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Lan’s foolish heart leapt into her throat, though reason told her it couldn’t have belonged to him. It had been three days since her parents had told her of his departure, and he was surely long gone by now. But the boat looked so familiar...
She chewed on her lip. She could send servants to investigate, but she would feel silly for disturbing the whole household if the boat turned out to belong to some passerby. And if she went herself, and if itwasBao’s boat, she might be able to apologize to him at last.
Lan pulled on slippers and a yellow silk robe and tiptoed downstairs, letting herself out through the front gate. She glanced back at the house, but all of the windows were dark. With any luck, she could find Bao, say what she needed to say, and return without anyone noticing. She both hoped for and dreaded the meeting, knowing he must still be angry, but she couldn’t let him go again without knowing how sorry she felt.
The grass tickled her feet as she hurried down the hill. The boat wasjust far enough out that she had to get into the water up to her ankles and pull it in. It was made of cheap but sturdy gray-brown wood, with two planks for seats and a pair of oars balanced on either side. Lan ran her fingers over the edge, wondering how to tell if it belonged to Bao, when the moon emerged from behind a cloud and illuminated the interior of the boat.
Beneath the seat lay a crudely carved flute. Lan picked it up eagerly. It was light as a feather, with irregularly spaced holes and a mouthpiece that had been worn down over time, but the bamboo was shiny from frequent cleaning. She felt sure now that the boat was Bao’s, but she couldn’t fathom why he had abandoned it... until a sudden terrifying thought occurred to her.
Her eyes fell upon the river. She felt cold all over at the thought of Bao having done anything to hurt himself because ofher. A sob of panic built in her chest. She struggled to calm down, but still a few hot tears slipped from her face and onto the flute in her trembling hands.
“Why are you crying?”
Lan shrieked as Bao appeared in front of her. “You’re alive!” she cried, the joy and relief in her voice so palpable as to be unladylike, but she couldn’t have cared less in the moment. “Thank the gods you’re all right! I was so worried. I thought...”
He didn’t respond or look at her. Instead, he trained his gaze somewhere over the top of her head, and her gut clenched at the thought that this time, it wasn’t out of shyness, but anger.
She took a tentative step toward him. There was something different about him—but then Bao had always been different from the men she knew. Where her father and brothers were small and stocky, Bao was lean and lanky, towering over everyone else. His skin, too, was darker and his hair longer, and she felt an irrational impulse to brush it out of his eyesand feel the softness of it in her fingers. She remembered, with sudden clarity, how she had stumbled against him at tea and grasped his arm for balance. She had never touched any man like that before.
Lan’s cheeks burned at the memory. She gazed up at him, suddenly shy. “I wanted to find you the other day, but my parents said you had left town.”
“Why, when you had made it clear you didn’t want to see me ever again?” Though Bao’s words seemed bitter, he spoke in a strained, fearful voice. Any apology Lan had intended to make died in her throat at the sight of the sheer terror in his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He swallowed hard. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.” She studied him. There was definitely something strange about his appearance tonight—the outline of his body seemed to shimmer in the darkness, but perhaps it was a trick of the moonlight. “Maybe I can help you.”
He looked around nervously, his shoulders wavering like smoke. “How on earth did I end up backhere, of all places? I thought she was sending me south.”
“Who?” Lan asked, baffled.
Bao met her eyes at last, almost defiantly. “The river witch.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything she might regret. She knew he had to be mocking her out of revenge, and yet his expression was as serious as death. Perhaps he had fallen out of his boat and had hit his head.
“Iknewyou wouldn’t believe me,” he said, shaking his head in frustration despite her tactful silence. “To haveyouof all people find me in this condition—”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You didn’t have to. You think I’m mad. It’s written all over your face!”
“Just tell me what happened.”
Bao clenched his jaw. “I was going south to start a new life. I half joked to a friend that I was going to find the river witch, so she could erase all of my memories of...” He didn’t finish the sentence. “I didn’t even believe in her, not completely. I thought she was only a folktale. But somehow my boat took me to her and she cast an enchantment on me.”
“The river witch cast a spell on you,” Lan said carefully. She wondered if she would have time to call someone from the house to help her. Clearly, Bao had not returned in his right mind. But he was watching her, so she kept her face neutral and asked, “Why? Did she do it for pure enjoyment, as Bà n?i used to say whenever she told me that story?”
“She claimed to be my aunt, and she knew about a birthmark I have.” Bao lifted one hand to his shoulder and winced, then looked down at his palm, where Lan saw a long, shallow cut. “She claimed that my mother had stolen my father from her, and she wanted to take revenge by enchanting me. She shrank me somehow, made me filmy like smoke. I fell insidethat.”
Lan followed his gaze to the flute in her hands.
“And then she commanded my boat to return to where it had come from.” He drew his thick brows together, his face dawning with understanding. “That’swhy I’m here! She accused me of luring her home on behalf of my mother—she thought I would go back to the Gray City. But this was my home. You picked up the flute and I turned back into myself.”
He shuddered, and he looked so intensely frightened that Lan couldn’t help believing him. At least, she believed thathebelieved what he was telling her. “All right,” she said, trying to keep him calm. “Don’t worry. We can figure this out.”
“What is there to figure out?” Bao’s voice rose slightly with hysteria. “The spell must be broken before the next full moon, or I’ll be forever trapped inside the flute. She said I can’t be apart from it, and I will lose my physical form unless someone I love touches me. But that will tie them to the enchantment, too. And to fix it all, they must declare their love for me.”
