Face-Slapping17 min read
"The Cup Hit My Arm" — A Princess, a Snake, and a Village That Would Not Bow
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"The cup hit my arm."
I jerked awake, my arm burning, and the memory hit me harder than the pain.
"The cup hit me," my father had said, and then the hall went silent.
"You know your crimes?" his voice had filled the great hall like thunder.
"I did what was right," I said then. "He stole the white elder's pill. He deserved it."
"You beat him until he could never walk again." He spat the words. "You broke laws, child."
"I did not break the law," I said. "I broke a thief."
They had argued for an hour. I had not flinched.
I had never learned to flinch.
The cup had been tossed. Hot water scalded my arm. For the first time my mother cried.
"Enough," Father said finally. "You are stripped of your spirit. You will be a mortal until you earn your light. Go."
"Go where?" I had asked.
"To the world below. You will live. You will gather good deeds. You will return only if you gather enough spirit before your eighteenth year."
They sealed it with a word I could not fight. The palace light went out. I fell and then I woke again in straw and smoke.
"Where am I?" I said aloud as the burn stung my arm.
"You were found by the old couple," a rough voice said behind me. "You were on the road at dawn."
They called themselves the Wangs, though they had no titles. They had rough hands and softer hearts. I tasted ash, then cheap rice. I had no crown. I had a small red whip that pulsed like a memory but did not answer.
"Do you remember your name?" the old woman asked as she fanned the tiny fire.
"Claire Tang," I said. "Call me Claire."
They smiled. "Claire, then. You sleep. We will feed you."
I learned quickly.
"Don't let anyone call us poor," the old man said. "We are what we are."
"You're not from here," their oldest boy whispered when he first saw me fight.
"I am a princess," I answered with my mouth and with my shoulders. I had no choice. My heart said rebel; my body said save.
The first test came that day.
"They won't pay," a loud voice boomed at the gate.
"Here comes trouble," the old woman said.
Clancy Greco's men stank of sweat and bad wine. They called themselves thugs. They called themselves order.
"Three days overdue," the man with the scar said. "Pay now, or burn."
"Pay what?" the old man asked. "We have three bowls of rice for the five of us."
"Then tonight you die with the house," the scar said and spat.
My hands tightened without thinking. I was small and their fists large. I had no spirit. I had only my legs and my temper.
"You can't burn us," I said.
"Look at the kid," a thug made a face. "She talks big."
I reached for the hurt old man's hand.
"Don't," the scar said, and his fist moved.
He never hit him.
I grabbed his wrist and stopped the fist.
He tightened his fingers like iron.
"Let go," he snarled.
I bit him.
He screamed like a pig and lifted me high like a toy, but his hand was bleeding. He tried to throw me down. I hit his jaw so hard his teeth fell out like broken stones.
"Get him!" he howled.
His men wanted to move; they hesitated.
"My arm hurts," I said, softly, angry and small.
They left. They held their faces and cursed.
"She is strong," the old man murmured, full of surprise.
"You're my daughter now," the old woman said, wiping my face with a rough cloth.
"I have a father," I told them. "He's far above."
News spread. People who had never spoken to us began to come by with gifts. To them I had done justice. To me, I had done what I had always done—stop a wrong. The cup burn throbbed and the scab raised like a small crown.
That night, someone tried to burn our house for real.
"Fire!" I screamed as smoke pulled at my eyes.
The door stuck. The windows were bolted from outside.
"Get the children!" the old woman cried.
I smashed the door with my shoulder. It fell like a paper wall.
I ran back in for the old man before anything else.
They had left a scent, a thin fuel in the straw.
Clancy Greco's voice rang strong in the yard. "Burn them all!"
I fought until my breath left, and I did not stop until the man who tried to start the fire lay on the dirt, broken.
"That will teach you," I told him.
"You're a devil," he spat as his teeth cracked under my fists.
"Go home," I said. "And tell the village to never touch these people again."
They fled like dogs. I stood there, fists bleeding and proud.
