The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  “But this Ghost Magistrate,” I said. “You didn’t see the faceless girl. She fled him. Though she had never been human, I saw how frightened she was, how alone. Hell’s guards hunted her, and she could have fled. I gave her an opening to flee, and she could have used it to evade capture, but that isn’t what she did. Instead, when she heard me threatened, she decided to face her fears. She gave herself up to her pursuers. She sacrificed her freedom, and she did it to protect me.”

  His gaze on me was sharp and slow, as if he were carefully cutting me apart. Eventually he said, “Li-lin, do you hold yourself responsible for your mother’s death?”

  The air puffed from my lungs. His question astounded me. I was not used to him being so perceptive about my thoughts and feelings. “No, not responsible,” I said, choosing my words precisely. “But unlike that faceless girl, I fled like a coward, and left my mother to die.”

  “You fled,” he said, “like an intelligent, responsible, and caring child, who was behaving respectfully toward her mother.”

  I stared at him, feeling suddenly raw on that spirit train. He said, “Honestly, Ah Li, what do you think would have happened if you had stayed and fought?”

  “Maybe Mother could have escaped.”

  “Not a chance,” my father said. “Li-lin, I was so much stronger then, with the vigor of my youth on me, and I could barely survive the Demoness’s attacks, until the sun came up and her power diminished. When I think of the horror of her hairs . . . .” He was silent for a moment, then he shook off whatever memories had afflicted him, and continued speaking. “Li-lin, she would have cut through your body like you were made of paper, and that would have been the last thing your mother would have seen: her daughter torn to shreds. By fleeing as she wanted you to, you gave her the opportunity to die with dignity; her last thought was probably relief that you survived. I can’t believe you’re selfish enough to wish it could have been otherwise.”

  I felt the ache of wounds I’d suffered a lifetime ago, and still suffered from. How could we hope to heal from the traumas of the past, when those traumas shape who we are and how we act in the present? My mother, my husband, both died too soon. Often I dreamed my hands were red with their blood, soaked with it, dripping it, and no water in the world could wash me clean again.

  The moisture on my cheeks took me by surprise. I wiped the tears with my sleeves, thinking, if only it were so easy to wipe away the spilled blood. I shook my head and gazed out the train’s window. Hills sloped by, and the locomotive chugged us through this odd reflection of California’s landscape, where the light always fell in golden streams. Shuai Hu rolled a little in his feline sleep. Cats could fall asleep anywhere.

  “The words you said are appreciated, Father,” I said, and then sat stunned at the word that had come from my mouth. Perhaps it stunned him as well, for we remained seated in silence for the rest of the ride, taking in the ghostly landscape of the spirit world as we watched it through the train’s windows.

  Over the train’s clatterings, I heard the sloshing hiss of waves, and then at last the inhuman voice called out once more, the cunning imitation a hunter might use to lure his prey. “Next stop, the Ghost Yamen.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The three of us walked toward a compound down the road, along a pebbly beach bedecked with seashells. The path toward the compound grew steeper and more rocky. Silently, step by step, we trod toward to the yamen, where I would find Meimei and hopefully rescue her, where I would try to learn what happened to Xu Anjing’s soul, and where my father would learn what kind of man this Ghost Magistrate was.

  The front gate of the Ghost Yamen was in sight now. Watchmen—watch-creatures—called out, alerting others of our approach.

  Ahead of us, a beast’s voice struggled to shape the sounds of human speech. “Stop where you arrrre,” it roared. “Announce your names and purrpose herrre!”

  “Li-lin,” my father said, his voice a whisper-hiss. “Proclaim my arrival.”

  I stepped forward and to one side, centering my father. With a bow and a flourish, I indicated Father and shouted, “Senior Abbot Xian Zhengying has arrived at the gates of the Ghost Yamen! He holds the Seventh Ordination of the Maoshan sect! He stands as representative of the Eightieth Generation of the Linghuan lineage! The Officer Who Proclaims the Great Commands of the Scriptures and Registers of the Sworn Powers of Orthodox Unity has arrived at the Ghost Yamen gates! The Interrogator of Immortal and Underworld Affairs has arrived at the Ghost Yamen gates!”

