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Liu Han wanted to die. How could she show her face anywhere in camp now that her body had been seen in truth? She felt like killing Yi Min for piling such humiliation on her shoulders. Maybe tonight, after he fell asleep-
The hiss from the entranceway brought her out of her dark fantasy and back to the present. That wasn’t a person there seeing her shame, it was a little scaly devil. As she rolled off Yi Min and away, as she scrambled into trousers and tunic, she wondered if that was better or worse. Better, she supposed-a person would surely gossip about her, while a scaly devil might not.
The devil hissed and sputtered in his own devils’ language, then tried to speak Chinese: “What you do?”
“We were enjoying the moment of Clouds and Rain, mighty lord devil Ssofeg,” Yi Min answered, as coolly as if he’d said, We were having a cup of green tea. “I did not expect you back so soon.” Much more slowly than Liu Han had, he began to put his clothes back on.
“Clouds and Rain? Not understand,” the little devil named Ssofeg said. Liu Han could scarcely understand it.
“As well expect to trap the moon in a mirror as poetry from a little devil, it would seem,” Yi Min said in a low, rapid aside to Liu Han. He turned back to Ssofeg. “I am very sorry, mighty lord devil. I shall speak plain words for you: we were making love, doing what makes a baby, mating, balling, screwing, fucking. Do any of those make sense to you?”
Wanting as she did to find all things about Yi Min odious, Liu Han had to notice he was good at using simple words, and at using a whole cluster of them in the hope that the devil might grasp at least one.
Ssofeg did, too. “Make baby?” he echoed.
“Yes, that’s right,” Yi Min said enthusiastically. He smiled abroad, artificial smile and made extravagant gestures to show how pleased he was.
The little scaly devil tried to speak more Chinese, but words failed it. It switched to its own language. Now Yi Min was the one who had to grope for meanings. Ssofeg had patience, too, speaking slowly and simply as the apothecary had before. At one point, it aimed a clawed finger at Liu Han. She flinched back in alarm, but the scaly devil seemed just to be asking a question.
After a while, Yi Min asked a question or two in return. Ssofeg answered with a couple of short words. Without warning, Yi Min brayed laughter. “Do you know what this stupid turtle thinks?” he managed to wheeze out between guffaws. “Can you guess? You would never guess, not in a thousand years.”
“Tell me, then,” Liu Han said, afraid the joke would turn on her.
But it did not. Yi Min said, “The little scaly devil wanted to know if it was your breeding season, if you came into heat at a certain time of the year like a vixen or a ewe. If I understand him rightly, that is how his kind’s females are made, and when they are not in season, he can feel no desire himself.” The apothecary laughed again, harder than ever. “Poor, poor devil!”
“That is strange,” Liu Han admitted. She had never given any thought to the little scaly devils’ love lives; they were so ugly, she hadn’t thought of their having any. Now, almost against her will, she found herself smiling. “Poor devils.”
Yi Min gave his attention back to Ssofeg. He mixed Chinese and the devils’ language to get across the idea that women could be receptive at any time. Ssofeg hissed and squeaked. So did Yi Min. Then, in Chinese, he said, “I give you oath, master devil, that I tell you the truth here.”
Ssofeg squeaked again before it-no, he, Liu Han thought-tried Chinese again, too: “True all woman? Not just”-he pointed at Liu Han-“woman here?”
“True for all women,” Yi Min agreed solemnly, though Liu Han saw the glint of laughter still in his eye. To make sure, his own sex was not demeaned, he added, “It is also true that men-human men-have no fixed mating season, but can mate with women at any time of the year.”
That started Ssofeg making cooking noises again. Instead of asking more foolish questions, the little scaly devil whirled and scampered out of the tent. Liu Han heard his clawed feet pattering away at a dead run. She said, “I’m glad he’s gone.”
“So am I,” Yi Min said. “It lets me think-how can I best turn to my advantage this strange and sorrowful weakness of the scaly devils? If they were proper men, I could sell them proper medicine to strengthen their peerless pillars. But if I correctly follow Ssofeg, without devil females he and his brethren might as well be so many eunuchs-though even eunuchs have desires, they say. Hmm…”
Not five minutes after his yang essence had mingled with Liu Han’s yin, he might as well have forgotten she remained in the tent. To Yi Min, Yi Min was all that truly mattered, with everyone and everything else to be rearranged at his whim for his convenience. Now he sat cross-legged on the mat, his eyes almost closed, feverishly planning how to turn the devils’ debility into money or influence for him.
