The next three days sneaking through the halls of the labyrinth passed in near silence, Xiaomei choosing like everyone else to pointedly ignore the elephant in the room. Using the excuse of the potentially pursuing Ashes, none of the group spoke above a whisper over the sound of their own feet.
What that did mean, for Xiaomei at least, was that she had lots of time to think. For the first time since entering the maze below the world, she felt like she could hear herself think. The thoughts themselves now seemed so loud that she was surprised she had been able to ignore the growing worry within.
I shouldn’t be here. I don’t fit in. I’m not strong enough.
Xiaomei didn’t know if fate was real or if everything happened by chance but she was sure that whichever it was, it didn’t care about her. She had once kept a kind of chart, a history of her ribbon readings for each day. The bundle of multicoloured thread had told a story through the chaotic jumble of colour that one she could have read. It was gone now, lost in an inferno of fire and pain.
She still saw the smiling face of Guan Po Daiyu in her nightmares, a large green shadow full of evil sitting behind her. In those fitful dreams, she could feel her body being shorn away like rock, massive heavy blows that tore parts of her away until it was just her self. The true self.
She was small. A tiny blue wisp in an ocean of fire and pitch black fear. She awoke from these dreams tense, rigid as though her muscles hadn’t moved in weeks. Usually Hyun Soon’s deep snores covered up her fearful awakenings, the bass covering her high pitched yelp.
Not so on this night.
The labyrinth, they had decided, must reflect light from the sun somehow. The stone itself seemed to become pregnant with light until everything was visible. The light ebbed throughout the hours and eventually the rock around them started to dim. This, they had called night-time, and so they had kept it routine to stop when it did.
A few times, Dan had argued to keep going. The second “night” was the first time. Dan had been unconscious after the escape from the Guan family vault and the horrible chimeric monster that had chased them soon afterwards. The night after that, and each night since, Xiaomei expected, Dan had stayed awake. Whatever she saw in her nightmares, that boy’s must be much worse.
So when Xiaomei woke to a badly contained scream and the feeling of Dan’s eyes on her, she could no longer ignore it. “Morning,” she mumbled, knowing he would hear her from across the small space they had claimed for their rest.
“I told you to be quiet.” Said a female voice. Xiaomei sat bolt upright. Something was wrong. That wasn’t Fa Lian’s voice.
“I said nothing. She must have awoken naturally.” This time it was a deep voice. In the darkness, Xiaomei’s eyes were taking their time to adjust. The fact that she was given that time at all was confusing enough but all the more because she didn’t recognise the voices. Once her eyes figured out the shapes in the dimness, the answers just made it more confusing.
“What are you two doing?” She only whispered so Hyun Soon might stay asleep, as clearly he was the only one who was. Were Fa Lian and Ah Dan having a private conversation… while doing impressions?
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“Back to sleep with you child, this doesn’t concern you.” The deep voice again. The confusion multiplied again. How was that voice coming from Fa Lian?
“Have you never talked to a young girl before, you scaly oaf?” This time Ah Dan’s lips moved but the voice that spoke was a smoky and soft woman’s. Maybe this was just another part of her dream, Xiaomei wondered. After a moment, she decided to stay in the haze instead of laying down as her sleepy eyes were asking her to do.
“Who are you?” Xiaomei asked, curious about the strange people pretending to be her friends. The pair looked at each other, and shared a smirk as though a joke had just been told.
“That’s not our secret to share, I’m afraid. Though I don’t love to hide things either. This one,” Ah Dan was speaking in his lovely voice, pointing a thumb at Fa Lian, “has no bindings. They’re just grumpy and lashing out.”
“That sounds like Fa Lian to me.” Xiaomei said, confident in her drowsy sleepiness. Fa Lian herself barked a crackling laugh and Xiaomei got close enough to see the pair to see them properly. Still, it was strange. Her dreams felt large and impossible and awful. They wore her down while she was awake. She understood why Ah Dan stayed awake when he could, and was slightly jealous of his progression. She’d like to avoid sleep when she could, too. She had no control in her dreams.
While Xiaomei revelled in the freedom that this specific dream had allowed, she took in the faces of her friends. Ah Dan’s eyes were a golden amber and Fa Lian’s seemed to glow with a black and red ember. Around Ah Dan’s eyes, a sheen of ghostly fur glimmered like sable while Fa Lian’s own skin was marbled and scaled like a lizard.
“What are you doing?” If she couldn’t know who they were, she could at least join the conversation as long as she knew what it was about. “It’s a bit late for scheming isn’t it, you two?” She found that she was more easily able to say the things she normally wanted to in this shaded dream.
“It’s never too late for a scheme, young Guan.” Ah Dan’s voice, coupled with his soft vulpine eyes made Xiaomei feel as though she was looking right into the face of a fox pulled from a bedtime story. His voice was like a lullaby wrapped in fur. “Would you like to come up with one?”
“You’re a troublemaker.” Fa Lian grumbled. Her own voice had become like the slithering of rocks, like sheets of shale falling away from themselves. “Put the child to bed and stop playing games. This is serious.”
Ah Dan’s orange eyes rolled dramatically and he flopped onto his back in a childish fall before rolling to his side and standing up in one fluid motion. “You’re never going to figure out that girl before you burn her away if you don’t know how to talk to her.” As though the tempo of things had changed, Ah Dan moved like lightning and appeared before Xiaomei with a soft landing.
“I speak to all equally.” Fa Lian replied, affronted.
“That’s the issue, but who am I to argue with the lofty Ryong Aang?” Ah Dan held a hand over his mouth and made a quick glance to Xiaomei, as though he had just said something scandalous. Xiaomei didn’t catch whatever secret Ah Dan had apparently tried to share, and a growl from Fa Lian had him looking every bit the admonished gossip. “Fine, fine. Like I said… no argument, right?”
Instantly, the mood shifted and the hazy fugue of dream dropped away. Xiaomei’s limbs felt heavy and numb, no strength in them to move and run like she was now desperate to do. She felt her mana, her core, being grabbed by something unknown and unwelcome. Like claws locking around her soul before squeezing. The last thing Xiaomei saw before everything faded to darkness was Ah Dan’s sympathetic eyes and clenched fist.
———————————
When Xiaomei awoke, all three of her friends were quietly sitting to one side of their small cave bedroom. She felt as rested as she ever had and wondered whether it was because last night, for the first night in a long time, she had not had a single dream.
No shades of Po Daiyu, her brother or any of the other dangers she had faced with her allies since entering the labyrinth. No gnawing doubt had kept her tense and fearful. As she stood, she ignored the smirks from the others and assumed that there was some joke being passed around that she just didn’t have the compunction to worry about.
All she cared about right now was how she moved. It felt like liquid had replaced stone within her limbs and everything that was stiff and uncomfortable was no longer so. A loud pop echoed around the small area, her hip aligning in the most confusing combination of surprise and relief. As she continued to stretch and move, Xiaomei’s mana moved too.
Her core felt like an untangled collection of silk, satin and velour, no bobbling to be found on her mana channels. She felt similar to when Dan healed her, but more than that. Ah Dan’s healing technique was potent, and it filled you with energy but it didn’t feel like your own. The energy she grasped towards now felt like her own.
Feeling better than she had since they stepped into the grey expanse of halls and horrors, Xiaomei joined the others as they began to plan their next steps.