Reflection: A Twisted Tale Page 7

  “Li Shang’s training helped you.” ShiShi scoffed. “Who is your guardian, anyway?”

  “His name is Mushu.”

  “I’ve never heard of him. I would have thought your ancestors would have sent the Great Stone Dragon of the Fa family to protect you.”

  Mulan shrugged. “Mushu’s…portable.” She smiled to herself. “When I first met him, I thought he was a house lizard.”

  “A house lizard?” ShiShi looked repulsed. “Strange that your ancestors would send such a pitiful guardian to protect you in battle.”

  “Mushu isn’t pitiful. He’s—”

  “A guardian is a reflection of whom he protects. If your ancestors sent you a lizard, then they must not think highly of you.” ShiShi sniffed. “Perhaps it’d be better if I alone sought Shang and brought him home.”

  Mulan wouldn’t let the lion’s skepticism upset her. She replied calmly, “You need my help, ShiShi.”

  ShiShi bared his teeth at her. “I need no one’s help. You are not a part of the Li family. I still do not understand why General Li would trust you, a mere recruit, to bring his son home. Look at you—you’re entirely unprepared for the dangers of Diyu. You didn’t even bring your sword!”

  “I…I dropped it when you dragged me down here.”

  “How committed are you to rescuing Li Shang, little soldier?” ShiShi demanded. “Are you only here out of guilt because he saved you? Or is it the honor you’d bring to your family if you saved him?”

  “A little of both,” Mulan confessed. She couldn’t lie to Shang’s guardian—she did feel guilty. And she did want to make her family proud of her. But ShiShi didn’t know why that was so important to her—he didn’t know how much she wanted to prove she could bring honor to her family, even if it wasn’t by impressing the Matchmaker or marrying well. ShiShi didn’t even know she was a girl. If he did, he’d probably never have accompanied her to Diyu.

  “And even if Captain Li hadn’t saved me from Shan-Yu, I still would have come here,” she said stoutly. “Shang is my friend, and China needs him. If it’s what it takes, I will stay here in Diyu in his place.”

  ShiShi studied her, his anger fading. “Let’s hope you aren’t all talk, Ping.” He let out a resigned sigh. “I remember your father, Fa Zhou. He fought with General Li many years ago. They were friends. Not good friends, but they respected each other. You remind me of him. But you’re far more stubborn. And shorter.”

  ShiShi meant the words as a gibe, but Mulan smiled, happy to be compared to her father.

  “We’ll find Shang,” she said gently, “but not if we keep arguing over how to do it. We have to work together.”

  The lion nodded once. “It was a foolish thing to do—bargaining with King Yama,” he said again. “But it was brave, and I respect that.” He paused. “My visits to Diyu have been brief, but I have centuries of experience. I may have my doubts about you, little soldier, but I’ll help you any way I can. That I promised General Li.”

  It was a start. “Thank you.”

  “Well, first we have to get out of this godforsaken forest.” ShiShi snapped another branch with his teeth. “I can barely see where I’m going.”

  Mulan eyed the surrounding bamboo plants, then looked behind them. The branches had reassembled themselves, obscuring the path they’d taken. She focused on the shapes around them. Some stems knotted one another like webs, some curled down like spiders, and others were straight like ladders.

  Her stomach sank. They’d seen this area before.

  “Give me your paw.”

  “What?”

  She picked up one of ShiShi’s paws, and scraped his claw against a bamboo stem. “We need to keep track of where we’re going.”

  She pointed at a gnarly stalk of bamboo on her right, bent over like a hunchbacked man. “I saw that plant when we first left Yama’s throne room. We’re going in circles.”

  “I don’t recognize it,” ShiShi said stubbornly.

  Mulan sighed. So much for not arguing. “Do you know anything about where we might find Shang?”

  “He isn’t fully dead yet, and he’s not fully alive. He’s a spirit, not yet a ghost.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, he won’t be allowed to traipse about Diyu,” ShiShi reasoned. “He’ll be waiting somewhere until his time comes.” He crouched, bending so he hovered over his forelegs. “Climb on my back. We’ll move faster, and I don’t tire as easily as you humans.”

