Back in the woods by the ke, Meí Guī slowly healed.

  Dzue Yi-sang supplied her with tonics and applied salves and brought good, wholesome food, but never answered any questions. Why was she helping Meí Guī? Was there, perhaps, a favour she owed Miss Fén? Was there anything Meí Guī could do in return? What sorts of things did Dzue Yi-sang and Miss Fén like?

  Dzue Yi-sang merely raised her eyebrows coldly and shook her head. "Just heal and don't cause me any trouble."

  Her visits became fewer and fewer as Meí Guī became better. The cultivator could understand, but having taken a sip from a cup of wine, the return to drinking water was hard - she may have been trapped alone in the ke for a hundred years, but now that she knew companionship, solitude was bitter.

  And Miss Fén continued to be absent.

  Meí Guī tried to return to her cultivation, what she could remember of the techniques, stilling her heart when it tried to rage. Sometimes fear, and even anger, threatened to overwhelm her. Each time, she returned to the scene of the tranquil ke before her, bringing the dark thoughts back down. It helped the lonely hours pass. But sometimes she felt herself slipping into trances where reality merged with fantasy, where the ke and woods faded away and she found herself in half-remembered or half-imagined pces, paces and city streets emerging between the trees surrounding her. Someone called out - who? What name had they called? And then when she turned her face, there stood a figure by the lotus pond (what lotus pond?), shimmering a rich bronze as though their clothing was made of fish or snake scales.

  The figure spread its arms in greeting, and the words burst from Meí Guī's lips before she even knew it. "Taai wong! Your Majesty!"

  "How do you know the Dzue tongue?" Dzue Yi-sang demanded behind her.

  Meí Guī thought her heart would leap out of her mouth. The trance colpsed in an instant.

  "How do you know?" Dzue Yi-sang demanded, dropping her bag to fall to her knees and seize Meí Guī's shoulders. Meí Guī was speechless. The doctor's cold and impassive exterior had cracked to reveal a desperate woman clutching at her robes.

  "I don't know," Meí Guī said quickly, taking Dzue Yi-sang's arms to reassure her. "I was meditating and I saw... Perhaps they are memories. I don't know. Did something happen to the Zhū Kingdom?"

  "What did you see?" Dzue Yi-sang snapped urgently, ignoring Meí Guī's question.

  "A pace... A lotus pond... Someone dressed in shining bronze robes. They're the one I called 'Your Majesty'."

  "Shining bronze robes?" Dzue Yi-sang mused, looking puzzled. She retracted herself suddenly and stood, but she remained pensive, apparently oblivious to all of the pills and other items that had spilled from her bag. Meí Guī began to diligently pick them up.

  "She's been gone a long time," the doctor said suddenly.

  "Who...?"

  "Ah Fan, of course." She impatiently swept her belongings from Meí Guī's hands and back into the bag.

  "Perhaps she was caught up in something?" Meí Guī suggested peaceably. Dzue Yi-sang ignored her words, evidently having returned to her usual cold self, and said instead, "Have you worked out your cultivation method?"

  "I'm still not sure. The most I've determined is that energy flows easier when I'm closer to the ke. But it's not water-based... I think?"

  "Well, hurry up," Dzue Yi-sang ordered, extracting a balm from the jumble in her bag. "And apply this to your joints."

  "Are you worried about Miss Fén?"

  Dzue Yi-sang left.

  And so the weeks passed. Late spring warmed into summer, the lotuses burst into bloom, and Meí Guī barely saw Dzue Yi-sang, or any other being for that matter. She stilled her heart, and pushed down her anxiety.

  And then, as the days finally began to ever so slightly shorten, Miss Fén returned.

  It was te afternoon, warm and hazy, and Meí Guī sat cross-legged by the edge of the ke, cultivating diligently. Things had changed so much since Miss Fén had fished her from the water. As summer had lengthened, her cultivation had improved markedly, and she had begun to suspect that something about the season had brought about this improvement. A passerby would not believe for a moment that she were anything but human; although she was still somewhat frail and underweight, and her skin still marked by her time underwater, she was clear-eyed and alert, her damaged hair regaining its shine, her wasted muscles fuller and her movements smooth. The miraculous hands of the doctor had impnted new teeth where the old ones had been lost.