"Thank you," the old woman said, hugging me like I'd saved the sun.
"You did," I said. "It felt like that."
After that the village began to talk.
"She's a god-child," a woman said.
"She's our luck," an old man muttered.
They began to bring food. They began to ask for help.
A week later, the wife of the village elder fell ill. She didn't eat. Her face was grey and thin.
"The doctor cannot solve this," the old man said worriedly. "He says her insides are poisoned, but he cannot find the cause."
"Poison?" I repeated, and I thought of the many small hands that had moved around food in their house. I thought of the night the fire smelled of gasoline.
"Who could poison an old woman?" the old man asked, tears wet on his cheeks.
I had the training of white uncle back in the palace—small lessons taught by him when the palace allowed me to learn. He had taught me to test, to read a pulse, to find bad things that hid in meals.
I pressed my fingers to the old woman's wrist.
"She is poisoned," I said, without drama.
"Who?" the old man asked. "Where did you learn that?"
"Say nothing. Let me show you."
I went silent. I took a thin needle and pricked gently. The thin steel turned black at the tip.
"What is it?" the elder snapped.
"Poison," I said. "It is slow. Arsenic, little by little."
The room froze.
"You lie," a voice hissed, and all eyes turned to the woman who had fussed over the elder every morning. "I would not do such a thing. I am her daughter." Her hands were always the first to the bowl.
The woman's face was white. She said nothing.
"You will prove it," I said.
I took a hair from the woman's apron. I crushed it in my palm and held it to the elder's lips. The elder's eyes, dull for days, fluttered.
"Th-there is sugar," the woman sobbed. "I put sugar so her medicine would not be bitter. I would never—"
The small bag the child had brought fell from the lady's sleeve.
The bag was white and fine and smelled faintly of metal.
"Open it," I said.
She fled, but the village surrounded her. She dropped the bag. The doctor came and smelled it and then shook.
"This is arsenic," he said quietly.
The house went quiet as a held breath.
The woman screamed and lunged. They held her down. She had been hiding the poison for months, a little in every dish.
"You said it was sugar," she wailed. "They all said I was good!"
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I wanted the land," she sobbed. "I would get the deed if they were gone."
They did not kill her. The old man had command. He asked that she leave and never touch the family again. He wanted none of her. They took back the fields. The village felt safer.
"Good," I said. "But I'm tired."
That night I found a strange thing under a tree on the mountain trail.
It looked like an egg, green and mossy, heavy.
"Some strange egg," I said aloud and put it in my basket.
It had a light, a faint shine like an ember beneath the moss.
"Don't break it," the old woman warned when I returned.
"Why?" I asked.
"It might be a spirit's egg," the old man said. "Keep it close."
I slept with it tucked at my feet.
In the morning it was warm. I heard a tiny crack.
A head poked out. A small snake-like creature blinked and regarded me with an ancient patience.
"Hello," it said in a small, clear voice that slid like water.
"A snake that talks?" the little boy whispered.
"Name?" I asked.
"I am Jude Conner," it said, and its voice sounded older than the bones of the earth. "But I prefer Night."
"Night?" I smiled. "I will call you Little Night."
"That will do," it said, and it curled up on my shoulder.
It was not only a talking animal. It had hands that could mend broken things, and a light that could fix a snapped lock, and an old secret that hummed like a drum.
"Are you a god?" the old man asked.
"No," Night said. "I am one who was bound to a different place. I escaped. I owe you nothing but a favor."
"Then stay," I said, and he stayed.
"You are my companion," I told him. "You will be my guard."
Little Night learned to hunt. He learned to bring fish and fix a lock so the elder’s chest could be closed again. I started to sleep a little easier.
But trouble did not sleep.
The village had a leader named Crew Zhao. He wore the soft robes of a man who wanted respect and none of the work. He spoke sweet things in public and collected fat sacks of coin in private. He had friends among the men who had tried to burn our house.
I had seen them in Colby Roy's carriage once at the trading post. They had different hands, same eyes.
