/
There is a story they tell in the hut where Mulan was born, dirt floor and old linens. The midwife talked of a girl who dressed like a man to go somewhere only men can go, and fell in love with a man who didn't know she was a woman.
Mulan's mother used to retell it to her while they sat in their tiny garden, weaving jasmine into the braids of Mulan's hair.
/
"I want you to teach me how to fight," Aurora says, two days after Mulan reached into her chest and gave her soul back, Aurora's heart thumping against her fingers, her eyes wide and shocked.
Mulan pulls her eyes away from the man at the bar, leaning back in her chair so she can see Aurora, across the table from her, and the bar. The man they're waiting for is on his sixth drink of the night, swaying slightly but boasting of his strength in a clear voice. "What?"
Aurora scrapes the bottom of the thin bowl of gruel Mulan had traded a few coins for and licks the rough wooden spoon, her mouth twisting in distaste. "Look at that man. We're sitting here watching him because we know we cannot take him in a fight." Mulan tries very hard to make her face still, but Aurora looks at her once and smiles. "That's a comment on my combat skills, not yours."
"Of course," Mulan says stiffly. The chain of her helmet rubs her nose and she bites back a growl. She hates the helmet, the heavy roughness of the veil, it pulls her helmet down and irritates the skin around her eyes. But being a man is, as always, easier than being a woman, and it affords Aurora some extra protection, a woman traveling with a warrior bodyguard rather than two women traveling alone. "We should wait for him to leave, he will be intoxicated. If I challenge him to a fight, he will not be able to resist." She moves to stand and Aurora catches her hand on the tabletop.
"Let's try it my way first," she says, and before Mulan can unfreeze from the warmth of their fingers tangled together Aurora is across the room, sliding up to the bar and turning wet beseeching eyes towards the man they've been following the entire day. Mulan shoots to her feet, her hand on the hilt of her sword. Her abrupt movement knocks the bowls, cups, and spoons to the floor with a clatter that strikes just as a natural lull comes over the tavern. All eyes fall on Mulan.
"Please," Aurora says into the quiet, "will you help me?" Mulan locks eyes with the man in the lion fur cloak, and deliberately tightens her grip on her sword. His lips quirk upward in the beginnings of a smirk.
"It seems like you have all the help you could ever desire," he says, turning his gaze to Aurora.
"I'm looking for knowledge," Aurora says, all fluttering lashes and demure features. "Someone who can… see into other worlds." The man hesitates, and Mulan sighs internally as she sees his expression change. He's already dismissed them as fleeting distractions, momentarily interesting but well on their way to being forgotten. Mulan lets go of her sword and considers their options, just as Aurora catches him by the wrist and blinks the fake tears from her eyes.
"My love is lost," she says so soft, whispered steel. "And there is very little I will not do to see him returned to me." Mulan tenses, moving her weight to the balls of her feet. She can feel her pulse in the roof of her mouth, feel her heart against the bones in her chest-she is too far to reach them if he decides to grab Aurora's throat in his paw of a hand and twist, too far to stop him from plunging a dagger into the vulnerable parts of her stomach, the thick veins in her legs.
"There is a mountain," the man says instead, "it is a four day climb to its summit. At the summit is a cave, and inside there are sisters who could help you."
Aurora releases his wrist. "Thank you."
He turns back to his drink and his friends. "Don't thank me. Just pray to your gods that guard of yours is worth every penny you paid for battle, and twice in loyalty." He leans to Aurora and whispers something into the curve of her ear, too soft for Mulan to hear.
Aurora strides across the dirt floor of the tavern like she's already sat and felt the weight of gold on her throne. "All that and more," she tosses back, carelessly regal.
Mulan lets out a breath she's been holding for longer than she remembers. "Your Majesty," she says lowly, and inclines her head in the smallest of bows.
/
Mulan's mother used to claim she sang them to her daughter, her only child, while she waited for the rice to boil and her husband to wash the ink from his hands.
