by Yangsze Choo
“Are you Li Lan, of the Pan family?” The guttural voice shook the walls. Rank stench filled the air; in these enclosed quarters, it induced an animallike panic. I barely controlled the urge to bolt. Fan could only gibber in terror. My father and Amah stared at her in astonishment and I realized that they could not see it.
“I asked, are you Li Lan?”
Fan blinked frantically. “What do you want?”
“She’s gone mad!” said my father.
Amah ran to her side, but Fan’s eyes were fixed on the demon.
“I have been sent to fetch the daughter of this house,” it said.
“No—oh no! I’m not Li Lan!”
“You match the description I was given.”
“There’s been a mistake!” Fan gabbled. “I’m not her. I’m just . . . taking care of her body.”
My father and Amah were distraught now, thinking that she had lost her mind. The demon narrowed its eyes at her. The cavernous mouth, bristling with teeth, dropped open. I could almost feel the heat of its fetid breath.
“My orders were to bring you back to the Lim mansion,” it said.
“No!” Fan was backing away. “I know the laws of the afterworld. You’re not allowed to take a living person!”
There was a pause, as though it was pondering this. It occurred to me that she might be right. A gleam of defiance shone in her eye. “This is my body now.”
Amah lunged forward as though she had suddenly made up her mind. With her right hand, she slapped a spell paper onto Fan’s forehead. The effect was instantaneous. Fan’s eyes rolled up and she crumpled like a paper doll. My father gave a cry of despair. But I could see what they could not. Fan’s spirit was abruptly cast out of my body. Shocked, she stumbled forward. At that instant, the demon leaped forward and snatched her. I saw her white, terrified face, the mouth opened in a silent scream. Then with a single bound, it carried her off into the night.
Amah and my father gathered around my fallen body. Amah was wailing, “I shouldn’t have done it! The medium said not to use it. It might sever all bonds.” But I felt an intense pain in my chest. It was pulling me, like a rope that was tightening and squeezing. Gasping, I ran toward my body and collapsed on it.
Chapter 36
A lone sunbeam illuminated the foot of my bed. The burble of pigeons and the rhythmic scrapes of Old Wong sweeping the courtyard rose through the open window. It was an utterly ordinary morning, except that I was back in my body. Amah was kneeling at my bedside again, where she had fallen asleep at her post. Gently, I touched her sparse gray hair.
“Amah,” I said.
“Is it really you?” She had aged, though she was still younger than my mother had appeared in the Plains of the Dead.
“Yes.”
“Oh, Li Lan! My little girl!” She stroked my face. “Where did you go?”
“Someone else took my body,” I said.
“I know. I knew she wasn’t you.”
We held on to each other for a long time. Later I would tell her a little about my wanderings. But not too much. I was mindful of Old Wong’s injunctions. I didn’t want to trouble Amah, superstitious as she was. Of my mother, I said little other than I had seen her and she had helped me. Amah was tearful. I didn’t tell her about how my mother had aged, nor the life she led as a servant in the Plains of the Dead. To my father, we said nothing other than I had recovered from a brain fever. He seemed to accept it, just as he accepted the odd events of the night before. No doubt the opium affected his perceptions.
It was strange to be back in my body. I spent some time examining my fingernails, the blue pulse in my wrists, and the crisp ligaments of my knees and ankles. They were a wonder to me, yet also completely undistinguished. Within a few days, I would forget about them completely. Yet I was grateful. In the end my body had, indeed, called to me, just as the doctor had said it should. Uneasily, I considered whether it was only until Fan had taken it, and showed me how charming and seductive my body could be, that I had wanted it back so fiercely. Or maybe it was some quality of Er Lang’s shape-changing qi. Once or twice I caught myself pouting or glancing sideways from lowered lashes in the mirror, and recoiled. If these were habits my body had acquired, I would have to be careful.
