She had tried to muster spiritual energy to heal her wound, but it had been impossible without her core, and her meridians were damaged even further by the uncontrolled energy. She couldn’t remember when she had lost consciousness, but she woke up to warmth. She cracked her eyes open and tried to lift her head. The sore, raw pain on her chest remained, but the smell of blood was mostly gone, as if someone had wiped it away. She was lying on a pile of soft grass and fabric inside what seemed to be a basket. More importantly, a tantalizing smell lingered in the air. She tried to stand up, but was too weak to move her legs. She was so weak that the pained yowl came out as a squeak.

The sound of chopping stopped, and she heard footsteps approaching. She raised her eyes and looked up warily.

“Oh! You’re awake!” The two-legged one reeked of immortality. But he did not look like any Immortal she had ever seen. For one thing, he was wearing coarsely spun clothes with too-short sleeves, whereas Immortals wore long, luxurious robes made with expensive materials from spiritual animals and plants. Even more incongruous, he had a slightly goofy smile and an indulgent expression as if he was looking at something cute, rather than at a dignified, three-tailed fox spirit.

She didn’t have time to feel any wounded pride because she was soon distracted by his gracious offer of a tiny bowl of water, which she lapped up greedily. As she drank the water, she allowed him to scritch her head very gently. He smiled again and said, “Wait just a moment,” before walking away. She gazed at the wall of the basket and heard more chopping and pounding. Human food seemed extremely complicated, but then again it smelled much better than anything she had eaten.

The two-legged one came back, this time with a small bowl and a wooden spoon. He scooped up a spoonful, scraped the bottom on the rim of the bowl, and held it in front of her mouth. She smelled the faint aroma of duck, so she greedily lapped up a mouthful.

Suddenly, the horrible taste of medicine filled her mouth and nose. She shook her head in disgust. This was not the delicious food she smelled! But at the same time, she felt a surge of gentle energy. The raw, grinding pain faded slightly. Tearing up, she lapped the rest of the food from the spoon. As she resentfully ate the whole disappointing bowl, the two-legged assured her that she was a good girl.

The little fox was too cute. I wiped her fur clean and put her in a warm basket in the kitchen. The next morning, she was still sleeping, so I got started on breakfast. I used a spoonful of duck fat and crisped up all the duck skin that was left over from rendering out the fat. After straining it out and setting it to the side, I quickly fried the green garlic shoots; much more pungent and savory than scallions. Next, little potatoes from the garden, a pinch of salt, sauteed until the potatoes were tender and a bit golden. After the potatoes were done, I tossed them with the crumbled bits of crispy skin and made another dish, a quick stir-fry with thinly sliced carrots and some duck meat.

I had to put some thought into the little fox. She might be too weak to chew, so it seemed better to give her soft food. I made a broth with the duck bones, then crushed some barley to make a porridge and minced the last scraps of duck meat. I just finished the porridge when a cute little squeak sounded from the basket. The little fox seemed alert, which was a hopeful sign. But that gash looked pretty severe. The fox lapped up some water, watching me warily. I hadn’t seen many foxes, certainly not a fox with three tails.

After thinking some more, I went and got the small black pouch, which now contained two pills. I mashed one of the pills in the mortar and pestle and added it to a bowl, then stirred in a scoop of the barley-duck porridge. The medicine had helped me after a fall from a cliff, and I hoped it would help the little fox too. I’d have to get some more at the apothecary next time I get to a city. I took a small taste and couldn’t help recoiling at how horrible it was. Then again, human taste buds and fox taste buds are probably different.

The little fox was still lying in the same position when I got back, but this time the white tips of her three tails were twitching somewhat anticipatorily. I couldn’t help grinning as I offered her a spoonful of the gloopy porridge. She lapped it up greedily. What a good girl.

She had been observing the two–legged one for several days. She had seen many two-leggeds in her time, but she had to admit that this one baffled her. In her experience, two-leggeds spent a great deal of time chasing each other and fighting. Some of them meditated, which seemed very boring but was a way of gaining power, so it seemed to fit in with all their other activities. In contrast, this two-legged spent a lot of time making food and then eating the food. She salivated at the thought of all the delicious-smelling food.

To her relief, after that first morning he hadn’t fed her any more medicine. Unfortunately, he hadn’t fed her any of the food that he shared with the old one. They had crispy roast duck with skin that crackled when they bit it, duck cooked with vegetables, duck soup... but she got the same thick porridge with duck and barley.

