by Zen Cho
There were so many ways in which she was a fool.
"I don't understand," said Junsheng. Siew Tsin recognised the tremor in his voice. That was how she had felt when she'd seen Ling'en and Yonghua in the music room. But they would each have to suffer their betrayals alone.
She got up from the table and walked out of the room.
She kept walking: out of the house, down the slope, into the streets of the tenth court of hell. In her cotton samfu she drifted through the crowd, jabbed by the elbows of busy spirits. Blue-faced demons threw suspicious glances at her. She almost got mowed down by a sedan chair. She kept walking.
Lady Meng's pavilion was on the other side of the settlement. The farther she walked, the emptier the streets became. The buildings thinned out, until the signs of commerce and habitation had dropped away. The road opened out. She saw the end of the line.
It snaked down to Lady Meng's pavilion, perched on the edge of a cliff. Past the pavilion was the bridge, gleaming faintly in the shadows. Siew Tsin's ears filled with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below.
The spirits in the queue ... Siew Tsin averted her eyes, then remembered her purpose and forced herself to look. There were spirits who had been dragged from their comfortable homes in the tenth court when they fell out of favour with the hell officials. They hit out wildly and wept, promising gold, their houses, their women, anything if only they were granted a reprieve.
This was humiliating enough, but worse were the spirits who had come up from the other levels of hell. The inventive tortures inflicted there had left them looking scarcely human. Siew Tsin passed a skinless person who flinched from the touch of the air; a groaning woman whose tongue rolled out of her mouth onto the ground, an unnatural red length; a man whose body had been so distorted by cruelty that he lay on the ground, curled up on himself like a caterpillar, and had to be pushed along by demons.
But there was something odd about these spirits. They were not weeping like the spirits of tenth court, made craven by prosperity. There was peace in their eyes, a serene understanding of unhappiness. They had come a long way. They knew themselves better than any living human was allowed to.
Suffering purifies the soul. That was what the nuns had taught her.
But the nuns had been wrong. She put her hand on her chest, as if she could press out the pain in her heart.
The hell officials dourly standing guard along the line did not even look up as she passed. Now that Yonghua had left her, Siew Tsin had become invisible again. Her breath did not stir the air. Her feet left no marks on the ground.
Where was Yonghua? Had Ling'en and Siew Tsin figured out the truth, or was Junsheng right when he said Yonghua could not be reborn? If she was still here, the attempt failed, she must not be smashed to pieces or torn apart by spirits wanting her immortality. Siew Tsin must save her.
If the plan had worked and they had both got away, Siew Tsin would never see Yonghua again. If the pact had failed and left Yonghua alone, she would be in danger, and she would need Siew Tsin.
That was a horrible thought, a horrible thing to desire. It had all gone wrong, and Siew Tsin had gone wrong with it.
A hand touched her elbow. A little old lady smiled up at Siew Tsin.
"You are one of the willing," she said.
"I don't know," said Siew Tsin. But when the old lady said,
"Do you want to see the sea?"
Siew Tsin said, "Yes, Auntie Meng."
They walked arm-in-arm towards the sound of the waves. Siew Tsin found herself telling Lady Meng everything, from the beginning—when she had died, no more than a girl. She felt very old now. If she were still alive she would be 19 years old.
"Did it work?" she said. "Did Yonghua escape? Junsheng said she has no soul."
Lady Meng said:
"This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my soul. What passes to the next life is the inexorable force of kamma. Someone like you has no more soul than the terracotta woman did."
"Ling'en and I thought she could be reborn," said Siew Tsin, mostly to herself. "So we were right."
Lady Meng's eyes creased in a smile.
"Insofar as there is a you," she said. "We are at the bridge. Look."
The bridge arced out into space. At the end of it shone light—light as she had not seen it since she had died—the warm yellow light of the sun. Beneath the bridge lay a dark sea.
The bridge led nowhere. There was no end to it. The brave leapt off it and dived into the unknown sea. The cowardly inched along until the light swallowed them up. But the end was the same. It was a beginning.
It gave Siew Tsin an odd feeling, standing there with the sea breeze in her face and her hand in the old woman's. It made her feel like a child again.
"When I was little, I used to dream about falling," she said. Her own voice seemed to come from far away. "I dreamt I fell from the sky, through the clouds, and it went on for a long time ... I never hit the ground. I used to wish, when I woke up, that I could do it for real without getting hurt."
"Yes," said Lady Meng.
"Does it hurt?" Siew Tsin whispered.
"By the time they get here, everyone has suffered as much as they ever will," said Lady Meng.
"Don't I need to drink your tea?"
"Not if you jump," said Lady Meng. "The wind takes your memories from you."
"Will I meet her?" said Siew Tsin. "Will I meet Yonghua in my next life?"
"Listen," said Lady Meng. "You will be born again. You will be a baby again. You will smile up at your parents again. You will feel the sun on your face again. You will be young again. Everything you know, you will learn again. You will find love again."
