Sweet Romance12 min read
"I woke in mud, with a broken body and a borrowed name"
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I spat a taste of iron and pushed my face up from the wet dirt.
"Is she dead?" someone hissed, close by.
"Dead," a high voice said, like a knife. "Good riddance."
I felt the boot. Pain slammed my ribs. I did not want to move. I could not move. My whole skin felt like it had been ground and burned.
"Leave her," the voice said. "If anyone asks, we never saw her."
They left. Footsteps faded. Leaves brushed each other. The forest smelled old and wet and wrong.
I blinked. Air was thin and sharp. I checked my hands. Tiny. Scarred. A child's body — not mine, not how I remembered being.
"My name is not what this body is called," I told the trees. "I am Emilie."
A memory reefed up fast and bright: hospital lights, a plane falling in a storm, a jade pendant that had always been on my grandmother's neck. A book I had memorized at five. A lab that smelled like antiseptic back home, in a time with glass towers and machines. Then a tunnel, and then I woke in a brown world.
I pulled myself to sit. Pain flared where lashes had bitten my skin. I checked my throat. No pendant. My fingers were thin and filthy. I pressed a wrist. Tiny pulse. Poison ticked under the skin. I had a voice in my head that was not mine: an echo of someone called Tien Jing. Same sound. Different ink.
"You survived," I told the dark. "You got a second chance."
Something snarled far off. I flinched. A low animal sound like a bell made of hot stone came closer. A thing with a mane and eyes like coal snarled through the leaves. I tried to rise. My hand muscles burned.
"Where is my pendant?" I hissed at empty air. "Where is the space jade?"
The book answered. It hovered above a patch of pale grass like a stubborn moth.
"Stupid owner," it said. "You woke me after I saved you. You are a mess."
"Who—?" I made my mouth work. I had the memory of the book's pages like a map. "You... you are my storage book? My—"
"A book-spirit," it replied. "Call me the Manual. I know medicines, skills. I know craft and more. I was slapped awake by you getting inside my space. You owe me tea."
I laughed, a small, raw sound. "I am Emilie Schroeder," I said. "I am not dead. I will not be dead again."
A lion's roar cut the air. The beast leapt, shaking the ground. I wanted to crawl. The Manual flared a thin light. The space around me sighed and opened like a door.
"Jump," the Manual ordered. "Into the pocket."
I closed my eyes and dove.
I opened them to a small green yard filled with snacks from a century I knew, a crate of sodas, a box of chips, and a single bright puddle that dripped, one clear drop a minute. I had been inside a secret space my grandmother had called the Vault. It held odd junk and a breathing book and a single spring.
"You have guts," the Manual said. "You swallowed world gates and came back with new skin."
"Tell me what this body was," I asked.
"Name here is Tien Jing," the book said. "She was small, favored, beaten and left at the forest edge. A spoiled lord's daughter, Constance Woods, and her gang like to play at murder."
My mouth went cold.
"She beat her?" I asked.
"She and her fools," the Manual said. "You were left to die. You did not die. You got me and space and now you have to grow into the marrow."
I let a laugh that turned to a snarl. "Good," I said. "I am good at breaking things. I will break them back."
Days passed, but I will not skip them. I learned to drink one drop of the spring at a time. The Manual fed me old recipes. I fed the poison out of my blood with a bowlful of the green liquid, tiny drop by tiny drop. The pain eased. My lungs learned not to crack. My chest glowed small with something the book called "chi."
"You have raw power," the Manual said one night, pages yawning. "Strange, big mental force. You could open a door if you had training. You have knowledge inside you. Use it."
"You mean my last life's training?" I asked. "The medicine, the notes?"
"Yes. And more. The Vault and I will grow. But the world will not be patient."
I nodded. "What else is out there?"
"Lord families and princes and beasts," the Manual said. "You belong to a house. The house will come. Or they will hunt."
Two months later, I left the Vault for the first real time. The forest spit me out in the morning haze. I stepped and found small beasts and larger dangers. I met a fire-cloud lion again. I did not run. I watched it fall into a swamp and be eaten by a flock of green-headed ducks, five times its size, with hooked talons. I nearly died chasing it into the pit. I learned that the world had teeth and all of them were sharp.
