Again, the dream changed.

“Wake up, Ah Cheng! Wake up, quickly!”

Shao Cheng was lying on a thin straw mat on the ground. Abrial recognized the surroundings after a moment; this was Shao Cheng’s small, poorly furnished cottage. Shaking him awake was his mother. He seemed to be in a deep sleep, and shrugged his mother’s hand away roughly.

“Ah Cheng, quickly! There is a fire!”

At last, Shao Cheng blinked his eyes open blearily.

“Wh-what? Isn’t it night time? Mama, why are you awake?”

“Come, Ah Cheng!” His mother’s eyes hovered over him, a warm brown shining with worry and fear. By the surprised look on Shao Cheng’s face, this was not an expression she often showed him.

Quickly, Shao Cheng stood and began to pull on his shoes. Only then did he notice the smell of burning wood, along with a strange smell that could be described as burning clay. A raging crackling noise accompanied the overpowering smell. The air seemed to be hazy with smoke as well.

His mother grabbed his arm in a strong grip, pulling him away from his shoes and towards the window.

“There is no time! We must leave!”

Shao Cheng’s mother insisted he leave first, so he slipped out of the window nimbly and turned quickly to help his mother. By the time they had both exited the cottage, the raging fire had spread to the inside of the cottage. Through the window, Abrial could see that the wooden frames within the house had caught fire.

Shao Cheng and his mother gaped at their cottage from the outside, unmoving even as the heat scalded their faces.

Up into the night sky rose flames hot and red as blood, golden at the center. The straw roofing of their cottage was already burnt to a crisp, blackened and wasting away to ash. The center of the roof was still crowned with violent flames, like a mane rising into the darkness. The wooden frames outside of the house were engulfed in furious fire, and even the round dried mud walls had caught flame, with spurts of gold and blood red running up and down the beige surface and turning it into black ash.

They stood there for a long time, watching their home burn. It burned and burned until the roof sparked and sighed and caved in, until the walls crumbled inward, all ash and charcoal. Hot scarlet sparks flew up into the night.

Only when the last section of wall turned black, did Shao Cheng’s mother shake out of her daze. She covered Shao Cheng’s eyes, though it was much too late for that.

“Come, Ah Cheng,” she said, her voice shaking. “Let us go to the Shin cottage. They will let us stay with them for now.”

Shao Cheng did not snap out of his daze, so his mother put her arm around him and led him through the hillside. Shin Minyeo’s family cottage was not too far away. Abrial followed them there through the quietly swaying, night-stained grass. Crickets chirped occasionally. The tranquil quiet of the night did not match the rage of the blazing fire that had burned into Shao Cheng’s eyes, stained there forever.

Shao Cheng and his mother were immediately let in by Shin Minyeo’s father. Abrial followed Shao Cheng as he was led to a corner of the cottage by a concerned Shin Minyeo, while his mother collapsed into a sitting position at the table with Shin Minyeo’s mother and father.

Meanwhile, Shin Minyeo set up an extra bedroll for Shao Cheng in the cramped sleeping section of the one-room cottage.

“Cheng ah,” Shin Minyeo murmured, pulling him towards the bedroll. Her usually sparkling and mischievous eyes were full of worry. She smoothed back the unkempt black hair on Shao Cheng’s forehead, trying to get him to sit down. “Sit, Cheng ah. I’ll get you water.”

Shao Cheng shook his head dazedly. With surprising force, he yanked his arm out of Shin Minyeo’s grip. He turned sharply and stormed toward the back door that led to the garden — the garden he’d once stolen from.

He stumbled and sat with difficulty on the step leading to the door. He kept missing the step with his backside, as though he had lost all sense of his surroundings. At last, he sat on it properly, hugging his knees loosely and looking out over the lush garden filled with fruits and vegetables and flowers with vacant eyes.

Shin Minyeo came to sit by him a moment later. She did not speak; she only hugged her knees loosely in the same way, and looked out over the garden with him, occasionally peering at him sideways with a serious, searching look.

Behind them, someone burst into the cottage.

Shao Cheng didn’t turn around at the noise, as though he had heard nothing. Shin Minyeo stood and went to see who had come.

A moment later, a boy with warm brown eyes and hair burst out into the garden and rushed to Shao Cheng. Shao Cheng looked up absently to meet a pair eyes brimming with concern and something shifting deep within, like anger. It was Li Jun. His pale blue night garments fluttered slightly in the cold breeze wafting through the garden. He studied Shao Cheng’s face intensely, each of their faces only a few hands’ lengths apart.

