The memory began with the sound of claws on kitchen tiles.
Click, click, click. A frantic scramble at the corner, then a thump against the cupboard.
Xu Hao lay beside the dying fire with his eyes closed, trying not to smile. He could hear the offended snort that always followed. Sia never blamed herself for a collision. If a cupboard insisted on standing in her way, that was plainly the cupboard's fault.
He hadn't remembered the sound in weeks.
Or perhaps it had only been days. Keeping track had become difficult since he'd arrived in the Dark Forest. He remembered Da Bao's morning runs and Er Bao's warnings about stubbornness. Beyond that, time was a collection of meals, bruises and unfamiliar stars.
Tonight, for once, nobody was asking him to improve.
Da Bao snored beneath the shelter. Er Bao mended a split seam in a supply bag, occasionally listening to the trees.
Xu Hao pulled the blanket up to his shoulder and let himself think of home.
* * *
He had met Sia six years earlier at an animal shelter outside the city.
His mother was responsible.
"You need someone waiting for you when you come home," she'd said over dinner.
"I have a neighbour who complains whenever I use the lift after ten."
"Someone pleased to see you."
"I've never asked whether he's pleased."
She'd slid a folded piece of paper across the table. An address. Visiting hours. A telephone number underlined twice.
His father had looked at the paper and said, "Your mother has already called them, hasn't she?"
"I only asked a few questions," she'd replied.
That was how Xu Hao ended up standing in a room that smelled of disinfectant and wet fur, listening to a volunteer explain why a young husky had been returned twice.
"She doesn't like being alone," the woman said. "And she chews."
"How badly?"
"She's improving."
"That isn't a measurement."
The volunteer sighed. "Shoes. Cushions. A doorframe."
The puppy arrived with a lead in her mouth, trotting as though she'd been invited to inspect a property she intended to purchase. Her coat was grey and white. One ear stood straight; the other folded at its tip. One eye was blue, the other brown.
Xu Hao crouched to greet her.
She ignored his hand, pressed her chin onto his shoe and went to sleep.
He stayed there because he couldn't bring himself to wake her.
He'd called his mother from the car park.
"Well?" she'd asked.
"I'm bringing someone home."
"Good. What does she look like?"
"Trouble."
His mother had laughed. "Then she'll fit right in."
By the end of the first week, Sia had eaten the strap off a leather shoe, stolen two rolls of kitchen paper and claimed his bed. He'd bought her a comfortable cushion and placed it beside the bedroom door. She waited until he turned out the light, climbed onto his pillow and settled her chin across his forehead.
He moved her back three times.
On the fourth, he fell asleep.
His father had been delighted when he heard the story.
"You spent your childhood arguing about rules," he said. "Now you understand your mother."
Sia had other habits. She sat outside the bathroom as though Xu Hao had been taken hostage behind the door. She recognised the sound of his keys in the corridor, however quietly he tried to turn them. If he returned late from the university, she would greet him with such extravagant relief that he felt obliged to apologise for every hour he'd spent away.
Sometimes he did.
He could picture her at the apartment door now, ears tilted forward, waiting for a sound that wouldn't come.
The smile left his face.
His parents had a spare key. Once they learned he was missing, they would look after her. He knew that. His father might complain about the fur on his trousers; his mother would pretend not to feed Sia scraps beneath the table.
But who had told them he was missing?
He'd told his department he would be working late on the sealed manuscript. When a translation caught his attention, he sometimes spent a night in his office and forgot to charge his phone. His parents had learned to scold him about it afterward.
There might not have been an afterward this time.
He turned onto his side, pressing his cheek against the blanket.
Somewhere, a dog might still be listening for his keys.
* * *
He did not mean to cultivate.
Er Bao had told him to rest. For once, Xu Hao had intended to obey. He only wanted to hold on to the memory: the folded ear, the little patch of white beneath Sia's chin, the ridiculous dignity with which she pretended not to hear commands she disliked.
Then the smell of smoke disappeared.
The crackling fire fell silent. The blanket against his cheek was gone.
Xu Hao opened his eyes inside the dark hall.
He had been there often enough to recognise its peculiar emptiness. There were no walls he could find, no lamps, no floor he could see. The writing brush floated ahead, its pale handle motionless. Beside it hung the stack of blank cards.
"Not tonight," he said.
The words vanished into the dark without an echo.
He had a headache coming on; he could feel its familiar promise behind his eyes. He should leave before it grew worse.
Instead, he found himself studying the brush.
Yesterday he'd drawn flames on bark until his fingers were black. Before that he'd imagined stones, wind and every other useful thing he couldn't produce. The brush hadn't moved for any of them.
He hadn't drawn Sia yet.
Not because he'd forgotten how she looked. Quite the opposite. He knew her too well to reduce her to a vague picture of a dog.
He remembered the way her nose wrinkled when she smelled citrus. The soft fur behind her ears. The small scar hidden on one front paw, left from the day she broke a flowerpot while attempting to rescue a ball from beneath a shelf.
He remembered her weight leaning against his knees after a bad day at work.
He shut his eyes in the hall, though he wasn't sure he possessed eyes there at all.
"Sia."
A faint movement disturbed the darkness.
Xu Hao opened his eyes.
The brush had tilted.
He stared at it. For days he'd tried to draw it closer, ordered it to move, even asked politely. He knew its position well enough to notice a change smaller than the width of a fingernail.
