FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 29, Written January 2012

===

Chapter 29 - Mortality

Many of the native Chinese who worked for the non-Chinese families on the island fled for the mainland as soon as people started showing Hong Kong Fever symptoms. In Sarina and Lord Randall's home, the only one of their three servants who remained was their cook, a wolf who was half Chinese and Half American. His name was Lu Chen, and he was the bastard son of a Chinese woman and an American sailor, disowned by both sides, and had no family he could go to.

Several of Lord Randall's trading partners had come down with the dreaded Hong Kong Fever. Trade had come to a standstill, as most of the ships from the mainland refused to come into port, and those ships that considered Hong Kong their home port took all their crews on board, and remained out in the harbor. Most families stayed in their homes, sweltering in the heat, and fearing contagion. It did no good. Somehow, the disease continued to spread, even though people had no contact with one another. The Chinese said there was 'bad air' on the island.

One morning Lord Randall awoke with a severe headache. By late afternoon, he was so weak that it was clear that he had Hong Kong Fever. Sarina sent Lu Chen to get a physician. The Chinese mink that came back with him told Sarina what she already knew - that there was little they could do but try to keep Lord Randall cool and comfortable, wash his body with cool wet cloths, make him rest, and hope he might be one of the lucky few who could survive. He left them with some herbal remedies that should ease the pain, but with little hope.

===

Three days later, Lord Edward Randall was near death, wracked with pain, and burning with fever. Sarina and Lu Chen had tended to him day and night for three days, as he lay on a small bed that they had set up in the coolest and darkest room of the bungalow, away from the windows.

"Edward?" Sarina said, as she held a cool, wet rag to his forehead. "My magic can do many things, but I cannot heal you. I have never had any luck or skill with healing magic, or even with using mundane medicine and herbs for healing. If... if it gets too painful to bear, I can give you sleep, so you will not feel the pain, and can rest. But that is the only relief I can offer you."

Lord Randall lay there, sweating and weak, and said, "That's all right, Sarina. I can bear it. I know you would aid me if you could. Forgive me, my child. I never should have brought you here. You should use your magic and leave this place, before it claims your life as well."

"There is nothing to forgive. It was my idea to join you here. I wanted to see these foreign lands. You only came back into my life to give me a splendid gift, for my birthday. You never asked me to join you here," Sarina replied. "I will stay here, and I will remain with you, while you live. If you die, then I promise I will leave this island, and not return. Do not worry for my health. The disease cannot harm me. I have... ways... to ensure that. But I can only do that for myself. It is a limitation of the magic I would have to use."

"Still, I don't know what possessed me to agree to bring you here," he replied. "No... No, I do know. It was my own base urges, my illicit carnal desires for you. When you said you wanted to be with me again, I could not resist the temptation. That is what possessed me."

"I encouraged you to mate with me, so do not blame yourself there, either," Sarina replied. Then she paused, saying almost to herself, "What possessed you? Possession?" She shook her head, and said, "Edward, listen to me. It is a very slim chance, but perhaps there is a way I could help you. There is something that I have never tried to do before, but that perhaps I can do. I must leave you to see if I can learn how to do this thing. Lu Chen will have to care for you."

Sarina went to Lord Randall's study, and locked the door. Then she closed her eyes, and carefully sifted through all the stolen memories of the scholar and the Chinese mage, as well as her other victims, seeking anything they knew about huli jing or Kitsune. Sarina's mother had been a Kitsune, and Sarina knew she could manifest her own soul as a star ball, as her mother had been able to do. When the Chinese mage had commanded her to use her huli jing 'celestial fire' to destroy his enemies, Sarina had instinctively breathed a torrent of fire - a Kitsune-type attack she herself had not known she was capable of! Perhaps she had other abilities attributed to a Kitsune as well? She recalled that a Kitsune, or a huli jing, could actually possess the physical body of someone else. If she could do that, then perhaps, while in possession of their body, she might be able to use the combat healing spell to cast an injury or illness from them to someone else?