Over the past few days, her wound closed, leaving behind a long silver scar. As she gained strength, she lifted herself onto her legs and poked her head over the side of the basket. It was a small room with a hard dirt floor. Her basket was relatively high up from the ground on a clean, bare wooden shelf. In front of her was a wide, worn-looking wooden table. The other side of the room had a big square-shaped stone structure. She had seen the two-legged one put wood and fire into the structure and then cook food in the large pots that were set into the top.

The little fox lifted her front legs to the rim of the basket and craned her neck further, but suddenly the world spun as she and the basket fell off the shelf. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for a fall on the packed dirt floor. Instead, she was enclosed in a pair of gentle, slightly callused hands.

“You must be feeling better now!”

She cracked open one suspicious eye. The two-legged set the basket upright, on the floor this time, and placed her back in it. She sat primly, twitching her tails as she observed the two-legged one. The two-legged grinned back at her with a goofy expression very unlike an Immortal. But at his next words, a jolt of cold horror shot down her spine.

“You’re so cute I could eat you up!”

The fox got better slowly. It was a relief to see her wound slowly heal. That night, I was afraid she wouldn’t make it. The tiny, blood-matted ball of fur couldn’t make a sound at first, but soon she was yowling demandingly whenever I cooked. She seemed to like any meat, but especially scraps of roast duck, and even more especially, cooked duck liver.

Over time, I explored the mountain more. During the past couple weeks, I noticed that my body had unusually sharp reactions. Maybe it was muscle memory from OG-me's unsavory line of work. I could scale an almost sheer cliff, climb a tree without any lower branches, and even jump from one tree to another (which I discovered when I accidentally “climbed” past a hive of bees). Later, I went back and harvested a bit of the honey. Some of it became a sweet glaze for roast duck, but the rest was stored away in a small ceramic jar. Hopefully it would be worth something at the market. I already had a mental list of things to buy from the market, but the real sticking point was that there wasn’t any money to buy it with.

My real moment of triumph came late one afternoon when I was walking back home with yet another duck (duck is amazing, but my creativity was running out, and I was pretty ready for a nice chunk of pork or beef). Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cluster of red berries under the trees. On closer look, I realized it was a ginseng plant. I’d seen the red berries and green leaves once before while hiking back in my old life. Excitedly, I looked to check that there were more ginsengs around. Didn’t want to take it if there was only one. There were several in the area. I came back later with some makeshift tools and very gingerly extracted two of the ginseng roots, which took all afternoon. The little rootlets were extremely long.

She quietly slipped over the side of the basket. She ignored the slight pang in her heart. Finally, she understood the two-legged one’s motives. She felt a sense of cynical resignation. These two-legged cultivators must always obsess over debt. One saved her and then took her spiritual core. The other saved her and now was trying to fatten her up and eat her. She was lucky that he wasn’t as cunning as she was and had even told her the whole plan. But she felt insulted that he thought so little of her intelligence. First of all, he told her all about the plan. Second, he wasn’t even doing the plan very well. He spent far too little time cooking, and then even ate most of the food himself instead of giving it to her. It seemed very inefficient. Then again, it was foxes, not two-legged ones, that had a reputation for cunning.

She sighed and crept outside the kitchen door. The scent of roasted duck lingered in the air. She had spent some time puzzling over what to do next. Suddenly, had an ingenious idea. She perked up her ears and trotted out with a slight limp but with her tails raised proudly. Ha, the short-sighted two-legged one was lucky that she was so tolerant and clever.

It seemed like it had been a whole year, but it was just forty-nine days. Every day people wept loudly, but Dou-Dou felt confused and couldn’t weep. They burned a lot of paper and also incense. Now the whole house was clean and almost empty. Some items were sold, some items were packed away. Dou-Dou looked around. She and Mommy had moved almost everything to her maternal grandmother’s house, and today they were moving themselves there. Brother Dou-Jin wouldn’t stay with them for long. He was going to go to Star River City to live with Daddy’s uncle and go to school there.

