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aegiscryptTitle: Wind Sweeping Away Lingering Snow (風捲殘雪)
Rating: G
Genre: General
Word Count: ~7400
Warnings: None
Also Archived In: Archive of Our Own on December 18, 2017.
Summary: Mulan’s not lost, exactly. She’s just... taking the long, scenic route around to find her way back from the war. Wherever that may lead her...
Series: Part 1 of the Spring Winds, Summer Rain (春風夏雨) series.
A.N.: For lmeden. Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this story as a send-off to 2017. May 2018 be even better for you!
The Romanizations are all over the place in this fic mostly because the movie did a crap job of actually making it transliteratively consistent (which Chinese dialects? Which Chinese regions?? Which Romanization system Disney augh), and for that I apologize.
Mulan is back from the war, and completely lost.
“Welcome home!” yells Butcher Chan.
Well. Not quite.
Butcher Chan piles choice cuts of beef into her hands. “Let your mother know that if she wants to make her famous meat and vegetable stew for tomorrow, or indeed anytime, she only has to come to me for the best!”
“Thank you,” Mulan says, and remembers enough of her manners to bow in proper thanks for the gift.
“Remember that! Only the best for the hero of China! Now for the homecoming feasts, and after too!”
Mulan bows again, and wonders how strongly she should brace herself as village life becomes her all again.
For all intents and purposes, the regard of the Emperor means very little outside of the immediate influence of the capital and the reach of its bureaucracy. It’s not that her village doesn’t recognize the magnitude of victory. The village elders puff out very proudly indeed during the opening speech that the blood of Fa Zhou has once again served the country in such fruitful fashion, and returned with such humility to continue service on the farm in peacetime. The celebrations held in her honour rivals the richest of New Year feasts in her memory, and probably in Grandma’s too, if the covetous glint in her eye is of any indication.
She finally runs into Ning Yuklan and Mao Shanting in the celebrations, and just about break their ribs hugging them. “Come find us when you’re settled,” Shanting mouths, before Mulan’s drawn away to greet the Tea Master and his wife. She doesn’t think she’s managed to converse with anyone more than once over the course of that night.
But village life is not all about celebrations, or even about acknowledgement. And the morning after the feast only reinforces her collection of observed moments.
“Rise and shine, girl!” Grandma makes a particularly worrying sound with the pot. “After I help you take stock of the crops, I need to go to the market!”
“Coming, Grandma!” She steps out of her bedroom to find Grandma eyeing her with a cocked eyebrow. “What?”
“Whatever else the military did for you,” Grandma declares, slapping her on the thigh, “I like your punctuality.”
Mulan laughs and follows Grandma out into the fields. Farm life isn’t too different from military life, in the sense that they both require her to be up by dawn and ready to work her body. And she’s betting on that hard to help her settle back into life as Fa Mulan, daughter of Fa Zhou, accomplished military genius and one of the foremost heads of families in their village.
This is what she remembers clearest when she dreams of winter:
Ice, the dry cold’s bite momentarily stopped by the dead wind.
Shame, a rising nausea as judgement against her and her associations builds.
Mercy, an unblooded sword tossed in the snow, provisions for travel to the nearest town explicitly left intact within her possession.
Funny that memories from one short moment in winter have so easily wiped her years of recollection of seasonal civilian life. She does not yet dream of spring, but when she does, she wonders if she’ll dream of the last fight against Shan Yu, or the fragrance of the magnolias when she laid eyes on Baba the day she came back.
Little Brother’s sudden pivot from the chickens gives her the first clue. She pauses mid-haul and eyes the growing pile of feed behind him, and makes a mental note to check back here later to clean up the droppings—
“Mulan! You’ve got visitors! Oh, go on ahead, she’s that way.”
“Thank you, sir, don’t mind if we do—”
“Yeah, thanks. Ping!”
“Oi, oi, you still being that flower vase you were back in rookie camp—”
“My, what a peaceful layout, this is sublime feng-shui—”
She just barely remembers to put down the full bucket of water before she’s leaping out from under the well. “Yao! Ling! Chien Po!”
They catch her in midair with a flying tackle of their own, shrieking with glee, and land the entire pile of them into the grass of the garden. She tussles with Yao and manages to get him into a headlock before Ling pushes her down and shoves a handful of fallen flowers into her hair. “There we go,” he smirks, “now you’re an actual flower vase.”
“Get off,” Mulan laughs, and punctuates by flipping him into the bushes with her legs.
“Mulan!” Grandma crows from somewhere near the house, “why, you naughty girl, bringing back home so many boys! How much free time in the war did you have—”
“Grandma!” Mulan protests, and hears an echo from the house as Mama hurries out.
“Grandmother! Auntie!” The men scramble upright – or attempt to, in Ling’s case – with impressive speed. Mulan is treated to a display of the most proper bows she has ever seen from them outside of parade rest. “We are honoured by, uh, your hospitality—”
“—and your generosity in welcoming us into your beautiful home,” Ling slides in smoothly as he finally detangles himself from the bushes. “On behalf of us humble men, we are at your service.”
Mulan snorts despite herself.
Yao and Ling tilt their heads slightly and glare at Mulan in unison. She can’t hold back the laugh this time. “Please, let me. Grandma, Mama, this is Chien Po, Yao, and Ling. We served in the same platoon, and they personally helped save the Emperor when Shan Yu invaded the palace. I couldn’t ask for better brothers-in-arms. Men, my grandmother and mother.” She pauses as Baba leans up against the outer garden door. “And you’ve already met my father, Fa Zhou.”
Baba smiles. “Such spirited young men must burn much energy. If your schedules allow, please stay for lunch.”
“Sir,” Chien Po says, tremulous, before Yao and Ling can check in, and that’s that.
Baba waves them off with a smile, and then they are alone again in the garden. Little Brother is sniffing at Yao’s heels, chickens crowding around them, but none of them look very disturbed by their feathery audience. Ling bends down for a coo, then jerks back upright. “Oh, wait, before we forget, we’ve got a missive for you.”
“Ah, yeah, let’s, uh, oh, uh, hope we didn’t break it when we were wrestling—”
Ling groans. “The Captain’s going to have our balls if it’s torn, may my ancestors have mercy—”
Mulan blinks. “What missive?”
“It’s intact,” Chien Po reports as he fishes out the scroll.
“Ma’s sweet soup, thank the gods—”
“The missive,” Ling says, jerking a thumb somewhat unnecessarily, “that Captain wrote by his own hand. He wanted to bring it personally too, but bureaucracy chained him down, so we volunteered.”
“Yao’s village only the next one over,” Chien Po adds, gesturing over his shoulder at where the mountains are, as if a mountain range and three valleys is no distance at all, “so we figured you were on the way anyway. Mulan, you have got to come along next time. We stayed to enjoy Chang’an’s cuisine for a bit, but his mother is apparently one of the best cooks in her village.”
“Aw, guys,” Mulan says, touched, “I’m really going to miss you too.”
“Don’t say that,” Yao protests. “We’re right next door.”
“Speaking of which, you can tell me more about what I’ve missed over lunch!”
Baba does not even glance at the scroll in her hands when she brings it to the dinner table the next evening. So Grandma gleefully takes the bait. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense! Is your strapping young Captain proposing?”
“Over a letter?” Mulan says, momentarily distracted.
“What’s an epistolary romance after a war?”
Mulan laughs. “Well, he’s not proposing. He’s inviting us to the capital for a banquet next month.”
Grandma makes an approving sound. “Ah, food as a wooing tactic. He’s starting well.”
Mama takes pity. “What’s the banquet for?”
“For his promotion to become General of the Imperial Army.”
Baba strokes his beard. “Will you go?”
“Only if you all come with me.”
“Mulan, this invite is for you—”
“And my family. Look, here.”
Grandma waves it away. “Chang’an is too far for my creaky bones, granddaughter, you should gawk at all the men for me and tell me about them when you come back.”
Baba smiles. “You must also tender them my apologies. My leg won’t allow for much long distance travel these days, and I’ve already said my goodbyes to the capital a long lifetime ago.”
Mulan turns to Mama, who shakes her head. “The farm won’t wait, not if this year’s harvest is as bountiful as the fortune-teller predicts. You have already represented us in war, daughter. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble representing us in peace too.”
She looks at their resolute expressions, and sighs. “All right. I’ll have a courier run my attendance and your declines tomorrow.”
This is what time has changed:
Her father’s skin, lined more heavily and weighed down with care.
Her mother’s hair, shot through with more silver than black.
Her grandmother’s... well. Grandma doesn’t act a year over sixty and she’s well beyond that, so Mulan’s actually the least worried about her. Grandma has made her peace with life, and who is Mulan to comment?
But time flows as the river does: it does not stop, and it does not flow back. More than ever, she is glad that she has returned, for her parents in their old age can do with all the support she can give. The question, of course, is whether she can give it at all.
Her reunion with her dearest friends go about as well as she’d expected.
“Mulan!” Shanting shouts the moment she catches sight of Mulan at the front door, “Mulan, thank the gods, is that you?! Come in, come in already, what’s with this hesitancy—” She drags Mulan through the reception hall and into the back, at the start of the fields. “Ning Yuklan, come here, it’s only twenty-six steps from the fields to your kitchen door, why are you taking so long? The Hero of China is arrived!”
