Ten Thousand Futures

The scream from Jia Nuo’s house was not a mule. The village had no mule left in that yard.

Shen Qing reached the doorway first and stopped before crossing the threshold. The house stood north of the shrine, with its rear wall against the grain lane. The old well lay twelve paces south. The open door between villages occupied the western edge of the courtyard. Fu Lan’s kiln and the drainage trench formed the eastern limit. Anyone fighting here would have to protect the shrine behind them, the inter-village opening to their left, and three roads that no longer agreed about where they led.

Inside Jia Nuo’s house, a harness hung from an empty peg. One iron buckle swung hard enough to strike the wall. Each impact produced the cry of a terrified animal.

Jia Nuo’s wife pushed past Shen Qing. “That is his harness.”

He caught her shoulders. She tried to bite his wrist.

“Let go.”

“The buckle is answering something.”

“It is his.”

“I know.”

She stopped fighting only when the leather strap stretched toward her like a hand. Shen Qing dragged her backward. The buckle struck the plaster again and a wet mouth opened around it.

The jaws were sideways.

Teeth unfolded from the wall in two curved rows. Water ran upward between them. There was no head, only the mouth and the suggestion of a throat passing deeper than the house possessed.

Hu Gan thrust with his spear from the doorway. The point entered the mouth, met resistance for half a span, then emerged from the shrine courtyard behind them. A pale foreleg followed the spear through empty air.

“Back!” Shen Qing struck the shaft aside before the leg could close around Hu Gan’s wrist.

The creature vanished from the wall and burst from the ash ring near the shrine. Ren Yu fell onto one hip. The print she had marked now contained a shoulder, translucent muscle pulling under water-skin.

Shen Qing shouted positions. “North house closed. Keep the yard. No one follows a part.”

The instruction mattered because the creature immediately offered too many parts to follow.

A muzzle pushed from the shadow beneath Anu’s copper ring. Hind legs unfolded from Jia Nuo’s harness. A rib cage pressed through the wet grain painted beneath Bao Ren’s name on the board. The name belonged to a missing man; the thing used the charcoal as though absence itself were a handle.

At the centre of the yard, Tianhui had placed six response plates around a bare square of stone. He stood outside them with Pei Chao and Lan Jue. Luo Pei had tied a cloth around his left ankle before allowing him into the yard, not because the ankle was injured but because he kept forgetting which leg failed first when he turned.

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The harness buckle pulled north when set alone. Anu’s ring turned east. Fu Lan’s spoon pointed through the open door until Fu Lan entered the yard; then the handle swung toward her.

She stopped beside the table. “I used that spoon for thirty years.”

“Then it has learned an opinion,” Tianhui said.

“It learned soup.”

Pei covered the spoon with an empty clay jar. The jar moved after Fu Lan by the width of a fingernail.

Lan Jue marked the result. “Covering weakens the pull. It does not break it.”

Beyond the boundary, Irlan knelt over his growing map. It did not resemble streets or hills. Black lines joined objects, names and people; some ended in pale gaps where no one stood. He glanced toward the shrine, then drew a short crescent between Qiao Rui and the rabbit.

Tianhui leaned toward the notation as it rearranged itself. His shoulders loosened, and he followed Irlan’s fingers with the alertness of a man confronted by work he could not yet read.

Tova sat on the boundary stone with the hook-blade across his knees. He watched Tianhui when Dren looked elsewhere.

“Where did you hear my title?” Tianhui asked.

Tova rubbed the folded rim of one ear. “A kitchen wall.”

“Walls do not speak without assistance.”

“My grandmother supplied the words.”

“What did she say?”

Dren turned. “Enough.”

Tova lowered his eyes. The obedience belonged to an argument older than their arrival.

A knock came from Anu’s copper ring.

Three. Two. Three.

Keshi shoved past his mother and struck the shrine table with one knuckle. Two. Three. Two. The ring replied. He leaned so close his hair brushed the bowl.

Then the first pattern sounded beneath Qiao Rui’s hand.

She had found the charcoal Xiulan dropped and was drawing a house with too many windows. Her grandfather sat beside her. She had placed him between herself and Xiulan without appearing to notice the choice.

Three. Two. Three.

Qiao Rui stared at her blackened fingers. “That came from me.” Her voice rose. “Grandfather, it came from me.”

The pale muzzle pushed out of the charcoal’s shadow.

Tova crossed the boundary before any guard gave permission. Dren shouted his name. His hook-blade flashed over Qiao Rui’s shoulder and caught the creature under a jaw that had not existed a moment earlier. Dark water sprayed the shrine floor.

The hound twisted without moving its body. One foreleg emerged beside Anu’s ring. Another forced its way through Mei’s cloth rabbit. Its hindquarters pressed from the wall beneath Jia Nuo’s name.

Qiao Rui froze. She did not make a clever observation. She made a small sound and covered her head with both arms.

Tova seized her around the waist and rolled. The sideways jaws closed where her neck had been. Teeth struck stone and left four wet pits.

Shen Qing reached them. His sword cut through the muzzle, dragged for an instant as though meeting heavy flesh, and came free in a sheet of cold water.

“Take her.”

Tova shoved Qiao Rui toward Qiao Ming. She caught his sleeve with both hands.

“My charcoal.”

“Leave it.”

“It has the board words on it.”

The foreleg lengthened through Mei’s rabbit. Tova brought the hook-blade down.

The toy should have parted like old cloth. His blade struck with the sound of iron on frozen ground. The rabbit split along its belly. One half remained in Qiao Rui’s reach. The other jerked toward the north marker with the pale leg trapped inside it.

Irlan moved before Dren could stop him. He swept one inked hand across his unfinished crescent. The black line rose from the dust like a narrow wall. The hound’s muzzle struck it and recoiled—not blocked, but redirected for the fraction of a second Tova needed to kick the severed rabbit half into the bare plate square.

Irlan’s fingertips split open. Blood darkened the map.

Qiao Rui was sobbing now, furious at the sound. She clutched the surviving half of the rabbit and tried to crawl back toward the other.

Xiulan reached her. Qiao Rui twisted away from Xiulan’s hands and buried her face against her grandfather instead.

The creature gathered in the square.

For the first time, it cast one shadow.