As she searched the memories, she found one possible flaw in the idea. It was also said that when a fox spirit possessed a mortal's body, it caused them to go insane. But was this true? Or was it a myth to explain insanity, blaming the strange behavior on the victim being possessed? There was only one way to find out. She needed to find a victim to test this ability on - someone who would not be missed if it went wrong, and who was in some way diseased.

===

Sarina went down to the harbor, to search for someone of little worth, possibly among the Tanka people. The area seemed strangely deserted. She thought to change to a native form, and recalled the sailor she had impersonated before, Hui Ding. What had happened to him? She had left him with the Tanka whores, and without his memories. If he was still there, he would be as good subject for her experiment, at least to see if she could posses his body. And after five months among whores, it was likely that the boy had contracted at least one social disease.

She walked to the end of the harbor where the Tanka people lived on their boats, using the form of Feng Wu as her disguise. Standing on the shore, she reached out with her mind. She was amazed at the dense concentration of people on the boats. There were hundreds of them, and most whose minds she touched had lived their whole lives on those boats, never once setting foot on the shore. She found seven 'nursery' barges, where children were being reared specifically to be sold later as concubines, mistresses or whores. Some were the children of the Tanka prostitutes, while many others were Chinese and foreign girls, purchased or kidnapped for the purpose. Sarina didn't care about the vices and morals of these people, or that they sold children as slaves. She kept searching.

Eventually she found Hui Ding. He was standing on the side of one of the farthest boats, dressed as a Tanka native, in just a loincloth, and swearing in Cantonese as he painfully tried to piss. His surface thoughts showed that he had started fishing with the Tanka males to make a living, and to pay for the whores that he lived with. Sarina cast a compulsion spell on him, and he leaped into the harbor, and started swimming to shore.

Feng Wu helped Hui Ding out of the water when he got to shore, and led the entranced young man to a shadowy alley, between two warehouses. The sailor stared blindly at Feng Wu, hardly acknowledging that he was there. Feng Wu stared back, uncertain as to how to proceed. The Chinese legends spoke of huli jing entering their victim's bodied through their chests. Perhaps it was similar to how a Kitsune summons their star ball? Feng Wu placed his palms on the chest of Hui Ding, and concentrated on entering the sailor's body, to take it over.

There was a disorienting sensation, as Sarina's point of view shifted from facing Hui Ding, to staring at a wooden wall of the alley. Feng Wu had vanished, and Sarina was in Hui Ding, controlling his body and his mind. She seemed to be in full control. Hui Ding wasn't acting strangely.

She walked back out onto the harbor's edge, and took his cock out of his loincloth. Hui Ding had a thick discharge coming from his cock, and it was painful. He had the symptoms of Gonorrhea. Sarina touched his cock and stared across the water at a Tanka prostitute on the flower boats, who had come out seeking Hui Ding. She invoked the combat healing spell, and felt relief from the pain in Hui Ding's groin. On the boats, the prostitute winced and went back into the building on the barge.

Sarina smiled. The spell had worked. But it remained to be seen if she could leave this body again, and if Hui Ding would be sane after she left him. She fastened his loincloth back in place, and walked back into the alley.

She thought to herself, 'I want to be myself again', but nothing happened.

She concentrated on seeing Feng Wu in front of her, as Hui Ding had seen just before he was possessed. She tried to remember just what his body felt like, and how it felt to be herself in that form.

This time, it worked. The disorienting shift happened, and Feng Wu was staring into the eyes of Hui Ding, with his hands on Hui Ding's chest.

"W-what has happened? Where am I? Who are you!" Hui ding asked, with growing alarm. "Why is my fur wet, and why am I on the shore?"

"Calm down, my excitable friend," Sarina said, as Feng Wu's eyes glowed, and she re-established her control spell on Hui Ding. "You have been lost, and very ill. I found you outside an opium den, and threw you in the harbor to wake you up, and wash the stench of opium from your fur. You remember that, don't you?" She altered his memories so he could remember his name and his past life as a sailor, but also so he thought he had last been in Canton, and gone to an opium den with friends. She erased his memories of his time among the Tanka people.