  In a loud whisper directed to me, Father said, “Ordination Name.”

  “Faxuan, Master of the Mysterious Rites, has arrived at the Ghost Yamen gates!”

  I had not realized just how many guards stood at the gates until I saw them bow. The motion rippled down a line of what must have been dozens of beast-men, of various shapes and sizes; militarized monsters dipped low like flowers in the wind. The display of humility, from so many armed and armored misshapen freakish creatures, was breathtaking to see.

  Long moments went by. At the center of the formation, one of the guards rose up to his height, an ox-head, and for some reason, I felt certain it was the same one I had met the other night. After he straightened up, the rest began standing in sequence, like long grass that has parted for someone running through it and then closes to its height when the walker has passed.

  Addressing me, the ox-head said, “And the animal?”

  I looked first at Shuai Hu and then my father. No guidance came. Uncertainly, I bowed again and flourished my arm in the direction of the big monk.

  “Shaolin monk Shuai Hu has arrived at the Ghost Yamen gates!”

  “That is no human being,” the ox-head said.

  “Neither are you,” I replied. It seemed like every armed and armored creature in the afterlife turned to glare at me then, so I composed myself and then proclaimed, “A three-tailed tiger has arrived at the Ghost Yamen gates!”

  The scowls of the badger-headed, the rigid stances of the octopus-faced, and weapons brandished by the rabbit-eared guardsmen told me that the defenders of the Ghost Yamen’s gates were alarmed by Shuai Hu’s presence. The ungainly battalion of animal-man troops began to array into a defensive formation, pointing spears, tridents, swords, and arrows in Shuai Hu’s direction. I rolled my eyes, seeing them line up in a military formation to defend against a pacifist.

  “Has anyone else arrived at the gates of the Ghost Yamen?” the ox-headed guard called out.

  “No one!” I said, but then Shuai Hu stepped forward and to the side. He bowed and flourished, and indicated me with a brawny arm.

  “Maoshan Nu Daoshi Xian Li-lin has arrived at the Ghost Yamen’s gates!” he shouted. “She holds the Fourth Ordination of the Maoshan sect! She stands as representative of the Eighty-First Generation of the Linghuan lineage!”

  He whispered to me in a voice that sounded half-growl, “What is your title?”

  “I haven’t been given a title.”

  “Your Ordination Name?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  The tiger’s gaze snapped harshly toward my father, and I felt abruptly defensive of the man.

  “Titles and Ordination Names are granted at the Sixth Ordination,” I said. My voice sounded strange, low and insistent. “It would be improper to title a Daoshi of the Fourth.”

  A commotion came from the guardsmen then, as the mismatched horde of animal-men haphazardly turned to face someone, and bow to him. A superior had arrived.

  “Honored guests,” I heard the lugubrious tone, as a small figure swept pompously forward to address the three of us. Stealing a glance upwards, I saw him, two-and-a-half feet tall, in his luxurious black silk robes with an embroidered blue emblem at his chest, his jade eyes gleaming strangely.

  “Welcome,” said Gan Xuhao, the red rat goblin, as he clasped his hands together and shook them, an imperious gesture, “to the Ghost Yamen. The two honored Daoshi may enter; I am sad to say that the beast must remain outside th
e gate.”

  The buildings in this compound did not resemble San Francisco’s skyline, with its low throttle of slums, flophouses, and dumps punctuated by the elegant marble towers of government offices and the octagonal mansions of millionaires high on the hilltops. Instead, this compound was a vision of China, but of no China I had ever seen. Not the humble village where I was born, not the vast courtyard estates built of plain wood that I had only seen in passing, and not the crowded port cities of Guangdong. None of them resembled, in the slightest, the place where I was now.

