Face-Slapping19 min read
"I'm Three and Already a War God? Fine — I'll Smash Your Face"
ButterPicks15 views
"I'll count to one thousand. You don't let me, I smash you."
I slammed my little purple hammer on the crate and it shook like a drum.
"Are you sure?" Theodore Palmer, my master, pretended to frown and hiccuped from the last swallow of his fake "water."
"Three and a half is not too young to be firm," I said. "One, two—"
The man with the scar laughed in the dark. "A baby counts to one thousand? Ha. Bring the child."
Theodore spat out pretend water like a man embarrassed to be caught drinking. "Don't be crude, you gutter rat. The child is small, you might break her."
"Then break her." The scar man smiled like a blade. "If this is truly the War God, kill all who know."
My hands were very small. The black van was very loud. The scar man's men were very big.
"Protect the child!" Theodore yelled. He ran with me on his back like a wind that knew where it wanted to be.
"Master—" I squeaked, breath like little steam, "run faster."
He laughed. "Do you think I will leave you, Bella? Not even if Heaven folds."
The van's engine screamed. Bullets painted the night.
One bullet hissed past our temple. Theodore reached with two fingers and pinched it out of the air like a singing beetle.
"How—" one thug said.
"Old man trick," the scar man spat. "Kill them!"
The chase began. Theodore ran like an old legend who refused to break. I ran like a fat little frog with hope in my pockets. I had a cat in my bag and a white crow on my shoulder and a purple crystal hammer no one believed in.
"Protect me!" I shouted.
"Protect yourself!" Theodore shouted back. He vaulted walls, slipped under carts, humored every bullet as if it were a joke.
The thugs closed in. "Just kill the child!" the scar man ordered.
I dug my tiny hand deeper into my bag, fingers finding the cat's fuzzy ear. The purple hammer shivered and grew.
"Don't tease," I said, and it felt like thunder in my grip.
Someone laughed too loud. The next moment a man was pasted to a wall like a puppet, thrown by something bigger than he looked.
"She can't be—" they whispered.
"Kill her," the scar man said, then cursed when the old man vaulted away again like a wind-proof shadow.
The night turned into a small war of wings and claws and the song of a little hammer.
Later they said the man with the scar saw a pistol fly and burn in the old man's hand. They said the man in black who chewed silver at the table had scales like a snake under his sleeve. They were all wrong and all true.
We lost Theodore that night.
"You go home," he whispered and shoved me with both hands like he was giving me the whole sky. "You say you are Bella D'Angelo. You eat your milk. You find your brothers."
He kissed my little forehead and then he was gone into a maze of alleys and the night swallowed him like smoke.
I had a cat that turned big when hungry and a crow that screamed "feast" whenever something died. I had a purple hammer and a tiny throat that refused to be quiet. I had a paper note sewn into my collar: You are of the White line. You are the last hope. When vines wake, you lead.
I went and found them.
"You sure she's the War God?" a man at the noodle stand asked when I showed my round face.
"She couldn't be," a rich man scoffed in a suit that smelled like old money. "War God? She's three. She drinks milk."
"Three and a half," I corrected. "And I can smash."
They laughed and walked away with their gift boxes, eyes full of sharp little coins. They walked away while I stared at a sad old vine in a stone pot. It lifted one tiny leaf like it remembered sunlight.
"It's mine," I whispered to the vine. "Don't go."
"They took it," a brother said behind me, voice like a pulling of old rope. "They left gifts and left. They left things empty."
"Who are you?" I asked. I held up a tiny muddy hand. "Are you my brother?"
He grabbed me like he had been waiting for a small thing to hold. "Sure you are. You must be Bella. I'm Sergei. Sit. Eat."
I sat and counted soldiers. One, two, three, four, five... Where is the sixth? My master said I have six older brothers. I could only find five. Someone was missing like a tooth.
We drove to the White manor. A parade of people came too, like flies to soup. They had long smiles and short words.
