My “little sister” clung to my side, clutching my hand, as our outlandish little group made our way through Chinatown. After our time in the extravagant Ghost Yamen and the bizarre haunts of unorthodox spirits, Chinatown, even with its drab clothes, squat gray buildings, dim lights, and the rumbly foot traffic, felt welcoming. Felt like home.
My father said, “Keep an eye out for a food vendor, Li-lin. I will buy us something to eat. You still prefer spicy thick noodles with meat?”
I nearly stumbled. “You remembered my favorite?”
Without responding, he continued, “I’ll buy some vegetarian noodles for the tiger.”
I stared at him.
“The offer is appreciated, Sifu,” Shuai Hu said, “but I do not eat noodles.”
Father’s glance asked me to explain. “He lived for many decades with claws instead of fingers,” I said. “He never learned to use utensils to eat. He’d need to eat the noodles with his hands.”
My father’s expression was incredulous, and then he started to laugh.
A gong sounded from California Street, near the corner of Dupont; it was the bell at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Its chime rang eleven times.
The monk slowed his pace. He sniffed the air, his eyes whipping this way and that.
“Daonu,” he said. “Does something feel wrong to you?”
As soon as he said it, Meimei staggered. Framed by her hair, the absence of a countenance began to shake, flickering like a candle’s flame. Pucker-marks erupted, pinprick-sized markings where eyes, nose, and mouth might go. The girl released my hands, wrapped both of hers around her throat as if she was choking, and collapsed.
THIRTY-FOUR
Iwas at her side at an instant, bent over her on the cobblestones, thinking,Oh no, no no no, not again, do not let another person who matters to me die in the street.
Meimei thrashed, and the convulsions that shook her body were so human and hurting that no one would have believed she’d been made from paper.
I held her hand; she clutched mine, as if I could somehow save her, spare her, from whatever throes she was undergoing. I could not. I refused to look away from the blank sheet of the girl’s face as small rips were opening where a human’s facial features would be.
“Li-lin,” my father said. “Whatever is happening now is what she was created for.”
I shot my eyes up to him. “Xu Shengdian is transferring another girl’s soul into her body? Murdering some other girl?”
My father nodded. “All of this is happening, right now. The ritual he’s trying to complete for his ten thousand year tree, it’s happening now. We must stop him.”
“So do it,” I said. “Draw up a barrier, reinforce it with all your power. Stop this ritual. I am begging you.”
His words came chipped from stone. “I cannot,” he said. “To be a receptacle for some other girl’s soul is what this girl was made for. That is her essence. If I remove that, then she will shrivel to cinders.”
“The other girl then,” I said, “the one who is being murdered right now, find her and shield her from the magic.”
“It isn’t like that, Li-lin, this spell wouldn’t be coming at the other girl from the outside. The vampire tree is growing inside that girl. Xu Shengdian must have fed her some seeds.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“You know who the other girl is?”
“He was feeding peanuts to my boss’s daughter.”
Father’s nod was brisk as a butcher’s chop. “Li-lin, I can’t help this girl, but I can help that one. I can prolong her life, keep the vampire tree from rooting inside her, and as long as I can prevent that, then the faceless girl will survive too; but unless Xu Shengdian’s hex is broken, then both girls are going to die, and the ten thousand year tree will be rooted in California.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
My father went to scoop Meimei up into his arms, but Shuai Hu was quicker. I saw my father assess the relative strength of the tiger in relation to himself, and without a fuss the tiger lifted Meimei, writhing in his burly arms.
Then, under the crisp light of the moon, during the shadiest hour, and across Chinatown, we ran.
The doors were wide open for once, and no secret passwords were expected. Tense, my boss’s men made way for us without a word. My father, though an Ansheng man, followed me swiftly up the stairs; behind him, Shuai Hu’s mass shook the staircase, keeping the faceless girl cradled in his arms.