"That man took too much," I told Night one night. "He takes and hides, he beats and smiles. He calls it law. He calls it need."
"Evidence is a thing," Night said. "We can find proof."
"Then we find proof."
We climbed his house at night. His basement was locked and full of air that smelled like lies.
"Come," I whispered.
I snapped the lock and the room breathed out coins and cloth and small carved boxes.
"A vault," Night said. "He hid the village's money here."
"Who else knows?" I asked.
We left the things where they lay. I did not steal. I only needed to show.
"Tomorrow," I said. "We will show the village."
We let the sun find the hidden room. We let crews see the boxes. I stood in the market and called the village to gather.
"What does that child want?" Crew Zhao sneered. He stood tall in his soft robe like a man who had never had to bend.
"Look," I said. "Open the chest."
They opened it and coins spilled like rain. A woman in the crowd pointed and cussed.
"That is my seed money!" one man cried.
"Those are my savings!" another shouted.
Crew Zhao's face was calm. "I have done nothing wrong," he said.
"Then you will speak." I stepped forward. I felt my arm burn—hot and old, as if the palace flame had remembered my skin—and the memory touched my lips.
"Tell them why you have these things," I said.
"I do not have to answer a child," Crew Zhao said.
"Then you will answer to truth," I told him.
I had a small thing called "truth dust." I had learned of it from white uncle as a trick, and I had never used it. I ground a bit into a little jar and tipped it into the pockets of Crew Zhao while he argued. He sneezed and his eyes went moist.
"I am innocent," he said, then stopped and laughed like a man split in two.
"I took the money," he blurted. "I took it and I hid it. I took protection fees and then I lied. I—"
It rolled out of him like a broken pot. The villagers stared. Crew Zhao's face drained of red and turned raw.
"How dare you—" he began, and the voice of authority slipped out like oil.
"You will return every coin," I said. "You will stand in the square and apologize. You will never again touch a man's rent."
He fell to his knees. He tried to deny. He tried to say that he had done it for the village. He tried to claim the money had been used for roads. The villagers turned on him like a wall.
He was humiliated. I watched his chest sink in the dust.
That night, the town was different.
They brought bread and meat to our house not to bribe, but to thank. They brought hats and coarse cloth. The Wangs' children laughed without a hunger in their eyes.
"You're a hero," the old man whispered.
"I'm only a child with a scar," I said, rubbing my arm as the flow of warmth returned to it a little.
Word reached far places.
At the blue palace under the sea, Victor Willis, the dragon king, did not sleep.
"My son still cannot walk," he kept saying. His face was carved in ice.
"Who struck him?" he demanded.
"Princess Claire Tang," an envoy said, hurrying. "She struck him, and he will not walk again."
Victor's red eyes turned like coals. His breath left the room in a gust. "She must pay."
He sent letters and promises. He sent threats to the three high courts. Nothing changed the law that had been made at the high hall: Claire had been punished and banished.
"Then we will be the hand," the dragon king told himself. "If the law will not do, I will do."
He sent Colby Roy, his elder son, to watch and wait. He chose a warrior who could break men and bend small crowds into fear.
Colby arrived in the valley and he found a child who would not bow.
"Your highness," said the dragon envoy in a low voice when he heard what was happening in our village. "Send someone to take her."
"We will come ourselves," Victor said. "We will bring justice."
The man they sent first was big and cruel, and he came in the night to kill me. He thought I was alone.
I was not alone.
A shadow fell across the yard. A blade flashed in the moon. Colby Roy's voice was thunder.
"Claire Tang," he called from the air. "Descend and face your crime!"
"I can talk like a book," I said, softly.
He walked down like a crown of cold.
"Stand down," a voice said behind him like a knife thrown under skin.
"Colin Legrand?" Colby sneered. He thought himself a man of more weight.
"You will not harm her," Colin said.
"Who are you to stop me?" Colby laughed.
It was then that the night blew cold and a new man stepped out from behind a stand of trees.
