The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 43
by Little PandaSpeaking of the Tiger Who Blindfolds the Fox and Presents the Tribute.
Why not use it?
Zhuoxue’s brush hand stopped in midair. Naturally, she thought, it’s because I’m afraid that if my calligraphy came out fine, you’d smell something fishy.
This life of hers had been spent growing up on Qiufeng Ridge; she could read, certainly, but she had scarcely ever held a brush. How could she possibly produce a fine hand?
Yet the moment her past-life memories came flooding back, she was like a water-dweller who hadn’t swum in decades—the instant they dropped back into the water, rust dissolved into old mastery.
And then, even if she deliberately crooked her strokes, the brushwork might not stay neatly hidden. This was not something two or three sentences of bluff could paper over.
Zhuoxue let her gaze drift away, turning the matter over. Longming would never bring this up for no reason at all.
Was her writing too wretched—so wretched it overshot into suspicion—or was her poem too brilliant, rousing Longming’s doubts?
Once she had settled on her wording, she feigned bewilderment. “Was I supposed to hold the brush in my right hand? I thought either hand would do. Could it be my earlier characters were ugly enough to offend your eyes?”
Longming stared at her without a single blink—impossible to tell whether she had seen through it or not.
Zhuoxue shook out her wrist and muttered, “I saw everyone else in the habit of using their right hand, so I wanted to strike out and be original, write something a little different. Don’t tell me that’s not allowed either.”
She was certain Longming would not press the inquiry to its roots. They were inside a Nightmare Dream; if matters from beyond the dream got dragged in, one wrong step, and the pair of them—demons both—might never live to leave it.
Even if there was a reckoning to be had, it could wait until they were out.
Longming studied her a long while. At last the probing in her eyes dispersed, and she gave a faint scoff. “Why would it not be? To masters and prodigies of strange arts, a brush is bound by neither left nor right—even clamped in their teeth, they can still breathe spirit into painting and calligraphy.”
The villager who had carried in the writing table suspected nothing. Only the misery in his brow deepened, and he choked out, “Poor child—you and your sister had only each other since you were small. Your sister did sit a few days in the village school, but she knew few characters herself. No wonder she taught you all crooked.”
“Her sister went to school. Why didn’t she?” Longming asked.
The villager hedged. “The village chief wouldn’t allow her to come, and the schoolmaster wasn’t glad to see her either. She was too unruly, always disturbing you, my Lord. You were very young then—you may not remember.”
Zhuoxue thought this fellow was rather decent, smoothing things over for her, and her invisible fox tail cocked right up. “Quite right. I am entirely self-taught.”
Though for her part, she had never once felt she was the least bit unruly.
Apparently, this Nightmare Dream truly was fated to clash with her.
“I don’t remember,” Longming said.
The villager wiped his tears. “Ah, careless of me. I’d been meaning to have you leave a last letter, but thinking it over now—who would I even deliver it to? Your sister still hasn’t shown her face. I doubt she ever will.”
Zhuoxue bowed her head, dipped her brush in ink, and switched it to her right hand. Only, she committed not one character to the page—she simply scrawled and doodled across the paper.
If they wanted to watch her write, then write she would not.
With flourishes of the brush and splashes of ink, a few strokes brought forth a turtle dressed in a big floral padded jacket1—her own imagining of Lan Hui’s true form come festival time.
“We never wanted to send you two sisters into the mountain either, but the Fox Immortal named you both. If anything went awry in that, Qiufeng Village would be in for a terrible year.” The villager mourned and grieved—then his gaze slid absently toward the low table, and he froze.
For a moment he honestly could not tell whether this girl was treating her own tribute as some lark. Calamity hanging over her head, and still so bright, so cheerful.
“Why have you drawn a… turtle2?” the villager asked, bewildered.
Zhuoxue didn’t so much as blink. “Making merry amid the misery, naturally. Even if I bathed my face in tears, you lot wouldn’t let me out anyway.”