Then he reached out and grabbed Shao Cheng’s hands, which sat limply in his lap. He gathered them together in his own warm palms and held them for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, while he struggled for words. Shao Cheng shifted slightly. Something like annoyance flickered in his eyes, but he didn’t move. He did not pull away, either. His mind seemed to be far, far away.

After some time, Li Jun awkwardly replaced Shao Cheng’s hands into his lap, then moved to sit by Shao Cheng’s side. The two of them sat there, their shadows long and thin in the pale silvery light of the moon, watching the many stems and leaves in the garden shiver in the gentle night time breeze.

Eventually, life seemed to return to Shao Cheng’s dead eyes. They glittered once again, and he sat up straighter. Still, he continued to study the garden silently, not even sparing a glance at Li Jun, who still sat next to him silently.

With his return to full consciousness, the voices from inside the cottage began to float more clearly out of the open back door into Shao Cheng’s ears. Shao Cheng’s mother’s voice reached the two boys who were sitting like stone statues shoulder-to-shoulder on the garden step. Her voice was hoarse from weeping.

“...It’s because of that family, the Ji family…I know it must be. Yuze and I have been expecting some retaliation towards us, but I didn’t expect something so cruel as burning down our house even when our son was inside…”

“Retaliation?” Shin Minyeo’s mother’s furious voice came. It seemed that she was trying to keep her voice down, but the outrage in it made her tone raise to a harsh snap. “What have you done wrong? What is there to retaliate for? How can anything justify burning down a fellow villager’s home and trying to kill them as they sleep?”

“You know how it is…” Shao Cheng’s mother said, her voice trembling. “The Ji family is very vocal about the bad luck of nonmagical people. Ever since their son was born three months ago with the nonmagical condition, they have been blaming our family. Because of that, everyone has been trying to drive us out with even harsher words than usual, and Yuze has had to travel at least seven towns away to sell our wares, since word had spread to the nearby villages…Thank goodness he is away right now, and did not have to see this. I…I did not think things would go this far. To burn down our cottage, even while we are sleeping inside…How cruel must these people be? Do they really hate us so much they are willing to kill us? Oh…what are we to do?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There came the sound of Shao Cheng’s mother weeping: a pitiful, hoarse sound, hopeless and wretched.

“Oh, don’t cry, Meilin ah…” Shin Minyeo’s mother comforted. “For now, stay with us, until you have a new cottage. That will be all right, won’t it, Minjoon ah? They have nowhere to go…”

Shin Minyeo’s father spoke with his deep voice:

“Yes, surely. You are welcome to stay here with your husband and son, Madame Wu.”

Out in the garden, Shao Cheng and Li Jun had been sitting in silence, hearing everything.

Li Jun turned and spoke quietly, his gentle voice was close by Shao Cheng’s ear:

“Cheng ge. I don’t know if I can convince my father, but if I can get him to say something to protect your family as the village chief and announce that you are not involved in that nonmagical birth, you might be safer. And maybe I can even get him to provide you will materials to build a new cottage, or — ”

“No.” Shao Cheng leaned away, his jaw clenched tightly. He shot Li Jun a dark look filled with disgust. “Do you not remember how many times you’ve tried that already? You’ll just get further out of your father’s favor for trying to protect someone like me. And he wouldn’t fucking do anything anyways. Besides the Ji family, Chief Li probably speaks out against us the most. Forget it.” Shao Cheng’s shoulders hunched. His obsidian eyes glinted fiercely. “Plus, I don’t want anyone’s fucking pity money. If someone tries to hurt my family like this one more time, I’ll find a way to kill them, and then move far, far away. Even if we have to live in the mountains or run to Roatia, I’ll find a way and bring my parents.”

Something in Li Jun’s eyes fell at the words, ‘move far, far away’. Still, he watched Shao Cheng grimly with those shining brown eyes. The unusual blue shimmer to them glimmered in the silver light of the moon.

“If that’s what you want, let me help you.”

“No!” Shao Cheng snapped. “Did you not fucking hear me? I don’t want anyone’s pity. Don’t get involved, Ah Jun. I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t need your help.”

Li Jun was silent for a moment. Then he spoke, even quieter than before:

“What will you do if someone in your family is hurt before you can find a better place to live?”

Shao Cheng’s already obsidian eyes seemed to darken somehow to an even more shadowy black than before, filling in with ink. His jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it was about to snap and splinter into a thousand shards. In his lap, his fists curled into stones.

“I’ll kill them,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “I will. And it’ll be painful, and slow. And then I’ll set fire to this whole town.”

