The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  “I can fight,” she said, producing a knife. It might have been more accurate to describe it as a toy; though it was long, sleek steel, it also was flashy, shiny, and imbalanced. Her left hand looked clumsy and awkward holding it.

  “Ginny, is that even your dominant hand?”

  “This is the hand my husband taught me to use when I wield a knife.”

  I stared at her for a long moment. “You learned knife-fighting from him? Ginny, if he didn’t have bodyguards, little children would beat him up and steal his money.”

  She said nothing, but I saw her determination.

  “Try to avoid fighting, Ginny,” I said. “Will you follow orders?”

  “Save my little girl, Li-lin. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  Hua’s fate, Meimei’s fate, the fate of Chinatown and the entire spiritual analogue of this whole region, were all in my hands. And the hands of the women at my side.

  Xu Shengdian’s hexes worked through brutal symmetries: faces were stolen or switched, roots of the ancient tree branching from the human world to the world of the spirits, his reflection in the water basin replacing my own, the bones of cats held together with string and affixed with nonsensical symbols.

  “He will have an altar,” I told my women, working to reconstruct how a boy might imagine Gong Tau. “He fed seeds to Hua. Four seeds, for the word. There will be a drawing on his altar representing Hua. To make the effigy on his altar correspond with your daughter, he probably took something that belonged to her, or was taken from her body, fingernail clippings or—”

  “Hair,” Ginny said. “The other day, he combed her hair.”

  “Four of her hairs, then,” Mrs. Wei said.

  I nodded. “Four nails to represent the seeds, also. Each nail tied with a strand of Hua’s hair. He’d hammer them into his drawing, affixing the drawing to his altar. He needs to represent the seeds germinating, but his ten thousand year tree didn’t awaken in soil and water; it woke in blood. To activate the seeds within Hua’s belly, he needed to pour blood over them.”

  “Whose blood?”

  “Not hers, Ginny,” I said. “His own. His hexes work because he’s sending messages to the ancient tree, but he didn’t know that when he was a child; all he knew was that when he performed a childish imitation of what he’d heard about Gong Tau magic, the spells would work. So he’s developed his own private system of self-harm, horror, and symmetry. He degrades his body and robes his rituals with grotesqueries, as a way to draw power from the tree; all the rituals do is intensify his aims and transmit them.

  “He’s there right now, I’m sure of it, sitting near his altar, preparing another hex, while the four hair-tied nails pinning Hua’s picture to the altar are soaking in his blood. We will come at him through his symmetries. We will find the string that connects the seeds on his altar with the seeds inside Hua’s belly; we will track that string like hunters following paw prints until they lead us to his altar, and then we will storm him with fire and destruction.”

  “Don’t hold back, Li-lin,” Ginny said.

  “There will be no holding back. Tonight we fight for Hua, for Meimei, and for Anjing. Tonight he dies.”

  They nodded fiercely.

  “We want him dead,” I said, “but first, and more important, we must break his ritual. That means either destroying his altar or removing the nails from his effigy of Hua. He’s playing a game of mirrors: Hua is mirrored in Meimei and in his paper outline. He won’t see it coming when we play a mirror game of our own. We’ll build an effigy of his altar.”

  “How do you intend to do that?” Mrs. Wei said.

  “We know some of what’s on it,” I said. “He has an effigy of Hua, with four nails driven into it, each of the nails tied with a strand of Hua’s hair, and blood spilled over it. We will make our own imitation of his effigy; we will draw a child’s outline, we will take four of Hua’s hairs and tie them to iron nails, and hammer those nails into the outline. Then we’ll magically bind the two altars together, and we will pull out the nails, one by one.”

  “That’s all?” Ginny said.

  “The best spells are simple and direct,” I said.

  “How do you intend to bind the altars together?” Mrs. Wei said. “As I see it, you’d be missing one essential ingredient: Xu Shengdian spilled his own blood over the nails.”

  Smiling, I held up my rope dart, its spikes painted with brown, dry blood.

  “That’s his blood, Li-lin? You hit him with that and drew blood?”

  “Yes, Ginny. I should have killed him, but I failed.”

