Mulan Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1200 Grand Central Avenue, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-05518-5

  Designed by Soyoung Kim

  Cover design by Soyoung Kim

  Cover illustration by Grace Lin

  Visit disneybooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Hua Mulan

  Chapter 2: The Healer

  Chapter 3: The Frozen Village

  Chapter 4: The Rabbit

  Chapter 5: The Foxes

  Chapter 6: The Rabbit Heals

  Chapter 7: The Rabbit’s Story

  Chapter 8: The Essence of Heavenly Majesty

  Chapter 9: The Red Fox

  Chapter 10: Xiu’s Toy

  Chapter 11: Daji

  Chapter 12: The Red Fox

  Chapter 13: Dragon Beard Grass

  Chapter 14: Prophecy of the Hua Sisters

  Chapter 15: The Red Fox

  Chapter 16: The Storm

  Chapter 17: The Waiting Wife

  Chapter 18: The Date Tree

  Chapter 19: The Peach

  Chapter 20: The Red Fox

  Chapter 21: The Strange Cloud

  Chapter 22: The Bees

  Chapter 23: The Rabbit’s Leg

  Chapter 24: The Red Fox

  Chapter 25: The Canyon

  Chapter 26: Leaps of Trust

  Chapter 27: Night

  Chapter 28: Morning

  Chapter 29: The Rabbit’s Past Mistake

  Chapter 30: The Scent in the Air

  Chapter 31: The White Fox

  Chapter 32: The Honey

  Chapter 33: The Evil Emperor

  Chapter 34: The City of Rushing Water

  Chapter 35: The River King’s Bride

  Chapter 36: Lu Ting-Pin

  Chapter 37: The Wooden Sword

  Chapter 38: The Red Fox

  Chapter 39: Sailing with the Odd-Shaped Rock

  Chapter 40: Fog

  Chapter 41: The Peach-Wood Sword

  Chapter 42: The Island That Was Not Green

  Chapter 43: The Bakery

  Chapter 44: The Missing Grass

  Chapter 45: The Two Rocks

  Chapter 46: Green Island

  Chapter 47: The Red Fox

  Chapter 48: Blue Water

  Chapter 49: The Sea Beast

  Chapter 50: The Sword Boat

  Chapter 51: The Water of Kunlun Mountain

  Chapter 52: An Immortal’s Breath

  Chapter 53: Ashore at the Isle of Kunlun Mountain

  Chapter 54: Palace of Jade

  Chapter 55: The Queen Mother of the West

  Chapter 56: The Red Fox

  Chapter 57: Garden of Splendors

  Chapter 58: The Search

  Chapter 59: The Cloth Rabbit

  Chapter 60: Finding the Flower

  Chapter 61: Lotus Blossoms

  Chapter 62: No Man Can Kill the White Fox

  Chapter 63: The Ten Thousandth Demon of the Peach-Wood Sword

  Chapter 64: Setting the Prophecy

  Chapter 65: The Decoction

  Chapter 66: The Cloud

  Chapter 67: Home

  Chapter 68: A Mighty Warrior

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  FOR MY PARTNER, ALEX, WHO KEEPS OUR REAL LIVES WORKING WHILE I WRITE ABOUT IMAGINARY ONES

  —G.L.

  SHE DISLIKED when they transformed into spiders. When she was a spider, her sight dimmed and everything became shapes of smoke. But she saw well enough to follow Daji. Even in the shadows, the white spider seemed to glow. One of Daji’s nine translucent legs brushed against her, and she felt the pain of a slapped face. Daji was irritated they had failed so many times. How many times had they done this? How many years, only to be thwarted?

  The white spider tapped a leg on the floor impatiently, and she knew the message behind the flashing eyes. Get the right girl, the eyes said. Daji found the other girl an infuriating nuisance, always in the way and always somehow stopping them with her clomping feet or sudden movements. “Obviously,” Daji had said, “she is not the one we want. That clumsy calf could never save the Emperor. We want the other one.”

