the miracle worker and the god-emperor

📖 read me

It’s rare for a commoner to see a golden-crowned crane, let alone with a pair of lovers’ ducks, but in the Feng Emperor’s palace, anything is possible. 

The crane crests its head above the lapping waves, catches the Emperor’s eye, and takes flight. My brush strokes the rice paper four times, the black ink curving across the canvas like the arc of the bird’s wings in flight. 

The Emperor places his hand on my shoulder, and I clench my fingers around my brush so I won’t recoil. I focus all my senses on sight instead of touch, boring holes into my newest creation. The brushstrokes glisten under the light of our two suns.   

“Lovely,” he says. He looks at my calligraphy hungrily, as if he’d like nothing more than to devour it. “Just like the artist.” 

The crane doesn’t get far. The garden is enclosed in glass. The bird pecks at the glass ceiling one, two, three times before giving up. It must’ve tried this before, but not enough times to stop trying. 

I force a smile. “Your Highness is too kind.” 

The Emperor removes his hand to grasp the scroll with both hands. My shoulders feel several riverstones lighter than the missing weight warrants. I should not be so repulsed by this man. He has provided for my parents a thousand times more than I was worth, as I’m constantly reminded by his Consul. He does not take advantage of me. The only service I provide him is my art.

For one breathless heartbeat, I’m sure that my art will not work this time, as I always am when the Emperor inspects it. My art’s magic has never worked for me, after all. It has only worked for others. But the strokes shift, a ghost of the glyphs flowing off the page and past his thin mouth as he inhales.  

At first, the only hint that something has happened is that the glyphs appear a little lighter, the shade of soot instead of midnight black. Then the Emperor’s mouth sharpens, lengthening into a curved beak. As always, my breath stitches, lungs stuttering, whenever a transformation from one of my artworks takes place. His peat-colored eyes turn golden, but do not lose their glint of cruelty. His back retracts into itself, and pure white feathers extended from his arms, plumage following suit from his skin. 

The Emperor takes flight. He circles once, twice around the glass garden, cawing at, mocking, the other crane. 

The other crane watches him, curiously but without any understanding. The Emperor perches on the cobblestone bridge we were on before his latest transformation. His feathers molt, his beak withdraws, and his eyes darken to their usual brown. 

“Excellent as usual, Yi,” he says. 

My stomach curls in on itself each time he says my name, and I chide myself for being so irrational. My thoughts dart to imagining what would happen if he saw me trying to escape, like that hapless crane. I doubt he would retaliate with only mockery. Think of Ma and Da, I think. Think of seeing them again at the upcoming Sun Shift Festival. This will all be over then.   

The Emperor takes my hand. I try not to flinch. “I know just the place to put your newest creation.” 

#

Time in the palace oozes by. I am aware of every heartbeat and footstep I take as I follow the Emperor from the glass gardens.

The Consul opens an intricately carved rubywood door, and I stop short when I see what’s inside. The Emperor strides in and falls onto his bed. I remain by the door.

“Hang it over my bed,” he says. 

I walk to the side of the bed and lean over the headboard as I hang my work up, making sure to line up the scroll evenly. 

“Beautiful,” he says. His Consul watches, face pinched in disapproval. 

Compliments always pour from the Emperor like water from a broken dam. Maybe that’s why he discomforts me, flattery being a tool for novice manipulators. I then realize the place, the situation I’m in. 

“Please excuse me,” I say, bowing my head. “I’d like your permission to leave so I can create another piece.”

“So soon?”

“I need to work my hardest to do my best at the Sun Shift Festival,” I say. “I don’t want to dishonor my family when they finally see me again.”

“You have many moon shifts to prepare,” the Emperor says. “A few more sun flickers won’t hurt your training.” 

“I don’t think it’s wise to stay here.” It’s bold to the point of stupidity, but I cannot dance around my worries any longer.

The Consul’s eyes bulge. A vein throbs in his forehead. He looks like he’s going to have a nervous fit.

 The Emperor merely presses his lips together. “I’ve beheaded greater men and prettier girls for less.” 

“So has the Empress. No one but you, your Consul, and a mute servant knows I exist. I prefer not to add an angry wife discovering an unknown girl in her husband’s bedroom. How easy would it be to erase my existence?”

My certainty that even the Emperor has faced criticism emboldens me. Surely his mother or his wife subjected him to that universal trial of self-doubt. But the room still feels colder than it did a few sunflickers ago. I tell myself I’m imagining it, that I’m being silly. Even the Emperor shouldn’t have control over the sunheats of the room. His Consul’s skin pales even further, deepening his resemblance to a corpse. 

“Emperor,” says his Consul, “this disrespect is a crime against you and the Heavens. I warned you against taking in this ungrateful peasant.”

The Emperor doesn’t say anything. His continued silence and heavy gaze drills into my courage, as a twisting worm’s slime would soften even the hardest packed dirt. His thin lips twist into a semblance of a smile. I do not feel reassured. 

“Then leave,” he says.  

