In the Balance

A couple of dragonfly planes settled toward the ground, floating through the air as light as windborne snow. Doors opened in their sides as they touched down. Liu Han saw motion inside them. Holding her breath, she waited for soldiers to leap out and finish slaughtering the Japanese.

Could they really be men of the Kuomintang? Liu Han hadn’t imagined that her country boasted such marvelous airplanes. Maybe they came from America! The Americans were supposed to be the most clever of all the foreign devils when it came to machines-and they were fighting the Japanese, too. Liu Han had seen an American once, a big, fat Christian missionary who spoke bad Chinese. He’d sounded very fierce, she remembered. She imagined big, fierce American soldiers springing out of the, dragonfly planes, each with a sparkling bayonet half as long as he was tall. She hugged herself with glee at the delicious thought.

Helmeted soldiers began springing out of the dragonfly plane. They were not big, fierce Americans. They were not Chinese troops, either. Liu Han’s glee turned to horror in the space of a single breath. The Chinese commonly called foreigners “devils”; just a moment before, Liu Han had been thinking about American devils. But here were devils in truth!

They were shorter than people, and skinnier. Their green-brown hides glistened in the afternoon sun like snakeskin. They had no noses; instead, the bottom parts of their faces were pulled out in short muzzles-Liu Han thought first of cats, then of lizards. The devils had tails, too, short blunt ones that hung a third of the way down to their knees. Liu Han rubbed her eyes, hard, but when she opened them again, the devils were still there. She moaned, deep in her throat.

The devils did not move like people, either. Liu Han thought of lizards again; the devils’ motion had something of that same loose-joined skitter to it. And when they were still, they were absolutely still, in a way no human save a meditating monk could match.

They did not act like monks. They had things that looked like guns in their hands. The things were guns-they started firing into the village. And what guns! Instead of the bang, bang, bang of ordinary rifles, the devils’ weapons spat streams of bullets like machine guns.

Despite their barrage, despite the rockets and gunfire from the dragonfly planes, Japanese soldiers in the village kept shooting. The devils on the ground advanced against the invaders, some rushing forward while others covered them. Had she been attacked by such monsters, Liu Han knew she would have either given up at once or fled. The Japanese did neither. They fought on until they were all killed. It did not take long.

By the time the little battle ended, the whole village was on fire. Peering through a screen of brush, Liu Han saw the townsfolk, those who still lived, scattering in all directions save toward her (the dragonfly planes on the ground were a potent argument against running that way).

After a few minutes, a couple of villagers did come toward the dragonfly planes, chivvied along by the devils with guns. One of those devils lay on the grass just outside the houses. The blood that splashed its scaly hide was red as a man’s. Liu Han rubbed her eyes again. She hadn’t thought devils could bleed.

Some of the hovering dragonfly planes flew off to the north. Before long, they began firing again. Good Liu Han thought. They’re killing more Japanese.

With resistance in the’ village-and the village itself-destroyed, the little scaly devils on the ground began prowling about, as if to make sure no more enemies lurked nearby. When one came in her direction, Liu Han frantically tried to bury herself under leaves and branches. If the Amida Buddha was kind, the devil would not see her.

The compassionate Buddha must have been looking somewhere else. The scaly devil yelled something in whatever language devils used among themselves. Liu Han shivered under her makeshift shelter, but did not come out. Then the devil’s gun roared. Bullets snarled through the branches around her.

The devil yelled again. She knew it could have killed her had it cared to, so maybe it was ordering her to give up. She stood up, raised her hands above her head. “P-please don’t shoot me, master devil,” she quavered.

When the devil spoke once more, she saw it had lots of small pointed teeth and a long forked tongue like a lizard’s. One of its eyes kept looking at her. The other, unnervingly, swiveled this way and that. When Liu Han took a step toward the devil, it sprang backward and raised its gun in clear warning.

She realized it barely came to her shoulder. “Are you afraid of me?” she said. The idea of a devil’s knowing fear was so absurd that she wanted to laugh in spite of all the disasters of this dreadful day.