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Wang Zijin thinks that their house is something of a miracle.
Xiao Bai had spent ages dragging the bamboo from the forest, stacking it in lopsided piles for Wang Zijin to sand down and cut notches into so that they could fit it together into something that vaguely resembled a structure. Xiao Bai had done this part too, most of it, because he was stronger than Wang Zijin, but Wang Zijin made up for it by braiding rush together for the roof, and they were able to finish the house before the rains started. Then, they sat in the doorway together, and Xiao Bai stuck his head into the downpour to catch the water in his mouth, and Wang Zijin had thought about how it dripped off the edges of his hair.
The house is fairly open, cool and light, with windows and a tall door and sunlight filtering in through the cracks in the walls. It will be too cold in the winter, probably, but Wang Zijin doesn’t know if they’re planning on sticking around that long.
“Look,” Xiao Bai says, pointing into the sky, where the bright colors of the sun are refracting through the water droplets that are starting to slow in their descent. “Pretty.”
Wang Zijin looks over his shoulder, follows the line of Xiao Bai’s arm up to the clouds.
“Pretty,” he agrees, only he’s not looking at the rainbow.
Xiao Bai goes out and catches fish.
He stands calf-deep in the river and goes very, very still, nose twitching just a little as he watches the water swirl by. If his tail is out, sometimes that swishes, but it’s mostly raised, held up to keep Xiao Bai balanced. Wang Zijin never sees what Xiao Bai does, but every so often, the fox will dart down to the water and come up with a wriggling, breathless fish clasped tight in his hand. He shows his treasure to Wang Zijin very proudly, the sunlight reflecting off of the scales, tossing shimmering patterns onto Wang Zijin’s eyes.
“Look,” Xiao Bai says, “Dinner!”
Wang Zijin goes to find firewood, takes inventory of the spices they have, washes the rice. Xiao Bai comes in for dinner with his feet wet and his robes still pinned around his thighs, whistling, the fish speared in a neat row on a smooth stick, shaved into a point.
Xiao Bai would eat the fish raw, but he waits patiently for Wang Zijin to cook them, eyes glowing in the firelight.
Wang Zijin writes letters.
He doesn’t write for himself; the only person he has left to send letters to is his grandmother, who cannot read herself, and Xiao Bai, who also cannot read, and is at Wang Zijin’s side regardless, so there’s no point. Instead, every week, Wang Zijin goes to the nearby village, sets up at a little table in a teahouse, and waits for people who need correspondence written to come by. Sometimes, people will come with correspondence they have received, and he’ll read the letters out loud to them. That is nice. He likes hearing what people write in response.
There’s a young woman in the village who writes to her husband once a week. He’s five towns over, working at a mill to save up money so that they can buy a home together. The young woman, Haihai, brings his letters to Wang Zijin every time, wringing her fingers anxiously together until he can tell her what the words say, and every time, she bows deeply to thank him and goes home with a smile.
Wang Zijin goes home with a smile as well. Xiao Bai waits for him in the doorway, his outline painted in the shadows, and, as soon as he spots Wang Zijin, runs from their house, down the hill, to tackle him to the ground.
Xiao Bai meditates.
He might not have his cultivation anymore, but there are some habits that have been ingrained too deeply for him to kick, and he sits cross-legged on their dirt floor, eyes closed and palms upturned on his knees, breathing melodious and even.
Wang Zijin watches him, usually sprawled on their straw mattress, watches the lines flatten out around Xiao Bai’s eyes. Watches his mouth unpurse, watches his shoulders relax. Watches as Xiao Bai tries to find the thing inside of him that isn’t there anymore.
Wang Zijin had never felt the elixir. He wonders what it would have felt like, had he been the one searching for it. Does Xiao Bai regret giving it up? Does he regret giving all of his hundreds of years of power for Zijin’s small, little life?
Xiao Bai opens his eyes, meets Wang Zijin’s, and crawls over to kiss him, saying, no, never, never.
Wang Zijin has nightmares.
Xiao Bai does too, but his are quiet and twitchy, flicks of his tail and gritted teeth. He’ll wake up with a gasp, and immediately nose his way into Wang Zijin’s side, his skin cool and clammy, and Wang Zijin, usually half asleep, will murmur something he hopes is reassuring and pull him close.
Wang Zijin’s nightmares have names; Daoran-ge, He-laoshi, Yinglian. Even the donkey, wherever he lost it. He comes awake yelling, the feeling of something being torn from his chest, and wakes Xiao Bai as well. Xiao Bai snarled the first few times, but he’s gotten used to it now, and now he just draws Wang Zijin into his arms, holds him as Wang Zijin sobs into his shirt. Xiao Bai trembles, every time, still.