"I was so happy," she tells Mulan as a toddler, tucking the bedlinens around her. "when I was pregnant, because I knew the matchmaker had given me a province man, and I would keep my child, be it daughter or son."
/
Aurora doesn't fare well in the cold. Mulan doesn't notice it until the third day of their journey, her calves cramping with the slope of the trail, but Aurora shivers almost continuously, and when they stop to make a fire and sleep for the night her eyes are a little glassy, curled in on herself while Mulan strikes the flint, blows softly on the kindling.
Mulan takes the cape off where it's clipped on her armor and drapes it over Aurora's shoulders, layering over the cloak she's already wearing. "You'll be too cold," she protests, even as she twists her fingers in the lining and hunches under its added warmth.
Mulan sits beside her. "I am from the mountains," she says, and stretches out her hands to feel the heat of the fire. She flexes her knuckles until they crack and sighs with satisfaction.
"Really?" Aurora asks. "I always thought your land was…." she trails off. Mulan looks at her, and Aurora flushes, soft pink rising on her nose and across her cheeks. "I guess I never really thought about where you came from."
"It's not so different," Mulan says simply. "Mountains, forest, river." She runs her fingers across the front of her armor, her arms and down her hips, checking for breaks, stresses, cracks. When she looks up again the silence has dragged out and Aurora is staring into the fire, her lip caught between her teeth, her fingers tapping in the dirt.
"What if there's nothing on top of this mountain," she says, her voice breaking. "what if that man was lying, and there's only snow and moss in that cave?" Her eyes fill with water. "what if we never find him?"
"There could be a bear," Mulan offers. "Or a boar." In her experience, boars can be even more dangerous than bears.
Aurora stares at her.
"That was a jest," Mulan clarifies. Another beat of silence passes. "I've never been very good at them."
A smile cracks over Aurora's face, dawning like a sunrise, and she ducks her head. "It was alright. For a beginner." She shifts her weight against Mulan's side, and leans her head on Mulan's shoulder. "Tell me more about your land."
Mulan looks down at her, Aurora's hair curling into her face, lit copper by the glow of the fire. "I-I don't think you'd find it interesting." She thinks about standing up, leaning against the boulder on the far side of the fire.
Aurora makes a soft noise. "You don't have to if you don't want to."
Mulan's fingers itch. She wants to reach up and twist Aurora's hair around her fingers, pulling the curl out ever so gentle and watching it spring back, wants to feel the smooth warm skin behind Aurora's ear when she tucks her hair behind it. "I am from the Middle Kingdom," she says finally, settling her weight down on the ground. "It is large, easily twice the breadth of your land and your neighbours to the east put together."
She tells Aurora of their oceans, the small boats bobbing on the waves, the fishmarkets set up right there on the rickety docks, the way the wood creaks. The mountains with their sweeping cliffs and rocky overhangs, the way the dirt packs into her boots, the food spiced with red peppers, hotter and hotter the farther from the coast you get. She tells Aurora about her home village, the ancestor temple, the small school, the red ribbons hanging from the matchmakers house.
And when Aurora's breathing evens out, her face gone lax with sleep, Mulan tells her about her father, what the symbols etched into her armor mean, all in the harsh mountain dialect of her village, every tone a pleasant twist on her tongue. She hasn't spoken her own language in years.
She tells the fire all her secrets and allows herself to slip an arm around Aurora's shoulder, pulls her close enough to feel her breathe on her neck with every exhale.
/
The cave is blessed silence, the whistling of the wind finally gone. Mulan's ears ring with the quiet, and she makes Aurora step in the marks of her footsteps, clearly outlined in the snow. Even in a deep cave like this one, the walls are ice and she sinks a few inches with every step, kicking up powder with her boots.
They stop for a rest at a juncture of two tunnels, and Aurora sits on a shelf of rock running along the wall of the cave, panting. "I thought traveling across the land like we have would have built my endurance."
"It's height sickness," Mulan says, freeing a canteen and taking a sip before passing it to her. "the air is different in the mountains."