  “Li-lin, when this is over, my husband needs to give you a raise. And that weapon with that bastard’s blood on it needs to be hung on the wall like a trophy.”

  “Ginny,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I will need your daughter’s Eight Details.”

  I’d asked for this information before and she’d refused to share it. Now, she nodded, gathered inkbrush and paper, and wrote Hua’s details on the page. She handed it back to me, and I caught my breath as I finally understood why my boss’s wife found it so important to keep her daughter’s details private.

  Most Chinese family names are pronounced with one single syllable and written with a single character; Ginny had written Hua’s family name with multiple characters, and it was a name I recognized.

  Did Bok Choy know that his beloved daughter had been fathered by another man?

  Did anyone but Ginny and me know that the girl was only half-Chinese?

  And that name, that name, with all the power and pull and influence wrapped into it. Those characters were the Chinese transliteration of an English name, a famous American family; tycoons, financiers, businessmen, railroad barons, and politicians, that family counted among the richest and most powerful people in the world.

  I raised my eyes to see Ginny gazing sharply at me. She knew how much she was revealing here, and what a dangerous secret she’d just confided in me.

  Ginny’s eyes remained hard as diamonds while I stood open-mouthed absorbing this revelation. “Tell no one,” she said.

  I nodded, and forced myself to continue my preparations. “Water cup,” I said, reaching out a hand, and Mrs. Wei slipped a cup into it. I placed the cup upon my altar. Holding Hua’s Eight Details sheet, I said, “Match,” and Ginny loaded a match into my hand.

  Though the sheet was merely rice paper, it felt like it was heavy with the realities of Hua’s parentage; her birth father’s name on the page made it weigh enough that my hand hurt, clutching it. When flame ate the paper, I felt relieved. I mixed the ashes into the water and swirled the mixture in its bowl.

  “Lamp oil,” I said, and my women went to fetch some.

  Meanwhile, Father and Dr. Wei had unpacked the chest, laying out Father’s implements side-by-side with the doctor’s surgical tools. My father’s face told me to come and arm myself. I did not hesitate.

  Silent and efficient, we worked together to choose our weapons for the long night ahead.

  There were two long, scarf-like stretches of black silk, intended to be worn around the head. People said this kind of sash looked like a single horizontal brushstroke, which is the character Yi, meaning one, so these headbands were called Yizi Jin—yi-character headpieces. A flat oval of polished stone was mounted in the center of each headband.

  The first headband was jeweled by a flat of bright amethyst the size of an egg. So light a lavender, it was nearly transparent. My father would have soaked this particular amethyst in moonlight during the three nights when the moon was fullest. I could draw upon the inherent nature of the stone, its “wind and water,” in order to create a spiritual Bubble of Violet Flame to shield my altar and defend it from attack.

  My other option was a fire agate the size of my fist. The oval of polished stone showed a swirling pattern of iridescent orange tinged with red; it made me think of fire and blood. In the Han Dynasty, people said fire agates were formed when the blood of evil demons congealed. If I selected this
stone, I’d be able to summon its essence into myself and express it with the power of the Fifth Ordination, making the candleflames burn hotter on my altar, the lights glow brighter, in order to help banish creatures of evil.

  If there was ever a time for me to choose blood and fire over benevolence and protection, it was this night. A cold wind entered the lumberyard and died here in a swirl of sawdust. I seized the headband with the fire agate; my father took the amethyst.

  I wrapped the Yi-Character Headband around my head and tied it into my hair so the polished fire-colored stone would shine from my forehead like a red third eye. Fire and blood: tonight the fire would belong to me; the blood that spilled would pour from the man who had hurt three girls.

  Anjing, he asphyxiated with the brightly blooming fronds of a vampire tree; Meimei, he created faceless; now Hua, a child of attentiveness and glee, writhed while a parasitic tree grew inside her.

  One man was responsible for all of this.

  I looked to the doctor’s wife, rummaging through potent clusters of dried herbs, and to Ginny on the other side, clumsy dagger in hand. It seemed right, somehow. Three girls had been Xu Shengdian’s victims; three women were going to avenge them.

  My father and I set up our pair of portable altars. Father and I moved back and forth as we selected items from the chest and laid out our altars for their respective purposes; his altar was meant for delicate surgery, mine for brutal war.

