When it was done, the Ghost Magistrate looked triumphant, and contemptuous; it was the first time I’d seen a familial resemblance between the ancient ghost and his perverse descendant, Xu Shengdian. “You cannot break your vow, little priestess,” he said. “And I am sorry to tell you this, so sorry, but you will not be able to resurrect your husband’s soul without my assistance. When all is said and done, when I alone am Tudi Gong for this region, you are welcome to return and see what else you can offer in exchange for your husband’s resurrection.”
“What nonsense is this, Ghost Magistrate? Are you saying you intend to bribe Hell’s officers to prevent Rocket from receiving a hearing?”
“I have no need to intercede like that,” he said. “No, that isn’t the issue; the issue is, you don’t know your husband’s name.”
“That’s preposterous,” I said.
The Ghost Magistrate laughed. “No, really, little priestess; you do not know the name your husband was born with.”
“Of course I do, Ghost Magistrate, it’s—” No further sound left my mouth. My lips shaped the syllables but my voice was silent.
The first syllable flew from my mouth, a small bird with pink feathers. I tried to stop speaking, but some magic was on me. I felt pressure forcing my jaws open, and a small frog with flesh all the colors of the rainbow jumped out of me: the second syllable of my husband’s birth name. I covered my mouth with my hands, trying to stop this curse from affecting me, but the last syllable squirmed out, a fish as glossy and transparent as glass.
Flying, hopping, and swimming, the bird, the frog, and the fish that were my husband’s birth name all came to land in three of the Ghost Magistrate’s palms. He cupped the creatures in his hands and the syllables of my husband’s name vanished between his fingers.
My hopes vanished with them.
“What was it you said to your father earlier? You are the caretaker of your husband’s name? How foolish, then,” the Ghost Magistrate said, “to let me take it from you.”
“I will destroy you,” I said.
“Silly little girl,” the Guiyan said. “You are sworn, even now, to do your best to encourage your father to allow for my Investiture; and even if he opposes me, I will receive the protection of a ten thousand year tree, which can snap the spines of all but the greatest deities. So what do you think you can do to harm me, little priestess, when I will be the supreme spiritual ruler of these parts, supported by a being of nearly immeasurable power, when I am the only person, living or dead, who can remember your husband’s name? Go now, insect. Gather your little seagulls, convince your father not to interfere with my Investiture, and take my faceless fourth wife with you. She’s going to be dead before tomorrow anyway.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Imoved down the hall of gilded cages. Too angry to speak, I swung the golden door of another birdcage open. Cooing and awrhking, the gull swept out and up in a stir of white and bluegray feathers, then joined the disorganized flock of its compatriots where they gathered behind me.
My father said, “What happened in there, Li-lin?”
I shook my head. “Please, I ask you, please commit to allowing the Guiyan’s Investiture to go forward.”
“Li-lin,” Father said, his living eye studiously exploring my face, “something is wrong. You can’t hide it from me.”
“Perhaps this is so,” I said, “but why should it matter? Look at these gull spirits. They are free now, and we will leave here tonight accompanied by Xian Meimei. An agreement was reached, and though I am not overjoyed at its terms, I am bound by them. So I ask you please, allow the Investiture to go forward.”
“No, Li-lin, not unless you explain yourself to me. What happened?”
I looked at him, feeling so hollow. “Let us go somewhere else and discuss this,” I said, “where there are not so many shadows eavesdropping.”
“There are people eavesdropping in the shadows?”
“No,” I said. “The shadows are listening, spying on us.”
A few minutes later we found our way into the extensive kitchens of the Guiyan’s house. Shadow cooks moved around us, barely aware of our presence, each shade focused entirely on a singular duty: this one chopped vegetables, that one soaked rice grains, another boiled water; one sharpened a knife, one seasoned a wok, one stretched raw noodles . . . . Everywhere, shadows went through motions and the kitchen was busy with the prep work of shades.