Many thanks. Apologies for my rudeness. I think the words, but do not say them in my rush to leave. I walk two steps before the Consul seizes my wrist and marshals me to my room. 

For such a large palace, the hallways are eerily empty. Where are all the courtesans, servants, concubines? They must be locked away, too. 

#

The mute servant motions to my new scroll.

I hand the paper to him. The script is simple and one of the first I learned outside of lessons with Ma. Dawnswallow. 

The servant inhales the script, savoring it as if it is his last meal. His eyes glaze over as the words first take effect. 

Instead of flying after this transformation, the first thing the servant does is warble. The dawnswallow’s song has a sweet, clear sound, like crystalline stream water falling against reeds, moss, and stone. Varied and nuanced, but calming and simple. He stretches his wings, flies around the room, still trilling. The joy in his singing makes me smile, despite my worries from the Emperor’s chambers. 

When the servant returns to his form, his eyes still retain their wistful, wondering sheen for several breaths. But then his gaze returns to their usual, polite, distanced demeanor, and I know the script’s charm has finished. He bows his head.  

“How long have you worked for the palace?” I ask. 

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he points to the brush, then paper. 

“Do you want to write something?” 

He nods. 

I pick up the brush, but he shakes his head. He points to himself, his throat. Shakes his head. Then his hands. He shakes his head again. 

“You can’t write,” I realize. “But you want to.”  

Another nod.

“I can teach you,” I say. “If I learned it, anyone can.”

His head jerks back. Whatever he was expecting, it was clearly not this. He holds up his hands in protest. Makes emphatic no motions.

I take one of his hands and he flinches. Ignoring him, I drag his trembling fingers to the brush. Just like Ma did with my hand the first time I had refused to write.  

#

The servant is a quick study. He learns the basic brushstrokes in one night, numbers and basic phrases in another. Another miracle stowed away in the Emperor’s palace. But I doubt the Emperor knows about the servant’s talent. His intelligence is a quieter magic, one the Emperor has no use for. 

The servant and I work on his glyphs during the nights. The two moons go through one full moon shift before he answers my first question of how long he worked for the palace.

Sixteen sun shifts, he writes. 

Imprisoned since birth. And I thought three moon shifts lasted for eternity here. 

“What about your family?” 

My mother was imprisoned. Consul took me when I was born. Tongue was cut out then. 

One who cannot speak is the perfect servant for the Emperor. He cannot reveal any secrets. Until now. 

“That is horrifying,” I say. “The Emperor and his crony are scum.” 

He winces. Do not even joke about matters like these. The Heavens will strike you down.

“Let them,” I say. 

 The ghost of a smile plays about his lips. Do you not fear anything? 

“It’s hard to fear anything when I know the Emperor cannot replace me,” I say. 

You are truly One of a kind, he writes. Though that’s not the written glyph for my name, it sounds similar enough.

“I would make a pun out of your name, but you still have not told me it.” 

I do not have a name. He fiddles with his fingers. The Consul deemed it unnecessary.

I scowl. “The Consul is unnecessary. Let’s choose one for you.” I all but throw the dictionary at him. 

At the end, he chooses a simple En.

Kindness, he explains. As I hope to show others the way you’ve shown me.  

#

En now writes faster than I do. He has far outpaced my reading two moon shifts ago. 

I demonstrate how I curve my glyphs, straighten others, embody the essence of the subjects in my writing. He watches, his brows furrowed, the shallow grooves reminding me of tilled soil at the start of planting season. 

Can I learn what you do? he writes. 

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. 

He copies my script exactly, down to the most eye-straining angles of the curves, but when he raises the scroll to his face, the glyphs remain on the page. 

“Maybe it doesn’t work for the writer,” I say. “Only a reader can experience its magic.”

He hands me the scroll. 

I study his writing. It’s indistinguishable from mine. But the words remain still. 

How did you learn to perform miracles? he asks on a separate piece of paper. 

“No one taught it to me,” I confess. “Perhaps the sun gods thought it’d be amusing to give this talent to the village idiot.” 

So you were blessed.

“If you can call it that.” 

You’re the most blasphemous person I’ve ever met.

I shrug. 

En’s brush hovers over the paper. He chews his bottom lip. Then: I’m supposed to be guarding you during these lessons. And reporting on any irregular behavior to the Emperor or his Consul. 

“You can look at the irisfish while enjoying the dewberries,” I say. 

I didn’t know you were a fan of the First Emperor’s sayings.

“I’m too tired to come up with anything original.” 

Do you need to sleep?

“My mind is more tired than my body.”

He continues lip-chewing. 

I continue when he doesn’t write anything else. “I had not seen anyone else but the same three people for one entire sun shift. The Consul hates me, the Emperor uses me. That leaves only one person who somewhat cares about me. And I can’t go anywhere in this palace, even with you or the Consul with me. The only places I’ve been are my room, the Emperor’s room, and the hallways.” 

