The Celestial Peach and the Black Horn Bow
Seok-ran's black eyes glittered, and she blurted out without a moment's hesitation.
"Celestial peaches! I wanna try the celestial peaches picked from the Bandowon, the Peach Orchard of Immortality!"
"Won't those be bad for a yokai, though?"
"They're only bad for the ones that eat humans! For white foxes like us, they were supposed to be good! Longer life, stronger power, softer fur, and they even smell sweet! I wanna be a beauty, kyang!"
"All right, then."
I took out the Eight-Pearl Wand and touched the second bell.
With a soft jingle, smoke billowed up—and what emerged from it was not the door to the treasure vault, but a sweeping view of a vast orchard heavy with peaches hanging in clusters.
The fox siblings' eyes went round as saucers.
The Bandowon, the peach orchard tended by the Queen Mother of the West, was famed even in Heaven for the exceptional purity and clarity of its energy.
That's why I loved resting there.
Seeing how fond I was of the place, my parents had set aside a section of the Bandowon as my own private ground and linked it to the second bell of the wand.
There were times when I was so ill I had to fast for long stretches, and celestrial peach juice was all I had to keep me going.
For the first time in ages, I found myself craving one. I was curious what it would taste like, eaten with this body's healthy, unspoiled tongue.
If I picked too many, it would be noticed—so just a few.
Here I was, a runaway deity, unable to even pluck freely from my own orchard.
I sighed only in my heart and gestured to Ansi.
"Ansi, go pick four peaches for me... no, make it five."
"At once, Your Highness!"
Ansi darted into the clouds and returned almost instantly, arms full of peaches.
"I have brought them, Your Highness."
I selected three of the celestial peaches Ansi had brought and held them out.
"Give one to each of them, and you can have one too."
"Ohh! My deepest thanks!"
Beaming, Ansi handed the peaches out to the fox siblings. Seok-ran looked fit to burst with joy, her mouth stretched wide as a washbasin as she accepted hers.
"Giving away something this precious—thank you! Kyang! I'm thrilled! Her Highness is the best!"
I set the remaining two aside to share with the Crown Prince, and Seok-juk carefully spoke up.
"C-could I ask for something other than a celestial peach, ma'am?"
"Hmm? Like what?"
"I want merit points for good deeds, ma'am!"
"Ah."
I rested my chin on the desk and smiled.
There were yokai and spirit creatures who cultivated the Dao in hopes of ascending to Heaven. If the gods and immortals acknowledged the good deeds such beings performed, it counted greatly in their favor when the time came for them to earn the right to ascend.
Those were the so-called merit points for good deeds.
"Mm. The merit I could give you for just this job would be far too large, though..."
"I must have it, ma'am! Is there any other work you'd command of me? I'll do anything, ma'am!"
Watching the fox plead so fervently, a good idea suddenly came to me.
"Seok-juk, was it? How old are you?"
"Nine hundred and fifty-seven years old, ma'am!"
"Almost a full thousand, then. You must be quite skilled. I imagine you've been honing your sorcery while preparing for the Cheonho trial."
"Yes! I'm confident in my abilities, ma'am!"
"Then I'll give you a rather long assignment. Let's draw up a contract."
I took out a fresh sheet of paper and lifted my brush.
Seok-juk tilted his head, his tail—which was darkened only at the tip, making it look like a brush itself—swaying gently.
"And what might this long assignment be, ma'am?"
"Escort duty."
"Yes, ma'am?"
"If you protect the human I designate for the promised length of time, I'll grant you merit points for good deeds in Princess Cheonmyeong's name."
I had just found the perfect bodyguard for Seol Deunghwa, who would need to escape the imperial family of Pyeong.
"Your Highness, then, th-then what about Seok-juk's celestial peach? Sh-shall we give it back, nyang?"
As I wrote out the contract for Seok-juk, Seok-ran looked at me with shining eyes, drool dripping from her lips.
I held back a laugh and nodded.
"That one was a reward I already gave you, so it's yours to sort out among yourselves."
"Thank you, kyang!"
"Sis! Even so, that was my share, and you're just swooping right in, dang!"
"You're getting merit points, aren't you, nyang!"
"That's that, and this is this, dang! It's a reward for the investigation we did together, and you're wolfing down my portion, dang!"
"Kyaang, honestly, I was the one who ran my legs off. Didn't I work harder, nyang!"
"I worked harder sorting out the mess you dragged back in total disarray, dang!"
The bickering between the thousand-year-old and the fox nearing his thousandth year was every bit as childish as a pair of toddlers.
Listening to the two foxes yipping at each other, I wrote out the escort contract.
"How can it be permitted that those creatures dare squabble so shamelessly before Your Highness? Should I not clamp both their mouths shut at once?"
"Let them be, Ansi. It's rather cute, actually."
"...At times, I truly do not understand Your Highness's tastes."
After sending the fox siblings on their way, I carried the two remaining celestial peaches to Jamryongdang.
"Hm? The Crown Prince isn't in his chambers."
"Your Highness, I sense that human's presence over there."
Ansi pointed beyond the back gate of Jamryongdang.
"What's over there again...? Ah, the Crown Prince's Guard Corps."
Thanks to having familiarized myself with the Eastern Palace's layout, I knew that Gyebang, the hall for the Crown Prince's guards, stood there—but I had no idea why the Crown Prince himself would be there.
The Guard Corps rosters were emptying out one by one, too.
What could he be doing in a place where no one was supposed to be?
Still holding the peaches, I climbed over the back gate.