“Ah, wait, why is the Hero so early, I haven’t fully prepared myself to give respect—” Yuklan bowls into view in a whirlwind of cotton and knees, and prostrates herself dramatically at Mulan’s feet. “O Great Hero of China, saviour of civilization as we know it—”
“Stop! Spirits, stop, you’re as ridiculous as ever.” Mulan yanks at Yuklan’s arm with no success; Shanting is no help, having laughed herself into a chair out of view. “Oh, fine, okay. I accept your most generous show of hospitality, O hostess, and beseech you to grant me favour—” Said, as she slowly collapses onto Yuklan’s back.
Yuklan breaks off mid-spiel with a squawk. “Heavens, Mulan, you’ve actually gained weight! I’ll stop, I’ll stop, now get off of me—”
“—and the ancestors will smile upon you with good auspice and fortune—”
Shanting’s arms wrap around her shoulders. “Oh, Mulan, we’ve missed you,” the other girl says, voice trembling, “nobody roughhouses like you do. But you’d better get off Yuklan, she’s a fragile piece of porcelain and cannot take much more strain—”
“I’ll show you strain, you ungrateful—”
Mulan laughs, wrapping a hand around Shanting’s arm, and flops fully onto Yuklan. “I’ve missed you too,” she says, nose buried into Yuklan’s thick, slightly sweaty shirt. “My bosom sisters. And you didn’t even see me off to war.”
“Ugh, get off.” Yuklan twists in a truly beautiful grappling move, and unseats Mulan onto the floor.
Shanting rolls onto her back and brings Mulan along onto the stone. “Yes, well, you know how good we are as women here,” she says, with less bitterness than Mulan remembers.
Yuklan punctuates with a groan. “Mulan, you fat pig, you’ve squashed me, and now I can’t get up.”
“It’s probably because she’s sitting on your dress,” Shanting points out sensibly. “She’s, what, just over one dan? Your cloth isn’t that finely woven, it can’t take that much pressure, if Sima Qian’s calculations are correct.”
“Nonsense. Mulan’s gained the most muscle out of everyone in the army and now weights five dan, and will have to demonstrate that she can lift about as much too when we start our summer repairs.” Yuklan sits up with a groan when Mulan wiggles obligingly off her skirts. She looks very tousled indeed, hair tugged loose from her ponytail and collars pulled out of alignment. Shanting looks much more decent, having made only brief contact with the floor on her own terms, but there’s a faint smudge of dirt on her sleeve, which is about equivalent to anyone else tripping and throwing themselves headfirst down a well. And Mulan can feel grass in her hair and... honest joy in her heart, and she can’t regret any of it.
She can just picture Mama shaking her head with disapproval, but that’s also why she’s not hosting it under Baba’s roof this time now, isn’t she?
“Seriously, though,” Yuklan says, touching her shoulder, then cheek, “it’s good to have you back. I’m glad you didn’t die in the war.”
Shanting leans close, a line of heat down Mulan’s back. “We were worried,” she says, muffled against Mulan’s shoulder. “When we didn’t see you for so long, and caught sight of Uncle Fa when we paid a visit, we figured you’d dressed as a man...”
“Which is wild. Hey, Shanting, what do you think if one of us—”
Shanting snorts. “Do you honestly think either of us make convincing men?” Mulan pictures Shanting, short and curvy in a man’s hanfu, then Yuklan, with her tall stature and generous chest, and has to concur.
“Well, if the Matchmaker’s scores for me are of any indication, I probably make a better man than a woman. It’s not like Mulan here would make a better man out of any of us. Which, hey, okay, I know we’re sisters but I can show better hospitality than have you tell us stories while sitting in the dirt in the garden. Come on, Auntie will forgive me for not plowing the fields for one morning.” She beckons them over into the kitchen and starts piling dishes into their hands. “We have some leftovers from last night, let’s munch and chat for a bit. Let me start since I can go fast, Danhung got married to the cobbler the next village over so that’s why she’s not here anymore—”
Mulan suspects that they’d take far longer than just the morning, and her gut is proven right when they next look up. The sky is the distinctive ruddy orange of dusk.
Shanting blinks. “Wow, I didn’t even notice we’d skipped a proper lunch. That’s quite the story, Mulan.”
“Quite.” Yuklan lays a hand on her upper arm. “So when are you going back to the capital?”
“Er, how’d you know?”
Shanting blinks. “Wait, you’re really going back for good?”
“What? No! I’ve just been invited to go to a banquet.”
“And you’re not moving to the capital after?”
“No! My family is not in Chang’an.”
“Yeah, I thought so. You’ve always been attached, just like me.” Yuklan withdraws her hand and lays her angular chin on it. “So? What are you going to do here? Farm away?”
“Not everyone hates farming as much as you do,” Shanting chides.
“Not the point.” Yuklan fixes her with an unwavering stare, and abruptly Mulan can feel every ounce of the three years between their ages and the fortunes that fate has granted them. “It sounds like you chose to do the right thing even when everything and everyone else was against you, and you won for it. You can’t take that back, sister.”
“Yuklan,” Shanting says, soft. She clasps Yuklan’s other hand in hers, and sweeps a gentle finger across her white knuckles.
“I’m just saying. You didn’t have to hide anymore. I envy that. I’d learn to fight if I were given the same chance, too. And don’t lie, Mao Shanting, you envy her too,” Yuklan says sharply. “You know you do.”
“I do,” Shanting agrees, sweet and anxious, “but it’s all the same calculations on the abacus, isn’t it? Your Auntie is here, and you can’t leave your dowry in bad shape. And I’m an orphan. If we leave, we won’t have any social standing or skills to even make start trying to make decent lives for ourselves. All you and I have ever done is farm, and to farm, we need land— so it’ll be straight to the Matchmaker for us for anyone who takes us in, and...”
Mulan drops her gaze down to the soiled dishes on the table, and doesn’t know what to say. Yuklan and Shanting had somehow both failed to gain favourable matches from their turns with the Matchmaker several years back. This is the last year Shanting is attempting another match through the Matchmaker before she reaches an unmarriageable age; she’s due for the meeting in less than a month.
Mulan rather thinks they’d be happier unmarried together. It isn’t as though they are at liberty to say, though, what with Yuklan as the sole inheritor of her father’s farms and Shanting reliant on Yuklan’s maternal aunt’s good grace.
Yuklan sighs at length. “Yeah, I don’t know how the Emperor is going to be able to help you here in this little village. It’s not like he lives here.”
“I don’t need his help, which is why I’m back here,” Mulan says baldly.
“No? You’re a smart girl, you should have already seen this. Your father gained recognition for achievements on the battlefield, but he came back and did something more tangible for the village to keep that recognition locally. You’re too young to be respected as an elder, and your status as a veteran will only carry you so far in this sleepy little village. So you’ll do something. What are you going to do?”
Mulan presses her lips together. “Try harder? It’s only been two and a half weeks. I’ll try different combinations of actions and ways of thinking...”
“...And I’ll give it another week,” she concludes. “What do you think?”
Khan doesn’t look much more impressed than Yuklan. She sighs, lowering the curry comb, and accepts Khan’s apologetic head-nudge as he whickers quietly. At least gentle Shanting is more reserved about voicing her doubts. They know her too well, her childhood best friends.
And she... knows them too. They’re her friends, so she cannot help secure their honour the way she can for her family. But she won’t stand for them to be unhappy either.
The plan unfolds as slowly as the stars as she walks to her ancestral shrine. She lights incense and kneels to pray. She hasn’t paid her respects since her first day back; she’s been remiss.
“Mulan, girl, is that you?”
“Mushu!” She catches the dragon in a hug, and grabs Cri-Kee out of the air when he makes the leap half a second later. “It’s good to see you.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be better if I saw you earlier! You don’t visit, you don’t call, it’s like I don’t even exist for you anymore!”
“I’m right there,” Mulan says, amused, “My bedroom window points towards this pavilion, even.”
“The principle of it stands,” Mushu sniffs.
“I’m sorry I didn’t visit more often. I won’t be able to for the next little while, since I’m heading to a banquet in the capital in two days—”
“Banquet! In the imperial city?! Wow, I’m down for that, I love fireworks!”
Mulan winces. “Actually, can I ask you to do me a favour here while I’m gone? Could you make contact with another family’s guardian—”
“You want me to do what?! No!” Mushu scrambles up onto a tablet and glares. “I’m not doing it!”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Mushu grouses on her bedroom table. Cri-Kee pats him on the knee comfortingly.
“Thanks, Mushu.”
“You owe me big time, Mulan, guardians don’t cross families for little things. The more territorial ones can spit intruders out like toothpicks!”
“But you’re a dragon, not a grove of bamboo,” she reasons, shoving another shirt into her bag. On second thought... she pulls it out and checks. Yep, that’s a towel, not a shirt. “And it’s not a little thing, I promise.”
“No?” Mushu follows her across the room, swarming up the divider next to her closet to glare at her at eye level. Well, I’m going to be missing out on capital fireworks, so whatever I gotta do had better make as big a boom as them!”
She takes a breath, but the truth is there just behind her teeth, and she can’t not spit it out. “We are. Blowing something up.”
Mushu blinks, then starts to smile, wide and toothy. “Well, hide my legs and call me a snake, I didn’t expect that. What’re we blowing up?”
Another truth. “Tradition.”
“And how big a boom are we looking for?”