  Mulan ignored the barb and leapt onto ShiShi’s back. The lion was good as his word. He bounded through the forest. The mist thickened the faster he went, until Mulan couldn’t see even a few paces in front of them.

  Some minutes later, ShiShi stopped.

  “What is it?”

  ShiShi growled and shrugged Mulan off. She pulled herself up, recognizing with a sinking heart what had angered ShiShi. They were in front of that bamboo plant again, the one shaped like a hunchbacked man.

  Whispers were emanating from the stems—there were so many they’d sounded like the wind, but now that she listened carefully, she could hear them coming from individual plants.

  “They’re alive,” Mulan murmured.

  “They’re ghosts,” corrected ShiShi, backing away from the shriveled bamboo. “Ghosts being punished for their human misdeeds on Earth.”

  A brush of twigs crunched under Mulan’s feet. She stepped aside, watching them snake over to their parent plant and reattach themselves. The scratches she’d made were gone, and all the branches ShiShi had cleared had regenerated.

  She looked more closely at that hunchbacked shape. The forest’s cloudy mist gathered around it more strongly than around the other bamboo. It almost seemed to have a face. The topmost bamboo nodes bent forward, creating what looked like a neck, and she thought she could make out two eyes and a mouth. She pressed her ear against it.

  Help me, a voice whispered from the plant just as ShiShi let out a terrible roar.

  “I knew it,” he rumbled. “Yama tricked us! We’re trapped.” He raised his paw to smash the plant down, but Mulan raised her arms high to block him.

  “Wait,” she cried. “I think we keep coming back to this plant for a reason. It said something to me.”

  Help me, the bamboo repeated.

  “If we’re going to save Li Shang, we aren’t going to do it by listening to a grove of demonic bamboo.”

  “Just give me one minute,” Mulan said. She turned to face the hunchbacked plant. There was something forlorn about its expression—something pained and frustrated.

  A man grows most tired while standing still, her father would say when Mulan would complain about having to practice good posture for hours on end. But then she would see her father limping into a room with his cane and automatically straighten her spine. She remembered how difficult it was for him to walk without it—harder still for him to stand straight.

  “I think I know what to do,” she murmured.

  She scanned the area by the hunchbacked plant, looking for a fallen branch. Most of them were cracked, crooked, or twisted. She needed one straight as a rod, one that could serve as a cane.…

  There!

  She knelt and scrabbled through the brush.

  “What in the Emperor’s name are you doing?” ShiShi rasped.

  She ignored him. Mulan studied the hunchbacked bamboo plant again. Its spine curled over, with a branch extending from it that slumped down like a heavy arm. If she could fit the cane just there to raise the spine up—the “man” could stand tall again.

  Gingerly, Mulan nudged the rod into place.

  “You’re wasting our time to do some gardening?”

  “Look,” she whispered. “Now he’s standing tall.”

  The bamboo began to glow, and then it shook, so violently that the rod Mulan had just inserted flew through the air.

  “Stand back!” ShiShi yelled. “We must have unleashed a spirit.”

  A ghost emerged from the tree, but not the an
gry, vicious one Mulan and ShiShi had been expected.

  “General Li?” ShiShi rasped, half-frozen in shock. Mulan blinked, just as surprised as ShiShi was to see Shang’s father.

  General Li rubbed his back briefly. “Ah, I thought I was going to be stuck in there for days. Thank you for finding me. I intended to wait for you here by the door, but the bamboo trapped me.”

  ShiShi was still speechless.

  General Li touched the lion’s cheek. “It is good to see you, old friend. I am grateful you made it. Both of you.”

  General Li still glowed with a pale blue aura; he was even more luminous than when she’d seen him on Earth. In fact, he was so translucent she could practically see the bamboo behind him.

  “I cannot stay long,” Shang’s father continued. “King Yama’s guards are looking for me.”

  “Why?” ShiShi said, his chest rising. “What have you done?”