  In fact, vilgers who had begun to return to the ke had met her and identified her as a cultivator. Heartened by the apparent disappearance of the 'ghost', they would visit every day, bringing Meí Guī food and talk. These visits did a great deal to help her recovery, nourishing her lonely heart such that she no longer felt such sadness over the infrequency of Dzue Yi-sang's visits.

  The figure in her trances would still appear occasionally, along with others - a cheerful girl in servant's robes who brought her osmanthus cakes, an older woman in rich attire with gentle hands and a soft voice, a cheerful man surrounded by horses. Their faces were blurry, and she didn't know their names, but she was sure, so sure, that she had once know them, in a different time and pce.

  She thought about Miss Fén a lot, especially in the moments as she was slipping into sleep, lying alone by the side of the ke, and she remembered how Miss Fén had held her securely even when she had been at her most wretched. She missed being held. She wondered where Miss Fén was and hoped she was safe, although the idea of something bad happening to Miss Fén seemed absurd.

  So she dreamed and cultivated and talked to the vilgers and her body slowly healed, and when at st Miss Fén stepped out into the st of the golden sunlight by the ke, the woman who sat alone by the ke barely resembled the emaciated creature that had crept trembling from the water.

  Miss Fén paused a moment, to simply look while she was still herself unobserved.

  The simply-dressed woman before her had a gentle face. Her full lips and heavy eyelids gave her a na?ve appearance, yet she had chosen not to remove the silvery scars criss-crossing her pale skin. The hair, that had been rough as straw, and as brittle, was now growing glossy and smooth and was long enough to brush her shoulders.

  "You have high cultivation, to maintain such a youthful appearance," Miss Fén called out, teasingly. A pair of dark eyes fshed towards her.

  "Miss Fén!" Meí Guī rose up instantly, checking herself when she realised she had almost flung herself into the demon hunter's arms. How strange, she hadn't realised she had missed Miss Fén so much. In many ways, they were complete strangers.

  But there was something very reliable about Miss Fén, a kind of warm assurance that...

  Something seemed wrong.

  "Miss Fén... Are you well?"

  "Me? I'm a bit hungry, but that's it."

  "Oh, please, go and get some food first, we can talk ter."

  Miss Fén shook her head. The afternoon light set sparkling lights in her hair and glimmered in her grey-brown eyes, but something seemed wrong. Meí Guī didn't know what it was.

  "You've kept these?" Miss Fén gestured to the scars.

  Meí Guī smiled and shrugged. "I have no illusions of vanity. These scars show what I have experienced. Miss Fén..."

  Are you okay?

  What's wrong?

  She barely knew Miss Fén.

  But she knew enough. She was the kind of person to come to decisions quickly and stick to them, and she had decided that Miss Fén was a very important person to her.

  Then Miss Fén lowered her head, and knelt gracefully before Meí Guī. It was a strange scene, the elegant figure of the demon hunter kneeling before the smaller one of the cultivator, cd in her simple borrowed garments.

  "... Miss Fén?"

  "Your Highness."

  "What?" Dzue Yi-sang demanded.

  "I'm almost certain that our Xiǎo Guī is the Second Princess Chūn Zéyì1春则溢, 二公主 (Chūn Zéyì, èr Gōngzhu) - i.e. 'Spring' same as the name of the Kingdom/Country and 'to overflow' as in 水满则溢 (shuǐ mǎn zé yì) - 'water rises to overflow' meaning a situation is about to change, the tides are turning., Divine Lotus2神莲 (Shén Lián), the Benevolent Ancestor of Chūn3春仁宗 (Chūn rénzōng)-"

  "Not that," Dzue Yi-sang cut in acidly. "When did you say you were at that border town?"

  "I don't remember." Miss Fén shrugged, and offered Meí Guī a pte. "Would you like a strawberry, Your Highness?"

  "Fan Ah Ji!"

  A cold aura rolled off Miss Fén and froze the bones of the two women beside her. Dzue Yi-sang gritted her teeth. "Stop that! Let me feel your pulse."

  Dzue Yi-sang had arrived after sundown, as if she had received some kind of telepathic message that Miss Fén had returned. She had brought food for Miss Fén, including the very berries that Miss Fén was carelessly offering to Meí Guī as they all sat, or in the doctor's case, stood, by the ke. Part of Meí Guī wanted to ugh raucously, the other part was supremely embarrassed.

  "Miss Fén..."

  "You don't want a strawberry, Your Highness?"

