Idony curled up on the wooden bed with one arm over Baozi as she laid in that spot between dreamland and wakefulness. After a fun bout outside where she was given new clothes and as many meat filled buns as she desired, a creepy lady had attacked them and now for the past eight days she had been stuck inside again. She was given a veritable mountain of food to devour and kept warm in the cold wet nights but she felt dreary. Even with Rui Yifu (with the help of Li Baobao) slowly teaching her strange bouncy rhymes and Baozi enjoying fetch she found herself sinking into a gradual molasses of boredom. She could not even bother Liu Xie anymore since he had decided to busy himself with making Bo do weird things like walk on his hands while carrying stones on his feet.
Usually, this ended with Bo toppling over and getting hurt. Idony was not sure how this was helping the mean man, but it was funny and she was learning new words. These words scandalized Li Baobao, which made her feel slightly guilty but made soup come out of Liu Xie's nose so she considered it a worthy trade.
She groped around the bed to pull the blanket tighter over herself and Baozi, breathing deeply and evenly. Even with her eyes closed, the moonlight still sank in and yet its soft glow was somehow comfortably lulling. The bandages around her were new, yet there was just enough slack in them to allow her to breathe. Where there had been once a gap in her skin was now a ruddy colored patch of new soft scar tissue that she would occasionally poke at when the bandages were being changed. Idony released the warm body of her pig friend from her grip temporarily to experiment laying on her wounded side, ready to wince if it was painful. Instead she felt a slight sharpness that quickly faded. She grinned and opened her eyes to turn back to Baozi, “look, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore!” She said as she looked at two pairs of beige clad legs, Baozi sleepily snuffling as his trotters hung down.
“Hey!” Idony yelled as she looked upwards to see the boy who had been at her window days ago. “Let him go!”
The boy took a deep breath in surprise, but rather than letting the pig go he instead jumped over Idony and onto the floor, dashing out of the bedroom.
Without any hesitation, grabbing her shiny good luck charm, Idony jumped out of her bed as well and bolted from the room in hot pursuit.
The Li Family Compound’s halls without light were distinctly less friendly. They curved and twisted in unfamiliar ways. It seemed like random tables would jut from the walls to impede her chase. But Idony was used to running in the dark, and kept light on her toes to avoid any obstacles, the friendly moonlight illuminating a barely visible path. Baozi’s confused oinking told her where to go.
“Baozi I’m coming!” She called out. "Help! There's a pig thief! Someone!" She yelled in the dark hallway, expecting someone to pop their head out from the doors she passed by, but no one came. It was as though the darkness itself muffled her sounds.
Her feet made tiny ‘thwump’ noises against the floor that slithered in her vision, curling around a turn that led to an open door outside. The small figure of the pig-thief was sprinting into a large fancy looking red and gold painted building whose doors he kicked open and ran through. A sharp painful smell slapped her in the face from the building, reminding her briefly of the stuff Liu Xie drank sometimes.
“Come back!”
Idony went as fast as a rabbit across the soft dirt path and yanked up the hem of her bedwear as she went up the stairs of the fancy building and into it’s dark interior. Not even moonlight fell into it, so all she could make out was a wall of dark square-ish shapes and the smell of something smoky sweet that made her nose itch. A darker shape where soft oinking emanated slipped behind a larger table-shape in the darkness and Idony stomped over to it. Behind it was dim light coming from a hidden set of stairs that Idony hurtled herself downwards without a second thought.
“Give him back!” She yelled angrily.
“No!” Came the reply.
Further and further down the stairs more dull light and sharp scent engulfed her. By the time reached the bottom she could make out a good few feet in front of her before the eye strain became too much. On the walls were rows and rows of large black jars with red writing on them, and further down the hallway came Baozi’s now terrified squealing. Idony rushed down the hallway to finally find the boy crouching on the ground holding Baozi back. The pig broke free of his grip to dash over to Idony’s open arms.
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“Okay, I gave you the pig back, now you have to play with us!” The boy declared.
Idony cradled Baozi in her arms while glaring at the boy in disbelief. “What!?”
“Yeah, I did something nice for you, you gotta do something nice for me!”
“You stole him!”
“But I gave him back,” the boy smiled and nodded.