"White D'Angelo? They bring a baby? This is the War God?" a titled ma told his guests.
I held my milk bottle like a scepter. "Drinking is important."
They laughed, and their laughter was hot. "Three and a half, what good is she? She will nap in war, ha!"
I crossed my arms and my jaw did a small, stubborn thing. "I do not nap in war. I smash."
They left, full of the smell of dinner and pride. They took the jade pot with the thin vine with them like a trinket.
"Stop!" I cried. "Not the little vine!"
A man in a lacquered suit lifted the jade pot and smiled mean. I thought then that rich smiles were like traps. The vine's leaf shivered like it was waving.
"You took my vine," I told my brothers. "You must buy it back."
"We will buy it," said Finch, who had a face like a stolen sun. "We will buy every vine."
My brothers were many and loud. They scolded the guests until the crowd left in a clatter. Then Finch stood with his hands in his pockets and said things like "debt" and "lawyer" and "contract" with a voice that meant business. No one likes a family who will fight with their credit lines.
The vine was gone. I cried because the vine's little song had meant something to me.
Then Saint of All Things Strange, Stan Zhao—no, the man who owned the jade pot—came back with a note. "This vine is not for sale," he said. "It is a family relic."
"My little vine is not just a vine," I said. I held the note the old man had left. "Master wrote this. He drinks a lot and runs away a lot. He always writes funny notes."
He laughed but let me see the vine. It was a thin thing, curled like a secret. I touched it. It was almost dry.
"Let me try," I said. I took one grape-sized moment and pulled the purple hammer out of my bag. It looked silly in my hands at first. Then it grew.
"What are you—" Old Stan started, then dropped his cane and stepped back.
Purple light beat wings out of my hammer. The little vine woke. It lifted its leaves like a tired old man drinking hot water, then it sprouted a blue bead of fruit and glowed.
Stan's mouth made a shape like an egg. "Impossible."
"You like it? Take it," I said, because I wanted the vine's family to be happy, even if they were slow at smiling. "But if you are mean, it will be mean back."
He backed away and let me carry the vine like I had stolen the moon.
When we carried the vine home, my brothers made a garden for it. They dug soil like they meant it. Giovanni Brantley—my uncle, a man with a face that tried to smile but kept failing—gave me a gold card and tried a bow that looked like a broken promise.
"You can have anything you need, little Bella," he said, and I could see fear hiding behind his tassels. He didn't know me. He'd bring gifts because gifts make people think you are steady. He always bought steadiness with money.
We planted the vine. I touched earth and the world shifted.
"System activated," a voice said in my head. "Welcome, Gardener. You have opened a Mistwood Gate. Plant, grow, claim."
I blinked because that was not fair. "Who talks?" I asked aloud.
"A system," the voice said. "Vine: Shennong Grapevine. Level Three. Matures in thirty days. Fruit heals."
"I want to win a prize," I said immediately.
The Eden Wheel spun like a carnival. It stopped on "Bottled Growth Serum." My tiny chest filled with the kind of joy that makes the world louder.
I poured. The vine got big. I poured the second serum I got on the neighbor weed. The neighbor weed screamed green and spread like laughter. I tried to be careful. I wasn't very careful.
"Stop!" cried the gardeners. "It's growing too fast!"
The vine obeyed no one. It became a canopy of purple grapes bigger than the gazebo. My brothers stood under it like we were in a ship.
"Good little vine," I sang. The vine hummed back. "We will feed the whole manor."
They called me "War God" like a rumor. I wore the title like a hat for a week.
Then the alarm broke.
"Someone kidnapped Four!" Andrei shouted like the snap of a twig. "They took him after lunch. He got mistaken for a beggar at a checkpoint. They said they'd want a ransom."
"Who?" I asked. My legs were small but my heart was big. "I run."
"Don't," Sergei said. "He'll be fine. He's the family's plague magnet. They'll probably return him."
