Chapter Fourteen Kasu
As Kasu dived deeper into the theatre district, she passed teahouses heaving with demons.
She pulled Arun through the flowing crowd, careful they remained illuminated by the hanging lanterns at all times.
When the streets were this noisy, it was hard to tell what were shrieks of delight and what were screams of terror.
Musicians and jugglers, puppet masters and storytellers leaned down from teahouse balconies, clamouring to be heard.
“Little flower, dressed in red, blooming in obscurity.” A spider demon played a zither with two arms while her other hands beat the top of a small drum and dragged a bow against the strings of a violin. “The Song of Shusa’s Lover” was all the local musicians were playing lately.
“Plucked from the earth, the young man pinned her to his breast.
To work he took her, and to rest – never did they part,
Until a war did shake the land.
Little flower, dressed in red, left alone to wither and rot –
When the young man returned, he cast her aside
And into the mud she sank.”
“This is intense.” Arun’s gaze darted this way and that with every twang of the lute and every pluck of the zither. A ghost barged past them with a hoot of delight, carrying a demon’s head under one arm as he raced by.
“Ghosts and demons want to enjoy themselves from time to time as well.” Kasu avoided a stall at which a masked ghost invited onlookers to play a game of poisoned cups. The goal was to solve a series of riddles to figure out which of five cups was safe to drink. The trick was that none of them were.
“I thought festival days in Bakrute were chaotic. This is something else.” Arun gawked at the performers in their glittering costumes. Kasu wondered if he realized that the coloured streamers hanging from the teahouses were painted guts.
“We’re guests here, so try not to cause trouble.”
“Of course I won’t. I’m no brute who stabs first and asks questions later,” Arun grumbled.
Maybe not, but Kasu remembered how quick he had been to draw a sword on her in the shadow forest. Granted, Ruo had been trying to eat him at the time.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Ruo popped into the air next to Kasu, bumping against her legs.
“Kasuuu, you promised me snacks.”
Kasu glanced down at the cat. Neither she nor Arun had eaten all day. She needed to replenish her qi one way or another if she did not want to start losing her physical form.
Once the body starts to fade, next comes the forever death.
“Are you hungry?” She glanced at Arun. She was not sure how often a human would need to eat in the under-realm.
“Starving,” said Arun.
“Kasu! Eyeballs!” Ruo pointed both tails at a stall with several large, bubbling soup cauldrons.
Arun scrunched up his face and leaned over the pots. Eyes of various colours bobbed up and down in the soup like apples. “Are those … human eyeballs?”
“The little ones are the most delicious!” Ruo grinned.
“Don’t eat them,” said Kasu.
“I wasn’t going to.” Arun looked appalled that she would even suggest such a thing. “Actually, I was hoping for some roast duck. Grilled fish maybe. Perhaps with mangosteen pudding to finish.”
“What’s a mangosteen?” she asked.
“You’ve never had it before?” Arun looked at her aghast. “What about rambutan? Longan fruit? Dragon fruit?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She didn’t think he meant to needle her, yet his surprise pricked at her ego nevertheless. So what if she didn’t know what a mango-something was? She wasn’t some fancy prince who was served the world on a platter each and every day.
Arun used his hands to mime the shape of something slightly bigger than a tangerine. “Mangosteen is a fruit. It’s got a hard purple exterior, but when you open it there are these white segments inside that you can eat. It’s soft and sweet, and it tastes divine.”
He spoke about rambutan next, about the bright-red hairy shells hiding pearly fruit inside, about the pinkish-purple skin of dragon fruit, and yellow carambola that, when cut, formed the shape of stars.
The more he talked, the hungrier Kasu felt.
Hungry for all the sweet things she had never tasted, and hungry for all the things the world of the living could offer.
“I’ve never heard of those fruits before. The ones I know about are … are like cherries and pears and plums.”
She remembered a market stall – or maybe it was a travelling vendor – with crates full of dark fruit that cost as much as a fine bolt of silk. She remembered a hunger – maddening, all-encompassing, gnawing at her gut, making her chew at her own knuckles. She was always hungry, so hungry, so—
“Sounds like you were from the north, then, if those are the fruits you’re familiar with,” said Arun.
Kasu blinked. When had they started talking about directions? “Maybe. I do remember snow.”
“I’ve heard of snow, but I’ve never seen it. In Bakrute, it’s hot all the time. So hot that you can stand in the shade of a tree and still be covered in sweat after five minutes.”