  "I'll take a strawberry if you get your pulse checked," Meí Guī conceded with mild exasperation, trying not to ugh. Still holding out the pte to Meí Guī, Miss Fén extended her free arm in Dzue Yi-sang's direction. "Done!"

  The doctor cast a sour look at the other two women, but began to carefully check Miss Fén's pulse as Meí Guī took a strawberry to uphold her end of the bargain. "So... What now?"

  "I'll escort you to Chūn."

  "You won't do anything of the sort," Dzue Yi-sang hissed. She broke into a rapid string of rebuke in the Zhū tongue, which Miss Fén calmly ignored and Meí Guī was mostly unable to understand.

  "Well?" Miss Fén asked, as if Dzue Yi-sang had not said anything.

  "What's the problem, Yī Shēng?" Meí Guī in her turn ignored Miss Fén's question and turned to the doctor.

  "She's overworked herself. She will need months of recovery -"

  "I'm fine."

  Dzue Yi-sang unleashed a torrent of angry Zhū again.

  "Um, Miss Fén?" Meí Guī managed to ask as Dzue Yi-sang drew a breath.

  "Yes, Your Highness?"

  Meí Guī squirmed at this title but pushed on. "You said you would escort me... Does that mean... You've found a way to release me from the ke?"

  A crooked grin crept onto Miss Fén's face. "I have. And so, once you are released, you can return to your homend."

  Meí Guī's heart quivered a little, and she realised, in amongst the joy of her almost-freedom, and the knowledge of who she was, that...

  "Are you not happy, Your Highness?" Miss Fén asked. In spite of the long journey she had just returned from, and the low state of health that Dzue Yi-sang had diagnosed her with, she looked bright and strong and Meí Guī could not ever imagine her being unwell.

  "Ah, no. I... It's a lot to take in."

  "Does your name and title not bring back any memories?"

  Meí Guī shook her head.

  "Second Princess Chūn Zéyì, daughter of the Third Regent Chūn Shénzhī4神芝 literally divine/spiritual mushroom! A name for the 'Lion's Mane' fungus. and his Consort Mǎn Jīang5满江 - 满江红 (Mǎn Jīang Hóng) i.e. 'the whole river red' is both the name of a set of Chinese lyrical poems, and also an aquatic pnt, red Azol. Mǎn Jīang by itself means 'a full river'...."

  "Oh... Regal Mother."

  The image of the older woman from her trances rose up in her mind, and those gentle hands, her soft smile...

  An unusually loud "Huh" escaped her throat, then she shook herself, and said, more normally, "Is she...? Well, it's been so long..."

  "Yes, she passed away several decades ago, Your Highness."

  "Please don't call me that. We don't know... For sure..."

  Miss Fén crouched on her heels, and looking up at Meí Guī, offered her hand. Meí Guī hesitated a moment before taking it.

  "Xiǎo Guī," Miss Fén continued, and the little endearment made Meí Guī want to smile and cry all at once. "It has been over one hundred years since you were cursed. Your elder brother, who became the Fourth Regent of Chūn, has also passed. In fact, the kingdom is now in the hands of the Sixth Regent, since the Fifth Regent died early from illness. Regent Yīlì6伊乐 - Doesn't have a clear transtion. 伊 has had a variety of uses over time, including as the name of a river, and as a pronoun. 伊乐藻 (yī lē zǎo) is Elodea, a water pnt. is your brother's second grandson, your grand nephew, younger brother of the Fifth Regent."

  Meí Guī's hand was limp in Miss Fén's gentle but firm grip. She had known that she had been in the ke for a long time, but it was only now that it felt real... She closed her eyes.

  "So that's how it is... How do we break the curse? Who cast it?"

  "I only have part of the answers for those questions, and a lot of conjecture... Xiǎo Guī, do you think you're ready?"

  Her eyes still shut tight, Meí Guī sighed. "Miss Fén, if the things you will tell me are as concerning as you suggest, then I will never be truly ready to hear them, which means I am currently as ready as I will ever be." She fshed strange smile and said cheerfully, "I'm a grown adult. Let's do this!"

  Dzue Yi-sang stood abruptly. "I have no interest in hearing any of this, and since Fan Ze refuses to be treated, I seem to have no choice. You can try and find me when you stop being foolish." She glided away into the forest with a flick of her sleeves.

  "Never mind her." Miss Fén's smile brightly returned. She pulled her fsk from her belt once more. "Let me tell you what I know."