They hear the enemy approach before they see it. A sound like infinite clashing swords vibrates the air, growing louder as the black cloud on the horizon darkens and swells. The villagers stand their ground in rows, like tall sheaves of grain waiting for the scythe. Fala draws air steadily into her lungs, the way she was trained. But she is no seasoned warrior. None of them are. The defenders, twenty-five drawn from each village, are bound by a single length of yellow silk that winds around their torsos and through their interlocked arms. An army of one hundred versus countless millions.
The villagers inhale, feeling energy pool in their collective lungs. They wait a beat, then push it out. Again. And again. Slowly, a protective cocoon rises from their efforts, invisible as wind and solid as rock. The barrier will only hold for as long as the villagers can maintain their rhythm. It will hold. It must.
Between breaths, Fala thinks of her newborn child, last seen cradled in a pair of sun-browned arms. When she left, Huo’s face was stricken but resigned. Though it’s unlikely she’ll return home, Fala knows this is the only way her family, or anyone else in the valley, will have a home left at all.
In.
Still, she wishes she could see her baby grow up taller than a stalk of canola.
Out.
Hectare by hectare, shadow devours the land.
In.
Silk draws tight around a hundred bellies.
HOLD!
The dark cloud crashes down upon the wall formed from the hundred’s last drawn breath.
•••
Aum and the other students watched closely as the azalea’s delicate petals slowly untwisted themselves and parted, like a pair of lips on the verge of revealing a secret. Then, in the space of a second, the flower opened fully, the dark blush on its outer edges giving way to a paler centre. The azalea trembled for a moment in the slight breeze. Just as deliberately, the petals began to close back up, until only a small pink bud remained on the branch once more.
Aum let out the breath she had been holding, even though it wasn’t her turn to practice. The boy who had successfully made the flower bloom broke into a wide smile when he saw his handiwork.
“Very good, Rugen!” The teacher led the others in a round of polite applause. “Your fu’aa has come a long way. At this rate, you’ll be helping raise the fields in no time.”
Fu’aa was not really the proper term. The people of Four Dragon County called it that after the sound of a slow exhale—fwaaah!—and because it was easier to say. Besides, breath control was farmer’s magic. Aum’s father always complained that the government bureaucrats, with their air-conditioned apartments and too-rich eating habits, had no right to name what they had no use for.
The teacher looked around. “All right. Who would like to go next? How about you, Aum?”
They all looked at her. Aum shook her head.
A girl with twin pigtails scoffed. “What else is new?”
The teacher smiled. “Are you volunteering yourself, Pirim?”
“Oh, uh…”
There was laughter and hooting. Aum remained silent. She stared at the azalea branch and felt the air seeping out of her lungs, as if she’d sprung a leak.
After class, Aum trailed behind the other children as they walked back along the dirt paths that would return them to their homes. Most of their chatter was about Festival preparations. For the last ten years, the annual Dragon’s Breath Festival had brought all four villages together to celebrate the harvest season. Everyone looked forward to it, except Aum. For her, it meant a week of being shut up indoors, lighting bundles of smelly incense, and praying over the small scrap of yellow silk her father kept in a shrine at the back of the house.
Aum’s unhappy thoughts were interrupted by someone saying, “Did anyone see the ghost come in by truck yesterday?”
“I did!” a boy piped up. “I heard they came from Black Dragon.”
The others teased him. “Don’t you mean White Dragon? Ghosts are pale.”
“Not unless it’s a salt ghost.”
“If they’re from Black Dragon, they must be a vinegar ghost.”
“I saw them,” Rugen said. The confidence in his voice made the others stop joking and turn to look at him. “I saw them, all right, because the ghost is staying at my house.”
•••
Sometimes, when the sky was clear of clouds, Aum’s father would sigh and seem to shake off the darkness that usually covered him like a veil. On these all too rare occasions, he would tell Aum little jokes and poems passed down from his own childhood. Aum’s favourite was a popular riddle about the villages that gave Four Dragon County its name. It went like this:
Of the Four Dragons, Red has the fiercest bite. Black Dragon’s scales grow stronger the more it sleeps in darkness. White’s talons are sharp, but life is dull without them. Yellow has neither tooth nor claw, but binds the other three together with its long, silken body.
