The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  Foot traffic stopped at the corner for a few horse-drawn wagons loaded with hay to clop, roll, and rumble past. I took the opportunity to face Mr. Yanqiu. He was slowly turning around and around, taking everyone in; making sure my enemy was not nearby. When he saw my eyes on him, he stopped turning, and his eye met mine.

  The eyeball’s glossy surface showed me a reflection, but it was not my face I saw reflected in him. In place of my image was Xu Shengdian’s.

  Shuddering, I turned away. An apothecary’s big window reflected sun; and, where the glass should have mirrored me, Mr. Xu’s face loomed, beaming with a victor’s grin.

  I lowered my eyes to the ground, and saw, in a small puddle, Xu Shengdian’s face.

  “Everywhere,” I said. “He’s everywhere. I’m surrounded.”

  “Where?” Mr. Yanqiu said. “I don’t see him.”

  “In glass, in eyes, in water,” I said. “He has devoured my reflection, and I see him everywhere. I cannot see myself at all, no matter where I look. It’s as if I have no face.”

  “This is scary, Li-lin,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “This is the hex?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you break the hex?”

  “My father can,” I said.

  “Then we need to go to him, now!”

  “I know,” I said. “I would not be in this situation if I had gone along with my father, done as he’d asked of me, agreed to be his assistant without asking to be informed.”

  “Li-lin,” Mr. Yanqiu said, bobbing as I paced down the road, “your father didn’t trust you enough to tell you what’s going on. He asked you to go in blind and follow his commands, without even telling you what he was trying to accomplish.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I felt insulted by that. But perhaps I deserved it. Perhaps the foolish woman who walked into Xu Shengdian’s love curse shouldn’t be trusted with knowledge or power. I can make myself useful by assisting him; I don’t need to ask questions or understand what he’s doing, I just need to do as I’m told.”

  Mr. Yanqiu huffed. “Li-lin, you made a mistake, but people do that. Even your father makes mistakes. I know it’s hard to believe, but I myself have made a mistake or two in my time.”

  “Mr. Yanqiu, it’s time for me to admit that I’m not up to the challenge. I can’t handle Xu Shengdian, his ancient tree, or this Ghost Magistrate, not on my own. I’m not sure I could even handle the rat who writes essays.”

  “You are more capable than you believe,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “But perhaps if you work under your father’s auspices for a while, you might have an opportunity to regain your confidence.”

  “I was foolish—no, I was stupid—stupid enough to walk into the murderer’s trap, look in his hexed water, and now I’m on the run. Mr. Yanqiu, I acted recklessly. I messed up.”

  “Maybe you did, but you know what you don’t do, Li-lin? You don’t give up.”

  “I’m not giving up,” I said. “I’m giving over. If that hex proved anything, it’s that I’m not capable enough to do things on my own.”

  “You’re not on your own,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “You’ve saved me time and again. But it’s time for me to admit that I’m not up to the challenge.”

  “So you’re asking for help?”

  I scoffed. “No, I’m asking to be allowed to help. If my father will accept my assistance, I will follow his orders humbly, silently obey everything he says, and do as I’m told without asking any questions.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Sure about it? Mr. Yanqiu, I’m lucky I’m not helping Xu Shengdian prepare weapons to use against my father and praising his cleverness when he boasts about murdering his child bride. My father needs to know what I’ve learned, and then he needs to be in charge. Those little girls deserve to be in better hands than mine.”

  “Your hands are just fine, Li-lin.”

  “No,” I said. “I really made a mess.”

  We arrived at the stone staircase leading up to the front door of my father’s temple. Red lacquer lanterns hung on either side of the entryway. Above the front door, like a fringe, was a string of cloth talismans. In proud Chinese letters, a sign announced to the world, “FIRST TEMPLE OF MAOSHAN.”

  I looked up those stairs and felt dizzy. Xu Shengdian’s hex was still incomplete, and the thought of it closing its hands around my throat filled me with terror. I felt wrecked, on the brink of ruin. I was worn out, wrung dry by anxiety and fear, then shame, because I had been outsmarted; the enemy had nearly turned me into his bootlicking toady.