Though Arun made it sound like a huge inconvenience, Kasu was almost jealous of the warmth of Arun’s kingdom. Almost. Jealousy was unbecoming and she would not dare indulge in it.
“Kasu, eyeballs,” Ruo persisted.
“Kasu, roast duck.” Arun tugged at her sleeve, in obvious mimicry, and beamed at her when she glared at him.
Kasu sucked in a deep breath. There were fifty-six Heavenly Principles about the importance of patience. She would not be bested by a pair of ungrateful little pests.
“What about your mother? Didn’t we come here for her?”
Arun’s smile slipped, and Kasu felt a pang of guilt. Before she could temper her previous comment with something softer, Arun turned away from the eyeball stand.
“You’re right. I’ll start asking around.”
“Wait. We shouldn’t split up,” Kasu called after him.
She bought Ruo a handful of eyeballs and vegetable skewers for herself and Arun.
She handed one to him, but the tension had returned to his face.
There was the same glimmering anger in his eyes she had noticed when they had first met.
Kasu did not want to admit it, but it frightened her.
It felt like he was about to run off and get himself killed at any moment.
“Why don’t we try a fortune teller? Perhaps they can point us in the right direction?” Kasu swallowed down her food as quickly as possible.
Arun was sceptical. “You have those in Ghost City?”
“Even the dead want to know their future.”
Kasu found a willowy lady squatting on the corner of one of the many winding streets.
Her dark hair was so long it pooled across the pavement and coiled around her bare feet like spools of rope.
An astral chart sat unfurled atop a small table in front of her.
To her right, incense wafted from a bronze turtle-shaped burner.
To her left, a bamboo cylinder stood upright, filled with cedarwood sticks.
Noticing Kasu’s gaze, the fortune teller raised a hand and ushered her over.
“We’re looking for someone. A woman named Sunan.” Arun planted his feet in front of the fortune teller.
The seer smiled and held out her hands. Her palms were covered in tattoos that crawled up her arms and vanished beneath the sleeves of her robe.
“Do you have something that belonged to her?”
Arun hesitated.
“The ball of star silk,” said Kasu.
“No! It’s mine now,” Ruo hissed.
Kasu squatted in front of the cat and scratched just behind their ears, over the spot she knew made Ruo melt into a puddle of limp muscle and fur. “If you let us borrow it, I’ll buy you some more eyeballs.”
Grudgingly, Ruo warped away in a wisp of smoke.
“They can teleport?” Arun asked, stunned.
“Only in open spaces and only to places they’ve been before,” said Kasu. “Don’t look so impressed. It’s a skill unique to Ruo and they’ll brag about it all day if they catch you looking like that.”
Arun quickly schooled his expression as, a moment later, Ruo reappeared with the ball of star silk gripped between their fangs. Like a petulant child told to share their toys, they spat it out at the fortune teller’s feet and stalked off with a huff.
The demon grabbed the ball and rubbed her hands over it.
“Ah, yes. Yes, I see now!”
“What do you see?” Arun leaned closer.
“The person you’re looking for is close. Very close.”
Kasu glanced at their surroundings. “How close?”
All she could see were other ghosts and demons. There was a three-legged crow lingering on the sea-green rooftop of an old teahouse and a pair of headless horses pulling carts along the road, but no one who looked like they might be from the heavens.
Her gaze brushed over tall, thin demons swaying like branches, over muscled demons carrying iron clubs and dressed in nothing more than loincloths, over a woman covered in snake-like scales and a masked demon with long, black hair and four arms that hung in a manner that reminded her of a praying mantis.
“Oh, hey, isn’t that the Sage of Ten Paces?” Ruo said just as the demon turned Kasu’s way.
Across opposite ends of the street, their eyes met.
“YOU! YOU’RE THE THIEF WHO STOLE MY MASK!”
Kasu was far too familiar with the red snarling face barrelling towards her.
The crowd parted like an ocean split in two. At first, Kasu thought they were trying to get out of the Sage’s way, but no – the crowd was splitting in a different direction.
A large white wolf tore along the busy street.
Where Ruo was nothing but darkness, this creature’s fur was a blinding white, like sunshine reflecting against the snow.
Its body was covered in eyes like cuts. Red pupils peered through the slits in its body.
As it came closer, Kasu felt every muscle in her body stiffen.
The creature was not a demon, but a curse.