Aurora gulps a few mouthfuls of water and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, too tired to drink in little princess sips and daintily dab at the corners of her lips. "Then I want to live in a valley," she mutters, catching her breath. She curses, once, and rubs her nose on the fur lining of her cloak. Mulan likes her better like this, all the finishing etiquette stripped away.
"We should camp here," Mulan says, after another minute of rest. "I don't know how long it will take to search this cavern, and it is late."
"No," Aurora says, and stands. "we're close, I know we are. We can push through, get the information we need, and rest for a day before we head out." The order comes out naturally commanding, a quick sure decision. Mulan allows herself a moment to measure it.
"Very well," she says, and lets Aurora walk beside her, carrying the torch.
/
"Mom," Mulan said with the impatience of youth, "I'm too old for these stories."
"Ngahng gayng," her mother scolded. "this is your heritage. How will you tell your daughters if you do not listen to your own mother?"
Mulan watches her mother's silver needle flash in and out, carefully stitching rips and tears. "I will never have children." She said, and couldn't quite keep the bitter out her voice.
/
"But you are children," Aurora says, shocked. She moves to step forward and Mulan catches her around the waist, pulls her back to the entrance to the wide cavern.
"Don't underestimate them," Mulan says, wary. "They are not like you or I."
"We are not human," the three say as one. Two girls and a boy, all looking around five or six years of age, dark skin and curly hair, hollowed cheeks and milky eyes.
"We seek your aid," Aurora says, her voice wavering a little.
"Liar," the boy hisses, and he has an accent Mulan can't place. "you come to steal, just like those before."
"The son took our eyes," the girl with the longer hair says, sadness to mirror her brother's anger.
Her sister lets out a soft, mournful cry, and when she speaks it's with the petulance of a child's tantrum. "What's the point of seeing all the worlds if we can't see them."
"The wraith," Aurora says, pressing on, "when they take a spirit, it-"
"He gave them back," the older girl says, "eventually."
"It travels to another world," Aurora continues, speaking louder. She pulls a scrap of parchment from her belt, a sketch of the wraith's mark. "where would this wraith send-"
"Let's kill them," the boy suggests abruptly, and makes a sharp gesture with his right hand. The air becomes tight, suppressively tight around them, and crackles. Mulan draws her sword with a sing of sharp steel and spins it easily in her hand, so all three seers can feel the way it cleaves through magic like hot butter.
"Wait," Aurora orders. Mulan stills her hand but keeps her gaze locked with the boy's, a steady promise of violence held in check. "There has to be something we can offer you in exchange for information."
"What could you have that we want," the whiny girl says, and brings her hand up to her eyes like it helps her sightless eyes focus. The gesture triggers a thought, and Mulan sheathes her sword in one smooth motion. She reaches into a pouch clipped to her belt and looses the leather strings, her fingers searching until they close over what they're looking for.
"What about this," she says, and stretches out her hand. Her father's spyglass, hand carved bone and glass lenses cut and bent by the finest craftsman in the capital, his reward for exemplary military service.
"An eye?" the boy asks, curious. "let us touch it."
Mulan hesitates. Carefully, she approaches the smaller girl, who cups her hands in front of her and looks expectant. Mulan tips her palm over and lets the last thing her father gave her fall away. The girl extends it, rubbing a fingertip over the smooth curve of bone, and brings it to one white eye. She smiles.
"Give me the mark," the boy demands, and Aurora hands over the sketch. "Hm," he says, and crosses over to the small fire in the center of the room.
"Your prince's spirit was sent to another land," the older girl says. The boy moves in front of them, holding a glowing coal in his hand like a bean. Mulan can smell the flesh burning, but he tosses it at the ground without a wince of pain. "It is in a magic vessel marked by the wraith's symbol."
The coal burns through the snow, and then the dirt, and starts to make the stone underneath glow white-orange, a black hole yawning open with licks of flame ringing the edges. Mulan feels a set of small hands at her back. "This way you probably die," she hears the boy says, and has time to meet Aurora's panicked look with one of her own before she's falling.