"No." I said the word like a hammer. "I go."
"You're small," Rio—no, Rex—said with that movie-actor pout he used when he liked his reflection. "You will get lost."
"I'm not lost. I'm small and loud." I tied my crow to my wrist and climbed out the window. Nine tails padded as if the world was a hallway made for cats.
We chased shadows. My crow flew to spy. My cat moved like black smoke. I had the system, only two day's worth of potions, and a heart too big for fear.
We found the lair because a car drove like it was nervous. The bad men had a leader with scales under his sleeve. He wanted to be a god. He wanted a War God to make him untouchable.
They had a man tied in the middle, eating cold chicken, not a hair on his head slick with fear. "You are Four?" a man asked.
"I'm Four," said my brother from the shadows. He smiled like a fool. "I like chicken."
They made him cut a slice of wood. He did and then told a joke. The men laughed like they had found a cure.
I crawled like a spider and my cat leaped into a meat locker like a small, polite lion. I hit a man with the hammer and forgot I was small.
Chaos is the kind of thing that makes grown men forget how to breathe.
They left one man breathing and on his knees, pleading for his life. They said they had orders from a silver-masked "God" who toys with men. They wanted to use my brother to force my family to get louder. They wanted my blood.
I found them on the warehouse roof with my little hammer lifted like a sun.
"Leave my brother alone," I said.
"We will take the child instead," the scaled man hissed.
My hammer was a whisper. "No."
The sky made a big choice. The white crow shrieked. The cat tore. Men with guns learned what it meant to be small and angry.
We broke the ropes. We smashed the plans. We took back what they had stolen.
The cult ran and left a hand with scales on the concrete like a bad joke.
"You're not supposed to be strong," my brothers complained later.
"Strength is loud," I said.
It was not just a fight. The world watched. People whispered about the little girl who ripped rope and laughed while her brothers squinted like they were suddenly seeing a sunrise again.
At the manor, the big guests had fled. Our uncle had thrown a shameful bow so deep his face stayed red for days. People left like leaves.
Finch stood at the head of the hall and said things that made the rich men go white in the face.
"You insult our daughter?" he asked. "We will collect every debt you owe. We will take your credit and your favors. Pay what you owe."
The room froze. The old lord who had made fun of me tried to limp away with his gifts. Finch laughed and told a number. It was a number so large it might as well have been a price for a city.
A man from the grand family thumped his cane and left, scandal on his shoes. People whispered that the White name would not rot quietly.
I liked that. They should not have laughed at me.
The system kept waking me. It gave me a gate, a palace, a small shed of spoils. It gave me tasks like a teacher who expected too much and loved me anyway.
I planted more things. A little vine I named "Wangcai" because dogs are the first guards of the mountain and Wangcai is a good guard name. Wangcai became a thorny vine that could sleep or bite, whichever I told it. The grape I called "Xiao Zi" and it grew like it had been saving up a lifetime to explode into fruit.
People came. Stan Zhao asked to meet me and my plants and bought my vine a new pot. He left a little fortune and a headache.
"You think you're a little witch?" he grumbled. "My gardeners tried to tend your plants. They died of embarrassment."
"Plants are shy," I told him.
"Keep her quiet," he said to his men. "Keep the gardener alive."
And then the nightmares got louder.
Men in silver masks started to look at me like they had seen a pattern. A god in their cult had golden eyes and a face hidden beneath metal. He watched from the edge of things like a boy watching a game he did not want to enter.
One night I heard his voice like paper breath.
"Child. You have a strong heart," a voice said from the dark. A man with a mask like a moon's bad joke leaned against a tree like he had all the time in the world.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"You have a name," he said. "You have a vine that wakes the world. You will grow wild and kill everything that hurts you. That is a weapon."
He sounded not pleased and not delighted. He sounded like a man who would pick one option if it fed his hunger.
I didn't like being a weapon.