  The stairs in front were for the people who came to pray or ask Father for blessings. All my life, I had come in through the back stairs, the rickety wooden ones that led to the quarters I had shared with my father. For all those years, I was admitted to a private part of the great man’s life, where no one else spent such personal time with the Daoshi. But those days were gone.

  Leaving Mr. Yanqiu on the street, I walked up the stone steps and faced the front door. Father’s cloth talismans were draped over the doorway, barring ghosts and goblins from entry, sealed with the power of the Seventh Ordination. A wooden block three inches high prevented any stiff corpses from walking in—or out. Paintings of the Door Gods hung on either side of the threshold, and an unusual Chinese character had been carved into the wooden frame itself; the twenty strokes of the character ni, which meant “dead ghost.” Father had dragged one of the Good Brothers—the raging, destructive ghosts—here to the doorway and slaughtered it. The rare mark on the doorway and the resonance of the ghost’s annihilation should frighten away any other unwelcome beings.

  Not all of them, I thought. I was unwelcome here, and the dead ghost character didn’t scare me at all.

  I stood on the landing outside the door to my father’s temple, and started gathering my courage. But I wished courage wouldn’t be needed. After Xu Shengdian’s hex, I wanted to be comforted. I wanted to feel safe, and I wanted to be forgiven.

  My father’s temple had never been a forgiving place, for me.

  Footsteps behind me came to a sudden stop, a stillness that was noticeable. “What have you come here for?” he asked.

  “You . . . are alone?” I said, keeping my back to him. My voice sounded raggedy, a torn and battered thing. “Mr. Xu is not with you?”

  “Yes I’m alone, Li-lin. Why?”

  Slowly I turned to face my father. I owed the man a lifetime of reverence, and more. Yet as he stood here on the street, he was no more than a man, lean yet confident. His human eye squinted; his glass eye gleamed.

  He saw my face and stopped breathing. All his facial features froze solid; they held stiff for a long moment, then they melted. It was his deathbed look: a touch of compassion, a touch of grief, but mostly frustration that he had not through sheer force of will been able to beat back death for good.

  “Li-lin,” he said, in a tone I’d hardly ever heard from him before. “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . did something stupid,” I said. “I made a mess.”

  He said nothing, but his one good eye gazed deeply into me. I struggled to hide what I was feeling, the desperate need to break down and sob and be comforted. In that moment, I wanted Rocket, his care and his judgement-free acceptance of me. I tried my best to hide the anguish, but I could feel my face betraying my secrets.

  My father reached out and touched the sleeve of my robe, awkwardly. “Li-lin,” he said, “have you eaten?”

  The smoke filling Father’s temple smelled pungent and sweet, yet breathing it left a harsh taste in the roof of my mouth. He went to the back room, to change from the heavy linen robe he wore in the street into one of his lighter robes. While I waited for him to return, as if by instinct, I started moving through the dim chamber, lighting candles, cleaning ashes, setting the incense to burn, refreshing the tea in its offering cup. These had been my duties since I was small, and now the return to these simple, rote acts made me feel calmer.

  Dust on the temp
le bell? I tsked, and started to wiped it away. The bell had never grown dusty when I was caretaker here. This bell was tall as my waist, made from white cast iron. The names of donors had been imprinted along its upper curvature.

  Cleaning the bell felt comforting. I had so many memories of this bell. I was seven years old when Father and I first entered this room, a dark empty space; after a few minutes of silent exploration, he said he’d need a bell so the gods could hear him. A few days later, a temple committee formed, and commissioned the bell. Tidying the room, I remembered how the committee argued over materials; one man said a bronze bell would look fancier and inspire more respect. My father responded that bronze could easily be melted, and the names of donors could be removed, unlike white cast iron, where the permanence of the metal would encourage donors to fatten the offering in their red envelopes. Father, as usual, got his way.