All at once, he let out a cry nearly as intense as the one he’d made when he spent himself inside her. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “I will-”
Liu Han never found out what Yi Min’s latest scheme was. Before he could announce it, Ssofeg burst back into the tent. Three more little scaly devils were right behind him, all of them carrying guns. Liu Han’s bowels turned to water. Now Yi Min bleated like a sheep facing the butcher’s cleaver. “Mercy, kind devil!” he wailed.
Ssofeg pointed outside, then to Yi Min. “You come,” he said in Chinese Yi Min was so frightened, he had trouble getting to his feet. He stumbled out of the tent on stiff, numb legs. Two of the armed devils flanked him as he went.
Liu Han gaped at Ssofeg. At a stroke, the little devil had given her what she wanted most-freedom from Yi Min. And if he was gone, then she’d have this fine tent to herself. She felt like kissing Ssofeg. If he hadn’t had a mouthful of sharp teeth and one armed retainer still standing by him, she might have done it.
Then the devil pointed at her. “Too come you,” he said.
“Me?” Her sudden hopes crashed down. “Oh, no, kind devil, you don’t want me, you don’t need me, I am just a poor woman who knows not a thing in all the world.” She knew she was talking too fast for the ignorant little devil to understand, but the words poured out of her like the sweat that all at once began to pour from her armpits.
Ssofeg paid no more attention to what she wanted than Yi Min had when he undressed her and satisfied his own urges. “Too come you, woman,” he said. The scaly devil behind him moved his gun so it bore on her. The devils were not in the habit of taking no for an answer. Moaning, she followed Yi Min out into the street.
People stared and pointed and exclaimed as the little devils marched her along behind the apothecary. She understood a couple of their remarks: “Ee, that doesn’t look good!” “I wonder what they did?” Liu Han wondered what she’d done, too, aside from being foolish enough to let, Yi Min take advantage of her. And why should the scaly devils care about that?
No one did anything more than stare and exclaim. The devils were little, but they were powerful. The three with guns could kill many Chinese by themselves, and even if they were somehow overwhelmed, the rest of the scaly devils would flay the prison camp with fire from their dragonfly planes. Liu Han had seen what such fire did to the Japanese in her village, and they had had arms to fight back. The people in the camp were utterly defenseless against assault from the air.
Yi Min yelled, “Help me, someone! I haven’t done a thing. Save me from the terrible devils!” Liu Han snorted angrily and glowered at his back. He didn’t care what happened to anyone else, so long as he saved his own worthless skin. She snorted again. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know that.
Despite his bawling like a pig with a cut hock, no one did anything foolish, for which Liu Han was heartily glad. But she felt very lonely as the armed escort of devils led her out of the prison camp, away from her own people, and toward a dragonfly plane. “In!” Ssofeg said. Having no choice, first Yi Min and then Liu Han obeyed.
A few minutes later, the dragonfly plane scrambled noisily into the air. Even tho
ugh her stomach lurched every time the plane changed direction, she wasn’t as completely petrified as she had been the first time the little scaly devils forced her aboard one of their flying machines. After all, several of them were in here, too, and no matter how little they cared about her, she’d seen that they valued their own painted hides.
“This is all your fault!” Yi Min shouted at her. “If you weren’t flaunting yourself there in my tent, I never would have gotten into this predicament.”
The unfairness of that took her breath away. Before she could answer, one of the devils let out an ominous hiss. It punctured the apothecary’s bluster like a pin popping an inflated sow’s bladder. He shut up, though he didn’t stop glaring at her. She glared right back.
After about half an hour’s flight, the dragonfly plane set down not far from some much bigger machines of the scaly devils. The devils, with guns urged her and Yi Min out, marched them along to one of those big machines, and up a ladder into its belly. Unlike the ones on the dragonfly plane, the seats in there were padded, though still not big enough eyen for her.