He walked like someone who had eaten the sky and still wanted more.
"Stay your sword, dragon prince," the man said.
He wore a purple robe and a silver mask. He moved with a precision I had never seen. He was small among warriors and colder than the winter river.
"Who are you?" Colby snarled.
"Jude Conner," the man said, and my shoulder stiffened as Little Night's voice echoed in the air, the same but larger.
"What devil—" Colby began.
"That is not your concern," Jude said. He took one step and then another. He shifted space and Colby's foot caught nothing and he fell into the dirt. Jude had moved in a blink. The prince's pride cracked like glass.
"Do not strike," Jude said softly.
"No!" Colby roared and reached for his sword, but the hand that met him was quick and strong. He twisted and threw the sword.
When Colby rose from the earth, dirt in his mouth, he had been made to look very small.
"You will leave," Jude said.
Colby smiled with broken teeth. "You think a snake can stop a prince?"
"A man can be kinder than his rank," Jude said. "Go."
Colby left without further damage, his pride smaller than his wounds.
"Who is he?" the villagers asked me the next morning.
"I only know he is mine," I said.
"Your guard," the old woman said, smiling.
The dragons paused.
Victor Willis seethed and then he sent something different.
"Bring her home," he commanded Colby, but this time Colby did not return alone.
They did not see the way the village had changed.
They did not see the way the people would stand at my side.
They did not know that I had learned to bind a truth to a coin and that the villagers would not flinch.
When the dragon envoys came to take me back, they found me standing with the old man and his sons, with Night on my shoulder and a dozen villagers behind us.
"Princess," a dragon man said, bowing not to me but to the air as if the law could be bought with fear.
"You are to come with us," he said.
"I will not," I said.
There was a hush, and then I acted.
"Tell them the truth," I said to the eldest villager, and I handed him a small bottle of my "truth dust."
They gave it to the leading envoy.
He tasted it by accident, and his tongue loosened like a broken knot.
"She is right," he said aloud. "The child saved us. I—"
Victor's men looked like men who had been slapped. Things came out of mouths like leaves in wind. They spoke of letters that had been paid, of bribes taken, of soft hands that gave orders.
The Dragon King paled, because the case would no longer be simple.
They could have taken me and gone. They could have pulled me up like a weed and dragged me into the palace.
Instead, the Dragon King did what strong men do when they know they are losing a fight for honor: he tried to burn the field and take the moral high ground.
"You will return willingly!" he declared. "We will have justice!"
Then Jude smiled a curve of something like ice.
"If you want justice," he said, "bring your proof here. Let the village watch. And you, king, will speak openly."
Victor's rage turned to a brittle brass smile.
"I will bring the man who stole the pill," he said. "I will cleanse this shame."
The day of the trial came.
They all gathered in the square beneath the old elm. The dragon men stood tall and cold. Victor's voice rolled like a drum.
"Princess Claire Tang, confess and accept your punishment," he said.
"I have already been punished," I answered. "My father punished me. You do not own me."
"Then explain why you strike our prince," he demanded.
"He stole a pill from White Elder," I said. "He stole a thing that belonged to an aged man. I stopped a thief. I hit a thief. I did not aim to maim. The pill was a prized thing, and he—"
"The child lies!" Colby shouted.
"She is a liar!" a dragon shouted, and with that the square filled with sound.
"Bring the proof," I said. "Bring me the pill."
They brought nothing. They had none.
Victor fell silent. He could not produce the pill. His men searched and found nothing. The prince would not show the medicine because once shown, it would be proof of wrong.
"You are proud," I said. "Your pride has no proof."
"Then I will test her," Victor said. He raised a dragon flame and pointed it at me. "If she is a mortal, the fire will burn her. If she is a god-child, the fire will harm me."
Jude moved like a shadow. Little Night bent and touched my wrist.
"Do not," Jude whispered.
I closed my eyes. The flame came and then it folded like paper against my skin. It did not hurt me. The court gasped.
"You are still a child of the heavens," an old voice said.
