The Serene Mother

~DEMURE YU~

Back on the surface, they were greeted by the morning light so bright that Yu had to shield his eyes and sit down, dizzy. Sayewa did not look uncomfortable, but she seemed to enjoy both the respite and the sunlight. They rested in companionable silence for a few moments before climbing down.

Yu covertly studied the faery in the full daylight. She seemed stouter than most of her kind, and with a pleasant, earthy colouring. He decided to trust her.

"Where to?" Yu asked once they've climbed down the steep rock wall.

Sayewa plucked a mauve flower from her tresses, grimacing with pain, and planted it into his hair. The flower was alive. He desperately wanted to scratch his skull where the faery's blossom touched it but dared not to offend the acolyte. Her humility in describing her rank did not feel sincere to him. Perhaps she had been demoted or held back for indulging her curiosity.

"I extend you the guest rights," the faery announced.

It took him a moment to process the idea, and the moment he did, he protested, "You want me to walk through the faery lands with you?! No!"

Yu turned away and started climbing back up. "I will wait for you---"

Sayewa grabbed his pant leg and hissed: "It will take days without you!"

It's been weeks and months already, Yu wanted to tell her. It was hard to remember the misery reigning over Sutao's infested alleys in this pristine forest, breathing in clear air which smelled like pine. But he did remember it, and he had no one to go back to. Or at least no one who waited for his return.

He sighed, "Lead on."

Yu had never seen so many faeries so close. They did not speak, but swarmed at a distance, their gazes fastened to the flower in his red hair. Yu did not dare to stare back at them. His skin crawled, so he found himself walking closer and closer to Sayewa. Finally, she took his hand again. Led like a child by the faery, Yu stepped into the holiest of all the Faery sites, the Temple of Serene Joy Upon the Hill of the Five Seasons.

The holy citadel did not feel oppressive despite its size, because the ceilings also stretched upwards to unthinkable heights. It was brightly painted, glowing with joyful, welcoming colours. The images showed the Celestials, the Imperial Family during the Dynasty of New Dawn, and the three faery wives the Emperors used to take back then in addition to the two human ones.

Sayewa's worries that they would have to plead to be heard were unjustified. A woman was already expecting them inside, in the middle of the Temple. The faery acolyte went to her knees as smoothly as a swan lands on a pond. Yu followed her example, though with considerably less grace.

"Serene Mother Weynala! I have words for your ears alone."

Weynala did not look serene to him. She hovered above the painted floor inside a sizeable stormy cloud. Her face was luminous, framed by two thick coils of hair and thorny branches full of scarlet leaves and blood-red flowers. The faery's eyes pooled with black hatred, and they drilled right through him. When she spoke, he expected thunderbolts, but the words came out soft if cold.

"You brought the blasphemer in, Sayewa."

"My companion and I were sent by the Mother of Sorrows, the Mistress of Rats as an embassy," the acolyte responded smoothly.

The woman has nerves of steel.

Yu continued to feel the eyes of the other faeries on his back, but they'd stopped bothering him. A slight draft is nothing when you face a raging storm. He'd weathered a few of those, and would rather they'd all hit him at once than stay another minute in Weynala's company. He was about to self-combust when the Serene Mother had finally turned some of her eyes on Sayewa.

"You went before a Celestial, Acolyte?"

Sayewa bowed so humbly that Yu thought maybe he was mistaken, and she was just a lowly acolyte. After all, what do I know about the faeries?

The Serene Mother did not seem to think so. The dark cloud moved, and both faeries got enveloped by it, a perfect venue for a private chat.

Left out, Yu shifted from his knees to sit on the floor cross-legged. He doubted that any amount of kneeling in the middle of the faery temple would spare him from the doom brewing within Weynala's cloud. There was no running from it either. So he sat and thought about Tien Lyn until the cloud parted.

Sayewa stepped out carrying an exquisitely carved statuette, about a hand tall. A mournful tune played, barely audible, in rhythm with the teardrops falling from the rat's jade tail. Each drop disappeared in the lily leaf. The pauses between the melodic drip grew longer, till none at all came. The tune no longer played but in his mind and the leaf was empty. The 'Lament of All Tears' was no longer awake.