"My brothers don't let people hurt me," I said. "They eat bullies."
He inhaled like a clock. "Power needs a host. Your little garden is becoming a gate. They want it."
"They can have a gate," I said. "But they cannot take me."
He smiled behind metal. A smile that was a promise of many winters. "Then keep it safe. We will talk again when the vine sings."
When he left, the night felt colder.
The cult's men came more often. They sent men with scales. They sent men who tried to charm my brothers with money. They told stories of rewards and gods of gold. My brothers cursed and prepared. We set traps that were like jokes and like knives.
We learned to fight with vines. I would tell Wangcai to wrap a boot and it would cradle like wood, but when told to bite it would clamp like a vise. The vine could guard, could attack, could hide.
I learned to make potions with the system. I learned to plant seeds that grew into bright little soldiers. I learned to bargain with soil and rain. Every time I used the system my garden deepened like a secret. The palace in the Mistwood taught me how to be small and right.
They tried to steal my plants one night. A group came with a man with scales and a mask that looked like a laugh. They cut into the ground like thieves cutting bread.
They forgot a child's patience.
"Wangcai!" I screamed and I threw my hammer and the vine grew like a tidal wave. It rose, green and sharp as a promise. It pushed men like wind pushes paper. It wrapped around metal. It made ropes into birds.
They ran and left behind a shard of mirror that had the scar man in it. It was bloodless and half-screaming.
A week later they came with real monsters. Stan Zhao's man found one in his school and it looked like a cat with eyes in the wrong places. It ate hearts and took faces. The school had a rumor like a stain.
"Can you stop it?" Stan begged me. He was sincere enough in his fear to not lie.
"I will try," I said. "But first—" I held out two grapes from Xiao Zi.
He hesitated. "You pay us. How?"
"You feed him one grape." I put the grape on the boy's tongue like medicine.
He coughed, then sat up. "Dad! There's a monster!"
"Monsters come and go," I said. "They like quick things. They don't like brave things."
We traced the monster's trails and found one of their masks under a school stair. The monster was a sly thing. It ate hearts to hide. It was a slave of the cult.
We followed threads the cult left like breadcrumbs. We found crates bearing a stamped mark — a cross like a flame — and a long list of debts. The cult wanted a war god to turn into a living idol to climb the ranks of their own godhood.
"You trade me immortality, you say?" someone asked in a thick voice. "You think a War God will bargain?"
They had plans. Plans that said: use the child, make her a symbol, sacrifice her later and get a different kind of life.
My brothers were not kind to plans that ate children.
"It's our girl," Finch said. "Our girl is small but she belongs to us."
He did something then that shocked everyone who had once mocked us. He sent men to collect debts. He called old alliances and read for balance. He threatened the very people who had sneered at us. The crowd began to listen.
The world is pliable to those who control the numbers.
While officers worried about paperwork, we worked in the shadows. We taught Wangcai to crawl like a sleeping dog. We taught Xiao Zi to sing like a bell at midnight. We taught my little hammer to listen.
The masked god grew impatient.
He made a move. He sent his men to steal the most dangerous thing he could find: my master, Theodore.
He called me small and laughed.
"She will run," he told his lieutenants. "She will not be able to stop old magic."
"They will use her brother," one said. "They will use the family."
"They will use hearts," the masked one said. "They always use hearts."
They took Theodore because he was old and wise and therefore inconvenient. They thought old men were slow. They thought old men could be bought or broken. They were wrong.
"Find him," I said to my brothers. "We go at dawn."
We raided a warehouse where the cult met. It was a place that smelled like old locks. The men were many and surprised. I was small but louder. Wangcai wrapped like a rope. Xiao Zi made the ground bloom with sharp vines that sprouted between boots and made them fall like a house of cards.
We found Theodore in the center, bound to a carved stone and fed wine like mercy.
"Master," I cried, and his eyes lifted like a kite. He smiled like a man who had run a long way and finally arrived.