She feels the flicker of the fire on her skin, and the jerk in her belly from free-fall, and then nothing at all.
/
"They swore a blood brother's oath," Mulan's mother said, and crimped the edges of a dumpling shut. "But that wasn't enough for Yingtai, and soon she confessed who she was. She left a necklace as a token of her love for Shanbo, and fled as soon as she told her secret"
Mulan listened with half an ear, the same story a dozen times, and when she tried to pinch the dumpling wrapper closed it tore, spilling the filling. Her fingers felt too big, clumsy. She watched her mother's deft example and imagined the weight of a dumpling in her palm was the hilt of a dagger instead.
/
Mulan wakes up with an unfamiliar lightness on her chest. She sits up and immediately feels the difference-she's lighter, and it's been so long since she went any extended amount of time without her armour she almost doesn't recognize the feeling. She runs her hands over her hips-no belt, no sword. Her boots are gone too, as are the pair of matching knives she keeps in the them. She's sitting on her cape, and whoever put her there left her socks on, and the pants and knitted shirt she wears under her armour. She coughs dryly and takes stock of her surroundings.
Stone floor, the uneven stones poking her where she sits, with walls made of the same dull grey rock. A few chains lie scattered on the floor, and when Mulan drags a finger across the metal it comes off thick with dust. The bars are thick, sturdy, and when she kicks them experimentally they ring solid. The door is made of the same metal, with an empty rectangle halfway down. There's another bucket in the far corner, and the smell alone lets Mulan know what it's for. There are no other people, and no guards that Mulan can see. There's also no other cells that Mulan can see, and the one she's in is long, she thinks the length of the room. She presses her face against the bars and tries to see down the corridor, but there's nothing. No light, no noise.
"Hello?" she calls. Her voice echoes a little. Nothing. Mulan settles against the wall, drawing her cape around her, and waits.
/
"Once she confessed her feelings, Yingtai feared Shanbo would be angry with her, even refuse to be her brother." Mulan's mother recited, the chickens pecking at her feet. "But Shanbo-"
"-swore he would love her forever," Mulan interrupted, rolling her eyes. She shook her hands, seed spilling across her fingers. "and they promised each other they would be married."
Mulan's mother rapped her across the knuckles. "Daadaa. Don't interrupt."
/
No one guards Mulan. She sleeps, and drinks in small sips, trying to conserve what water she has. She moves from the waste bucket in the back corner to her cape as makeshift bedding, the water bucket propped against the wall where the ceiling leaks a drop of water every few hours. Her stomach gnaws continuously with hunger, and she has started to contemplate trying to lure out the rats she can hear scratching at the walls.
She has just begun to pull at the seams in one of her socks when she hears the thud of footfalls. She yanks her sock back on and stands, letting her cape fall from where it was wrapped around her shoulders.
There are two men approaching the door of her cell, in non-restricting white pants and dark vests. There are identical sashes looped around their waists, dark purple with black trim. Long knives ornamented in gold sheathed in leather at their hips and she can see hilts protruding over their shoulders; swords slung on their backs. Mulan watches the way they walk, shifting their weight, and effortless swing of their stride. The hilts of the knives look too expensive, delicate gold patterns that gleam the cleanliness of the rarely used. They have a curious curve to the blade, smooth and unsymmetric and deadly, a shape Mulan hasn't seen before.
The taller one gestures roughly at her, saying something in a quick language Mulan doesn't know, and she stands as the other man opens the door.
/
The Sultan's daughter is missing. The servant who'd translated for him had stuttered, with a thick accent that made Mulan's head hurt to understand one language translated into another with her brain retranslating as fast as it can to the language of her home, that she now speaks only with her thoughts. From what she can make out, Aurora is safe, and being kept in a room much nicer than the one Mulan woke up in.