  So it was the other one they crept toward. The girl that smelled of embroidery threads and woven cloth. The one with clean, half-moon fingernails and smooth hair that glistened almost as much as the poison dripping from their spider fangs. They pushed against the floor and moved out of the shadows. Crawling. Watching. Crawling. Unnoticed, they stole across the floor and up the leg of the table. Then, Daji’s spider legs, like the craggy petals of a white chrysanthemum, disappeared into the folds of the girl’s dress. They were closer than they had ever gotten before. And getting closer.

  Then, the white spider leapt from the sleeve onto the girl’s hand—the skin as soft and delicate as a freshly steamed dumpling. The girl gasped, but it was too late. Daji had already stabbed her needle fangs deep into flesh. At last, said the glint in the beady eyes. The girl screamed.

  The door flew open. The other girl, the one that smelled of horse and chicken feathers, rushed in. “What happened?” she called out. “Xiu! What’s wrong?”

  “The nine-legged spider!” the stricken girl said, grasping her sister’s strong arms. “The spider! It bit me! Oh, Mulan!”

  HUA MULAN felt Black Wind’s mane whip her face as she pressed the horse to run faster. The man who sat behind her was tall but did not seem heavy, for Black Wind quickened his stride with ease. Still, Mulan worried. Faster, she thought. We need to go faster.

  She urged the horse through a field, a shortcut that only she knew, while the dust Black Wind’s hooves kicked up behind them rose like smoke. They galloped up the slope, the sun-tipped stalks stretching on either side of her as terraced rice paddies and farmlands below came into view.

  This would be faster than following the road, she knew. But she also knew that if Ma or any of the villagers saw her, they would shake their heads with annoyance. Mulan always seemed to veer off the road.

  But Mulan could not forget the look on Old Auntie Ho’s face. When Auntie Ho had seen Mulan’s sister, her wrinkles had frozen as if carved of wood, and Mulan felt a dread come upon her. Xiu was as pale as the moon and as hot as fire, and she lay motionless with eyes that could no longer open.

  “Mulan,” Auntie Ho had said, the worry clear in her voice, “your sister needs more help than I can give. In the Lu ­Family Village, there is a visiting healer. Take your horse and get him. If you go now, you will be back before dark. Go now. Quickly!”

  Her parents had sensed the urgency, quickly waving Mulan off. Her mother had not even frowned at the reference to Mulan’s skill at riding. Just before, Ma had been chiding her for riding Black Wind so often. “You try the patience of an Immortal! What girl rides a horse all the time?” Ma had scolded, as Mulan flushed with shame. “And it’s given you wind-cold sickness. You can’t even breathe out of your nose anymore.”

  Maybe this healer will be able to clear my nose, too, Mulan thought. But she knew she was only trying to distract herself from thinking about Xiu. How Xiu’s eyes, so full of panic and fear, had dulled to be as unseeing as stones and how her hands had fluttered and fallen to stillness, like the petals of a dying magnolia flower. It was only a spider bite, Mulan thought. She had teased Xiu hundreds of times about spiders. She had joked about spiders in her hair, spiders in her teacup—with Xiu screaming as if the mere thought of a spider would kill her. But a spider bite couldn’t…Xiu couldn’t…

  Mulan leaned forward. “Faster, Black Wind,” she murmured into the horse’s ear. They finally clambered onto the road, thundering past the layers of rice paddies. The plants swayed in their wake, waving thin leaves in greeting as if compensating for the farmers who had already left for their dinners. Mulan squinted in the early evening light, hoping to see her home in the distance.

  At least the healer had been easy to find. The Lu villagers had immediately pointed her to the right home, and when she had burst in, she had gasped in surprise as well as exertion. Mulan was used to Auntie Ho with her bent back and dappled skin; she had been expecting another wizened, plain-clothed healer. But while this healer had a silver beard, he wore a lord’s robe of brilliant red trimmed with blue. His eyes were strange, unusually light-colored. They were amber with pupils that burned like two black coals, which Mulan found disconcerting yet also oddly familiar. He had stood as if expecting her, his yellow bag already looped across his chest.

  “My…my…sister…” Mulan had stuttered, “bitten by a spider…”

  In return, he had given her a long, hard stare before simply nodding. “Let’s go,” he said.