There was some weakness in my legs and arms caused by the weeks of lying in bed. Amah had massaged my limbs daily, which had helped, but Fan had done nothing to improve their condition. She had only been interested in looking beautiful. As much as I disliked her, however, even she didn’t deserve such a fate. I couldn’t forget the sheer terror in her face in those last moments. It frightened me, to think that such creatures had been looking for me. I could only guess that it was some last, desperate plan of Lim Tian Ching’s, or Master Awyoung’s before his arrest, and I wondered again what had happened in the world of the spirits. For I missed it. Although I had spent so much time trying to get back into my body, I felt restless and anxious, longing for the freedom to wander to unknown places. Being half-dead, despite its drawbacks, had been far more interesting than being constrained to my limited social circle. Guiltily, I tried to put such thoughts from my mind. I was grateful, very grateful to be back. Still, I chafed at my restrictions. Perhaps this contact with the spirit world had, indeed, spoiled me, as Old Wong had warned. He had said it was a taint, not a talent, and a dark melancholy filled me as I considered how similar his words were to the medium’s at the Sam Poh Kong temple. My skin prickled at odd moments and I started at shadows, though I could no longer see anything. Yet I felt the presence of the unknown, the filmy touch of vapors that eddied in dark corners. It crossed my mind that these sensations were caused by spirits and that they hung, translucent as jellyfish, in the very air that I passed through. I had experienced a hidden realm, which though terrifying, had also been a source of pure wonder. Lying in my familiar bed, I recalled the spirit lights as they bloomed in the darkness like cold and silent fireworks; the mystical creatures that gathered in the streets of Malacca, that perhaps even now still conducted their odd business every night. And I remembered an impossibly handsome face, once seen by moonlight.
Nothing pleased me as it had before, not even Tian Bai. He came to see me almost every day, just as charming and pleasant as before. But I was no longer the same girl who had been so impressed by his worldliness and his travels. One afternoon we sat together in the front room, just as he had sat with Fan. She was like a shadow between us. Although she was gone, I still found evidence of her at every turn: the hairpins she had discarded, the new dresses she had ordered to be tailored. Fan had accumulated quite a collection of jewelry in the short time she had possessed my body, most of it gifts from Tian Bai, no doubt. Strangely, she had hidden it all over the house, as though she didn’t quite trust her good fortune and was squirreling it away in case of an emergency. I felt sorry for her every time I came across one of these caches, even though she had quite willingly consigned me to the fate of a hungry ghost.
“What are you thinking?” asked Tian Bai. He had brought me a slim jade bangle that day, mottled green and white like the bark of a jungle tree. I resented the fact that he didn’t seem to realize I wasn’t the same girl who had coveted such presents. But Tian Bai had brought it out so hopefully, the dimple in his left cheek appearing as he slipped it onto my wrist, that I couldn’t hold a grudge against him.
“I don’t feel very well,” I said.
Once again, I regretted never telling him that I had been dispossessed from my body. If I had told him from the beginning, perhaps things would have been different. Yet, he had helped me even without knowing it. He had given me Chendana, whom I could no longer see or find. I worried about her, anxious if she still stood patiently in the street outside our house.
“You haven’t seemed like yourself recently,” he said. “Is something troubling you?”
Sometimes I wondered why I didn’t tell him, but I was afraid he wou
ld think me mad. There was some stigma over my purported brain fever. He didn’t say it, but I heard from the servants that the Lim family still thought to cancel the marriage if I proved incompetent. If that should occur, what would happen to my father’s debts? And I loved Tian Bai, didn’t I? Still, there was no denying I was cooler toward him. I let him caress my hair and embrace me. He even kissed me, gently and with great tenderness. But Fan was always there between us. I couldn’t forget how free she had been with my body, and in some ways, I felt violated. I wished I knew whether he noticed we had changed places, or worse still, preferred her to me. She had been far more affectionate, coquettishly hanging on his every word. In contrast, I was melancholy and often withdrawn.
