My name is Fangu — Rebel Bone. The demon king named me; he says there's a rebel bone behind my skull.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang says Wei Yan has a rebel bone and will one day turn. We yao read human books — we have to; the demon king's shelves are stacked with plundered volumes, and us little yao learned our letters at the end of a whip. When I reached that passage, the demon king tapped the back of my head with his staff and said: you're the same.
I didn't know what it meant then. I do now.
I'm the first little yao in this den to say no.
That day the king ordered the smallest monkey cub taken from the pens — "for the Stone-Heart Pool." For what? They don't say, and no little yao dares ask. The cub was barely furred, and it cried the whole way — cried like a human child.
I loosened the rope.
One finger's width of knot. The cub ran. The king gave me forty lashes and asked who taught me. Nobody taught me. My hands just itched. When he tired of beating me, he said: Fangu, your rebel bone has finished growing. Grow any more, and it gets cut out.
He didn't cut me. Do you know why? Because that night, his tent had a guest.
I was on watch outside, and I heard it.
The demon king kept his voice low. The demon king never keeps his voice low. He was speaking to someone in the tent, and he used the word "please." Our king has said please to no one in three hundred years. The guest made no sound — or its sound was one I couldn't take in, like wind over a broken drum.
One sentence came through. The king said: "He is coming. Have everything ready."
He.
The next day, every order in the cavern changed: the forge on triple shifts, grain stores doubled, and even the Stone-Heart Pool's feedings doubled. The whole den is arming — but not against soldiers. The scouts have reported nothing about soldiers.
They're waiting for him.
You ask if I've turned? I haven't decided. I only know that since that night, in the middle of my chest, where an arrow once went in, something new has grown — hot, beating.
Humans call that a heart. Yao don't have one.
I've grown one.
So don't ask why I show the way to those who enter the cave. I'm not betraying anyone. I want to see for myself —
What the one who gets a "please" out of the demon king looks like. If even he can't win, then nothing in this cave — yao or monkey — can be saved. And if he can win —
If he wins, put one mark in the book for Rebel Bone.