Yet their presence, however insubstantial, meant the ears of the Ghost Magistrate were numerous as his arms. If I were to say anything to my father that could suggest anything other than compliance with our agreement, the Guiyan might hear me.
If the Ghost Magistrate’s Investiture were to go forward, he would have a deity’s strength and authority, and he would diminish the amount of power my father and I could draw from the gods. If the Guiyan were to behave abominably, we would no longer have the ability to send messages to the Celestial Orders.
After tonight, there would be no way to send a message to the Heavens. And if I sent a message to the deities tonight, now, before the Investiture, the Ghost Magistrate would eavesdrop. Here, having made a contract, and with his horde of globbing, shiny shadows slithering all around, I would not choose to provoke him.
This, right now, was my last chance to communicate with the gods. Here, in this kitchen.
With its array of stoves.
Stoves, where the Kitchen God can hear whatever is said, and will report it all at year’s end to the Jade Emperor who rules the Celestial Hierarchies.
In the Ghost Yamen, the Magistrate’s innumerable shifting shadows slid like spies, watching, listening. The Guiyan must only hear what I wanted him to hear. The Ghost Magistrate must not hear me speak a single word against him. He must not learn what I was planning.
My plans would end in blood and annihilation. He tried to control me through my husband’s name. I was going to teach the Ghost Magistrate that my husband was no one’s toy to manipulate, flip around, and spin like a child’s top; the spirit who thought to do that would die at my hand. But every word I spoke might be relayed by shadows to the Guiyan’s ear; so there would be no way to allow my father in on my plans.
The Kitchen God needed to be told, now, tonight, and not in the weak-throated, unconvincing voice of a low-Ordination female Daoshi. It needed to be the authoritative tones of the great Daoshi of the Seventh; somehow I needed to manipulate my father into pronouncing judgement on the Ghost Magistrate, out loud, within the hearing of the Kitchen God; and then, after Father issued this condemnation of the Guiyan, I needed to convince him to change course and allow the Investiture to go forward. All without telling my father any of what I was planning.
If I succeeded, the Ghost Magistrate would be Invested as our regional deity; if he had the support of the ten thousand year tree, he would be unstoppable. My plan was clear: send a message to the Kitchen God today, make the Investiture take place, and prevent the plant from germinating here. This way, once the Guiyan became our local deity, he would not have the support of either gods or monsters and I could hunt his servants and comrades one by one.
In my mind I recited the names of the monsters I must kill. The “Gambling God” Xu Shengdian; the red rat, Gan Xuhao; and the luosha demon, Biaozu: all would meet their deaths prematurely and at my hand. Once I had slaughtered them all, Ghost Magistrate Kang Zhuang would stand alone, with no force supporting him, no allies at his beck and call, and facing the condemnation of the Celestial Orders, and then, then, I would besiege the isolated little deity, hunt him, corner him, reclaim my husband’s name, and execute the monster who tried to use my love as a bargaining chip.
I led my father toward a stovetop where oils were simmering in several woks. Standing near the stove, I said, “My name is Xian Li-lin.”
“I know your name, Li-lin.”
“And your name is Xian Zhengying,” I said, “Maoshan Daoshi of the Seventh Ordination, Eightieth Generation of the Linghuan lineage.”
“I know my own name as well. What is this about?”
“Why is my name Xian Li-lin?”
“What on earth are you asking?”
“Xian. My family name is Xian. The same as yours. Why?”
“I do not understand what you mean, Li-lin.”
“I am married,” I said. “So why do you and I have the same family name?”
“You took your husband’s name,” he said, and as he said it, his cheek twitched and his forehead furrowed. “Didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. So why is my family name Xian, the same as yours?”
“I do not understand.” Father bit his lip. “What does it say on your talismans?”
“My family name is written on them, Father, and it’s the same as yours.”
“What does this mean, Li-lin?”
“What is my husband’s name?”
“Rocket,” my father said without hesitating.
“That’s the English word his friends named him,” I said. “Your apprentice, my husband, what is his name? His birth name?”
My father paced across the tiled kitchen floor, back and forth.
