The Choice

You are thinking too long, old Mr. Hu said, and there was almost kindness in it. A young man should not have to choose between his life and a house in the rain. Go back to your uncle's school. We will manage, as foxes have always managed, or we will not, and either way it is not your debt.

I have a question, Feng said. And he surprised himself by how steady his voice was. When the hunter comes, will he come to this house, or will he come for the girl first?

Old Mr. Hu was quiet for a moment. He will come for the girl, he said. The line runs through her now. I am old, and I am not what I was. She is the one the charm will name, if he can.

Feng thought of the line she had completed for him, before he could. Her embarrassment, the way it had made her look her age. The green bird in the dream, the one that would not be frightened away from the sill.

Then I will stay, he said. And he said it the way you say a thing that has already decided itself, a thing that only needs to be spoken out loud.

Old Mr. Hu closed his eyes. You are a fool, he said, but he did not sound as though he blamed him. Sit down. I will tell you what you must do. The hunter comes at dusk on the night of the full moon. Until then, you must eat with us, and laugh with us, and be seen by us, so that the charm that names what we are cannot be certain what you are.

Through the rest of that week Feng learned the small strange life of the house. Where the wild jasmine grew that went into the wine. That Qingfeng could run up the steepest path without catching her breath, and would never admit it. And slowly he learned something else. He was happier than he had ever been.

Qingfeng herself said little about the choice. But on the eve of the full moon she came to him where he sat by the brazier. She did a thing she had never done: she took his hand. Her hand was warm. She did not look away.

You should not have done this, she said. But her fingers tightened on his. And she did not say it the way a woman says a thing she hopes he will argue with. She said it the way a woman says goodbye to a kindness she does not expect to survive.

Then let us hope, Feng said, that the hunter is as superstitious as every hunter is, and that he hesitates, one moment too long, before he raises his charm against a house where a human is sitting at the table.

She almost smiled. That is a scholar's hope, she said. But she kept his hand. Outside, the moon rose over the hills, fat and pale and terrible, and the door of the house stood open to the road.