  We sped back and forth, making room for each other at every step, moving together like dancers who had been dancing together for decades.

  When the tools had been divided, Father and I nodded to each other. It was not his curt nod but his valediction. He was saying, potentially, goodbye.

  “Father,” I said. “We each go to fight a separate battle. Before you and I go to our own altars to protect the innocent and fight the evil, there’s something I need to say to you.”

  “What’s that, Li-lin?”

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” I said.

  He looked startled, but quickly his expression changed. His wry surprise, and his small, acknowledging nod, meant everything to me in that moment.

  And then we went our separate ways.

  It was time for me to face my enemy.

  Time to kill or die.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  At the width of my shoulders I placed a pair of red candles in copper holders on the altar table. I inhaled the moonlight and, in the crucible of my being, transformed it into sunlight, which I breathed out as I lit the Sun Candle, then, inhaling sunlight and exhaling it as moonlight, lit the Moon Candle.

  Somewhere in this foggy night, in whatever grubby hole he’d found to hide out, Xu Shengdian would be opening a jar full of squirming maggots. He would smear corpse oil on his face; he would drink ghost urine. To draw upon the harsh powers of his ten thousand year tree, his rituals would drag him through filth.

  His was a world where what was buried, rots; where what was wounded, festers. I wanted a world where what was buried can take root; where what was wounded, can heal.

  I arranged three sticks of white sandalwood incense and set the triple incense aflame. Sanctified smoke fueled the altar with divine power, and energized me.

  My peachwood sword’s edge had blackened a bit, a lip of char where a demon’s dying breath scorched the wood. My weapon and my sacred tool, it fit my hands, perfecting something within me; holding it, I felt strong.

  I heard Ginny gasp, and turned to see her and Mrs. Wei staring transfixed at my altar candles. No, not at them; through them. They were looking at my representation of Xu Shengdian’s altar, and seeing it for what it really was. I joined them, and saw, through the heat ripples from the candle flame and my burning lotus lantern, the twisted man himself, at his altar.

  One eye was blackened, nearly swollen shut. The whole side of his face had swelled up, black and blue with broken blood vessels. The left side of his lips looked like they’d been stung by bees. I felt a fleeting moment of ferocious pride, seeing how the dapper gambler looked more like a plague victim than his handsome, smiling self: all my doing. His earth-brown jacket and white button-down shirt-and-bowtie were the height of American fashion, yet he slouched through a dim room full of animal skeletons, tarry candles, and clay jugs.

  A wicker basket sat on the ground, churning with hissing, writhing, rattling snakes. His altar was simple wood, and a sheet of paper held an ink outline representing Hua; four rusty iron nails protruded from her midsection, each cinched with a hair and resting amid a crusting of dried blood.

  A statue loomed behind him. A thing of menace and grasping arms, clawed hands, and gleaming knives, it seemed a child’s frightened nightmares had all been carved in stone. Though the statue was only about three feet high, its wings spread wide, and its reptilian face showed a ridge of sharp fangs. Its humanoid body had too many arms, holding some sort of tool or weapon in each hand.

  It made me pause, realizing this was how a little boy might imagine a frightening, evil power. He had seen the ancient tree as a divine monstrosity, when in fact it had been a force of nature corrupted by humans, in our cruelty. Yet looking upon the statue, I felt it somehow contained the secret to Mr. Xu’s mind; studying it could tell me who my enemy was. But staring at it made me feel like the world had gone darker, as if its shadow stretched over me, consuming all the light.

  Shuddering, I looked away from the idol, and took in more of Xu’s lair. In the back, incongruous in the bone-strewn altar area, a large, shiny machine rested on wheels. His automobile.

  I needed to learn my enemy, his mind and his weaponry, so I forced myself to turn my gaze back to the hideous statue. I studied it, looking closely to see what it carried with its many arms. Some hands grasped little knives, one wielded a heavy coiled whip, another held a long chain, another arm was a branding iron. Looking at it, I realized I’d misunderstood the statue. No, this wasn’t how Xu Shengdian saw the tree when he was young; the nightmare statue’s hands wielded a slaver’s tools; the monster was a physical representation of slavery. Just thinking of it made me feel chilled.