As the Dragon’s Breath Festival grew nearer, the roads connecting the villages to the celebration grounds filled with activity. From Black Dragon, pickup trucks bearing heavy earthenware urns of dark vinegar trundled slowly down from the rice paddies in the northern hills. One could spot White Dragon villagers by their glittering pants and sleeves, encrusted with dried crystals from underground salt wells. And all travelers inevitably passed through a shallow sea of gold, for Yellow Dragon’s canola crops were the most extensive in the valley. Even without wind, the bright blossoms swayed and rippled in time to the sighs of the field workers as they breathed vitality into the healthy plants.
As for Red, their “dragon teeth” were considered by many to be the star of the Festival. Proper fu’aa technique could coax the slender peppers to grow as long as an adult’s forearm, brighter than jewels, redder than blood. To most animals, the colour was a warning to stay away from the painfully spicy flesh. But to valley folk, it was a delicious invitation.
What Aum associated most with harvest season, however, were the sounds. The dry snap of peppers being plucked from their stalks. The scratchy flensing of their insides, causing a patter of tiny yellow seeds to rain upon the ground. When the peppers were dried and strung up for winter storage, Aum imagined them whispering to each other in soft, rustling voices, a memory of summer’s heat stored in each wrinkled crescent.
The only place in the valley that remained silent during Festival week was the house where Aum lived alone with her father, Huo. Some of the less kind children called him “Old Salamander” behind his back, but secretly, Aum could see the resemblance: her father was wrinkled, solitary, and prone to lashing out at anyone who tried to coax him out of his dark cave.
Aum dreaded the moment after school when her classmates eventually peeled off to their own busy lives, leaving her alone on the dirt path. Right now, it was just her and Rugen walking side by side. For a few seconds, she didn’t realize he’d been speaking to her, even though there was nobody else around but noisy cicadas.
“Wanna come see the ghost?” Rugen said. He added hurriedly, “Cousin Jeshi, I mean. We’re related on my dad’s side.”
Aum’s first reaction was one of suspicion. “Why me?”
“Jeshi said they wanted to meet you. They would have visited earlier, but they were sick.” Rugen’s voice lowered. “Jeshi was the only survivor of the locust attack, ten years ago. They’re not really a ghost. I guess that’s what happens when you use too much fu’aa in one go.”
Despite her curiosity, Aum’s response was automatic. “Father won’t like it if I’m late.”
Rugen kicked a pebble off the path, seemingly on her behalf. “Your father doesn’t like it when you do anything.”
It wasn’t that her father had explicitly forbidden Aum from practicing fu’aa or celebrating Festival, but she saw how fearful he was around breath control, how bitter he became around the anniversary of Fala’s death. His grief had only grown stronger over the years, like an urn of Black Dragon fermented vinegar.
How could anyone celebrate such a tragedy? Huo often said. It’s a disgrace to the names of the fallen.
They shouldn’t teach something so dangerous to children.
Be careful, Aum. You’re all I have left.
Aum thought of her father’s hands, twisting the scrap of yellow silk that was all that remained of Fala after she’d given her last breath to save the valley. For all his prayers of remembrance, Huo didn’t talk about her much.
“If Cousin Jeshi was one of the hundred,” she said slowly, “they must have known my mother.”
“Probably, yeah.” Rugen looked hopeful. “Does that mean you’ll come?”
Aum felt the words leave her mouth as if they were coming not from her, but from the fall breeze slipping through the nearby cornfield.
“All right. But only for a little while…”
•••
The ghost was short with skinny limbs, as if someone had sucked the life out of them with a straw. Their pale eyes floated like sesame seeds in a puddle of soybean water. Their fine, white hair was bound at the back of their head with a piece of tattered, yellow silk.
“I’m sorry this has taken so long,” Cousin Jeshi said to Aum in a thin, calm voice. Rugen had gone off to help his parents prepare for the final ceremony, leaving them together in the front room. “After I recovered, I sent your father some letters, but he never responded. Did Huo… Did he ever mention me?”
Aum stared at her feet. “No. I don’t think he’d want me talking to you.”
“Why not?”
“You’d remind him of bad things.” Just like me.
Despite her words, Jeshi was insistent. “At the very least, please eat dinner with me.”
In the valley, turning down food was the height of rudeness. Aum nodded.
Jeshi went to the kitchen and came out with two bowls of cooked rice. From their robes, they produced a small clay pot.
“This is the Dragon’s Breath from last year’s ceremony.” Jeshi removed the lid. A sharp, pungent odour made Aum’s eyes well up with tears. “My family fed this to me every day while I was recovering. Even in the depths of my coma, it was as if I was tasting life itself.”
