David

Alice took advantage of her bad fortune and insisted upon being carried back to the temple, even though she'd already taken a few experimental steps under the mulberry trees and found herself stable. David found it difficult to refuse her, especially after she coughed delicately.

"You really are too manipulative for your own good," David chastised, not really meaning it. He scooped her up again.

Alice responded by looping her arms around him again and smirking at him. It was a bit morbid because a little trail of blood bloomed from the corner of her lip and ran down to her chin. He sighed, bent his knees slightly to balance himself, and brought his sleeve up and wiped it away.

"It's just mulberry juice," Alice insisted again, lying to his face.

He let her.

David carried Alice back through the archway and past the broken pillar, through the double doors and to the patch of ground she had swept for them last night. It had grown a little dusty again but that couldn't be helped.

He bent to lay her down gently but she all but hopped off of him. "Thanks!" Alice beamed, but her smile mellowed slowly and then fell away when she saw David's real concern.

"How are you feeling, actually?"

She sighed, placing a hand between his shoulder and his chest, just over his heart. "I'm fine. I promise," she said. Alice changed the topic of conversation as quickly as she could. "What exactly was this secret you got from the wall?" She gestured at the carvings.

"I don't know what it's actually called, but I know it as the Scripture of the Uprooted," David said, moving away from her and slid into the first stance. He stopped. "Is it dangerous for you to see it, you think?"

Alice shook her head empathically. "I don't even think it's dangerous for me to practice it, to be honest. I was just surprised by it."

David raised his eyebrows. "That's a pretty weird way to define surprise.” His tone was neutral and he looked relaxed but there he did not move again.

She sniffed, a delicate sound. "The way this sort of thing goes, in books at least, is if you let it overtake your senses, you'll run into trouble. I suppose I was a bit arrogant," she decided.

"A bit arrogant?"

"Never you mind. Just show me, again. I’m just going to watch."

David went through the steps of it. The Song roared in his veins. This time, it was like a dance he'd practiced for his entire life.

He started again and Alice made a move to join him.

David stopped. “Didn’t you say you were just going to watch?”

Alice frowned.

"You can't," he muttered, unable to vocalize his fears in any other way. He found his thoughts and they clarified into narrowed eyes and folded arms. "That's just too reckless," he said.

"I'll be okay." Alice's eyes almost glistened in determination.

His hands made tight fists behind his back. "And if you're not?"

"Then you can carry me back to the mulberry trees," Alice said, a little imperiously. She checked her nails.

David exploded. "You're literally spitting blood out and telling me that it's mulberry juice. You can't-" He stopped, calming.

“Can’t?”

"You shouldn't," he said, looking tired and a little worried, but he was almost sure he couldn't stop her now, not with the look in her eyes, because now Alice was also angry.

"You're just mad because you feel like this is your thing," she said, even though she was sure that it wasn't true - because she was sure it wasn’t true.

Now David was offended. He threw his weight against one of the thick stone columns which held up the temple. "Is that what you got from this? That I'm afraid you'll steal my sublime heaven defying Dao gospel?" There was a touch of sarcasm, thin and sharp, in his voice now.

The Song continued on, rising with his annoyance and worry until it filled his ears like the beating of a drum.

Alice pouted angrily, not answering.

"You really haven't forgotten the bit where you said that you were dying, have you?" David exhaled sharply and slammed his fist into the column.

There was a loud crack, as the column showed lines like a spiderweb extending from his fist.

They both stood in stunned silence, anger completely forgotten.

"D-did I do that?" David stuttered.

Alice and David examined the cracked pillar, expecting some kind of secret compartment full of scrolls or a weapon, or something that was more likely than David splitting stone with his bare hands.

There was nothing. It was made of solid stone.

"This can't be real life, can it?" David looked to his left, but Alice wasn't there.

"Move away from the pillar," came her voice, several feet behind him.

David turned around to see Alice in the first stance of something that he recognized to be a Wing Chun form. Her eyes were closed and he could feel the Song rising from within her. There was a morbid sound in the air, one that he'd heard beneath the mulberry trees, like hundreds of silkworms chewing on leaves.

He took a few uncertain steps away, as she'd asked, but it was partially from a sort of primal fear. His own Song rang proudly, asking him what he was afraid of.

Alice danced towards the pillar, shifting into one stance after another until she stood on her toes directly in front of it, her body swaying like a willow slightly to the left and then the right.

She opened her eyes and her right palm found the pillar a little under where he'd punched it, faster than the eye could see. There was a swish from her wide silken sleeves - it felt thematically aesthetic.

Nothing happened. There wasn't even the sound of a hand slapping stone. Her arms dropped to her sides and her sleeves found rest over her thighs.

Alice exhaled and sighed. "Nope," she said, shrugging, "guess I'm not also a super martial artist protagonist after all."

