Pahua and the Soul Stealer

“Welcome to the Crossroads,” Miv said. He looked smug, which, for a cat, was pretty normal.

“Wow,” I said. The place was like a painting. Or a scene from a fantasy movie.

Even Zhong, who supposedly had experience traveling with her mentor, seemed a little awestruck.

A rainbow of wildflowers blanketed the surrounding hills. Nature spirits with hair like thistles and crowns of woven grass giggled as they blew pollen at passersby to make them sneeze. I had to jump to see beyond the travelers walking in front of us, but I caught a glimpse of what lay ahead: nine roads, all converging at a single point.

“Keep it moving!” someone shouted. We were blocking a wide assortment of spiritfolk headed toward the Crossroads. Some of them looked completely mortal, like me and Zhong. But others were a bizarre mix of mortal and animal. Beast spiritfolk. A man with scaly skin grunted as he elbowed his way ahead of us. He pulled a large wooden cart filled with leafy vegetables, their dirt-encrusted roots still attached. I caught a whiff of soil just as his cart nearly rolled over my foot.

“Watch it!” Miv shouted. The man turned and flicked his forked tongue at us. The cat spirit hissed in response. “Lizard shifters. They think they’re so important just because they’re distant relatives to dragons. I should steal his relic.”

“Relic?” I asked, only partly paying attention. I shuffled forward, gawking at everything around us. A pack of tigers in leather jackets prowled down the opposite lane. We passed a turtle in mismatched socks making slow and steady progress.

Now that he mentioned it, everyone who looked mortal was wearing a peculiar-looking cloak. Some were covered in feathers of midnight black and flame orange, royal purple and peacock green. Others had luminous silver and baby-blue scales. There were cloaks of fur and quills and leather. I even saw a woman wearing a tortoiseshell slung over her shoulders like a backpack.

Miv rolled his eyes. “They wear the relic as a cloak when they’re in their mortal form, and as skin when they shift back into animals.”

I thought about the dragon we’d met in my apartment. Before he had transformed from man to beast, he had been wearing a scaled cloak. I’d just assumed it was part of his questionable fashion sense.

“My mom used to tell me this folktale about a peacock princess,” I said. “When she took off her cloak of feathers to go swimming, she turned into a beautiful woman. A man saw her, fell in love, and stole her cloak so she couldn’t change back.” She’d ended up marrying him, but he kept her cloak hidden. When she found it years later, she abandoned him and their children to return to her home in the sky.

That story had stuck with me. The man was the worst for taking her cloak and trapping her into marriage, but she wasn’t so great, either. What sort of person just abandons their kids like that? I could never understand it.

“The princess was one of the Sky Father’s granddaughters,” Zhong said. “So I guess that would make her Shee Yee’s cousin.”

Did that make me royalty, then? I almost laughed. Princesses were definitely not awkward eleven-year-olds who only had invisible friends.

Parked along the side of the road was an entire mini market. Vendors shouted over the clatter of traffic and voices, adding to the din. A woman sitting on a brightly colored bamboo mat held out a basket of metal bracelets fashioned with tiny bells, like the kind Hmong women put around their babies’ wrists and ankles. She shook the basket, and the sound of tinkling bells rose into the air.

Another seller had arranged bushels of fresh fruits and vegetables over vibrant banana leaves. My empty stomach grumbled, even though I couldn’t smell them over the mixed scents of too many bodies, dust, and grass. Beside the vegetables, a monkey spirit carefully measured bags of spices in vibrant reds and yellows.

I pulled a granola bar out of my backpack as a rooster with a badge and a notepad squawked at a seller.

“No permit, no selling!” the rooster was saying. I was so focused on figuring out how the rooster was holding that pen that I ran into someone’s back.

We were close to the intersection of the Crossroads now, but that meant traffic was almost at a standstill. The person I’d run into turned around. He was a bulky man with huge bull horns and broad nostrils that smoked faintly. His shadow alone was bigger than me. I swallowed hard.

“Um, sorry,” I said. Miv arched his back, his fur standing up as he hissed. I pressed my palm to the cat spirit’s head to settle him down. If he wanted to, the man could squish Miv into paste with one fist.