"My stubborn girl's back," he said, and he smelled like dust and old rain.
They let their leader into the room. He took off his mask and his face was a riddle folded.
"You are bold," he said, "for one so small."
He called me "War God" like it was a title of both respect and appetite.
"I am Bella," I said. "Not just war. I grow things. I feed people."
The masked man laughed like dry wind. "A child who pretends to be merciful is still a tool. Give me the child or the old man dies."
"Die?" Finch answered like thunder. He stepped forward and said words that were like lawsuits and hurricanes. The men with scales faltered. Power has a way to step aside when budgets get whispered.
"No," I said quietly. "You can't have him."
Then I did what my master taught me not with words but with a single swing of my hammer.
It cracked like a bell. The stone behind Theodore split. Vines leapt and coiled, not to strangle but to free. They unfurled, pushing the masked man and his soldiers out like toddlers blown by wind.
The masked man stood and the mask clattered on the floor like a lie.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He took off the silver and behind it was a face I had seen before in a dream — a man with dark hair and sharp jaw and eyes that burned like a late winter.
He breathed like a man who had kept secrets to feed himself. "I am called With. I have no other name you would know."
"We will not be used," I said.
He smiled and the smile was a contract. "Then fight," he said.
We did. It was not poetic. It was dirty and fast and smelled like cut grass. Wangcai bit hands. Xiao Zi burst fruit that made men dizzy. My brothers were a storm; they were all the things a family can be — loud, rash, brave, and stupid in the best way.
When the last man in black fell like a sack with his maps spilling, With knelt and laughed.
"You could be very dangerous," he said.
"You could be very blunt," I said. "Do not use us again."
"Why defend her?" he asked Finch later, when the dust settled and the night tasted like old bread. "Why defend a child who will be a weapon anyway?"
Finch looked at his little sister asleep among the grapes. "Because she is ours. Because blood is not business."
That night the masked man left and took a small thing from the warehouse — a token chewed by a tree. He promised he'd be back when necessity outweighed charm.
We built walls around the garden. We taught the staff not to talk of the Mistwood. We fed people and paid debts and paid old favors. We bought a silence that was a new kind of armor.
The kingdom of small things grew under my care. The system deepened into a lattice of lessons and rewards. I could close a vine's mouth with a thought and open it to sing with another. I could grow a plant that healed a fever or one that called rain. I could plant a tree that remembered a face.
People began to look at me differently. Some still mocked. Some told stories. A few came and left offerings. A coal miner gave me a tobacco tin because his son ate grapes. A teacher bowed like a small man who had seen truth.
I knew we had been watched. With returned like a prophet with bad manners.
"I offer you a bargain," he said in our hall, face unmasked like the moon forgetting to hide. "Join the Godmakers. Let me teach you the old ways. I will give you knowledge and not chains."
"And if we refuse?" Finch asked.
He smiled. "Then those who would use you will come again. You will die a slow reputation."
We had a long night. My brothers argued like seasons. They each argued for different futures. Some wanted money and comfort. Some wanted the old quiet lives. Some wanted revenge.
I sat on my little window and thought about the grapes.
"You will make mistakes," Theodore told me. "A War God is a harsh teacher."
"You said I should swing my hammer," I said. "You said break the door if the lock is wrong."
"My hammer taught you to break. The world will teach you to stitch." He winked. "Find your stitches, little one."
In the morning I walked bare feet through rows of vines. Wangcai the guard curled around my ankles and purred like a wolf who had learned manners. The crow hopped and mimicked a mailman. The system gave me a choice like a child choosing candy.
"You will go to the Godmakers?" With asked.
"I will go to the place that keeps secrets," I said. "But I will not be sold."
He chuckled. "Clever. That is why you are dangerous."
I went to his place because to refuse only made him more hungry.
