The Unwanted Girl becomes the Red Fox

The Unwanted Girl becomes the Red Fox in the story Jade Rabbit recounts to Mulan, a rescue journey that ends in two losses: the girl’s youngest brother is left without the medicine he needs, and the girl is transformed into Daji’s servant. The episode turns an act of compassion into a trap. Jade Rabbit brings the girl along because he sees her resilience and longing to belong, but Daji has already been gaining control of her without his knowledge.

The desperate search for a cure

Before she meets Jade Rabbit, the girl is treated with suspicion and kept at a distance. She cannot seem to win acceptance or find a place where she belongs, yet her isolation has not broken her spirit. When sickness spreads through her village, her family asks the Moon Lady to send Jade Rabbit, the healer. He arrives dressed as a fine lord and riding a yellow tiger, and succeeds in curing the girl and the other members of her family—except her youngest brother.

The boy needs a different medicine, one Jade Rabbit does not possess. Gathering its many ingredients will require travel to several places, even with the tiger to carry him, and the journey may take too long. Jade Rabbit warns the family that the medicine might fail regardless: the child is very young, his chi is already weak, and the sickness is especially difficult for someone so small. His mother pleads for him to try, and Jade Rabbit agrees, though he cannot promise success.

As Jade Rabbit prepares to leave, the girl follows him and asks to come, insisting that she can help. He recognizes both her strength and the sorrow she keeps to herself: at night, she swallows her tears and whispers to the moon about wanting someone to care for her or somewhere to belong. He doubts that she can help him gather the medicine, but considers whether the journey might help her. He lets her ride behind him on the tiger. The decision gives her a place beside someone who has noticed her, but it also carries her into Daji’s reach.

Daji’s concealed influence

During the journey, the girl meets Daji. Jade Rabbit has never before traveled with a mortal, and Daji is interested in the unusual sight of him accompanied by a human. She may initially intend only to trouble her old adversary by manipulating the girl; she soon recognizes that the girl can be useful. While Jade Rabbit remains unaware, Daji gradually gains mastery over her.

That influence becomes visible only at the journey’s final destination, the Queen Mother of the West’s Garden of Splendors. Jade Rabbit and the girl need one last herb, and he petitions the Queen Mother of the West for permission to pick it. Her attendants fan her as she warns that visitors disturb her garden. She recalls previous intruders, including a monkey who ate the Fruits of Longevity, and stresses that the fruits must not be touched while they ripen again.

Jade Rabbit promises to take only the herb needed to treat the child’s Qi-Ruohua sickness. When the Queen Mother of the West asks whether both travelers want to save the boy, the girl raises her head and answers sincerely that she does. The Queen Mother of the West then asks whether the girl can save herself. Jade Rabbit does not understand the question; he is worried about the dwindling time to help the boy. The Queen Mother of the West speaks of allowing a thread to be chosen, then grants permission to pick the herb, with the condition that they touch nothing else. Her warning that disturbing the fruit will bring suffering beyond her own annoyance gives the garden’s restriction an ominous weight.

The garden’s reversal

Inside the garden, Jade Rabbit finds the herb. When he turns to show it to the girl, she has disappeared. He searches in sudden dread and finds her standing before the Fruits of Longevity. She slowly lowers a fruit from her face; golden juice runs from her mouth and fingers. A terrible screech fills the air.

A whirlwind circles the tree and lifts both travelers from the ground. The herb flies from Jade Rabbit’s paw, the fruit bounces away from the girl, and a voice in the wind reminds them that they were warned. The force carries them over the garden’s walls and out of the Queen Mother of the West’s palace. Jade Rabbit uses his power to bring them safely to the ground, so neither is physically hurt. But the journey’s purpose has been undone: the medicine is gone, their time has run out, and the girl’s brother will die.

The expulsion is not the episode’s final reversal. As Jade Rabbit and the girl lie gasping, Daji appears at a distance, smiling. The girl rises without speaking and walks toward her. With each step, she transforms; by the time she reaches Daji, Jade Rabbit understands that Daji has acquired a servant destined to follow and obey her for the rest of her life. The girl has become the Red Fox. The transformation makes visible the control Daji had been building in secret, while the rescue mission that brought the girl out of her village ends with her bound to the very figure who had manipulated her.

The tale’s place in Mulan’s journey

Jade Rabbit’s account is an embedded story within the larger narrative: Mulan hears it during her own journey with him. Its details echo her immediate circumstances. She, too, is traveling with Jade Rabbit in search of medicine for a sick sibling, so the girl’s failure and transformation give their quest a possible, frightening counterpart. The resemblance sharpens the tale’s warning without making the two journeys identical: Mulan wonders whether they are reliving the same story, then holds on to the possibility that hers is different.

The episode’s sequence is crucial to that unease. The girl begins by asking to help save her brother, and Jade Rabbit’s decision to include her answers, however briefly, her desire for companionship and belonging. Yet compassion cannot protect her from Daji’s covert influence, and the garden’s permission to take one herb cannot avert the consequences of touching the forbidden fruit. The lost medicine and the girl’s transformation converge as separate costs of the failed rescue. When Mulan continues toward the City of Rushing Water, the story remains with her; she thinks of the girl’s fate as evening falls and she looks for a place to camp. The remembered tale therefore becomes more than a completed tragedy: it shadows the choices and dangers of Mulan’s still-unfinished quest.