When no more syrup dripped from the bottle, Mulan stared at the ground, the black splotches surrounding her. What would have happened if she had opened that jar earlier? What would have happened if she had eaten the honey? Mulan shivered.
Another cool breeze brushed her face, and there was a soft thumping noise behind her. When Mulan turned around she saw the Rabbit looking at her. How long had he been watching? She felt the shame fall on her like a heavy boulder. What was he thinking? Did he wonder why she had a bottle of poison? Could he tell she had been with the White Fox? Would he ever trust her again?
The Rabbit’s head cocked to one side and his nose twitched as his eyes went from the bottle in Mulan’s hand to the scorched earth in front of her and then to her face. He looked up into her eyes, and his brow furrowed as if he was confused.
“Your face is clean,” he said.
“YOU COULD not have told me anything while you possessed that honey,” the Rabbit told Mulan. “While you held it, the White Fox was able to keep you from talking about her. It’s an old trick—she was ‘sticking your lips together’ to keep you from speaking unless she wanted you to.”
“That’s why it was always so hard to talk when I was with her!” Mulan exclaimed. It had been a great relief to finally tell the Rabbit everything. As they ate their morning meal, Mulan described all her encounters with the White Fox—from receiving the honey to last night’s turbulent scene. “But wasn’t it poison?”
“It was definitely poison,” the Rabbit said, crunching on a date. “If you had eaten it, yes, it would have killed you eventually. But before it did, not only would you not have been able to speak unless the White Fox wanted you to, you also would have had to do her bidding.”
“Do you think that is what happened to the Unwanted Girl?” Mulan asked, aghast.
The Rabbit stopped midchew and his ears drooped. “I have no doubt,” he said.
Mulan looked down in chagrin. A sadness always came over the Rabbit when she mentioned the Unwanted Girl, and, remembering those two glinting eyes staring at her in the darkness, she could understand why. How different would that girl’s life have been if she had not become the Red Fox?
“And what about the peach that she wanted me to pick?” Mulan said. “Is that poison, too?”
“Oh, no,” the Rabbit said. “That peach is the Queen Mother’s prized Fruit of Longevity. If you eat it, it will fix your ailments and give you up to six thousand years of life—more or less.”
“So Daji was right when she said the peach could save Xiu?” Mulan asked.
“The peach would keep Xiu alive,” the Rabbit said slowly, and then looked directly into Mulan’s eyes. “But at great cost.”
The Rabbit’s words fell like stones in water, and he did not offer more. But he didn’t need to. Just from the way he spoke, Mulan’s heart chilled.
“Daji had it all planned out, then,” Mulan said.
“Yes.” The Rabbit nodded absently. He stared out into the sky, lost in reverie. “Interesting that she still calls herself Daji. I misjudged her.”
“What do you mean?” Mulan asked.
“She must have, in her own way, cared about the emperor,” the Rabbit said. “I thought she only wanted to control him.”
“She controlled the Emperor?” Mulan said, her eyes bulging.
“Not this one,” the Rabbit said quickly. “The emperor of the last dynasty. She’s the one who really caused its downfall.”
“She caused its downfall?” Mulan asked. “How?”
The White Fox has used many names and taken many forms. Her favorite form is that of a beautiful woman. As the centuries have passed, she has perfected her art and is able to make herself into a creature of such surpassing beauty and charm that few are able to resist her.
The last emperor of the previous dynasty, Emperor Zhou, was not one of those few. He succumbed to her immediately and with unmatched passion. As soon as he saw her, he made Daji his royal companion and lavished gifts upon her, sparing nothing to please her and indulge her whims.
The fastest horses were whipped to exhaustion weekly, racing back and forth from the southern part of the kingdom just to fetch fresh, ripe fruit for her. The fuel in the charcoal heaters was broken into pieces and mixed with costly honey to sweeten the smell that offended her delicate nose. And, because Daji enjoyed the sound of silk ripping, rooms were filled with the finest handwrought silk just for her to tear.
However, this was just a tiny drop of Daji’s exorbitant demands. The peasants of four hundred villages were forced into slavery to build her an enormous jewel- and jade-studded palace with a resplendent garden, complete with a hand-dug lake of wine. Servants hung snacks of roasted meat from the branches along that lake just for Daji to pluck and eat while she passed the time upon her three-story boat of gold and marble. And one day, when a leaf fell from a tree in front of her, she insisted that it—and any other fallen leaves—be replaced on its branch by a leaf made of silk. She quickly bankrupted the kingdom.
But it was not just her whims and excess that brought about the downfall of Emperor Zhou; it was also her cruelty. Soon she grew bored of boating on wine and picking delicacies and searched for other entertainment. When she heard that a true sage would have seven holes in his heart, she had all the wisest men of the kingdom killed and their hearts brought to her so she could see. When she saw an ant accidentally cooked after it fell into a frying pan, she had the emperor devise a similar execution for his enemies, delighting in their torture. But she was at her most heartless when she developed the notion to see a battle. Not a theatrical fight, nor one with a few soldiers, no. Daji wanted to see a battle in a real war with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
So, to please her, Emperor Zhou declared war on a neighboring kingdom. Even though the battle had already begun when she arrived, Emperor Zhou forced his men to stop combat to find a good vantage point for Daji. He commanded his soldiers to build a road up to a cliff’s ledge, and only after Daji was lounging on that ledge in a rosewood chair, comfortably fanned by her handmaid and dining on fruits, did he allow them to continue the fight. Daji watched the carnage below, thrilled, but eventually even the brutal butchery became tiresome to her and she wished to return home. So even though his soldiers were winning, the emperor halted his troops midbattle and retreated.
All were aghast at the meaningless death of so many men. So when a few days later, Daji declared she wanted to see another battle, only bigger and bloodier, the kingdom revolted. A new emperor was declared and troops of all regions rallied to follow him, not to march to battle, but to attack their own capital. The suffering commoners amassed at the city gates, eager to join the rebelling soldiers. As they stormed the palace, the Imperial Guard turned to fight with them, only to see there was no opposition. All demanded the end of this callous reign of blood and extravagance. Trapped and without any supporters, Zhou was easily killed by the new emperor’s son, and Daji, with the help of her handmaid, hanged herself.
Or, at least, pretended to hang herself. A day later, when Daji’s body was retrieved for burial, they found, instead of a body, a stalk of bamboo. The White Fox, leaving behind her usual trail of blood and destruction, had escaped again.