A crowd congregated around my boss’s quarters. “Li-lin,” Ginny said, speeding toward me. Her words came at a frantic pace. “Hua is sick, flowers growing from her mouth, can you help her?”
“My father can,” I said.
Ginny glanced behind me. Perhaps it was her state of crisis that made her flick her eyes so casually and take in the stern Daoshi and the huge monk standing in her hallway, and the prone and shaking form of a girl in the monk’s arms. Ginny spent a perplexed moment observing Meimei’s facelessness, but immediately she became all business. “Dr. Zhou is working on Hua,” she said.
“Listen to me,” my father said, asserting all the authority in that panicked hallway. “Your doctor can’t save her. I can save her, but only with the help of an experienced doctor who knows both Chinese and American medicine. Someone needs to get Dr. Wei and bring him here.”
“I will retrieve the doctor,” Shuai Hu said. “Li-lin, will you . . .?”
He handed the prone form of my “little sister” to me, heavier now than paper but still less weighty than flesh.
“What must be done?” Ginny asked.
Father was immediate. “Bring her, bring both girls, to some large, wide open space, beneath the stars.”
Bok Choy and his wife, both looking stunned and weary, started thinking. It was Ginny who spoke.
“The lumberyard, behind the boot factory.”
Her husband nodded.
My father turned to the tiger monk. “Go, now, get Dr. Wei, take him to my temple, tell him to gather the materials to make two altars, and bring him to the lumberyard.”
It was hard to understand how such a bulky body could move so fast, or how that combination of massive muscles and swift motions could give a sense of humility. But that was Shuai Hu, his huge human shape leaping down the stairs and out the door without a word.
A few minutes later, Father and I, Bok Choy, and Ginny, came out to the lumberyard. My boss’s men had wanted to back him up, but Father insisted they’d only get in the way. We walked past the part of the yard that housed bulky, steam-powered lumber-cutting machines, and crossed to the open space, the soil blanketed with wood chips.
Now, on a broad wooden table, beneath the stars, Meimei and Hua were prostrate, side by side. I placed my satchel against a fence. Hua started thrashing and gasping, slapping her own face, indicating her right eye.
Her iris had lost its shaded brown, and turned the color of ice. And Meimei . . .
My “little sister,” the girl with no face, was no longer featureless.
There was one eye in her face.
It was Hua’s eye.
THIRTY-FIVE
In the cool moist night, in the lumberyard, near the hulking, dormant wood-chippers and choppers, our feet pressed down on wood chips damp from the humidity. Sawdust and wet earth were all I could smell.
Two girls writhed, shrieking. One was human, one was a spirit girl, only visible to the others because this was now the two-hour stretch of night when the universe’s shifting energies would cause many strange things to be seen.
The living girl’s right eye had gone blind. And the girl made of cinders and spirit had sprouted an eye on the right side of her face.
I wanted to scream. Xu Shengdian’s ritual was as deep a violation of the human order as any grotesque spell I’d ever heard of; he was aiming to rip the live girl’s senses away, blinding one eye and then the other, deafening one ear and then the other, and as each sense died, it would be transferred to the girl he’d commissioned as a faceless
paper offering; eventually, Hua would die and some portion of her soul would be transferred to Meimei. The vampire tree’s roots would be bound to that portion of her soul, and once it moved from the world of the living to the spiritual world, the ten thousand year tree would blast Meimei apart from the inside, then propagate and root here.
“Hurry, Brother Hu,” I said, though I knew he was too far to hear.
My father addressed me, my boss, and Ginny, speaking to all three of us as if we were children.
“As soon as Dr. Wei arrives with our tools, I will construct a defensive altar to protect the girls. Li-lin . . .” He trailed off, a lifetime of regrets in his glance.
“You want me to perform a rite to break the power of Xu Shengdian’s altar.”
He nodded.
“Sifu, you are better suited. You could crush him.”
“Li-lin,” he said, “a man can only do one thing at a time. Preserving these girls’ lives is going to be a complex, demanding, and delicate operation.”
