The Girl with Ghost Eyes (17 page)

With my husband gone, I stopped climbing to the roof to watch the sun rise. Part of me believed that dawn would never come again in a world where my husband was dead.

My father grieved as deeply as I did. He had loved Rocket like a son. My father grieved, Tom Wong grieved, and I grieved, but never did we grieve together.

Nothing made sense, nothing ever made sense since that day, and nothing would ever make sense again.

Nothing made sense but the Dao.

The Way, and its power. The perfect order that underlies the universe. I had studied the Dao all my life, because my father wanted me to study; but for the first time, I studied the Dao by my own choice. It was important for me to understand the interconnections between all things. The Dao brought harmony to the discord between yin and yang. The Dao made sense. It gave me something to believe in, and that was all that mattered.

I asked my father if I could take Rocket’s place as his assistant. He reluctantly agreed. I chose to carry on my husband’s mission as my own. I would become a protector, as a tribute to the man I loved.

Tom Wong grieved differently. I remembered seeing him now and then, in the months that followed. Maybe he felt guilty for bringing the constables. Maybe he blamed himself for having faith in the authorities. Tom seemed as lost as I was. He looked like his higher soul had been diminished. He lost weight, maybe twenty pounds. The color left his lips. I wanted to console him, or maybe I wanted him to console me, but somehow even talking with my husband’s pretty friend would have felt like a betrayal.

No one consoled me, and I immersed myself in the Dao. Now I realized Tom had found something different to believe in. He would never trust any authorities to protect him again. Instead he had come to believe in standing up to his enemies, gaining power at any cost, and proving that power to the world. After tomorrow night, all the people of Chinatown would tremble at his name. Soon enough the whole world would quake in fear. Tomorrow night, a Kulou-Yuanling was going to rise. An old terror would re-enter the world.

“Unless I stop it,” I said out loud, and it was then I realized I had stopped crying.

“Stop what?” Mr. Yanqiu asked.

“The ritual. That’s the weak point. If Liu Qiang manages to complete the ritual, then the Kulou-Yuanling will rise. It will kill everyone in its path. It will destroy everything. And no one will be able to fight it.”

“Stop the ritual, and you stop the monster,” the eye mused.

“That’s a plan,” I said.

“That’s not a plan,” the eye said, turning in the teacup to face me, “that’s an idiot telling a moron to do something stupid. You can’t fight them, Li-lin, and you know it. You don’t even know how many of the hatchetmen are following Tom Wong. And then there’s Liu Qiang! It would be dire enough if you had to fight a Daoshi of the Fifth Ordination, but he went and became a soulstealer and learned some yao shu and he can call upon evil spirits, and did I forget to mention something? Oh yes,” he said, “his arm is a great big snake monster! With three eyes!”

“You think I should let my father handle this.”

“Obviously.”

I scowled at Mr. Yanqiu. He was clearly my father’s eye. “Why haven’t I destroyed you yet?”

He shrugged. “I’m giving you good advice here, Li-lin.”

“You’re still trying to save me,” I said.

“It’s my nature.”

“You could find a hobby.”

“Saving you is my hobby. It’s like gambling—a reckless, self-destructive hobby that only a fool would pursue.”

I smiled, glad for a little levity. “Mr. Yanqiu, my father is resting in an infirmary bed. He was still recuperating from gouging out his eye when a big dog monster chewed him half to death. He shouldn’t even be standing up right now, let alone going off to fight.”

The eye appraised me from his cup. “So what do you think you should do?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, taking a sip of my tea. “I can find allies.”

“Mrs. Wei offered to teach you her magic.”

“I won’t be taking her offer,” I said. “First, her magic rituals involve shen-da, activities which harm the body.”

“Like gouging her arm?”

“Yes, like that, but if I were to perform shen-da, I’d also probably need to slit my tongue, pierce my cheeks with a spike, or beat myself with a barbed rod. I might need to burn my fingertips until they lose sensation, or roll naked over thorny branches.”

“I see,” Mr. Yanqiu said.

“With a bloodied tongue, my incantations would be weaker. With burned fingers, my shoujue gestures would be less precise. After beating myself or rolling in thorns, I would not fight as well.”

“That all makes sense,” the eyeball said. “But what if her magic would give you what you need to beat Liu Qiang?”

