Idony watched the water rush past her ankles, occasionally spotting a fish swimming in the clear water. The sun was unusually warm, but the river was icy cold. Her eyes were scanning the pebbles and rocks lodged into the mud beneath. She reached down and plucked a stone from its murky bed, detangling it from thin black fronds that stuck from the mud, and held it up in the sun light which highlighted the dips and grooves in it. It looked something like a duck, she thought, so she placed it on the bank with the small pile of other interesting rocks she had acquired.

How many times had she come to the river? She waddled back into the water and shoved her arms into its cold currents. Things were becoming normal. She would wake up, eat some sort of weird rice mush with Lang Lang, then wander around town or go help Sister Hua with picking flowers. Then she would go back to Lang Lang and eat again before going to sleep.

She did not recognize her own reflection anymore. Her face had become round and she poked her cheek with a wet hand, watching her reflection do the same.

It was a peaceful place, more peaceful than the town back in Norwen. She was happy and yet..

“Hey! Hey!!” A voice called out.

She looked up to see a few children standing further down from her, some splashing in the water while others looked at her. A boy with a scuffed nose and a ball under his arm waved at her. “Do you want to play with us? If you join, we’ll have even teams!”

“Me?” She wadded out of the river to walk closer to the group in disbelief.

“Yeah!” He nodded. “It’s better to play fair with even numbers on both teams. Your accent is really weird but that doesn’t mean you can’t play with us.”

A strange not-unpleasant feeling filled her chest and she smiled. “Yeah! Okay, I’ll play but… what are we playing?”

“Oh!” The boy set the ball down and coughed before saying in a grand voice while gesturing behind him to a long furrow someone made in the dirt with a stick. “Oooonnn THAT side… is THE LINE! TWO TEAMS COMPETE TO KICK THE BALL OVER THE LINE! First one to reach ten points wins!”

“Wait who is keeping track?” Another kid asked.

“I will!” A girl nearby volunteered.

“Yeah! That’s good,” the boy shrugged. “What’s your name?” He tipped his head while looking at Idony.

“My name is Id…” she stopped. “Zhu'er.”

“Zhu'er?” He looked like he did not believe her.

Idony shrugged, “Yeah?”

The boy waved his hand. “Ah well, you’re on my team okay? Hey everyone! Zhu'er is on my team!”

The two teams assumed their spots, and someone tossed the ball into the middle. A flurry of little bodies rushed at each other and Idony scampered around trying to kick the ball away from the opposing team. There were loud shouts and screams as a titanic struggle over a ball built steam.

A swift sliding kick sent the ball sailing over heads and scored the first point for the other team. The next point was scored quickly afterwards when the scuffed nosed boy kicked the ball so hard that it knocked another kid in the head before bouncing over the line.

The ball’s movements were fast and erratic, switching possession and teams so quickly that Idony had trouble keeping up until she finally found the ball right at her feet somehow. She acted on instinct, carefully guiding the ball between her feet while jumping over legs that tried to trip her and maneuvering around feet that attempted taking the ball.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she twisted and turned away from her opponents and finally saw the line in the dirt. With a mighty grunt of effort she swung her leg into the ball and sent it soaring over the line.

“Yes!” She jumped up and down happily, briefly glancing around in some subconscious desire to see… someone. Her joy rapidly drained away when she remembered that Liu Xie, Rui, Li, Baozi, or that dog-breath Bo were not around to see her triumph. She looked up at the blue sky and bit her lip. How long had she been in the village?

Would they even come for her, even if the Raven told them where she was?

“Watch out!”

Idony snapped from her thoughts just in time to dodge a ball smacking her in the face. It hit the dirt with a hard thud before arcing over another child and then landing in the water with a light splash and staying still.

“Ah no! Look at what you did!”

“I’m getting it, I’m getting it!” The scuffy nosed boy grumbled as he walked past her. “I didn’t even mean to kick it that hard…”

She placed her hands on her hips while watching him go towards the water where the ball continued to cheerfully bob up and down in place, thin black strings plastered under it. “...Hey wait a minute…” Idony said while stepping quickly after the boy. “Hey! Wait!”

He had already waddled into the water and reached for the ball. “There’s hair on it!” He yelled in shock.

“Get away from the ball! Get out of the water!” Idony yelled as she splashed into the water herself to grab him. The boy shrieked as black strands wrapped around his hand. Idony grunted in exertion as she pulled the boy free from the hair’s grip. He scrambled onto the bank as soon as he was free, scattering a pile of oddly shaped rocks, and Idony slowly backed up away from the dark mass of hair that squirmed beneath the surface of the water.