From just inside Gyebang's main gate, which abutted Jamryongdang's rear entrance, came the sounds of a hissing release and a dull thunk.
That sounds like archery.
Stepping inside, I found a training ground spread out before me, and right beside it, an archery range with targets and shooting stands.
There, the Crown Prince stood alone, drawing his bow.
The shoulders and arms wrapped in black martial garb were perfectly straight. His upright figure traced a flawless line from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.
The taut bowstring caught the sunlight and glimmered faintly as it crossed the cheek of a boy still green in years.
And then there were those black eyes, gazing unblinking at a single point—deep as a shadowed spring.
Twang. The arrow flew.
Only the boy's fingers had moved. His outstretched back and the gaze fixed on the target did not waver in the slightest.
The arm that had released the string sprang open with elastic ease, and the breath he had held came spilling out as his chest rose and fell gently.
I followed the Crown Prince's gaze to the target. The arrow stood sprouting dead center of the deer's head painted there, as if grown from its antlers.
"Hmm. For a human child, his form is passable, I suppose."
Ansi offered the praise grudgingly. I didn't answer, only stared blankly in the Crown Prince's direction.
Not until he had lowered the bow entirely did a thought finally surface in my head.
That was amazing.
The first thought that came. And then—
I want to try it too.
I wanted to learn exactly that.
Things I hadn't even dared dream of with my old body—things I had given up on so completely that I never even let myself look at them.
"Your Highness?"
I ran toward the Crown Prince. Only then noticing us, he startled and hastily set the bow aside. I stopped in front of him and pointed at the bow he had laid down.
"That!"
"Yes?"
"The bow! Teach me too!"
At my sudden shout, the Crown Prince blinked, then shifted his gaze to the thing in my hand.
Oh. I'd been pointing at him with a peach.
I cleared my throat and, for the moment, held out the celestial peaches to him.
"Th-this is... for you, Your Highness."
"You brought these yourself, my lady?"
"Mmhm... these are rare. They're delicious, and good for the body, too."
"Thank you, my lady."
The Crown Prince's eyes curved like crescent moons as he accepted the peaches. Glancing around, he headed for the pavilion behind the shooting stand and spread out the folded outer robe he'd set aside there.
"Please, come sit here."
"Isn't that your robe, Your Highness?"
"Sitting somewhere cold is not good for your health. Please, sit here."
I had sat without a second thought on the clothes Ansi had spread for me before, but sitting on the Crown Prince's robe somehow made me embarrassed.
When I hesitated, the Crown Prince tilted his head.
"Why so shy all of a sudden, my lady? You had no qualms about grabbing my hand before."
"I'm not being shy! I was just..."
Come to think of it, what was there to be embarrassed about in front of a child?
I hurried over and sat down, and the Crown Prince, seated beside me, drew out his silver knife and began peeling a celestial peach.
In no time at all he had peeled half of it, pressed the unpeeled end into my hand like a handle, then took the peach I'd been holding and began peeling that one too.
I gazed blankly at the beautifully peeled flesh of the peach, white tinged with the palest pink, then asked him.
"You know how to peel fruit, too?"
"I learned from His Majesty when I was young."
"From the Emperor?"
"From around the time I could walk on my own, he always took me along on his hunts. I learned at the hunting grounds. He taught me archery with his own hands, too."
"Oh..."
Longing was etched into the Crown Prince's face and voice as he spoke. It was an expression far too deep for a boy of eleven.
"...Then how old were you when you first learned the bow, Your Highness?"
"Four years old."
"Whoa."
"Just like you, my lady... the moment I saw His Majesty shoot, I begged him to teach me."
The Crown Prince scratched the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish, then smiled brightly.
"I pestered him so relentlessly that he made me a little toy bow fitted perfectly to my body, all with his own hands."
"The Emperor made it himself?"
"He loved hunting so much that he took a keen interest in bow-making as well. The eunuchs shrieked that he would hurt his hands, and the ministers recoiled, crying that he must uphold proper decorum, but..."
As if recalling those days, the Crown Prince chuckled warmly and went on.
"His Majesty brushed them all aside, saying that if they had time to meddle in a king's harmless pastime, they had better look after the welfare of the people, or read one more line of the classics."
"He sounds wise and wonderfully bold."
"Doesn't he? Even after that, every time I grew, he made me a new toy bow. Then, on my eighth birthday, he told me it was time to try a real one, and gave me this black horn bow as a gift."
The Crown Prince looked at his own bow resting beside him.
Seen up close, it was a rare treasure—deep black, with dragons and clouds gracefully inlaid in subtle gold leaf.
Its surface gleamed smooth, polished by careful tending despite how often it must have been handled.
He cherished it so much.
Still, it was far too large a bow for an eight-year-old. Even now, for a Crown Prince on the large side for his age, it seemed a touch big.
"At eight? Wasn't this too big for you?"
"It was. But he gave it to me so that I might grow accustomed to a real bow early, since I loved archery so. He said that once I passed ten, we would go hunting together with it, but..."
The Crown Prince swallowed the end of his sentence and lowered his eyes.
So before the Black Zhou, he truly had been close with his father.
What had the Crown Prince been like before he turned nine? Surely a far brighter child than the one before me now.
"You control the darkness quite well during the day now, don't you? You'll be able to go together someday—the hunting, I mean."
"...Yes. I would like that."
Answering with a faint, distant smile, as if he dared not hope for much, the Crown Prince seemed to want to change the subject, and bit into a slice of the peeled peach.
Then his eyes went wide with surprise.