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Golden Lilies

…; and it was only after a while that I realised my head had gone through the pine wood. I felt — light, empty, as if something had been torn out of me — more insubstantial than flesh and bones and muscles. Gradually, I made out stumbling words, coming from outside my grave: “I pray that you will come and be present; that you will grant to your posterity that they may be prosperous and blessed by good fortune. Reverently I present the fivefold sacr…

Blighted Heart

For years my city gave the hearts of maidens to the corn-man to awaken him, but on the day I came to him I was no longer untouched by man. The priests were careless; they had checked the previous morning, but did not check again. Their mistake, and mine, for I had made love to a warrior on the evening before, out of pique, out of a desire to defy them for the last time before they took my innocence away. I was not thinking of the consequences at…

The Dragon’s Tears

Huan Ho passed through the gates, which lay open for fear the riders would tear them down to enter the city, and took the long, winding road that led past the rice fields into the hills above Fei Weng. The air was crisp and cold, and stung his exposed skin. He walked on. The door through which the riders came stood a little way from a fork in the road. Its wood was old and weathered, and the lacquer had cracked in many places. Faded pictures of p…

Dragon Feasts

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By Bargain and By Blood

…ath in childbirth had left my questions forever unanswered. Nevertheless, when Aname told me about her child to come, she spoke of a bargain struck. And thus I should have known someone would come to honour it–that someone would walk through the rice paddies and the forests until he reached our jati, our small community isolated from the affairs of the world. But, just as you know about death but do not think about it, so I did not think about him…