Earlier that morning, Dou-Dou walked all the way down the street outside her home. It felt like there was some big mistake, and dad will probably be there waiting. The market stalls were busy. The toy stall, with brightly painted wooden dolls and animals; the vegetable stall, which wasn’t interesting; the butcher’s stall, where the enormous, fierce butcher was conducted a vicious war against flies; and then the best stall, which was the candy stall. The candy-stall uncle was always surrounded by the smell of cooked sugar.

One morning just two months ago, Dou-Dou walked down this same street with Daddy. When they passed the candy stall, she begged him to get the sesame sugar candy for three broken coins. Instead, Daddy got her tanghulu for one broken coin. She ate all the crunchy sugar off of the outside, but the sour, mushy hawthorns inside made her whole face pucker.

When she tried to give the hawthorn to him, Daddy gave her a look of amazement, and told her “How did you know that this is my favorite part?” Dou-Dou felt gratified and very proud of herself for sharing. It was a relief he liked the sour part, because if he had liked the sugary part it would have been much harder to share. She ate all the sugar and gave him the sour hawthorns. Every time he ate one she laughed because his face puckered up like a monkey’s from how sour it was.

Dou-Dou paused in the street and gazed quietly at the sesame sugar candy, the tanghulu, and the animals and shapes made from sugar. The candy-stall uncle looked at her with a complicated expression and beckoned her over. He put a square of sesame sugar candy in her hand.

Dou-Dou clutched the candy in her fist and ran home after thanking him politely. The sesame sugar candy weighed on her mind for several days. It felt like somehow everything could go back to normal, but if she ate the candy then it would never turn back.

Dou-Jin was almost as tall as his mother and had already reached his father’s shoulder at the age of fourteen, but dad still called him little Dou-Jin. People said that dying as a guard was somehow heroic, but he had heard the gossip and knew that there was nothing dignified or heroic about it. There wasn’t anything heroic about just dying for no reason. Dou-Jin gloomily thought about the gossip. People didn’t tell him things if he asked, but they seemed to ignore that he could put pieces together by listening.

Obviously the theft was related to Immortals. Immortals had been going back and forth all that week, and there was another flurry of visits after that had happened. Dou-Jin clenched his jaw grimly. Immortals never seemed to care about the human world, but whenever they showed up people always seemed to suffer. He didn’t understand how people could just keep going. It wasn’t like this was a natural disaster like a flood or famine. Someone was guilty. Dou-Jin was sure it was an Immortal, because there was no talk about holding anyone accountable.

The time seemed to pass both quickly and slowly. Mother went around with red eyes and a numb expression. Every once in a while in the past couple weeks she had turned to him and asked, “Where is your father?” before looking startled and apologizing. After forty-nine days of mourning, Mother packed up all the old belongings and they went to her family home. The day after she arrived at her family home, Dou-Jin’s maternal grandmother babied her and she finally cried.

Dou-Jin, Dou-Dou and Dou-Jin’s mother stood at the entrance of his maternal grandparents’ house. Dou-Jin clutched the chest-strap of his bag. It contained some of his father’s clothes that had been remade to his size, some money, and a letter of introduction from Scholar Wu to a school in Star River City. Dou-Jin had had sporadic lessons from the elderly clerk who lived down the street, but this would be the first time going to school. Dou-Jin’s maternal grandmother lived in Shang Cheng City, but his paternal great uncle lived in Star River City, which was several days away.

Mother pulled Dou-Jin into her arms, and he felt the rough, sober-colored fabric of her mourning clothes against his cheek. Dou-Dou had a sort of bleak, stunned expression on her little face. Mother gave him a blessing. Dou-Dou’s little hand was clutched in a fist and she stared at Dou-Jin with big eyes. Dou Jin felt powerless and irritated, and didn’t know what to say. Just saying goodbye felt anticlimactic.

Halfway down the street he heard the cry, “Brother!” and there was a patter of running feet. Dou-Jin turned around and swooped up Dou-Dou, who clung to his collar like a monkey. She wrapped her skinny arms around his neck in a hug, and he buried his face in her head. The spiky ends of hair that stuck out of her perpetually messy braid tickled his nose. After a moment, he steadily placed her feet on the ground and pushed her gently towards home. Dou-Dou grabbed his hand and put something in it before running back to her mother.

Dou-Jin decisively turned back on the path. After several steps, he opened his hand and saw a warm, partially melted and deformed piece of sugar-sesame candy. He put the candy in his mouth. It was slightly bitter, and there was a lot of lingering gooey sweetness.