Wang Zijin wishes that he didn’t disturb his sleep, but there’s really nothing for it.
Xiao Bai wants to leave.
Of course he does. He’s a fox; he’s not meant to be caged. Summer comes to its tail, and Xiao Bai begins pacing the length of their house, running into the forest in the evenings and coming back out once it’s already dark, with nothing to show for a hunt. It worries Wang Zijin, who feels guilty and afraid, wanting beyond everything to keep Xiao Bai here with him, and afraid that when he lost his spirit powers, he became a more fox than human.
One evening, during dinner, the wind changes, not enough for Wang Zijin to detect, but Xiao Bai’s nose goes in the air, a whine escaping from between his teeth. He abandons the food going to the doorway and standing in it, sniffing the cool, damp air, tail folding between his legs.
Wang Zijin sets down his own plate, comes up behind Xiao Bai. He doesn’t touch him.
“There’s something different,” Xiao Bai murmurs, his attention focused on what’s outside. “Something different. Waiting for us.”
“Us?” Wang Zijin asks.
“Us.” Xiao Bai inches backwards, just the slightest amount, until Wang Zijin has no choice but to wrap his arms around the other’s middle, to keep him in place.
“Well,” Wang Zijin says after a short moment, wrought with a pebbly sort of fear. “Let’s go, then.”
Wang Zijin locks up the house.
It’s probably useless, because it’s just tied with a length of rope, but he feels better, like if he does this, they’ll have a place to come back to. When he was searching for Daoran-ge, that was one of the balms; he would have somewhere to bring him back.
Xiao Bai is excited as they begin their journey, darting further and further down the path, and then dashing back, circling Wang Zijin frantically, his teeth shown and his eyes squinched up with happiness. He bounds along, into the forest and back out again, as Wang Zijin moves slowly and carefully down the packed road.
“Zijin,” he says, “Zijin, Zijin. We’re going. We’re going.” It’s as though his vocabulary has been limited to those words, unparalleled ecstasy stealing away all other thought.
“We are,” Wang Zijin says. There’s never been an emotion that’s kept him from speaking.
Xiao Bai ducks under his arm, knocks him to the side a little, and rubs the side of his head against Wang Zijin’s ribs.
“We’re going,” he sings, “We’re going, we’re going, we’re going.”
Xiao Bai doesn’t sleep as much.
The first night they stay out under the stars, Wang Zijin doesn’t know if it’s the anticipation of the journey that keeps Xiao Bai awake, but by the second and the third, it’s clear that some sort of base instinct has risen up inside him now that they’ve left their home, and he spends the dark hours standing guard instead. Wang Zijin wakes up sometimes to find him stalking around the edges of their campsite, dragging his feet in a circle, weaving a barrier around Wang Zijin. If Wang Zijin looks carefully, he can see the glow of a predator’s eyes reflecting the campfire.
“Xiao Bai,” he whispers, and Xiao Bai doesn’t answer him.
Wang Zijin finds himself missing his bed.
When he had been looking for Daoran-ge, he had stopped in a town every night, and if he hadn’t had enough money to pay for a room, he would sleep in the doorway of a store, or with the donkeys in a barn. He’s not used to sleeping on the cold ground, in the middle of a forest that sings and creaks and speaks the entire night.
Xiao Bai flops down anywhere, squirming in the dirt like a puppy, sending up clouds of dust and inevitably making himself sneeze, startling himself every time as he shakes the feeling away and glares at the ground as if it did it on purpose.
Wang Zijin laughs at him, and Xiao Bai glares at him too, but the way his face cracks into a smile lets Wang Zijin know that he isn’t truly angry.
The small pockets of Xiao Bai’s happiness are well-worth any discomfort.
Xiao Bai hunts.
Wang Zijin doesn’t know exactly how he does it, doesn’t know how he makes the kills, just knows that sometimes, especially when it’s getting to be dinnertime, Xiao Bai will duck into the woods without warning, moving too fast for Wang Zijin to follow, and Wang Zijin will keep walking until Xiao Bai catches up with him again, a rabbit or squirrel or pheasant held in his hand, a pleased look on his face.
Sometimes, he hunts for interesting rocks, or pretty leaves, or caterpillars that he peels from stalks and lets inch over his hands and around his fingers, displaying them for Wang Zijin as easily as if he’s been asked.