“What is that!?”

“Go get Lang Lang!” Idony said as she fiercely stared down into the water, watching dark strands wrap around her ankle.

“What about you?”

Idony spared a glance for the boy and the other children. Some of them were already running away. “I’ll be fine.”

The boy stood up hesitantly before he gave her a nod and followed after the other children.

Instantly Idony regretted her decision deep in her heart but refused to show it on her face. There was a soft gurgling sound in the water as the black strands wiggled in the current to start latching further up her legs. Then a pale face slowly emerged from the water and Idony met the leer of the pig-thief boy demon from what seemed like a lifetime ago to her. “You again!” She snarled while attempting to free herself from the long strands of hair.

“There’s no one here now but us,” he said. “So now you have to play with me, at least until she comes.” His blued lips split into a sharp toothed grin.

“Why do you keep bothering me!” Idony asked while she was being inexorably pulled further into the water. She dug her heels into the muddy riverbed.

He trudged through the water until he was right in front of her, a scarred face where a single eye stared back at her. “Because I want to play with you. You got away the first time, and then that stupid dog got in the way the next time. This time, there’s nobody to save you. You have to play with me.”

Idony felt cold hands grip her throat and water abruptly closed over her head. Her eyes snapped shut to shield them from the cold. She thrashed in panic as water sank into her mouth and nose, the black threads around her ankles dug deeper, painfully into her skin.

The hands tightened slowly, squeezing the air from her as her own hands tried to desperately pry them off. She opened her eyes and could no longer see the light above her, instead she was looking downwards towards the ground where piles of small skeletons were embedded into the mud. The feeling of suffocation increased and she thrashed desperately, closing her eyes as silt was kicked up. Around her ankles skeletal hands clung tightly and she felt herself pulled further downwards, the cold bones closing around her arms and pulling her hair.

“Stop moving so much!”

It was a woman’s voice.

Idony forced her eyes open once again.

A wild eyed woman was crouching over her, putting pressure on a broken leg that made Idony howl, holding a long needle in her shaking hands. “Stop moving, stop moving! If you keep moving, I’ll miss and then something worse will happen!”

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Another frantic voice spoke, and Idony realized it was not her own. “Please stop! Please! Please mom, don't hurt me!”

The woman’s face twisted into a strange awful grin, “don’t you love me!? I’m your mother! Begging isn’t the most noble of professions to send my son into, but we all need to contribute so we have enough to eat for the next day. Now stop… stop moving so much!”

Idony thrashed and the woman drifted away like sand leaving her to look up at the sun shimmering through the water above. She kicked her legs and found them free of their tethers. With her lungs burning she swam up to the surface and immediately took a deep gulp of strange air that made her stomach churn in disgust. She covered her mouth with her drenched sleeve and looked around into her suddenly foggy surroundings.

She swam around a bit, first one way, then another. She felt nothing beneath her feet besides more water and there was no land to be seen.

A cold feeling welled up inside of her and it was not from the water.

“This isn’t very fun!” She called out into the mists.

“It’s not supposed to be fun for you!” The voice came right beside her ear and she turned quickly in the water to follow it, yet there was no one around her.

Idony swallowed a lump in her throat.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?” The boy’s voice was still hanging right beside her ear. “Because you know I’m going to kill you, right?”

Fear clawed at her ribs but it came out of her mouth as anger. “Of course I’m scared! Why do you want to kill me!?”

“Because I hate you.”

“I don’t even know you!” Idony’s anger and fear were mixing with confusion. Like any feral dog or child, she responded to things out of her control by thrashing around in the water as though to somehow catch the invisible spirit with her splashing. “I don’t know anything about you! I haven’t done anything to you!”

There was a short silence before the boy’s head broke the water in front of her. She immediately splashed water at him as she swam backwards but he simply swam after her. “You’re really stupid! It’s not what you’ve done to me, it’s what you have!”

This time Idony caught the arms as they reached for her neck yet it was to no avail. The cold hands gripped her throat again. “What… do I have that… you don’t!?” She asked before her face was shoved beneath water once more.

A sharp pain filled half her face. The woman was leering over her again with a cup in one hand as she discarded the needle. “See? See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She wheezed. “I know I’m asking much, but remember this is for both of us.”

Not-Idony screeched still, grasping the gory ruin of an eye socket. “Please stop, please stop! It hurts I’m going to die!”

“No,” the woman reached down to hold the face still with an iron grip. “No, you’re not going to die. You won’t leave me like your father did. Not until I say so.” Then she tipped the cup of hot murky liquid down onto the eye socket.