  I gazed for a moment at my father’s deity shrine. I still felt shaken, so I prayed silently, first to thank Guan Gong, the god of warriors and writers, for fortifying me while I fought blind, and then to the statue of Bei Di. God of the North, Dark Warrior, Lord of the Dark Heavens, share your courage with me now. I could not meet the eyes of the statue of Jinhua Gonggong, the Goldenflower Goddess, Lady of the Azure Cloud; somehow I felt she would be ashamed of me.

  My father’s footsteps came lightly into the altar room. He was carrying his goosewood staff, using it like a walking stick. Taking in the lit candles, the trimmed wicks, the dusted bell, and the tidied ashes, he looked relieved for a moment, as if happy not to have to perform these petty acts himself.

  “I really should take on an apprentice,” he said.

  “Sifu,” I said, “I would like to hire you.”

  “To do what?”

  “A small ritual,” I said. “I can pay.”

  “What is it you’re trying to hire me for, Li-lin?”

  “Sifu, for this ritual,” I swallowed, and looked down, “please, if you would, you would need to gather anise stars, rainwater collected during a thunderstorm on a yang day, a sword made of coins, and the petals of a fresh white lily.”

  His staff clattered to the floor. “You’re under a love curse?” His voice was rocks shattering. “Who has done this to you? Say his name and he’s a walking corpse, this I swear.”

  “It was Xu Shengdian, Sifu. He’s behind all of this. He murdered Anjing, and he’s Investing a City God he selected.”

  “Slow down, Ah Li,” he said, and I barely had a moment to absorb the fact that he’d addressed me with an affectionate term. “Fill me in on the details later. First I need to break this curse. How is it that you’re here, asking for help?”

  “I do not understand your question.”

  “No one who is under a love hex can simply walk away and ask to be cured of it,” he said.

  “The hex is incomplete, Sifu,” I said. “I have not yet gazed upon his face.”

  “So how do you know you’ve been hexed?”

  “When I look in water or in glass, the reflection I see is his. I’m already disappeared, invisible to myself, while I see his face everywhere.”

  “But you haven’t set eyes on his real face?”

  “That is correct, Sifu.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Li-lin. He must have been somewhere nearby to seal the curse upon you.”

  “He was,” I said. “He was a few feet behind me.”

  “So how is it you haven’t seen his face?”

  “Sifu, when I realized I’d been hexed, I shut my eyes and hit him with my rope dart. I kept my eyes closed and fought my way past him to escape.”

  “Let me make sure I understand this correctly,” my father said. “He prepared a love curse in advance, infused it into water or a mirror, and set it up to be triggered when you looked into it. He caught you by surprise; you looked into the surface; the spell activated; you saw the reflection of his face and—without a second passing—you instantaneously realized a hex had been placed upon you, and you identified the hex; in that split-second you worked out that the spell would remain incomplete until you looked in his real face; you rapidly figured out that by closing your eyes you could temporarily prevent the spell from taking over your soul; you closed your eyes; you formulated a plan . . . You are saying you did all this before he had a chance to get you to look at him, within the fraction of a second after the hex was triggered?”

  “I know I acted foolishly, Sifu,” I said.

  “And then,” he continued, “you’re telling me that with your eyes shut tight, you fought against a man who could see? Xu Shengdian is neither weak nor infirm. You’re saying that even blind, you were able to fight your way past him, and escape, successfully, without once getting a glimpse of his face?”

  “This is correct, Sifu,” I said. “I really messed up.”

  “Some quick thinking went into that response, Ah Li. I’ve never heard of anyone being quick-witted enough to see a love spell coming on and interrupt its mechanisms before it could finish. And then you fought the man who cursed you, with your eyes closed, no less . . . .” He stopped speaking, blinked, and laughed, looking at me shrewdly. “You invoked Guan Gong, didn’t you.”

  Embarrassed, I looked away. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he also fought blindly,” my father said, “and because I know you.”

  I said nothing.

  “This will make an excellent story,” Father said. “I can hardly wait to tell my friends about it.”

  “Sifu?”

  “Yes, Ah Li, I know you’re impatient. Let’s prepare the water and the lily petals.”