"You're reckless," the Manual scolded when I scraped back clean but bloodied. "You have no tools."
"So make me tools," I said.
"So we will," the Manual answered. "But that takes materials and fire and fish that cook themselves into bones."
I took a tribe of small bright fish from the swamp and used their chitinous jaws to fashion a blade. The Manual taught me how to bind chi into metal. We made a thin knife that bit like a winter blade. I gathered duck eggs and fired them in salt-coals. I taught my lungs a new chant. I learned the basics of elements. The purple thing inside me — an ember that had lived in the dead girl's chest — rose and answered me. It had the name "purple thunder fire." It was no friend at first. It bit.
"You are a shock," it said, in thought-voice. "You carry lightning and burn."
"I carry you," I told it. "We help each other."
We were a strange trio: a tiny girl, a floating book, and a child-fire that cried like a baby when it was cold. A fire that had once burned insane in human hands and left black marks. It did not want to be caged. It wanted to be named.
"Be named," I said. "I name you Lor."
Lor was proud and turned purple and hummed. The Manual smiled in paper creases. "Fine. Lor, the debtor to the Brave Child."
I learned to balance: water to cool, fire to cut, chi to temper. I slept, I ate, I grew. I learned the old girl's memories piecemeal. I learned she was a treasure of a family tied to General Jameson Boyd — that was my cover. Called Tien Jing before. Loved and spoiled. The family that would search would call the girl their jewel.
"So they will come for me?" I asked when the forest wind carried horse sounds.
"They will come," the Manual said flat. "And Constance Woods will smile."
That name I hated long before I saw her face again.
Three days later the chancellor's carriage came to the county road. Horse hooves hammered the dirt. A retinue spread like dark skates on the land. A woman in white stepped down, hair like a crown, and a smile that could scythe a throat. Constance Woods. She had been ugly in heart and beautiful in face. She passed the messenger girls and spoke like silk folded over knives.
"Search," Constance ordered. "Find the one who stole our fun. The house must be clean."
When she left, a servant whispered, "She keeps the life of the weak as a game."
I followed, small, hidden, with Lor in a sleep pocket under my clothes. I had ideas. I had a plan. I would not be hunted like a rabbit in a snare again.
Weeks later, rumors unrolled. A grand festival at the chancellor's estate. They would hold a show, a parade, a wedding — everything rich and loud. Hundreds would attend. Constance would be at the center, as always. I would not go in with fury. I would go in with proof.
"How will we show proof?" Lor asked, a tiny thunder flicker.
"Old tech," I said. "Recording. In another life I knew cameras and loudness. The Manual, can you display?"
The Manual opened. Paper pages rubbed together. Then it pulsed and spilled light like a television. It recorded images years and times had shown it. The Manual had memorized old-world video sequences as if they were recipes.
"Yes," the Manual said. "I can call the Vault-display. But we will need an audience. And courage."
I had both.
I gate-crashed the festival in a pair of borrowed servant's clothes. I kept to shadows. The Hall was full of people with jeweled belts and loud laughter. A hundred candles burned like small suns. Constance laughed from her dais, and people bowed.
The Manual hovered behind a tapestry.
I slid a small device — a recording crystal I had sewn from an old battery and a glass bead — into the tapestry seams. The Manual hummed. It fed into the house lights like a spider unrolling a net.
"Now," I breathed. "Now."
The chancellor rose to speak like a man who enjoyed being heard. "This home stands high," he said. "We build beauty."
People clapped. A hundred hands like dry leaves. Constance smiled like a white blade.
"Bring forth the tapes," I said to the Manual under my breath.
A hush moved; the Manual released a thin beam into the grand chandelier. A screen came to life above the curtains. Gasps rose like birds.
The screen showed images. Grainy. Raw. A small girl in rags, tied and beaten, a boot stamping, a laugh like a bell. A voice — Constance's — calling a cruelty a joke: "She'll not live long. It's too small a toy not to break." Then a second clip: the girl crawling and the same hands shoving a twig into the girl's side, the girl's legs buckled, the book of the household dropped, the girl's head hit rock. The footage ran again. Close-ups caught faces. Acrid light.
People started to shout. The chancellor's smile faltered.
"Turn it off!" Constance screamed. She ran to the dais and slapped at the curtain, trying to cover the screen.