Sometimes, he hunts Wang Zijin, eyeing him from over top of the campfire, from across a field, from his side, and Wang Zijin lets himself be caught, every time, kisses Xiao Bai on the nose and calls him clever and watch as Xiao Bai preens and preens.
Wang Zijin gets hurt.
It’s an accident; he slips up with the hunting knife while skinning a rabbit that Xiao Bai has caught, and knicks the side of his hand, slicing a gash in it from the base of his thumb down to his wrist. He hisses, dropping the rabbit and taking his injured hand in the other, lifting it above his heart to slow the bleeding.
Xiao Bai hears the noise he makes and wanders over, curious until he sees the red spilling down Wang Zijin’s arm, and then his eyes grow wide and panicked, and he rushes over, uses both of his hands to cup the rivulets of blood, to try and press them back into Wang Zijin’s body as Wang Zijin fumbles for a spare cloth to staunch the wound. Xiao Bai keens, sharp and devastated, pressing harder and harder, as though that will knit Wang Zijin’s skin back together.
Wang Zijin finally has to wrench his arm away so that he can tie the cloth around his hand, pulling it tight with his teeth, hiding away the injury, though there isn’t much he can do right now about the blood drying on his skin, the blood drying on Xiao Bai’s hands.
Xiao Bai stares down at his fingers, splotched red, and wails.
Xiao Bai leaves him behind.
Wang Zijin doesn’t particularly blame him. It’s coming to winter, snow is starting to pile up, and there’s really no use for a full-human to be wandering around the country. He’s already tired and cold, most days, and the sun goes down earlier, so when Xiao Bai brings up the idea of finding him work for the winter, of giving him a place to stay where he’ll be warm and safe, Wang Zijin agrees.
It hasn’t been long since the knife incident, and they still haven’t talked about that. Xiao Bai has watched the injury heal with barely veiled suspicion, as though it will suddenly reopen and all of Wang Zijin will spill out between his fingers.
“I’ll return in the spring,” Xiao Bai tells him. “Don’t worry. I’ll come back.”
They find Wang Zijin a rich family who need a tutor for their two younger sons, and he puts down his backpack in the small room they’ve given him, which has a real bed, a real mattress, and looks out the window.
There are fox tracks in the snow.
Wang Zijin teaches.
He’s good at that, he finds, able to explain things in a way that is tantalizing to young ears, and rewards the boys with stories if they’re good during lessons. Their favorite story is the one of the brave, young fox, who was swallowed by a frog and then blew it up. They shout kaboom! along with Wang Zijin whenever it reaches that part of the tale, throwing their hands in the air and dissolving into giggles when Wang Zijin describes the littler frogs carrying the big one away.
He gets a day off every week, spends it sitting at the little table in his room, writing letters that he doesn’t send. These ones he does write to Xiao Bai, because for the first time since they met, Xiao Bai is not there for Wang Zijin to deliver his thoughts to.
He writes one to Haihai, back in the village, hoping that her husband has returned home to her, but he doesn’t send that one either.
He writes one to a younger, smaller Zijin, telling him, hold on. Hold on. He’s coming to you.
Wang Zijin celebrates his birthday.
He takes the day off, bundles up in the furs that he has, hides his hair under a woolen hat, and goes for a walk in the woods. It’s beautiful in the cold, a different sort of majesty than it has when it’s bright and green and lurid, stuck still in time, a pulse slowed to a crawl.
He brushes off a fallen log to sit on, looks at his feet, the tips of his boots covered in powder, and then up at the sun, which is just as brilliant as it is on any other cloudless day. He breath fogs into the air, wisps of smoke that disappear as quickly as they come.
He wishes Xiao Bai were here. He wishes that he were some sort of creature too, one that could keep up, one that could keep warm, one that could keep Xiao Bai’s attention long enough to convince him to stay.
He thinks he sees a flash of red, sometimes, but when he turns, his imagination has already run away.
Wang Zijin has nightmares.
This time, when he wakes up screaming, the bed is cold.
Wang Zijin learns how to ride a horse.
The master of the house is teaching his sons, and when Wang Zijin expresses an interest, he offers to show him how to, as well. It’s terrifying, nothing like riding a donkey, and he never even rode his donkey that much. He’s so far up in the air, so high that he could fall easily, but the horse is broad and sure underneath him, and Wang Zijin learns how to tighten his thighs, to rock with the momentum of the animal under him, to let his fear blow away with the wind in his hair.