The streets of this land are cramped, carts and animals rattling against each other as they slog in separate directions. Mulan is wandering, planning, working her way through the beginning of a plan when she sees a young man darting through the fruit carts, clever fingers hiding plums and dried dates in his sleeves. It's not the theft that catches her eye, however, but the way the cloaked figure is moving.
She alters her path slightly, moving diagonally but keeping pace. She slips into a small, dark alley and catches the cloak by the hood. She shakes the figure once and the hood falls to the side, revealing dark brown eyes against darker skin, ink black hair braided tight against the skull.
Mulan smiles, victorious. "Hello, Princess."
/
Mulan's mothew drew in the dirt, swooping lines and choppy characters "Yingtai was engaged to another man, a match for her family. She had angered the matchmaker, and-"
Mulan rubbed oil into the bridles, untangling the leads and easing the cracks in the leather. "I don't want children."
Her mother choked on her words, her eyes gone wide. "Do not even joke of such things," she snapped.
"Mom-" Mulan started, but was taken back by her mother's face, suddenly so close to hers.
"You will listen to my stories," she said furiously, "and you will learn the lessons, and you will bring honor to your line. You are descended from only children, only daughters, and you must match with someone who will not leave your child in the river if it is born a girl."
Mulan rubbed the tack until it was soft and supple in her fingers, and the entire time she promised herself furiously, I will never take a husband.
/
"No matter where I go," Mulan says darkly, twisting sideways and smashing the hilt of her sword against a guard's temple, "there seems to be those who cannot handle the responsibility of magic."
Jasmine spins, a blur of sharp metal, and the last guard falls, his eyes milky with death. She carries twin weapons, short curved blades with twisted guards that curve around her hands. "He worked for my father as an advisor for many years," she says, crossing the room to the large glass cupboard against the far wall. "We never suspected."
Mulan hears boots on stone floor, and spins her sword smoothly in one hand. "I have fulfilled my side of the bargain, Princess." Jasmine steps up beside her, smiling. She pulls Mulan's belt out and slips something heavy and brass through the loops before tightening it again.
"As have I," she says. "this contains the soul you are looking for, and if you get me out of here alive you may use the portal in our palace."
The door rattles against the rough barricade of wooden furniture. Mulan tosses her helmet aside, lets her hair tumble down around her shoulders. She raises her sword. "You have a deal."
Jasmine steps so they are shoulder to shoulder. Her weapons spin in her hands slowly, almost lazily, and Mulan thinks she is faster with a blade than anyone Mulan has ever met in her entire life. "Well then," Jasmine says, smiling with blood across her blouse, "let us dance."
/
"When Shanbo learned of the engagement he raged for four days and four nights, until he found himself at the edge of the river, sand between his fingers as he howled." Mulan's mother smoothed the linens around Mulan, tucked against the wall. The winter moon hung low and big in the sky.
Mulan swallowed and closed her eyes. Her father's draft papers were under her pillow. She planned to leave when the brightest star was directly overhead.
"He threw himself into the river," his mother said, "and drowned with the first lungful." She brushed her fingers through Mulan's hair, long and silky and braided, and Mulan thought about how her fingers would feel around the hilt of her father's sword when she cut it off.
/
"I would offer you a place in my house," the Sultan says. "My daughter holds a fondness for you, more so than any guard she has had her entire life."
"She is a credit to your name," Mulan says, measured. She keeps her eyes lowered to the floor near the Sultan's feet, and tries not to look at where Jasmine sits at her father's side.
The Sultan shakes a pouch, heavy coins clinking against each other. "Will you accept my offer? I reward excellence, and above all, loyalty."
"I am in service already," Mulan says, and bends to one knee in a show of respect. "thank you for your compliments."
Jasmine catches her just outside the heavy main doors, pulling her into a small pantry. "Would you accept an offer of a place in my own house?" She kisses Mulan once, close lipped and dry.
"What position?" Mulan asks. Jasmine drops her eyes, and Mulan steps back.
"I will not forget you, your highness," Mulan says quietly, and leaves.