En is wearing out his lip so much, I’m concerned that he’ll leave a mark. His brush’s ink is dripping onto the paper, staining an otherwise perfect piece of calligraphy. I am about to open my mouth when he gets up and heads to my bed. I stiffen. 

He fashions a me-sized lump out of the blankets. Sits in a chair by the corner and closes his eyes. Makes guttural snoring sounds. Leans over the chair in his pretend sleep and a key to the room falls out of his pocket. I smile, getting the message. I almost run to the key. As I grab it, En’s hand finds my own. He squeezes it once. I don’t need words to understand his message. Don’t get caught. I squeeze back and unlock the door, wincing at the creak. I crane my head. No one in sight. Tiptoeing out, I creak the door back into place and lock it just in case the Consul jiggles the door in his nightly strolls to check.  

I sidle out the hallway, my shadow being my only company. 

#

At first I am cautious, flinching at every creak. Then I grow bold as the night passes. I still walk on the balls of my feet, treading silently, but my stride is longer, my pace quicker. I peek into rooms with already open doors and am disappointed when I still do not see anyone. Perhaps the Emperor can perform his own magic, running the palace with only him, his Consul, and En.  

I hurry past the door leading to the Emperor’s chambers. The next hall over, I become even bolder and try each closed door. Most of them are open. There are rooms full of gorgeous art, paintings with vivid colors and creatures so realistic they nearly come off the scrolls. But there are no other people. My sense of unease grows. 

When I am just about to head back to my chambers, I see a wide open door at the end of the hallway, a radiant golden glow emanating from its room.  I draw closer, treading slower than I had in the other hallways. I peek inside. 

The Emperor is there. I nearly flee right then. But he is absorbed in his task, hunched over a scattering of differently shaped bones with glyphic markings, peering at them intently. The glow is emanating from the bones. As he continues studying them, two bones, one curved like a sickle and the other the shape of a collarbone, lifts off the ground, floating in the air as he writes something down on a scroll of paper. 

He murmurs something, his fingers moving as if playing an invisible instrument. Out of his fingers swirl a stream of smoke, which then solidifies into a beautiful woman, one who I have only seen in paintings. The Empress. She blinks slowly, her long, black lashes complementing her alabaster skin. 

“You are not to speak at the ceremony tomorrow,” he says. “You smile, throw sun stones to the commoners, and do what you usually do when I summon you. Understand?” 

She nods once, her chin dipping to her clavicle, her neck slender like a golden swan’s.   

The knowledge that the Empress is a mere conjuration and not a real person alarms me even more. The Emperor said he already had an heir, a boy of twelve sun shifts. I saw this heir at a former festival. Did the Emperor conjure him, too? How many people and things did he conjure to lie to the empire and the Feng people to gain their trust and adoration?   

There are only two known miracle workers in the empire. Knowing that the Emperor is the other one doesn’t provoke an intelligent reaction, only a very base instinct. I flee. 

#

The Sun Shift Festival heralds a new beginning, change, rebirth. When the Consul arrives in my chambers the morning after I saw the Emperor perform his sorcery, En is already drawing back the gilded curtains from my window. I blink against the dazzling sunlight. The two suns, instead of being separate like two egg yolks in a bowl, are now together, one sun against the other.

The Consul stands in front of the door, his face as sallow and dour as usual, with a parcel in his hands. “Here’s your gown for the ceremony, girl.” He thrusts the parcel upon En. “You and she should meet with the Emperor immediately after you help her get dressed.”

“That’s really not necessary. I can get dressed by my—” I start to say, but the Consul leaves before I can finish my protests. 

En and I stand there, looking at the ground instead of each other. A bird twitters outside the window. 

Still avoiding my gaze, he opens the parcel. The gown is a dark shade of full-bodied wine, the kinds I see the Emperor sip when he watches me at work in the glass gardens. The dress is folded across several times over. En unfolds the first layer. The bodice has three knotlaces that need to be tied in the back. There is a gap in the fabric. This dress will expose my back from the shoulders to the dip. En unravels the second layer. The third, the fourth, the fifth. A gossamer train consists of the last several layers, one I can’t envision wearing without tripping over it every single step. I start to see why the Consul says I would need help getting dressed. 

“I’ll put this on as best as I can,” I say. “Afterward, can you help me lace up the back?” 

En nods. He goes into my room’s side chamber as he waits for me to dress. 

If there was a class on putting on ceremonial palace dresses when I was a child, I would’ve failed that course, too. At first I slip the gown on head-first, but after struggling through what feels like riverlengths of the train obscuring my vision and getting tangled within my hair, I step into the dress, so I won’t have to deal with the train. One foot hits the floor where train puddles, and I try snaking another foot through. The bodice is too tight for both of my thighs to go through. Cursing, I take my feet out and examine the bodice. After what feels like several eternities later, I realize I need to completely unlace the back of the bodice to shimmy into the dress. I call for En to reenter.