  And, finally, they were almost there. Now, she could see her village tulou, the large, round community building, bathed in the golden glow of the dipping sun. The villagers must have been watching for her, for the doors of the tulou were already opening. She was home. Mulan felt a surge of gratitude and warmth as they raced through.

  Neighbors stared out from their windows and stood at their doors, and she could see the worry etched on all their
faces even as they held up their hands in greeting. Big Wan, the village blacksmith, met Mulan at her door.

  “I’ll take Black Wind out for you,” he said. Big Wan was so large that Mulan could meet his gaze even while sitting on the horse. So when she saw that his face held not only concern but sadness, Mulan felt herself turn cold.

  The healer slid down from the horse behind her and his feet hit the earth like a heavy weight. “Is Xiu…” Mulan choked on her words. “Is she…is she worse?”

  Instead of answering, Big Wan gently took Black Wind’s reins out of Mulan’s trembling hands and helped her off the horse. “Better go in,” he said. “They’re waiting.”

  Mulan looked at the door and windows, closed and shuttered as if the house had been forsaken. Mulan gulped. She was home.

  “WE’RE HERE!” Mulan cried out as she pushed open the door and stepped over the entryway. Her congested nose muffled her voice, but it sounded loud in the still house. She blinked to adjust to the darkness, holding the door open so that the light from the sinking sun cascaded over the floor like a translucent banner. “Here’s…um”—Mulan realized that she did not even know her companion’s name—“the Healer!”

  He entered and scowled at the scene that greeted him, but somehow Mulan knew his anger was not for them. They had created a makeshift bed for Xiu and she lay as still upon it as if she were a clay figurine. Mulan’s eyes burned with tears when she saw that an embroidered cloth rabbit hung from a pole leaning on a nearby wall. In desperation, Old Auntie Ho must have fallen to old superstitions and dangled Xiu’s favorite baby toy over her in hopes of luring her wandering spirit.

  Mulan’s parents had risen at the Healer’s entrance, their eyes full of hope and gratitude, but the Healer waved them back down again. He walked to Xiu’s bed and Auntie Ho lifted Xiu’s limp hand to him, showing him the wound. His glare darkened. The two small pinpricks would have been impossible to see, except that a viscous, honey-colored liquid slowly oozed from them.

  “Do you have many spiders here?” the Healer asked, checking the pulse of Xiu’s left wrist and then her right.

  “A few,” Auntie Ho said. “But just the usual.”

  “Maybe not,” Mulan’s mother broke in. “Maybe there were more, or maybe something is strange about our spiders, after all. It would explain why Xiu has always been so afraid of them.”

  “She’s been scared of spiders her whole life,” Mulan said when she saw the Healer’s eyebrows rise. Her mother’s eyebrows rose as well, and Mulan knew it was because she was speaking out of turn again—not what a young girl, quiet and obedient, should do. But this seemed important to the Healer, so Mulan pressed on. “Xiu always acted as if spiders were chasing or hunting her.” Then Mulan’s voice faltered. “I teased her about it.”

  “Hunting her?” The Healer’s voice held only the faintest question. “Do you know for certain that it was a spider that bit her?”

  “Well, she said so,” Mulan said, hesitating. “But maybe she just thought that because she’s so scared of them? She said it had nine legs, and I don’t think any spider—”

  “Nine legs?” the Healer interrupted, dropping Xiu’s arm and standing. He towered over them, the glint reflecting from his eyes like lightning. “The spider had nine legs?”

  Mulan stared up at him and nodded. “That’s what she said.”

  The mournful howl of a restrained dog somewhere in the village drifted into the room. As her father limped unevenly over to the Healer, Mulan realized how upset he was. He usually hid the pains of his old war injuries. She remembered seeing him limp like that only once before, when she was a child and had accidentally chased a chicken onto the roof. She remembered his faltering, unsteady steps as he ran toward her, so afraid she would fall to her death.

  “Tell me,” her father said. “This is not an ordinary spider bite, is it?”

  The Healer hesitated. “No,” he said, finally. He reached into his bag and turned to Mulan. “Put these in hot water,” he said, handing her a small packet.

