No! No! Noooooooooo!
I could not suppress the shrieks that ripped out of my throat and my soul at the same time. I found myself before the painting, lunging at it and attacking it over and over and over. I had to rend the scroll, to tear it to shreds.
But the dried leaf strips from which it had been woven were too hard and thick. My beak couldn’t penetrate them, and the weaving itself was too tight. I couldn’t stab my beak between the strips either.
Nooooooo! No no no!
I raked my claws across the paint, which started to flake off. This was not me. This was not how these people – any people! – would remember me. I wouldn’t let it be! I had to shred this painting, this terrible painting, had to destroy it and any like it until no memory of it remained.
Someone screamed. It might have been the foxling.
“Pip! What are you doing?” cried overlapping voices.
Rosie! Stop!
“Oh no, ssshe’s not ssstopping!”
“Stop her! Stop her!” clamored the villagers in their archaic dialect. “She’s destroying our history!”
This is NOT history!
“Pip! Pip! Please stop!”
Human hands wrapped around my body. I thrashed free, and the fingers didn’t grab, as if their owner feared squeezing too hard would snap these fragile sparrow ribs. I savaged the painting, gashing lines across the monster’s face.
This is not history! This is slander! Libel! Calumny! Propaganda! Whoever did it must be executed for crimes against the state, the way they were five hundred years ago!
I thought I’d had all versions of this painting confiscated and destroyed, everywhere they had spread throughout the Empire! I thought I’d had all of them collected and burned in a bonfire before the main gates of the palace, along with the original traitor artist and everyone who had picked up a brush to copy it, or distributed it, or so much as thought about buying a copy. How had one survived to be copied and re-copied and embellished over the centuries until it transformed into an even more grotesque lie?
This village. This village had to be razed from its ground-level rooftops down to floors of its basement rooms!
Wings folded around me and caged me and dragged me away from the painting, that horrible, horrible painting.
Rosie, calm down. We’re not razing anything.
It was Stripey, his voice rumbling through his chest, and he sounded like he was losing his patience very, very fast.
I flung myself against his wings, but he didn’t open them. I beat against his chest with mine.
It’s a lie! I – she never looked like that! It was a lie spread by her enemies at court! It was such a horrible lie that everyone involved had to be burned to death for it! Flos Piri was beautiful and graceful. She had skin like pear blossoms and lips like cherries and hair like the billows of midnight – and nine very fat, very soft, very fluffy tails!
On the other side of the wall of Stripey’s wings, the commotion was still going on. The villagers were howling over the desecration of their painting, the foxling was howling over the desecration of Lady Piri’s image, and Floridiana and Bobo were howling to make themselves heard so they could calm everyone down.
Movement. Stripey was taking us further away from the crowd. He lowered his voice so only I could hear. If it’s just a lie, then why does it matter?
Because they’ve never seen me! They think I look – looked like that! They think it’s true!
And why does that matter?
Because – because –
Because fox spirits were beautiful, were meant to be beautiful, were known to be beautiful, were supposed to be beautiful. It was just what we were, a fundamental part of our very existence. Sphaera understood that. I could tell she did, from the continuation of her shrill, outraged rant. I didn’t need to listen to the words to know what she was saying. But how did you explain it to someone who had never been or cared about being beautiful?
You didn’t. It was impossible.
I tried anyway. Look, it’s different for other kinds of spirits. You’re not supposed to be beautiful. It doesn’t matter for you.
Stripey didn’t say anything. Oh. I had just accidentally insulted all whistling ducks, hadn’t I? Not that I was wrong. Whistling ducks weren’t bad-looking, per se, with their deep orange bellies and striped wings and bright eyes – but they were, well, ducks. And ducks were rather plain, pedestrian creatures.
Well, okay, fine, mandarin ducks were ducks too, and their plumage could be pretty spectacular, at least for males, while female spirits made up for their drab colors with flamboyant attire. But my essential point remained the unchanged: They were still ducks. They didn’t need to be beautiful. Beauty was incidental to their nature.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
So what was fundamental to a duck’s nature?
It would like – like – if a duck spirit couldn’t swim. Or – or fly. I’m sure you’d agree that a duck that can’t swim or fly is missing something very fundamentally…duck-y.
That wasn’t a word, was it? Well, whatever. It got the point across.
Hmmm, said Stripey, and I could tell he was mulling over it, perhaps tallying up his band of duck demon bandits, all of whom could both swim and fly. But they’d still be a duck spirit. They’d still be a person.
Well…. I wasn’t about to reject the personhood of a duck spirit who couldn’t swim or fly, not least because instinct told me that such a rejection would deal immortal damage to our friendship.
And also, I supposed, because I didn’t actually believe it myself. A duck that couldn’t swim or fly was still a duck. I could go with that. But a fox spirit that was not only unbeautiful but monstrous?!
I hadn’t met any foxes before I reincarnated in the Jade Mountains this time around, commented Stripey.
That’s because people persecuted us after I died!
Setting aside the issue of why foxes were persecuted after you died, have you considered that maybe the painting wasn’t supposed to be literal representation of your outward appearance?
Huh?
Stripey stared at me the way I imagined that Floridiana would stare at a particularly dense student. When she wasn’t daydreaming about travel adventures, that was. Maybe it was supposed to be a representation of what the artist thought you looked like inside?
