Serpentine by Cindy Pon

but didn’t escape from her eyes. She couldn’t cry in this form, just as she couldn’t speak.
    “My name is Stone,” the man’s voice said in her ear, and she lurched, lifting high on her serpent body. But no one was near her. “Say it if you need me.” And his words whorled into the night.
    Stone.
    It was what he had tasted like on her tongue. Of earth and gravel and granite. Of dirt and pebbles and the most pristine jade. Of all the life that could spring from it. Or all that it could oppress with immoveable finality.
    Skybright clutched herself with both arms, trying to make sense of everything she had seen that night. Trying to ease the trembling that would not stop. She never glanced back as she returned to the creek. She sank into the cold earth near its bank, pressing her bare torso against it, her tail unwinding along the ground. It was frightening how familiar this form felt to her already, how used to being unclothed she’d become. She didn’t even think to cover herself when Stone had manifested from nowhere.
    Change back to your human form, he had said, and we can talk.
    To be naked as a girl was a completely different matter. But Skybright didn’t forget her original task. She needed to be able to control her shape shifting, needed to be a girl as quickly as she could change into a serpent. She lay there, with her cheek pressed against the dirt, absorbing the quiet hum of life that reverberated through her senses, the rodents and hares, her fellow brethren slithering along the forest floor, hunting in the warm night.
    She drew a deep breath and focused on becoming a girl again, on her tail splitting to give her back her legs. Her fingers thrust in the dirt. A coolness zinged through her lower half, the opposite of the heat she had always felt when her tail emerged. She tingled from the waist down. Rising unsteadily on both feet, she grinned in triumph as she pulled on her sleep clothes.
    There was no use fighting fate, fighting the lot you were given in life. But she refused to be ignorant and helpless, halfling demon or no.

 
     
    Skybright sneaked on noiseless feet back to her bedchamber, feeling very awkward in her human form. She did her best to sponge the dirt from her body, then slipped into a peach tunic and trousers for the day. It was still some time before dawn, but feeling too restless to sleep, she slipped on her embroidered cloth slippers and stepped outside, with the intention of going to the kitchen to replenish the hungry ghosts’ offerings.
    She wound her way through the enormous manor, but slowed out of habit outside her mistress’s quarters. A faint sound made her pause by the door panels carved with lotus. There it was again—a low moan. Was Zhen Ni having a nightmare?
    Skybright slid the door panel aside. The reception hall was in complete darkness, but she walked through it with the familiarity of someone who could navigate it blindfolded. She pressed her ear against the bedchamber door. There was the rustling of silk sheets, a soft murmur and gasp. Surely, her mistress was having a bad dream.
    She pushed the bedchamber door aside and the golden glow of lantern light spilled into the reception hall. Surprised that Zhen Ni had kept the lantern burning, Skybright stepped inside. The chamber was warm, tinged with the scent of peach cream and jasmine perfume, sweat and—
    The bed sheet writhed in front of her, obscuring a giant lump, some kind of beast or monster. Uttering a cry, Skybright rushed to the bed, tearing the sheet back, ready to do whatever she had to to defend her mistress. But what she saw stopped her dead. Confused, she stumbled back.
    Zhen Ni and Lan clutched one another, their eyes standing out in their white faces. Their hair was disheveled, floating in wild wisps around their heads. Both girls mouths and cheeks were smudged with faint rouge. Hadn’t she removed the cosmetic from her mistress’s lips before Zhen Ni retired to bed the previous