Chapter 140: The Butterfly Problem

The butterfly was very pretty.

This was, objectively, the issue.

Zhen had been in the middle of her very sincere, very carefully worded apology when it appeared. It floated past her mother’s shoulder on enormous wings the colour of a sunset, all orange and gold, and her eyes had followed it completely against her will.

Her brain, to be fair, tried.

You are apologising, her brain said. You are looking at Mama. You are being good.

The butterfly dipped lower. It landed on a flower fifteen feet away. It folded and unfolded its wings.

Very good, her brain said desperately. Very responsible. You are five years old and extremely—

She was already moving.

Not running. Not exactly. Just…..drifting. Very casually. In the direction of the butterfly. While still technically facing forward. Sort of.

“And I’m sorry about—” she called back, still drifting, “—all the things!”

The butterfly launched itself back into the air.

Zhen followed.

Behind her, she heard her mother turn around and say something to her father. She did not hear what it was because she was now jogging, because the butterfly had made a decision and that decision was the eastern path, and that was Zhen’s decision now too.

The forest swallowed her.

She was not running away. She was conducting a scientific investigation. Of a butterfly. These were completely different things.

The butterfly did not care about the distinction. It floated serenely through a shaft of morning light, past a stand of ferns, over a mossy log that Zhen cleared in one enthusiastic leap.

She landed. Rolled. Came up grinning.

“Wait for me!”

The butterfly waited for no one.

~

She followed it for a very long time.

This was the thing about Zhen that everyone who loved her had come to understand: she did not get tired in the normal way. Other children flagged. They slowed. They said I’m hungry or my feet hurt or can we stop.

Zhen just ran. And ran. And ran.

Her mother had, on one memorable occasion, sat down in the middle of the path and refused to move until Zhen came back. Papa had eventually carried her home on his back because Mama’s legs had given out. Zhāo Yàn had declared it a personal insult that she had more energy than he did. Yàn Shū had looked it up in three different scrolls and come back with a theory about cultivation and constitutional temperament, which Zhen had listened to very politely before immediately running away.

She had been three.

She was five now, which meant things were worse.

The butterfly eventually vanished into the upper canopy, satisfied that it had done its work.

Zhen stopped and looked around.

She was in a clearing she did not recognise, which was fine, because she did not recognise most places and they usually turned out fine. A river ran along the far edge, catching the light like something alive. White flowers grew along its bank in cheerful clusters.

“Oh,” Zhen said.

She went to investigate the river.

The river was very fast and very sparkly and deeply satisfying to poke a stick into. The flowers were extremely pretty. She picked one and put it behind her ear, then picked three more because they were also pretty, then sat on a rock to contemplate the general excellence of the morning.

Then, very slowly, the thought arrived.

Mama will be worried.

She looked back at the forest. At the path she had come down, which she could mostly remember. At the general direction of home.

She should go back.

She was going to go back. She was definitely going to go back. She was just going to—

A sound.

Not a bird sound. Not a river sound.

A growl.

Zhen stood up on her rock.

She turned.

The undergrowth across the clearing was shaking.

Zhen’s hand found the small bracelet on her wrist, a habit. The one her mother had made her, smooth beads of river stone threaded on a cord. If you’re ever lost, Mama had said, if you’re ever in trouble, leave something of yours where someone can find it. The trail-marking charm her grandmother had woven into the beads would glow if Mama touched the matching one.

She was not in trouble yet.

She was just… assessing.

The undergrowth stopped shaking and a small shape emerged.

It was a jaguar cub. No bigger than Zhen herself, spotted and compact, his form flickering at the edges the way beast forms did when the shift was recent or new. He stood at the edge of the clearing with his little chest puffed out and his teeth showing and the smallest, most determined growl Zhen had ever heard rolling out of his throat.

Zhen stared at him.

He stared at her.

She had half a second to wonder why he was out here alone before he launched himself at her.

They wrestled for approximately four seconds, which was how long it took Zhen to get her feet under him and push, hard, using the technique Ruì Xuě had shown her. The jaguar cub tumbled sideways into the flowers.

He sat up. Shook his head. Hissed.

Zhen sat up and brushed leaves off her tunic.

“Hello,” she said.

He growled.

“I’m Zhen. What’s your name?”

He growled again, lower.

“I don’t know what that means.” She tilted her head. “You can shift if you want.”

For a moment he held very still. Then the shift happened, the flicker and the change, and where there had been a spotted cub there was now a boy. Roughly her height. Dark curls. Eyes the colour of deep water. He was wearing clothes that were slightly too big and slightly too muddy, and his expression was the kind of furious that is actually frightened wearing a costume.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

“I didn’t touch you. You jumped on me.”

“That was a territorial warning.”

“You live here?”

He hesitated, just slightly. “Yes.”

“Where’s your parents?”

His jaw tightened. “None of your business.”

Zhen looked at him for a long moment. He did not look like someone whose parents were nearby. He looked like someone who had been eating berries for several days and was not going to admit it.

“Where are you coming from?” she asked, more gently.

“I—” He stopped before looking away. “I—”

A shadow fell over the clearing.

Then another.

Zhen looked up.

Three vultures circled them, and one of them landed at the edge of the clearing with a sound like a collapsing tree.

“Well,” the vulture said, its voice light and airy. “Look what we found.”

Zhen’s hand closed around the jaguar boy’s arm.

“Don’t run yet,” she whispered. “They’re faster.”

“I know that.”

“Do you know how many exits this clearing has?”

His eyes moved, quick and clever. “Three. Two behind us, one left.”

“I see two behind us. Which left?”

“Through the flowers. There’s a gap in the roots.”

The vultures were spreading out and surrounding them. Before they could do anything to the cubs, Zhen reached up with her free hand and unclasped her bracelet.

She pressed it, very carefully, into the mud at the base of the rock. Face up. Visible.

The charm pulsed once, quiet and warm, against her fingers.

Mama would find it. Mama always found things.

“I am Zhen,” she said, loud and clear, to the vultures who were still approaching. “Of Thousand Fang. My fathers will be looking for me.”

“Thousand Fang?” the lead vulture thought to himself. “You do not happen to be related to Bai Yue?” Zhen stiffened before stubbornly nodding her head. “She is my mother!”

The vultures stared at themselves, as if they couldn’t believe their luck.

“Wonderful,” the lead vulture said. “Then they’ll know where to come.”

She felt the jaguar boy’s hand close around hers.

“My name is Tao Zi,” he said, quiet enough that only she could hear.

“Nice to meet you, Tao Zi.”

“If we get out of this,” he said, “I didn’t ask for help.”

“I know.”

The vultures closed in.

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