“Nothing too big. I’m not quite sure how to do it yet, but I need you to be in contact with the other guardians. Just to get their trust. I’ll have a better idea of what to do after I come back.”
“And whose family guardian’s ear am I stealing?”
“The Ning household.”
“Ning, Ning... ah, the lion-dog— the lion dog?! You want me to die, don’t ya? She’s all loyalty and fangs. I’m really going to need all the time you’re gone to work my magic on that one.” He flashes her a grin full of teeth, and it’s just like old times in the army, plotting together in the scant spaces during take down, hushed discussions held over an armful of cloth. “All right, girl, I’m going to make you proud. So you make me proud in Chang’an, yeah? Go show them what you’re made of.”
“It’s a banquet, Mushu.”
“So? Did I stutter? Eat them under the table! Save the Emperor from food poisoning! Go!”
This is the truth:
It’s time consuming to find out what that right thing is at any given moment, and how to achieve it.
It’s when she is doing the right thing that her soul settles into her body like it truly belongs.
It’s been a while since she’s been able to find that quiet place within herself.
But she’s growing to suspect that time isn’t the issue anymore.
Chang’an, taken in more slowly than a frantic ride through the end of the war, is a labyrinth of court manners and culture shock. For one, everyone is so dressy. For another, everything is about sixty times more complicated. The time the imperial staff took to dress and adorn her took twice as long as when she had to be dolled up for the Matchmaker. And if she’d thought her village’s homecoming celebrations were grand, Li Shang’s promotion banquet in the capital defies description.
She is seated at the head of the table at the Emperor’s left, facing Li Shang. The ten course dinner would blow Mushu’s mind with its intricacies. She can scarcely do more than nod and smile and sample and try to affix to her memory the rich, foreign flavours and textures of imperial cuisine. Mama would undoubtedly have enjoyed this; she’ll have to ask for a list of served dishes from the kitchens later.
That is, if she can even remember it. She has greeted and bowed to more court officials and dignitaries and ranked honoraries than she can count. Or Shanting can count. She is speaking to a young... Duke? Viscount? Judge? When a familiar voice coughs behind her.
“If I may be forgiven for interrupting, Magister,” Li Shang says from behind her, “the Emperor has requested the honoured presence of Fa Mulan.”
“What did you just say?” Mulan hisses as Li Shang draws her away.
“Court speech,” Li Shang says without pausing his stride. He gives her a look, one eyebrow cocked. “Between you and me, imperial administrators don’t like it when they aren’t addressed with the proper formality.”
“Ah.”
Li Shang glances at her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Lots of new experiences, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“I expect there’s been a lot of new experiences these past few months.”
“Well, none of them were anything like that avalanche,” Mulan says, and Li Shang chortles until they are in front of the Emperor.
“Fa Mulan,” he greets. “I would like you to accompany me to honour our war dead tomorrow. We will make stops at three temples to thank the gods for watching over us, and to ask them to send our soldiers peacefully onto their next lives.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. You didn’t even need to ask. I would have done the same on my own.”
“I think having the General who led the troops to victory, the saviour of the Middle Kingdom, and the ruler of that kingdom together would probably grab the gods’ attentions harder, hm? All right. That is all. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Li Shang walks silently by her side for a good portion of the stairs down. “You know you can ask for help.”
She glances at him, surprised. “Where did that come from?”
“Just... in general. I know you didn’t grow up in this environment. And I don’t know how useful this is for you when you return to your village. But knowledge is power, and I—” he hesitates, then says in a rush, “I like knowing that you are armed.”
“I— thank you?”
“I— will just. Go say hi to the examiner over there. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow morning? Okay. Good evening.”
She watches him stomp off stiffly with some bemusement, then settles back down beside Ling. Beyond him, Chien Po looks as though he is catatonic with satiated joy.
“This is... really intense,” Ling remarks, leaning back on his hands. “All this... policy and bowing and ranks and stuff.”
“You like a challenge,” grunts Yao on Chien Po’s far side. He’s started eating again, savouring tiny bites of quail with intense concentration.
“How’re you guys finding your hometowns anyway?” Mulan ventures. “I haven’t visited you yet.”
“Quiet,” Ling says just as Yao says, “busy.” They glance at each other, then snort in tandem.
“I’m just settling back down in town and taking stock,” Ling says, “not like Yao, who’s put all his earnings and reward money to renovating his family home.”
“Toilet’s roof leaked for ages, and the western walls are crumbling,” Yao grunts, “why wouldn’t I fix it if I can?”
“Congratulations on earning a reward! What did you earn it for?”
A pause, as they both look at her. “Ah, right,” Yao says slowly over the quail leg, “you took off before you cashed out, didn’t ya.”
Ling smacks his forehead. “Of all the things we forgot— did you even collect the rest of your salary?”
“Uh—” Finances are a big, empty blank in her mind. “Where do we get it?”
“Right. We’re dealing with it tomorrow— no, wait, that’s busy— day after. How about the morning? It won't take long. I hope your war horse is still fit, because you’re about to haul a lot of money back with you.”
“Nah, she should bank most of it here. Ya don’t want to attract bandits. You can courier some of it over mail. I know a guy, I’ll introduce ya.”
“Thanks, guys.”
“Least we can do. All right, I need to taste test this again, my Ma’s going to be quizzing me on the spice mix. Chat with ya in a bit.”
The temples are solemn affairs riddled with strict procedures that would have lost half her compatriots had the Emperor not had the prescience to assign them personal minders. She comes out of it relatively intact, which is... something. She hadn’t expected even capital worship to triple the complexity, but what does she know.
Li Shang snags her arm before they disband completely. “Are you busy this afternoon? No? Could you do us the honour of sparring a round with the recruits? I won’t waste your time,” Li Shang adds quickly, “I’d just really appreciate your opinion on the finest of our soldiers. Uh, newest soldiers. You’ll be testing the cream of the crop—”
“All right, all right,” she says, smiling. “It’s okay, Shang. I’ll spar.” Truth be told, she’s missed it. She’s grown used to the rigorous demands of fitness required in the military, and the sheer blood-pumping physicality of facing down an opponent during martial arts practice.
Two hours later, dripping with sweat and arrayed with a fresh set of bruises, the itch has eased, her body is sore in the best way, and the slow dawning understanding is a burning weight in her chest. She compliments Li Shang on his fine recruitment abilities, and readies to return home to her quiet village tomorrow.
This is what she’s found:
Many parts of herself, all honest parts that can live on a battlefield.
Some parts of herself that may or may not be viable in a civilian setting in her village.
Fewer parts of herself that revels in the challenge and the sheer overwhelming adrenaline rush of the capital city.
She’s not all that good at math; it’s Shanting’s forte. But she can hardly ask someone else to sum up all her found and yet-to-be-defined-or-discovered parts and interpret just what that answer may mean.
“It’s done,” Mushu says proudly the night she returns to her village. “I have stolen the Ning family guardian’s ear!”
“See, you’re not a pile of toothpicks.” She flips her blanket back, stifling a yawn, then pauses. “Please tell me you didn’t actually steal the guardian’s ear.”
“No! What do you take me for, a kleptomaniac? The other family’s guardian only got set slightly on fire!”
“They got set on fire?!”
“Slightly on fire, lady, don’t insult my control!” Cri-Kee makes an unimpressed sound. “Well, let’s see you try to wake up a sleeping lion-dog next time!”
“Did you try a gong or something first?” Mulan says helplessly.
“Tell you what, next time you want me to actually steal a stone guardian’s ear, I’ll use a ‘gong or something’,” Mushu grumbles. “So what’s next? There better be a plan, I promised her I’d come back pronto. She really likes her beauty sleep, and she really can use more of it if you ask me...”
“Can you convince her to appear to the eldest maternal relative and suggest that selling the farm would be more beneficial than making it a dowry?”
Mushu stares at her, claws tapping the table, then says, “and what do I say if she asks about the female scion of the Ning family?”
Ah. She hadn’t thought that far yet. But if there’s any time for a leap in the dark, a blind faith in her cannon’s aim at the snow at the peak of the mountain corrected against the vicious wind, it is now. She takes a breath. “Tell them to come find me.”
Baba is at heart a man of discipline. She finds him the next morning, predictably enough, on the stone bench in the garden, eyes closed as he listens to the birds herald the dawn. It is his wont to pursue his morning routine every day with absolute mindfulness, in solitude, undisturbed.
“Good morning,” he says without opening his eyes, “my daughter.”
She bites her lip, then steps over the garden door. He opens his eyes at the rustle of her trousers, but looks only at her face as she pauses over the stone path. “Good morning, Baba. May I have a moment?”
“Of course.” Baba waits until she sets up his tea, then flips another cup for her beside him.
She takes the offered seat and fills the cup. The time she’d bought hadn’t granted her words any less blunt that what she had to start with, so... well. “How did you adapt? After the war.”
Baba sips his tea, then puts it down. She can see where she gets this stalling strategy from, now. “With gritted teeth, mostly. And you? How are you feeling?”
“Unfulfilled,” she admits. There, the bald, painful truth. “I don’t begrudge my duties in farming and as a member of the village. But it’s... I know I will only shame you again if I choose to become a farmer.” She stares down at her hands as they clench into the trouser fabric. She hadn’t been in a dress mood today, but going into the market like this is really asking for trouble. “And I don’t think— even if I trained to go back to meet the Matchmaker—”
“No,” Baba says thoughtfully, “no, I agree. The military teaches discipline and trust in a correct order to things, but I do not think farming or meeting the Matchmaker for a future husband will quite cut it for you.”