"Stop this lie!" she cried. Her voice trembled now. I watched her face change from smooth porcelain to a red blotchy mask. The crowd pressed forward like a tide.
"How do you know this?" she said, splitting her voice. "This is slander! Who dares show this?"
"Who showed it?" a voice demanded from the crowd. The Manual answered, in a voice not quite human.
"I did," the Manual said, loud and dry. "And she can confess."
Constance's eyes began to dart. Her body did the first real thing I had waited for. She denied. Then she laughed a false laugh. Then she faltered. Then the masquerade broke.
"That's a trick!" she shouted. "You planted that! You want to make me look small."
A young man near the dais stepped forward and angled his network lens. "She keeps a ledger," he said, voice sudden. "Here — receipts, payments. She paid men to…"
"Silence!" Constance slammed a hand down. "You lie."
Phones rose like a thousand thin moons. People filmed. The images spread in an instant. A woman in the front stood and pushed the hand of a servant away. "You," she snarled at Constance, "you beat that child. I saw the whip marks last month on the girl's back when she was brought to collect linens."
Constance's breath came sharp and short. She could still try to crow. She tried charm: "You're fools. You will lose your favor if you believe this." Her voice stuck on the last word. Her cheeks paled.
A murmur turned into a roar. People shouted. "Shame!" a man yelled. "Shame on you!"
"Stop, stop it!" the chancellor finally bellowed, more panic than command. He lunged to the dais and grabbed his daughter's arm.
Constance wrenched free. Her mascara ran down like rain. She took a step back. Her cronies looked away. The favorite courtesan who had often laughed with her began crying. People in the hall took their phones and their bearings and turned them toward Constance.
"Tell us you didn't," someone said.
"I—I—" Constance's mouth opened. She could not find a lie that sounded real. Her hands trembled. Her carefully trained face went hard and then thin with fear.
"No. No! I didn't do it. I didn't!" She shouted at the roof. "It was a trick. It was—"
"She said she would do it," another voice cut in. "She told me she'd handle them so the family would look clean. She said the general's house would be punished."
Constance's legs folded. She fell to the floor, knees hitting the polished tiles. I watched her as everybody watched and filmed. Her face was now all naked terror. She lifted her hands, stuttering.
"Please," she begged, the armor of aristocratic polish dropped and gone. "Please—stop. I didn't mean—"
"Begging is cheap," someone in the crowd said. "Confess."
The Manual lit up and displayed a second roll: a ledger, a courier receipt, a servant's letter witnessed by an aged steward. The steward was in the hall. He stepped forward like stone.
"You took a girl and left her in the forest," the steward said. "You ordered her beaten to teach herself fewer boasts. You ordered her to be left."
The room inhaled. Constance's face crumpled. "No—no—" She tried to crawl forward. Two guards stepped in her way. She fell to her knees on the cold tile. Her fine skirts fanned like dark water. She began to weep, raw and animal.
"Please," she said, to no one. "Please don't ruin me. I will give you money. I will give you position. Please, please—"
She looked up to the chancellor, who turned away.
"Get her out," he whispered, voice tight. "Get her out, before this goes worse. I will speak."
But the crowd would not let it be a private matter.
"Bring her to the square!" someone shouted. "Public seat. Let the town judge her."
They carried Constance, white hands clinging, to the square outside the gates. A thousand eyes watched. Markets stopped. People left stalls to watch the spectacle.
"Why are you doing this?" she begged in the square. She held onto one guard like a child holding a parent.
"Because you did it," the steward said. "You beat a child to death and left her. You thought the general would not come."
Constance's voice went to pleading. She slapped her palms together. "Please—God—please! I was taught to be hard. I only did what I was told by my elders. I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll kneel!"
At that, a wave of shouts rose. Some in the crowd spat. Others laughed. A woman who had been a servant in the manor — the one who had hidden the girl’s last bowl of rice — stepped forward. Her face was broken from years of abuse.
"You left her to die!" the woman said. "You sang at nights while she lay, barking like a dog."
Constance's eyes finally found me, in a ragged servant mantle. She reached toward me with a trembling, varnished hand.
"Don't look," she begged. "Please don't look. I am sorry."