The brush turned again.
A single white card slid forward from the deck.
Xu Hao forgot his headache.
"Wait."
He didn't know whether he meant for the card to stop or for the rest of the world to hold still while he examined it. He leaned towards the floating shapes, afraid that a careless thought might send them back into place.
A pale thread appeared at the tip of the brush.
It touched the card.
Xu Hao saw no ink. Instead, the blank surface darkened in delicate strokes, too fine to follow. A curve became an ear. A patch of grey formed along a cheek. One eye opened blue, the other brown.
His chest tightened.
It was Sia.
Not a husky resembling her. The card held the precise uneven markings he'd traced with his fingers a thousand times, the fold at the tip of her ear, even the faintly impatient tilt of her head when she expected him to open the refrigerator.
He reached towards it.
The card flashed white.
Pain struck beneath his ribs.
At first he thought something had torn inside him. Then came a dreadful pulling sensation, as though all the strength in his body had been gathered into a single thread and was being drawn through a needle.
He tried to pull away. He couldn't find his arms.
The brush continued its work.
His thoughts scattered. His legs, which had been sore from training, might as well have belonged to somebody else. He remembered once breaking his wrist during an expedition, and the long ride to hospital while his colleague told him not to look at it. He would gladly have traded for that pain now. At least a broken bone had a location.
"Stop," he tried to say.
The pale line brightened.
A terrible possibility occurred to him: perhaps the cards weren't merely difficult to use. Perhaps they had been waiting until he supplied something worth taking.
He thought of Er Bao beside the campfire. Tried to call him. No sound came.
For one moment, Xu Hao was certain the hall would drain him until nothing remained.
Then the pressure broke.
He hung in the dark, emptied of strength, while the last pale thread vanished into the card.
The brush returned to its place.
One painted card floated before the blank deck.
Sia looked out from its face.
Xu Hao tried to reach for her. The effort felt enormous. He managed only the intention to move his hand.
The hall vanished.
* * *
He came back to the forest with his fingers clenched in the blanket.
Cold sweat covered his skin. His breath came too quickly, and every attempt to take a deeper one made his stomach turn. The firelight swam before his eyes.
"Little brother?"
Er Bao was already beside him.
Xu Hao tried to answer. His tongue felt thick and dry.
The giant pressed a hand to his forehead, then took his wrist. "Can you sit?"
"Probably," Xu Hao whispered. "If we don't insist on speed."
Er Bao slipped an arm behind his shoulders and helped him lean against a log. He brought water in a wooden cup and waited while Xu Hao took several careful swallows.
The movement woke Da Bao.
"What happened?" he asked, emerging from the shelter with his club already in his hand.
"No enemy," Er Bao said. "Put that down."
Da Bao looked around anyway, then crouched on Xu Hao's other side. His expression changed when he saw his brother's face.
"I thought you were resting," Er Bao said.
"I was." Xu Hao swallowed. "That's the embarrassing part."
"What did you do?"
"I remembered my dog."
Da Bao blinked. "Your dog?"
"Sia. The one I told you about." Xu Hao looked down at his shaking hands. "I was thinking about her. Then I was in the hall again. The brush moved."
Neither brother spoke.
"It drew her. On one of the cards. I didn't ask it to start." His voice faltered. "It felt as though it was pulling something out of me. I tried to stop it."
Er Bao's jaw tightened. "You should have called."
"I tried."
That was enough to make him fall silent.
Da Bao shifted closer, but for once offered no joke and no advice. Er Bao drew the blanket around Xu Hao's shoulders.
"No more tonight," he said. "Whatever happened, we can examine it when you can stand without help."
Xu Hao nodded. He had no desire to see the hall again.
Er Bao rose to fetch more water.
"Wait."
There was something beneath Xu Hao's right hand. He'd assumed it was a fold of blanket, but it pressed against his palm with a smooth, straight edge.
He opened his fingers.
A card lay against his skin.
For a moment none of them moved.
Xu Hao lifted it towards the fire. The surface was warm. On one side sat the picture he'd watched the brush create: Sia, her head cocked a little to one side, as though waiting for him to say something sensible.
He turned it over.
Letters rose across the pale back. They were not written in any script he knew, yet he understood them as soon as he looked.
Name: Sia.
Beast: Wind Husky.
Cultivation: Dust Realm, First Layer.
Unique.
He read the lines again, willing them to reveal what the card could do. They remained exactly as they were.
Da Bao leaned nearer. "Is that her?"
Xu Hao nodded.
"She's beautiful," Da Bao said quietly.
Er Bao sat back on his heels. His gaze moved from the writing to Xu Hao's face, then to the cup still trembling in his hands. Whatever questions he had, he kept them to himself.
Xu Hao touched the little white patch beneath Sia's painted chin.
He knew it was not the dog he'd left behind. He didn't know whether the card held her memory, a likeness, or something altogether stranger. It gave him no answers about his parents, his apartment, or the world he'd lost.
But he had not invented that face. He had carried it across a distance he couldn't begin to measure, and now the others could see her too.
His eyes filled. He lowered the card, afraid of dropping it, and held it against his chest.
Er Bao put a hand on his shoulder.
Xu Hao tried to thank him. He couldn't manage the words.
For the first time since waking in the Dark Forest, he cried without trying to hide it.