“You think I can’t handle it?”
“I know you can’t, Li-lin. I think I can, but that’s only because I watched it done once before. Do you remember what I told you about the last time I saw this kind of affliction? It took thirty Daoshi to keep that vampire tree from growing any bigger or draining any more of that girl’s blood and her qi. Thirty of them, Daughter! They spent days mapping the interactions of the vampire tree with the girl’s energy meridians. I am going to try to reconstruct their defenses from my memory of an event that took place decades ago. And all I will be able to do is prolong her life, not spare it. Someone needs to clash swords against Xu Shengdian, and target his altar; someone needs to break its power. And you are the only one who can.”
“I will do my best,” I said. “But this ten thousand year tree is so far beyond my abilities . . . .”
“Far beyond mine as well, Li-lin. We are lucky that Xu Shengdian can only invoke its resources through crude rituals. If he could simply tell it what to do, we would turn to vapor in the wind.”
“Still, the strength of his spells will far exceed my own.”
“Li-lin, the strength of a certain luosha demon far exceeded yours,” my father said. “You slaughtered him and ate his liver.”
“I did not.”
“It will make a better story if I tell it that way,” he said. “My daughter, devourer of demons.”
“I do not understand how you can joke when the world is on fire,” I said.
“Because there’s nothing else I can do until Dr. Wei gets here!” He glanced at Bok Choy and Ginny, hovering near their sick daughter, stricken. The two of them stared at me and my father like we were their only hope in this world.
Watching my father’s face, I saw him hesitate; he wasn’t sure he should even be here, trying to save the only child of his boss’s rival.
“I know you are risking Mr. Wong’s wrath,” I said. “That is not something you would take lightly. It means a great deal to me that you are here.”
He looked at me for a long time. “Li-lin, you thought I’d let the girl die?”
I took a deep breath. “Of course not. I knew you would help, but it takes courage to transgress, to break the rules, to risk angering your employer. That bravery should be acknowledged.”
“It is my responsibility as a Daoshi,” he said, but I could tell he was pleased. Turning to my boss and his wife, Father raised his voice to be heard. “You need to remember, after tonight, that the doctor and I—two senior specialists—work for the Ansheng tong. The fact that we met here to assist the family of the Xie Liang leader, demonstrates the magnanimity and beneficence of the Ansheng.”
A tense moment. It was never comfortable to be present when two powerful men assess each other’s strength. I glanced to Ginny to learn her tactics; looking as anxious as I felt, she watched her husband and waited for his response. It took the restless man a few moments, but he did call back, “The Ansheng tong has extended its hand in friendship, and the Xie Liang accepts it with gratitude. For services rendered here, we will pay handsomely.” But then a hardness snaked across my boss’s features, and he said, “But if you fail my daughter, my men will shatter every bone in your arms and legs.”
My father’s face lit up, delighted. I rolled my eyes. He replied, “I’d like to see them try.” Ginny looked to me now for guidance, and in gestures I tried to explain that everything was all right; she did not know my father as I did; no violence was brewing; Father had pushed Bok Choy and Bok Choy pushed back, a response my father would respect. Now they’d established a balance of strengths.
“Listen to me now,” my father said. “All Dr. Wei and I can do for the girls is prevent them from dying too quickly. For the hex to be broken, Xu Shengdian’s altar must be destroyed. It’s all in your hands, Li-lin; you need to defeat Xu Shengdian or the deal is off and the girls will die.”
THIRTY-SIX
The night air grew strangely oppressive. The vampire tree’s presence inside Hua was an incursion. The world was under siege.
We were under attack and I wanted to fight back. I wanted to turn around and face it, pummel someone’s face to a bloody mess and splatter their head on the ground. Xu Shengdian first. I would make it slow and painful, draw it out, make him suffer.
No. Stop. Startled by the violence of my own thinking, I shook my head, No. That wasn’t me. When I fought, I fought to protect people, or to serve a higher purpose. I shuddered, realizing the savagery of what I’d just been thinking. Torture was never my way, and it frightened me that those thoughts had ever come through my mind at all.
