SHE DISLIKED when they transformed into spiders. When she was a spider, her sight dimmed and everything became shapes of smoke. But she saw well enough to follow Daji. Even in the shadows, the white spider seemed to glow. One of Daji’s nine translucent legs brushed against her, and she felt the pain of a slapped face. Daji was irritated they had failed so many times. How many times had they done this? How many years, only to be thwarted?
The white spider tapped a leg on the floor impatiently, and she knew the message behind the flashing eyes. Get the right girl, the eyes said. Daji found the other girl an infuriating nuisance, always in the way and always somehow stopping them with her clomping feet or sudden movements. “Obviously,” Daji had said, “she is not the one we want. That clumsy calf could never save the Emperor. We want the other one.”
So it was the other one they crept toward. The girl that smelled of embroidery threads and woven cloth. The one with clean, half-moon fingernails and smooth hair that glistened almost as much as the poison dripping from their spider fangs. They pushed against the floor and moved out of the shadows. Crawling. Watching. Crawling. Unnoticed, they stole across the floor and up the leg of the table. Then, Daji’s spider legs, like the craggy petals of a white chrysanthemum, disappeared into the folds of the girl’s dress. They were closer than they had ever gotten before. And getting closer.
Then, the white spider leapt from the sleeve onto the girl’s hand—the skin as soft and delicate as a freshly steamed dumpling. The girl gasped, but it was too late. Daji had already stabbed her needle fangs deep into flesh. At last, said the glint in the beady eyes. The girl screamed.
The door flew open. The other girl, the one that smelled of horse and chicken feathers, rushed in. “What happened?” she called out. “Xiu! What’s wrong?”
“The nine-legged spider!” the stricken girl said, grasping her sister’s strong arms. “The spider! It bit me! Oh, Mulan!”
HUA MULAN felt Black Wind’s mane whip her face as she pressed the horse to run faster. The man who sat behind her was tall but did not seem heavy, for Black Wind quickened his stride with ease. Still, Mulan worried. Faster, she thought. We need to go faster.
She urged the horse through a field, a shortcut that only she knew, while the dust Black Wind’s hooves kicked up behind them rose like smoke. They galloped up the slope, the sun-tipped stalks stretching on either side of her as terraced rice paddies and farmlands below came into view.
This would be faster than following the road, she knew. But she also knew that if Ma or any of the villagers saw her, they would shake their heads with annoyance. Mulan always seemed to veer off the road.
But Mulan could not forget the look on Old Auntie Ho’s face. When Auntie Ho had seen Mulan’s sister, her wrinkles had frozen as if carved of wood, and Mulan felt a dread come upon her. Xiu was as pale as the moon and as hot as fire, and she lay motionless with eyes that could no longer open.
“Mulan,” Auntie Ho had said, the worry clear in her voice, “your sister needs more help than I can give. In the Lu Family Village, there is a visiting healer. Take your horse and get him. If you go now, you will be back before dark. Go now. Quickly!”
Her parents had sensed the urgency, quickly waving Mulan off. Her mother had not even frowned at the reference to Mulan’s skill at riding. Just before, Ma had been chiding her for riding Black Wind so often. “You try the patience of an Immortal! What girl rides a horse all the time?” Ma had scolded, as Mulan flushed with shame. “And it’s given you wind-cold sickness. You can’t even breathe out of your nose anymore.”
Maybe this healer will be able to clear my nose, too, Mulan thought. But she knew she was only trying to distract herself from thinking about Xiu. How Xiu’s eyes, so full of panic and fear, had dulled to be as unseeing as stones and how her hands had fluttered and fallen to stillness, like the petals of a dying magnolia flower. It was only a spider bite, Mulan thought. She had teased Xiu hundreds of times about spiders. She had joked about spiders in her hair, spiders in her teacup—with Xiu screaming as if the mere thought of a spider would kill her. But a spider bite couldn’t…Xiu couldn’t…
Mulan leaned forward. “Faster, Black Wind,” she murmured into the horse’s ear. They finally clambered onto the road, thundering past the layers of rice paddies. The plants swayed in their wake, waving thin leaves in greeting as if compensating for the farmers who had already left for their dinners. Mulan squinted in the early evening light, hoping to see her home in the distance.
At least the healer had been easy to find. The Lu villagers had immediately pointed her to the right home, and when she had burst in, she had gasped in surprise as well as exertion. Mulan was used to Auntie Ho with her bent back and dappled skin; she had been expecting another wizened, plain-clothed healer. But while this healer had a silver beard, he wore a lord’s robe of brilliant red trimmed with blue. His eyes were strange, unusually light-colored. They were amber with pupils that burned like two black coals, which Mulan found disconcerting yet also oddly familiar. He had stood as if expecting her, his yellow bag already looped across his chest.
“My…my…sister…” Mulan had stuttered, “bitten by a spider…”
In return, he had given her a long, hard stare before simply nodding. “Let’s go,” he said.
And, finally, they were almost there. Now, she could see her village tulou, the large, round community building, bathed in the golden glow of the dipping sun. The villagers must have been watching for her, for the doors of the tulou were already opening. She was home. Mulan felt a surge of gratitude and warmth as they raced through.
Neighbors stared out from their windows and stood at their doors, and she could see the worry etched on all their faces even as they held up their hands in greeting. Big Wan, the village blacksmith, met Mulan at her door.
“I’ll take Black Wind out for you,” he said. Big Wan was so large that Mulan could meet his gaze even while sitting on the horse. So when she saw that his face held not only concern but sadness, Mulan felt herself turn cold.
The healer slid down from the horse behind her and his feet hit the earth like a heavy weight. “Is Xiu…” Mulan choked on her words. “Is she…is she worse?”
Instead of answering, Big Wan gently took Black Wind’s reins out of Mulan’s trembling hands and helped her off the horse. “Better go in,” he said. “They’re waiting.”
Mulan looked at the door and windows, closed and shuttered as if the house had been forsaken. Mulan gulped. She was home.
“WE’RE HERE!” Mulan cried out as she pushed open the door and stepped over the entryway. Her congested nose muffled her voice, but it sounded loud in the still house. She blinked to adjust to the darkness, holding the door open so that the light from the sinking sun cascaded over the floor like a translucent banner. “Here’s…um”—Mulan realized that she did not even know her companion’s name—“the Healer!”
He entered and scowled at the scene that greeted him, but somehow Mulan knew his anger was not for them. They had created a makeshift bed for Xiu and she lay as still upon it as if she were a clay figurine. Mulan’s eyes burned with tears when she saw that an embroidered cloth rabbit hung from a pole leaning on a nearby wall. In desperation, Old Auntie Ho must have fallen to old superstitions and dangled Xiu’s favorite baby toy over her in hopes of luring her wandering spirit.