The Girl with Ghost Eyes (2 page)

“Well then,” said Mr. Liu, and his eyes took on a mean look. “Are peach trees blossoming in your garden?”

Shock rushed through my entire body. He was asking if I was menstruating. The question left me speechless, and I must have turned bright red. Tom’s eyes widened in surprise and discomfort. Mr. Liu’s question was so rude, the answer so private. I tried to calm myself.

There were legitimate reasons he might ask such a question of me. Menstruating would make it easier for me to cross over to the spirit world, and harder to return. The question was relevant, but I was horrified that he even mentioned it. These were matters I would choose not to discuss. And yet I needed to show respect to my elders, and Mr. Liu was an important man.

I looked down so the men could not see my face, and then I answered him. “No, Mr. Liu, this is not the time of blossoms. Now I shall gather what I need to make the passport.”

I came back with the supplies. Father’s altar dominated the heart of the large chamber. Colorful silk lanterns hung above it, red, yellow, and blue-green, and the altar was surrounded by bright brocades, candles, idols, and incense—a clutter of magnificence. Five different kinds of fresh fruit were displayed nearby, on copper plates. A painting on the wall showed Guan Gong, god of war and literature, holding his bladed polearm in his right hand. Statues of the Five Ghosts hulked nearby. In warlike postures, they glared from behind black beards.

I crossed to the corner, to the plain wooden crate I used as my altar. I laid my peachwood sword down beside it. Tom Wong and Mr. Liu stood quietly while I lit the lotus-shaped oil lamp on the altar, refreshed the tea and rice in the offering cups, and swirled the water in the dragon bowl.

To make the passport I took a reed brush and wrote Shi Jin’s name in black ink on a sheet of yellow rice paper, distorting the Chinese characters into ghostscript. To the left of the name I drew seven small circles in vermilion ink and connected the circles with lines; the circles represented the seven stars of the Northern Bushel. I wrote the four yin trigrams of the Yi Jing along the bottom, the names of Hell King Yanluo and the Grandfathers at the top. At the lower right corner I stamped my chop, printing the passport with my name and lineage.

I lit a match and burned the paper. Fire blackened the passport. Transmuted it into spirit. As the ashes crumbled, the passport took shape in the world of spirits and drifted to the floor.

“Is that all?” Tom Wong asked.

“Not yet,” I said, turning to him. I tied a red string to my wrist, feeling the silken cord tighten against my skin. “The soul passport has been sent to the spirit world, but there are no messengers in the lands between. I need to enter a trance and deliver it to Shi Jin by hand.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“The spirit world is full of dangers,” I said. “But my peachwood sword will protect me, and a red string will guide me back to myself. You’ll keep my body safe while I’m in the spirit world, Tom?”

He nodded, and his eyes were filled with encouragement.

Ghosts and goblins prowl the spirit world, and I would not be foolish enough to travel there defenseless. I took a grease pencil and wrote a spell on my peachwood sword, then replaced the sword at my belt. It would cross with me when I entered the world of spirit.

Then I began. Clicking my teeth, I closed my eyes and thought of the sun and the moon. I felt sunlight stream in through the place between my eyebrows, and moonlight through the soles of my feet. I let them radiate within me. Once my skin was filled with shining, I began to dance.

The Pace of Yu would allow me to wander the three realms. I stamped the floor hard with one foot, and dragged the other. I danced the broken, halting steps of Yu the Great, who beat back the floods. Singing, stamping, and dragging, I danced as Yu, who could transform himself into a bear, yet walked with a limp. Yu the king, the sorcerer, nearly a god, who slew the beast with nine heads. His power cascading through me, I danced the same series of limping steps over and over, making intricate magical gestures with my hands.

There was no way to tell when I stopped dancing in my body and began, instead, a dance of spirit, but there it was. I crossed over without knowing it. I stood outside myself, a spirit in the spirit world, inches from my body yet unfathomably far away. The red string was secure around my wrist; it extended through unnatural fog, through impossible angles, back to where my living body stood, swaying, entranced. I had no other anchor.