When he does, my bare back is facing him. I do not see his reaction. I avoid thinking of how I want him to react. As his footsteps near me, I hear his breath hitch and feel his fingers fumble the first laces. He knots the first one, winding the laces around each other to hold the top of the dress’s back in place. His fingers are cool, cold as a new sun shift’s breeze against my bare skin, but the places he touches feels like they’ve been scalded.

After he knots the last laces, he takes three steps back. I turn to face him. His eyes are not hungry, nor greedy as the Emperor’s as if coveting a new territory to possess, but my cheeks still pinken under his gaze. 

He turns to go, to lead me to the Emperor’s chambers, but I grab his hand, nearly tripping over my train in the process. 

“Stop,” I say. 

He is very still, motionless as the glyphs not written by my hand. 

I lead him into the side chamber and retrieve a scroll. His chest starts moving almost imperceptibly again. But his shoulders are still tense, his eyes still flicker to the door.

“This’ll only take a second,” I promise, stamping the ink stick into a well of water, the stick’s soot coloring the water black. I pick up my brush in one swift, practiced flick of my wrist and dip it into the inkwell. My script flows. 

A boy who can speak. 

En reads it. His eyes widen as he realizes what I’m attempting to do. In sunflickers, he shrinks. His head reaches my shoulder. I stare, entranced, at his ongoing transformation. Then, we both recoil when we realize who he transformed into. 

“Don’t,” the boy-Emperor speaks. It’s uncanny to hear En’s pleading through the Emperor’s mouth. 

A boy of sixteen sun shifts who can speak, I continue. 

En reads it, resignation as foreign to the Emperor’s face as spoken words are to En. 

He grows, his height not towering over my own. But it is still not En, but a brawny golden-haired boy. He says, “We should be heading to the Emperor’s chambers soon.” 

I write a kind boy of sixteen sun shifts has read this while sitting beside a girl named Yi and now has a tongue.

He starts to say something, insignificant protests in a gravelly stranger’s voice, but stops as he transforms for the third time this morning, his words cut off as his head jerks back. His hair darkens. His figure becomes more sinewy than rough-hewn. En examines himself. Shows me an ink stain on his slender fingers left from the night before. He goes to the washbasin to clean it off. 

“You look like yourself for this one at least,” I say. “Try saying something.” 

He smiles wryly. Opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. 

The disappointment and anguish for En, for the hopelessness once I realize my power’s limits, constricts my throat far more than any of the Emperor’s stares. I turn away, ashamed of the tears that come too quickly. 

En squeezes my shoulder once. Turns me to face him. He dries one damp cheek with his hand,  but then doubles over, as if wracked with pain.

“What is it?” I ask, alarmed. This has never happened before with any transformation. Perhaps I had insulted the gods with my daring.

But instead, when En takes gulps of air as the spasms of pain seem to ebb, I gasp at the flash of pink I spot in his throat. 

En catches my shock. His hands fly to his mouth and gingerly touch the new muscle there. 

His voice only lasts less than a standard transformation, but once his words die out, mid-sentence, I am not the only one with wet eyes. I wrap my arms around his hunched shoulders, as he trembles, his voiceless sobs gasping through a bittersweet smile.  

Only the sound of the Consul’s impatient approaching footsteps stops our commiseration. En lets out one last, soundless exhale before he gets up, holding out his hand for me to do the same.   

We leave the chamber with the Consul leading the way, the murmurs and babble of the crowd seeping through the palace’s walls.

The Emperor is dressed in robes of the darkest night, embroidered with golden thread resembling starlight. He looks every part the role of a man descended from the gods. The Empress is draped around his arm, playing her role of the adoring wife. 

“Shall we?” he says, offering his other arm to me. 

I glance at the Empress pointedly, still playing my part as the dutiful and tactful employee. 

The Empress flicks her wrist, as if to say I shouldn’t worry. The Emperor clasps my hand in his. We walk through the empty hallways, up several flights of stairs, then onto the palace balcony.  

The two suns dazzle as one as I stare out onto the crowd gathered onto the palace grounds. I can’t pick out my parents from the teeming mass below. En stands behind us, inside, respectfully in the shadows. The Consul stands by the Empress. By the way he glowers at me, it’s obvious he’d like to be on the Emperor’s right, instead of me. 

The crowd spots me, some of them openly pointing. Knowing that I must look like a new concubine, I fidget. The Emperor pulls me closer. 

“Behold!” the Emperor booms. “A miracle worthy of the heavens.” 

I then notice a rolled up banner draped across the balustrade, tied to the end posts with two lengths of rope. Not even needing to touch the paper, the Emperor unravels it carelessly with one flick of his wrist, and the banner unfurls for the crowd to see. 

The crowd’s murmuring crescendos. Though everyone in Feng was told of the Emperor’s divinity, now here is proof. 

I peer down over the railing and the Emperor yanks me back. I wrote on this banner one moon shift ago. The crowd looks at the glyphs, uncomprehending. Then, a mass transformation takes place.

Terrified yelps changing into high-pitched shrieks fill the grounds as the crowd’s bodies cave in on themselves, bones twisting and muscles warping. When the change is complete, a thousand moon birds cover the area, staring at each other and us, goggle-eyed. 

