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CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Her teeth were missing, she heard someone silently say, a girl from a distant, remembered conversation.

Lucky’s tongue felt thick as it moved. Her teeth were safe and sound.

She stood in a hall. A narrow hall. One with many doorways and an end that didn’t end, the long space leading to an unavoidable dark.

The low table was gone. As was Yin Ying and the brazier. The dragon no longer whipped ‘round the baseboards and the wiggling of her flesh had quieted.

The red remained. A haze that snuck along the floor, and climbed the walls, and ducked into the shadows hugging the ceiling.

Lucky blinked, and then blinked again. Fingers flexed and her chest rose in a deep breath. Her mouth tasted of sick. And a sour burn stained her throat, stinging her nose when she swallowed.

She’d drunk the tea. She remembered. She closed her eyes, the heat of the red room returning.

A dragon chased its tail. Two clay pots waited. Madame Xuo sat silent and watching and dead. Then alive, bending forward, crawling near. The shrunken flesh stretching as her skeletal fingers gripped the edge of the warped wood and she pulled herself close, the kimono rustling while cobwebs snapped and dust fell and spit dangled from her smiling lips.

Then there’d been black.

And now red.

This red. The dark hall bathed in a dusty crimson glow, the low-ceilinged space like some ancient, forgotten tomb.

She wasn’t alone.

Something bumped against her calf. Too tired and too confused, she didn’t look. Not until four fat fingers wrapped around her ankle.

Below her, it crawled. A torso with a large head squatting awkwardly on slender shoulders, one arm reaching forward, the thick fist on her ankle, pulling forward, pulling near. The large mouth opening, the sharp stench of something spoiled and infected and threatening to burst rising from the nubs of yellow teeth.

Its nose was pushed flat, the lips pushed forward. Its hair heavy, greasy strands sticking to a flaking, grimy scalp. The legs two clubs jerking from the hip, each with a long, thick, yellowed nail jutting from the end that scraped the floor as it angled near.

Lucky wanted to scream. Wanted to run. But the hall was too red and the world moved too slow. And even as the legless thing with the four-fingered fist wrapped its mouth around her ankle to gnaw the flesh, the tongue sticky and wet as slobber slid down her heel, she stood quiet.

After another blink, the haze cleared and she could see clearly.

A moment later, she screamed.

Like a swarm of insects, they crawled, waddled and shuffled. Heavy skulls squatting on twisted necks. Crooked torsos without legs. Arms that curled and bent to grope in the dark. Five fingers stretching from where the shoulder ends and an arm should begin.

Anonymous souls, these with legs, their eyes blind under sheets of thick flesh, feeling their way as they crawled, the wet sound of bleeding, torn knees dragging against the wood. Others unable to move, or see, or speak, sitting trapped in an unforgiving stench of sweat, spoiled blood, weeping flesh and mangled muscle.

In the corners, they lingered, these unfortunates, the insistent beat of their hearts visible beneath their too-pale skin and shallow, sunken chests.

Sensing her near, they turned. Sightless eyes attempted to see. Squat noses pressed flat to slimy faces lifted to catch her scent. Thick lips smeared with sick stretched into torn, ripped and jagged grins. Half-finished forms dragged and turned and moved close.

“You still live.” Weathered with age and weary, the voice came from behind her. “I don’t believe that’s happened before. Not after seven sips of tea.”

Carefully turning, fearing she’d step on someone or something, Lucky discovered Madame Xuo the No Longer Silent.

Still small, still pale, her lips still cleaved with red and her brows still perfect strokes of unapologetic black, she stood, wrapped in gold silk, bathed in red, surrounded by the swarm.

“No one has had more than three sips,” Madame said, her eyes meeting Lucky’s. “Yet this was allowed. And now I know why.”

They scurried away from Lucky, these things. Their fingers no longer reached and their fists no longer grabbed. Their mouths no longer tried to gnaw her calves or ankles or feet. Desperate and afraid, they fled to the safety of open doors and thick shadow and smooth wall.