“I don’t remember his name, Li-lin,” he said. “This is not right. Why can’t I remember his name?”
“Because the Ghost Magistrate stole it from me,” I said. “No one will be able to remember Rocket’s birth name anymore. The Ghost Magistrate transformed my husband’s name into a bird, a frog, and a fish. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” he said.
“A pink bird, a rainbow frog, and a transparent fish. Is this familiar in any way?”
“No,” he said. “However he has done this, Rocket’s name has been stolen, not just from our memories, but from the world. Li-lin, if the Ghost Magistrate has done this wicked thing, why are you petitioning for me to allow his Investiture? I could block it with a sentence.”
“I know you could,” I said. “But then the contract that freed the gull spirits would be voided.”
“There’s something missing here,” my father said. “The Magistrate’s stratagem is stark and underhanded, but it isn’t clever. One does not rise to the Guiyan’s degree of prominence by taking hostages at the beginning of negotiations. He didn’t try to tempt you with something first?”
“He did,” I said, slowly. “He offered to bring my husband back.”
“That makes no sense, Li-lin. No one could resurrect a man who has moved on to his next life.”
“That’s exactly it,” I said, sighing. “He hasn’t moved on to his next life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My husband awaits his day in court, in the City of the Unjustly Slain.”
“Preposterous. The constables—”
“The Son of Heaven ordered all Chinese citizens living abroad to obey the laws of the lands, Sifu. However indirectly, that does mean the constables who shot my husband had been deputized into one of the bottommost ranks in Heaven’s chain of command.”
My father’s breath whuffed from his mouth. His eyelids shut tight for a long moment, then slid wearily open. He rubbed his hand along his brow. “There must be other ways to recover Rocket’s name,” he said, thinking out loud. “There was that boy at the wedding . . . .”
“I have not seen my husband’s younger brother since the day of the wedding, five years ago,” I said. “But yes, my brother-in-law would still have the same family name as my husband, and it would not have been erased from the world. One third of my husband’s birth name exists. Possibly two-thirds, if they share a generational name. Yet the only name I remember for my brother-in-law is his nickname, Squirrel. The last I heard, he was canning fish somewhere in Alaska.”
“Still,” my father said, “that fact alone suggests there may be other ways to reclaim Rocket’s name, other than petitioning the Guiyan.”
“If we do not go along, Father, then I am forsworn, and he will hunt the Haiou Shen with impunity.”
“A sacrifice I am willing to make,” he said.
I took a breath, steeling myself to engage in a level of manipulation beyond anything I’d ever tried before.
“The Ghost Magistrate is accomplishing some good in this region,” I said. “Think of the Railroad of the Spirits. It’s simply extraordinary.”
He nodded, and I continued. “Why should we care whose labor built it?”
“Li-lin, it was built by the ghosts of Chinese workers,” Father said.
“He’s also planning to build a lighthouse, to draw the spirits of drowned men to land.”
“And once they’re drawn in, Li-lin, what unpaid labor does he intend to use their manpower for?”
“Well then,” I said, “consider the splendors of the Ghost Yamen itself, constructed over the unmarked graves of Chinese fishermen.”
“Fishermen whose soul portions are forced to labor as manservants and cooks. What do you think the moving shadows are, Li-lin? Whose arms are sticking out of the walls, holding the lanterns?” he said. “Each of these achievements was built on people being exploited. Our people.”
This was my chance. I stepped to one side so my father’s voice would be clearer to the stove. “What do you think of the Ghost Magistrate, Sifu?”
“What do I think of him, Li-lin? He’s corrupt and malevolent. He has exploited the suffering of the souls it should be his responsibility to protect.”
“This is the judgement of Daoshi Xian Zhengying?”
“Of course it is, Li-lin. I would not have said so otherwise.”
I smiled. “We are done here,” I said. I bowed to the stove and led my father back out of the kitchens.
In the hallways, arms holding lanterns wavered, and shadows lurked in waiting, eager to hear every word and report back. Now was the time for me to say what I needed them to hear.