Li Jun watched Shao Cheng’s face. His forehead wrinkled, eyes glimmering.

----------------------------------------

The dream changed again. Though Abrial did not have a body, her vision blurred with dizziness. She felt jolted; a moment ago, she had nearly forgotten she was in a dream, and not spectating these events herself in person. Her sense of self seemed to be crumbling as the dreams went on.

The scene unfolding now was strange and vivid:

In the small market of Shao Cheng’s village, many people milled around. Suddenly, a woman collapsed as she was reaching into her bag for coins. Gasps rose all around her, and several people rushed forward to check what was the matter with her.

“That’s Madame Jin, isn’t it? Is she all right?”

“What’s happened to her?”

“She isn’t pregnant, is she?”

Abrial drew close to the woman with people crowding around her. The woman had gone pale as winter snow, and on her neck there were a few strange scarlet marks…shaped like crescents…

“What is that?” someone pointed, shouting.

“It looks like a rash!”

“Could it be contagious?”

“Let’s go and fetch the village healer!”

The dream changed again, the scene flashing into black.

Suddenly, a voice spoke close by Abrial’s ear. If she had had a body, she would have jumped. The quality of it was slightly hazy, as though it was being drawn out from a far-off memory. It was a woman’s voice, whispering urgently:

“Did you hear? Madame Jin died this morning! Just three days after she fell sick!”

Another woman’s voice whispered back, also quite close by and echoing slightly:

“She died? But from what? Not that strange illness with scarlet marks?”

The other voice answered, gossiping somewhat frantically:

“Yes, it was! That strange scarlet disease killed her in just three days! And do you know what the worst part is?”

“What is it?”

“Her whole family has caught it now! Her husband, her two sons, and her little daughter! They all caught it!”

“How terrible! I hope it stays within their family, imagine if it spread to the whole town…”

“Aiya, don’t say such things! Let’s just go to the market and forget about it…”

The voices faded away, leaving Abrial’s presence floating alone in the pitch darkness.

Suddenly, many images flashed all around in quick succession, like patches from the fabric of memory torn off from the larger whole and sewn together in a train:

A man collapsed on the dirt road of the market. As people crowded around cautiously, they fell backward over themselves screaming. On his neck just beneath his burlap collar, was a pattern of scattered scarlet crescent rashes.

Next came the image of a woman dragging a man outside the door of her house and calling out desperately to those walking past down the road:

“Someone help us! My husband! He has caught the scarlet disease!”

Those on the road fell into chaos and shouting, dispersing and fleeing like cockroaches in sudden sunlight.

The scenes that followed were quick as flashes of lightning, making Abrial nauseous. They appeared and disappeared so quickly that only parts of them could be seen properly, but they were still utterly horrifying. They consisted of close flashes of pale, sweaty skin, jagged crescent scarlet scars, fingers scraping desperately at scabs on collarbones and peeling off flesh, eyes rolling in heads, and white faces that lay staring into nothing, their eyes utterly void of light.

Once this horrible parade of flashing images had ended, Abrial was left floating in darkness once again. An appalled numbness and nausea hung in the black air.

Though it was becoming hard to continue forming her own thoughts as the rapid dreams drew her deeper and deeper, Abrial succeeded in thinking to herself:

Those…these are the symptoms of the scarlet disease, right? Rashes, just like the Scarlet Plague that came when I was born. The scarlet disease and the Scarlet Plague…they’re the same? And it started in Shao Cheng’s hometown?

Something felt very strange about all of this. Vague thoughts about the repetition of the scarlet plague throughout the centuries floated around Abrial’s mind, but they faded quickly. Her mind seemed to be falling asleep as her presence melded into the scenery of the dreams. Thinking was becoming like trying to swim across the bottom of a dark, heavy lake.

A deep, resounding voice sounded from somewhere not far off in the darkness, sounding somewhat warbled and echoing disorientingly:

“As head of Pianjian village, I, Chief Li Gang, order that everyone remain within their houses except to harvest food from their own gardens and fetch water every two days from the central well. In addition, there will be a curfew placed such that no one may leave his home after the fourteenth hour. We must stop the spread of the scarlet disease and save our village! All those who specialize in healing are to meet me at the hill by the northern edge of town to discuss medicinal approaches to this outbreak…”

Li Gang…Abrial remembered with some difficulty. He is…was…the village chief of Shao Cheng’s village. He must be Li Jun’s father…So, they had to shut the whole town down…

She floated aimlessly in cool darkness for a period of time that seemed short, but also stretched out forever. At last, the world filled in with color again, bringing a new scene to light.