Chapter 3
A finger to her lips, she hushes her lightly.
"Remember, no talking until you're absolutely sure you have the right answer," she whispers.
Mai's eyes illuminate, her lungs fill with an exuberant breath as her mouth flies open to speak, only for tiny hands to clamp it shut at the sight of her mother's slender finger in front of painted lips. She remembers her place. She remembers that they're at a dinner, and not a festival, and that little girls aren't supposed to yell and laugh during these sort of things because father is trying to make a good impression.
Mai nods instead.
Her mother gives a relieved smile, praising her by bending down to whisper in her ear...
. . .
"What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon—"
"An infant crawls on all fours, only to learn to stand on two. An old man is aided by a cane, and when he has met his end, four men—eight legs—carry him to his cremation pyre," Koh smirks.
Mai's throat goes dry. Her head aches.
"My dear, you'll have to do much better than that."
When she holds her hands out, he moves the fish out of reach with a tut.
"Darling, we both know that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Now let's hope that today's toll is a bit more...stimulating than the past two—for your sake, of course."
First sipping some fresh water from one of the shells, Mai makes a show of slowly rising to her feet, expression bare, and eyes haughty.
"I am a wonderful help to women,
the hope of something to come. I harm
No citizen except my slayer.
Rooted I stand on a high bed.
I am shaggy below. Sometimes the beautiful
Peasant's daughter, an eager-armed,
Proud woman grabs my body
Rushes my red skin, holds me hard,
Claims my head. The curly-haired
Woman who catches me fast will feel
Our meeting. Her eyes will be wet."
He laughs.
One...Two...Three...
"An onion," he finally grins, a glint in his eyes. "I must admit I'm quite surprised —I didn't think you capable of speaking such...provocative words. Though, I can't imagine why. It's not as if you're a child, after all," his eyes rove the cradle of her hips and the swell of her full breasts as they rise and fall with each breath.
She's quick to shield herself with an arm. Her faint scoff of disgust only brings a grin to his lips.
"You said that you'd sleep."
"Of course, my dear. Of course," he yawns. "A promise is a promise."
With that, his eyes close and she draws her knife. His breathing slows.
A blank canvas sits before her.
One.
The red and purple of the Noh mask vanish. A round face becomes hollow. She raises her knife.
Two.
Blood trickles down a white cheek. And white skin remains unflinching.
Three.
Eyes flash open, and a laugh emerges from behind curled lips—red again.
Mai retreats as swiftly as she advanced.
He drops the fish at her feet, and she scrambles to her knees, wiping the sand off the scales and tearing out one of her knives.
With a claw, he wipes away the blood beading at his forehead, casting her a look admiration as his legs, a sharp clacking on the cave floor, carry him out.
"Crimson suits you, my dear."
Mai wipes her hands off in the sand.
"We're not all that different, you know," he says to her one night. "Both painfully bored with our dull lives, both insatiably hungry for excitement."
"I'm not a monster like you."
"Oh? Are you quite sure, darling? You may not look the part as I do, but something tells me that those idle hands of yours aren't completely clean. I wonder...How many cities—how many men—have fallen to the edge of your blade?"
She dreams about it. At night. Staring down at the water's edge, atop her head sits a white, pale face, and gleaming teeth peer out from behind blood-red lips. In the snatches of sleep she can find, she is haunted by the image. And now he gives it another, more fearsome meaning.
"Taking interest is different from taking pleasure—you find a sadistic joy in murder. In this vital way, we are impeccably different."
"Something tells me that you'd take a 'sadistic joy' in it as well, if it were my blood staining your blades," Koh grins.
"Think what you like," Mai spits. She juts her chin out in defiance, and recoils when his foul tongue runs across her jaw.
That night, she dreams not of Koh, but of a knife wielding demon, cutting out hearts and stealing them away in the night as they still beat their frantic rhythm. And when Mai wakes, Koh's face is no longer the only one she fears.
"When is a door not a door?"
"When it is 'a jar.' Another. That was poor."
"What is yours but your friend uses more often?"
"Your name. Try again."
"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down."
Koh smiles.
"Time," he muses, picking at his talons, "Something you're running short on, my dear."
He slithers away.
"That will do for today."
