Chilan

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A shape moves in the darkness. It is small and unsteady with the bearings of a child, but it moves with familiarity across the small island. Incense swirls through the air as it hurries down the steps of the temple, then kneels beside a small pond. In it, five arowana swim about, their flowing bodies reflecting the moon.

One of the arowana swims slower. Its fin is ripped by play from the children of the shrine. Thin hands dip into the water and scoop it up. A wooden raft hits the water, and the child sails towards the city.

It is said that even in the quietest hour of the night, the city is still alive. The wisteria bridge whispers to the floral incense drifting from the island altar, and the altar calls out to the drifting tatters of the night market. Age after age of memories have inlaid themselves in the stones of the streets, and in the twilight they sing the song of the children.
In the day they are ignored. In the day they are drowned out by the calls of merchants and the whistling sailors that anchor weather-beaten vessels at harbor beyond the market. In the day the heavy incense is overpowered by the aroma of sizzling skewers and the sharp, citric tang of a spilled basket of oranges.

A child limps through the market, a wriggling sack in her hands. She falls beside the harbor and lets the golden arowana slip free and dance through the water. It swims in a circle, as if displaying its newly healed body. But what reflects the water are only bruises and mud.

"Go. You're free." As if to urge it on its way, she begins to sing.
"The city is alive? That's just a saying," the grandmother of the island altar tells a circle of children as maple leaves grace the sky above their siheyuan. "It means it's vibrant. This is Yangphon City, after all. The fire god sleeps beneath us, and its power shines over us. How can we not prosper?"

One child wonders at the bright scarlet flowers. The petals catch the sunlight and burn like fire.

New moon. The cool night air tastes like red beans and tangyuan. A young Wildclaw dressed in rags sits on the side of the street, a sword cradled in her claws as she tucks herself behind a marble guardian lion. She smells the incense from the altar island and watches the royal entourage cross the narrow strait. Music hums in the air, woven with shouts and cheers, but she hears more intimately beneath her the sound of stones groaning and pebbles quaking as firecrackers shatter the night.

As the royal entourage reaches the island, a container is pushed into her stiff claws. She sees only a flash of black fabric and arowana embroidered in gold.

"Yuanxiao," the stranger tells her. Or perhaps that was the voice of the wisteria bridge, singing as the lantern light washes it in red. "Safe travels."

Nobody knows how it happened. It began with the disappearance of the royal family's guardian lion. Who had the audacity to steal the statue? Nobody knew, but the royals were furious. Until other statues began disappearing, and scratch marks began appearing throughout the city. A rug torn to shreds. A wagon reduced to splinters.

She watches the chaos spread from beneath her family guardian lion, wrapped in her cloak and trembling. Because she can hear the snarls and growls in the dead of night, and they sound all too similar to the streets that creak and heave beneath her.

More disappearances. The royal guards are dispatched, but they return in pieces or not at all. The once-bustling streets are now tinged with death and in the night, they hear the roars of what sounds like lions. But she knows it is the sound of marble, of marble inlaid with memories, of marble creaking with the weight of histories and suffering, of bodies buried beneath the streets that had coalesced into what they now call the city.

It is the sound of the marble that calls out to the altar island, the sound that sings to the wisteria bridge. She has heard it every night, but only now do they hear its voice.

That night, her family guardian lion disappears.

Pandemonium. The streets shake as the guardian lions stalk through the city and the stones around them become animated. Dragons with scales of gold and red paint lunge at the royal guards as the royal family tries to flee. Left and right, the world is crumbling with the shatter of marble and concrete. She runs home, but there is no home. The siheyuan quakes and groans as tiles clatter to the floor, and she hides in the back of an alleyway as the ground itself becomes an enemy.

The city is alive, she whispers to herself. Footsteps click into the alley, and she meets the jade eyes of her family guardian lion.

But maybe it always has been, and it is only too late that we realize it.

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