White Smoke from the West by J. Y. Zhang
1100 words, ~5 minutes reading time
Issue 7 (Spring 2025)
Wake up, my brother—the light is upon us. Look out again, through the half-moon windows. The clouds today are a scum of haze over the blue. I feel its moisture seeping through my bones.
The torpor of the unsleeping.
Rise from your sullen bed and come watch the sky. What are you thinking of, perched upon the window ledge? I no longer know how to decipher that look in your eyes, nor the way you rest your hand upon my window pane, as though you knew what she had done to me.
Could it be?
Hope is a brittle thing.
Slip out of your nightshirt while the light is still lifting; fold up your sheets, if you will. There is little else to our labourless life. I watch you, remembering the bird we kept in the filigree cage who never sang. When it died, it took us three days to notice. I thought he was being coy again, teasing out the cat in play.
But birds cannot imagine eyes behind its golden bars.
Each day you walk my halls, unaware.
How many years has it been? The substance of time withers in wait.
Sometimes, when she leaves you alone for too long, you begin searching your cage again. Lifting my floorboards one by one, from the foyer to the stairs to the attic; the brittle walls of your measured world. The brittle confines of my skin.
The pads of your fingers are long callused stiff. Still, you continue this fruitless work, scoring your nails against cherrywood. These marks you leave—I hold on to the way I ache beneath your hands. I hold on to every touch which still remains, remembering my once-skin.
What do you search for, my brother?
I have watched you far too long. There is nothing within my walls left for you to find.
Beneath the sun-bright emeralds set upon the sterling dish, her golden athame lies in sleep. You reach for it once more. You regard the dagger as one regards running water. The light of its ruby no longer enamors you.
So push the gleaming blade into your scar-toughened wrist.
Or press your palm flat against the pan of sizzling oil.
Or try again to twist the sterling key through the lock of the door—the key she hangs upon the handle.
Your hands will stutter still—the words of her hex echoing through your ears like a tolling bell, seizing your puppet body.
Remember that the freedom she gives you is not true freedom.
Remember the verdant fields of our youth. How we ran along the river until the day you stepped on that shard of glass.
Remember this pain. Remember that it was yours. Remember what she did to us.
At sundown she returns to collect her due.
Lay down the broom, she tells you, and you obey. Come and sit with me.
Comb her hair back from her widow’s peak. Kiss her wrist in veneration. She will smell of the bitter sap from ancient woods. She will smell of cherries on the cusp of spoil, a scent so sweet your eyes may water. She will smell of the ash our verdant fields became. The wildfire she nurtured from embers by a single word spoken under the breath.
Kneel for her, when she commands it. Drop your head to your knees. Take the athame from her palm, the handle warmed by her touch.
Cut, my brother. Open your wrist once more with the blade.Your body is her waterskin. Watch it pour upon her pale feet.
Her lips shudder at the touch of your power, and our prisons strengthen anew.
But remember her scarlet eyes among the smoke. Remember the shard of glass in her hand—the poison of your forgotten blood, glinting upon its jagged edge. The word of ensnarement she spoke then, and still speaks now.
Our fields burned that day by the trap she laid in our gentle grass. In our folly, we had walked blindly to her, giving ourselves away. You must remember this history, just as I must remember who I am; who I was.
My fountain, she says, kissing the part of your hair, my light.
What is her hex to your ears? A shout of command? A cold-handed strangling? Or is it a whisper? A hummed lullaby?
Once I imagined the imposition of will as a brutal affair. But I have since learned that gentleness is the truest poison.
A hex is merely a song beckoning you to listen.
A hex is merely a story beckoning you to read on.
Brother of mine, are you finally with me? Have my practiced words broken through?
Will this morning finally be different? Do you hear me speaking to you?
Slip out of your bed before the light begins to lift—this is permitted, yes, you may do this. Step into the blade of moonlight striking the carpet. Come close to the benthic sky and lean your head against the window casing. Let me feel your touch once more.
You step forth. You come. You listen—finally you do.
The pulse of your warmth upon my stagnant body.
The moon outside, an edge of filigree.
The sun and stars, abiding, knowing.
Brother of mine, how long has it been? There is so much to tell you. Even now, I want to ask you to stay with me for a moment longer, but my magic cannot hold and I cannot risk you.
So know this much, before you go: I love you and I always will. Do not blame yourself for how this must end. Understand that it was my will—mine alone.
Walk through the silence of my night-black halls and open her door. In the bed where she never sleeps, she keeps a matchbox beneath her pillow.
Take out a single matchstick and hold it between your palms. Strike it against the grain until the fire takes hold and flickers gold.
Drop it upon my cherrywood skin, and run. Open the locked door with the sterling key and run into the night.
Run. Don’t look back. Why are you looking back?
You must be on your way. So long as you hear my voice, you must continue to run.
Tell me—is the light lifting now? Time withers for me. Seconds or minutes or hours. What is a lifetime but moments?
Tell me—do you see it once more? The dew upon our verdant fields? Is it as beautiful as I remember it to be?
Sleep, my brother. Sleep, and I will be with you when you wake as white smoke, sweeping forth from the west.