In spirit I had the same form I had in flesh, my hair long and unbound, wearing the yellow cloth robe of a Daoshi. I had the same skills, abilities, limitations, in spirit as in body. Even my peachwood sword was at my belt, thanks to the spell written on the side. I crossed the room and picked up the spirit passport. It would guide me to Shi Jin. He’d been sending dreams to Mr. Liu, so he couldn’t be far. Probably within half a mile.

I let the passport lead me. It pulsed in my right hand, drawing me toward the man whose name was written on it. I went out through the temple door and peered into the night, where the passport drew me. Wind was blowing from the lands of the dead.

I stopped for a moment, taking in the transformed world ahead of me. The sky of the spirit world had never seen the light of the sun, and the drifting clouds glowed a burnished orange in the light of the moon. There was an uncanny beauty to the spirit side of Chinatown, lit by perpetual moonlight, but brighter and more golden than the moon looks from the world of the living.

Beautiful and eerie, the world of spirits would be a terrible place to spend eternity; unable to enter the cycle of birth and death and birth again, and yet unable to establish a home in the lands of
the dead.

I stepped outside, crossing the string of protective cloth talismans over the door. I felt the protective spell give way for me as I walked through it, easy as walking through a spider’s web, and stepped out into a ghostly mirror of Chinatown. On Dupont Street, immigrants were walking home for the night, or walking to work. They all wore the same nondescript dark clothing, and their braids swished with each step. They had the indistinct look of ghosts, half-there and half-gone, but I knew I was the ghost among them. No one could see me.

From Telegraph Hill, there was the sound of a train chuffing down its tracks. Its steam whistle called and faded into distance. A vegetable seller strolled past, oblivious of me. Baskets of carrots, yams, and leafy greens were balanced on a bamboo pole across his shoulders. This was Chinatown, and it was my world. Such a small world, twelve square blocks in all, yet I seldom ventured outside the six or seven blocks my father protected.

“Aah!” a seagull cried from a lamppost. The sound of its caw was like laughter and mourning intermingled. “Aah! Aah!” It cocked its head in my direction, opening its third eye. “Xian Li-lin!”

I took a deep breath. “Jiujiu,” I said. Of all the ghosts and goblins that inhabit the world of spirits, Jiujiu was the one I’d known the longest. She was one of the Haiou Shen, the spirit-gulls. Her flock had been slaughtered long ago. She had come to Chinatown somehow and found a new flock to join.

Many spirits are invisible to ordinary people, but the Haiou Shen are visible. They simply look and sound like normal seagulls. Regular people don’t see the third eye in a spirit gull’s forehead, beady and black in a vertical slit. Regular people hear their human speech as the inarticulate cry of gulls. It is the blessing of regular people; they do not witness the monstrous, and thus they can live normal lives.

“There will be pain, Xian Li-lin!” the seagull cried. “There will be loss!”

I sighed. “Life as usual, in other words,” I said, but the warning made me tense. Spirit gulls sense each change in weather. Over the years Jiujiu has warned me about many hazards, but she never gave me enough information to avoid them.

It worried me that Jiujiu was paying me a visit now, when I was out of body, vulnerable.

Something bad was going to happen, and I had no way to know where it was coming from. Girding myself, I checked the red cord on my wrist. It was secure. A line of red string stretched back to my body.

The passport tugged me toward a bulky man standing in the shadows at the end of the street, where Dupont met Jackson. He must have been a big man in life, and his spirit body was no different. Strong shoulders filled out his threadbare robes. His face looked hard behind an unkempt black beard. His eyes had the half-mad look of someone who has spent many years alone.

I hesitated. This might not be as simple as Mr. Liu had led me to believe. Was this rabid-looking ghost what the spirit gull just warned me about? I bit my lip in frustration. Trying to sidestep Jiujiu’s warning could cause the suffering she’d foretold.

But a man needed my help, and it didn’t matter if he was dead, or if death had driven him mad. I had sworn my oath a long time ago. I would never hide from monsters. Never again.

For reassurance I let my fingers stray to the hilt of my peachwood sword, and I walked up to the ghost’s place in the shadows.

His hair was wild. Dark and tangled into knots, it sprawled over a forehead that had not been shaved in a long time. Wandering through death, he had neglected his queue. I winced. The braided hair was a symbol of a man’s service to the Emperor; it comprised one third of a man’s higher soul. It was no wonder Shi Jin was lost. He had abandoned one of his strongest connections to the world of the living.