  She took it to the kitchen and, as she suspected the Healer had given her this job so that he could talk to her parents and Auntie Ho in private, left the door open. When she opened the packet, she found a small bundle of dried, greyish-green herbs. They were so delicate, Mulan feared they would crumble before she could get the water heated.

  She tended to the kettle, but could not help continuing to steal glances over her shoulder. She heard her parents recount Xiu’s scream, how she had clutched at them and cried about the spider, and then how she had suddenly wilted in Mulan’s arms. The Healer replied in low murmurs, and as Mulan gently placed the fragile plants in a bowl, she strained for the words. Poison…reaching vitals…destroying her chi…death.

  Mulan felt an icy wind fly down her throat as the boiling kettle softly hissed, a thin snake of steam coiling from the spout. Slowly, she poured the water into the bowl.

  The herbs seemed to dissolve into smoke, for as soon as the water touched them, Mulan saw a cloud billow up like the dust of swept ashes. She grabbed the bowl with both hands, hoping she had not accidentally done something wrong. The mist thickened, curving into her face and enveloping her. It grew into a heavy veil of fog that hid everything from view and dampened all sound. Suddenly, all was silent, and Mulan could only see whiteness. Her world had disappeared.

  MULAN SHOOK her head wildly, her hair whipping at the mist. She blindly set down the bowl, hoping the table had remained in front of her. As she released it, the fog began to thin. She rubbed her eyes and slowly began to see the familiar kettle and stove.

  But when she turned, she had to rub her eyes again. It was as if her world had become a still painting. Through the open door, she saw the Healer’s back and her parents’ faces looking up at him. But their mouths were open as if struck silent midsentence and their outstretched, pleading arms were frozen in the air. Auntie Ho stood static next to the bed, her hands still clutching a red cord as she waited with the hope of tying Xiu’s spirit back to her body. Everything seemed swathed with a soft silver light; even the scarlet robe of the Healer, which had been so brilliant before, was now the more muted color of a frosted hawthorn berry.

  What had happened? Why was everything frozen? Mulan crept forward soundlessly, unwilling to disturb the suddenly hushed world. She was beginning to feel as if she had somehow slipped into a moonlit dream, where all—except her—slept.

  But then, without warning, the Healer stirred. His arms dropped from his conversational gesture and, in a swift motion, he turned from Mulan and her parents, his robe swirling behind him. The sound of his boots echoed in the silence as he stalked out the door.

  Mulan stared, openmouthed, and then stole out after him. Yet, the instant she stepped over the entryway, she stopped. Her mouth fell open even wider than before as she gazed, dumbfounded. Her parents were not the only ones suddenly still. All the villagers looked as if they had turned into statues. Big Wan held a dog by the scruff of its neck, the dog’s wide-open mouth revealing he had been silenced while detecting a foreign animal outside. Boys, frozen in play, stood on one leg—a ball impossibly balancing on one child’s toe. Above, a woman leaned over the balcony and a falling piece of her newly clean laundry floated just out of reach of her outstretched hand. Even the chickens stood tilted in their half-waddled steps.

  The silver mist veiled everything, as if it were a sugared coating holding the world motionless. Mulan’s head slowly spun as she continued to gape. It was everyone and everything she knew, yet it was not. For they all seemed fixed in a real place and time, while she was wandering alone in this dream. And here, there was no sound, no movement…except for the flapping red robe of the Healer as he wove his way around the stationary villagers and out the door of Mulan’s village tulou.

  MULAN DARTED around the frozen villagers, chasing the Healer’s fluttering red robe as if she were trying to catch a butterfly. The crimson silk flapped out of view through the tulou’s open entry and Mulan rushed forward, tripping over the doorway. Her arms splayed wildly and she fell, face-first, onto the ground.

  As Mulan gasped into the dirt, she realized that outside her village, the sounds of the world were unchanged. Even as her feet had pounded on the floor of the tulou, the thuds had been muffled. Here, the wind’s gentle roar and the warbles of the dusk-singing birds filled her ears. As she raised her head, Mulan saw that all was still tinged with a muted light, but unlike inside her village, everything was moving and alive. The grass and trees swayed, and black silhouettes of birds flew against the amber-colored clouds.