Kylie Chan - Red Phoenix

I had a horrible thought. ‘Will you change when you have your snake back?’

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I am unchanging.’

He concentrated, and the Tiger appeared next to me in the other visitor’s chair. He saluted us both casually without a word.

‘Ah Bai.’ John leaned his elbow on the desk. ‘Do remember back to when I lost the Serpent?’

‘I remember,’ the Tiger said, and his eyes turned inwards. ‘That was a tough time for all of us. No idea what brought that on.’ He snapped back. ‘It was about 1975. He just completely disappeared for about six months. And then he came back as if nothing had happened at all. The first time he took True Form afterwards, he seemed the most surprised of all of us that the snake was gone.’

‘Was I different when I had the Serpent? To how I am now?’ John said.

The Tiger studied him appraisingly for a while. He appeared to be thinking about it. Then, ‘Yeah,’ he said with a grin. ‘Come to think of it, you were different.’

John frowned. ‘No, I wasn’t. I was exactly the same person.’

‘Nah.’ The Tiger’s grin widened. He shook his head and raised his hand. ‘You’ve changed. Be interesting to see what happens when you have that Snake thing back.’ He realised what he’d said. ‘By the Heavens, Emma, I’m sorry. Don’t worry, he’ll still be the same person.’

My blood ran cold. ‘How different was he?’

The Tiger turned back to John. John glared under his brows at him, obviously irritated.

‘He was much more yang, but that’s understandable,’ the Tiger said. ‘Much brighter, much harder, much more…I dunno…’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, my Lord, there’s no other way to put this. He was much more of a bastard.’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ John said, leaning back and glowering.

‘Why is it understandable that he would be more yang?’ I said.

‘Suppose it wouldn’t hurt you to know, Emma, you’ll be spending most of your time with this thing, you’d better be aware of the strange nature of its essence,’ the Tiger said.

‘He’s not a thing !’ I said, horrified.

‘Yes, I am,’ John said equably. ‘Because I encapsulate both essences in one creature. Two creatures.’

‘Essences? Turtle and Serpent?’

‘Yang and yin,’ the Tiger said. ‘You know?’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Yang is bright, hard, life, light, metal, hot, male.’ I gestured towards the Tiger. ‘You are extremely yang.’ He nodded and grinned. I thought about yin. ‘Yin is soft, dark, death, black, water, cold, female,’ and I gasped. I looked at John. He was all of those things, except for the female. He nodded. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

‘How female are you?’ I said with horror. This was something about him—and something about myself— that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to look at too closely.

The Tiger chuckled. ‘Ever done it, Ah Wu?’ he said slyly. ‘I know I have.’

I stared at the Tiger, aghast. ‘You’ve turned yourself into a chick?’

The Tiger nodded, and his grin widened. ‘We choose the form we take. Gender is part of the form. For us, gender is completely optional. Humans seem to have a great deal of attachment to gender, and often seem to find change in gender threatening. No idea why; most of us Shen can’t understand this preoccupation. The Phoenix’s human form used to spend most of its time male, now it spends most of its time female, and won’t tell anyone why.’

‘The Tiger will go to any length to get the girl, sometimes,’ John said, his voice a low rumble.

I collapsed forward over my knees, laughing silently. I could believe it. I looked up at the Tiger. You guy. Living every hot-blooded guy’s dream. I shook my head. Even as a chick, he would still have been a full-blooded male. This was so weird, and here I was handling it perfectly.

I crossed my arms over my knees and leaned on them. I glanced up at John. He watched me placidly. Gender was completely optional.

‘Is the Turtle female?’ I said softly.

‘That question doesn’t really apply to our True Forms, Emma,’ he said. ‘We are essence.’

‘But he’s always male in True Form,’ I said, leaning back and pointing at the Tiger. ‘Extremely male.’

‘You noticed,’ the Tiger said, grinning evilly.

‘Bit hard to miss,’ I shot back, ‘you’re a shocking exhibitionist.’

The Tiger just shrugged, the grin not shifting.

‘The Bai Hu’s essence is yang,’ John said. ‘Extremely yang, even though he is the Lesser Yang. Of course his True Form is male.’

‘But your essence is yin,’ I said. ‘Female.’

‘I encapsulate both essences, Emma,’ John said. ‘Yang and yin. I am two creatures. The Turtle is yin. The Serpent is yang. The essence of the Xuan Wu, combined, is yin. I am the ultimate yin creature: I am dark, cold, water, winter, death. But my human form has always been male.’

‘He’s right, Emma,’ the Tiger said. ‘He’s always been male in human form, despite his yin nature, his dual nature.’

‘No wonder everybody keeps saying you’re a very strange creature, Xuan Wu,’ I said softly with wonder. ‘They’re right.’

‘Both essences, combined into yin. Two creatures, combined into one. His colour is black, his number is one, his direction is North, and he is Master of the Arts of War. And in human form, he has always been male,’ the Tiger said softly. ‘With perfect alignment.’

‘Okay. So you’re a very yin guy, but still a guy,’ I said.

John nodded. ‘And you’re a very yang woman, but still a woman. Think about it. Aren’t you?’

I mentally stepped back and studied myself. ‘I suppose I am,’ I said. ‘But I’m still one hundred per cent female, all the way through. I’ve never thought of myself any other way.’ I hesitated. ‘That explains our compatibility, I suppose. Yang and yin.’

I had a sudden brilliant, wonderful thought.

‘Could I be your Serpent?’ I said quietly with delight.

He wasn’t surprised at all.

‘You thought that too,’ I said. ‘You’ve thought that for a long time.’

He shrugged. ‘We don’t need words.’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘I’m not sure I’d want that, Emma,’ he said. ‘Because if you were my Serpent, then when we joined, I would lose you. You would be absorbed into me and no longer exist as a separate entity; you would become part of the Dark Lord, you would become part of me .’

‘I can’t imagine anything that I want more in the whole world.’

‘But we have loved, we have shared our minds and our bodies. If you were my Serpent, we would have rejoined. I have often wondered, but it’s not really possible.’

‘Damn,’ I said softly.

‘Not possible at all,’ the Tiger cut in from where he was sitting, completely forgotten by both of us. ‘Because the Serpent’s been found. That’s probably why he brought it up, he’s somehow subconsciously aware of it. I was on my way to tell him anyway.’

‘I brought it up,’ I said, but neither of them heard me.

‘Where is it?’ John said, excited. He leapt to his feet, full of energy. ‘I must go to it. It would be good to be whole again.’

‘You would lose everything, Ah Wu, you forget yourself,’ the Tiger said. ‘It is better that it stays where it is.’

John rubbed his hands over his face and grimaced. ‘You’re right.’

‘Where is it?’ I said. ‘What’s it doing?’

‘It is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench,’ the Tiger said, his face expressionless. ‘It is hiding in the deepest reaches of the ocean. It sleeps at the bottom of the darkest seas.’