/
Yingtai learned of her lover's death two days after it happened, in a letter from his family. But she knew, in her heart, the moment it happened, like a shadow passing through her soul. Mulan read her mother's letter before bed most nights, and wondered if her mother knew the moment she mounted her father's warhorse, dressed in his armor, or if she had slept peacefully through the night, dreaming of her daughter's upcoming engagement.
Pressed in the letter is a blossom from her grandmother's garden, and Mulan bound it in the white bandage she wrapped around her chest every morning.
/
"The portal leads to another world," Aurora says quietly. She smoothes the hair off Phillip's forehead. "it's where the rest of our world went while I was sleeping. There is no magic there."
Mulan doesn't look up from where she's organizing their pack. "He will be ready to travel in the morning," she says, "and I think I am ready for a world without magic." She looks up. "Are you ready for a world without princesses?"
"I don't care about being a princess," Aurora says quietly, "I just want to live a quiet life for a while." She holds Philip's hand to her lips, presses kisses to his knuckles. "We deserve a quiet life."
Mulan draws the pack shut and sets it on the floor. "I'm ready," she says simply.
"You are my family," Aurora says suddenly, and Mulan pauses in the act of shedding her armor. "I mean it."
"Thank you," Mulan says, "that… that means a great deal to me."
"I want you to be happy," Aurora says, soft.
"I am happy enough to be with you," Mulan promises, and lies down to sleep. She leaves her war ribbons under her pillow, and hopes whoever cleans the room will deliver them to Jasmine.
/
Mulan stood at the front of her father's house, an officer's sword at her hip. She could smell the blossoms from the trees behind the chicken coop. Her medals clinked where they were pinned above her heart. When she knocked on the door she pressed her fingertips to the nicks on the frame, each notch a height she was as a child.
"We've steamed a chicken for you," her mother said when the door opened. "A hero's welcome."
A son's welcome, Mulan thought, and kissed her mother on the cheek.
/
Emma bangs on her door until she opens it, a yellow door of a yellow house Aurora found for her, too small for the three of them but huge when it's just Mulan. When she answers the door her hair is tangled into knots across one shoulder, and her eyes feel gritty. Emma looks her up and down and shrugs. "I've seen worse, to be honest."
"I'm sure," Mulan says. She shoves her feet into her boots. "What do you need?"
"A deputy," Emma answers, and tosses a badge onto the bed. "Get dressed, we're going to the range."
There's an odd rhythm to Mulan's life. Emma teaches her to drive the Sheriff's vehicles, and how to use the technology they need to do the job. She has dinner with Aurora and Phillip every Friday, and brunch with their son on Saturday. His middle name is Hua, and she is teaching him Chinese.
Aurora catches her as she stands to leave one weekend, walks her to her car. "Are you happy, Mulan?" She runs one hand through her hair, strawberry gold between her fingers, and all Mulan can think about is a braid like coal, Jasmine's skin against her own.
Aurora looks down, sadness darkening her face. "You are my closest friend. Sometimes I wonder if I should have asked insisted you joined the Sultan's service." Mulan catches her by the wrist and draws her into a loose embrace.
"I have never regretted it," she says. "I have joy in your happy ending." She gets into the car and turns the engine over.
Aurora presses her palm against the window. "You deserve your own happy ending," she says, and Mulan pretends she cannot hear her through the glass.
/
"Yingtai cried on his grave," her mother said into the crisp fall morning. "Her tears soaked the dirt and the ground split in two."
Mulan tightened her fingers on the reins. Shang danced under her, his muscles tightening and bunching. She knew he wanted to run, and she patted a gloved hand to his neck, his braided mane. "And she fell where he lay, and the ground closed above them. Are these the last words you would leave your daughter?"
Her mother's eyes are wrinkled at the corners. Mulan thought fleetingly that she has never seen her mother smile. "It is not natural to send a daughter to war. Take care I never tell my old stories to your tombstone."
Mulan put her helmet on; the chain fell across her face. "You will never bury me beside your house," she promised, and dug her heels into Shang's side.