“But you were able to settle with it after your war.”
“Oh, my daughter,” Baba says, smiling. “I only looked like I did. We’ve wet the paper with ink already. There’s no going back.”
She shifts. “Going back? I don’t want to fight, Baba, I love peace. But I... I felt the most alive when I was in the capital helping General Li with drills. And I’m not... sure what to do with that.”
“I meant we can’t go back to civilian life the same way we left it,” Baba says gently. “They say that everyone leaves a piece of themselves on the battlefield, but I think everyone brings a piece of the war back with them too. I brought mine back, and now,” he touches her chest, right over her heart, “you have brought yours back too.”
Her heart skips a beat; she prays to whatever ancestor listening that he doesn’t feel it. “Baba, I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You brought yourself to the war; now, you can bring yourself to civilian life too. You already know this, daughter. You already know this.”
“I don’t— I’m not completely sure yet— but...”
Baba’s gaze is distant, as though he can see through the garden wall into the wisdom buried beyond. “What were you fighting for? And why did you come back? No,” he says, gently, when Mulan opens her mouth, “it is not me who you need to answer. It is yourself. And,” he brushes her hair back, tucking a blossom behind her ear, “if that look in your eyes isn’t the one that makes your mother and I tear our hair out and ultimately makes us so proud of you, then I will eat my slippers.”
These are the right things that she’d wanted to accomplish:
To protect her family by bringing honour.
To see her family again.
To find herself.
But no one lives in isolation, and a hero is an empty title when there is land to till and chickens to feed and a family to nurture. Her heart is not within the gilded walls of Chang’an, nor its shifting politics; it is not within the earth of their fertile farms, nor the quiet bustle of small village rhythms. It is in something higher and greater, and though she doesn’t have a name for it yet, she is beginning to see its shape.
Li Shang visits again a mere two weeks after his promotion. He sits in the garden with easy familiarity, as if he’d come by every day of his life, and it’s nice. Mulan can relax with him here in a way she hadn’t fully expected.
“I didn’t know the rank of General came with so many days for relaxation,” Mulan says, smiling to take the sting out.
Li Shang arches an eyebrow. “Hardly. I’m finishing a tour around the country to assess the state of my former soldiers as they reintegrate into their communities. I guess you didn’t get my letter from my last village yet.”
“That’s some route,” Mulan says, mentally charting his course. No matter how she swings it, her village is a detour from the next closest hometowns of her platoon-mates.
“My soldiers are worth it,” Li Shang says firmly, then laughs, soft. “You should hear some of the stories about you... the last place I was at had people who were convinced that your achievements were the work of dragons.”
“Ah— haha, they think I work with dragons?” Mushu will never let her live it down. “I’m not quite that blessed.” Scratch that, hopefully Mushu isn’t within hearing range or he’ll never let her get away with saying this.
“I will personally present offerings to the river dragon, the rain dragon, the Jade Emperor, and the Queen Mother of the West herself for blessing you with all that you had to save China. But you must know that that’s the important part for me. That without you, the gods wouldn’t have shown their favour, and China wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“That’s... that’s overstating it a bit, I think,” Mulan says weakly.
Li Shang smiles. “But it’s only the truth. Whether you were able to save China by yourself, or you were blessed by the gods to save China, you had to be there.” He coughs, then leans forward. “So, uh— so? How’re you adapting to this China you saved?”
Mulan jumps on the shift in topic. “It’s a work in progress. You remember in my last letter that I thought about instructing, right? Only I have no idea how to do that. I’d be... messing about. And that’s not—students deserve more than that.”
“Okay. So what are you going to do next?” Li Shang props his head on his hand. “I don’t see you as a career soldier.”
“No, I’m not.” Mulan rubs a thumb up and down her cup. “But I’m not just a village woman who’ll be satisfied with marriage, farming, and family life, either.”
“I don’t see you as that, either.” More than once, she has to appreciate the patience in his eyes. “Or just that, in any case.”
Mulan raises an eyebrow.
“You’re an excellent warrior. And I’d be a fool not to recognize that first and foremost about you, before the fact that you are a woman. Especially if Shan Yu himself acknowledged it.” Li Shang’s gaze unfocuses, and abruptly Mulan is reminded of the red blood flowing within his veins, the military legacy of the Li clan bearing down full bore upon his shoulders. He looks very young. “China is one half women. How many warriors did we miss, when we asked only for sons?”
Mulan frowns. “Shang, I’m not training women for war.”
Li Shang blinks, stares at her, then blinks again. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”
“I didn’t join the army to fight the Huns. Well, I mean, I did, but—... I didn’t enlist because I wanted to fight a war.”
But Li Shang is already smiling, a strangely crooked thing. “I know. You joined the army, yes, but the fact that you were fighting against Huns was incidental. You could have been fighting against Uyghurs, or fighting rebels, or even just hunkering down in reserves during the entire conscription, and it would all have been incidental to your enlistment itself.” His thoughtful gaze trails Baba as he walks the far side of the garden with Mama. “I can see that.”
The right thing is so very hard to do. But once the path is found, there is peace in that place. So maybe it is, in a way, the easiest path of all. “Actually. Shang. I think I know where you help me. Do you have some time for me later this afternoon?”
His smile is a rare, glowing thing. “I am at your service.”
“Thank you, Shang. I’m finding out that I really have no idea how to teach the fifteenth form of the third empty hand set...”
The day after, she catches sight of Mushu throwing a quick thumb’s up, and smiles to acknowledge the notice. One minute later, Ning Yuklan and Mao Shanting stumble through the front yard of her family home.
“Mulan,” Yuklan gasps. Shanting seizes her hand and hangs tight. “Mulan, the strangest thing— Auntie came over this morning talking about a dream the ancestors had sent her, and—”
“She’s thinking about selling the farm.” Shanting is a trembling line down her side; Mulan has to grab her other arm in case she shakes right off her feet. “Mulan, she said the ancestors told her to send us to you first. We don’t have anywhere else to go if the farm is sold—”
“Oh—” Perhaps Mulan hasn’t thought the presentation of the farm through nearly as thoroughly as she should have. “Oh, um, you actually came at a really good time! I actually could use you both!”
Yuklan stares. “You can— what? Explain.”
“I’m going to start a school for martial arts, for self-defence. But this one will welcome everyone, men and women, boys and girls. And I’m only one person. So I can use extra hands.” Mulan smiles. “Yuklan, if you don’t mind, I could always use another instructor for the beginner levels, and Shanting, your head for organization and finances is far better than mine. So— but it’s only if you want these positions. They’re yours if you want them.”
They gape at her for a long moment. “I have no training,” Yuklan says at length, helplessly.
“So you’ll be my first student! I can refine my pedagogy on you, and then you can teach the first classes.” Yuklan’s already a natural; she’ll take no funny business from anyone. And if people can’t handle having Yuklan teach them, then they won’t have Mulan either.
“Mulan,” Shanting says quietly, “where exactly are you teaching?”
“Well, I’ll need space and a hall.” Mulan strokes her chin. “Well, I’ve brought some of my income back from the capital. What if I asked to rent the North wing in your family home, Yuklan? It’s got a hall that’s plenty big enough—”
“—and that wing’s also where our bedrooms are.” Yuklan narrows her eyes. “Mulan...”
“Yuklan.” Mulan lets Shanting go and lays a hand on her shoulder. “I was just thinking. If you had extra skills in addition to your farming experience, and maybe a letter of support from me, you could both leave for better fortunes later...”
“Mulan,” Shanting says, choked. She blots her tears on her sleeves, then takes a deep breath and says more calmly, “just to be clear, we can’t accept payment for this. We have no experience, no background, no— nothing of worth to convince you to pick us over anyone else.”
“But you could have that, if circumstances allowed you the opportunity to make a choice.” Mulan squeezes her hand with a smile. “So. Here’s your opportunity. It’s up to you to take it.”
“Of course.” Shanting seizes Yuklan’s hand, fingers intertwining tight. “Mulan, of course we’ll take it.”
“Seriously, though,” Yuklan says, thickly, “thank you.”
“No,” Mulan says softly, “thank you. This is just an opportunity. The hard part is the rest of it. That’s yours to figure out.”
“But we have hope again. I— don’t know how we can thank you.”
Mulan shakes her head, smiling. “You can thank me by getting ready. We start when you’re on your feet.”
They exchange a glance, then square their shoulders in tandem. “We’re ready now.“
“All right. Let’s go check out how suitable your North wing’s dining hall is for forms.”
She’s done with hiding. And when her important people are ready to stop hiding as well, she’ll be there to protect them, too. Her friends, her family, her fellow women, her peers, her villagers, her country. She’ll be here.
They clear the space in no time at all. “Let’s get down to business,” she says, smiling at the memory of Li Shang throwing quarterstaffs at them that long lifetime ago, and promptly sweeping them all off their feet. Literally speaking.
Time to bring herself to her village, war and all, peace and all. She takes a step forward, firms her stance, and knows, abruptly and without a doubt, that she’s on the right path home.
-fin-
A.N.: 風捲殘雪 (fēng juǎn cán xuě): idiom. Literal: wind sweeping away lingering snow. Metaphorical: to make a clean sweep.