Next to the huge bull man, a short woman with a small horn on either side of her head jabbed her elbow into his side. “Stop towering over her like that, Choj.”

The man grunted but turned back around. The heavy bag hanging from his shoulders—the one I’d run into—nearly whacked me in the temple.

“Don’t mind him. That’s his usual expression,” the horned woman said with a laugh that ended in a distinct moo. “Life is hard when you look like a bull about to charge.”

I was so grateful for the friendly smile that I bowed my head. “Thank you, Niam Tais.”

Niam tais is the Hmong term for an aunt on your mom’s side. Obviously, she wasn’t really my aunt, but it’s a polite way to address older women you don’t know.

“Call me Aunt Chan,” she said. She had large brown eyes with thick lashes, and even though her face was mostly human, her arms were covered in short brown fur with white spots. She wore a long green dress with triangles printed along the hem. “What’s your name?”

After I introduced everyone, Aunt Chan’s eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. I recognized the expression immediately as the Asian Auntie Critical Eye.

She made a disapproving moo. “You’re very thin. And short. Which realm are you from? What are your parents’ names?”

I mentally groaned. Who are your parents? is usually the first question out of older Hmong people’s mouths. Hmong communities are so intertwined—and the gossip networks so advanced—that pretty much everyone has heard of everyone else. My mom moved us to Merdel to get away from it all, but honestly, I thought she missed it sometimes. It isn’t always a bad thing when everybody knows who you are and you’re all part of the same community.

But when Dad left, the way our Hmong neighbors treated my mom changed, even though it hadn’t been her fault. Right before we moved, she’d told me that, sometimes, it was hard to change the minds of people who’d already decided to judge you. I certainly knew all about that from school.

As I struggled with how to reply to Aunt Chan, my stomach saved me by growling again, despite the granola bar I’d just finished.

Frowning, she dug into the leather pack that hung from her shoulder. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I could eat something,” Zhong said. When I looked at her in surprise, she added, “What? It’d be rude to refuse.”

Aunt Chan pulled out three green sticks. I recognized them as sticky sweet rice wrapped in banana leaves. They were a treat that my mom only made around the New Year. Matt could eat three of them in less than two minutes.

“Thank you.” Zhong used the same respectful tone she had with Shao. Basically it was nothing like how she talked to me. But I was grateful for that. I’d told her not to be weird about the fact I’m Shee Yee’s reincarnation, and so far, she’d listened.

I pulled off my gloves and accepted the snack. Then I turned away and whispered to Miv, “Is this okay? Me eating the food here?”

“You’ll be fine,” Miv drawled, waving away the stick that was offered to him.

As Aunt Chan put it back into her pack, I peeked inside. There were some folded clothes, wrapped possessions, and a bundle of dried seaweed. I was baffled. Where was she getting these rice sticks from?

She noticed my bewilderment. While I watched, she withdrew a strip of seaweed. As she held it, the seaweed grew plump and greener in front of my eyes, and the air sweetened with the scent of coconut.

“Haven’t you ever seen transmutation before? Of course, it’s especially tricky with food. Few people master the skill.” She said this like she was proud to count herself among them.

As I stuffed my mouth with sticky rice, I had to admit she was a master. Zhong had mentioned that Shee Yee had the power to transmute things. Maybe I could learn how to transform food, too. Then Matt and I wouldn’t have to eat eggs and ramen all the time. An ache began in my gut. He and I might never share a meal again if I didn’t hurry up and find that ax.

I gestured to the traffic jam up ahead and asked through a mouthful of rice, “Was there an accident?” We didn’t have time to stand around.

“Oh, no,” Aunt Chan said. “It’s always like this. I have to account for the congestion on my daily commute. You two look unfamiliar. Are you new here?”

Aunt Chan’s head tilted in confusion. Glaring at Zhong to stay quiet, I added, “This is our first time at the Crossroads by ourselves. Our, uh, parents don’t usually let us travel alone.”

She patted my arm. “Choj and I would be happy to watch over you while we’re together.”