“You’re birds, aren’t you?” prompts the Emperor. “Fly!” 

Thousands of silver-white birds fly through the blazing blue sky, the rhythmic beating of their wings accompanied by the melody of their songs, some curious, some delighted, others terrified. I suppose there is some innate warning when the transformation is ready to be over, for all the morning doves land on the cobblestones again within sunflickers of each other. 

They revert to their human shapes in mere breaths. The back of the crowd surges forth, all trying to get a closer glimpse at my work. 

“Fun, yes,” says the Emperor proudly. “But this is not just for entertainment, Fengsians. Imagine a world where there is no illness. No deformed child, no village idiot, no premature death.” He clasps his hand on my shoulder. “Changing thousands of you is what this girl can do now. By next sun shift, she will be able to create permanent change. The oracle bones foretold it! I promise you, by the next Sun Shift, she will accomplish all I say and more. Feng will rise as the most formidable empire in the world!” 

Miracle worker, I hear one onlooker yell, and many others follow. The words feel surreal, almost as if they’re not spoken but written, a transmutation of the written word. As if their words were my own glyphs finally having effect on me. My thoughts blur, the ground spinning beneath my feet as the crowd takes up the chant.

The Emperor beams at me. I still can’t see my parents. I know only about them through the letters we exchange once every moon shift, as the Emperor allows. He is very stringent about me not being distracted from my work. 

He makes more announcements about Feng’s wellbeing and how the Heavens will be materialized in Feng. “Dying will no longer be necessary,” he says. “To reach the Heavens. Feng will be Paradise for all who is worthy!” His eyes are feverish, his color high in his cheeks. I have never seen him so animated before.  

He then lets the festivities commence, the Empress throwing sparkling sun stones to the commoners, who scrabble over the gold. Fire dancers twirl and spin among flames, light blue and dark crimson, which they exhale from painted lips. Uniformed soldiers march in unison, flashing their swords in tandem, their synchronicity almost inhuman. I inhale sharply. It wouldn’t be impossible for the Emperor to conjure more apparitions. I do not know the extent of his powers. 

When the celebrations finally end and the crowd disperses, the Emperor says, “I did promise one last thing, little Yi.” Shrugging off the Empress’s arm, he marshals me back inside, down the hallways, down the stairs, and past the palace gates. His Consul hurries in our wake while En easily follows, his long legs taking one stride for every two of the Consul’s. 

This is the first time in nearly a sun shift I’ve been outside the palace. The stone-faced palace guards do not even glance our way as we exit. Like the soldiers, their dedication to their job is almost also inhuman. 

My parents stand within a semicircle of guards.

“Ma! Da!” I cry out, rushing to embrace them.

They throw their arms around me as we cling to each other, Da silently crying and Ma smiling so hard I think her face might break.    

“You were wonderful, dear,” Ma says, kissing my cheek, her own cheeks still flushed from her smiling and the season’s wind. 

“You and your husband can stay at the palace tonight,” says the Emperor. “You all deserve it, for raising such a talented daughter.” 

As we file back in the gates, I take a closer look at my parents. They seem younger, happier. Their clothes don’t have a single loose thread, but are not as flashy as the Emperor’s or mine. My chest swells with happiness when I notice this. Despite their new fortune, they are still my same, humble Ma and Da.

My family all wants to stick together once we enter the palace. But I’m only with them until dinner, when the Consul says the Emperor wants to discuss matters with me privately. The Empress will entertain my parents in the meantime.

Knowing the Emperor hand-tailored every facet of the Empress, making her no more than an elaborate puppet, a sense of foreboding takes root in me. But I follow the Emperor, disregarding my instinct. He motions for En to wait outside the door as he ushers me into the next room.

His eyes are intense, burning into mine. “You’re a smart girl,” he says. “I hope you understood the underlying message of my speech.”

“You want me to strengthen the Feng empire,” I say. 

“Very good,” he says. “What else?”

I look at him blankly. “Expand it, too?” 

The Emperor nods. “And?” 

I do not answer, as I don’t know. 

The Emperor sighs. But his disappointment is fleeting, as the same fervor that took over him at the festival washes over his face. “For too long this empire played host to the weak, the feeble, the wormlike people lower than dirt. With you, we can remold the people.”

I still do not follow. I’d understand if he wanted to reshape Fengsians to be stronger or smarter. To have no illnesses, of the mind or body. But that seems too simple, too understated for the way his eyes are burning.  

“Have you ever looked at the common Fengsian,” he continues, “and felt just pure contempt? Disgust? Imagine a world where all Fengsians are just like us.” He chuckles lowly. “Of course, I doubt even you can produce another miracleworker. But imagine a world where you don’t have to crawl into the dirt to look at another Fengsian. Where everyone is more equal. The same intelligence, the same strength….” His eyes light on me hungrily. “The same aptitude.”  

It takes all my will to not flee the room. What he’s suggesting is insane. “You want me to…make everyone more like us? More like you? That’s impossible!” 