Rating: G
Genre: General
Word Count: ~7400
Warnings: None
Also Archived In: Archive of Our Own on December 18, 2017.
Summary: Mulan’s not lost, exactly. She’s just... taking the long, scenic route around to find her way back from the war. Wherever that may lead her...
Series: Part 1 of the Spring Winds, Summer Rain (春風夏雨) series.
A.N.: For lmeden. Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this story as a send-off to 2017. May 2018 be even better for you!
The Romanizations are all over the place in this fic mostly because the movie did a crap job of actually making it transliteratively consistent (which Chinese dialects? Which Chinese regions?? Which Romanization system Disney augh), and for that I apologize.
Mulan is back from the war, and completely lost.
“Welcome home!” yells Butcher Chan.
Well. Not quite.
Butcher Chan piles choice cuts of beef into her hands. “Let your mother know that if she wants to make her famous meat and vegetable stew for tomorrow, or indeed anytime, she only has to come to me for the best!”
“Thank you,” Mulan says, and remembers enough of her manners to bow in proper thanks for the gift.
“Remember that! Only the best for the hero of China! Now for the homecoming feasts, and after too!”
Mulan bows again, and wonders how strongly she should brace herself as village life becomes her all again.
-----
For all intents and purposes, the regard of the Emperor means very little outside of the immediate influence of the capital and the reach of its bureaucracy. It’s not that her village doesn’t recognize the magnitude of victory. The village elders puff out very proudly indeed during the opening speech that the blood of Fa Zhou has once again served the country in such fruitful fashion, and returned with such humility to continue service on the farm in peacetime. The celebrations held in her honour rivals the richest of New Year feasts in her memory, and probably in Grandma’s too, if the covetous glint in her eye is of any indication.
She finally runs into Ning Yuklan and Mao Shanting in the celebrations, and just about break their ribs hugging them. “Come find us when you’re settled,” Shanting mouths, before Mulan’s drawn away to greet the Tea Master and his wife. She doesn’t think she’s managed to converse with anyone more than once over the course of that night.
But village life is not all about celebrations, or even about acknowledgement. And the morning after the feast only reinforces her collection of observed moments.
“Rise and shine, girl!” Grandma makes a particularly worrying sound with the pot. “After I help you take stock of the crops, I need to go to the market!”
“Coming, Grandma!” She steps out of her bedroom to find Grandma eyeing her with a cocked eyebrow. “What?”
“Whatever else the military did for you,” Grandma declares, slapping her on the thigh, “I like your punctuality.”
Mulan laughs and follows Grandma out into the fields. Farm life isn’t too different from military life, in the sense that they both require her to be up by dawn and ready to work her body. And she’s betting on that hard to help her settle back into life as Fa Mulan, daughter of Fa Zhou, accomplished military genius and one of the foremost heads of families in their village.
-----
This is what she remembers clearest when she dreams of winter:
Ice, the dry cold’s bite momentarily stopped by the dead wind.
Shame, a rising nausea as judgement against her and her associations builds.
Mercy, an unblooded sword tossed in the snow, provisions for travel to the nearest town explicitly left intact within her possession.
Funny that memories from one short moment in winter have so easily wiped her years of recollection of seasonal civilian life. She does not yet dream of spring, but when she does, she wonders if she’ll dream of the last fight against Shan Yu, or the fragrance of the magnolias when she laid eyes on Baba the day she came back.
-----
Little Brother’s sudden pivot from the chickens gives her the first clue. She pauses mid-haul and eyes the growing pile of feed behind him, and makes a mental note to check back here later to clean up the droppings—
“Mulan! You’ve got visitors! Oh, go on ahead, she’s that way.”
“Thank you, sir, don’t mind if we do—”
“Yeah, thanks. Ping!”
“Oi, oi, you still being that flower vase you were back in rookie camp—”
“My, what a peaceful layout, this is sublime feng-shui—”
She just barely remembers to put down the full bucket of water before she’s leaping out from under the well. “Yao! Ling! Chien Po!”
They catch her in midair with a flying tackle of their own, shrieking with glee, and land the entire pile of them into the grass of the garden. She tussles with Yao and manages to get him into a headlock before Ling pushes her down and shoves a handful of fallen flowers into her hair. “There we go,” he smirks, “now you’re an actual flower vase.”
“Get off,” Mulan laughs, and punctuates by flipping him into the bushes with her legs.
“Mulan!” Grandma crows from somewhere near the house, “why, you naughty girl, bringing back home so many boys! How much free time in the war did you have—”
“Grandma!” Mulan protests, and hears an echo from the house as Mama hurries out.
“Grandmother! Auntie!” The men scramble upright – or attempt to, in Ling’s case – with impressive speed. Mulan is treated to a display of the most proper bows she has ever seen from them outside of parade rest. “We are honoured by, uh, your hospitality—”
“—and your generosity in welcoming us into your beautiful home,” Ling slides in smoothly as he finally detangles himself from the bushes. “On behalf of us humble men, we are at your service.”
Mulan snorts despite herself.
Yao and Ling tilt their heads slightly and glare at Mulan in unison. She can’t hold back the laugh this time. “Please, let me. Grandma, Mama, this is Chien Po, Yao, and Ling. We served in the same platoon, and they personally helped save the Emperor when Shan Yu invaded the palace. I couldn’t ask for better brothers-in-arms. Men, my grandmother and mother.” She pauses as Baba leans up against the outer garden door. “And you’ve already met my father, Fa Zhou.”
Baba smiles. “Such spirited young men must burn much energy. If your schedules allow, please stay for lunch.”
“Sir,” Chien Po says, tremulous, before Yao and Ling can check in, and that’s that.
Baba waves them off with a smile, and then they are alone again in the garden. Little Brother is sniffing at Yao’s heels, chickens crowding around them, but none of them look very disturbed by their feathery audience. Ling bends down for a coo, then jerks back upright. “Oh, wait, before we forget, we’ve got a missive for you.”
“Ah, yeah, let’s, uh, oh, uh, hope we didn’t break it when we were wrestling—”
Ling groans. “The Captain’s going to have our balls if it’s torn, may my ancestors have mercy—”
Mulan blinks. “What missive?”
“It’s intact,” Chien Po reports as he fishes out the scroll.
“Ma’s sweet soup, thank the gods—”
“The missive,” Ling says, jerking a thumb somewhat unnecessarily, “that Captain wrote by his own hand. He wanted to bring it personally too, but bureaucracy chained him down, so we volunteered.”
“Yao’s village only the next one over,” Chien Po adds, gesturing over his shoulder at where the mountains are, as if a mountain range and three valleys is no distance at all, “so we figured you were on the way anyway. Mulan, you have got to come along next time. We stayed to enjoy Chang’an’s cuisine for a bit, but his mother is apparently one of the best cooks in her village.”
“Aw, guys,” Mulan says, touched, “I’m really going to miss you too.”
“Don’t say that,” Yao protests. “We’re right next door.”
“Speaking of which, you can tell me more about what I’ve missed over lunch!”
-----
Baba does not even glance at the scroll in her hands when she brings it to the dinner table the next evening. So Grandma gleefully takes the bait. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense! Is your strapping young Captain proposing?”
“Over a letter?” Mulan says, momentarily distracted.
“What’s an epistolary romance after a war?”
Mulan laughs. “Well, he’s not proposing. He’s inviting us to the capital for a banquet next month.”
Grandma makes an approving sound. “Ah, food as a wooing tactic. He’s starting well.”
Mama takes pity. “What’s the banquet for?”
“For his promotion to become General of the Imperial Army.”
Baba strokes his beard. “Will you go?”
“Only if you all come with me.”
“Mulan, this invite is for you—”
“And my family. Look, here.”
Grandma waves it away. “Chang’an is too far for my creaky bones, granddaughter, you should gawk at all the men for me and tell me about them when you come back.”
Baba smiles. “You must also tender them my apologies. My leg won’t allow for much long distance travel these days, and I’ve already said my goodbyes to the capital a long lifetime ago.”
Mulan turns to Mama, who shakes her head. “The farm won’t wait, not if this year’s harvest is as bountiful as the fortune-teller predicts. You have already represented us in war, daughter. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble representing us in peace too.”
She looks at their resolute expressions, and sighs. “All right. I’ll have a courier run my attendance and your declines tomorrow.”
-----
This is what time has changed:
Her father’s skin, lined more heavily and weighed down with care.
Her mother’s hair, shot through with more silver than black.
Her grandmother’s... well. Grandma doesn’t act a year over sixty and she’s well beyond that, so Mulan’s actually the least worried about her. Grandma has made her peace with life, and who is Mulan to comment?
But time flows as the river does: it does not stop, and it does not flow back. More than ever, she is glad that she has returned, for her parents in their old age can do with all the support she can give. The question, of course, is whether she can give it at all.
-----
Her reunion with her dearest friends go about as well as she’d expected.
“Mulan!” Shanting shouts the moment she catches sight of Mulan at the front door, “Mulan, thank the gods, is that you?! Come in, come in already, what’s with this hesitancy—” She drags Mulan through the reception hall and into the back, at the start of the fields. “Ning Yuklan, come here, it’s only twenty-six steps from the fields to your kitchen door, why are you taking so long? The Hero of China is arrived!”