  My father’s sheet, titled “Talisman to Break the Spines of Hexes,” went up in flame. The thin rice paper blackened in the fire and crumbled into black bits; he swept the ashes with a hand-broom into the water, scented with anise, where white lily blossoms floated.

  “You must dip your fingers in the water now, swirl it counterclockwise, and flick droplets one hundred and ten times, in each of the five directions,” he said.

  I stood and placed my fingers in the water. “Is there a breath incantation I must recite? Or an image I must visualize?”

  “No,” he said, “the power is already infused into the water, and must merely be spread. We can speak while you flick the water.”

  I nodded. Over the next few minutes, I told my father what had happened and what I’d learned. I swirled and flicked, while he paced in tight circles, occasionally tugging on the ends of his graying mustache as he thought.

  “Gan Xuhao?” he said at last. “The red rat goblin? Himself?” After my nod, he added, “Didn’t Ghostkiller Zhong Kui slaughter him and eat his eyes?”

  “Apparently he did not die, but his eyes are gone,” I said, spraying infused water into the corner of the room. “Instead of eyes, he has a pair of green jade marbles.”

  “Perhaps I will get a chance to exterminate the rat,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be a story of legends? To be the man who killed a creature who fought the exorcist god himself.”

  “Sifu,” I said, turning and flicking water in another direction, “Gan Xuhao is a murderer, and he is also very, very annoying. But I do not think he is important here.”

  “Yes,” Father said, “the real issue is this ten millennium tree . . .”

  “Sifu, I think everything Xu Shengdian is doing is for that tree,” I said.

  My father took a moment to consider this. “What was he hoping to accomplish by killing Anjing?”

  “I think it’s like this,” I said with a flick. “Suppose each vampire tree is just the physical manifestation of one of the ancient tree’s seedlings. Suppose there’s a little girl in the world of the living who has an analogue in the spirit world; suppose he feeds a seed of the demonic tree to the living girl, and it grows inside her, physically . . . .”

  “And then,” he said, “for the tree to manifest its full spiritual powers, it would need to cross over somehow. So he creates an effigy, allows the seedling to grow physica
lly inside Anjing, but also spiritually rooting into her soul, so when it kills her . . . .”

  “Part of her soul was supposed to transfer to the paper effigy, Sifu, carrying with it, like a parasite, the spiritual manifestation of those seedlings.”

  He grumbled a bit, reached for his pipe. “We must not allow that tree to set its roots here, Li-lin. The devastation it could wreak . . . Simply by existing, it could pollute the entire region. Brother would murder brother, men could go to war for no reason, there would be massacres . . .”

  “I have faith that you will stop it, Sifu,” I said.

  “That’s one hundred and ten,” he said.

  I gazed down into the bowl of sacred water, where the white lily petals floated. The swirling, eddying flow calmed to a clear surface, and I watched to see what I would see. A reflection looked up at me, a young woman with bruises on her face. She looked hollow-eyed, worn-out, defeated, and older than her years.

  “What do you see?” my father asked.

  “His hex is broken,” I said. “What he tried to do to me, Sifu . . . . That man nearly took my world from me.”

  “Not a man, Li-lin,” my father said. “There is nothing human left in Xu Shengdian, if there ever was. Anjing was a sweet girl, Ah Li, and I thought I was doing her a favor by marrying her to him. But that beast murdered the girl I introduced him to, as a human sacrifice. And that was bad enough. And now you tell me . . . .”

  I stayed silent.

  “There are times when I look around me and dislike what I see,” my father said, his voice heavy. “There’s cruelty and selfishness in everyone, and sometimes I detest us all, myself included. But then I remember the man you married. He was chivalrous, I admired that so much, and I know there are many other virtuous men. The reason there are few actual heroes is that virtue, exceptional athleticism, and brilliant minds are all uncommon; to find them all within a single individual is a joy. I loved Rocket too; he was decent, protective, and caring, he was everything admirable about a man, and he was madly in love with my daughter. It meant so much to me to have a man like him as my apprentice, my successor, the potential father of my grandsons. The way you loved him and he loved you meant the world to me.”