“Does she have a name? Do you have a name?”

“I’m Jingzhi. And I think I’ll call her Chilli Oil. What do you think?”

“Chilli Oil! Yes!” She’d clapped her hands in delight before reaching out and petting the phoenix. “Hello. My name’s Xiayin.”

I’d clutched the stalks that Xiayin had given me in my clammy hands and brought them home to steep in cold water as she instructed. My mother recovered, and after that, whenever anyone in my family was unwell, I went to Xiayin, and if the medicine I needed was native and in season, we would go hiking together, our shoeprints sinking into the dirt while Chilli Oil soared above us, a comet even in daylight. If not, Xiayin would measure out the dried berries and leaves for me on delicate scales and wrap them in thick paper, tying the parcel with twine and writing the prescription in a neat hand on the front.

Combing through the worn memory of that first day, I started to question if perhaps my phoenix had chosen both me and Xiayin together. Perhaps Chilli Oil was not just mine, but hers too. Perhaps she could go to the palace and I would not have to bear this hollow sickness at the possibility of marrying a distant man I didn’t know, even if he was the ruler of the land, with wealth as vast as the sea.

I wished Xiayin had a herb that could cure me of this nausea.

*

My skin tingled under Xiayin’s thumb as she rubbed some kind of herbal balm on to my temples, and I actually felt a little better. Just having her near calmed the turbulent waves in my chest. She always smelled of green things; of solid ground.

“Why don’t you want to go?” she asked.

“Would you want to go?”

Xiayin blinked at me, leaning back. Her eyes were lighter than mine – they looked earth-brown, whereas mine looked black; her skin was brown too, from days spent in the sun. Everything about her made me want to take root, to stay here with her for the rest of my life, on these cool stone steps outside her father’s apothecary.

She laughed. It was a false sound, a careless musician plucking the wrong note, but I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t known her so long and so well. “Jingzhi, it’s the Emperor. I’ll have to marry someone, won’t I? Why wouldn’t I want my husband to be the Emperor? He’s said to be gifted with good looks too.”

I’d come to ask if she would go to the palace in my place, but now anger sizzled in me, like water splashed into a hot pan. “You don’t have to marry anyone if you don’t want to,” I said.

“Why would you think I don’t want to?” Xiayin crossed her arms. “Just because you don’t seem to care about these things doesn’t mean I don’t.”

I stared at her. My anger had evaporated quickly. The paper lantern above us swayed in the evening breeze. My grandfather had crafted that lantern; in bold brushstrokes he’d written ‘herbalist’ on the paper.