She helped Siew Tsin onto the ledge. She was surprisingly strong for an old lady.
"This time, let us hope you will get to be old," she said. "It is a great suffering to know youth only."
"Goodbye," said Siew Tsin.
"See you next time," said Lady Meng, more accurately.
"Will you remember me when I come again?"
"Of course," said Lady Meng. "I miss you every time."
Siew Tsin closed her eyes and fell off the bridge backwards. She fell forever. The light on her eyelids went from lurid red to warm gold. The smell of sea water was taken over by rain and fresh air. The clouds came up to meet her.
She never hit the ground.
End
Thank you!
Thank you for reading The Terracotta Bride. I hope you enjoyed it!
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Other books by Zen Cho
Sorcerer to the Crown is my debut novel, the first in a historical fantasy trilogy set in Regency England. Zacharias Wythe, England's first African Sorcerer Royal, is trying to reverse the decline in England's magic when his plans are hijacked by ambitious runaway orphan and female magical prodigy, Prunella Gentleman. The book is out in the US from Ace/Roc Books and in the UK and Commonwealth from Pan Macmillan. Click here for more information.
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo is a historical romance novella set in 1920s London. When struggling young writer Jade Yeo writes a scathing review of a book by Bloomsbury dreamboat Sebastian Hardie, this leads to literary and romantic adventures she could never have predicted. You can read this for free on my website, or purchase it as an ebook on Amazon, Amazon UK and all other geographical variations of Amazon.
Spirits Abroad
is my Crawford Award-winning short story collection, published by Malaysian indie press Fixi. You can order the print version from Amazon.com, or get the ebook (with additional content) from Amazon, Amazon UK and all other geographical variations of Amazon.
Cyberpunk: Malaysia is an anthology of short cyberpunk stories by Malaysian authors, edited by me. You can get the print version from Amazon.com.
If you'd like to read an excerpt from Spirits Abroad, please turn the page.
Spirits Abroad preview
The First Witch of Damansara
Vivian's late grandmother was a witch — which is just a way of saying she was a woman of unusual insight. Vivian, in contrast, had a mind like a hi-tech blender. She was sharp and purposeful, but she did not understand magic.
This used to be a problem. Magic ran in the family. Even her mother's second cousin, who was adopted, did small spells on the side. She sold these from a stall in Kota Bharu. Her main wares were various types of fruit fried in batter, but if you bought five pisang or cempedak goreng, she threw in a jampi for free.
These embarrassing relatives became less of a problem after Vivian left Malaysia. In the modern Western country where she lived, the public toilets were clean, the newspapers were allowed to be as rude to the government as they liked, and nobody believed in magic except people in whom nobody believed. Even with a cooking appliance mind, Vivian understood that magic requires belief to thrive.
She called home rarely, and visited even less often. She was twenty-eight, engaged to a rational man, and employed as an accountant.
Vivian's Nai Nai would have said that she was attempting to deploy enchantments of her own — the fiancé, the ordinary hobbies and the sensible office job were so many sigils to ward off chaos. It was not an ineffective magic. It worked — for a while.
There was just one moment, after she heard the news, when Vivian experienced a surge of unfilial exasperation.
"They could have call me on Skype," she said. "Call my handphone some more! What a waste of money."
"What's wrong?" said the fiancé. He plays the prince in this story: beautiful, supportive, and cast in an appropriately self-effacing role — just off-screen, on a white horse.
"My grandmother's passed away," said Vivian. "I'm supposed to go back."
Vivian was not a woman to hold a grudge. When she turned up at KLIA in harem trousers and a tank top it was not through malice aforethought, but because she had simply forgotten.
Her parents embraced her with sportsmanlike enthusiasm, but when this was done her mother pulled back and plucked at her tank top.
"Girl, what's this? You know Nai Nai won't like it."
Nai Nai had lived by a code of rigorous propriety. She had disapproved of wearing black or navy blue at Chinese New Year, of white at weddings, and of spaghetti straps at all times. When they went out for dinner, even at the local restaurant where they sat outdoors and were accosted by stray cats requesting snacks, her grandchildren were required to change out of their ratty pasar malam T-shirts and faded shorts. She drew a delicate but significant distinction between flip-flops and sandals, singlets and strapless tops, soft cotton shorts and denim.
"Can see your bra," whispered Ma. "It's not so nice."
"That kind of pants," her dad said dubiously. "Don't know what Nai Nai will think of it."
"Nai Nai won't see them what," said Vivian, but this offended her parents. They sat in mutinous silence throughout the drive home.
Their terrace house was swarming with pregnant cats and black dogs.
"Only six dogs," said Vivian's mother when Vivian pointed this out. "Because got five cats. Your sister thought it's a good idea to have more dogs than cats."
"But why do we have so many cats?" said Vivian. "I thought you don't like to have animals in the house."