The villager half believed her, half doubted, and sighed again. “If Suli doesn’t show her face soon, we’ll have no choice but to find someone else to take her place. Plenty of people can’t wrap their heads around it—they even regard the chief and the rest of us as heartless.”
“Can’t wrap their heads around what?” Zhuoxue sensed trouble—another round of twisted logic was likely on its way.
She cast a covert slanted glance at Longming, savoring a touch of gloating.
Perfect timing. Let Longming listen closely, and call to mind the disgraceful sermon she herself had delivered not long ago.
A perfectly good demon lord, gone and turned into some street-corner evangelist.
The villager drew himself up with righteous solemnity. “This journey wins peace and safety for Qiufeng Village—a fortune fallen from heaven. There is sacrifice, yes, but it is a worthy price. Those who enter the mountain serve the good of the entire village; from now on, the five grains will ripen and the six livestock flourish3 in Qiufeng, the envy of every other town. Every single soul who goes up that mountain is a hero of the village.”
“If it’s such a beautiful errand, why aren’t you going?” Zhuoxue set her brush down carelessly; a blot of ink bloomed across the paper.
Longming snorted faintly—yet she had listened to the whole sermon without a shade of shame.
The villager hemmed and hawed. “I’ve the old above me and the young below me—how could I ever go?”
Zhuoxue, ever helpful, offered a suggestion. “Why not go as a family, all neat and complete? If it’s such a fine errand, of course the whole household should take part together.”
“You!” The villager was stunned and outraged. This girl plainly understood everything and played the fool purely to revile him through it.
That turtle on the paper—it had been drawn to curse him too, beyond doubt!
Zhuoxue said, cool as still water, “There, all finished. Take my parting painting with you.”
Humiliated into a fury, the villager snapped, “Don’t you know what’s good for you!”
Zhuoxue felt stifled with injustice—since when did she not know what was good for her?
Then the thought turned over, and she lifted the sheet, bowed her head, and gently blew the ink dry, drawling, “Come to think of it—might that register of names be something you all made up? You saw me and my sister with only each other, friendless and helpless, so you pretended the Fox Immortal had named us. When really, the Fox Immortal never named any names at all.”
“And as for that Fox Immortal—probably just styles itself an immortal when it’s no immortal at all.” She was the picture of composure, arguing with reason and evidence, not a crack anywhere in it.
The villager’s rage sent smoke streaming from his seven orifices4. “Spoken words prove nothing—how could we possibly be such heartless, faithless people?”
This man’s glib tongue was still no match for Suli’s. Both sides were fakes conjured by the Nightmare Dream, yet this side was plainly a cut inferior.
Puffed up with triumph, Zhuoxue couldn’t help sorting herself and Longming into two rival camps.
If the villager born of Longming’s side of the dream lost out to Suli, wasn’t that proof enough that Longming was a notch beneath her?
“What are you laughing at!” the villager demanded, nonplussed.
Zhuoxue no longer cared to argue. She drawled, “Since you’ve caught me, and I can’t escape, why not hurry up and send me into the mountain?”
The villager glowered. “You are going into the mountain, make no mistake! The Fox Immortal held you two sisters in high regard—that’s why your names were chosen. Not another word of this nonsense!”
Feigning idiocy without the madness5, Zhuoxue nodded along. “My thanks to the Fox Immortal for thinking so highly of me—that’s exactly why I’m so eager to meet her.”
The villager leapt with rage. He snatched up the paper with its big floral-jacketed turtle and crushed it into a wad.
Stepping out the door, he reined his expression in a little and looked back. “Go in peace now—everyone will burn incense and paper6 for you!”
Once the man was gone, Zhuoxue heaved a long sigh and turned an innocent gaze on Longming. “He went and crumpled my turtle. Still, the right hand really is handier than the left—that’s the finest I’ve drawn in ages.”
Longming gave her one look, turned, shut the door, and left.