He greeted me like an invitation. "You will meet those who care for names," he said. The chamber smelled like metal and old breath. He placed a mask on a table and a leaf on the other. "Choose."
I picked the leaf because the leaf could be fed.
He was surprised and not surprised. "You think plants are better teachers than the world?"
"Plants don't lie," I said. "They grow how you treat them."
He laughed like a boy who had lost a bet. "You will learn this night."
He taught me words—strange grammar of roots and old pacts. He wanted to see whether I would become a blade or a root.
I learned a rite. I learned a song that made roots listen. I learned the price of every seed. He offered me glassed immortality in exchange for obedience. I said no to the glass. He offered memory. I said no to memory that isn't mine.
When I left, he presented one last promise. "If you ever come to me and ask for a name, I will answer."
"Would you give me a name?" I asked, because I wanted a safe place to put myself when the world leaned too hard.
He studied me as if a rare insect. "You are Bella of the White House. The vine will teach you your other names."
Years passed. The vine grew into an orchard. I grew too, stubborn like an old root. My brothers changed in ways that suited them. Some smiled more. Some found women who laughed like stars and some found themselves liking silence.
The Godmakers tested us again and again. They sent spies and men with scales and men who wore faces like bills. My garden met them every time with green fingers and sharp teeth.
Once a man with a paper title came and called the growers fools. "You are nothing but children playing at power," he said in a voice like paper.
Finch set the ledger on the table.
"You owe the White House forty-three billion nine hundred million," Finch said.
The man's color dropped like a curtain. He had nothing to say. "We will see," he said, and he walked out with a face like sour milk.
I learned to laugh then. It tasted like victory. Not loud victory but the slow kind a river takes to rose a mountain.
The Godmakers never taught me how to keep family. My family taught me that. We ate grapes and honey and argued into dawn. We carved things from the vine that the vine had offered. We made chairs and ladders out of what would otherwise have been teeth.
People came for our grapes. They came for medicine. They came because in the middle of the city a child had grown a garden and the god who wanted to be a god couldn't take it.
Once With returned and this time he had a different face. He smiled like a man who had learned to bend knives into spoons.
"Why do you refuse me?" he asked gently.
"Because you trade people for your hunger," I said. "You make bargains with blood and call it salvation."
He sighed. "I am not kind."
"Neither are you funny," I replied.
There was a silence that felt like a curtain lifting. He reached into his coat and took out a shard of the first stone the cult had used to bind Theodore. He handed it to me.
"They don't bind people well," he said. "But they are tenacious. If you want peace, you must make better traps."
I looked at the stone. It was cold. "Will you help us?" I whispered.
"Maybe," he said. Then he surprised everyone and laughed, a small sound like someone who had dropped a heavy thing and it didn't break. "You are less naive than you look, Bella D'Angelo. You could become a terrifying garden."
"And you?" I asked. "What would you be?"
"Someone with fewer enemies," he said. "If I wait, perhaps I will teach you how to read the night. But do not become me."
I planted the shard. It sank into a pot and the soil hummed like a tiny radio.
We had ceremonies after that. We made rules. If a family came to mock us, we opened our books and showed them they owed more than their pride. We kept our flowers to ourselves unless the world needed them for a cure.
My master came back one evening, smelling of roads and old teas. He hugged me like he'd been away for ten years and I had been waiting in a room with a candle.
"Master!" I squealed.
"You found my pot," he said, bewildered and proud. "You smashed a god's party."
"I smashed a lot," I said. "I smashed a chair once."
He ruffled my hair and then looked at the vines. "You turned a tool into a home. Good."
"With the system," I said. "It helps."
"Systems are like rabbits," he said. "Feed them and they'll breed. Train them and they'll obey."
We carved our name into the garden gate: Bella's Mistwood. It wasn't flashy. It was a crooked sign painted by someone with a shaky hand. It was ours.