Sayewa slipped the statue into her travel bundle and motioned for Yu to follow. He wanted to avoid Weynala's eyes but he could not. Her inexplicable hatred was focused on Sayewa's flower in his hair now, his only feeble shield.

***

"What did she want with the Lament?" Yu asked Sayewa when he dared, as they retraced their steps through the grounds and towards the outskirts of the holy Hill. "Your temple seems a happy place." At least most of it.

"Serene Mother did not choose to share this information with me," the faery replied curtly and Yu left her in peace after that. Something obviously weighed on her mind, and she kept mum till they were about to go through the portal.

There she finally stopped and spoke up, "You and I are both owed a favour by the Celestial. I suggest you use yours to ask her to put you through a portal that opens outside the Evershining Empire's reach."

Yu thought of all the dark places he'd glimpsed in the portals and said, "I am homeless, not a rat to feel at home wherever I go."

"This is hardly a polite thing to say in a place filled with sacred rats," Sayewa scolded but she looked troubled.

"What are you not telling me?"

All her four eyes looked away from him, each in a different direction, "I've made a bargain, Yu."

He waited. Whatever it was, she sounded too ominous for him to hurry her along.

"Do you remember how I've I told you that I was not one of your enemies in the Temple?" Sayewa said at last.

"Did you lie?" he forced words over the lump in his throat. Ancestors, why did he decide to trust her?!

"No. I am not your enemy, Demure Yu," Sayewa assured him, sounding crestfallen. "But Weynala is the bitterest among them, and she sits on the High Council. She is ancient and very powerful. Her hold was so strong on the Lament, that I did not think anyone else could stop the tears from flowing. Not even..." she glanced wearily towards the portal.

"And?" Yu went cold with dread.

"I bargained as hard as I ever did, Yu, I swear!" the flowers exploded out of her spraying Yu with petals. Where she human, she'd be crying. Yu did not think he could bring himself to comfort her. "The best I could do was convince her to let you surrender to the Human Prefect and be judged for your crimes."

Yu staggered but propped himself up on the statue of that monkey with the exceptionally toothy smile. "You sold me out to stop a blessed fountain from running?!"

"A fountain of eternal tears, yes. Weynala would not say what it did, and to whom. But I know it was not a good thing." the faery tried to appear serene, but what she'd managed to do was look shifty. "It is not a hopeless deal, Yu."

"Oh?" He felt like spitting into her eyes. All four of them.

"You can run away!" Sayewa yelled at him, carpeting the floor around them with poppies.

She took in a deep breath to compose herself, then added in a normal voice: "If you face human judgment, the Council would have no legal authority to persecute you again, no matter what Weynala wishes. But..."

But you only trust Weynala as far as you could throw her. And by the look of it, that's is not very far at all.

"So I have choices," Yu muttered and separated himself from the smiling monkey. It seemed just as exhilarated by their parting as it did by their sudden embrace, the story of his life, really.

He walked towards the portal, purposely not looking at Sayewa. He wished he could find a land without the faeries, and run for it, but there was only one land he knew of that had a merchant's wife. In the end, he was pathetic enough to choose wrong, "Let's do it. Then I will surrender to the Prefect, as you have so skillfully arranged. I am so grateful to have someone like you to bargain behind my back, Sayewa."

He did not realize just how wrong his choice was until the guards swung the heavy doors of the crowded jail cell opened.

"When is my trial?" he croaked, clinging to the slimy walls. His head swam with the proximity of sickness and despair. The guards shoved him in as an answer. Yu landed on his hands and knees and crawled between the unwashed bodies.

This is not the Inscrutable Contagion, not that, that is now done. Sayewa and I saw to that.

But he felt a hundred of other afflictions. There were parasites, rots, fevers and broken bones. And madness, of course, the manias.

Like my own.

Yu tried to hold on to clarity, to the memory of Tien Lyn. He jammed himself in a corner as far away from the temptations as possible. It was no use. The tidal wave of craving swept away the fragile causeway of reason.

There are hurts to heal, there are hurts to heal, heal... yes, heal...