Zhong frowned at the idea, but I didn’t mind. Aunt Chan collected our empty banana leaves and stuffed them back into her bag.

As we inched closer to the intersection, I noticed statues on either side of the road. They stood behind the mini market where sellers kept shouting unlikely things like “Get a glimpse into your future! Pay only two memories!”

But the statues commanded more of my attention. They were bigger than life and incredibly detailed: dragons with curling whiskers and clawed feet attached to serpentine bodies, tigers with their teeth bared, and boars with raised tusks. Thick weeds and wildflowers climbed up their bases, as if they’d been there for a long time.

“These statues were once the guardian spirits of the Crossroads,” Aunt Chan said, noticing my interest. “They were turned to stone after demons tricked them in order to gain access to the Sky Kingdom.” She pointed upward. “Through those stairs.”

Sure enough, shrouded by wispy clouds, a staircase rose into the sky. High up, there was a huge gap between the steps, like a giant had smashed a hammer into the stairway. The chasm was an uncrossable distance.

“The shaman Shee Yee destroyed the stairs with his powerful lightning ax to prevent the demons from reaching the Sky Kingdom,” said Aunt Chan. “Ever since, no one has been able to go there without the gods’ assistance. You can’t even imagine the paperwork involved. And the wait time? Might as well not bother.”

Zhong’s expression brightened at the mention of Shee Yee’s past exploits. Even though the folktales made him out to be a hero, which Zhong clearly believed, it sounded like he’d caused a lot of trouble. Destroying the stairs to the Sky Kingdom? Hunting down every single one of Xov’s horde of demon children? Imprisoning a god? No wonder there were demons and dragons after me! Shee Yee sounded reckless and brave. Nothing like me. I wasn’t even sure I would come back from this trip alive.

I didn’t know how I was going to save my brother. I only knew that I had to do it, and not just because his current condition was my fault. Like me, Matt didn’t really have anyone else. If his big sister couldn’t look out for him, who would?

But what if Shao was wrong about me having any sort of gifts to use against the bridge spirit? Maybe all that time he’d spent in cosmic space or whatever had messed up his brain frequencies, and he’d mistaken me for someone else.

Except that wouldn’t explain the mark on my arm. Or the sudden rainstorm in Shao’s cottage. Or me not impaling myself with my own sword in the demon store. Shao had said something else, too, which I hadn’t had a chance to think about in between trying not to die. Something about an ivory gate…

“Aunt Chan,” I began. I paused, fumbling for what to say. “You seem to know a lot about…spirit stuff.”

My face went hot. “I mean, obviously you do, because you’re spiritfolk. Like me. I’m spiritfolk, too. Ha-ha-ha.”

Aunt Chan’s brow rose. “You seem tired, dear. Here, take some more.” She shoved a half dozen more transmuted rice sticks at me.

I sighed heavily, dropping the food into my backpack as Miv laughed. I was tired, but that was beside the point. I decided to ask my question straight out. “Do you know anything about ivory gates?”

Her look of concern turned into one of puzzlement. “You can’t mean the first seal holding the old thunder god?”

Of course! Relief washed over me at having at least one mystery cleared up. Shao had warned me to stay away from Xov’s prison because the god of destruction hated Shee Yee for trapping him. Well, Shao didn’t need to worry about that. I wasn’t going anywhere near that guy. I was more concerned about keeping Xov’s minions away from me.

“Why would you want to know about that?” asked Choj, the bull man. He must have been eavesdropping. When he turned around, everyone squished back to make room for his bulk.

“Um,” I said, scrambling for something that made sense. “So I know how to avoid it?”

“No one knows where his prison is except the gods. What’s wrong with you, girl?” Aunt Chan clucked her tongue. It was the same sound my mom made when she wanted me to clean my room. (And hey, if I know where all my stuff is, then it can’t be that messy.)

“How does the curse go again?” Choj asked. He tapped a finger the size of a hot dog on his chin.

“Bound in ivory, silver, gold,

The god of wrath will prison hold.

By victor’s hand the gate undone

When sky bridges earth for love of gum.”

“You got that last bit wrong,” Aunt Chan said. “It’s ‘love of fun.’”