  General Li gave his former guardian a mild smile. “Old friend, they are looking for me because I am to ascend to Heaven. They were supposed to escort me to the gates hours ago. But I wanted to stay here in Diyu, to help you.”

  “We can’t find him,” Mulan blurted. “I don’t even know where to begin looking.”

  “Diyu is not an easy place to navigate, but Shang is not too far from here.” General Li stepped aside.

  Behind him, the forest’s heavy mist thinned, revealing a watery portal between two bamboo plants marked by bronze demon medallions.

  “You’ll find him in the Tower of the Last Glance to Home,” General Li said, gesturing at the door.

  Mulan squinted through the portal and spied a scarlet and emerald tower with a sloping gold-tiled roof and elaborately latticed windows. It spiraled up toward the dark sky like a festival kite still tethered to the ground.

  “It is where all ghosts go before they are reincarnated,” General Li said. “To reflect and remember home. In the morning, Meng Po—the Lady of Forgetfulness—will bring Shang a cup of tea. Once he drinks, he will forget everything—his family, his friends, even his name. Then he will float back to Earth into a new life. Shang’s time in the tower is the last time he will remember any of us.”

  Mulan swallowed. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “Finding my son will be the easier part,” General Li said. “But the lower you venture into Diyu, the deeper into King Yama’s domain you’ll go. Look for the doors with the bronze medallions of demon heads.”

  Mulan nodded. “And the doors? How do I find them?”

  “Some of them, you cannot. You will need help. But most levels are marked.” General Li gestured at the two plaques on either side of the doorway. Only now did Mulan see the number written underneath each bronze demon head.

  “Seventy-nine,” she read. “How did we get to the seventy-ninth level of Diyu? I don’t even remember—”

  “It is easier to descend than ascend,” ShiShi interrupted. “The only path out is up.”

  “What level is King Yama’s throne room on?”

  “I’m not sure,” said General Li, “but ShiShi is right. You must ascend to exit Diyu.” He paused. “But it won’t be so easy. Diyu is a treacherous place, and it is easy to lose oneself. The ghosts on the bridge are spreading word of your arrival, and many will try to thwart your attempts to save my son—simply for amusement.”

  “Do you know how we can return to the exit?”

  “Sadly, I do not. Few know their way around Diyu. It took me a long time to find this particular door to Shang.”

  “It’s a start,” she said gently. “Thank you.”

  She started to climb onto ShiShi’s back, but Shang’s father wasn’t finished.

  “Ping, wait. My son…my son is like me in many ways. He’ll have accepted his death—he’ll believe the honorable path is to die. You must convince him otherwise.”

  “I will.”

  “It won’t be so easy,” General Li said, hesitating. “He may not believe you. Remind him of his childhood.” His voice grew hoarse. “Remind him that when he was only six years old, he wanted so much to accompany me to war that he sneaked into my trunk. I didn’t realize he was there until I was half a day from home. I told him to walk back, barefoot in the rain, to teach him obedience and patience. It was a harsh punishment, especially for such a little boy, but Shang did not complain.

  “I continued on my way, but after a while I turned back and took him home to his mother. Then I told him that one day we would fight together, that he would lead my soldiers. Until then, he had to wait.”

  Mulan pursed her lips. Baba had always told her to wait, too. He’d teased her for being impatient, for wanting to prove her worth. Except Shang was a boy. He knew he’d get to prove himself one day. And me… Her chest tightened, and she remembered her last dinner at home, the last fight she’d had with her baba.

  You shouldn’t have to go, she’d said.

  Mulan!

  There are plenty of young men to fight for China.

  It is an honor to protect my country and my family.

  So you’ll die for honor.

  I will die doing what’s right!

  But if you—

  I know my place! It is time you learned yours.

  She’d been so petulant, so angry. And yet, she didn’t regret going in his place. Only that she’d deceived her family.

  “Ping,” said General Li, breaking her thoughts. “Shang’s life is not supposed to end like this. You may think I say that because he is my son, but it is more than that. His heart has always been in protecting his family, his country—his friends. He is too young to die. There is much more good he can do for China. You must make him see that his path is this life.”