I smiled. “That brings me to my second point, Mr. Yanqiu. Her magic wouldn’t give me enough.”

“How do you know, Li-lin?”

“Mrs. Wei said as much. She offered to teach me her people’s magic, and she offered to help me find her people’s spirit servants. But she also told me the Daoshi defeated her people’s spells and killed their spirits.”

“I see,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “Asking for Mrs. Wei’s help would mean inflicting harm on yourself, and all you’d get in return would be spirits too weak to fight Daoshi.”

I nodded.

“So when you said you could find allies,” he said, “who did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking of Bok Choy.”

My father’s eye sputtered in the teacup. “Li-lin, if Bok Choy helps you, you’ll be cast out from the Ansheng tong. This whole side of town will be off-limits to you. Half the gangsters in town will raise their hatchets at the sight of you.”

I sighed and turned my head away. Not far from me a man was selling fireworks from a cart. Across the street a woman with bound feet was haggling with a butcher, while two small children waited behind her.

These were the people who lived in Chinatown. They crossed an ocean in pursuit of a dream. And I imagined them dead. I imagined their bodies crushed or torn to pieces by the Kulou-Yuanling. The image filled me with a nauseated feeling, a feeling of helplessness and horror. I made up my mind.

“I have to do something,” I said. “In the morning I’ll go to Xie Liang headquarters,” I told the spirit. “Tomorrow I’m going to talk with Bok Choy.”

The eye dipped underwater and somehow blew little bubbles. When he came up, he said, “Could you do me a favor?”

“What do you have in mind, Mr. Yanqiu?”

“Could you destroy me now? Please?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to destroy me sooner or later,” he said. “I’m a monster and it’s your duty. But my duty, my only duty, is to keep you safe. So I would greatly prefer it if you would destroy me now, so I don’t have to watch you get murdered by gangsters.”

I stared at him for a long moment, and then I began to laugh. With my thumb I dunked his head under the water. He bobbed back up with an undignified look on his eye.

“You don’t ever give me face,” he said.

“You haven’t got a face, Mr. Yanqiu.”

He harrumphed.

17

When the sun went down I stood on the steps to Father’s temple and called for Mao’er. He did not come. I went back inside and came out with a flask of lamp oil. “Mao’er,” I called again. A pair of red lacquered lanterns hung outside the temple. I refreshed their oil and lit them. All down the street, other people had done the same. Passersby would walk between shadows, lit by the glow of lamps and lanterns.

I sat on the bottom step and poured my remaining lamp oil into a ceramic saucer. This time, when I called, a small orange shape came sauntering out of the shadows. Mao’er’s two tails were high. He carried himself with a deliberately casual air, as if he just happened to be walking nearby.

“Miao,” he said. He stretched himself on the boardwalk, his eyes focused on the saucer full of oil.

“Don’t be shy, Mao’er,” I said, pushing the saucer closer to him. “It’s for you.”

“Mine-mine?”

I nodded, but still he approached the oil warily, as though some other cat might leap out of the darkness and take his treat from him. He inched toward the saucer. When he reached it, he lowered his head and began lapping it up, with a kind of gusto.

After a few moments, he sat back, in a posture that seemed to be intent on reclaiming some of his dignity. “Dao girl fighty now?”

I looked at him. “I’ve seen you fight, Mao’er. You were like a whirlwind of claws and teeth. Those boys ran away, covered with bites and scratches.”

He preened. “Mao’er fighty!”

“You weren’t holding back when you fought them, were you?”

“Hrah!” he said, or something like it, a cat’s proud laugh. “Me be jungle cat, Dao girl, me be fierce. Hunty, fighty! No hold back.”

“So what you’re saying, Mao’er, is that you fought with all your might, against children, and only managed to give them some scratches?”

He glared at me, his posture shrinking from pride to sullenness. “Mao’er fighty,” he said. “Hunty, fighty.”

“Mao’er, I’m sure you are a mighty hunter, and I would not insult your prowess,” I said. “But I do not think you should join me in my fighty. I mean, my fight.”

Sulking, he went back to lapping up the fish oil.

When there was none left, I burned paper mice. Mao’er hunted the mice, taunted and toyed with them, for minutes, before he killed them with a savagery that surprised me. He was chewing spirit-meat from their bones when I climbed back up the stone steps into the temple, and down the rickety wooden stairs to Father’s quarters.