He rides with the older sons, rides with the master. He leaves hoofprints in the snow, which are blown away minutes later. He yells into the cold air, the shock of it punching his lungs, but he’s never felt so close to Xiao Bai in months.
Is this what it’s like? he wants to ask. Is this what it’s like to be strong?
The wind sounds like a fox’s laugh, but that is all.
Wang Zijin meets a young man.
He’s the butcher’s apprentice, a strong, sure fellow who delivers cuts of meat to the master’s house every weekend, and sometimes, if Wang Zijin is out in the yard, he’ll nod to him, a small smile passed Wang Zijin’s way, and Wang Zijin will smile hesitantly back.
One evening, the butcher’s apprentice asks him if he’d like to attend the town’s New Year’s celebration, and Wang Zijin says yes.
The butcher’s apprentice kisses him behind a fabric stall as fireworks go off above their heads, and Wang Zijin feels as though his stomach’s been hollowed out.
When they part for the evening, Wang Zijin says, “Thank you.” Wang Zijin says, “That was nice.” Wang Zijin says, “I’m waiting for someone.”
The butcher’s apprentice smiles at him, still. “That’s okay.”
Wang Zijin is asked to stay.
The snow is beginning to melt from the tree leaves, the boys are well-entrenched in their studies, and soon the master will have to oversee the fields again. He asks Wang Zijin if he’ll keep being their tutor, if he will retain his place in their household. He asks if Wang Zijin has any other ideas for the future. He asks if Wang Zijin would consider it, anyway.
Wang Zijin does consider it. He very carefully and very thoughtfully goes over all of the options and plans and alternatives in his mind, but he knows that he hasn’t even fully been here since he arrived. There’s a small, solid part of him that has been running through the woods, chasing rabbits and the sparkle of snowflakes and his reflection in the stream.
He tells the master that he’ll be leaving in the spring, and his decision is accepted. Disappointedly, but it’s accepted.
Wang Zijin’s chest burns with longing.
Wang Zijin waits by the window as the snow sloshes into puddles, as the icicles drip-drip-drip from the overhang of the house, as the birds return to the eaves and begin to nest, as the trees bud and bloom, as the frogs croak in the marshes, and the calls of farmers to their flocks ring out on the fields.
Wang Zijin waits as the stream burbles happily in its banks, fat and full from snowmelt. He waits as the nests fill with eggs. He waits as the horses produce wobbly, knobby foals that stagger around the yard, tripping and whinnying with the fervor of life discovered.
Wang Zijin waits.
Xiao Bai doesn’t come.
Wang Zijin goes home.
The months turn over, and he finds that his legs are getting restless. He’s distracted more often than not, stealing glances out of the windows and taking his horse for longer, more complicated rides. He finds himself in the woods, sometimes, listening for the sound of animals calling back and forth to each other, a language that he doesn’t understand.
He’s not mad, exactly. Xiao Bai has always been wild, always been a springy thing that deserves to be free. He’s upset that he might never know what happened; if Xiao Bai had been roped into a different fox clan, if he had reverted into his animal form for good, if he had been—
He doesn’t know, is the thing.
He has to go back, though. Here isn’t home. There might not be home either, but it’s the closest that he has, and he misses the little house that they built, on top of a hill, with its thatched roof and spaced pillars and the wide, wide door.
So he packs his bags again, hugs his students, bows to the master, and sets off down the road.
The walk is leisurely, but not as careful as before. He knows the way, vaguely, and he’s also in a bit of a hurry. He wants to be back before the rains start. He thinks the house is high enough that it won’t flood, but he’d like to know that for sure. The things they left there can be replaced, but it would be nice not to have to do that.
The wild grass tickles his legs. Bees hum, bumping up and down on the breeze. Birds laugh in the trees, and Wang Zijin sings back to them.
He sleeps under the stars and under the trees and feels his roots returning.
Eventually, the landmarks begin to be familiar, and he greets the boulders and villages and ruts in the road that he remembers, walking with renewed purpose, and then, he rounds the corner of the hill, and sees the top of the roof, and his heart swells with contentment, longing, the comfort of a space he built himself.
No. Not himself. Not quite.
He ignores that pang, letting the eagerness draw him up the hill, up the little path that he hasn’t walked in nearly a year, to the threshold, the door—
—the door that swings open—
—the door that swings open to reveal a bright pair of eyes and thick, tangled hair, and—
—bright eyes that are laughing, laughing—
—and—
—“I’m sorry I didn’t come,” Xiao Bai says—
—“but I wanted to make you a home.”