“Turn,” Madame said. “Look.”

She did.

Her shadow waited.

It was dark, as all shadows are. But this was different. It breathed. It lived. It had small eyes that opened and blinked. There was an awareness. A hunger.

“This has walked with me,” Madame was saying. “It has made me and my life safe. From sickness, from poverty. From hunger. Can you imagine a life without sickness or poverty or hunger, little Lucky?”

Lucky didn’t respond, her gaze on the dark standing in front of her.

“As Yin Ying said, this has felled armies and raised kings,” Madame said. “It is pure power and might. As strong as stone, it cannot falter.” The hem of her kimono rustled against the floor as she stepped forward. “It cannot fail. And should you embrace it and let it become you, neither will you.”

Lucky turned her head.

It turned with her.

“The rules of life will mean nothing,” Madame said. “You will live free from consequence. Climb as high or fall as low as you like. There is no limit. It will be your choice what you do with it.”

Lucky watched the dark. Beneath the surface, something waited. She could almost hear it, almost see it. She came oh so close to catching whatever was trying to speak to her or reach out to her. Even narrowing her eyes and looking closely, she still couldn’t catch it, the thing allowing her just the smallest glimpse of souls trapped and bodies broken and a writhing world of never ending anguish.

“But there is a price,” Madame said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “A price determined by what you choose. A price that must be paid when your life, this life, comes to its close.”

From the dark, a face came forward. A young girl with tearstained cheeks. Small and grieving, she pressed to the shadow like a hand to glass, the lipless mouth speaking words Lucky couldn’t hear. She moved close, and closer still, pressing her own face into the dark. It was cool and calm. Like the blissful shade of a giant tree on the hottest of summer’s days.

She liked it.

“Can you hear me, little Lucky?” Madame said.

Yes, she could hear the old woman. But the shade, the dark, it was calling her. It promised relief from pain, from work. It whispered of freedom and strength. Of power. Perhaps even of wealth and a life of smiles and laughter.

In the dark waited the end of being at the mercy of others.

“Whatever you choose cannot be undone. Once you agree, it is yours and it can never be lost. You can run and it will follow. And I promise you,” Madame said as she took another step closer, “there will come a time when you will pray for release. You will beg for it to be over. But it never ends. It is forever.”

She wanted to turn to Madame. Wanted to acknowledge the words being said. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The dark brought her closer. She could almost feel its breath kissing her lips and hear the beat of its lonely heart.

“Think,” Madame said, the word sharp. Sharp enough for Lucky to turn and peer through the red haze to see Madame standing, the mob of misshapen souls squirming around her ankles, their arms thumping against her shins. Tears fell from the woman’s eyes, the furrowed brow urging what her words could not.

“Please,” Madame said. “Think of what you are choosing. Of what it might be. At the end.

“You are young. Too young. And I know you hope, as I did many years ago, that this will be the answer. But it is not—”

A hand the color of moonlight rose to stop the words, the flesh soon wet with a stream of blood that stole between her long, pale fingers. Madame closed her eyes and, taking a deep breath, wiped the red from her lips with the back of her hand before speaking.

“I have said all I can. But know this: there is nothing to fear from death, but much to fear from a life without consequence.”

Lucky turned from her, her eyes once again on the dark.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Are you afraid, little Lucky?” Madame said.

Lucky shook her head. Leave behind a life of work and pain? Even now, her arms ached. Even now, hunger burned and her body wept. Even though her day had been quick and her work interrupted by the invitation to tea, there were years of pain weeping in every bone and muscle and breath. Her days, day after day, cursed with pain she’d always feel, no matter how long her life.

Freedom from this is what was being offered. This was the choice she had in front of her.

Why wouldn’t I take that? she thought. Afraid?

No, she was not afraid.

“You will be,” Madame was saying as Lucky stepped into the dark.

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