The lake took heat like a secret. Steam rose where her skin met the water and vanished into the night air as if it had never been. Mulan slid deeper until even her shoulders were covered, braid coiled on a rock like a rope she could pull if anyone came. Mushu paced the shore, flicking sparks at midges.
“Two o’clock, three meatheads,” he hissed, tail lashing. “Laughing about feet. I told you they’re weird.”
She went under on instinct and came up to her nose. Cold seeped behind her ribs. The voices grew from the reeds first, then the shapes of Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po, shirts slung over shoulders, boots clapping each other free of dust.
“Lake time,” Ling announced to the moon.
Mushu glanced at her, whispering “don’t move” then sprang onto a half-drowned log and threw his little body to twice its size with pure theater. Sparks cracked. Smoke coughed out of him like a bellows.
“Halt, mortals,” he boomed in a voice he absolutely did not own. “This waters is cursed by an evil lizard demon.” A pause, then with relish: “Me.”
The boys stopped. Three shadows against the pale water.
“A lizard demon,” Yao said, flat.
“Ancient. Cruel. Territorial. I hate soap,” Mushu said. He rolled his eyes back and worked up a gout of smoke that turned the reeds into trembling silhouettes. “Any man who lingers will be turned into a woman. Slowly. Horribly. With cramps.”
Chien-Po folded his hands. Ling snorted and then did not laugh.
Mulan edged behind the rock, and kept her mouth closed. Stupid. Should have gone upstream. Should have- Mushu’s glance pinned her again.
Yao spat into the grass. “There’s no such thing as lizard demon curses.”
“Oh yeah? Then how come one of your comrades already took the hit,” Mushu said, pointing grandly at the water. “Guy dove in like a hero to warn you latecomers and bam - afflicted.”
Ling’s head whipped toward the surface. “Who’s in there?”
Mulan pushed just enough of herself up that they could see a face in steam and dark, eyes wide above water. She pitched her voice lower and rough from lake chill. “Don’t,” she rasped. “Get out.”
If Mushu had set a stage, the lake breathed the line for her. Ripples ran. Frogs kept absolutely silent.
Chien-Po bowed toward the water. “Brother, thank you.”
Yao took a step back. Then another. He planted his hands on his hips like that made it a choice. “We weren’t going to go in anyway.”
“You absolutely were,” Ling whispered, which did not help.
Mushu leaned in. “The transformation starts in the… sensitive regions. First hour, poof - nothing you want to brag about in the barracks. Second hour, more complicated. By dawn his, um, voice will be higher, his patience will be shorter, and if any officer catches him he’s going to the surgeon and then to a farm where he can braid hats for the rest of his days. Tragic.”
Mulan closed her eyes against the heat that rose in her face. You could maybe not improvise the whole anatomy of humiliation. She kept her chin level in the water.
Yao turned his back to the lake and addressed the reeds. “Nobody tells the captain. We’re not getting Ping in trouble for heroics.”
“Ping?” Ling blinked. “That was Ping?”
“Who else sneaks off to bathe like a scholar and then never looks anybody in the eye for a full day,” Yao asked, almost rhetorically.
Mushu hummed, pleased. Smoke made a thin veil between them. “You boys owe him.”
Chien-Po nodded without hesitation. “We can bring him clothes. And a blanket.”
“Don’t bring him anything,” Mushu snapped. “Contact spreads the curse. Visuals from the collarbone down, also risky. He’s going to need solitude and a lot of respectful averting of eyes.”
“Right. Averting,” Ling said, studiously staring at the stars.
“Go,” Mulan managed. “Please.”
They went. Not running. Not quite looking over shoulders. The reeds breathed again. Mushu sagged like a damp match and wiped his nose on his arm.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She let herself laugh once, too short. “Vagina curse?”
“You want results or poetry,” he said, already scuttling for the bag she’d left under the willow. “If they’re going to keep a secret, it has to be one that keeps them out of trouble, too. Fear of sudden womanhood? Powerful motivation.”
“Accurate, unfortunately,” she said, and hated that the truth of it warmed her more than the water.
