Legs on a Snake

First to finish his snake-drawing wins the wine. He had time to spare, so he added legs. Lost. Snakes have no legs.

He lost by not stopping when he'd already won. Enough is a skill.

"And after that?" the soldier said. "What comes after?"

The Wu had already told him what he came to know — that the road south was clear three days, that the thing he carried would arrive whole. The stalks were back in their cloth; the matter was closed. But he sat where he was, turning his cup, wanting more, the way a man who has won at dice wants to throw once more while the throwing is good.

She had watched the wager in the yard that morning — two carters and a jar of millet-wine, first to draw a serpent in the dust with a stick. One finished while the other was still bent over the dirt, and then, with the time he had to spare and the jar as good as won, he gave his serpent legs. Careful ones. The second man finished, looked at what the first had made, and picked up the jar. A serpent has no legs, he said. You have drawn something else.

"After is not what you asked," the Wu said.

"But you can see it. One more cast—"

"I can draw legs on it, if you like." She tied the cloth. "Then it stops being your reading. It becomes the one I wanted to give you — a different animal, worth nothing — and you'll pay for it just the same."

The soldier did not understand, but he heard the door shut in her voice, and he went. Dog watched him out. "He'd have paid for the legs," he said. "People like the legs."

"I know they do." That was the whole danger of it. She had drawn them once, a long time ago, for someone she loved — one line past the question, the line they had begged her for — and the begging had felt like being needed, and being needed had felt like being right. She said none of this. She put the stalks away while they were still only a serpent. "Enough is a skill," she said. "It's the last one anybody learns."