Page 24 of The Blood Orchid
The Sandstone Alchemist had spoken a dialect that resembled Chang’an’s, but it had still been a struggle for me to make sense of, the rising and falling tones flipped and weaker than I was accustomed to.
I’d thought he’d emphasizedyou two, as if saying people like us could never find Penglai unassisted. Maybe because we were children, or poor, or because he hated my father.
But perhaps the emphasis hadn’t been intentional.
You two could never find Penglai Islandwith only a map.
I sat up straight, flattening the paper.
I already knew of one place that you couldn’t find with a map: the river of souls. No map in the world could bring you there—it was intention, a soul tag, and alchemy that opened the door.
“This is it,” I whispered. When Wenshu didn’t respond, I grabbed an orange from my bag and threw it at his head. “This is it, Gege!” I said. “This is how we get to Penglai Island.”
“With a poem?” he said, rubbing his head where the orange had struck him. “Where is that supposed to take us?”
“Everywhere,” I said. “Anywhere, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a place you walk to. It’s a place you unlock.”
I ran my fingers across the dried ink, the words that would bring all of the dead back to me.
“This is what we use to open the door.”
Chapter Five
We left Lanzhou at dawn, tossing our bags into a creaky canoe that absolutely would not spring a leak and dump us in the Yellow River, according to the fisherman who sold it to us. I patched a few questionable spots with moonstone before we left, and by the time the sun rose, the river was drawing us north.
I read over the Sandstone Alchemist’s transformation again once daylight broke, running my fingers over the words that would save everyone.
Even if I didn’t understand the whole transformation, I knew the first ingredient. Opals were expensive stones imported from other continents, something we would never find in a desert village.
Baiyin, a day’s boat ride to the north, was known for its copper and silver mines, so chances were good that stone trade there would be more diverse.
Maybe in Baiyin, I could find scholars who could help me figure out the rest of the transformation. No one would openly admit to being an alchemist now that private armies were everywhere, but that was the beauty of a transformation hundreds ofyears old—no one would know for certain that it was a transformation unless they also knew alchemy. No one could turn me in without incriminating themselves. I wondered if the first alchemists had ever imagined that one day, alchemists would need to hide their transformations not to protect their ideas but their lives.
All I need is one good scholar, and I could be on Penglai Island by the end of the week, I thought as the river curved to the left and Lanzhou disappeared behind the trees. That ember of hope flared bright inside me, filling me with warmth. Everything I’d destroyed could be repaired with only a few stones. It didn’t matter what the Empress was planning, because I would reach Penglai first and have all the power in the world at my disposal. I didn’t realize I was smiling until Wenshu told me tostop thinking about your stupid boyfriend.
The morning chill melted away, and as the sun rose over the Yellow River, we rode the current to the northeast, wide awake from the fear of toppling overboard, since neither of us could swim. We’d grown up on the Pearl River, but had never ventured past the shores—the children of clay merchants had no reason to go farther than the muddy riverbanks.
I steered us around patches of rocks and tall cordgrass, but no matter how I directed us, the waters drew us east, like it wanted us there.
After a few hours, there was nothing but sparse trees on either side of the river and searing sun overhead, baking us alive in the wooden boat. I’d set Durian on the seat beside me, but he’d stubbornly squirmed back inside my bag and fallen asleep.
Driftwood lay scattered across the banks, mixed with unsettled dirt and cracked Huyang trees. Villages like these—built too close to the river—were often swept away overnight in thesummer floods, leaving behind nothing but ghosts and broken branches by morning. We passed through yet another shattered ghost village, the remaining trees creaking overhead, branches barely held upright by thin strips of split wood.
The quiet unsettled me. Even in the golden expanse of the desert, it hadn’t been this silent, as if the world knew something that we didn’t. I paddled faster than Wenshu, steering the boat too far to the left.
Wenshu frowned over his shoulder. “Would you relax?” he said. “I’m going as fast as I can, but your boyfriend didn’t exactly have a ton of upper body strength.”
“Don’t say that like your body was any stronger,” I said. Then, quieter: “This place feels strange.”
“Well, we’re leaving it. At a normal, sustainable pace,” he said, turning the boat straight again. “Save your energy in case we see an alligator.”
“Is that a possibility?”
I couldn’t see his face, but somehow I felt certain he was rolling his eyes. “No, Zilan, I’m sure all the river beasts in the north are very polite and will step out of the water until we pass so as not to startle us.”
Something thunked against the boat, rocking us to the side.
I jumped and yanked my oar out of the water, half expecting an angry alligator to chase after it, but the river was clear and still, save for the ribbons of water rippling behind our boat. I peered over the edge, but saw no sharp teeth or yellow eyes or muddy scales. Only a long, thin piece of wood embedded in my side of the boat, the end sparkling with gold fletching.