“Ah, wait, why is the Hero so early, I haven’t fully prepared myself to give respect—” Yuklan bowls into view in a whirlwind of cotton and knees, and prostrates herself dramatically at Mulan’s feet. “O Great Hero of China, saviour of civilization as we know it—”
“Stop! Spirits, stop, you’re as ridiculous as ever.” Mulan yanks at Yuklan’s arm with no success; Shanting is no help, having laughed herself into a chair out of view. “Oh, fine, okay. I accept your most generous show of hospitality, O hostess, and beseech you to grant me favour—” Said, as she slowly collapses onto Yuklan’s back.
Yuklan breaks off mid-spiel with a squawk. “Heavens, Mulan, you’ve actually gained weight! I’ll stop, I’ll stop, now get off of me—”
“—and the ancestors will smile upon you with good auspice and fortune—”
Shanting’s arms wrap around her shoulders. “Oh, Mulan, we’ve missed you,” the other girl says, voice trembling, “nobody roughhouses like you do. But you’d better get off Yuklan, she’s a fragile piece of porcelain and cannot take much more strain—”
“I’ll show you strain, you ungrateful—”
Mulan laughs, wrapping a hand around Shanting’s arm, and flops fully onto Yuklan. “I’ve missed you too,” she says, nose buried into Yuklan’s thick, slightly sweaty shirt. “My bosom sisters. And you didn’t even see me off to war.”
“Ugh, get off.” Yuklan twists in a truly beautiful grappling move, and unseats Mulan onto the floor.
Shanting rolls onto her back and brings Mulan along onto the stone. “Yes, well, you know how good we are as women here,” she says, with less bitterness than Mulan remembers.
Yuklan punctuates with a groan. “Mulan, you fat pig, you’ve squashed me, and now I can’t get up.”
“It’s probably because she’s sitting on your dress,” Shanting points out sensibly. “She’s, what, just over one dan? Your cloth isn’t that finely woven, it can’t take that much pressure, if Sima Qian’s calculations are correct.”
“Nonsense. Mulan’s gained the most muscle out of everyone in the army and now weights five dan, and will have to demonstrate that she can lift about as much too when we start our summer repairs.” Yuklan sits up with a groan when Mulan wiggles obligingly off her skirts. She looks very tousled indeed, hair tugged loose from her ponytail and collars pulled out of alignment. Shanting looks much more decent, having made only brief contact with the floor on her own terms, but there’s a faint smudge of dirt on her sleeve, which is about equivalent to anyone else tripping and throwing themselves headfirst down a well. And Mulan can feel grass in her hair and... honest joy in her heart, and she can’t regret any of it.
She can just picture Mama shaking her head with disapproval, but that’s also why she’s not hosting it under Baba’s roof this time now, isn’t she?
“Seriously, though,” Yuklan says, touching her shoulder, then cheek, “it’s good to have you back. I’m glad you didn’t die in the war.”
Shanting leans close, a line of heat down Mulan’s back. “We were worried,” she says, muffled against Mulan’s shoulder. “When we didn’t see you for so long, and caught sight of Uncle Fa when we paid a visit, we figured you’d dressed as a man...”
“Which is wild. Hey, Shanting, what do you think if one of us—”
Shanting snorts. “Do you honestly think either of us make convincing men?” Mulan pictures Shanting, short and curvy in a man’s hanfu, then Yuklan, with her tall stature and generous chest, and has to concur.
“Well, if the Matchmaker’s scores for me are of any indication, I probably make a better man than a woman. It’s not like Mulan here would make a better man out of any of us. Which, hey, okay, I know we’re sisters but I can show better hospitality than have you tell us stories while sitting in the dirt in the garden. Come on, Auntie will forgive me for not plowing the fields for one morning.” She beckons them over into the kitchen and starts piling dishes into their hands. “We have some leftovers from last night, let’s munch and chat for a bit. Let me start since I can go fast, Danhung got married to the cobbler the next village over so that’s why she’s not here anymore—”
Mulan suspects that they’d take far longer than just the morning, and her gut is proven right when they next look up. The sky is the distinctive ruddy orange of dusk.
Shanting blinks. “Wow, I didn’t even notice we’d skipped a proper lunch. That’s quite the story, Mulan.”
“Quite.” Yuklan lays a hand on her upper arm. “So when are you going back to the capital?”
“Er, how’d you know?”
Shanting blinks. “Wait, you’re really going back for good?”
“What? No! I’ve just been invited to go to a banquet.”
“And you’re not moving to the capital after?”
“No! My family is not in Chang’an.”
“Yeah, I thought so. You’ve always been attached, just like me.” Yuklan withdraws her hand and lays her angular chin on it. “So? What are you going to do here? Farm away?”
“Not everyone hates farming as much as you do,” Shanting chides.
“Not the point.” Yuklan fixes her with an unwavering stare, and abruptly Mulan can feel every ounce of the three years between their ages and the fortunes that fate has granted them. “It sounds like you chose to do the right thing even when everything and everyone else was against you, and you won for it. You can’t take that back, sister.”
“Yuklan,” Shanting says, soft. She clasps Yuklan’s other hand in hers, and sweeps a gentle finger across her white knuckles.
“I’m just saying. You didn’t have to hide anymore. I envy that. I’d learn to fight if I were given the same chance, too. And don’t lie, Mao Shanting, you envy her too,” Yuklan says sharply. “You know you do.”
“I do,” Shanting agrees, sweet and anxious, “but it’s all the same calculations on the abacus, isn’t it? Your Auntie is here, and you can’t leave your dowry in bad shape. And I’m an orphan. If we leave, we won’t have any social standing or skills to even make start trying to make decent lives for ourselves. All you and I have ever done is farm, and to farm, we need land— so it’ll be straight to the Matchmaker for us for anyone who takes us in, and...”
Mulan drops her gaze down to the soiled dishes on the table, and doesn’t know what to say. Yuklan and Shanting had somehow both failed to gain favourable matches from their turns with the Matchmaker several years back. This is the last year Shanting is attempting another match through the Matchmaker before she reaches an unmarriageable age; she’s due for the meeting in less than a month.
Mulan rather thinks they’d be happier unmarried together. It isn’t as though they are at liberty to say, though, what with Yuklan as the sole inheritor of her father’s farms and Shanting reliant on Yuklan’s maternal aunt’s good grace.
Yuklan sighs at length. “Yeah, I don’t know how the Emperor is going to be able to help you here in this little village. It’s not like he lives here.”
“I don’t need his help, which is why I’m back here,” Mulan says baldly.
“No? You’re a smart girl, you should have already seen this. Your father gained recognition for achievements on the battlefield, but he came back and did something more tangible for the village to keep that recognition locally. You’re too young to be respected as an elder, and your status as a veteran will only carry you so far in this sleepy little village. So you’ll do something. What are you going to do?”
Mulan presses her lips together. “Try harder? It’s only been two and a half weeks. I’ll try different combinations of actions and ways of thinking...”
-----
“...And I’ll give it another week,” she concludes. “What do you think?”
Khan doesn’t look much more impressed than Yuklan. She sighs, lowering the curry comb, and accepts Khan’s apologetic head-nudge as he whickers quietly. At least gentle Shanting is more reserved about voicing her doubts. They know her too well, her childhood best friends.
And she... knows them too. They’re her friends, so she cannot help secure their honour the way she can for her family. But she won’t stand for them to be unhappy either.
The plan unfolds as slowly as the stars as she walks to her ancestral shrine. She lights incense and kneels to pray. She hasn’t paid her respects since her first day back; she’s been remiss.
“Mulan, girl, is that you?”
“Mushu!” She catches the dragon in a hug, and grabs Cri-Kee out of the air when he makes the leap half a second later. “It’s good to see you.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be better if I saw you earlier! You don’t visit, you don’t call, it’s like I don’t even exist for you anymore!”
“I’m right there,” Mulan says, amused, “My bedroom window points towards this pavilion, even.”
“The principle of it stands,” Mushu sniffs.
“I’m sorry I didn’t visit more often. I won’t be able to for the next little while, since I’m heading to a banquet in the capital in two days—”
“Banquet! In the imperial city?! Wow, I’m down for that, I love fireworks!”
Mulan winces. “Actually, can I ask you to do me a favour here while I’m gone? Could you make contact with another family’s guardian—”
“You want me to do what?! No!” Mushu scrambles up onto a tablet and glares. “I’m not doing it!”
-----
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Mushu grouses on her bedroom table. Cri-Kee pats him on the knee comfortingly.
“Thanks, Mushu.”
“You owe me big time, Mulan, guardians don’t cross families for little things. The more territorial ones can spit intruders out like toothpicks!”
“But you’re a dragon, not a grove of bamboo,” she reasons, shoving another shirt into her bag. On second thought... she pulls it out and checks. Yep, that’s a towel, not a shirt. “And it’s not a little thing, I promise.”
“No?” Mushu follows her across the room, swarming up the divider next to her closet to glare at her at eye level. Well, I’m going to be missing out on capital fireworks, so whatever I gotta do had better make as big a boom as them!”
She takes a breath, but the truth is there just behind her teeth, and she can’t not spit it out. “We are. Blowing something up.”
Mushu blinks, then starts to smile, wide and toothy. “Well, hide my legs and call me a snake, I didn’t expect that. What’re we blowing up?”
Another truth. “Tradition.”
“And how big a boom are we looking for?”
“Nothing too big. I’m not quite sure how to do it yet, but I need you to be in contact with the other guardians. Just to get their trust. I’ll have a better idea of what to do after I come back.”