  Each building in this place had its own glow of fairylands and fireflies. Each shone like a flower at its moment of perfect bloom, yet each was high and sturdy. Behind the red rat we followed in silent stupor, for what was there that could be said, in this city of marvels? Our expressions of awe would echo down the green garden pathways rich with bright flowers; our clumsy, gabbled words would mean nothing in the face of the exquisite buildings. Saying nothing, barely daring to breathe, we trod a road of stones, but where San Francisco’s cobblestone streets had been built willy-nilly of rocks and pebbles randomly thrown together to cover the ground, the stones here had been selected for flatness; they had been polished and meticulously arranged so the colors of each stone would build a pattern with the others, whorling out in vast spirals that reminded me of starfish.

  Ahead of us, a bridge thrilled upwards, taller than any bridge I’d seen before. It was not the kind of bridge held in place by pillars and cables, but one that swooped upward like a snail’s shell, and its planks had been painted—too dim a word for such a celebration of bright color!—in brilliant stripes. At the apex of the rainbow bridge, we would be able to stand and gaze out upon this amazing dreamscape, its echoes of a long-ago dynasty, its palaces and pagodas, its topiaried gardens and manicured rivulets. Its magnificence.

  Nothing in my life had prepared me for so sumptuous a sight. The central building loomed above the courtyard, a series of roofs rising over other roofs; the corners of each roof sloped elegantly upwards. Trees nearby had been coiffured to resemble floating puffs of soft green, and it looked for all the world as though tufts of bright spring grass were levitating near the red doors of the entryway.

  There was a sense of unreality and artifice to everything, as if we were not moving noiselessly among things but among the paintings of things. All the colors here seemed soft, bright but soft, like watercolors or pastels, a gentle shining of joy built into place.

  To our left, marvels; to our right, wonders; ahead of us, delights. Such a blessing of color had taken place here! Such architecture of bold light. Every building anywhere was a triumph of human ingenuity over the destructive forces of nature, fire, wind, and chaos, but nothing had prepared me for this. Each of these buildings was both immense and a work of art. The red painted walls, the green or yellow roofs, all had been designed to coordinate with the panoramas of deep sunset and the sweep of long night; together it all created an unforgettable skyline.

  If terms existed to describe these structures, in any language, I did not know them. The round tower to one side made me think of a pine tree made of gold and painted with red stripes; the central complex ahead uprose in elaborate, detailed layers, flamboyant scarlet and profound gilded green, a splendor of geometry and imagination.

  Golden statues of dragons adorned the topmost roofs—no, the calculating part of my mind stopped to point out, they weren’t dragons. The statues depicted dragon-heads atop the bodies of snakes, jackals, lions, turtles . . . . All were hybrids, the sons of dragons. This made the first suspicions flare in me; the Jade Emperor would be able to see through the eyes of any statue of an actual dragon, but not through statues of half-dragons. What was the Ghost Magistrate trying to conceal from the Heavens?

  The thought slipped away as I walked on. Overcome by the artistry of the space, I gaped at its sublime terraces, its revelry of gardens, and its miraculous labyrinth of walkways.

  No word from my mouth would interrupt the stream of odd beauty, the radiating seashell light, the pulsing firefly glow twinkling from lanterns. I still could hear the hollow, whispering slosh of the sea. This yamen was more beautiful than any place I had ever seen, and more bizarre.

  Father and I and Gan Xuhao were not alone here. Around us was a bustle of the strange: nature spirits, ghosts, yaoguai, all dressed in resplendent formal attire, all pursuing some order of business. Militant humanoid fleas tall enough to reach my shins proudly strode, wearing armor and carrying heraldic banners I did not recognize. Ducklings nearly as tall as me waddled down off the Rainbow Bridge, their eyes open huge; they shook their pale yellow fluffs. A procession of disembodied human faces skittered like spiders. Phantom figures, seemingly human, moved along in an orderly procession, transparent and murmuring. Darknesses pooled, sentient, witnessing.

  Flags and streamers whipped and rippled from the rooftops. I watched my father for cues. Observing his face, I saw tension and suspicion, lightened, occasionally, by a burst of childlike wonder. When we walked past a Moon Gate, its circular aperture allowing us a brief glimpse of a garden bright with colorful birds, his face lit up, and so did mine.