The masked god never stopped watching. He sometimes taught and sometimes hid. He would drop by with a fruit and leave like a man who never wanted to be tied. One day he came without mask and asked me if I wanted a name.
"No," I said. "My family gives me names every day. My brother calls me trouble. My uncle calls me his debt. You want to name me because you want to own me."
He laughed. "Then own me instead." He handed me a small black leaf. "Plant this and you'll know my debt to you."
I planted it in a pot. It grew. It turned into a vine that looped once and then frowned.
"Plantmakers are strange," he told me, as if this sewing together of futures amused him in a good way. "You will never be what they expect."
We went on. The world had seasons. People tried to take what we grew, they tried to take me. They mostly left with sore feet.
Years were not kind in rounding corners, but they taught me how to weave. I became a woman with a child's laugh and a hammer that fit my palm. I still counted to one thousand sometimes because counting anchored me.
The Mistwood Gate filled with maps. The system gave me seeds from lost forests, a fruit that cured the black fever, a thorn that could stitch bone. I sold some, kept others. We fed orphans with the surplus. We taught them to tend and to be loud when they needed.
One day the masked man came back to our gate without a shadow. He took off his mask and there was no surprise now. He wore a suit with no name.
"Do you still want me to teach you names?" he said, not as a mage but as an old man offering a cup.
"No," I said. "But I will take the one you leave."
He smiled with something like relief. "Good. Take the name 'With' if you want. Call me With if you must. It ties me to you in a manner that is not exact. Names are debts you repay."
I looked at my brothers and then at the masked man. "We do not take debts from strangers."
"Then you owe me nothing." He placed his palm on the stone I had planted long ago. The ground shivered like an old violin. "We will keep a bargain: I will not demand. You will not hand me your girl."
"She is no one's prize," Finch said. "She is our thorn."
With nodded. "Then make me a partner. Partners share fences."
We signed nothing because words from men like him tasted like silver. We built instead. We built an orchard that could hide the poor and a garden that could cure the ill. We built bridges. We made a map of our enemies.
The masked man never offered me marriage or throne or glitter. He offered teachings and a condition: never become what he feared.
"Are you afraid of becoming me?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "But I like my family too much."
He studied my face like a man learning an unfamiliar song. "Then you will not become me."
Time rolled on. Children learned to tend grapes the way my master taught. My brothers laughed and stole the garden's ripe fruit when they were hungry. We made a new rule: no one takes the War God without family consent. We meant it.
Years later some of the men who had laughed at us from that first banquet began to come back when their children got sick. They didn't ask for flowers; they asked for help. We gave it without pride because the soil had taught us to give before asking.
One day I stood in the orchard and counted to one thousand just because I could. The crowd around me—workers, farmers, and a few men in suits who now had the look of penitent men—watched and cheered like they were at a show.
"One thousand," I said. "Now fetch me another bucket."
My brothers laughed and passed the buckets. Theodore sat by the gate and pretended to snore but kept an eye. With walked by and tipped his hat. He gave me a name like a blessing and left it like a puzzle.
"You are Bella D'Angelo," he said. "You are a weed and a queen. You have a system that feeds the world."
"Enough titles," I said. "Just stay outside the fence."
He smiled, left, and the sun slid down the vines.
That night I saw my master sit by my bed. "You grew more than grapes," he said. "You grew a house."
"I smashed a lot," I admitted. "But I also planted a lot."
He pinched my cheek. "You will be the War God people talk about with fear and affection."
"I don't want them to fear me," I said.
"The ones who fear you shouldn't be your neighbors," he said. "The ones who love you will sit at your table."
Outside, Wangcai hummed like a contented dog. The white crow slept on a pot. My brothers snored like logs that had learned music. The Mistwood Gate glowed with a steady light that belonged to no man and everyone.
I whispered into my pillow and the system answered in its sexless language with a new seed and a small icon: The Garden grows.
I fell asleep and the world felt like soil—ready to be turned.
The End
— Thank you for reading —