“And whose family guardian’s ear am I stealing?”
“The Ning household.”
“Ning, Ning... ah, the lion-dog— the lion dog?! You want me to die, don’t ya? She’s all loyalty and fangs. I’m really going to need all the time you’re gone to work my magic on that one.” He flashes her a grin full of teeth, and it’s just like old times in the army, plotting together in the scant spaces during take down, hushed discussions held over an armful of cloth. “All right, girl, I’m going to make you proud. So you make me proud in Chang’an, yeah? Go show them what you’re made of.”
“It’s a banquet, Mushu.”
“So? Did I stutter? Eat them under the table! Save the Emperor from food poisoning! Go!”
-----
This is the truth:
It’s time consuming to find out what that right thing is at any given moment, and how to achieve it.
It’s when she is doing the right thing that her soul settles into her body like it truly belongs.
It’s been a while since she’s been able to find that quiet place within herself.
But she’s growing to suspect that time isn’t the issue anymore.
-----
Chang’an, taken in more slowly than a frantic ride through the end of the war, is a labyrinth of court manners and culture shock. For one, everyone is so dressy. For another, everything is about sixty times more complicated. The time the imperial staff took to dress and adorn her took twice as long as when she had to be dolled up for the Matchmaker. And if she’d thought her village’s homecoming celebrations were grand, Li Shang’s promotion banquet in the capital defies description.
She is seated at the head of the table at the Emperor’s left, facing Li Shang. The ten course dinner would blow Mushu’s mind with its intricacies. She can scarcely do more than nod and smile and sample and try to affix to her memory the rich, foreign flavours and textures of imperial cuisine. Mama would undoubtedly have enjoyed this; she’ll have to ask for a list of served dishes from the kitchens later.
That is, if she can even remember it. She has greeted and bowed to more court officials and dignitaries and ranked honoraries than she can count. Or Shanting can count. She is speaking to a young... Duke? Viscount? Judge? When a familiar voice coughs behind her.
“If I may be forgiven for interrupting, Magister,” Li Shang says from behind her, “the Emperor has requested the honoured presence of Fa Mulan.”
“What did you just say?” Mulan hisses as Li Shang draws her away.
“Court speech,” Li Shang says without pausing his stride. He gives her a look, one eyebrow cocked. “Between you and me, imperial administrators don’t like it when they aren’t addressed with the proper formality.”
“Ah.”
Li Shang glances at her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Lots of new experiences, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“I expect there’s been a lot of new experiences these past few months.”
“Well, none of them were anything like that avalanche,” Mulan says, and Li Shang chortles until they are in front of the Emperor.
“Fa Mulan,” he greets. “I would like you to accompany me to honour our war dead tomorrow. We will make stops at three temples to thank the gods for watching over us, and to ask them to send our soldiers peacefully onto their next lives.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. You didn’t even need to ask. I would have done the same on my own.”
“I think having the General who led the troops to victory, the saviour of the Middle Kingdom, and the ruler of that kingdom together would probably grab the gods’ attentions harder, hm? All right. That is all. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Li Shang walks silently by her side for a good portion of the stairs down. “You know you can ask for help.”
She glances at him, surprised. “Where did that come from?”
“Just... in general. I know you didn’t grow up in this environment. And I don’t know how useful this is for you when you return to your village. But knowledge is power, and I—” he hesitates, then says in a rush, “I like knowing that you are armed.”
“I— thank you?”
“I— will just. Go say hi to the examiner over there. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow morning? Okay. Good evening.”
She watches him stomp off stiffly with some bemusement, then settles back down beside Ling. Beyond him, Chien Po looks as though he is catatonic with satiated joy.
“This is... really intense,” Ling remarks, leaning back on his hands. “All this... policy and bowing and ranks and stuff.”
“You like a challenge,” grunts Yao on Chien Po’s far side. He’s started eating again, savouring tiny bites of quail with intense concentration.
“How’re you guys finding your hometowns anyway?” Mulan ventures. “I haven’t visited you yet.”
“Quiet,” Ling says just as Yao says, “busy.” They glance at each other, then snort in tandem.
“I’m just settling back down in town and taking stock,” Ling says, “not like Yao, who’s put all his earnings and reward money to renovating his family home.”
“Toilet’s roof leaked for ages, and the western walls are crumbling,” Yao grunts, “why wouldn’t I fix it if I can?”
“Congratulations on earning a reward! What did you earn it for?”
A pause, as they both look at her. “Ah, right,” Yao says slowly over the quail leg, “you took off before you cashed out, didn’t ya.”
Ling smacks his forehead. “Of all the things we forgot— did you even collect the rest of your salary?”
“Uh—” Finances are a big, empty blank in her mind. “Where do we get it?”
“Right. We’re dealing with it tomorrow— no, wait, that’s busy— day after. How about the morning? It won't take long. I hope your war horse is still fit, because you’re about to haul a lot of money back with you.”
“Nah, she should bank most of it here. Ya don’t want to attract bandits. You can courier some of it over mail. I know a guy, I’ll introduce ya.”
“Thanks, guys.”
“Least we can do. All right, I need to taste test this again, my Ma’s going to be quizzing me on the spice mix. Chat with ya in a bit.”
-----
The temples are solemn affairs riddled with strict procedures that would have lost half her compatriots had the Emperor not had the prescience to assign them personal minders. She comes out of it relatively intact, which is... something. She hadn’t expected even capital worship to triple the complexity, but what does she know.
Li Shang snags her arm before they disband completely. “Are you busy this afternoon? No? Could you do us the honour of sparring a round with the recruits? I won’t waste your time,” Li Shang adds quickly, “I’d just really appreciate your opinion on the finest of our soldiers. Uh, newest soldiers. You’ll be testing the cream of the crop—”
“All right, all right,” she says, smiling. “It’s okay, Shang. I’ll spar.” Truth be told, she’s missed it. She’s grown used to the rigorous demands of fitness required in the military, and the sheer blood-pumping physicality of facing down an opponent during martial arts practice.
Two hours later, dripping with sweat and arrayed with a fresh set of bruises, the itch has eased, her body is sore in the best way, and the slow dawning understanding is a burning weight in her chest. She compliments Li Shang on his fine recruitment abilities, and readies to return home to her quiet village tomorrow.
-----
This is what she’s found:
Many parts of herself, all honest parts that can live on a battlefield.
Some parts of herself that may or may not be viable in a civilian setting in her village.
Fewer parts of herself that revels in the challenge and the sheer overwhelming adrenaline rush of the capital city.
She’s not all that good at math; it’s Shanting’s forte. But she can hardly ask someone else to sum up all her found and yet-to-be-defined-or-discovered parts and interpret just what that answer may mean.
-----
“It’s done,” Mushu says proudly the night she returns to her village. “I have stolen the Ning family guardian’s ear!”
“See, you’re not a pile of toothpicks.” She flips her blanket back, stifling a yawn, then pauses. “Please tell me you didn’t actually steal the guardian’s ear.”
“No! What do you take me for, a kleptomaniac? The other family’s guardian only got set slightly on fire!”
“They got set on fire?!”
“Slightly on fire, lady, don’t insult my control!” Cri-Kee makes an unimpressed sound. “Well, let’s see you try to wake up a sleeping lion-dog next time!”
“Did you try a gong or something first?” Mulan says helplessly.
“Tell you what, next time you want me to actually steal a stone guardian’s ear, I’ll use a ‘gong or something’,” Mushu grumbles. “So what’s next? There better be a plan, I promised her I’d come back pronto. She really likes her beauty sleep, and she really can use more of it if you ask me...”
“Can you convince her to appear to the eldest maternal relative and suggest that selling the farm would be more beneficial than making it a dowry?”
Mushu stares at her, claws tapping the table, then says, “and what do I say if she asks about the female scion of the Ning family?”
Ah. She hadn’t thought that far yet. But if there’s any time for a leap in the dark, a blind faith in her cannon’s aim at the snow at the peak of the mountain corrected against the vicious wind, it is now. She takes a breath. “Tell them to come find me.”
-----
Baba is at heart a man of discipline. She finds him the next morning, predictably enough, on the stone bench in the garden, eyes closed as he listens to the birds herald the dawn. It is his wont to pursue his morning routine every day with absolute mindfulness, in solitude, undisturbed.
“Good morning,” he says without opening his eyes, “my daughter.”
She bites her lip, then steps over the garden door. He opens his eyes at the rustle of her trousers, but looks only at her face as she pauses over the stone path. “Good morning, Baba. May I have a moment?”
“Of course.” Baba waits until she sets up his tea, then flips another cup for her beside him.
She takes the offered seat and fills the cup. The time she’d bought hadn’t granted her words any less blunt that what she had to start with, so... well. “How did you adapt? After the war.”
Baba sips his tea, then puts it down. She can see where she gets this stalling strategy from, now. “With gritted teeth, mostly. And you? How are you feeling?”
“Unfulfilled,” she admits. There, the bald, painful truth. “I don’t begrudge my duties in farming and as a member of the village. But it’s... I know I will only shame you again if I choose to become a farmer.” She stares down at her hands as they clench into the trouser fabric. She hadn’t been in a dress mood today, but going into the market like this is really asking for trouble. “And I don’t think— even if I trained to go back to meet the Matchmaker—”
“No,” Baba says thoughtfully, “no, I agree. The military teaches discipline and trust in a correct order to things, but I do not think farming or meeting the Matchmaker for a future husband will quite cut it for you.”
