My Mother-in-Law Sacrificed Me in Drought, Then Went Mad

1.

I was once a koi who leapt the Dragon Gate and became a goddess.

To repay Elias Henson for sparing my life long ago, I came down into the mortal world for a hundred years, disguised as an ordinary woman, and married him.

Then the droughts came, year after year, and I used my divine arts to bring the family's dried-up well back to life.

Hundreds of households in town lived off the water they bought from us, but my mother-in-law raised the price from ten coins to a hundred.

Plenty of them couldn't pay, and died of thirst. I couldn't bear it, so I said one thing:

"Mother, times are hard for the neighbors. Take a little less."

She grabbed a fistful of my hair, dragged me out into the street, and screamed at the people who'd come to buy water:

"Merciful heavens! This wretched woman won't let me sell water to any of you!"

"With a heart that cruel, I say the sky won't rain because she's cursed it! Burn her, and the rain will come!"

The townsfolk were so desperate for rain that they knelt in a crowd at the gate of the county court:

"We beg you, my lord, order this wretched woman burned!"

Elias Henson listened to all of it, and not only did he not say a single word in my defense, he swept his robe aside and knelt too, his face full of righteous purpose:

"If the county court will pay three thousand taels as compensation silver, this humble man will offer up his sinful wife, and ask only for good weather and gentle rains!"

I smiled coldly and said nothing in my own defense.

Did they have any idea?

When a god is angered, mortals are left to rot unburied for a thousand miles.

I had watched my mother-in-law crouch at the well, draw barely half a gourd of water, and demand a hundred coins for it. I couldn't help but say something.

Her face changed, and she seized my hair.

The force of it dragged me sideways, and I went down onto the ground.

Elias Henson didn't so much as reach out to help me. He only looked irritated. "You shouldn't have upset Mother."

Meaning I had it coming.

It still wasn't enough for her. She jabbed a finger at my face and spat:

"You eat the Hensons' rice, you live under the Hensons' roof, and you still dare to lecture me and show me that face in my own house?"

I pushed myself up off the ground, my hands shaking and unable to stop, though it wasn't from the pain.

It was from how cold my heart had gone.

I turned and ran back to my own room, dug a single scale out from under the pillow, and pressed it hard into my palm.

I reached out to the old immortal who had once secretly sent me down to the mortal world.

A moment later came a lazy voice from the other side. "Well, well. You finally deign to call on me?"

"I'm done playing at this. I'm coming back up to the heavens now."

I didn't even hear what the old immortal answered before my mother-in-law was pounding on the door.

Her voice was loud enough to make my ears ring through the wood. "Locking your door in broad daylight? What have you got in there you don't want anyone to see?"

"Who do you think you are, putting on airs! Do you have any idea how bad the drought is out there? This whole town lives on the water the Hensons sell, and it's my silver that feeds you!"

Elias Henson made a show of holding her back. "Mother, that's enough."

She only cursed harder. "Enough? Enough nothing! You know how to dote on her, all right. You've spoiled her until she thinks the rules don't touch her!"

"Serena Lyle, you listen to me. Come out and kneel and beg my forgiveness today, or don't ever set foot through the Hensons' door again!"

Elias Henson gave up, lowering his voice. "Nia, you heard her. Come out and admit you were wrong to Mother. It isn't such a big thing."

I pulled the door open and walked straight past them.

Elias Henson froze, then came after me and caught my wrist. "Where are you going?"

I shook him off and didn't look back. "To get the divorce papers."

He gave a short twist of his mouth, as though he'd heard a joke, and then his face went cold. "Eight of the ten wells in this town have run dry. The two that are left are both the Hensons'."

"If you dare walk out today, I'll put out the word this instant. Anyone who gives you water will never buy from the Hensons again."

I shook his hand off.

"Don't worry." I gave a cold laugh. "Even if I die of it, I won't come to you for a drop."

Then I raised my hand and threw the divorce papers in Elias Henson's face.

He glanced down at them and hesitated, not picking them up.

My mother-in-law bent, snatched them up, and shoved them into his hand with a sneer. "Sign. Let her go!"

