THE RED CRANE OF GUILIN

Year 697 of the Ashless Era

Anjie closed his eyes with Liyun’s trembling hand in his grip, their pulses thundering in tandem. But when he woke, he was alone.

He was in his bedroom, hued orange by the soft candlelight at his bedside. A night breeze drifted from the windows, stirring the little flames and their smoked wax scent. He breathed in. Lungs stung, a thousand needles. Breathed out. Bones burned, scorched raw. Shaking, he pushed the fresh sheets off his remade body and attempted to stand. His legs shuddered. With a sore, voiceless cry, he collapsed onto the polished wooden floor.

Gentle string notes seeped through the cracks of his closed door, a distant sound too sharp for his raw ears. He ignored the ache and crawled forward, a weak thing approaching his reflection in the oval mirror. Within the chiseled mahogany frame was the same face, but stark, thin, and hairless. New scars that looked months old lined his scalp, and the deep earth of his irises had faded to a pale, fragile copper. He gripped the arm of a nearby chair and pulled himself upright.

A red silk robe covered his body. He tugged the sash loose and slipped the upper half from his shoulders, letting the fabric collect around his elbows. Faded incisions layered his chest, patterned lines drawn with mathematical precision. Watching the mirror, he turned around. Inked across the span of his back was the traditional crane of House Guan. Her long throat arched, vulnerable. Her eyes dared anyone to mar her canvas.

Anjie leaned against the chair and slid a hand over his face. His fingers closed over his lips, holding back the flood of emotions. The relief that he lived. The weight of the ink. The lost, shaken uncertainty. The insidious fear, making it hard to breathe. But he breathed, deeply, three times.

He retied his robe and straightened his back. He left the room limping.

Tonight, the corridors of his home were somber and dark. When he reached the source of that string melody, a pit filled his gut.

The music came from the tea room. Beneath the archway to the night garden, a young boy looked up. His small fingers hovered over his instrument strings, frozen. His lower lip trembled. Beside this boy, a younger child bolted upright, spilling a cup of tea over the wooden floor. He ran toward Anjie, colliding at his waist with a stifled whimper.

Hearing the broken sound, Anjie fell to his knees. He held his little brother in his arms, those wrenched cries muffled in his robes. He looked up at the First Lord and Lady Guan, sitting behind a table, quiet among the tears of their children. A painted calligraphy character hung on the wall above their heads.

Duty.

“Liyun,” said Anjie.

His father touched his teacup. His mother shook her head.

A silence.

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong, Ah-Jie. She simply could not endure it.”

Anjie looked down at the woven floor mat, the details of the straw sharp to the grain. Liyun? Could not endure? His fierce, infallible sister, twice as strong as he was. Then how had he survived? He clutched his chest, which seemed to be tearing apart beneath the new insulation, the reinforcement implants, the titanium bones. It seemed now that the crane upon his back weighed a hundred tons for each dot of ink. His vision burned. Threatened to blur.

“Ah-Jie.”

He looked up. The First Lord of House Guan poured a second cup of tea.

“Come.”

Swallowing, Anjie gently pulled aside his brother. He rose against the weight and the ache, and sat with folded legs across his Lord and Lady. His heart kept burning, beating itself raw against his cold new bones. But expressionless, he wore his body unbent.

“Hold your tears now, my son. The spirit of House Guan cannot be daunted. Tomorrow we will celebrate a new crane.” His father set the cup softly before Anjie. A thin chrysanthemum petal rolled along the golden liquid. “When the full moon passes, you may grieve.”

He drank. The lukewarm tea scalded. Days later, the full moon passed.

They buried his sister within a southern hill of the Guilin mountains, where the river streamed into the turquoise lake. Her body was restored as much as it could be to its natural state so that the earth might embrace the return of her soul. Nobody was permitted into the operation room while their shamans performed the restoration. After the restoration, nobody was permitted to touch the clothes that covered her body.

The funeral was brief. After days of feigning an iron spirit, Anjie could no longer cry when they sealed the lid of her coffin. He only soothed the trembling of his little brothers, dreading the day when they too would mature into their bones, and their bones would be recrafted to mirror the gods.

The days went by. The weeks went by. The months. He stopped visiting her grave. Instead, Anjie passed the lonely stone bridge in the mornings and tossed fresh flowers for the stream. Sometimes he stayed a while, watching the sun rise and the petals disperse.

One morning, it rained. He meant to send the flowers and be on his way, but the drops beating his fallen petals into the water kept his feet grounded on that stone bridge. The rain washed over him, drenching. The petals disappeared in an unceremonious rush.

A shadow fell over him.

Anjie turned beneath the shelter of a red umbrella. Holding it was a young man, appearing as rough and as wild as the unadulterated beauty of Guilin, a languid, crooked smile on his lips. His eyes crinkled in their corners. A damp, curling lock of black hair plastered to his forehead.

With a gentle, windblown voice, he said, “As lovely as you look standing under the rain, you really shouldn’t.”

Anjie frowned. “I’ve not seen you here before.”

“I’ve only been here for two weeks.” The man reached into his shirt. He pulled out a folded parchment and offered it. “Here. I hope you don’t mind.”

Anjie took the parchment. It was tough, thick. Smelled of old wood and graphite. When he lifted the fold, he blinked in surprise. He looked up at the stranger, who smiled a little softer.

“You’ve been coming here for a while. I couldn’t help but notice, and then I couldn’t help myself. You can keep it. Toss it. Whatever you would like.”

Anjie’s wet fingers hovered over the image, afraid to touch. The profile of a figure on a bridge, delicacy in every stroke. Soft eyebrows drew as faint as a whisper, lips parted as if trembling. The graphite man looked like he was about to cry.

Anjie did not know how long he stood looking at this picture. He only startled as a warm, wet drop splattered the sketched cheek. With a rare panic, he wiped at the drop. But his hands were still rain-soaked.

“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

The man caught his guilty, wavering fingers. His touch was as rough as his make, warm as his smile. Anjie looked at his kind eyes and could not turn away.

“It’s alright,” said the man. “If you like it, I can make you another.”

In the pause, the mountain rain drummed. A rhythmless, relentless wash, and yet a gentle constance.

“I’m Musheng,” said the man eventually.

“Anjie.” Softly, “Guan An Jie.”