Idony would have thrown a rock at the boy if any had been nearby, and she feared using her good luck charm. The boy might steal it. “That’s not how it works, you’re stupid!”
“I’m not stupid!” The boy stomped his foot, “I only took him because you wouldn’t play with me!” He crossed his arms and huffed. “I can’t make the others play with me because they’re all napping anyway.”
“Well now I definitely won’t play with you!” Idony snapped in irritation as she also stomped her bare foot upon the cold stone floor. The boy’s eyes widened and he shook his head, “yeah I’m not going to play with you because you were mean!” She nodded firmly, petting Baozi’s head.
“But it was a game! And I wasn’t going to hurt him!” The boy insisted, coming up to stand before her. “It was fun, right? It’s better than staying in that room all day or sleeping.” He grabbed her arm with a cold hand and she jerked away from him. "I know a place, near the river. Lets go there, it'll be fun. I promise."
“You! Stole! Baozi!”
“I didn’t steal him because I returned him! Why are girls so stupid?” He growled.
“Boys are stupid,” Idony corrected sharply. “Anyway, I gotta go back to my room or else I’d get in trouble.”
“Why? Afraid of getting punished?” The boy mocked, “who are all those guys anyway? They don’t look like you. Where’s your real mom and dad? Did they sell you because you were a STUPID GIRL?”
Somehow the pain of getting half her side bitten off did not compare to the strike in her heart from the boy’s words. She squeezed Baozi to her chest as though he could somehow absorb the sprouting thorns of anger and grief that pierced through her. The pig squeaked and wriggled from her arms, landing faithfully at her feet. It faced the boy and made a strange sound that was almost like a dog’s bark. In Idony’s memories she saw her mother upon a damp red sheet, dull eyes staring upwards at her. The shivering hand holding her own. Unconsciously she curled her own hand again as though her mother’s still wrapped around it. “Sh-shut up,” she managed to spit out even as her eyes welled up.
The boy gave her a big grin, “yeah I knew it. I knew it! They didn’t like you so they sold you! Haha!”
There was a loud smacking sound as Idony launched her fist into the boy’s cold laughing face. He reeled backwards and stumbled, grabbing at something to stop his fall. His small hands managed to grip one of the black pots upon the wall which unfortunately followed him to the ground, shattering and sending pottery shards and a sharp smelling liquid everywhere on him and Idony’s robe.
Idony was about to laugh at the sudden turn of events when her eyes spotted something in the middle of the remains of the jar.
Baozi began an odd low growl at something past the boy deeper into the halls, standing in front of Idony.
She stood atop her toes to look at the thing among the shards as the boy got up and brushed a few pieces from himself and also looked. It was a very pale thing, all scrunched up into a little ball. The flesh was smooth except for folds where limbs tucked in. As Idony realized what it was, she felt as though cold fingers were slowly moving up her spine. She looked back at the boy who gave her a shrug with a smug grin on his pale face.
“I told you,” he said, “all the girls ever want to do here is nap!”
Idony grabbed Baozi again and immediately ran back towards the stairs in voiceless blind terror, practically flying in fear. A cold wind followed her, pulling at her hair, seeping through her clothes. Her bare feet pattered faster and faster.
The girl hurtled headlong into some legs, nearly knocking their owner over as she and Baozi bounced back and onto the ground. The fall knocked enough of the fright from her lungs that she was able to get back onto her feet and yell, “we have to leave! We have to get out of here!” She jumped up and down desperately as she looked up at the confused faces of Bo and Rui Yifu. Both were in bedclothes, and Rui Yifu did not even have his hair up and was holding a blanket in one hand. Bo was holding up a lantern that cast a warm glow in the hallway.
Realizing neither of them could understand her, she tried pointing down into the darkness and then shaking her head madly. Rui Yifu offered her a concerned smile and reached down to gently pick her up while Baozi squealed and hopped around Bo’s feet.
“We have… to… go!!!!” Idony struggled, trying to pull herself from Rui Yifu’s ironclad grip. Idony heard Bo sniff at the air and then say something to Rui Yifu who replied shortly after.
Then they began to walk back into the hall, and no amount of her yelling or biting into Rui Yifu’s shoulder stopped them.