"Opium... I don't use... Well, not much. This... this is not Canton? Where am I?' Hui Ding asked.

"Why, you are in Hong Kong! I don't know how you got here from Canton. You certainly swim well, though. Are you a sailor, or a fisherman, perhaps? Maybe you smoked too much opium in Canton, and came back to Hong Kong with your mind still befuddled by that drug? I cannot say. I only know that I found you here, reeking of opium in an alley. Do you have a name? A ship you can recall?" Feng Wu asked.

"Name? My name is... Hui Ding. Yes, my name is Hui Ding! It is so hot and humid here! It should be cooler in April," he said.

"April? But it is mid September! You cannot remember the last five months?" Feng Wu asked.

"I can remember nothing. Not since Canton. Oh no! I have a wife, in Canton! She must be thinking I abandoned her! Thank you, sir! But I must find a way to get home!" Hui Ding shouted, as he ran from the alley.

"You do that," Sarina said quietly, as she changed back to herself. "Good luck explaining your absence to your captain and your wife, but maybe you can. Whether you do or not is not my concern."

===

She could do it, she was certain. She had found a way to heal Lord Randall.

Over the next few hours she located another Fever victim close to their home. The human man was close to death himself. It would be difficult, but if she could possess Lord Randall, and then immediately infect their cook first, and then possess the cook while his strength was not yet weakened, and then get within sight of the human so she could pass the disease from the wolf to the human fever victim, then she could save Lord Randall, while only hastening the death of a human who was already doomed by this disease. It would, of course, be easier to simply have Lord Randall's body go to infect the human, but she feared Lord Randal's body was too weak to walk that far.

There was a very real risk to herself, however, and she was reluctant to take that risk. If she possessed Lord Randall's body, and if he died before she could remove the disease from his body and inflict it upon Lu Chen, Sarina did not know what would happen to her own spirit. Would she die, if the body she was in died? Or would her spirit re-form her body when the victim perished? Was she willing to risk her own life, to save the life of a man that she was merely using, and did not love? She paused in a tea house and sifted through the memories again and again, seeking any legends or lore that might enlighten her. It took her a while to find the answer.

===

The sun was setting as Sarina returned home. Lu Chen was sitting on the front steps, with his head in his hands. He looked up at her sadly, and said, "He is gone, Lady Randall. Two hours after you left us, he suddenly got out of bed, claiming he felt much better. I tried to keep him quiet and resting, but he is... was... much bigger and stronger than I am. He insisted on seeking you, to tell you he had improved. He... got only as far as the street, before he collapsed. I have already told the authorities. His body is inside, properly laid out, and they will be by in the morning for his funeral arrangements."

===

In the morning, Lady Sarina Randall, dressed in black, signed the paperwork for the funeral arrangements for Lord Edward Randall. His remains were to be cremated, and Lu Chen was to personally take the ashes back to Lord Pennington, to be interred in the family crypt.

"Lady Randall?" Lu Chen asked, confused. "I will do as you ask, surely. But you are not coming with me, to see your husband placed in the family crypt?"

"I have other matters to attend to here, Lu Chen, and faster means of transportation for my own return to England. Please, do as I ask. And when you get there, give Lord Pennington this letter. I am asking him to offer you a job, in his household, in thanks for your loyal service to my family. You should leave Hong Kong. I will try to be there myself in time for the funeral," Sarina insisted. As Lu Chen left, Sarina altered his memories, so that once he left Hong King, he would recall serving not a man and his wife, but a father and daughter.

Sarina sold the bungalow as soon as the cremation had been dealt with, and Lu Chen sent on his way. Then she gathered her belongings, including the funds in her late husband's bank account, and his strong box. The Governor and Lord Randall's other friends were told she was leaving Hong Kong on the next available ship for India, and from there back to England. Several people later remembered seeing her board that ship.

However, Sarina did not remain on the ship, which was not the one she had booked passage on. She left Hong Kong as Feng Wu, on a boat headed for the port of Shanghai.