"Nai Nai collected the cats," said Vivian's sister. "She started before she passed away. Pregnant cats only."
"Wei Yi," said Vivian. "How are you?"
"I'm OK. Vivian," said Wei Yi. Her eyes glittered.
She'd stopped calling Vivian jie jie some time after Vivian left home. Vivian minded this less than the way she said 'Vivian' as though it were a bad word.
But after all, Vivian reminded herself, Wei Yi was seventeen. She was practically legally required to be an arsehole.
"Why did Nai Nai want the pregnant cats?" Vivian tried to make her voice pleasant.
"Hai, don't need to talk so much," said their mother hastily. "Lin — Vivian so tired. Vivian, you go and change first, then we go for dinner. Papa will start complaining soon if not."
It was during an outing to a prayer goods store, while Vivian's mother was busy buying joss sticks, that her mother's friend turned to Vivian and said,
"So a lot of things to do in your house now ah?"
Vivian was shy to say she knew nothing about what preparations were afoot. As her mother's eldest it would only have been right for her to have been her mother's first support in sorting out the funeral arrangements.
"No, we are having a very simple funeral," said Vivian. "Nai Nai didn't believe in religion so much."
This was not a lie. The brutal fact was that Nai Nai had been an atheist with animist leanings, in common with most witches. Vivian's parents preferred not to let this be known, less out of a concern that Nai Nai would be outed as a witch, than because of the stale leftover fear that she would be considered a Communist.
"But what about the dog cat all that?" said Auntie Wendy. "Did it work? Did your sister manage to keep her in the coffin?"
Vivian's mind whirred to a stop. Then it started up again, buzzing louder than ever.
Ma was righteously indignant when Vivian reproached her.
"You live so long overseas, why you need to know?" said Ma. "Don't worry. Yi Yi is handling it. Probably Nai Nai was not serious anyway."
"Not serious about what?"
"Hai, these old people have their ideas," said Ma. "Nai Nai live in KL so long, she still want to go home. Not that I don't want to please her. If it was anything else ... but even if she doesn't have pride for herself, I have pride for her!"
"Nai Nai wanted to be buried in China?" said Vivian, puzzled.
"China what China! Your Nai Nai is from Penang lah," said Ma. "Your Yeh Yeh is also buried in Bukit Tambun there. But the way he treat Mother, I don't think they should be buried together."
Vivian began to understand. "But Ma, if she said she wanted to be with him—"
"It's not what she wants! It's just her idea of propriety," said Ma. "She thinks woman must always stay by the husband no matter what. I don't believe that! Nai Nai will be buried here and when her children and grandchildren pass on we will be buried with her. It's more comfortable for her, right? To have her loved ones around her?"
"But if Nai Nai didn't think so?"
Ma's painted eyebrows drew together.
"Nai Nai is a very stubborn woman," she said.
Wei Yi was being especially teenaged that week. She went around with lightning frizzing her hair and stormclouds rumbling about her ears. Her clothes stood away from her body, stiff with electricity. The cats hissed and the dogs whined when she passed.
When she saw the paper offerings their mother had bought for Nai Nai, she threw a massive tantrum.
"What's this?" she said, picking up a paper polo shirt. "Where got Nai Nai wear this kind of thing?"
Ma looked embarrassed.
"The shop only had that," she said. "Don't be angry, girl. I bought some bag and shoe also. But you know Nai Nai was never the dressy kind."
"That's because she like to keep all her nice clothes," said Wei Yi. She cast a look of burning contempt at the paper handbag, printed in heedless disregard of intellectual property rights with the Gucci logo. "Looks like the pasar malam bag. And this slippers is like old man slippers. Nai Nai could put two of her feet in one slipper!"
"Like that she's less likely to hop away," Ma said thoughtlessly.
"Is that what you call respe
cting your mother-in-law?" shouted Wei Yi. "Hah, you wait until it's your turn! I'll know how to treat you then."
"Wei Yi, how can you talk to Ma like that?" said Vivian.
"You shut up your face!" Wei Yi snapped. She flounced out of the room.
"She never even see the house yet," sighed Ma. She had bought an elaborate palace fashioned out of gilt-edged pink paper, with embellished roofs and shuttered windows, and two dolls dressed in Tang dynasty attire prancing on a balcony. "Got two servants some more."
"She shouldn't talk to you like that," said Vivian.
She hadn't noticed any change in Ma's appearance before, but now the soft wrinkly skin under her chin and the pale brown spots on her arms reminded Vivian that she was getting old. Old people should be cared for.
She touched her mother on the arm. "I'll go scold her. Never mind, Ma. Girls this age are always one kind."
Ma smiled at Vivian.
"You were OK," she said. She tucked a lock of Vivian's hair behind her ear.
Old people should be grateful for affection. The sudden disturbing thought occurred to Vivian that no one had liked Nai Nai very much because she'd never submitted to being looked after.
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