Bixian sighed and stared down at her hands. The Weaver’s hands had been cool on her skin; it was the first time she had been touched and not tortured since her imprisonment. Pathetic, how such paltry contact made her body ache. She, who always prized solitude even as she raised a daughter, felt the ache of loneliness within her prison.
It was the easiest torture imaginable. Tuck someone away in an oubliette, and let time do its slow gradual work. There was nothing crueler than to be kept in a box, shut away from sunlight and wind. Away from the sound of other beings, the sound of being alive: from the raucous din of revelry to the susurrations of sleep. Something, anything to give the empty world company.
She must be going mad, for she thought she heard laughter somewhere in the room. Her hand went up to her throat, making sure it wasn’t her own voice she was hearing. It wasn’t.
“You sure told her off,” someone said from the far corner, followed by the same light laugh, a giggle that was almost just a vibration. “Though if she’s going to the big man to advocate or tattle on you, I have absolutely no clue. Couldn’t hear her intentions beneath all that simpering.”
“I have never heard your voice before,” Bixian replied. “Have they sent a new interrogator?” She was powerless within the cell, so if the intruder meant her harm all she had were her wings and beak.
“I’m honestly not certain,” the voice hummed as Bixian crept nearer. “I have memories of sights and sounds, but they’re different than what I just heard. The sound of voices quarreling…I think that may be the first time I’ve ever experienced sound.”
At the furthest edge of the room, a small crack bloomed out the wall, the slightest imperfection within the impenetrable prison. Bixian knelt down slowly and, plucking a feather from her wing, jimmied the quill around the inside, unsure of what she would find.
It turned out to be a worm, pale translucent gold and the size of a thumb. Bixian held the feather by the edge as far away from the creature as possible. The worm had no eyes and six stubby pairs of limbs. It settled itself on the feather and raised two pairs of limbs in a sort of greeting, lifting what Bixian could only assume was its head.
“That’s better, I think,” it spoke, in the same manner of spirits, whose bodies could not physically produce speech. “For a while I thought I’d be in the dark forever, but then I thought, wait, I have more than a dozen words for colors, lights, and leaves, all sorts of things that I know of but haven’t experienced yet. And that presents a binary, doesn’t it? Either the world I remember exists still, or it has been destroyed. Either way, very important for me to come out and see.”
“But it is not a binary.”
The worm scrunched up, expressing disdain as well as it could without a face. “Oh?”
“You could have dreamed of this world,” Bixian supplied. “All of this.”
“I must be cruel, then, to put you in a place like this.”
“You are quite gregarious for a worm.”
“What can I say? I have a lot of words to spare. Meanings just floating in a sea of dust.”
Certain that the worm was harmless, or at the very least less powerful than she, Bixian offered it her palm. Up close, she could feel the residual karma radiating off the worm’s body. “You’re a collection of memories,” she said. “Like how a pearl forms from a grain of sand.”
The worm tucked its head beneath its first pair of limbs in mock embarrassment. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”“It won’t get me out of this tower,” Bixian said sadly.
“Not with that attitude. Didn’t I come out of a crack over there? Have you ever heard of the Heavenly Pagoda having cracks in it?”
“I suppose not.”
“If a wall can crack, then it can crumble.”
“You sound more ready to escape than I am.”
“I know the names of a hundred trees, but I don’t know what a breeze feels like. I feel so old already, but I’ve only been alive for, I don’t know, minutes.”
“You were born knowing many things,” affirmed Bixian. “Was a name one of them?”
The worm stroked what should be its chin. “I don’t think so, no. I know that I am me, and I am a worm. Would you give me one?”
“What, a name?”
“Sure.”
Bixian lifted the worm up to her face and scrutinized it carefully. “Let’s see,” she contemplated. “You appear similar in shape to a silkworm, and you were born much like a pearl. How about Xiu Chan? 绣 for a pearl’s beauty, and 蝉 since you are a worm.”
“Xiu Chan,” the worm repeated. “My name is Xiu Chan…”
“I can give you a different name if you aren’t pleased with—”
“I love it,” the worm exclaimed. “Thank you, Crane, for not eating me and instead honoring me with words beyond my station.”
“Nonsense,” Bixian replied. “There is a prison. There are no stations here. But I am glad you like your name. I have only named one other person.”
“And who is that?”
“Myself.”
“Really.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard the tale of the Crane and the Child?” When the worm gave a negative, Bixian took a breath and sat up, assuming the air of a teacher giving a dictation to his students, a feather in her hand instead of a fan.
“Once there was an only child from a poor family, who was engaged to be unhappily married. On the night of the wedding day the child stayed in the family shrine and prayed.
“’Oh gods and ancestors, don’t let this be my fate,’ the child cried, ‘I do not wish to be married. I am still young, and there is still so much of the world to see and learn. Why was I not born into the life of a scholar, free to pursue my innate magic and cultivate my divinity?’
“A great storm brewed outside, as if to reflect the heart’s inner sorrow. That fervent wish, spoken into the night, became a golden arrow that pierced the heart of a bird flying overhead. Suddenly, a gale swept through the shrine and extinguished all the lights, and in the air heavy with the scent of incense and rain the child heard a voice say:
“’There is a spark of divinity in you, which imbued the wish you just made. It has granted me the power to take you away from your fate, if you so wish.’
“And the child saw before them a crane, with feathers white as eggshells, black as ink, and red as luck. Their fates were linked that night as the child climbed atop the Crane’s back to become a scholar of divinity, with the crane as the first disciple, who would bring others into the fold, desperate hearts who wished to walk away from their given fate.”
There was a pause after she finished, the last of her words hanging on the air like motes of dust. “You are a good storyteller,” Xiu Chan said quietly.
“It’s just a fable,” Bixian sighed. “From long, long ago.”
“Even so, it has touched the likes of me.”
Bixian was reminded of Luo Xingxi and how the wild, headstrong girl would sit mouth agape as stories were told: tales of earth and sky, mortals and gods, great wars and small famines. Even as Qiping nodded off, the eagle girl would sit with uncharacteristic calm until the story was finished. It didn’t matter if there was a lesson to be learned or a happy ending earned or gifted; once the tale concluded Xingxi would leap up as if a spell had been broken. But if there was any doubt that she was paying attention, she would happily repeat the story with her own added flourishes.
“Stories have such power,” Bixian mused.
“What happened to the scholar and their crane? Are they still on the path to cultivation?”
“The scholar has now become a wise Sage, handsome and young despite his many centuries.”
“And the crane?”
“Always faithful, until very recently.”
“Must be the Sage’s fault,” harrumphed the worm. “He’d be nothing without the crane.”
“How kind of you to take my side. Though your judgment may be premature. You don’t know why the crane betrayed her master.”
“The crane must have had a good reason.”
“You are so quick to cast your trust.”
“I’m still crafting my personality. Perhaps I’m choosing to be petty and shallow. Perhaps I’ve always been. In any case, you still have not provided any evidence to the contrary that the crane was in the wrong.”
“There’s a longer story to that,” Bixian smiled, surprising herself with how foreign the expression felt on her face.
“I have time. It seems you do as well.”
Bixian looked around her. No one was watching her in this unescapable prison. There was no one but Xiu Chan to hear the stories she would tell. “To start, not as long ago as before, there was a bridge in Heaven where a dragon and a phoenix met…”
Within the lonely tower, Bixian found comfort in her memories of the Qiao.
2/22/23: Xiu Chan looks like a beetle grub in my mind, but there's a part of me that also thinks of it as the worm from Labyrinth.
Xiu Chan is also the sexiest character in this series.