 “I have faith in you, Yi. So does fate.” He leans closer. His voice lowers. “We’re both miracle workers. Blessed by the gods, chosen by the heavens for their mission.” 

He swirls his fingers, as if circling them through an irisfish pond. An image of the emperor and me materializes, us standing against a backdrop of the two suns setting against the walls of the glass gardens. “Take advantage of your blessings. Why be a commoner, when you can be an Empress?”

I draw away. “What about the Empress now?” I say, feigning ignorance. “You have been married for many sun shifts, you have a son!” 

He turns from me, his fingers raking the air again. A duplicate Empress swirls into being, twirling the ends of her dress. He waves her aside and the Empress disappears. “She only serves to appease my subjects. My Consul says the masses will only be at ease if I have an heir by the time I was twenty.” He scoffs. “As if I can ever marry such an inferior woman. I would rather play this farce with an illusion.” 

“Why do you listen to your Consul?” I am still stalling for time. “From what you told me, I thought you would only rely on yourself.” 

He smiles. “Very good, again, little Yi. He is also an illusion. I created a human of all my contrariness, so if I go one way, he would always go the other. He’s very annoying, but he keeps me from becoming too extreme.” 

He nears me again. “So what will it be, Yi? Will you serve this empire, our people, with me?” 

“I can’t even fathom doing what you described.”

“That’s not what I asked. I’ve foretold it, so it will happen. Will you do your utmost with your gift and be by my side?”

I do not think. My first thought is a feeling, one of utter revulsion that I still cannot identify the cause behind. But then I realize what he is capable of and how feeble my power is in comparison. I cannot even be affected by my own magic. 

“I will be honored,” I say, bowing my head so I do not need to look into his heated gaze anymore. 

“Look at me,” he says, tilting my head up.

He kisses me, aggressively and deeply, his hand snaking around my waist and pulling me closer to him in a vise grip. I take a step back and open my mouth in surprise. He interprets this as an invitation. His tongue worms into my mouth, slimy and probing. His other hand goes to my hair.  

I push him away, visceral disgust overriding thought. “I think this is happening too soon,” I say once my mind is provoked to work again by his insulted look. “I—” 

He sweeps from the room without looking back. I follow him, several paces behind. En catches one sight of my mussed hair and swollen lips and looks away, walking ahead and almost in-step with the Emperor. 

#

Until the next moon shift, I am miserable. The Emperor forbids Ma and Da from seeing me again. En does not meet my eyes when he practices his writing, still trying to learn the magic from my glyphs. The Emperor drills me over and over, analyzing my glyphs, trying to discern the secret of how to make them permanent. His test subject is a nondescript palace guard, who I’m sure the Emperor conjured for this purpose. I tried writing with the finest technique, taking painstaking care on every rise and fall in each glyph. I tried chasing away the pitfalls of slaving over too much technique by writing with unbridled passion instead.  I’m at my breaking point when the guard changes into a mouse, but does not revert back, long after I count to one thousand. 

The Emperor picks up the former guard by the tail, the animal squirming and wriggling with frightened squeaks. “I will place him in a room,” he says. “If he does not change back by tomorrow, then I will crown you as the new Empress.” 

The mere thought makes me ill. I glance at En. He still does not look at me, but something flickers across his eyes that give me pause.

When I am locked in my room that night, I confess. 

“En, I can’t stay here any longer,” I say. “I despise the Emperor.” 

He still does not say anything but stares straight ahead. 

“I’m taking my parents and fleeing to the northern kingdom. You can stay here if you like, but if you don’t want to live underneath a tyrant of a false God any longer, than come with me.” 

En still does not answer.

I scribble my script as hurriedly as I can, not even bothering to fetch paper, but writing on my skin. 

En reads the words. Sunflickers later, he still does not look at my eyes but stares at my arm where the ink glistens. “I cannot go with you.”

“Why not?” I say. 

“The Emperor is too powerful. You will be caught within a moon shift.” 

“I can use the glyphs.”

“You can’t use them on yourself. The Emperor will be lenient on you, but he will execute me.” 

“He may have a soft spot for you. He is the other miracle worker.” My words tumble over each other in their rush to reach En. “He conjured the Empress and the Consul. He could’ve just as easily conjured you, but he chose to keep you.”

“He can just as easily replace me.” 

“At least give me the key.” 

“No.”

The resolute way he says it angers me more than the lone word. I thrust my hand toward his pocket, but he grabs my wrist and drags it aside as if I’m no more than a rag doll. 

“I won’t tell the Emperor about your treason,” he says. “But I won’t help you either.” 

I yank my hand from his wrist and rush to the door. I turn the knob. It does not open. “Let me out,” I say, teeth clenched. 

“No.” 

I scream, “Give me the key, En!” 

En’s face, resolutely blank, does not waver. 

I continue screaming at him, yelling, calling him every name under our two suns I could think of. But he does not waver. He does not say even one word. 

Shaking, I sink to the floor, wracked with sobs. 