"I'd like to see whether she can survive out there, dry as it is."

"When she's starved or died of thirst outside, or when she comes crawling back to lick my shoe and beg me to forgive her, then she'll know who was right and who was wrong."

Elias Henson stared at the paper, gripped it for a few breaths, then took up the brush and signed.

I took nothing with me, and went back to the river where I had lived before I ascended.

By now it had run dry too.

I walked to the middle of the riverbed, and water vapor began to seep up out of the cracked, parched ground.

The scale burned in my palm. Word had come from above.

My divine throne still stood. I could return whenever I chose.

2.

Three days I was gone, and the Hensons never got the sight of me crawling back to beg.

It was Felicia who cracked first, going around the town's water stalls and the market, telling anyone who would listen.

"That daughter-in-law of ours, from the day she set foot in our house, not one drop of rain has fallen. You tell me that isn't strange."

"I never used to believe in this sort of thing, but the more I think on it the more it turns my stomach. Three years of drought, and she's been with us three years. What are the odds of that?"

The more she told it, the truer it sounded, until in the end she was slapping her thigh and weeping. "There are dozens of us under the Henson roof. I won't have the whole town dragged down for the sake of one woman."

"This old woman is willing to put family aside for what's right. If the heavens will only send rain, do whatever you please with her!"

The people were half mad with fear of the drought, and whoever handed them a reason, they believed.

One told two, two told ten, and inside a couple of days the whole town was cursing my name.

At the water pool a man threw down his bowl. "It's that Henson woman! Her own mother-in-law said so with her own mouth. She's a curse!"

In line at the water stall a woman wiped her eyes and spat, "My children are half dead with thirst, and there she is, eating well and drinking well, choking off the rain and sitting on a whole well besides!"

Somebody knelt at the gate of the county court, knocking his head against the ground. "Your Honor, bind that curse and offer her to the heavens! The whole town, young and old, we beg you on our knees!"

Behind him a crowd went down in a rush, sobbing and cursing all tangled together.

One man shouted himself hoarse for the heavens to open their eyes; another said through his teeth that if they burned the plague away, the rain would come.

Some even came all the way to the wall of the Henson yard and wept toward the inside of it. "Nia, girl, if you've got any conscience at all, step forward yourself. Don't make the whole town die alongside you!"

"Weren't you the one with a saint's heart? Then a saint should give herself up to save the people!"

I did not want to leave under that name.

That evening, at dusk, I walked to the county court alone.

The steps were packed with kneeling people. When they saw me coming, they froze, then parted to open a path, fear and hatred both in their eyes.

I looked up once at the plaque over the court, then stepped forward and spoke toward the inside.

"No need to seize me. No need to bind me. I'll take part in the rain ritual of my own will."

The magistrate shot to his feet in shock, and outside the door the crowd went still for a heartbeat before the sobbing swelled louder, this time from a wild, grateful sort of joy.

"Send the rain now, Heaven, the curse has confessed her sin!"

I did not turn to look at them. I only lowered my eyes to my own palm.

The scale was still there, pressed against the flesh, warm to the touch.

Tomorrow at noon I would return to my divine throne, and the town's last two wells would run dry along with me.

Then they would learn which one it was who, burned in sacrifice to the heavens, actually did the trick.

3.

The whole town turned out to help build the altar.

They worked until sweat ran down their faces, and every one of them shot me a look like I was an enemy as they passed.

Someone spat on the ground near me. Someone else knocked into me with a shoulder.

I sat on the stone steps in the back courtyard of the county court and watched them come and go, and felt nothing much at all.

Once the altar was finished, my mother-in-law arrived.

Her hair was combed slick and shining, and in her hand she clutched the pouch of compensation silver the court had just handed down, heavy enough to drag her wrist toward the ground.

She turned to face the townsfolk crowding in and drew herself up straight.

Sure enough, someone called out first: "Old Mrs. Henson, what righteousness! Giving up her own daughter-in-law to save the whole town. She's a living saint!"

"Isn't she just! Anyone else, who'd have the heart to hand over their own son's wife?"