Left alone, the fox ground and gnashed her teeth. Who knew—perhaps a tiger’s hide simply runs thicker than most. That tiger hadn’t shown a hair of embarrassment, and had even sat there broad and open, taking in her whole performance.
Outside was still a hubbub—some wailed their bitter lot to the heavens, while others sang and danced in the rain, in the highest of spirits.
Over the next two days, Zhuoxue saw little of Longming. She didn’t fret; judging by Longming’s composed bearing, a counterplan must already be in hand.
Still, this Nightmare Dream was genuinely formidable—even a great demon like Longming had her lingtai and demonic core locked down.
Which meant they likely couldn’t brute-force their way out. Victory would have to come by cunning.
Zhuoxue was long past fear. If the sky fell, the tall would prop it up; if floods came, the short would drown first7. Now that the White Tiger was here, what had she to worry about?
She made her peace with circumstances. With nothing to do in this room, there was only waking to sleep and sleeping to wake.
In those days she heard someone wailing and cursing through the walls—presumably the villagers, having failed to find Suli, had picked someone to take her place. How could that person resign themselves to death? The cursing went hoarse and ragged with desperation.
Thankfully the Nightmare Dream was an illusory realm; no one was truly being sent to die.
Zhuoxue chose to treat the cursing as an opera singer on stage delivering an aria—sung, one had to admit, with genuine and heartfelt feeling.
She tossed and turned. One moment she steadied her mind on the sound of the rain; the next she focused on the cheering or the wailing outside—but none of it could pull her mind away.
The mating heat crested over the tip of her heart like a rising tide. There was not an inch of her body that wasn’t wretched; even rubbing against the straw mat until her skin flushed red brought no ease.
She seemed to have steeped herself back into that bolt of soft spring gauze: the moment she so much as pressed her legs together, everything felt slick and sticky, worse than the days before.
In the end the fox simply flopped down flat, bit down on the tiger’s mouth8 of her own hand, refused to let go, and forced herself into sleep.
The next day, as the sky neared dawn, the torrential rain thinned to a fine, misting drizzle. A burst of firecrackers sounded outside, followed by pipes and strings, blowing, plucking, drumming, and song—a proper racket of festivity.
A good while later, the villagers must have moved on to slaughtering chickens and pigs—somewhere a pig shrieked, a scream to tear the heart and split the lungs.
Zhuoxue got up. The fever still simmered after that sleep, but she felt a good deal easier than before.
She could no longer find the hole she had poked in the window paper, so she poked a fresh one and peered out with the greatest care.
The villagers had gathered in a cluster, hoisting the hewn-off pig’s head onto a horse cart.
The ground outside ran with blood. The crowd, soaked by the rain, dripped from head to toe—every one of them looked like some fiend out of hell.
Neck-wrung fowl and quartered cattle and sheep, all of it heaped onto the carts. Thank goodness the Fox Immortal wanted living humans—otherwise, even those chosen by name would likely have been torn apart by five horses9 on the spot.
Just then, the door creaked.
Zhuoxue jumped and whipped her head around—seeing it was Longming, she settled and went back to spying outside.
Her lingtai being useless, her ears seemed to have gone back to their former selves as well; she couldn’t even catch sounds clearly anymore.
Thankfully her nose still worked. She caught a faint scent of cooked meat, twisted to look behind her, and saw that Longming carried a basket—holding, in all probability, her last meal before the knife10.
Longming said nothing. At an unhurried pace she lifted the dishes from the basket and set them on the low table beside the straw mat.
Her hair slipped down from her shoulder, screening half of that heartless face—yet her hands moved with care. She had even spread a cloth beneath the bowls and chopsticks.
The hands that took up the chopsticks were long and pale as jade, each knuckle clean-cut—hands that by rights should have been uprooting mountains and raising bronze tripods11, yet here they were, performing a new bride’s office of washing hands and brewing soup12.