My thoughts turned endlessly to Lim Tian Ching’s accusations of murder. Despite Tian Bai’s explanations, I felt the stain of suspicion in my heart, like a fungus that would spread swiftly if unchecked. Tian Bai was patient. He didn’t comment on my reserve, nor did he ask for more than I would give. I wished that I could lift this doubt, which was Lim Tian Ching’s dark wedding gift to me.
“I heard something about you,” I said at last.
“Oh?” His eyes creased at the corners.
“Perhaps it was only a rumor. But I wanted to ask you myself.”
He ran his finger down the nape of my neck, the same gesture he had used with Fan. “Is this what’s been troubling you?” he said. “I suppose it’s only fair that you should know, since we’re to be married.”
I waited, my heart in my mouth. He walked over to the front window.
“I’m older than you, Li Lan. I won’t deny that I’ve had other relationships. There was a woman that I loved in Hong Kong.”
“Isabel,” I said, before I could stop myself. He looked surprised.
“So you heard the gossip. But it was impossible from both sides.”
“Was there a child?” I asked, hating myself for being so intrusive.
“No. There was no child. She married someone else, and that is also why I didn’t seek you out and marry you when I first returned from Hong Kong. You must have been surprised that we were betrothed for so long, even before my cousin died. But I think it was better this way. I didn’t know you then, you see.”
He smiled at me, that slow beguiling smile that had captivated me from the beginning. I couldn’t help myself. I went over and put my arms around him. He kissed me then, a lingering kiss that made my cheeks grow hot.
“You look like a schoolgirl,” Tian Bai said, tugging on my braids. “You must put your hair up when we get married.”
Later, I chided myself for not pressing him about his cousin’s death. When we were together it felt like a foolish suspicion, but when I was alone it returned to haunt me. Just as I wondered what his expression was when I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t forget that cold, almost appraising look with which Tian Bai had fleetingly regarded Fan when she was still in my body, and I wondered again if he had truly not noticed we had switched places.
I was searching the house, as was my custom now. I had been searching it ever since I returned and that was how I had discovered Fan’s little hoards. But I wasn’t interested in jewelry. I was looking for Er Lang’s scale. Like Chendana, it too had disappeared once I returned to my body; and try as I might, I could not find it. I was afraid that I had left it on Bukit China among the graves, and even persuaded Amah to return with me to the Sam Poh Kong temple—to pay my respects, I said. All the way there and back, I scanned the road anxiously from the rickshaw, but there was nothing to be seen. I couldn’t even be sure of the spot where I had fallen from Chendana and where Er Lang had given me part of his life.
For more than anything else, I wanted to see Er Lang again. To see his oversize hat, hear his irreverent remarks. To scold him for leaving me for so long, with no further word. I told myself that he had always come back for me, even from the brink of death. Surely he would return, though I feared there might be no more reason to do so. I still had questions. Whether Lim Tian Ching had really filed a suit against Tian Bai in the spirit world for murder, as he had boasted he would. And if I was needed as a witness against Master Awyoung and the Old Master. Only Er Lang could tell me those things. But his last words had merely underscored the fact that he wanted to preserve me for his records. An inexpressible sadness haunted me. I wished that I had never seen his face, yet it was seared into my memory. He had warned me not to look at him. Why had I not listened?
In the tales I had read from China, the interactions between spirits and humans were often tantalizingly unresolved. The chrysanthemum nymph’s plant was cut down, the bee princess returned to her hive, and even the cowherd’s happiness with his celestial bride was short-lived. Yet every time the wind blew hard enough to rattle the shutters or heavy rain lashed the house, I ran to the windows. But Er Lang did not come.