I walked forward. The crowd parted like water. The Manual flickered. Lor hummed cold. I stood in front of Constance. Her face was close enough to see the tiny veins in her eyes. Her voice was small and venomless.
"I remember your foot," I said. "I remember the whip wrap like a promise. I remember being left. You thought I was a toy."
She stared, a strip of white under her eyes. "You lie," she said. Her voice scraped like tin.
"No," I said. "I woke. I swallowed a lung of another world. I learnt medicine and how to read a ledger. I learnt how to look. The Manual showed the tapes. The steward told the truth."
The crowd tightened. Constance's mouth opened and closed. She tried to keep her chin, and then she could not. She crumpled into a heap, fingers clawing at the dirt.
"Please," she begged again. "I will pay. I will kneel. Please—"
"Then kneel," the steward said. "Kneel now and confess. Let the town see."
Constance sank onto her knees, and her hands beat the stone until they bled. She begged in a voice that had once been taught how to be smooth and now had no training left.
"Forgive me," she sobbed. "Forgive me, forgive me—"
The crowd closed around her with sharp voices. People spat. Cellphones recorded, voices shouted curses; a child in the front dropped a fruit and stomped it with loathing. A woman whose husband had been sent away for not meeting tax demands pointed at Constance and laughed until she wept.
"Are you done?" someone shouted. "Do you feel good now?"
Constance looked up. Her face was raw. People leaned forward like hunters. The chancellor stepped back into the crowd as if he had been burned. His name did little to steady the storm.
"Take her," a voice said. "To the stocks. Let her sit in the square. Let her be hungry. Let her be watched. Let the market know her name."
The town decided. Constance did not fight. She had no fight left. They led her to the stocks, bound her hands, and left her eyes to the sky. The children pointed. The old men smoked and sat on the benches and spoke in low, bitter voices about privilege. Women spat on the ground. Someone poured water on her head. Someone else knocked her hood off. She cried and cried and begged and then fell asleep on the stone bench, exhausted and hollow.
The videos went out like fire on dry ground. By nightfall it was in every mouth in the county and a thousand screens beyond. The chancellor's house that had glittered at noon was gaslit cold by rumor. Constance's friends cut her off. Her mother did not come.
The Manual closed its covers and said, softly, "Justice is a crowd's tool."
I looked at the girl who had been a villain and felt no triumph. I felt no joy in the smallness of human ruin. I felt a clean thing like a wound stilled.
"Do we stop here?" Lor hummed.
"No," I said. "We teach. We change. Let people see what they did. Let them remember it."
The days after were not easy. The chancellor sued for slander. The steward gave testimony. The emperor’s men came to question. Constance's face turned in public records and lost all luster. She was stripped of rights to certain events. Her friends avoided her. The house had to perform reparations to the family of the child — payments channeled to the servants and to the poor bowls of the district. When Constance stood in the market she was silent. People spat without even thinking about it.
She wrote letters kneeling by a well and tearing them up before anyone could read. A video circulated of her kneeling and begging in the square; it lasted for days, and people reused it to teach children better. She lost her place. People whispered about how she would be left no marriage. Her pride was the shape of the fall she had to make.
Weeks turned to months. I left that estate behind. I kept the Manual and Lor close. I learned herbs and mended evil scars with tinctures I ground from swamp roots and violet sap. I grew taller in spirit if not in inches. In a Lao market I traded a leather knife for a small vial of iron.
"Who was the villain?" someone would ask on the road.
"Constance Woods," I would say. "She was proud and she broke a child. The town fixed her where privilege had failed."
"Did she suffer?" they asked.
"She did," I told them. "She knelt. She begged. She lost what she had used to hurt others. It was public. It was hard. That is the law the people made that day."
I moved on. The world had more woods, more beasts, and more people with hands that wanted what they wanted. I would keep my eyes open. I had a name and I would keep it. I had a fire and I would guide it. I had a book and a small spring and maybe, one day, a family that would forgive the girl's borrowed life.
At night I would think of Constance crouched under the stars in the square, and I would say, quietly, "If you learn, you may be less cruel. If you do not, you will learn the hard way."
The Manual would flicker, Lor would hum low, and I would stitch a salve for some child's back that a noble's boot had nearly ended. I would not forgive the world for being cruel. I would make something of it.
The End
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