Someone knocks at the door. 

“Sweetie, are you okay?” Ma asks. “I heard you scream something from next door, and I know we’re not supposed to see you, but…”

“I can’t open the door,” I say bitterly. “My servant won’t let me out.”

“That’s too bad,” Ma’s voice smoothens. En and I both freeze as she continues talking, not in Ma’s voice but with a more slithering timbre we both heard the night of the Sun Shift Festival. “I suppose I should fetch someone else who can override that upstart of a boy.” 

The latch clicks and the door swings open.

Ma stands in the doorway, holding a key. She looks like Ma, but she is smiling very peculiarly and not like Ma at all. 

“Why do you look so scared, dear?” she says, continuing to speak in the Empress’s voice.

My mind seems to have frozen, but my body trembles. 

Her face contorts, stretches. Her eyes bubble in their sockets, her mouth twists in on itself, until not Ma, nor the Empress stands there, but the Consul. 

“I thought I should check in on you two,” he says, his words clipped but eyes gleeful. “Very interesting things I’ve overheard, indeed…follow me.”

En doesn’t even look at me as he follows the Consul. When the Consul arrives at the emperor’s chambers, he motions for the both of us to enter with all the glee of the hangman preparing the noose for his worst enemy. 

The Emperor is at his desk, examining the former guard, now mouse. The creature is whimpering in the corner of a glass cage. He looks at En with exasperation, then me with surprise. When the Consul enters, his eyes all but sharpen to the edges of the glass. 

“What is it?” he asks.  

“This ungrateful peasant unduly abused your servant,” the Consul says. “Screamed curses, threats, everything you can imagine at him.”

The Emperor merely looks amused, his eyes glinting with contempt at En instead of sympathy. “I don’t see the problem.” 

“She wanted him to give her the key to her room,” the Consul says. “So she could escape.” 

At this, the Emperor stills. His hand remains hovering above the glass cage, and his eyes become so still they almost appear dead. But still, his mouth moves. “What else did she say?”

“The first I heard of it was her shouting at the servant boy to give her the key. Then when he didn’t, she screamed that he was going to result in the fall of the Feng Empire, and—”

The Emperor quiets him with one wave of the hand. He turns his gaze to me, and I quail under his burning gaze. “Perhaps I was too soft with you,” he says. “Perhaps you need a different kind of motive to see my ways.” 

Hands curling, he conjures up five stone-faced guards. “See to it that Yi and her family are given a different set of accommodations. Effective immediately.” 

#

Ma, Da, and I are shunted into a cell in the dungeons. 

“What happened?” Ma whispers. “Why are we here?”

“I upset the Emperor,” I say.

Ma and Da do not press further, for which I’m grateful. 

Days pass within that cell. The Emperor visits me while the suns are still high in the sky from the frosted window in the cell. He drills me, perfunctorily and still with a remnant of simmering anger, on my glyphs. 

One instance, he catches Ma and Da watching us. 

“Your daughter couldn’t work her miracles in a palace,” he says. “So instead she will work them in a prison.”

#

I wonder what En is doing. Whether he knows the Consul is just an extension of the Emperor, as is the Empress and everyone else in the palace but him. Then I think of his stubbornly blank face as I screamed, yelled at him, and I hate him almost as much as the Emperor. 

Ma and Da are conversing in low voices as the two moons’ light trickles in through the cell’s window. I wish I had some paper and ink to entertain myself with, but the Emperor took away that, too. He thought I would try to transform Ma and Da into something that would help us break out of this cell. Ma and Da quiet when they hear footsteps patter down the stone stairsteps to the cell. I stop drawing half-formed glyphs in the dust on the floor. Even with the heavy dust, the floor is too rough for any of the glyphs to stay. 

En emerges from the shadows, his face unreadable. 

“What do you want,” I say flatly. 

He looks at me, his face still unreadable. Then: “I can still speak.” He says it slowly, reverently, as if he can’t believe it himself. 

“So?” I say. 

“Your glyphs are starting to create permanent change,” he says. His face, usually as impassive as riverstones, wavers. 

“The Emperor would be pleased,” I say bitterly. 

En’s face looks very odd. He clears his throat, then withdraws a scroll of paper in his pocket. He hands it to me. “Read it,” he says. 

“My magic doesn’t work on me,” I say. 

En shakes his head. “Read it,” he insists.

I humor him. I read the script. Something lodges in my throat. At first I think it is my despair physically manifesting, but my throat continues to constrict as I shoot toward the ground. I let out a squeak as I finish transforming into a dawnswallow, able to fit through the bars of the cell. 

I chirp. How—what?

“There are three miracle workers now,” Da says.

He and Ma read En’s script, now a perfect facsimile of my magic. They transform, too, and we all, save for En, flitter around, our bird brains temporarily overriding our human ones. En smiles. But the exultant moment does not last long. En makes a gesture, and we settle down. He hurries from the dungeon. We follow. He does not head toward the gates, but the glass gardens. I lightly nip his hand to get his attention. I jerk my feathered head to the entrance of the glass gardens and shake my head. 

