Threads 23-Winter’s Muse

Zeqing’s home had never seemed so dark, Ling Qi thought nervously.

For once, no one had come to greet her when she arrived on the mountaintop. There was only the wind and the dancing snowflakes. Her mentor’s home huddled darkly on its foundations like an image from an old tale. Its shutters were closed, and shadow lay deeply under its eaves despite the bright noonday sun shining overhead.

And it was so very cold. Ling Qi shivered, rubbing her arms as she approached, footsteps light atop the snowy field.

“Are you sure about this?” Sixiang asked, their voice drifting on the wind. “I know she’s your teacher and all, but you’re… No one is welcome here right now. Can’t you feel it?”

“I can feel it,” Ling Qi replied, approaching the door. “But I know my lessons aren’t complete either.”

<Ling Qi… This isn’t like that dream or messing around in the forest,> Sixiang said, the wind falling silent as their voice returned to her thoughts. <I know I joke a lot, but you could die here. Did you even tell anyone what you were doing?>

Ling Qi opened her mouth, but she ended up staying silent rather than replying. She had told Cai Renxiang that she would be secluding herself in cultivation for a day or two, but there had been no reason to worry or frighten everyone else. She had already chosen to approach Zeqing again, even knowing the spirit was dangerous right now.

“The way things are right now is partially my fault,” she finally said. “It’s only right that I help resolve it. I don’t want to…”

Sixiang didn’t answer with words, but memories of her childhood drifted up, of stolen blankets and too slow allies.

“No, that’s not right.” Ling Qi shook her head. “I’m still that person. I’m still selfish and afraid.” The Bloody Moon dream had proven that. The old her remained, just under the skin. “But Zeqing is my teacher. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am without her. I won’t leave her or her daughter like this,” she said, determination filling her voice. “… There has to be some things more valuable than safety.”

She felt Sixiang’s mental sigh, followed by the assurance of support, settling like a warm blanket around her shoulders. With that, Ling Qi didn’t hesitate any more, and she took the last steps toward the darkened doorway and rapped her knuckles on the frame.

For a moment, there was no reply, but then, ever so slowly, the door opened. The drawn out creak as it drifted ajar raised the hairs on her neck. There was no more invitation than that, but Ling Qi knew that if Zeqing did not want her here, she could not have forced the door even with all her strength. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside, squinting into the unnatural darkness that shrouded even her vision. It was unsettling. How long had it been since she had last stood in the dark like this?

The door snapped shut behind her, cutting off the last rectangle of light, but Ling Qi remained composed. “Master Zeqing, your student has come to greet you,” she said, speaking formally. Unable to see, she simply made the appropriate bow without turning. A cold breeze was her only answer, but as she straightened up, the darkness lightened a fraction, and she saw ahead of her a sitting room where her mentor waited before a hearth that guttered with heatless green flame.

Zeqing floated before the hearth, the empty lower half of her gown folded as if she were seated upon an invisible seat. The spirit’s head was lowered, her silver hair hiding her face. Ling Qi approached cautiously until she stood within the circle of firelight, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that she stood in an empty void from which there was no escape or exit. “Master…”

“I am surprised to see you so soon. Are you really so eager?” Zeqing asked, her voice cold and distant. She did not look up.

“I do not want to leave my mentor in pain,” Ling Qi replied honestly. “Where is Hanyi?”

Zeqing let out a small huff of amusement at her hesitant words. “Safe. I left her with her father while I centered myself.” Zeqing paused then, finally raising her head to look at Ling Qi. She almost flinched at the sight of the hairline fracture running from Zeqing’s chin all the way up to her temple. It was as if Zeqing’s face was a porcelain mask, and Ling Qi could not quite find the courage to look into the darkness that lay behind it. “You have never met my husband, have you?”

“No,” Ling Qi answered reluctantly, a sinking feeling telling her that she was not going to like this.

Zeqing gestured with an empty sleeve, and to their right, a patch of darkness grew light. Through it, Ling Qi saw into a room, its shadowed walls stacked with toys shaped from ice and snow and rock. In the center, she saw Hanyi seated at a table, face screwed up in concentration as she messily copied the characters from a second sheet. As she finished the last brushstroke, she looked up, an excited gleam in her eyes and said something Ling Qi could not hear to the larger figure beside her.

Ling Qi could not help but follow the young spirit’s gaze. Although her eyes saw a handsome man with ice pale skin and a bookish air smiling softly at his daughter, her other senses saw beneath the facade. It was a hideous mannequin of ice, blood, and bone. A single terrified eye stared out at her from an iced over socket, pleading for escape and release.

Ling Qi shuddered, her stomach churning as she felt the reality of the thing that Zeqing called her husband. The bones of it were made wholly of the spirit’s power, but there were enough pieces, crudely stitched into its frame, that she could feel the shape of the man it had once been. The worst of it was that there was still a spark of life and awareness in those broken fragments of a soul.

“Even her time with him has turned to lessons,” Zeqing sighed, resting her chin in a hand of clear ice. She glanced briefly at Ling Qi. “Hanyi sees only her father as he should have been, but I felt that you could handle the truth.”

“… Why?” Ling Qi asked, swallowing the bile that wanted to rise in her throat, dragging her eyes away from the horrible thing.

“Would any answer satisfy you?” Zeqing asked absently. “Would spinning a tale of his perfidy give you satisfaction?”

Ling Qi grimaced. “Maybe,” she admitted. “People can be terrible.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Zeqing let out a small laugh. “Such honesty,” she mused. “Very well. Once, a small clan ruled this patch of land, though I and my predecessors had been here far longer. My husband was one of three brothers in contention for the seat of the clan’s heir. My husband was a scholar and a wanderer at heart, and so he discovered me.”

Ling Qi studiously avoided looking at the subject of their conversation but nodded. She already had a feeling where this story was going.