Bowl knocked against chopsticks with a light, ringing clatter.
Heat simmered up in Zhuoxue again. Pretending nothing was wrong, she strolled over and asked, “Such a lovely smell—who made it?”
Longming said, unhurried as ever, “There is certainly no poison in it.”
A performance should be carried through to the hilt—Zhuoxue had flat-out pasted the script onto her own face.
Cheerfully she babbled her nonsense: “One glimpse of you and I’m content. Even if this meal carried poison that seals the throat at the first sight of blood13, I would still have a taste.”
She might as well be that lovesick girl pining after a widow—willing to go to her death for a single meeting, meat and fish upon another’s chopping board.
This time, surely, the act was seamless.
For once, Longming was struck speechless. A long moment passed before she said, “Enough of that. Eat your fill, so you can be on your way.”
“How could that be nonsense.” After two days cooped up, Zhuoxue at last had someone to talk to; the spirit of theater possessed her on the spot, and she no longer cared whether Longming was vexed or furious.
Her eyes brimmed as if with stardust, glittering bright. “Is your heart also inclined toward me?”
Longming turned to leave.
Before Longming could open the door, Zhuoxue hurried on: “You come trysting with me at night, hold me captive in this room, wait on me with fine food and drink—you must adore me too, mustn’t you?”
Longming’s voice was flat. “If the mouth is idle, stuff it with a couple of bites of rice.”
“Why not run away with me? Elope, just the two of us—to hell with Qiufeng Village. Your little one—I will love the house and the crow on its roof14, and care for the child well in the bargain.” The fox’s tongue unfurled lotus blossoms15; in her mouth, even lies came out sounding true.
“Eat now, or I’m taking the bowls away,” Longming said.
The fox said no more.
It must be because the dream was built from her memories and Longming’s—even the fragrance of the food was the same as on Lingkong Mountain. As she ate and ate, this place came to feel as familiar as coming home, and she had all but been lulled under the dream’s spell.
Luckily the dry fever in her body flared again and scorched her back to her senses.
Zhuoxue suffered in silence, quite unable to work out how Longming held on to her own mind.
No matter. A great demon always has a great demon’s methods.
At midnight, gongs and drums erupted in unison. The rain suddenly poured harder, and a heavy fog blanketed the village—ten paces out, you couldn’t make out so much as a person.
Zhuoxue waited until she burned with impatience. The villagers had not yet come in to call for her, but she had already put herself in order and was standing at the door to wait.
The door stirred—Longming stood without.
Fog drowned heaven and earth. At a glance, it seemed the Nightmare Dream held no one but the two of them.
In Longming’s hand was a length of red silk; the swaddle was no longer in her arms. Bland of expression, she beckoned. “Eyes covered, and we enter the mountain.”
Splendid robes or no, Longming remained that same proud, frozen figure. This was no delivery of tribute—this was a trip to visit a grave.
Zhuoxue stepped up, just reaching to snag the red silk for herself, when a flick—neither light nor heavy—brushed the back of her hand away.
Longming leaned close and drew the red silk over her eyes.
Zhuoxue’s vision was slowly, utterly claimed by a field of red. She felt the band pass around her ears—and Longming’s sleeve drift weightlessly up onto her shoulder.
Longming’s breath fell close against her, warm and damp, like the scalding water of the dye-vats16.
Wasn’t she, in truth, a bolt of soft spring gauze fallen into a dye vat? So Zhuoxue thought.
The red silk cinched tight. Longming withdrew her hands, hooked a band of crimson satin down from her shoulder, and wound it around Zhuoxue’s wrists.
Those slender wrists were gathered together and clamped so they could not part—like a wooden cangue17, only far softer than any cangue.
Blind as she was, Zhuoxue could not stop thinking of those emptied arms. “And the swaddle? You’re truly letting it go?”
“It has gone where it belongs,” Longming said, level as ever.