The pain and scream tore Idony back into reality to see the boy floating in front of her, hands slackening around her throat. Air bubbled out from her mouth and she swam back to the surface. The scream was echoing in the fog that churned into a heavy mist. The still river began to seethe around her.

“I used to have a happy family,” the boy’s voice was low and harsh. “I had a mother and a father, and we lived in a big house together. My father was a war hero and my mother was supposed to have been the most beautiful and kind person one would ever meet.” There was a cold laugh. “When my father passed away, everything changed…nobody wanted to play with me anymore, and gradually everyone pulled away from my mother too. Loneliness became-”

“So?” Idony spat some water that leapt into her mouth as she talked. “I had a mother and father too, far away in Norwen!”

There was another period of silence. “Those people you traveled with, they are not your family?”

Idony was quiet too. Her nose hurt and she fought her eyes urge to scrunch up with tears. It was true that they were not her blood family, but she realized she really did like them. Even Bo. As much as she liked Lang Lang, she missed the others deeply, and she knew she still had someone to see again.

“You got a new family, friends, all of that! All I had was suffering and my shadow.” The boy appeared again, sitting on the water like it was a solid floor. “How is that fair?!”

“How is what you’re doing fair!?” Idony scowled.

“Life isn’t fair,” the boy replied sharply. “When my mother fell in love with another man, she had no more use for me.”

“So you hurt people because of that?” She shook her head. “Do you think you’re the only person who has ever suffered!?” Idony grabbed the boy’s leg and yanked on it, pulling him back into the water with her. He yelled while latching onto her, sinking them both like stones.

All around them was white. A white sky, snowy ground, that hugged a lake that might as well have been a mirror of ice, and trees draped in frost. For the briefest of moments Idony felt like she was in Norwen again. Then she saw two hooded figures walking quickly in the snow. They carried between them a large wrapping of fabric and stones that weakly struggled and moaned.

They reached the edge of the lake and tossed the bundle where it bounced with a loud pained shriek.

One of the figures grunted and grabbed the bundle, pulling it along to the gap in the ice they had been aiming for.

“Hurry, hurry!” The woman’s voice ordered.

“I know, I know.”

The person in the fabric shrieked one last time before being shoved into the icy water.

Idony stared in mute horror and disgust, wide eyed as the two people took their leave without even sparing a glance back to the lake. Hesitantly she took small steps towards the lake’s edge. With each step, the snow melted away. The sun returned to the sky. The barren trees began to turn green again. The ice on the lake melted away.

A pale scarred arm emerged from the water. Then another. Idony hid herself behind a tree and watched as a tall youth with a strangely bent leg heaved himself from the water. Wet black hair swaddled his body to his knees. He walked unevenly forward, wobbling as spring grass withered under his steps. He was gurgling words Idony could not understand, water and bugs spewing from his mouth and empty eye.

“Do you understand now?”

Idony turned around to find the boy behind her, leaning on a tree for support. She noticed his leg was bent. “Understand what?”

“Everything!”

“All I know is that you are hurting me, when I haven’t done anything to you!” She yelled, “how many people have you killed? How many of them actually hurt you! Just because your mother was a bad person doesn’t mean-”

“SHE KILLED ME!” The boy roared at her. Idony found herself crashing back into the water as though a giant’s hand had simply swatted her aside. The air was knocked out of her lungs. She floated back to the surface and felt a foot meet her face, crunching her nose beneath. Blood ran freely over her lips and chin. “Have you ev-”

Idony grabbed the boy’s legs and used them to haul herself back up to the edge. She got back to her feet while blinking away tears, standing her ground she looked straight at the boy. “My father tried to kill me and I still didn’t become a terrible person like you!”

The boy’s mouth opened before shutting just as fast, taken aback. “What?”

Idony wiped her bloody face on her wet sleeve, “I was alone, and I was hurt too. Nobody wanted to come talk to me or have me near them because they thought my father would kill them. I was so alone and tired I wanted to die!” She was yelling. She did not know when she started yelling, but she could not stop. “Every day was horrible! It was always cold! I was always sick! There was never enough food! I had to fight dogs and a wolf bit me and I only lived because it got scared away by thunder! I slept in dirty places and I ate grave offerings! But I never hurt anyone! I didn’t kill anyone! I didn't become as rotten and ugly as you are!” Then she lunged at the boy, hitting him with all her weight and he fell over onto the ground.

“You don’t understand-” He hissed.