Chapter 37
Tian Bai and I were to be married in two months’ time. I sought to delay the wedding, pleading illness and the fact that the year of mourning for Lim Tian Ching was not yet up. Tian Bai said he would consider it. In the meantime, Amah and I were sewing my trousseau. Amah was happy. At last I was to be married, though my eighteenth birthday had passed unnoticed during my supposed illness. It was the culmination of her ambitions to see me as the first wife in a great household. My father wandered around as though a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Even Old Wong was pleased with me, though he couldn’t help scolding me from time to time. But sometimes, when the moonlight stole through my bedroom window, I felt tears sting my eyes. And sometimes, when Tian Bai was sitting with me, I found I could barely meet his gaze.
The rains were very heavy that year. The monsoon came early and the streets turned to mud. Clothes hung out to dry remained damp from the humidity. Amah sighed and said we would never get my trousseau done in time. Other girls had spent most of their childhoods preparing a chest of elaborately embroidered materials, from napkins to bed curtains, but I had little to show in that department. She finally gave up the faint hope that we would be able to sew my trousseau before the wedding and decided to hire a seamstress instead. Still, Amah felt terribly ashamed that it wouldn’t be my own handiwork on show that day.
“Your mother did everything herself,” she said. “She even made five pairs of beaded slippers!”
I had seen those slippers, embroidered in eye-wateringly tiny beads. It was hopeless to think I could replicate them, even if Amah complained that my father had wasted my time with studies. Secretly, I thought that if he hadn’t taught me to read, I would never have been able to decipher the letter that Lim Tian Ching’s great-uncle had held in the Plains of the Dead. But that was not the world I lived in, though I sometimes quailed at the thought that if I married Tian Bai, I would be doomed to reenter the ghostly halls of the Lim mansion after my death. In any case, there were other things that demanded my attention. I was to be married, a wife and hopefully a mother. Friends and neighbors congratulated my father on such a fortunate match. I was very lucky, they said. The luckiest girl in Malacca.
I hoped that these preparations would give me an opportunity to see Yan Hong. There were many things I wanted to ask her, most pressingly about the teacup she had hidden in her room. Tian Bai seemed pleased that I had taken such a fancy to his cousin, yet he was disinclined to arrange a visit to the Lim mansion.
“After we’re married, it will be your home,” he said. “There’s no need to rush. My aunt is not well.”
I wondered, disloyally, whether he was trying to shield me from his aunt’s disapproval, or prevent me from finding out more about his family. Or even, more ominously, whether the spirit of Lim Tian Ching still lingered in their household, despite Er Lang’s promises of arrest. But the more gen
tly he dissuaded me, the more determined I was to talk to Yan Hong.
And so, when Old Wong mentioned he meant to return some cake molds borrowed from the Lim household, I said I would go with him. Of all people, he was the one who most understood my concerns, although I dared not tell him all the details. He blew out his cheeks.
“Little Miss, things are finally going well. Must you dig further?”
Not meeting his eyes, I nodded.
“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing lately,” he remarked, and surprisingly, said no more about it.
We entered the Lim household through the servants’ quarters. The household staff paid me little heed, taking me for Old Wong’s assistant in my plain sam foo. I was glad of it. The last thing I wanted was to sit in some front parlor, fielding polite chatter with various relatives of the Lim family and losing my chance to speak privately with Yan Hong. In other ways too, the anonymity was comforting, reminding me of the time I had spent in the kitchens of that other, ghostly Lim mansion. For the hundredth time, I wondered how my mother fared and if we would ever meet again in this life.
“Is Yan Hong here?” I asked a servant.
“She’s in the garden.”
I had never walked through the outer garden before and couldn’t possibly have found her if the servant had not guided me. It seemed a long way as we wended through walkways and arbors and traversed wide lawns. These were laid out in the English fashion, the grass pressed by heavy rollers and trimmed so that it resembled the short fur on a cat’s back. Like the other great mansions along Klebang Road, the extensive grounds backed onto the sea. A low wall covered with a fiery tangle of bougainvillea was all that separated it from the steep drop below. Yan Hong seemed pleased, albeit surprised, to see me, although her complexion was puffy and dull.