  “I will,” she said fiercely. Mulan looked up at Shang’s father, meeting his eyes. “I promise I’ll find Shang, and I’ll bring him back.”

  Her determination brought a sad but hopeful smile to the general’s face. “I believe you. I do not know if I will see you again, Ping. When you find Shang, tell him he has…he has honored me greatly. And tell him I’m sorry…I’m sorry we never had the chance to fight together.”

  Mulan’s throat dried, and no words could crawl out. She simply bowed her head.

  “Go. You have my trust.”

  Those words again. Why did the words prick at her conscience so much? Shang had spoken them to her only hours ago, honoring her. His words had hurt her then, too. She hadn’t deserved them.

  She managed a meager smile. “I won’t let you down, General.”

  With a curt nod, General Li stepped behind the mist and was gone.

  Mulan turned to the portal, her eyes on the Tower of the Last Glance to Home in the distance, then on the full moon hanging above. The dark band ringing the moon was definitely getting thicker.

  She stepped through the door. I’m coming, Shang.

  They found themselves at the bottom of a stony hill, a short distance from the Tower of the Last Glance to Home. There was something lonely about the tower, Mulan felt. Other than its brightly painted walls, its faded scarlet windows and yellow roofs, it reminded her of one of the austere watchtowers she’d seen on paintings of the Great Wall protecting China.

  ShiShi was quiet. Mulan supposed seeing the general’s spirit in Diyu had had a profound effect on him.

  The sky shifted above them, lightening into a dismal gray.

  The moon remained, though. It was paler and softer than the moon she was used to seeing in the living world, as if someone had pulled a swathe of gauze over its face.

  Mulan inhaled. A familiar, spiced smell lingered in the air. It was faint, but there was no mistaking it.

  “Do you smell that?”

  ShiShi nodded. “Incense.”

  From the top of the tower, Mulan thought, gazing up.

  At the tower’s base was a small, rectangular opening—too narrow for ShiShi to enter.

  Mulan and ShiShi exchanged a glance. She’d have to go alone.

  The guardian frowned, but didn’t
argue. “Remember what General Li told you. And don’t take your time.”

  Mulan gave a curt nod.

  “Ping,” ShiShi added, “don’t tell Li Shang about King Yama’s deal just yet. Give him some hope. He needs something to live for.”

  Mulan tilted her head, touched by the lion’s thoughtfulness. “All right.” She hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Even if I could, it wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why?” ShiShi blustered. “Because…” He stopped. “Why should I bother explaining to you the intricacies between guardian and man? Your guardian is a house lizard. Enough of this. Go, go.”

  Not needing to be told twice, Mulan hurried up the stairs.

  The smell of incense grew stronger, heavier, the higher she went. It used to make her sleepy when she was a child—back then, Grandmother Fa often took her to their family temple to pray for their ancestors. Young Mulan had always had to stifle a yawn when it came to her turn to hold the incense and bow to the ancestors’ spirits at the altar.

  But now, she was anything but sleepy. Her adrenaline high, she ran faster, ignoring the flickering shadows from the candles tracing her figure as her boots drummed up the cold stone steps.

  She wished she’d left her armor downstairs with ShiShi; wearing an extra forty jin slowed her down. But she didn’t slacken her pace, training her eyes on the wooden door at the top of the stairs. It was slightly ajar, and light slanted out of the opening.

  Shang had to be there.

  Panting, Mulan reached the last step. She caught her breath, collected herself, and stepped into the room. The lighting was dim. Incense burned, the thin sticks staked into a lone tangerine surrounded by candles in bronze cups.

  An altar for worshipping the dead, Mulan thought—but that wasn’t the sight that made her shiver. Her knees locked in place. Her muscles froze.

  Shang leaned against the wall, staring out the window at the world outside. He didn’t turn around when she came in. He didn’t even seem to hear her.

  At first glance, he looked the same as when she had first met him. Thick black hair tied into a neat knot behind his head, cape fastened at the collar and thrown over his shoulders, armor polished and free of tarnish—and blood.