“Maybe I don’t,” Idony agreed. “But you got another chance, didn’t you? Look at what you are now! You're a mean, bad, terrible person! You hurt people! You're the one causing pain now! Why are you doing this? Your mom is probably dead! Dead for a long, long, long, long time! So who are you hurting? The reason why you’re so lonely is because of yourself!” The boy’s face twisted into a horrible snarl while drops of blood from Idony’s nose pattered onto his face. She felt his flesh bubble and pop. Things began to slither out from his body. “If you wanted to play so badly, just ask!”

Whatever strange thing he was doing he abruptly stopped. He blinked at her. “What?”

Idony got off of him and stood up. She wiped her bleeding nose again, “yeah. If you just want to play. Ask. Don’t… don’t do all of this. Don’t steal my friend Baozi. Don’t hurt other people because you’re angry at your mom. Just…” She sniffed, struggling to stay upright. Blood was still oozing from her nose and she wiped it on her hand. “Just don’t.”

The boy also stood up. The drops of Idony’s blood on his face slid downwards slowly as he gazed at her with a mixture of confusion and hope.

Idony held out her hand to him. “So… lets be friends from now on, okay?”

He stared at it, unsure, “friends? Do you mean it?”

She nodded while wondering why the world was swaying around her. “Yes! Completely. With my whole heart!” She felt his cold hand wrap around her own and she gripped it firmly. “We’re friends from now on, for forever even. Where I come from, if you get someone’s blood on you, that means it’s a blood oath!” Idony was fairly certain that’s how blood oaths worked at least. “My name is Ido… uh, Zhu'er. Everyone calls me Zhu'er. What's your name?”

The boy’s face was still for a moment before it scrunched up with tears. “I… I don’t remember my name…” He sank slowly to his knees, his hand dropping from Idony’s. “I… I don’t remember my name, or my old face… I don’t remember any of it anymore…”

Idony sat down beside him, grateful to have a reason to sit. But she still felt dizzy and darkness was eating at her eyesight. Her arm rested over the boy’s cold back. “That’s fine! That just means you can give yourself a new name.”

The boy looked up at her, sniffing. “... before I came here, the fortune teller lady said she knew that I wasn't like Lang Lang, I need to keep eating or I'll fade away. But she said I couldn't eat you." Abruptly Idony found herself being grabbed, and a young man was tightly holding her arms. His long hair formed a black curtain over an emaciated body, one of his legs sticking out oddly like it had been broken and set badly repeatedly. A single eye stared intently at her, the rest of the scarred face obscured by the hair. "Listen to me, Zhu'er. You need to be careful. Promise me you'll do that, alright? If you need help, just think of that lake. I'll find you. She can't be trusted-."

"What are you talking about?" Idony asked, alarmed at the intensity of the staring eye and yet too weak and sluggish to move.

"We're friends, right? I'm telling you what I know so you can stay safe. It's my fault they know where you are anyway. Lang Lang's almost here. Wake up."

Her lungs heaved as she spat and coughed, water splashing over her chest as Lang Lang helped her sit up. He firmly patted her back to coax more water out. “Are you okay?” He asked.

Idony looked around in bewilderment. Her clothes were drenched, her chest hurt, and the boy was nowhere to be seen. She did not even remember swimming and climbing out onto the riverbank she now rested at. “What happened?” She asked.

“Oh, a troublemaker showed up. The other kids said you stayed behind to face him!” Lang Lang’s expression was both impressed and concerned. “That was very brave of you, but don’t do it again! I’ve dealt with him before and he’s never been anything but a vicious little spirit.”

Idony reached up to her nose and tentatively poked it. There was no pain. “I don’t think he’ll be a problem anymore.”

“Why is that? Did you talk to him?”

Idony nodded, “he was just lonely.”

Lang Lang tipped his head thoughtfully. “Well, he’s a hateful ghost, those guys tend to be unpleasant to everyone. Even to each other. Most of them are victims of terrible crimes who want to inflict their suffering on their killers, but this is rarely enough to quell the pain in them.”

“We both had bad people who hurt us.”

Lang Lang frowned as he lifted up Idony in his arms, “well those sorts of people can’t get you here, and he’s gone. Swam off to probably go mope in his lair.”

“Lang Lang, do you know his name?”

He was walking quickly back towards the village and slightly shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone remembers it anymore either. But it’s best not to worry about him too much, we’ve got other things to think about. Like the millet, and what we’re having to eat tonight!”

Idony did not respond, instead looking over Lang Lang’s shoulder back to the river where a jade clad person stood in the water. There was an amused smile on the person’s strangely familiar face. She blinked and the apparition was gone. She sighed, sinking in Lang Lang’s arm.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m tired.”