/
Someone is knocking on Mulan's door. She grabs her gun from the bedside drawer, a soldier's wartime wariness hard to shake in the early hours of the morning. She has just finished a 48 hour shift, chasing a pixie with a grudge through the swamp just south of Main Street, and she forgets the peephole in her eagerness to return to bed.
The door swings open and Jasmine drops her hood, standing on Mulan's step in a dark brown robe. She is looking at the side of the house. Her voices shakes only very slightly. "I won't live in a yellow house." Mulan stares at her, her throat working. Jasmine continues: "we'll have to redo it."
"Blue," Mulan says, finally. Jasmine looks at her. Mulan's voice is very hoarse. "I always thought you'd like it blue, with white along the windows.
"Yes," Jasmine says, and Mulan pulls her inside and presses her against the wall with her body, their breaths mixing. Mulan's military medals jingle where they hang on a chain around Jasmine's neck."Blue will do very nicely for our house."
Much later, when the sun creeps through the windows and lights their bed golden, Jasmine stretches her legs around Mulan's hips and smiles with her lips on Mulan's jaw. "I realized that I wasn't fighting to marry Ali," she confesses softly. "I was fighting to marry whoever I wanted."
Mulan lays her head on Jasmine's chest. "And who is that?" She feels the rumble of Jasmine's laugh on her cheek.
"Well," Jasmine drawls, "I suppose I'll have to go see the town, figure out my prospects. There must be someone who'll wed me."
Mulan's heart does something funny in her chest. "Someone, I'm sure," she murmurs, and pulls the sheet over their heads.
/
Mulan's mother died in the spring. She was buried under the cherry blossom trees, and Mulan used the heavy chisel to chip her mother's name into a heavy square of slate.
The house goes to a distant cousin, because women cannot hold property.
Mulan gives Shang to her old commander, now retired on a beautiful bit of green land, where Shang can graze and run to his content. She kisses him between the eyes before she leaves.
On the boat to a new land she puts her helmet on, letting the chain hide her face and her gender, and realizes she has held her promise true-she will never be buried with her family.
/
Mulan's daughter is born in a hospital. It smells like chemicals, and the cigar Emma lights for her while they wait in the parking lot. "It's still a man's world," she says, her blonde hair twisting in the wind. "but we do all right."
There is a baby book bumping against the badge in Mulan's coat pocket, and a gun at her hip. Mulan opens her mouth and watches the smoke roll out, slow and easy. "When I was young, I swore to never take a husband, nor be with child."
Emma snorts. "Well. Things never do end up like you expect them too." Mulan exhales again. Emma spent her whole life thinking she was an orphan from a big city, that she had no one in the world that loved her. Mulan was born on a dirt floor in a universe where there were no pipes of water or lights that flicker with a switch, a daughter when her father wanted a son.
Mulan pulls out one of those cheap spiral notebooks that you can buy at the checkout counter in convenience stores. There's a cherry blossom on the cover-it had caught her eye during a two-in-the-morning ice cream run, Jasmine waking her in the night, lips on the shell of her ear darling, the baby wants sweets. Inside the cheap cardboard covers are the stories from her childhood, written in the language her mother told them in.
A nurse steps out from automatic sliding doors. "They're ready for you."
Mulan drops her cigar to the pavement and steps her boot on it, heavy brown suede with rubber soles instead of supple leather and metal buckles. They thump heavy on linoleum tiles as she walks to the room where she will meet her daughter. There is a small window in the door the nurse points her to-she can see Jasmine inside, a small bundle in her arms.
She tucks a finger into her pants pocket, a nervous gesture, as she opens the door. There is a silver ring weighing her down with nerves, etched with stylized blossom petals and engraved in the beautifully swooped script of Jasmine's language: wife, beloved, habibi.
Jasmine looks at her, joy in the sweat on her brow. "She's beautiful," she whispers, holding out the baby, and Mulan cradles their daughter between them as she bends to taste the curve of Jasmine's smile.