There was an odd feeling in my spirit body. It took a moment to identify it. My stomach was itching. I found it odd that even here, between the lands of the living and the dead, travelling far from my body, I felt an itch, as though insects were crawling along my stomach.

The man turned to face me as I approached him. His eyes were bloodshot, and under his beard a long scar ran from his cheek to
his neck.

“Shi Jin?” I said. “Here is your passport to the lands of the dead.” I reached out both hands to offer him the passport, as young people are supposed to do. One uses both hands to show undivided attention.

Shi Jin grabbed my elbow and yanked me down to the ground. I toppled, off-balance and disoriented. Then he stepped behind me and snapped my red string.

2

Falling is a chaotic feeling. A coordinated body turns into a mess of arms, legs, and hips moving in their own directions when it falls. I sprawled forward. My knees and hands took the brunt of the impact, and then my chest thudded down against the cobblestone, and my chin landed on my forearm.

The burly ghost grabbed my red string. My eyes widened. This was a trap, that much was clear, but I needed a chance to think. Then Shi Jin attacked with a bellowing war-cry, leading with a spinning kick that had enough force behind it to collapse a ribcage.

Fifteen years of training took over. Father’s voice, telling me to repeat that move
again, again, again, again. Two hundred more times, Li-lin.
Someday your life might depend on this.
Rolling up into a crouch, I slammed my elbow into the ghost’s ankle. It hit with a sharp sound, interrupting the momentum of his kick.

Pain and surprise registered on the ghost’s scarred face. He looked at me, saw I had taken a warrior stance, and hesitated. I took that moment and leaped for my red string.

He stepped back and away, holding onto the string, appraising me. There was a stark, tense moment as we each sized up our opponent. The itching on my stomach grew worse, and a sick feeling rose from my gut. I knew what the itch was.

Someone was cutting my flesh. Carving a talisman into the soft skin on my belly. Probably Mr. Liu. He was engraving some kind of spell in my skin. I felt exposed, powerless. Violated.

The ghost spoke, and his voice creaked as though it hadn’t shaped words in a generation. “Give me the passport,” he said.

My pulses raced, and I felt all control slipping away. My body was defenseless. I felt small and afraid. And I didn’t understand why any of this was happening.

“The string will lead you back to my body,” I said. “But you won’t be able to do anything to me. Not without—”

He snorted. “Give me the passport.”

So that was it. I had made the passport myself, sealed it with my name and lineage. It could grant him passage to the city of the dead, but it would also grant him control over my body. Permanent control.

“You’re going to possess me,” I said.

We faced each other, our stances closed, defensive. He was bigger than me, much bigger, but I could draw my peachwood sword before he reached me. I could chop him to pieces.

I was angry. Like a fool, I walked right into their trap. I was powerless to stop Mr. Liu from carving a talisman into my skin. The talisman could make Shi Jin undetectable inside me.

I felt heat rush up to my head. I was seething with anger. I wanted to cut this ghost to ribbons. And he wasn’t even my biggest problem. My body was unconscious and vulnerable, and if the one-armed man was carving talismans into me, it meant he had power. If he was ordained past the Second, I couldn’t hope to defeat him with magic.

Their plan was solid. If I hadn’t dodged Shi Jin’s kick, I would have been trapped in the spirit world already, and a ghost would be walking in my skin. Their plan only missed one thing. They had underestimated my martial arts training.

Shi Jin advanced a half-step. I took a half-step back.

Anger, fear, and shame tried to take hold of me, but I resisted. I needed to resist. I couldn’t let myself be impaired by emotion, not now, with men attacking me in two worlds. I needed clarity of mind. First I needed to defeat Shi Jin and recover the red string. Once I’d done that, I’d return to my body, find Mr. Liu, and make him pay. He had cut my skin. It was a violation, and he was going to suffer for it.

I drew my peachwood sword.

Shi Jin snorted, a wet sound moving out through his beard. “A practice sword? You brought a child’s wooden toy, girl.”

I flicked the sword forward, a quick stroke—Dragonfly Skims the Water—and left a clean slice on his arm. His eyes bulged in surprise and a red stain began to spread from his cut.