Darkness slams into my face.
I clutch my phone, thumb jammed against the side button. The screen stays black. Good. For once, it listens.
I blink until the dark begins to loosen. Glaze patterns along the foot of the wall give off the faintest violet-gold light, just enough to sketch a slope and a recess in the stone.
Rain drums harder beyond the hole. Footsteps crunch over rubble. Something behind them scrapes, plate against plate.
‘The boss wants everything moved. Hurry up.’
‘It's pouring. My fur's soaked. Tell those black-shell things to move faster!’
Going back is impossible. Unless I charge straight out and say, Sorry, just squeezing past.
I shove my phone inside my jacket, feel my way down the slope and fold myself into the recess. At once, a murky amber glow presses over the light from the walls.
Deep gouges score the next corner. Broken stone lies heaped beneath them, as if something much too large forced its way through.
Two sharp-muzzled, long-tailed shadows descend first. Foxes. Upright ones. Their noses twitch without stopping. A dozen black shapes follow, each a head taller than me, shoulders and arms sealed in glossy shell. Every step makes their plates grind together.
One fox spirit kicks aside a shard of pottery. A draught snakes through the passage. My nose prickles.
I pinch it shut.
No sneezing. If I sneeze now, we can probably skip introductions.
The fox spirit stops.
Its muzzle lifts towards the bottom of the slope.
‘What?’ asks the other.
‘There's a smell.’
‘Wasn't me.’
The first fox spirit clicks several times. Two black-carapaced soldiers drag a transparent crystal petal up the slope between them. It's wider than a mattress and leaves a white scar across the stone.
‘Take the loose pieces first,’ the fox spirit says. ‘We clear the path before we touch the ones inside.’
Grandfather Moon sent me to find Zuobituo. These things are looking for her too.
At least I'm in the right place.
Just late.
I flatten myself against the wall. Air brushes my right hand, then slips towards them.
Brilliant.
I wait for the soldiers to pass, then flick a pebble across the slope. It strikes stone—tik—and skips twice.
Both fox spirits turn. The first lifts one paw and makes a sharp string of clicks. Two soldiers peel away at once and march towards the sound.
While their backs are turned, I slide out of the recess and head down.
The slope doesn't end in a chamber.
It ends in more ways to get lost.
The walls fall away beyond the corner. I catch a stone rail. Another gallery lies beneath my feet, another across from me. Violet light leaks through door after door until pillars swallow the view. Above, the balconies keep climbing.
A broad ramp descends on the right. A narrow stair hides to the left. I've turned only one corner. There's still no end to that enormous wall.
The fox spirit sniffs again.
Wind from the breach tugs my jacket towards the ramp. The narrow stair sits behind a thickness of wall. I hunch my shoulders, slip down it and don't stop until I reach the level below.
In the glow along the floor, I catch fragments of carving: a hand reaching from a flower; the lower half of a robed figure, the rest vanishing above the light.
Clicks sound behind me.
Armour scrapes stone. That pebble didn't fool them for long.
Cold air breathes through a half-open pair of doors.
I squeeze through.
The space opens around me. Two broad paths cross at the centre, dividing rows of transparent chrysanthemums into four vast beds. Every flower stands taller than I do. There are doors to either side and another straight ahead, barely visible in the dark.
I cup my hand over the phone torch and let only a blade of white escape.
A figure stands inside the nearest flower. Its face is made of metal chrysanthemum petals folded one over another. A translucent frame covers its limbs.
There is another beside it.
And another.
My beam reaches a dozen flowers or so. Beyond that, the rows fade into pale after-images. No end to the left. No end to the right.
‘Zuobituo.’
I breathe the four characters carved into the flower's base.
This one is Zuobituo. That one is Zuobituo. This entire impossible hall is Zuobituo.
Grandfather Moon told me to find ‘her’. He forgot to mention there might be a whole city's worth of her.
Footsteps draw closer.
I switch off the torch, memorise the door on my left and circle behind the nearest crystal chrysanthemum. Cold air threads through its petals towards the doorway I used.
The fox spirit's nose is over there.
I move deeper between the rows.
The fox spirit stops at the entrance.
‘The scent ends here.’
‘It's all old dust.’
‘Not dust.’
It comes inside.
I edge behind the flower bases. Fine lines run through each transparent petal, rising from the plinth and gathering at a narrow-rimmed circle on the crown of the metal chrysanthemum head.
A button.
Or a very efficient way to tell everyone where I am.
Remember it. Don't touch it.
The clicking starts again.
One black-carapaced soldier passes between the rows. Its dark face shines like fired pottery; two hard pincers open and close beside its mouth. I hold my breath until it turns. Another guards the door. Every time they start or stop, a pattern of clicks comes first.
Long. Short. Twice. Pause.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Three different clicks make one soldier halt and step back.
I understand some of it.
A very small some.
‘Click. Click-click.’
The nearest soldier jolts. Its left leg rises. Then its right. Apparently standing has become too complicated, because the entire thing drops to one knee with a crash.
Both fox spirits whirl round.
I crouch behind the crystal flower, tongue still pressed to my palate. That sounded exactly right. I must have put the punctuation in the wrong place.
The first fox spirit clicks twice. The soldier stands and moves left.
