Jiang Lan's Nightmare

With that little ball of a boy missing from the dinner table tonight, the Sea God Palace felt especially quiet.

The kitchen was still keeping his dinner warm: his favorite garlic-grilled fish and seaweed-and-dried-shrimp soup. The fish was the six-hundred-year-old Great White Shark he had carried back himself that morning.

Bo Saixi remembered clearly how seriously he had worked on that shark. As he scraped off its scales, he kept saying the fattest meat on its belly had to be saved for Mom Bo Saixi. She had pretended not to hear, but afterward, she had quietly told the kitchen to cut off that piece of belly meat and marinate it.

Now that marinated meat still hung in the kitchen, waiting for the little rascal who had promised to save her the fattiest piece to come home.

Bo Saixi closed her eyes. Inside her sleeve, her fingers curled slightly.

"Little Guga, wherever you are, please be safe," Bo Saixi said softly. The sea breeze scattered her words into the night.

Then she opened her eyes, her gaze regaining its usual sharpness and composure.

"Pass on my orders. Watch the direction of the Heaven Dou Empire closely and report any unusual activity at once. Also, contact every force affiliated with Sea God Island operating along the mainland coast. If they find a six-year-old child wearing a penguin onesie whose catchphrase is 'Guga,' they are to report it immediately and protect him discreetly. There must be no mistakes."

"Yes, Your Excellency!" As if granted a reprieve, the dark figure vanished with a whoosh, moving at least three times faster than usual.

No joke. The high priestess just now had been even more terrifying than when she faced the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King.

Bo Saixi took one last look at the sea to the north, then turned and walked back into the Sea God Palace.

At the doorway, she paused and glanced at the little dried-fish wind chime hanging beside the palace's side entrance.

Jiang Lan had made it for her when he was three, stringing together dozens of fish he had dried himself into a crooked wind chime.

Standing on tiptoe on a chair as he hung it from the doorframe, Jiang Lan had looked up at her eagerly. "Mom Bo Saixi, now you'll smell dried fish every time you come in, so you won't forget to cook fish for me!"

She had said with a straight face that it was hideous. But the wind chime still hung on the door, and not a single little fish was missing.

Every day, on her way in and out, she would glance at it without thinking. Sometimes she even reached out to nudge it, listening to the rustle of fish brushing against fish as the corners of her mouth lifted.

Bo Saixi reached out and gently flicked the wind chime. In the silent Sea God Palace, the rustle of the dried fish sounded unusually crisp.

"Little rascal," Bo Saixi muttered. She turned and entered the palace, her red robe sweeping over the threshold.

"Phew..."

Jiang Lan lay sprawled in a hammock in the Zi Zhenzhu's storage hold, fast asleep. The hood of his penguin onesie had slipped over his face and puffed up and down with each breath, making him look like a Pufferfish stranded in a hammock.

Doro was sprawled on his belly, dead to the world. Her four stubby legs were curled in front of her, and the ribbon on her bun had slipped sideways.

Her round body rose and fell with Jiang Lan's stomach. Little smacking sounds escaped her mouth; who knew how many Oranges she had stolen in her dreams?

Their snores rose and fell in turn, one like a tuba, the other like a tiny bagpipe, together performing a sleep symphony that could only be called noise pollution.

A faint sliver of lamplight seeped through the gap beneath the storage-hold door. From outside came the muffled shouts of sailors drinking and playing finger-guessing games, but none of the racket disturbed Jiang Lan's sleep.

Jiang Lan had a dream.

In it, he stood outside the imperial palace of the Heaven Dou Empire, holding the glittering Vast Sea Cosmic Shroud aloft. He tipped his head back and shouted at the Sea God Phantom in the sky, "Uncle Sea God! I got it! I don't have to keep running for another six years now, right?"

The Sea God Phantom looked down at him with a complicated expression, as though he could hardly believe a six-year-old had actually gone to the Heaven Dou Empire and taken its national treasure.

Then the Sea God Phantom opened his mouth to speak, but the dream suddenly shifted to the dining table in the Sea God Palace.

Bo Saixi sat across from him, holding a steaming bowl of fish soup. She looked at him without expression and said, "Dinner is missing a dish tonight."

With a whoosh, the platter of garlic-grilled fish vanished from the table.

Jiang Lan ran in frantic circles in his dream, clinging to Bo Saixi's long leg. "Mom Bo Saixi, I was wrong! I shouldn't have sneaked away! Give me back my grilled fish, guga!"

Bo Saixi looked down at him. Her lips slowly curved into a smile that made his hair stand on end. Then she hauled him up, laid him across her lap, pulled down his penguin onesie, and gave his round little bottom a fierce spanking.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

"Waaah—! Help, guga! I was wrong! I really was wrong!"

Jiang Lan howled as if his heart were being torn out. His bottom burned, but the spanking wasn't what frightened him most.

It was what happened afterward. Bo Saixi turned him over, looked into his eyes, and, with her own eyes slightly red, said hoarsely, "Don't ever sneak away again."

Those words hurt him more than any spanking.

In the dream, Jiang Lan's mouth trembled as tears filled his eyes. Then he wrapped his two stubby arms tightly around Bo Saixi's neck.

He buried his face against her shoulder and mumbled, "I'm sorry, Mom Bo Saixi. I promise I'll tell you next time."

Then he woke up.

Jiang Lan's eyes flew open. Above him were the low ceiling of the storage hold and a swaying oil lamp.

It took him several seconds to remember where he was. Not the Sea God Palace, not his little bed with its soft blankets, but the Zi Zhenzhu's storage hold.

His sudden movement bounced Doro off his belly. She sprang twice against the hammock before opening her big purple eyes blearily and letting out a puzzled cry.

Jiang Lan sat in the hammock with his head lowered, silent for a long while.

The hammock swayed gently with the ship, and the lamplight cast flickering shadows across his face.

Then he reached back and touched his bottom.

Good. It didn't hurt. It was only a dream.

But his eyes still stung a little.

"What's wrong?" Doro climbed onto Jiang Lan's lap and looked up at him, her big purple eyes full of concern.

"I dreamed about Mom Bo Saixi." Jiang Lan's voice was muffled. The hood of his penguin onesie drooped behind his head, exposing a wild tangle of hair. "She spanked me. And she cried."

Doro tilted her head and thought for a moment. "But that only happened in your dream, didn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Then why do you look so sad?"

Jiang Lan clutched at the sleeve of his penguin onesie, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. His voice grew smaller and smaller. "Because I think... Mom Bo Saixi might really be crying. I ran off without even saying goodbye. She must be worried."

Doro reached out with her two stubby arms and hugged Jiang Lan. "Then when you go back, bring her a few extra oranges. She won't be mad anymore."