“His guards are patrolling outside the gates,” he says. “There’s an underground tunnel leading out of the palace in the gardens.” He motions to his pocket, but I flitter to his shoulder instead. 

He pushes open the door. The two moons gleam in the sky like pearls, the stars like diamonds. He falters when he sees the Emperor standing in the center of the garden, the other miracle worker throwing dewberries over the cobblestone bridge to the lovers’ ducks. A scroll is behind him. 

En bows his head. I dart behind En, hoping the Emperor has not seen me. Ma and Da follow suit. 

“Interesting night for a stroll,” says the Emperor. 

En is still pretending he cannot speak. He motions toward the moons, making an appreciative gesture, and my parents and I follow En close behind, nearly hitting him in our efforts to stay hidden. I wish we would’ve hidden in his pockets once we escaped the cells. But even then, our transformation is due any flicker now. I am surprised it has lasted this long so far.

“You may have wondered why I took you in,” the Emperor continues. “When your parents were traitors.”  

En raises his head to look at the Emperor.

“Come closer, boy.” 

En approaches, walking close to the foliage and near the sides of the path. I realize what he’s doing. I hit one wing against my Ma’s, then Da’s, causing them to swivel their heads. I flit behind a pillar and they follow. In a handful of flickers, we are human again, crouching because the pillar is not enough to conceal us all. 

“I did not raise you because of loneliness,” the Emperor says. “I am not so weak. All Gods live in solitude, so it is my duty to do the same as the Son of Heaven.” 

Liar. All he craves is to be in the company of those he considers his equals. 

“Well, say something. You have a tongue after all.” 

Everything then seems to happen in slow motion. En grabs the nearest tool he can find, an axe that he used just one moon shift ago to shape the cranetree. The Emperor laughs, lowly and contemptuously, as En holds out the axe in front of him. 

“Let me just show you how different you and I are, servant-boy,” the Emperor says. Smoke trickles out of his fingers. The beginnings of an armory, hundreds upon hundreds of daggers, knives, and swords, all pointed at En and waiting just for the Emperor’s command to surge forth, break my silence. I race out from behind the pillar. 

“Stop it,” I say, shaking. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll help you with the Feng Empire, with anything.” 

En and the Emperor both look stricken. 

Then the Emperor sneers. “I thought so. It’s tantamount to your ignorance that you choose a servant over an Emperor. Luckily I don’t need your miracles anymore.” 

He turns to the scroll behind him. The calligraphy is written more angrily, more violently than any of my works, but even from this distance, I can sense the might resonate from it, tangible and thunderous. A realization sinks in my chest like a riverstone. He found out how to do it, I think, just as the emperor waves aside the apparition in favor of his transformation. 

He had written just one character. 

Power. 

His furred cloak melts, clings to him, transforming into a glossy pelt of rust-orange. Dark stripes streak across his body, now a powerful, sinuous clawed beast several times my and En’s weight combined. The colossal tiger’s striped tail flicks back and forth. I stand there, paralyzed, as he bares his teeth. He roars, terrible and shaking the earth, the garden flowers and plants rippling in his wake as he leaps toward us. 

En pushes me away, holding up his axe in a valiant but foolish stand. 

“No!” I scream as the Emperor smiles a yellow-fanged grin. 

But then En looks at the Emperor’s scroll, a sun flicker before the Emperor’s claws reach him. The Emperor’s claws close around nothing. He screams in frustration. 

Power for En may not be a snarling beast amassing several riverweights, but whatever En became, I prefer it deeply, viscerally to the monstrous Emperor. “Look at the scroll!” I scream to Ma and Da. “The Emperor’s scroll!”

The Emperor’s tawny eyes light upon me, enraged. He does not notice the newly formed dawnswallow flitter its way away from him. He roars and leaps toward me. I make the transformation a fraction of a sun flicker before it’s too late, his claws ripping off several feathers. 

I dart out of reach as En, Ma, and Da fly toward the glass ceiling, the birds’ nature overtaking their rational ones.   

The Emperor paces back and forth. His sly, golden eyes dart toward the bridge, the ceiling, then me. I pretend to take the bait. Chirping as if panic had overridden me, I dart toward the ceiling, too, and the Emperor snarls as he launches off the bridge, his claws reaching toward me. 

I dart to the side, and the Emperor’s force shatters the dome’s ceiling. He howls as the glass shards pierce his skin. He moves his haunches back and forth, as if trying to summon the glass out, but the glass remains. His eyes widen as he falls back to the bridge, and lands gracelessly. 

He turns back to the scroll, as if willing it to revert him into a man again, but his shape remains. He roars again, this time panicked and forlorn. I chitter lowly. At least now his lack of humanity is apparent. En, Ma, and Da are waiting for me by the newly formed opening in the dome, and they chitter in return as the Emperor roars again, then howls.

Together, we fly away, as the Emperor continues to howl, alone, inside his glass gardens.