She drinks when he brings her water, eats when he brings her fish, and if he's feeling generous that day, he let's her make a fire. She speaks when she's asked to speak, she entertains when she's asked to entertain. Though when he asks her to smile for him, she turns away, showing her back instead. Koh laughs every time.
She's beginning to see things—and not just at night.
The days go by spent lying on the cave floor. Sometimes, it's because her stomach doesn't permit her, and she moves just fast enough to the outside of the cavern for her stomach to reject its contents, but most days she's too tired, too lost, her eyes cloudy and her skin hot, to do much else but lie there.
The wall becomes a shadow theatre, the fifteen notches become lavish ornamentation like that on the box the circus troupe brought round to the nobles during the New Year's festival.
Even the shadow puppets are without faces, their patterned clothing encasing only a silhouette of a nose or chin. The dragons that scared her as a child are much less frightening without fangs, or eyes of fire; they curl through the air like tiger koi through water, scales rippling through the sky, and fire another sun.
Mai finds the people most peculiar. Funny things without faces. They soundlessly bicker, and laugh, and kill, and fall in love—sometimes all at once. Some of them are quite fearsome. Others rather timid. All fear the darkness. Always disappearing.
Each day, as the sun begins its descension, they grow, stretching their arms out wider, striding forward with each stride longer until they simply vanish into nothingness.
"Come back," her cracked lips whisper, and her hands reach out only to touch rock wall.
And Mai is left to brave the harsh reality of the night once more. Alone.
He looks at her, his tongue sweeping his lips and his claws tapping on the cave floor.
"Go on, Dearest," he says. "Let's hear it."
Ten seconds are all she needs. Maybe less if she moves quick. Her heart double time the seconds on the clock.
"Under the light of the sun,
crimson tulips bloom,
revealing white anthers,"
Her voice echoes through the cave walls, and the seconds tick by, ever so slowly.
Six seconds pass.
At first he laughs.
Eight.
And then he lunges.
Mai steps back—but she doesn't have to. For before Koh can reach her, he's thrown backwards, his body coiling around itself, he hisses in a language Mai cannot recognize, spitting and muttering to an unseen force in an old, forgotten tongue.
"Oh, don't worry, Child," he says when he addresses her again, "I haven't forgotten about you."
He snakes forward, inching closer and closer, and Mai moves farther and farther until her shoulder blades touch the cave wall. Koh's face draws near to hers, though never touching, and she focuses her gaze on spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth, avoiding his bared, yellow teeth. Warmth trickles down her forearms and her fingernails dig into her own skin. Breach the skin to save the face.
Mai stops counting seconds.
And then his own two lips part and curl upwards, revealing his answer.
Koh laughs again. The sound is quiet, like the rumble of stones before a rock slide.
"The Laws of the Spirits are so obnoxious. If only I could break them as easily as I could break you," he hisses. "Well, you've won, my darling. There's no need to look so serious. Rejoice! Let's finally have that smile."
She doesn't.
He chuckles, and closes his eyes.
And within her, it grows: a rush of adrenaline fueled no longer by fear, but by a gripping anticipation to stain steel. Wetting her lips, she bites the insides of them to prevent them from twisting upwards.
Mai raises her blade.
—FIN—
A/N: I originally had an extended ending, showing the aftermath and a bit of Mai's state afterwards, but after finishing the entire thing, I decided that I liked the effect this ending had much better. I'm contemplating posting the extended ending on my tumblr, and maybe in the future I'll post it here as an epilogue depending on demand and such.
Also, if the answer to the last riddle was unclear, don't hesitate to PM me! I didn't want Koh outright saying it, just because I thought that would disrupt the mood a bit?
More importantly, I'm so sorry that it took me close to five months to update, and I'm sorry if the end result really wasn't worth the wait at all. In truth, the execution wasn't that great, and I'm a bit ashamed, but I felt that all of you guys deserved an ending regardless—even if that end result turned out to be sub par.
So if you did manage to stick it out to the end, you have my sincere gratitude. Thank you so much for reading.
SOURCES: Riddle #1—found at ; Riddle #2—Wikipedia under Anglo-Saxon riddles; Riddles #3 and #4—Wikipedia under riddle; Riddle #5—J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit; Riddle #6—original