“Sifu, I understand your arguments, but still, do you not think it would be good for this region, to have a unified spiritual authority?”
“There would be some advantages,” he admitted.
“The Guiyan has a vision,” I said, “and though it aims for his own advantage, along the way, he would defend this region from attack, he would improve communication, and he would be able to do more for the wandering souls of the dead than we ever could.”
My father stopped walking, and turned to me with a gaze made of iron. “You’re trying to convince me to go through with the Investiture, Li-lin. Why? There is something you aren’t telling me. Some reason you haven’t expressed. Are you planning something?”
My jaw dropped. Father was rarely so perceptive. That his insights should be so sharp at exactly the moment I needed him to go along with my plans without me ever spelling out my plan? Frustrating.
“I am not planning anything, Sifu.” I looked down and away as I spoke, blinking too much.
“You really want me to allow this Investiture to go forward?” my father asked, grinding his teeth. “And you won’t tell me the real reason for it.”
“Please,” I said. “You must. You must. I beg you. The future depends on it.”
His shoulders sagged. “You’re asking me to make a decision of such profound significance, without telling me the real reason. You’re asking me to gamble all of our futures on how much I trust you.”
“I have always had the best of intentions,” I said. “You know that is the case. Please, Sifu. Trust my intentions now, and allow the Investiture to proceed.”
Without ceremony, my father and I, as well as a silent, faceless apparition of a girl, left the Guiyan’s house, accompanied by a cawing, shrieking crowd of gull spirits.
Silently we followed garden paths lit by dancing firefly-light. Above us, the Ghost Yamen’s banners flapped and whipped, though no wind was stirring, as if the banners were alive and moving of their own volition. Eternal, unending sunset felt soft and melancholy on my skin, daylight’s maudlin dying, like a dirge.
Meimei reached up and took my hand in hers. I looked at her, and though no facial features met
mine, I knew she looked back. I squeezed her palm while we walked, and she clutched my hand. Was this worth it, I wondered? Rescuing Meimei and the gulls, was this worth the loss of my husband’s name, worth allowing a wicked man to become a deity presiding over this region’s spiritual affairs? It was too soon to tell.
After all the hubbub when we first arrived at the gate, I expected more of a commotion when we went back to depart. But the transaction, this time, was far more everyday, like counting out change; the armored creatures at the gate saw us coming, exchanged a few passwords, lifted the huge dead bolt and swung the gates open and outward for us. We passed through the gate and started walking the path through the rocky terrain.
Squeezing the paper girl’s hand in mine, my mood was dark and thick as I rattled off the names of the men and monsters who needed killing: The Ghost Magistrate. Xu Shengdian. Gan Xuhao. Biaozu.
Almost as if the seagulls had heard me thinking, they took up the name, shrilling, “Biaozu, Biaozu, aaaahh!” Then the gulls scattered to the winds, and charging on all fours like a juggernaut through the flock, his mouth radiant like a volcano, coming right at me, the luosha demon bulled on, a storm of antlers and flame to bring my death.
TWENTY-NINE
Ispun and fled but could not run fast enough. Biaozu, hunting me, shouldered my father aside and sent him sprawling on the rocky path; the demon’s rush scattered the seagulls. The faceless girl bravely, foolishly, tried to obstruct him with her body; he didn’t seem to notice her before she went skidding to the stones.
Running, I feinted left to misdirect him, but my attacker was not fooled. His feet pounded the rocks behind me. I veered left, then right, hoping agility could give me advantage over the mass of my assailant, but whatever time I gained was minuscule. I fled, a panicked doe, and there was no doubt about the outcome. It was inevitable; the hunter would catch his prey. I fled anyway.
Without slowing my run, I yanked out my sword and swung around, using my spinning momentum to slash at him. He caught the stroke on his rack of antlers; one prong of antler severed and flung through the air, but my sword tangled in the mess of thorny protuberances, pulled out of my grasp, and landed among the larger stones at the side of the path.
The Girl with No Face Page 24