“But you were able to settle with it after your war.”
“Oh, my daughter,” Baba says, smiling. “I only looked like I did. We’ve wet the paper with ink already. There’s no going back.”
She shifts. “Going back? I don’t want to fight, Baba, I love peace. But I... I felt the most alive when I was in the capital helping General Li with drills. And I’m not... sure what to do with that.”
“I meant we can’t go back to civilian life the same way we left it,” Baba says gently. “They say that everyone leaves a piece of themselves on the battlefield, but I think everyone brings a piece of the war back with them too. I brought mine back, and now,” he touches her chest, right over her heart, “you have brought yours back too.”
Her heart skips a beat; she prays to whatever ancestor listening that he doesn’t feel it. “Baba, I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You brought yourself to the war; now, you can bring yourself to civilian life too. You already know this, daughter. You already know this.”
“I don’t— I’m not completely sure yet— but...”
Baba’s gaze is distant, as though he can see through the garden wall into the wisdom buried beyond. “What were you fighting for? And why did you come back? No,” he says, gently, when Mulan opens her mouth, “it is not me who you need to answer. It is yourself. And,” he brushes her hair back, tucking a blossom behind her ear, “if that look in your eyes isn’t the one that makes your mother and I tear our hair out and ultimately makes us so proud of you, then I will eat my slippers.”
-----
These are the right things that she’d wanted to accomplish:
To protect her family by bringing honour.
To see her family again.
To find herself.
But no one lives in isolation, and a hero is an empty title when there is land to till and chickens to feed and a family to nurture. Her heart is not within the gilded walls of Chang’an, nor its shifting politics; it is not within the earth of their fertile farms, nor the quiet bustle of small village rhythms. It is in something higher and greater, and though she doesn’t have a name for it yet, she is beginning to see its shape.
-----
Li Shang visits again a mere two weeks after his promotion. He sits in the garden with easy familiarity, as if he’d come by every day of his life, and it’s nice. Mulan can relax with him here in a way she hadn’t fully expected.
“I didn’t know the rank of General came with so many days for relaxation,” Mulan says, smiling to take the sting out.
Li Shang arches an eyebrow. “Hardly. I’m finishing a tour around the country to assess the state of my former soldiers as they reintegrate into their communities. I guess you didn’t get my letter from my last village yet.”
“That’s some route,” Mulan says, mentally charting his course. No matter how she swings it, her village is a detour from the next closest hometowns of her platoon-mates.
“My soldiers are worth it,” Li Shang says firmly, then laughs, soft. “You should hear some of the stories about you... the last place I was at had people who were convinced that your achievements were the work of dragons.”
“Ah— haha, they think I work with dragons?” Mushu will never let her live it down. “I’m not quite that blessed.” Scratch that, hopefully Mushu isn’t within hearing range or he’ll never let her get away with saying this.
“I will personally present offerings to the river dragon, the rain dragon, the Jade Emperor, and the Queen Mother of the West herself for blessing you with all that you had to save China. But you must know that that’s the important part for me. That without you, the gods wouldn’t have shown their favour, and China wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“That’s... that’s overstating it a bit, I think,” Mulan says weakly.
Li Shang smiles. “But it’s only the truth. Whether you were able to save China by yourself, or you were blessed by the gods to save China, you had to be there.” He coughs, then leans forward. “So, uh— so? How’re you adapting to this China you saved?”
Mulan jumps on the shift in topic. “It’s a work in progress. You remember in my last letter that I thought about instructing, right? Only I have no idea how to do that. I’d be... messing about. And that’s not—students deserve more than that.”
“Okay. So what are you going to do next?” Li Shang props his head on his hand. “I don’t see you as a career soldier.”
“No, I’m not.” Mulan rubs a thumb up and down her cup. “But I’m not just a village woman who’ll be satisfied with marriage, farming, and family life, either.”
“I don’t see you as that, either.” More than once, she has to appreciate the patience in his eyes. “Or just that, in any case.”
Mulan raises an eyebrow.
“You’re an excellent warrior. And I’d be a fool not to recognize that first and foremost about you, before the fact that you are a woman. Especially if Shan Yu himself acknowledged it.” Li Shang’s gaze unfocuses, and abruptly Mulan is reminded of the red blood flowing within his veins, the military legacy of the Li clan bearing down full bore upon his shoulders. He looks very young. “China is one half women. How many warriors did we miss, when we asked only for sons?”
Mulan frowns. “Shang, I’m not training women for war.”
Li Shang blinks, stares at her, then blinks again. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”
“I didn’t join the army to fight the Huns. Well, I mean, I did, but—... I didn’t enlist because I wanted to fight a war.”
But Li Shang is already smiling, a strangely crooked thing. “I know. You joined the army, yes, but the fact that you were fighting against Huns was incidental. You could have been fighting against Uyghurs, or fighting rebels, or even just hunkering down in reserves during the entire conscription, and it would all have been incidental to your enlistment itself.” His thoughtful gaze trails Baba as he walks the far side of the garden with Mama. “I can see that.”
The right thing is so very hard to do. But once the path is found, there is peace in that place. So maybe it is, in a way, the easiest path of all. “Actually. Shang. I think I know where you help me. Do you have some time for me later this afternoon?”
His smile is a rare, glowing thing. “I am at your service.”
“Thank you, Shang. I’m finding out that I really have no idea how to teach the fifteenth form of the third empty hand set...”
-----
The day after, she catches sight of Mushu throwing a quick thumb’s up, and smiles to acknowledge the notice. One minute later, Ning Yuklan and Mao Shanting stumble through the front yard of her family home.
“Mulan,” Yuklan gasps. Shanting seizes her hand and hangs tight. “Mulan, the strangest thing— Auntie came over this morning talking about a dream the ancestors had sent her, and—”
“She’s thinking about selling the farm.” Shanting is a trembling line down her side; Mulan has to grab her other arm in case she shakes right off her feet. “Mulan, she said the ancestors told her to send us to you first. We don’t have anywhere else to go if the farm is sold—”
“Oh—” Perhaps Mulan hasn’t thought the presentation of the farm through nearly as thoroughly as she should have. “Oh, um, you actually came at a really good time! I actually could use you both!”
Yuklan stares. “You can— what? Explain.”
“I’m going to start a school for martial arts, for self-defence. But this one will welcome everyone, men and women, boys and girls. And I’m only one person. So I can use extra hands.” Mulan smiles. “Yuklan, if you don’t mind, I could always use another instructor for the beginner levels, and Shanting, your head for organization and finances is far better than mine. So— but it’s only if you want these positions. They’re yours if you want them.”
They gape at her for a long moment. “I have no training,” Yuklan says at length, helplessly.
“So you’ll be my first student! I can refine my pedagogy on you, and then you can teach the first classes.” Yuklan’s already a natural; she’ll take no funny business from anyone. And if people can’t handle having Yuklan teach them, then they won’t have Mulan either.
“Mulan,” Shanting says quietly, “where exactly are you teaching?”
“Well, I’ll need space and a hall.” Mulan strokes her chin. “Well, I’ve brought some of my income back from the capital. What if I asked to rent the North wing in your family home, Yuklan? It’s got a hall that’s plenty big enough—”
“—and that wing’s also where our bedrooms are.” Yuklan narrows her eyes. “Mulan...”
“Yuklan.” Mulan lets Shanting go and lays a hand on her shoulder. “I was just thinking. If you had extra skills in addition to your farming experience, and maybe a letter of support from me, you could both leave for better fortunes later...”
“Mulan,” Shanting says, choked. She blots her tears on her sleeves, then takes a deep breath and says more calmly, “just to be clear, we can’t accept payment for this. We have no experience, no background, no— nothing of worth to convince you to pick us over anyone else.”
“But you could have that, if circumstances allowed you the opportunity to make a choice.” Mulan squeezes her hand with a smile. “So. Here’s your opportunity. It’s up to you to take it.”
“Of course.” Shanting seizes Yuklan’s hand, fingers intertwining tight. “Mulan, of course we’ll take it.”
“Seriously, though,” Yuklan says, thickly, “thank you.”
“No,” Mulan says softly, “thank you. This is just an opportunity. The hard part is the rest of it. That’s yours to figure out.”
“But we have hope again. I— don’t know how we can thank you.”
Mulan shakes her head, smiling. “You can thank me by getting ready. We start when you’re on your feet.”
They exchange a glance, then square their shoulders in tandem. “We’re ready now.“
“All right. Let’s go check out how suitable your North wing’s dining hall is for forms.”
She’s done with hiding. And when her important people are ready to stop hiding as well, she’ll be there to protect them, too. Her friends, her family, her fellow women, her peers, her villagers, her country. She’ll be here.
They clear the space in no time at all. “Let’s get down to business,” she says, smiling at the memory of Li Shang throwing quarterstaffs at them that long lifetime ago, and promptly sweeping them all off their feet. Literally speaking.
Time to bring herself to her village, war and all, peace and all. She takes a step forward, firms her stance, and knows, abruptly and without a doubt, that she’s on the right path home.
-fin-
A.N.: 風捲殘雪 (fēng juǎn cán xuě): idiom. Literal: wind sweeping away lingering snow. Metaphorical: to make a clean sweep.