Jeshi tilted the pot over the rice. Crimson oil trickled down the white grains, turning them the vivid colour of a paper lantern ablaze from within. The flakes of chili pepper looked like dragon scales in a river of molten gold.
Aum accepted the steaming bowl. Her mouth started to water along with her eyes. The familiar, sharp scent of Red Dragon chili peppers had unlocked a hunger in her that had nothing to do with her stomach, a hunger that praying for the fallen had never been able to satisfy. Unable to contain herself, she whispered, “What was my mother like?”
Jeshi smiled sadly. “Fala was a good friend of mine. She taught me everything I know about fu’aa. We always thought she’d leave the valley to train in the capital, or a monastery. But she made the choice to stay here.”
The first mouthful of rice and Dragon’s Breath was warm and smoky. The roof of Aum’s mouth filled with the mellow taste of cooked garlic, followed by the subtle bite of peppercorn. Then a slow, rolling intensity, like summer thunder coming off the mountains. Waves of heat traveled through her body all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.
Even Jeshi’s sallow cheeks were beginning to flush. They said, “Fala once told me that breathing is the first thing humans learned when we were created, and the first thing we forgot when we separated our energy from the land and called it magic. Fu’aa is simply remembering what it means to live.”
Though her mouth and belly felt full of flame, Aum felt something in her chest open up, like a knot unraveling. Her lips parted wide and she drew air deep into her lungs, as if for the first time.
“Those who loved the land return to it, and nourish the ones who follow.” Jeshi was watching her with a strange expression. “I am glad I finally met you, Aum. I can tell you are your mother’s daughter.”
In a corner of the room, a vase of wilted sunflowers lifted their weary heads, and suddenly burst into a riot of yellow.
•••
Illustration by Danielle Taphanel
The last night of the Dragon’s Breath Festival was traditionally when Aum’s father insisted that she stay indoors and pay her respects, so she had never witnessed it in person. But now she was running down the dirt path towards the lights and music, Jeshi’s bony hand clutched in hers. The first strikes of the drum were as loud as her own heartbeat.
The villagers were gathered in a designated clearing for the final ceremony, drunk from the past six days of festivities. They stood in concentric circles, hands linked by a ribbon of yellow silk. In the central circle was an immense cast iron cauldron, big as a washtub, heated from below by a massive bonfire.
At each strike of the drum, representatives from the four Dragons poured their harvest’s bounty into the cauldron. First, barrels of oil, until the surface shimmered with lustre. Then, fresh and dried chili peppers, followed by bagfuls of salt, chopped garlic, and herbs. Splashes of black vinegar went in last, hissing upon contact.
After a brief prayer over the ingredients, the villagers began to breathe in time with the drumbeat. Their collective fu’aa churned the fiery mixture, making it stronger with each turn around the iron belly. Sweat broke out on their foreheads, glistening with effort.
As Aum and Jeshi ran up, the smoke from the cauldron was swirling into thick coils above their heads. There was an empty gap in the circle where the ribbon hung loosely, as if a place had been saved for them. The villagers shuffled aside to make room without losing the beat. Aum helped wrap Jeshi’s hands in the silk before joining the circle herself. She saw Rugen on the other side of the orange firelight, his chest moving in time with the others. He caught her eye and grinned.
The drum continued to pound. Jeshi’s fu’aa fluttered weakly. Aum focused on keeping them both inside the wreath of molten air, pulsing like the heart of the earth itself. She felt her breath chase itself around the circle, merging with the others, growing stronger and steadier with each beat. As the burning in her lungs reached a crescendo, she felt Jeshi’s hand squeeze hers back.
They all felt it then. Within the depths of the cauldron, the crimson-gold elixir suddenly deepened to the colour of blood and autumn. The villagers roared in tandem, eyes and noses streaming through the cheers. The smell was enough to overpower heaven.
Under the joy, Aum felt a pang of despair that her father had refused to join her. But grief takes its time, slowly opening itself to the sun and rain. It can’t be rushed, only tended to with patience and care.
Teacher had warned that the first breath was always the most painful. It became easier once you got in the rhythm.
As she panted and laughed with the others, Aum heard a voice in her ear. It was the same voice that whispered through the tall grass in summer and warmed the village homes on cold winter nights.
Out.
To breathe is to live.
In.
Remember to breathe, my love.
Out.
A hundred breaths rose into the night sky, mingling with the stars scattered there like so many tiny yellow seeds.