  My enemy went about his rituals, chanting and bowing. He moved with confidence among his ritual implements, reaching into a jar and withdrawing a hand full of writhing maggots.

  He caught sight of us. To him we would appear like the disembodied faces of witches gazing through a window in the air above his altar.

  I grabbed hold of a thick shaft of incense, swiftly brushed my palm to its lit red end, and swung my arm hard, hurling sparks through the aperture formed by my altar candles.

  The sparks reached Xu Shengdian’s altar and screamed in, scorching his clothes and skin. His eyes wide, his hands tamped out the flames on his brown jacket and white shirt, and then he glanced at the palm of one hand. I could tell it hurt.

  At the surrogate altar I raised my hand palm-up above the nails in Hua’s effigy. “One!” I shouted. “Two! Three! Four! All seeds, burn!”

  On Xu Shengdian’s altar, the nails rattled in the wood. He ran to his representation and covered the nails with his hands.

  Mrs. Wei joined at my right side, Ginny to my left. I led the chant. “One! Two! Three! Four! All seeds, burn!”

  At Xu Shengdian’s altar and at my effigy, the ring of Hua’s hair knotted around one of the nails burst into fire. Scowling, he yanked his hand away.

  From the table where Father and Dr. Wei were preserving the girl, I heard her convulse; this was a good thing. We had killed one of her parasites. With pinching fingers I yanked the corresponding nail from my effigy and threw it down.

  Xu Shengdian sprinted away from his altar, yanking lids off of his jars and jugs. Preparing some sort of counterattack. His preparations gave us time to strike.

  “One! Two! Three! All seeds, burn! One! Two! Three!” we chanted. “All seeds, burn!”

  At the second iteration, another nail on our joined altars flared up like a match, and Hua’s stolen hair burned to nothing. I pinched the second nail an
d plucked it out like a splinter.

  Xu Shengdian returned to his altar, holding a writhing snake. Fingers grasped beneath its chin so it couldn’t bite him, he chose a meaty section and closed his mouth on the snake’s belly. He bit; he tore; he rended; he chewed. Blood filled his mouth and ran down his chin. He spit the living snake’s blood in a murky red spray onto his monster-shaped statue.

  I signaled to my women to start a third round of our spell. “One! Two! All seeds, burn! One! Two! All seeds, burn!”

  I waited for something to happen, but neither of the remaining nails blossomed into flame. Across the altar, snake-blood was dripping from Xu Shengdian’s mouth and chin, and he was gloating.

  Mrs. Wei leaned in to me. “The fresh spray of blood allowed him to call on more of the tree’s power,” she said. “He’s grown too strong for us.”

  I took a breath, allowing that to sink in. “I need to build my reserves of spiritual power,” I said. “There isn’t much I can do right now, but if I focus and cultivate internal energy, it could give me the advantage we need.”

  Beginning my silent meditation, I closed my eyes, went deep, and started gathering internal force. The intensity of my spiritual abilities built up, the way a fire grows hotter, and then I began reciting words of sacred scripture, feeling the energies within me flow smooth as silk in a breeze.

  When I felt ready, I opened my eyes. Mrs. Wei stood near me. At my other side, Ginny looked regal and glamorous as ever. “The doctor and your father say Hua is doing better,” she said.

  A flush raised inside me, recognizing the submerged praise in their words. I reached a hand to each of my women now, my fingers spread wide. We joined hands. I inhaled. Ginny and Mrs. Wei followed my lead, chanting, “One! Two! All seeds, burn! One! Two! All—” and then the strand of hair knotted around the third nail bloomed fire.

  Xu Shengdian watched the blossoming of flame with a grim expression. Pressing the point of his curved ceremonial dagger against the palm of one hand, he started to cut himself. He drove it deep; this was not a simple bloodletting, he was ruining his hand. Seeing it happen made me wince. Xu Shengdian squeezed the scored hand into a fist, and kept squeezing, as one would press an orange to express the juice; but it was his own blood that was dripping, onto his nightmare of a statue. This was another ratcheting upward, another increase in aggression; harming himself worse than before could only mean he was throwing a more serious attack at us.