  We trod in silence, marveling. We took in the branching pathways of the yamen. Painted wooden signs signaled restaurants—one specializing in hotpot made with lamb, another boasting the thinnest stretched noodles—and a bath house, a flower house, an inn called Banbuduo, an opera theatre, and a silk shop. My father and I moved quietly through a many-splendored city the likes of which I had never seen.

  Father’s gaze met mine. “Have you noticed, Li-lin, that this entire compound has been constructed with exquisite feng shui?”

  “I had not, Sifu.”

  “Look around you. The buildings are arrayed in the shape of a horseshoe. The opening is straight south. The tallest building is at the back, centered in the north end, yet facing south, constructed on the southern face of a hill. On either side of that building, bamboo—or ghost bamboo—is growing, like a wall to defend against negative qi. If you look at that hill and the two next to it, you will see that together they are shaped like a dragon.”

  He sighed and continued to speak while we walked among magnificence. “I have always wished I could walk among the men and women of bygone years. Imagine that, Li-lin! Imagine hearing the words they spoke, gaining the skills and the learning that time has lost to us. Instead of that, we live like exiles in a strange country, where we are told we are wrong to hold on to our traditions, our customs. We live among people who disrespect their Ancestors yet call us heathens, who scoff at literature and call us barbarians. I pray we hold on to our traditions, Li-lin. I pray we do not fall victim to the winds of time.

  “I never expected we would have a chance to walk down the roads of ancient China, reconstructed in the new world.”

  Of all the marvels I had already encountered in the Ghost Yamen, my father speaking to me with such honest feeling was one of the most wondrous. I waited quietly for him to continue, but he spoke no more. We walked in silence down the path, until I said, softly, “Have you ever seen such a beautiful estate?”

  Father took a moment to think. Clearing his throat, he said, “It reminds me a little of the Forbidden City.”

  The Forbidden City. The Emperor’s district, at the heart of the capitol, Beijing, where my father had traveled, and yet he’d never told anyone. Father’s secrets held power over me, even here, where the ghostly air was hung with ribbons of strawberry light. How could he have voyaged to Beijing and visited the Imperial palace of the Forbidden City—twice—and never mentioned it to me?

  “Please, Sifu, if you would, grant me the privilege of hearing about your time in Beijing?”

  “The first time I went I was little more than a child,” he said, “sitting for the Imperial Examinations.”

  I stumbled on the path. It took a few steps to regain my rhythm alongside my father, following at his side behind the red rat. I never knew my father had taken the Examinations. Just like the e
nigmatic pathways branching to our sides, another direction of my father’s life was being unearthed before me, plans and paths and possibilities. I’d never even known he considered testing to become a government official.

  The Imperial Examinations were established during the Zhou Dynasty, to allow young men of accomplishment and learning a chance to become ministers, judges, and other officials; the system was intended to keep the unworthy out of the ranks of Chinese governmental posts. Yet Father had always railed against the system, calling it corrupt. The Examinations took the form of essay questions, and my father said the proctors who judged the essays would reward their own friends and family, as well as the young men who’d brought the heftiest bribes, while those who truly deserved a position were often failed.

  With the realization that my father had sat for the Examinations came a flood of insight. His bitterness toward the structure’s unfair ways; his hostility toward corrupt officials; his anger at anyone who bent the rules, even me. A lifetime of regrets had shaped him; he became a Daoshi as a second choice, because there were few good jobs for scholars who failed the Examinations.

  A life spent guarding the Ghost Gate, risking his health and his soul, fighting monsters that would terrify any rational person, dealing with spiritual contaminants, perpetually being the man whose presence makes other people uncomfortable; he had wanted none of this. He’d wanted a government job, perhaps as a magistrate, with the authority and prestige of the position, power and many wives and many sons, and all the other rewards a government position would bring. Men said the magistrate of a small village in China would enjoy more of power’s rewards than an American president.

  And I’d never known he’d sought that life. He’d always been so committed to his soul-saving work, so dedicated to keeping the transitions between life and death in order, that it had never even occurred to me that this wasn’t his first choice. I felt as though I was getting a glimpse of the man for the first time, framed by the Moon Gates, his face luminous in the otherworldly glow.