She sat frozen, her arm still suspended in the air, as she gawked. Butterflies! All the bees had turned into butterflies!
For a moment, they hovered. Their fragile wings flapped a trembling, multicolored cloud around Mulan as she continued to gape like a confused chicken. “Uh…” Mulan said, her head turning back and forth in confusion. She raised her hand in a tentative gesture. “Shoo?”
It was more a question then a command, but the butterflies immediately scattered. They flew up into the clear blue sky, adorning the heavens like fluttering flowers.
Mulan slipped off the horse in a daze. She stared up in disbelief at the withdrawing wave of butterflies, following them blindly across the field. Each butterfly was so delicate that even a gentle breeze blew it off course, yet it had only been a breath of time since they had been a vicious, killing swarm. It had only been moments before that she had been fleeing them for her life.
Black Wind nuzzled Mulan’s shoulder and she gently patted his face. The Rabbit thrust his head over the other side of Mulan’s neck, his nose twitching as he peered up at the departing insects. The vivid butterflies became specks of color in the sky as the Rabbit’s pink, naked leg hung below Mulan’s elbow.
“Well done,” the Rabbit said, as she placed him on the ground. And, suddenly, Mulan found herself smiling with the warm glow of pride.
THEY WATCHED until the last of the butterflies disappeared and the sky, clear and still, reached unblemished to the Heavens. “That’s finished,” the Rabbit said, with a satisfied grunt. “If only freeing all her servants were so easy.”
Mulan nodded, but she barely heard him. She was too distracted by his leg. With the hair missing, the Rabbit’s bare leg was pale pink, like the skin of a newborn baby. It would have been a funny sight, this soft, naked leg poking out from all of the Rabbit’s dignified silver hair, except for the four stab wounds that marred the smooth skin. The scars were deep pink—like stains from a fruit—but a syrup-like amber liquid trickled from them.
Mulan could not stop staring. Even as she shuffled back to Black Wind, her eyes kept returning to the Rabbit’s leg. The puncture marks. The seeping, golden-colored ooze. The Rabbit’s wounds were just like Xiu’s! There were four of them and larger, but they were the same kind of marks, the same kind of blistering. Xiu was dying of poison…did that mean… ? Being an Immortal only means you are immune to sickness and aging, the Rabbit had said. We can be killed by blade or poison.
“OW!” Mulan yelped. A sharp, stabbing pain burst from her toe, and she hopped and squawked as if being burned by a hot coal. She dropped to the faded grass and grabbed at the silver glinting from her foot. As she yanked it out, the stinging stopped. Between her fingers was a delicate needle, obviously a stray that had missed a bee. She shook her head in chagrin. She was always such a clumsy egg, like the time she’d been playing with the boys and kicked the ball so hard that it flew past them and broke the shrine statue…again.
Black Wind whinnied as if laughing, and the Rabbit watched with amusement.
“The mighty warrior, Mulan,” the Rabbit said, in a tone of mock pageantry, “felled by a needle.”
Mulan snickered. “More like the great weakling,” she said, and then, as his words took shape in her mind, she began to hoot with laughter. “Me, a mighty warrior!”
The Rabbit only smiled, but his eyes twinkled as if he were silently laughing at a private joke. Mulan shook her head again and grimaced at the needle, even though the disgust was more for herself.
“Don’t worry,” the Rabbit said, with another smile. “It won’t kill you.”
Mulan poked the needle into the earth and then looked at the Rabbit. “But will the White Fox kill you?” she asked.
The Rabbit looked up in surprise. He met Mulan’s worried eyes, and then slowly began to hop over to her.
Mulan nodded toward his wounded leg as he hopped. “Those are just like Xiu’s,” she said almost accusingly, as if he had argued with her. “You’ve been poisoned by the White Fox, too, haven’t you?”
The Rabbit sat down next to her, the crisp grass making a crunching noise despite being withered.
“Yes,” he said. “The White Fox injured me with hupo poison.”
“Are you dying from it, as well?” Mulan demanded.
“Yes,” the Rabbit said simply.
Of course he was, Mulan realized. He was always so tired and sleepy as they traveled. Now, as she looked at him, she could see he was smaller than when they had first met. Smaller, paler, and slower.
“It’s not a coincidence that it is now that we are running into trouble on our journey,” the Rabbit said. “My power has been diminishing. I can no longer shield us from the White Fox.”
“You think she sent the bees?” Mulan asked.
“Of course,” the Rabbit said, “and the storm, too. As I said, my powers are no longer strong enough to protect or assist us.”
So he had been affecting things, Mulan thought, remembering the days of easy riding and fair weather.
“How much time…will you be able… ?” Mulan stumbled, as there didn’t seem to be a proper way to ask your companion when he would die.
“I am stronger than your sister,” the Rabbit said, “but I took in more poison. It seems I have until the new moon as well. The White Fox is poetically skilled with her poison.”
“But if you can make the medicine for Xiu,” Mulan said, jumping up, “you can make it for yourself as well. You can save Xiu and yourself.”
“Yes,” the Rabbit said. “I admit, that thought did cross my mind.”
“Then we should keep going,” Mulan said. She whistled for Black Wind, who had wandered off for fresher pastures. “You need that flower from the Queen Mother’s garden, too.”
“The flower from the Queen Mother’s garden and the grass from Green Island,” the Rabbit reminded her. “Your sister and I need both.”
Mulan nodded as she hoisted the Rabbit into the carrier on her back. She was eager to continue, but a pang of uneasiness filled her. Those plants won’t work, Daji had said. What if Daji was right?
“HOW DARE they?” Daji sputtered, her eyes blazing with fury. “The Rabbit and…that…that…girl… ! I cannot believe that little human-faced, beast-hearted witch!”
Xianniang said nothing, knowing better than to point out the self-blindness of Daji’s insult.
“They destroyed them all!” Daji fumed. “All my bees! All of them!”
“The bees were not really destroyed,” Xianniang pointed out, and then immediately regretted it. That was not something Daji would want clarified.
“They are completely useless to me now!” Daji stormed. “They might as well have been destroyed! I can’t believe it! My bees! I cultivated them for centuries!”
Longer than you cultivated me, Xianniang thought. She suspected that her own destruction would cause Daji less anger than that of the bees.
“The Rabbit must not be as sick as I thought he was.” Daji continued to seethe. “He must be healthy for his power to still be so strong.…”