“Wait, wait, we’re both wrong,” said Choj. “I’m pretty sure it’s ‘love of bun.’”

A loud whistle made me jump. Choj faced forward again. I accidentally stepped on Zhong’s foot to avoid getting brained by his pack. Then I had to jump up to see what was happening ahead. I was used to being one of the shortest people around, but it still sucked at times.

At the center of the intersection, a crossing guard in a bright-orange vest stood holding a big STOP sign. From the neck down, he almost looked human. But his torso was twice the normal size, because it supported three furry badger heads, all facing in different directions. Each head blew an ear-piercing whistle whenever someone tried to cross out of turn.

Behind him, looming over the entire Crossroads, was a tall stone pedestal topped by a statue of a massive eagle. The bird was evil looking and super disturbing.

Each of the roads led somewhere different in the six realms. This close to the intersection, I could see the ghostly impressions of those different places. The road immediately to our left was surrounded by thick jungle. From vines hanging over the travelers, monkeys hurled papayas at their heads. The next road over was framed by sheer cliff walls.

I wanted to blink and rub my eyes to clear them. It was kind of like looking at a double-exposure picture, like the computer-manipulated photos of “ghosts” a boy had shown me back in third grade. He’d said the ghosts lived in his house and would kidnap me if he told them to. So I told him that ghosts only haunted people who they knew were about to die and join them in eternal torment. He started crying, and I got detention and a note sent home to my mom.

“Which road are we taking?” I asked Miv. That restless feeling in my stomach got more persistent the longer we were stuck there.

He pointed one small paw to the right of the eagle statue. “The Dragon’s Veins.”

That road was narrower than the others and ended at a sandy gray riverbank where numerous small rowboats were moored. Spiritfolk were boarding the boats and pushing off into the river. The “water” was dark red, like cranberry juice.

Farther down the bank, new boats sprang from the water. They bobbed to the surface, completely dry and ready for the next passengers.

Large shapes waded through the river as well. Elephants, pale and gray and semitranslucent, moved with steady grace, their trunks swaying. Mortal spirits sat on their backs. My skin prickled. They were like taxis for the dead. Now that was a crummy job.

I groaned. Fun fact #3 about me: I can’t swim. I wasn’t sure if you could drown in a magical river of…whatever that was. Hopefully not actual blood.

When I was little, my parents took me swimming at a local lake. I hadn’t known then to avoid water spirits. So when I saw one, I waved to them and called them a mermaid. The moment my dad’s back was turned, the water spirit got hold of me and pulled me under. I almost drowned. I don’t actually remember much of it other than the water spirit’s big fishy eyes, their slick fingers around my ankle, and a feeling of intense fear. I do, however, remember what happened afterward.

My dad had held me tightly, his big hand cradling the back of my head while his voice called my name. Even though I’d been afraid moments earlier, I’d felt completely safe in his arms. Now it seemed like a stupid memory, because my dad had ultimately let me go. In the past four years, I’d never gotten so much as a card from him.

I didn’t have much experience on boats, either, but that part didn’t worry me as much as the fact there didn’t seem to be any life jackets available. Butterflies flailed in my stomach.

She pointed at the crossing guard, who was handing a card back to a long-legged crane. The bird spirit shook their feathers and continued down the road toward the waiting boats.

“I’ve been watching, and every single person taking the Dragon’s Veins has had to give him a physical permit.” She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. I’d noticed she did that when she was nervous.

Zhong shook her head and rubbed her face. “I should have expected this. The Spirit Realm isn’t as tightly regulated as the Sky Kingdom or Zaj Teb, but it’s still pretty restricted.”

“We could tell the crossing guard you’re Shee Yee and demand celebrity treatment?” Miv asked.

I crossed my arms, frustrated. We couldn’t give up. I had to get into the Spirit Realm, and this was our only path there. We had no other options.

Zhong was already gripping her sword anxiously, as if she expected us to fight our way to the Dragon’s Veins. I didn’t want it to come to that, so we’d have to think of a better idea. I’d always been good at using my imagination to pretend myself out of a situation, but that had only been in my head.