Page 22 of The Scarlet Alchemist

They shut the door and left me in the dark, and I remembered the hands of the men scraping across my bare back, ripping away everything I’d ever wanted. Tears wet my pillow, so I pulled my blanket over my head and ignored Auntie So asking if I was going to open the shop. The idea of selling míngqì the rest of my life in that tiny store made me want to disappear.

I hugged my bag of stones to my chest and wondered what my father would think of me now. He’d been a great alchemist in the West, but his only child would be no one at all.

I lay there even after the sun grew too bright for sleeping and began to scorch my cheek, then hid my face under the blankets, because if I was to be a bride, I couldn’t get too tan.

The door slammed open.

I winced, but didn’t lift my face, even when someone tore my blanket away.

“Zilan,” Wenshu said, breathless. “Get up.”

“No thanks,” I said, determined to crush my face into my pillow.

“Zilan, we’re going to Chang’an,” Yufei said.

“I knew you would,” I said, too tired to even feign enthusiasm. A cruel part of me had hoped at least one of them had failed, just so I wouldn’t be alone.

Wenshu sighed, yanking my pillow out from under me, my forehead smacking the floor.

“Hey!” I said, sitting up. “What are you—”

“Not just me and Yufei,” he said. “All three of us.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

We filled our bags with lychee and oranges, the only cheap foods we didn’t need to cook. Then we split our gold between all three of our bags, with smaller satchels sewed into our undershirts and hats, loose coins tied into my braids and stuffed into our socks so that even if someone robbed us, they wouldn’t leave us with nothing. Yufei had suggested swallowing some of the coins whole for safekeeping, but Wenshu had shot her such a horrified look that I’d laughed and insisted she was joking before he could start yelling.

Wenshu had, unsurprisingly, ranked eleventh out of all the scholars in Lingnan, the southernmost district. Yufei had just made the cut at rank number forty-six, even though her raw score probably would have disqualified her if she’d tested in the North, but there weren’t many southern candidates who knew the Northern dialect well enough for the speaking exams they would face in Chang’an. When they’d checked the list of alchemists, they’d found my name second on the list. Nothùnxie, but Fan Zilan.

I’d run back to see it for myself, and sure enough, my flowery servant name had been written next to the number two. Part of me had been convinced it was someone else, but for once I was grateful for my name destined for nothingness, because at least it was unique. I thought of all the men who hadn’t passed, their burning shame when they told their parents they’d failed, their lifetime of expensive classes worth nothing at all. They’d thought I was just a joke when they’d seen me, but none of them were laughing now. For a brief, brilliant moment, I allowed myself to imagine life in Chang’an as a royal alchemist, able to practice alchemy without fear.

But that dream was still half a world away. After telling Auntie and Uncle, we started planning for our move in earnest.

The first chunk of our savings bought us two horses named Kumquat and Turmoil, who both seemed suspiciously old, but the merchant swore up and down that they could make it to Chang’an. We could have walked there in a month and a half, but our second-round exams were in four weeks, and horses could take us there in three if we were lucky. We had a hasty riding lesson that resulted in all three of us falling into water troughs and hay bales, but once we all could cling to the saddle long enough to make it up and down the street, the merchant took our money and waved us off.

I transformed my hairpins into three copper rings and slipped them onto my index, middle, and ring fingers. That way, I could transform most materials just by touch, without fishing a stone from my bag. I knew our journey would be long and potentially dangerous, and I didn’t want to be helpless if someone cut the strings to my satchel and my stones scattered across the road.

Two days after the exam, we said goodbye to Uncle and Auntie, who crammed our bags full of even more fruit and a few strips of smoked sea snake.

“You bought that?” I said, backing away as Auntie So tried to shove it into my bag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten meat. We’d given Auntie and Uncle enough money to last them a few months, but hadn’t intended for them to use it on us.

“You can’t ride to Chang’an eating only oranges,” Auntie So said, grabbing my bag and yanking me toward her, then shoving bananas out of the way to cram the paper-wrapped snake into the top. “You’ll fall off your horses before you make it out of Guangdong.”

Uncle Fan slipped me a dagger when Auntie So wasn’t looking. “A girl needs one of these,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Baba. Wenshu will be with us,” I said.

Uncle Fan raised an eyebrow, glancing at Wenshu pulling Yufei’s hair to stop her from taking his bananas, loose soap beans spilling from his bag out into the road.

“Yufei will be with us,” I amended.

Uncle Fan stifled a cough, closing my hand around the dagger.

Yufei and I managed to settle ourselves on Kumquat’s saddle, while Wenshu sat on Turmoil. I wrapped my arms around Yufei as she grabbed the reins, then looked over my shoulder at Auntie and Uncle standing before the store. I’d never really noticed how small they were until I saw them huddled in the shade of the awning, leaning into each other. I had a sinking feeling that I would never see them again—they were old and sick, after all. What if they died while we were gone? I wouldn’t be around to resurrect them. I knew that the five of us couldn’t keep living on broth, that my resurrections alone weren’t enough to keep up with how fast gold was losing its value, that they wouldn’t survive the journey to the North with us, and a thousand other reasons we had to go. It was a logical choice, an investment in all our futures, the smart thing to do.

But Uncle Fan’s eyes misted over and he held Auntie So’s hand as he waved goodbye, and some cruel part of my brain whispered,Remember this, Zilan. This is the last memory you’ll ever have of them.

I wanted to go back, but the horse lurched forward and I clung to Yufei to avoid falling off, and after that I couldn’t bring myself to turn around until we passed the city walls.

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