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her spine bows. The clear, unlined skin is suddenly a veneer, seeming youth spread thin over an accumulation of centuries. Julienne has seen this in her aunts, at odd moments. "You'll have seen the movies and the operas. Her life and mine reenacted for your amusement. All the shame, all the mistakes, all the failures. Why not."
    "I've seen classroom plays of the suns falling down, of the girl who flew to the moon."
    "That's different. Their story's just an outline to mortals and even much of that is understood wrong. There's none of the—personal, the details. And they are together now, aren't they? They got their happy ending."
    Olivia draws the curtains. The sky outside roils. Planets hover far too close to be true, a ringed giant that might be Saturn, a red bonfire that might be Mars. What wing between them are not birds, too many appendages, not all of them feathered. Julienne can't see clearly; despite the glare there are more shadows than light.
    "This is banfaudou," Olivia says. "The place between. From here there are gates back to your world, and paths to mine."
    "Not heaven?"
    "They really don't teach you anything. There's no way there. It's not topographical, or don't you think your astronauts and the like would've found Lady Seung Ngo, the woodsman, or the rabbit when they made lunar landings? The immortals' realm is open to the pure, the divine." The snake shrugs. "Not that I especially want to see it."
    Julienne inches closer to the window. The mountain's shape is different, too jagged, the wrong shade. All white, as if in eternal winter. Down below, on what should be Salisbury Road, there are cars, but there are also rickshaws and palanquins, and horses with peacock tails. "Why my aunt? Why not—I don't know—Gunyam?"
    "She already aided us once, and she isn't so much compassion as... never mind. I just thought Lady Seung Ngo would sympathize, since she was trapped on the moon." Olivia grimaces. "Not quite the same as what binds my sister. And having been married to the archer for so long she probably hates all things demonic by now."
    "I don't think she does, she's her own person. You're wrong about Aunt Hau Ngai. She's—kind, in her own way, and I'll speak to her. For what that's worth."
    "You will?"
    "As soon as I'm in range of a cell tower."
    Olivia lets out a harsh breath. "I misjudged you. You probably won't sway her any more than you will sway those stars, but it does mean something. For now you should remain here; the monk's marked you, and he has no qualms about harming the innocent."
    "My aunt's… going to take it the wrong way. If I disappear."
    Pained amusement creases Olivia's mouth. "I'll find a courier. Until then, do you want to see more of banfaudou?"
     
    * * *
    The tickets are old paper stained gray and pink, hints of other writings and printings that have gone before, and Olivia pays for them with oblong turquoise chips. She also kisses the little girl who takes the fare on the forehead. No one seems a stranger to Olivia, who calls every woman a sister or auntie, every man a brother or uncle, as she switches dialects to exchange gossip flying fast and thick.
    Julienne bites her knuckles and tries to pretend she is in a normal auditorium, a normal Hong Kong where people don't have so many eyes apiece, where the woman sitting one tier down doesn't have dragonfly wings folded around her shoulders. She pretends that, and stares regardless—she can't not, at blue capillaries that as on a leaf catch light, the wing-membrane thinner than a whisper of glass.
    The woman peers over her shoulders, eyes bulbous, all black facets. "Human girl, do you want to touch them?"
    Olivia extricates herself from an old man telling her about some wedding, some sage of heaven ensnared by a tortoise. "Yunyan, you say that to every girl."
    "Oh, but this time I mean it." The woman smiles with a small yellow mouth. "She can touch me anywhere. Delicious girl, I'll look more human for you if you like."
    Julienne's