But as she spoke, there was the sound of cracking and grinding and crunching.

The pillar did not appear to have changed. Another loud crack.

There was suddenly dust everywhere as pebbles rained from the ceiling, some of which struck David glancingly.

"Ow," he said, almost out of habit. It didn't hurt much.

Alice looked at David, her eyes wide and her lips pursed in disbelief. "Point taken. I am, in fact, a super martial artist protagonist."

She walked to the other side of the column, folding her arms, as she examined the damage she'd done to the pillar. David followed along behind her, cataloguing the pebbles dislodged from the ceiling which littered the ground.

A wide fissure had formed within the column. David was sure that if they had a jug of water and poured it into the crack it would come out where he’d damaged the pillar himself.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Alice looked at the hole left behind in the pillar then turned to David with that demonic grin.

"Whatever’s on your mind, don't say it," he muttered, desperate. “It really isn’t that funny.”

She stared at the ground, took a deep breath, straightening her back and pushing out her chest, which David paused to openly admire, in order to force her voice down an octave. "Omae wa-"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why would you do this to me?"

She leaned upwards at him, staring at him through her lashes and then tapped his nose. "Because I love it when you suffer."

They both burst into easy laughter but her laugh soon turned into a cough and she spat another stream of sticky red onto the floor.

"It seems like whatever injury I've sustained is worse than I thought," Alice said, wiping away another trail of blood from her chin. David stared at her in horror, then went into a long think about whatever this injury was, reviewing the times she'd coughed and spat.

"I think maybe you should refrain from anything overly strenuous until we figure out exactly what's wrong with you," he finally said, hoping that Alice wouldn't fly off the handle and do something reckless, as she seemed wont to.

But Alice, who was now as worried as he was, just nodded fearfully, looking at the small splatter of blood on the ground, which was a sickly red, almost purple in color.

“I’m going to lay down. I’ve barely gotten any sleep.”

Alice nodded.

She watched him fish out another robe from the pile of clothing he'd used as a pillow and sweep away the dust and the pebbles which had accrued. Alice let him lead her gently to the cleaner ground and then laid down, putting her head on her pillow.

"You know," she said, as he closed his eyes beside her, "this really makes the sword in the wall seem a lot less impressive."

Alice

Alice waited until David was sound asleep before she stood up.

The afternoon sunset could not find its way into the temple. In the morning, the sun left lines of light which cut the temple into slices of darkness, but now the windows were just blots of brightness against the wall.

It didn’t bother Alice. It had become just as easy to see in the dead of night as it was during the day. If David's poetic soul could be believed, it was because they carried the lightning with them wherever they went.

While it sounded evocative, the only thing Alice was certain she carried with her were the million voices of her Story.

She swayed and danced and moved freely, trying not to think of the Story at all, not letting it flow into her rhythm as she moved through her Wing Chun forms. The dance of the Eternal Spring, a martial arts with something she prized above all else - a compelling principle. But it seemed wrong now, like she was speaking without punctuation.

No - even worse, it was as if she were misplacing her punctuation, and making a mess of what she loved.

She coughed and was relieved to see that there was no blood. Mulberry juice, she thought stubbornly. Then words which she had spat at David in anger in the Library came back to her.

"I'm lying to me," she said aloud, in a sing-song voice.

David shifted in his sleep.

Alice covered her mouth, as if that would help. There was still something wrong with her that went beyond her reaction to the Story.

Something was bothering her a little bit though. Alice looked at the carvings and reviewed the mysteries at hand. She leaned on one foot then the other and then brightened up as an idea came to her.

"Once upon a time," she started, feeling a little silly because she was talking to herself, even though framing the unfamiliar as a fairy tale would help her work her way through this mystery. "There was a sect. It was founded by five immortals who were very powerful, but they did not have any disciples. One day, one of them found a cave with carvings in them."

She stopped, because that seemed not entirely correct. It was fine though, it was just a way to see the world - one possibility for what had once happened here.

"One day, they came across a beautiful mountain. They decided that they would plant their seeds here and one of their numbers cleared out the mountaintop. Another built a courtyard from the stone. The third raised a pillar and carved their names on it. The fourth brokered relationships with the nearby village. The last of the friends had nothing to give, so she planted mulberry trees."

Her voice echoed through the empty halls and she immediately glanced at David. He snored lightly.

Alice sighed. Volume control. "And then one day, thousands of years later, someone came along and ruined their work."

She hummed, then realized what was bothering her.

In that maidenly dance, full of the grace from stories untold, Alice found herself in front of those skeletons of the past. She stared at the Lovers in their final embrace, the sword sticking from their backs.

"I'm never really going to learn what happened to you, right?"

Even as she said it, she hated the idea of it. She would most certainly find out what happened to them.