“Then where do I belong?” Zhuoxue’s interest sparked—she had never yet met a nightmare demon, and she could hardly wait for the introduction.
“Your place is to follow me,” Longming said evenly.
The other end of the satin stayed in Longming’s hand. At the least pull, the fox came stumbling and staggering along behind.
Led blind, the fox walked square into Longming’s back. Her voice was small as a mosquito’s hum: “Blindfolded and led along by a ribbon—isn’t that rather abrupt? You’re not going to walk me into a ditch, are you?”
“When you said all those things, why was that not abrupt?” Longming paused. “And that melon ladle of yours.”
Footnotes
- 大花袄 | dà huā ǎo | A padded cotton jacket in loud floral prints, iconic rustic winter wear, especially of China's northeast; dressing anyone dignified in one reads as pure comic costume.
- 王八 | wángba | Vulgar colloquial word for turtle that doubles as a strong insult—bastard or cuckold—so a drawing of one reads as a deliberate curse.
- 五谷丰登，六畜兴旺 | wǔgǔ fēngdēng, liùchù xīngwàng | Stock blessing couplet: 'the five grains ripen and the six livestock thrive.' Five grains and six domestic animals together symbolize complete agrarian prosperity.
- 七窍生烟 | qīqiào shēngyān | Lit. 'smoke rises from the seven apertures.' The eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth are the seven openings of the head; the idiom depicts fury past containing.
- 假痴不癫 | jiǎ chī bù diān | Lit. 'feign idiocy without going mad,' the twenty-seventh of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: play the fool while remaining lucid to lull the enemy into carelessness.
- 焚香烧纸 | fén xiāng shāo zhǐ | Burning incense and joss paper offerings for the dead, a standard funerary rite; promising it assures her she will be properly mourned as one already gone.
- 天塌有高个，水淹有矮子 | tiān tā yǒu gāogè, shuǐ yān yǒu ǎizi | Folk saying: 'if the sky falls, the tall will prop it up; if floods come, the short drown first'—somebody bigger, it implies, will always absorb the disaster before you.
- 虎口 | hǔkǒu | Lit. 'tiger's mouth'; the standard anatomical name for the webbed flesh between thumb and forefinger—hence a built-in pun when a fox bites one.
- 五马分尸 | wǔmǎ fēnshī | Lit. 'dismemberment by five horses,' an ancient execution tying each limb and the head to horses; an idiom for being utterly torn apart.
- 断头饭 | duàntóu fàn | Lit. 'severed-head meal'; the final, deliberately generous meal traditionally granted to condemned prisoners before execution in imperial China.
- 拔山扛鼎 | bá shān gāng dǐng | Lit. 'uproot mountains and raise the tripod'; alludes to Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Chu famed for lifting a thousand-jin bronze cauldron, hence supreme might.
- 洗手作羹汤 | xǐshǒu zuò gēngtāng | Lit. 'wash the hands and brew soup,' from Meng Jiao's Tang poem on a new bride's first kitchen duty; an image of tender domestic devotion.
- 见血封喉 | jiànxiě fēnghóu | Lit. 'seal the throat the instant blood is seen'; an idiom for instantly lethal poison, and the name of the deadly upas arrow-poison tree.
- 爱屋及乌 | ài wū jí wū | Lit. 'love the house and the crow upon its roof'; loving someone extends to everyone and everything connected with them.
- 舌绽莲花 | shé zhàn liánhuā | Lit. 'the tongue blossoms lotus flowers'; praise for eloquence so dazzling listeners seem to see lotus bloom, rooted in Buddhist preaching imagery.
- 染缬 | rǎnxié | Classical term for resist-dyeing crafts—tie-dye, clamp-resist, wax-resist—in which cloth is bound or clamped before immersion in scalding-hot dye vats.
- 木枷 | mùjiā | The wooden cangue or pillory of imperial Chinese punishment: a heavy board locked around the neck or wrists to bind and shame prisoners.
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