By morning, the curse had a name and rules. It lived on chalk on the latrine wall – a rough lizard with horns and a note: No bathing between last drum and first light. Time limit ten minutes. No lingering. Offerings accepted: fish bones, shiny rocks, respect. The characters were crooked but careful.
Ling arrived at breakfast with two small red cords tied around his wrists. “Protection against lake demons,” he said lightly to anyone who asked. Nobody did. Most of the camp had grown up with grandmothers who pointed at door lintels and warned about what lived in wells.
Yao became a gatekeeper at the water barrels. “Ten men at a time, move it,” he barked. If anyone asked why, he opened his mouth like he had a deep reason and then they remembered Ping and shut up.
Chien-Po, who prayed over meals anyway, added a line about lizards to his morning mutter.
They were not good at subtlety, but they were excellent at complicity. When Mulan tripped on a loose stone and caught herself sharper than she meant to, three hands reached at once then stopped mid-air because of the contact rule and hovered awkwardly. She shook them off, embarrassed, and saw how relieved they were to obey the boundary they had invented for her.
When Shang asked why the squad had drawn a circle of ash around the practice dummy and declared it a no-splash zone, Yao looked him dead in the eye and said, “Superstition, sir.”
“Superstition,” Shang repeated.
“We will work harder, sir,” Chien-Po added, serene.
They did. Push-ups rose from the dirt like crops, even when nobody counted. They passed canteens without the sideways jokes. They ran together instead of a blur of lonely races. Mulan tasted what a unit could be when everyone had a reason not to fail each other and nearly cried on a hilltop for no noble reason at all.
Shang watched with confused skepticism. He liked results. He distrusted sudden ones. At the noon break he caught Mulan alone by the cookfire, sorting greens into a washbasin.
“You seem tired,” he said.
“Long night,” she said, careful with the angle of her face.
He considered that and considered the odd perimeter of red cords in the camp and seemed, briefly, as if he might press. Then he didn’t. “You’re keeping pace,” he said. “No complaints.”
“No complaints,” she agreed. Not a lie.
He nodded once. Tentative. Pleased in spite of himself. “Whatever you’re doing with the men - keep doing it. Within regulations.”
“Of course.” She put a leaf in the water and watched it darken.
Mushu, from the cookpot rim, mouthed within regulations and almost fell in.
At drill, Yao barked at anyone who drifted toward the lake edge. “Eyes on the captain. Eyes on the mountain. Eyes anywhere else and you’re cursed.” Nobody wanted to look at the lake. That helped with focus.
The secret softened around its edges until it felt less like a lie and more like a pact. Poor Ping, afflicted by the vagina curse, had made a mistake, and that made him theirs. They positioned themselves so he walked in the middle without it being obvious. If someone came too close in the washing line, a cough rippled down the rank. He didn’t reach for buckets they could carry. He hated that and accepted it because defiance would bring more attention.
Mushu kept the performance warm. A glimpse here, a hiss there, a scrap of blackened reed “accidentally” found as a demonic scale. He did not breathe fire except once, discreetly, to help the cook start a damp pile of twigs. The cook’s gratitude wrote another line on the latrine wall: No eating lizards. Bad luck for seven campaigns.
On the fourth day, the captain made them spar in pairs and then as a unit, shields linked, boots thudding as one. When the shield wall closed, Mulan felt the click in her bones that meant a group had become something solid. Fear held them together – and so did the quiet agreement to steward one another’s humiliations. There was honor in that if you squinted.
After, Shang stood apart and watched them file past. He shouldn’t have looked proud. He did, a little. “Your squad is getting along,” he told the lieutenant beside him.
“They’re… creative, sir,” the lieutenant said, eyeing the red cords, the chalk lines, the way Yao would physically relocate Ling’s elbow like they were brothers.
Shang followed his gaze to the lake. The surface was flat, unreadable, moon waiting in it for later. A bundle of reeds tied with cord had been set on the bank like an offering. He opened his mouth to ask what that was and closed it again.
“Fine,” he said. “If it helps.”
He walked on. The reeds clicked together softly in the breeze. The pact held.
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