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Eleven

"Tell me again what he looked like, this man upon the harbor wall?" the badger-teakettle said in its inhuman voice. To Inari, the badger sounded as earth would if it could talk: deep and thick and slow. The badger was sitting on the bed beside Inari, its paws folded and its long claws meshed. Its eyes appeared to be closed, but she could see a black gleam beneath the wrinkled lids.

"Tall. Not young. I think his hair was gray, but I sometimes find it difficult to judge, in this light of Earth. A hard face, like something found on the side of a tomb, with eyebrows like a bar. A long coat, such as demons wear. A sword."

The badger ducked its head and said, "I do not know such a person." The reproof was plain.

"I did not imagine him," Inari snapped. "He was real and he was there, watching me."

"Perhaps your husband has assigned a guardian."

"He didn't look like a policeman."

The badger's eyes opened wide, catching the candlelight so that the dark irises contained a tiny, perfect flame.

"Hell, then. Kindred."

"He did not feel like kin to me. He smelled human, even at such a distance. And why would my family use a human to spy upon me?"

"I don't know," the badger admitted. There was a short, contemplative pause. "And if it is your kin, what will you do?"

"I won't go back."

"I know you will not go back, Inari. I asked you what you would do." The badger's eyes were like polished iron and there was no pity in them. Animals do not feel pity, and neither do spirits, thought Inari, it is a failing of humankind, and sometimes of my own.

"Well," she said reluctantly. "I won't put Chen Wei in danger."

"He is already in danger, and was so from the day you first set eyes upon one another. If you left him, and vanished to the furthest depths of the storm-breeding ocean, or to the highest winter peak of the Zhai Fu Lo, it would make no difference. If they chose to do so, the wu'ei could still hunt him down."

"I know," Inari whispered. She had always known that this day would come: the day on which she had to face the truth. She wanted to pretend that the man she had seen on the harbor wall was no one of importance, and perhaps it was true, but it still didn't matter. The consequences of her actions were inescapable. "I could not have done otherwise," she said. "You know what I am. Demons cannot help but use, however greatly they may love. And I could not face marriage to—to that person."

"Yes, Dao Yi, your betrothed," the badger said. "We have heard nothing from him since the day you left Hell."

"My family paid him the dowry," Inari said, and even to her own ears her voice sounded hollow and unconvincing. "That was what Dao Yi wanted, after all: not me."

"You know better than that," the badger said.

Inari rose and paced to the window. It was now quite dark. She could see her own image reflected in the candlelight on the glass: a pale, pointed face, and eyes like wells of blood. She turned this way and that, trying to imagine herself human, as if she wished hard enough, transformation would come. Change flickered in the reflection beyond her shoulder: the badger, a teakettle once more, in silent rejection of all that she was trying to pretend.

 

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Framed