"Not yet," I said. "I only drew a small piece of what I once had."
They could not touch me. The crowd's wonder became a blade in Victor's chest.
"You cheated," he cried.
"No," I said. "The truth is that you had your son steal and you tried to hide it. The thing you feared to show was not a child’s wound but his crime."
At that, a dragon servant fell to his knees and confessed. Crew Zhao's coin chest was shown; the village's money was returned. The palace messenger admitted he had been paid.
Victor's face changed. He had not expected to be the accused.
"Your son will be punished!" Victor roared. "We will cut his rank!"
"Do not," I said. "If you punish him, you must punish every man who takes without asking. If you punish him, you must return what he stole. If you do not, you are not a king of justice but a king of fear."
He was quiet for a long time. The wind moved.
"Very well," he said finally. "Return the money. Return the pill if you have it. Admit your son stole."
They did not have to return the pill, but they had to admit theft and apologize.
Colby Roy, with his face white and angry around his eyes, walked forward and bowed his head.
"I wanted power," he said. "I took the pill because I thought it would make me great. I am sorry."
The villagers gasped.
The trial was strange. The dragons had expected me to break, and instead I had made them confess their sins in public.
Colby's body still trembled. He had been made small in the dirt, and he could not take it.
"Make him speak!" the people cried.
He cried aloud, and then the more he spoke, the less of a prince he felt.
I had my proof. The village had its justice.
Yet the Dragon King wanted more. He wanted blood and fairness on his own terms.
"Return her to me," he said, but he did not look like a man who was winning. He looked like a man who was left with a hollow where pride had been.
That night I sat on the roof with Little Night and watched the sky.
"My father punished me," I said. "I have yet to gather my light."
"You have gathered honor," Jude said. "You have gathered truth."
"But not enough," I said. "I still need eight hundred thousand spirit points to return."
Jude touched my wrist and a light passed between us.
"There is a place," he said. "A forest in the realm of beasts. It opens but once a century. It gives power to those who walk inside."
"I cannot enter," I said. "The gate will swallow a mortal."
"Not if you wear an armor from my father," Jude said. "He keeps a shell of old power. If I can take it, you will pass."
"Your father?" I asked. "The ruler of the beast realm? You would steal from him?"
Jude smiled, and the smile was a sword, bright and dangerous.
"I will not steal," he said. "I will borrow."
He left me alone for three days. He came back with the weight of a storm on his shoulders.
"The old one will be angry," he said. "He will curse me, but it is done."
He showed me a small breastplate, green and old and humming with a deep pulse.
"Put it on," he said.
I did. The metal fit like a secret. It did not take away my breath. It made the gate accept me.
We went through a doorway that smelled like rain and thunder. It closed behind us.
The forest inside was a cathedral of growth and gold. Trees breathed; stones sang. I walked and the air filled me with a cool light.
I did not take the gold or the jewels. I took a single leaf from the Heart Tree and a root from the well of deep water. I did not steal. The forest asked for nothing because I asked nothing but change.
When I came back, my arm's scab glowed like a star.
"You have gained much," Jude said.
"I have enough to return now," I answered.
We returned to the palace with the armor hidden beneath my cloak.
Victor was waiting. The sky was a glass bowl and the palace stood like a crown. He looked at me, and I could see the weight of the old verdict like chains on his chest.
"Claire Tang," he said. "You may return to the heavens, or you may stay here."
"You promised me nothing," I said. "You punished me. I will not beg."
He hesitated. Around him the court was a hive. They wanted spectacle.
"Return her power," a loud voice demanded.
He could not. No one could simply give power back.
But I stood there and put the Heart leaf in my mouth and the root under my tongue.
Light broke out like dawn.
"I am not the child you called stubborn," I said.
"I am the child who will make you answer."
My voice was a bell. The palace echoed.
I did not shout with rage. I spoke with the cold clarity of what had been done.
"You will call the village tonight," I said. "You will bring Colby Roy and you will apologize. You will return what you took. You will say you were wrong."
