act like a man?”
The dragon looked offended once again. “Of course I do! Just what do you think I’ve been doing all these years?”
“Sleeping?”
“Pfft. I’ve only been pretending to sleep all the time. Actually, I have been people-watching since the day, the hour, the very instant we were born because—because in my infinite guardian-style wisdom, I knew this day would come.” He settled back on his haunches, looking smug.
That….seemed highly unlikely, but before Mulan could bring this up, the dragon was speaking again.
“And as it turns out, it might even be for the best that you tried to pass this overgrown heifer off as your guardian—“
Khan spat at him, and very probably he deserved it. The dragon dodged behind Mulan and without pausing his chatter once.
“—because once they start looking for Fa Zhou’s missing daughter, they’ll be looking for a girl with a horse guardian. All the better for our little masquerade.” He rubbed his claws together with glee.
Mulan supposed she should feel relieved, but instead fear welled up again.It is more difficult than you can understand to maintain a pretense day after day, her father had said, and Mulan wished she had thought to ask him what sort of pretense he had maintained to speak so. Had he been concealing his shame at such a disgraceful daughter? Or, even worse, had it been how little he wanted to be forced to the battlefields again?
He wouldn’t be forced anywhere, not now that he had a daughter to fight for him, and she a guardian willing to help her. Which reminded her:
“Do you—“ Mulan dared ask for the first time in her life. “Do you have a name?”
The dragon let out a startled laugh. “Do I have a name? Do I have a….” he trailed off as Mulan raised an eyebrow at him. Only the sheepish droop of his ears betrayed anything of his shyness. He said, quietly: “Call me Mushu.”
“All right,” she said, and held out a hand to help him climb up to his customary position around her neck, exposed this time instead of hidden away. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mushu.”
They looked out together down to the training camp at Wu Shu. “This won’t be easy,” Mulan felt compelled to mention.
Mushu scoffed. “’Course it won’t. But with me at your side, girl, we’ll manage somehow. Now,” and his voice was low, conspiratorial, and clearly delighted, “hush up and pay attention to lesson number one: how to walk like a man.”