It was the seedling within Hua. The invasion of its rage and drive to hurt. It permeated the dark. It was pushing us, all of us, toward our most brutal selves. It consumed us with fury.
I glanced at the girls on the table. My boss held his daughter’s hand and bent over her. “Papa’s here,” he said. I watched him for a while, unaccustomed to seeing a father so affectionate.
I took a moment of silence to gather my strengths and turn into steel. If the ten thousand year tree had its way, by morning its spirit-tendrils would overgrow Chinatown, choking us all with despair, spreading ever outwards.
So much power. I felt it, clammy and overwhelming in the gloom. It would turn us into murderers, torturers, and cannibals.
Shuai Hu returned, carrying the chest where my father stored his altar supplies. It must have weighed two hundred pounds. The monk was breathing heavily, though his muscles seemed to show no strain. Sweat glistened on his brow, and tears rolled down his gentle cheeks. I cursed, understanding; the weight of the chest did not bother him; the tree’s presence in the air pressed against him. He was fighting to suppress a tiger’s nature; the force making us bloodthirsty would affect him the strongest.
The tiger monk’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched; his eyes squinted tight. “Brother Hu,” I said. “I think you should not be here.”
He smiled then, but pain lacerated the grin. “There is blood and growling in the wind, Daonu. Can you feel it? Meat and murder in the air, waking my appetites.”
I indicated the two girls on the table. “Here is the source of your bloodlust, Brother Hu. The tree is trying to tear through into the spirit of this region, and we will all feel it; but you perhaps first of us, perhaps worse than the rest.”
And, I thought to myself, with more potential to hurt people. With so much arrayed against us, the last thing I needed was to face a giant tiger mad for blood.
“I hate giving up my strongest and most trusted ally, Brother Hu. But you must go. Run from here, as fast as you can. Flee San Francisco and keep running. Put a river or an ocean between you and here, where the tree may sprout.”
“Daonu,” he said, his eyes clouded with feeling. “I hope you survive this night.”
Emotion was not a luxury I felt I could have, while two girls writhed in throes that could kill them. I said, “So do I, Brother Hu. So do I.” I turned and walked away from Shuai Hu. A moment pa
ssed, and another, and then I heard footsteps begin to run in the other direction, a heavy tread like paws landing on the earth and springing off.
“Li-lin,” my father called, and I saw him and Dr. Wei, circling the table where the two girls were spread out. The old friends moved together, efficient as an army. But I saw what he was indicating, too; the blank expression of my ‘little sister’ now had two eyes, blinking wide, flitting from side to side, panicked. Which meant Hua, my student, the girl I was sworn to protect, had gone blind. I cursed.
“Li-lin,” a woman’s voice said. “How are we going to stop this?”
Mrs. Wei faced me, looking weary and worn. I guessed Shuai Hu had woken her in the middle of the night, banging on the infirmary door, demanding immediate help for my father.
“What do you have with you, Mrs. Wei?”
“Some herbs, fabric to make a spirit bridge, iron nails,” she said. “Even when I was younger, I was never strong, but you are, and if you’re going to help those girls, I want to stand with you.”
“Are you willing to follow orders?”
She paused. “Orders?”
“If a candle goes out, can I tell you to light the candle, and you’ll do it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Without hesitation.”
“Me too,” another woman said, and Ginny joined us. Beside me in my smudged, dirty, torn, and bloodied robe and Mrs. Wei looking half-asleep, my boss’s wife looked glamorous and beautiful. Somehow, even though she’d been in a state of panic, not a single hair on her head looked out of place. But her makeup was a mess.
Tears had run through the goo on her eyelashes, congealing. Smudged, the bluish blot beneath her eyes more closely resembled a black eye than a subtly shaded look. But no, a black eye suggests a victim, and even with her face blotched with smeared makeup, she looked nothing like a victim.
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