Oh.
I wait until it reaches the other fox spirit, then send the same sound up towards the high roof.
Click, click.
The soldier spins and scoops the fox spirit into both rigid arms. It shrieks. Every hair on its tail stands out.
‘What did you tell it to do?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Put me down!’
The first fox spirit leaps at the soldier. The second hits the ground and launches itself straight back. Two balls of fur roll across the stone, their insults ricocheting down several galleries and returning from somewhere else. I bite my sleeve to keep the laugh in.
This works.
This actually works.
I try three more clicks. The soldier charges after them and flattens both with one swing.
‘Stop! Make it stop!’
‘Let go of my tail first!’
‘I'm not doing this!’
I shift behind the next flower base. The movements are joining together now. Smooth. Easy.
The fox spirits stop fighting.
‘Wait.’ One of them pants. ‘I gave it two commands.’
The other slowly raises its muzzle.
The wind at my back is blowing straight towards it.
‘Rock Guai!’ it shouts into the dark beyond the glow. ‘In here!’
Far away, something goes boom.
The floor trembles beneath my palm.
I run.
The fox spirit clicks an order. Black-carapaced soldiers fill the way back, shadow after shadow across the gallery entrance. I retreat between the chrysanthemums and race for the left-hand door I memorised.
The next boom comes from the other side of it.
A stone hand reaches through. Its knuckles shear fragments from the frame. A shoulder follows, green with moss and broad as a cliff face. A small pine growing from its head rakes the lintel and sheds needles across the floor.
The Rock Guai ducks and forces itself into the hall.
It doesn't wait for another order. Eyes buried in the cracks of its face sweep over the fallen fox spirits, stop at the fragments I disturbed beside the flowers, then follow my footprints.
‘Click. Click-click.’
I send the nearest soldiers at it.
The Rock Guai turns towards them.
Slowly. Shoulder first. Head second.
I sprint past its left side.
Ten steps later, its shadow sweeps over me again. The Rock Guai flings the soldiers away like loose tiles. It wastes one glance on them and turns back.
Great. It has a brain. My favourite kind of monster.
I dive through the side door and round the wall into a narrow stair. A stone hand follows, jams at the entrance and showers my back with grit.
I run down with my arms over my head. Carapace plates clatter after me, one soldier after another.
The stair spills into a gallery. I charge through the nearest doors.
Another cross-shaped path. Another four beds of crystal flowers. I barely set foot on the central aisle before two black-carapaced soldiers enter through the opposite door.
Click, click.
They stop and hop backwards. Four clicks answer from the fox spirit behind me. Their feet rise again.
A boom rolls along the gallery at my back.
The Rock Guai made it down too.
I retreat among the flowers and circle towards a side door. The frame comes into view.
So does an insect mouth.
The doors behind me thunder.
The Rock Guai squeezes through, its shoulder clipping the edge of a flower bed as it turns. A crystal plinth splits. A sheet of transparent shards pitches across the passage beside me.
I snatch my foot back. The way I could have taken is all jagged edges now.
Carapaces scrape closer from both sides. The Rock Guai reaches down the central aisle. I scramble onto the cracked plinth, my rucksack shrieking against a crystal petal.
Cold, transparent petals press against my back.
Inside them, the metal chrysanthemum face hangs bowed. Every fine line gathers at the same circle on its crown.
The button.
Grandfather Moon sent me to find her.
The Rock Guai steps onto the broken plinth. More crystal snaps beneath its foot.
I grab the intact flower behind me and haul myself up. My shoes skid. My knee smashes into the base hard enough to bleach my vision. I hook one leg over the break and climb.
‘There!’ the fox spirit shouts. ‘Get him!’
The soldiers close through the rows. One reaches for my shoe.
I drag myself onto the outside of the chrysanthemum and hang there. The circle sits directly above the metal face, buried under a layer of dust.
I slap my palm over it.
Dust bursts into the air. There is a seam underneath.
The Rock Guai comes closer.
I press the circle with my thumb.
Nothing.
‘Please.’
I put both hands on it and throw my whole weight down.
Click.
The circle sinks.
The crystal chrysanthemum loosens around me. Its outer petals withdraw one after another, spilling dust from seams that haven't moved in—who knows how long? It pours over my hair and face.
The figure inside does not move.
No new light. No sound.
The Rock Guai's shadow swallows the plinth.
I tumble from the opening flower and cling to its lowest petal.
This is the path Grandfather Moon gave me.
It's the last one I have.
‘Zuobituo!’
My voice flies into the unseen roof and returns through row after row of sleeping figures.
No answer.
The Rock Guai lifts one hand.
My fingers tighten around the cold petal.
‘If you can hear me—please, help me!’
The stone fist falls.
I shut my eyes.
BOOM—
Air tears at my hair. Stone chips sting my cheek. Nothing hits me.
I open my eyes.
A hand in glass-like armour has caught the Rock Guai's fist.
The metal chrysanthemum face is raised. Violet-gold light burns through the depths between its layered petals.
She stands between us.
‘Princess, you have returned. Who needs saving this time?’
Princess?
Me?
The Rock Guai's arm is still bearing down against her palm. Between the flower beds on either side, every black-carapaced soldier turns towards us.