"The Hensons cut their own flesh for this town!"

Every crease in her face folded up with pleasure. She waved a hand. "It's only right, only right. I couldn't let the whole town suffer for one person under my roof."

As she spoke she hefted the pouch of silver in her hand again and tucked it into her sleeve.

The townsfolk dragged me up onto the altar. The rope bit into my wrists, and the pain forced a low groan out of me.

Elias Henson stood at the very front of the crowd, head down, as if he were afraid someone might recognize him.

I didn't look at him.

The torch was passed into my mother-in-law's hand. She took it, stepped forward twice, and stopped at the edge of the woodpile, the firelight playing over her deeply furrowed face.

She looked at me, and there wasn't a trace of hesitation in her eyes. Only impatience.

"All these years since you married in, which of the clothes on your back, which meal in your mouth, wasn't paid for by my Henson family?" She held the torch up and spoke in a voice only I could hear.

"The well is mine, the silver from selling water is mine. You're an outsider who married in. What right did you have to stand in the way of me earning?"

Her wrist twitched, pushing the torch a little closer. "You cut off my livelihood, so you deserve to die. Curse, no curse, that's just something to tell outsiders. I stopped being able to stand the sight of you a long time ago."

Below the altar there was a beat of silence, then someone shouted, "Burn her!"

The shouts rose after it, joining into one wave and surging up like a tide. She heard it, and the corner of her mouth pulled into a satisfied smile as she lowered the torch toward the woodpile.

I watched that ball of fire draw closer and closer, and all at once I found it funny.

She said I'd cut off her livelihood.

But what I'd brought her was far more than one well.

4.

The flames climbed my skirt, and I caught the smell of burning wood.

The fire raced upward, ankle to waist in the space of a blink, and yet not one part of me hurt.

Smoke rose, mixed with the crackle of the kindling and the townsfolk praying below, while my mother-in-law stood beside the woodpile, eyes fixed hard on the flames leaping over me.

I looked down at my hands.

My fingertips were coming apart, drifting off flake by flake, like paper ash scattering in the wind.

When the old immortal shaped this body for me all those years ago, he plucked a willow leaf by the river, crushed it in his palm, breathed on it, and that became me.

Weightless, thin as anything, and it took more than ten years of tending before it wore even the shadow of a living person.

Now one fire, and it was going back.

My mother-in-law leaned a step closer. "Better to burn clean. Burn it clean, and the rain will come."

As she said it, she turned and waved toward the crowd below, like she was claiming credit.

Below, some dropped to their knees, some began to kowtow, and others shouted that heaven had finally opened its eyes.

Elias still stood at the very front, and never once raised his head.

The fire reached my shoulders. But I felt no heat at all, my body growing lighter and lighter, the woodpile under my feet blurred as if seen through a film of water.

I lifted my face. The sun sat high, and not a breath of wind moved.

So many people begging for rain, and the sky held not a wisp of moisture, dry through and through.

The last willow leaf peeled away from my cheek, and golden light shone out from within, wrapping around me without a sound.

It was as though a hand tugged gently at my back, and my body floated upward.

I looked down at the crowd, the Henson family, the people kneeling for rain, the women weeping with children in their arms, my mother-in-law still holding up her torch, all shrinking to black dots, smaller and smaller.

Wind rose at my ears, blowing the smoke apart, cooling the ash.

The fire below still burned. The kindling spent itself, the flames drawing in to one small tuft, and then going out.

The gray smoke thinned, and the altar stood empty.

My mother-in-law was still standing there, the smile not yet gone from her mouth. She took two steps forward and craned her head to look into the pile of ash.

There was nothing.

No hair, no scrap of clothing, no charred bone.

Not even the smallest sliver of bone.

She froze for a moment, nudged the ash on the ground with her foot, and even that was only a thin layer, gone with a breath of wind.

Below, the crowd went quiet, and then someone began to murmur, the sound slowly rising. "Where is she?"

"You can't burn a person and leave nothing at all, can you?"

"Where are the bones? Burn someone and there have to be bones, don't there?"