Victor's face had lines like old maps. He had to choose.
He chose, and that choice made the court tremble.
They knelt and apologized. Colby Roy's shoulders bowed as if the apology were a thing heavier than a stone.
"You will step down from the position if you can no longer stand as an honest prince," I said.
He stepped down.
The dragons could not hold themselves as a wall. The world had changed in a small valley because a child had chosen to stand.
I returned to the village. I could have gone back to the palace then, but I did not.
"Why not go?" Jude asked softly as dusk turned the fields into glass.
"They are my people," I said. "The Wangs took me in. The old man shows me the sky he never visited. The children laugh. If I go now, it feels empty."
"Then stay," Jude said. "Or go when you choose."
So I stayed.
I mended what was broken. I healed the sick. I fought those who would prey on the weak.
I grew in quiet strength. The Wangs' boys grew into men who would no longer take protection money.
The village hoed its fields and brought me harvests. They made a low bench in the square and put my name on a wooden sign.
"Claire Tang, our guardian," they carved.
When my eighteenth winter came, I stood on the same roof where I had once slept with the egg at my feet.
Night was with me. The old man, the old woman, and the children were asleep below. The Wangs had more than one small bed now; they had a small store, and the house was strong.
I had gathered more than the eight hundred thousand. I had gathered friends and enemies, truth and reproof.
Jude stood beside me.
"It's time," he said.
I closed my eyes. The palace light rose and the world shivered.
"Will you come?" I asked him.
He touched my hand and held it like a promise.
"If you go back, you will be taking a world that needs you," Jude said. "You will be taking your light back, and you will be able to help more. But if you stay, you are a guardian too. You choose."
I looked down at the village. I saw the old man on his stoop waving a rag like a flag. I saw the little boy asleep with his thumb in his mouth. I saw the old woman humming a song she used to sing to me.
I had two doors: one up, to cold marble and duty, and one on the ground, to warm hands and thank yous.
"I will return sometimes," I said.
"Then go," Jude said. "And come back when the world calls you."
I rose. The sky unstitched itself and folded me in.
At the palace I stood before my father again. He did not strike me. He did not need to. The law had been done.
"You have returned," he said, and there was a softness in his voice I had never heard.
"I did what I had to," I said.
"You have done better than I expected," he said. "You are not my child to rule. You are my child to be proud of."
That small praise was enough. It did something like loosen a chain around my chest.
I left the court with one thing only: a small ribbon from the old woman's apron.
I walked back to the roof of my village house and tied it on the gate.
"If I forget," I said, and I smiled.
"You won't," Jude replied.
Years passed. I returned to the palace when the sky called me. I returned to the village when the soil asked. I watched dragons learn that pride could make a king small. I watched men be made to confess in the dust. I watched a prince find humility and then slowly, in the honest light of labor, stand again.
The day I left for good, I stood under the elm.
"Will you be safe?" the old woman asked.
"I will find ways," I said.
"Promise you'll come back," the little boy pleaded.
"I will," I said and tied the ribbon again, tight and simple.
I had been punished, then humbled, then healed. I had been small and then bigger still.
When the sky took me last, I left a small ribbon on the gate, tied to the wood with a child's knot. It was a promise and a memory.
The villagers told the story of the girl who would not bow and of the snake that came from an egg. They spoke of a king who had been forced to be honest and of a prince who learned to walk without pride.
Years later, when thunder rolled and a new storm blew over the valley, someone would say:
"She came back once more, the one with the green armor," and an elder would smile. A child would look at the ribbon on the gate and whisper:
"I will be brave like her."
I had come down for a lesson. I had left people changed.
I had learned that justice was not always a sword. Sometimes justice was a hand that helped a village plow, or a child who would not let the evil go unspoken.
The last thing I did before the sky closed was tap the ribbon twice, like a small, silly salute.
"Be good," I told them.
They were, for the most part. And when they were not, they had me to come home to—if they needed me. That, in the end, was enough.
The End
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