These people were alive once. Their memories had taught David an invaluable Scripture. At the very least, their old home had given them shelter from the elements. She liked the mulberry grove but she wouldn’t want to sleep under the trees. Each time they had been there, David glanced at the branches cagily and didn’t stand in one place for long.

The temple had given them peace. The least she could do was to solve this final mystery for them.

She examined the sword carefully. The pommel, as she remembered, was a black and white stone which was miraculously not joined together - it had formed the bagua that way naturally, or by supernatural causes, an image of yin and yang in the natural world.

Alice gave it a tap. It was unmistakable. Was it made of jade? This sword was valuable, if only for the pommel alone.

And it wasn't a sword, not exactly. It was actually a dao, a saber - with one sharpened edge. The blade was made of a deep, grey metal she didn't recognize. She looked around as if there were anyone who could see her, then gave it an experimental lick.

Iron, but not like any iron she'd ever seen before.

She ran her finger an inch along the blade, instantly cutting into her hand. "I really am… I just can’t believe I’m actually the dumbest person alive," she said to the Lovers, who had become her captive audience.

Her finger was spurting blood, but whatever had splashed onto the blade slid off of it easily and found the stones.

Even more alarmingly, she heard the sound of silkworms and watched her wound seal up into a bright pink scar, which then disappeared.

The cough wracked through her body immediately.

Alice turned her head and all but vomited out what she could only describe as a fistful of blood, thick and dark in consistency. It hit the ground like a stone hitting the surface of a pond and splashed. It hurt. She felt a bit lightheaded.

"I want it," she said suddenly, looking at the well crafted pommel and the dark iron. It glinted in the darkness, despite the dark iron. She noticed a blocky leather scabbard which had fallen to the feet of the lovers.

This was an unreasonable impulse but she really, really wanted the saber.

"Elder sister," she said to the skeleton. "Would you begrudge me if I take the sword that killed you? Would you haunt me if I took your sword?"

She almost expected a response, given the fantastical nature of everything that had occurred up to this point. Alice took a seat against the wall next to the remains of the man and started talking at the couple.

"I know a boy just like you did, elder sister. He's loyal, he's cute and he's smart. He doesn't crack under pressure but he also treats me tenderly."

Alice looked at the skeletons and sighed again.

"That's why I need your sword, elder sister. I need to protect this idea of us. You lived and you died for your us, didn't you?"

As she expected there was no response at all. This was her attempt to rationalize the theft of a beautiful weapon, not really her asking for permission. What a shameless display this was. Alice gave a wry grin.

She stood. "I wear your clothes and I eat your fruit. Now I'm taking your saber."

The Stories whispered in her body again and she knew she should be afraid that she'd end up spitting blood again but Alice couldn't even find it in herself to care. She had made a choice.

She gripped the sword by the handle, bent forward and lifted her left leg off the ground so it formed a parallel line with her outstretched arm in the handle. Her free hand formed a fist with two fingers extended towards the heavens.

It was a classic stance in Tai Chi. She thought it felt right to take hold of the sword with an art rooted in the Dao.

"But fear not,” said Alice. She flashed a beatific smile. “I'm not some ungrateful girl who won't do what's right. I will avenge you and your boy, as surely as the rain falls, whether it was a man or a dragon who did this."

The Story muttered. She slid the sword out of the stone, out of the bodies of the Lovers, as though she were removing a knife from a jam jar.

Alice felt a chill all of a sudden and when she blinked, the world crashed into a perplexing photo negative. It died down almost immediately, overwritten by the sound of silkworms in the darkness.

In an instant, the skeletons around her all crumbled into dust and a wind she could not feel sent that dust through the thin windows and into the setting sun.

Coughs wracked her body again and she spat out another stream of dark red.

"I made a promise that I have to keep, didn't I?” Alice said to nobody. “Ah, that's not so good, is it?"

She looked at the windows. It had become night. She had come this far, she might as well go all the way.

No. She was wrong. The sudden blot of the windows along the walls were from storm clouds.

Lightning came from the Heavens and struck the abandoned Temple, but it did not even shake, did not budge. It was not the Brooklyn Public Library. Thunder roared but it was meek and disinterested and rain began to fall.

"Alice what the actual-"

David had woken and he was beside her immediately. She let herself collapse into his arms, swaying gently.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself," he said, looking a little sad and very annoyed. He wiped away the trickle of blood on her chin with his long, floppy sleeves.

"David." She looked him dead in the eye. "Thank you for being worried about me." She kissed him on the cheek and slumped into unconsciousness against his chest. The saber clattered to the ground from her nerveless fingers.

"Alice!" he all but shouted. "What's going on? Where are the skeletons? Alice!" He shook her, but she didn't wake, even though she was breathing peacefully.

In the darkness, he heard the sound of silkworms.