To prepare myself for what was coming, I needed to pray and meditate, to perform prostrations and move through taiji sequences, if I was to have any hope of succeeding tomorrow.

Tomorrow. The day was approaching, second by second, and it frightened me. I didn’t see how I could face my challenges, but I still had to try. Tomorrow morning I needed to try to recruit the help of gangsters I had always held in contempt. Tomorrow night I needed to try to stop Liu Qiang’s ritual.

At eleven o’clock it was quiet in the empty apartment, and no wind was blowing outside. I wouldn’t have heard the sound if there hadn’t been silence within the apartment and silence outside. That’s how soft the tap was. I looked toward the door and waited. There was another tap. A few moments later, another.

I walked to the door, gathering my peachwood sword and my rope dart on the way. There was no way I could know what was out there.

I swung the door open and saw nothing, just another night in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Then a small pebble landed on my toe. I looked down, and my father’s eye looked up at me.

Mr. Yanqiu stood just outside the line of talismans over the door, with a heap of pebbles stockpiled nearby. “Li-lin,” he said, clearly out of breath from the effort it took to gather the pebbles and throw them.

I squatted down to look him in the eye. “What is it, Mr. Yanqiu? What’s the matter?”

“There’s something you ought to see,” he said, panting.

“I need to rest for tomorrow, Mr. Yanqiu. I have to gather my energy. If you’ve found some sort of steam vent …” I let my voice trail off.

“I’ve found something that might be able to help you,” he said.

I blinked at him, then placed my wooden sword in my belt, my rope dart in my pocket, and scooped up the little spirit. “Let’s go,” I said.

Mr. Yanqiu guided me down the streets of Chinatown, as he had in the world of spirits, telling me where to turn. The traffic on Pacific was as it often is, men walking to work or from work, some going to pay visits to whores or spend the night at gambling houses. And then I heard something odd. There were voices coming from around a corner, from an alley between Dupont and Lozier.

“What …” I began, my head reeling.

Chinatown was a mere twelve blocks. There were neighborhoods I avoided, but here, at Pacific and Dupont, I knew where everything was located. I could find my way around if I were drunk in the dark.

And there is no alley on Pacific between Dupont and Lozier.

I turned to face the impossible alley. Market stalls lined the lane, lit by paper lanterns. Vendors were selling, customers were buying, it was business as usual in many places in Chinatown.

Except none of these vendors, and none of these customers, were human.

There was a pig-nosed ghost selling a bottle with a blue flame swirling inside of it, and nearby I saw an animal tall as a man, with red fur and an anteater’s trunk. It was standing on two feet, and it held a sign that said, “DREAMS EATEN FOR TWO BITS.” Perched on an awning was a large bird with a woman’s head. An old man was browsing through the stalls, or at least something that looked like an old man; he had white hair and a long white beard, but bats were flying in circles all around him, and he didn’t seem to mind.

I took a breath. Panic threatened to rush through my body. I wanted to turn around, run away, and never come back. There were ghosts and goblins all around me. Though not so horrific as those that dance with the Night Parade, these were still freaks of spirit, outlandish monsters going about their business near the world of men, where they had no right to be. An old umbrella hopped around on one leg, with a long red tongue protruding from its face. Two thin wicker arms extended from the umbrella’s side.

“What is this place?” I said.

“This is Gui Shi,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “Ghost Market is on the border between Chinatown and the spirit world. It appears somewhere different every night.”

“Mr. Yanqiu,” I said under my breath, “that makes no sense. It could not appear so often in such a small community without my knowing of it.”

“This isn’t the only Chinatown, Li-lin.”

“You’re saying this Ghost Market moves between Chinatown in San Francisco and New York?”

“And Hawaii, Boston, Chicago, Toronto. Every Chinatown in the world. Wherever your people have gone.”

“Because no one leaves their ghosts behind,” I said. “It makes sense. Wherever we go, we are outsiders. Laborers looking for work, far from our homeland, we lose touch with our ancestors and our traditions. Strange beings haunt us, as flies follow horses.”

Mr. Yanqiu nodded. “Ghost Market is in them all, and in none, Li-lin. Madmen stumble upon it sometimes, and smokers of opium. You can see it, but even you cannot find Ghost Market without a spirit leading you here.”