Heart and liver and lungs and intestines, you mean? (Yes, I knew where he was going with this line of thought. Didn’t mean I had to follow him.)
Rosie. Must you make everything so difficult?
It’s not me making things difficult. It’s the world making things difficult for me.
His response was a long-suffering sigh.
Fine, fine, I’ll stop trying to destroy their cultural artifacts, even when those cultural artifacts are shameless reproductions of brazen propaganda that should never have survived in any kind of recorded form. Happy now?
Another sigh. I’ll take what I can get.
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“Psst! O great representative of Lady Piri! Are you awake?”
Technically yes, but I had already tucked my head under a wing, preparing for bedtime. Reluctantly, I pulled it back out.
If I had not been, do you not think you would have woken me with that question?
“I’m sorry,” said the foxling with genuine contrition. “But I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with you, and I needed to tell you that I was awed by your passionate defense of your mistress.” She heaved a sigh that was very different in quality from Stripey’s earlier. “Such loyalty! Such devotion! I wonder if I will ever be able to inspire such faithfulness in my own retainers.”
I doubted it very much. You’re keeping everyone awake.
As it turned out, the aboveground wall-less huts were called pavilions, and the villagers slept in them during the summer. After Floridiana and Den had smoothed things over with the villagers, the elders from each family had discussed among themselves and eventually invited us to stay. They’d offered to split us up so we could sleep indoors, but Floridiana had deemed the weather warm enough to sleep outside, and Sphaera had minced her way down into a pit where a house was built, taken one look at the waist-height porch roof, and refused to crawl under it. I couldn’t blame her. The doors into the houses were simply square holes cut into the wall under the porch roof. Her gown would have snagged on the wood.
So, after a dinner of boiled flying fish, we’d settled down in three neighboring pavilions: Stripey, Bobo, Sphaera, Steelfang, and me in one; Floridiana, Lodia, and Dusty in a second; and all of Sphaera’s retainers in a third. If Sphaera were the sort of person who liked to talk to you when you were trying to sleep, I might transfer to Floridiana’s pavilion.
“I don’t mind being kept up!” Bobo said cheerfully. “I can’t sssleep anyway. It’s too exccciting!”
“What’s too exciting?” Steelfang grumbled. The wolf had curled himself into a furry mountain, as if the tighter he curled, the more he could block out our voices. Good luck with that.
“They’re ssstill out fissshing! At night! They’re usssing thessse little lamps to lure the flying fisssh into their nets!”
“Great.”
Not bothering to lower her voice, Sphaera asked, “How does the great Lady Piri want me to take over this village? Shall I challenge its chieftain to single combat?”
In the other pavilion, the figure of a woman sat up. Floridiana’s dry voice called, “That would be a little difficult, considering that they don’t have a chieftain.”
“They don’t?” asked Sphaera, startled.
“Weren’t you paying attention? Each village around here has a group of elders, but they don’t adhere to a strict hierarchy.”
“Oh. Then how am I supposed to take over?”
How indeed?
Maybe you can start by talking to them, Stripey suggested.
“Just…talk to them?”
His wings lifted and fell in a shrug in the moonlight. Why not?
It’s worth a try, I agreed.
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However, it turned out to be harder than we expected to get together a quorum of villagers to discuss the re-founding of the Serican Empire. They were just so gods-cursed busy. During the day, able-bodied men went out in their canoes to catch flying fish or stood guard against demon attacks from the foothills. The women tended their taro and yam and millet fields, cared for their goats and chickens and pigs, and caught sand crabs. When the fishing boats returned with their haul, everyone, even the children, would work together to clean the fish. They split them open and hung them up to dry on racks made from the excess roots of those weird trees, which were apparently called pandan trees. Even at night, the fishing went on, because the villagers had to catch all the flying fish they’d eat for the next year during these few months.
In short, no one had time to sit down and talk about the political future of Serica. And if I didn’t want these humans to run out of food and starve, I couldn’t insist that they sit down and talk about the political future of Serica either.
How long does flying fish season last? I asked one of the women.
She was trudging through a field of taro plants, inspecting each leaf and removing snail eggs when she found them. Sweat streamed down the back of her neck.
“From the Second Moon to the Fifth Moon,” she answered without looking up.
That long?!
We weren’t going to be able to discuss with them for another two moons? Then what we were doing hanging around here?!
I see. I will leave you to your work.
The villager grunted and moved on to the next plant. As for me, I flew back to the others. They were all lounging on the grass and enjoying the sea breeze while watching the fishermen in the distance.
Change of plan, I announced. We have two months before they’re free to discuss the New Empire. Let’s go take over the mountains first.
Although I expected Steelfang to leap up, salivating over the prospect of a good fight, the wolf cracked one eye open. “Must we?” His eyelid slid shut again.
Yes.
“But the beach is nice. Even if we’re not allowed on it. Yet.”
“Stop going soft! We need to take over West Serica!” Sphaera flicked his ear, which twitched before going still again.
“West Serica will wait. All of Serica will wait. It’s waited for five hundred years. What’s a few more years or decades?”
“The great Lady Piri has instructed us to – ”
You’re not allowed on the beach for another two moons anyway, I pointed out. Why don’t you use those two moons to subdue the nearby demon tribes and then come back for a well-earned, peaceful beach vacation?
Steelfang leaped to his paws.