He frowned, considering. “Allow me an hour to think on this,” he said, to both me and the Ghost Magistrate.
Several of the Guiyan’s hands were wiping sweat from his brow; a pair were massaging his shoulders. “An hour is granted, Sifu.”
The powerful men turned to look at me. “Fine,” I said. “One hour. I would prefer it if the Senior Daoshi stands by my side on this, but nothing will change my mind. The seagulls must go free.”
A change swept over the Ghost Magistrate’s face. Excitement? “Perhaps you and I could leave the Senior Daoshi alone for a contemplative hour? I might have something to offer you.”
“I am sorry to say this, venerable Guiyan,” I said, “but you can offer me nothing that would convince me to forswear my vow.”
This only made the Guiyan seem more excited, clapping a few dozen of his hands together. His face lit with cheer. “At least hear me out, little Daoist priestess,” he said, aglow. “For the hour.”
The private chamber was lushly decorated, with brightly colored fabrics and golden statues. Earlier, in the courtyard, the Ghost Magistrate had been carried on a litter, and in the hallroom, he’d loomed behind a towering podium; unlike those theatres staged to establish his authority and my relative puniness, in this room, we sat like equals on a magnificent couch.
Shadows moved in this room, awry. The intelligence stirring the darkness was under strict control; the shadows belonged to the Ghost Magistrate, answered his call, were his slaves. I knew, somehow, whatever power made them seem alive was also holding them in chains, and every chain terminated in the Guiyan’s stealthy grip.
“Much as I appreciate this private audience, Venerable Ghost Magistrate,” I said, “the Haiou Shen must be set free. Nothing you can offer me will alter this commitment.”
“Commitments,” he said, nearly squealing with delight, while all his hundreds of hands bounced around, gesticulating joy. “This is what I am hoping to speak with you about.”
“Then I must humbly say, Lao Guiyan, that I seek no commitment from you.”
“Not from me, little Priestess! No, what I am offering you is something quite different from that. I am offering your heart’s desire.”
“I apologize if I have been unclear, Venerable Ghost Magistrate. All the riches the world can offer would not peel my hands away from the doors to your bird cages.”
“I am not offering riches, Xiao Daonu,” he said. “First, let me say what I seek from the bargain. I ask two concessions from you: one, that you make no fuss about the creatures I have conscripted to deliver the ghost mail; and two, that you use all your wits and influence to persuade your father not to interfere with my Rites of Investiture.”
“Is that all, Great Ghost Magistrate?” I felt the acid drip into my words. “All you ask is for me to forswear my oath, forsake my vows, break my word, allow my friends and allies to be enslaved, and do what I can to make sure the man who enslaved them ascends to spiritual supremacy over this region? You must be mad.”
“Not mad,” he said, and all his fingers began to waggle. “I simply know what I can offer you.”
“And what might that be?”
His hundred hands all went still. “I can resurrect your husband.”
TWENTY-SIX
You lie.” Anger hardened the edges of my accusation.
“I tell the truth, little Priestess. I can resurrect your beloved husband, return him to your life, your eyes, and your table.”
I took a deep breath; the air raked my lungs, cloying with its sweetness. Having so great a love was like a beacon; it announced to cruel men everywhere that they could manipulate me through my widow’s devotion, taunt me, torment me, tempt me.
“You have no such power, Guiyan. It has been three years since Rocket died. I loved and buried him. I shrouded his bones in sanctified cloth and set them aboard a ship to China to be buried with his ancestors, and someday my bones will be buried near his. I’m sure the conscious portion of his soul drank Granny Meng’s broth and forgot any trace of this life on his way to his next.”
A hundred hands stuck out their index fingers and chided me with their gestures. “Is that what you think? Here,” he said, “take a look in this water basin.”
I stifled a harsh laugh. “Even I am not foolish enough to be ensnared by this same trick twice in a single day.”
“Not a trick, little Priestess. I swear to you, a sacred oath, by my aspirations to govern; you have my name and my word in vow that this water will merely show you your husband’s soul as it appears right now in this very moment. No other enchantment has been placed upon the basin or the water. If I should lie, I declare my name shall be shattered, my authority shall be forever broken, this Ghost Yamen shall expel and exile me and then it shall fall into dust, I shall never be welcome within any doors again, and human speech shall wither into cobwebs on my tongue.” Then, with solemn finality, he pronounced, “Ji, ji, ru luling.”
Quickly, quickly, for it is the Law.
I felt the world change around the Ghost Magistrate, the binding of a sacred oath. I stared at him. The Guiyan had left no loopholes to exploit, no ambiguous language whose interpretation could later be argued; he bound his oath to the things that mattered most to him in all the worlds; and the spell had sealed. This was Da Fa now, immutable, the Great Law.
His words shook me. My husband’s soul, as it is right now, in this very moment. It couldn’t be true . . . could it? Was I missing something? It wasn’t possible, it could not be real; there was no way the Ghost Magistrate could display someone who must have been reincarnated by now.
“You mean to show me who Rocket has become in his next life, Guiyan?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “Your husband has not been reincarnated. Take a look, little priestess; see where he is now; and know that, for a certainty, I can bring him back to you. My oath has been sworn, on my power, my ambition, and my relationship to the human order; looking in the water basin will do you no harm, nor will it deceive you.”
Suspicious still, I took a step toward the water basin, and I peered in.
For the second time in the last day, the reflection in the water did not show my face.
Rocket had never been photographed; his portrait had never been painted; his face had gone on existing in my memory alone, but memories flickered like candle flames and faded toward dimness. I never thought I would see him smile again.
Seeing my husband’s face in the water nearly broke me. Emotional wounds that had scabbed, tore open in this moment; the pain of losing him flowed afresh.
“How . . .?”
“Take a few minutes to watch him,” the Ghost Magistrate said.
I did.
He was still so beautiful, my husband, still so good-natured, so kind-hearted; still the lad whose leaps were so mighty, the children always said he launched up into the sky. As soon as the Chinese boys who went to school learned that English word, they dubbed him “Rocket” and the name superseded the one he’d been born with. Even my father loved that English word as my husband’s name, once he learned its meaning, because rockets were a Chinese invention.
The face in the water was Rocket’s, I was certain of it. Not one day older than when I’d seen him last.
The Guiyan had said this water basin was showing me my husband’s soul, right now, in this very moment. Where could he be? I searched his generous face for a hint, scoured his surroundings for a clue.
Wearing a shirt I’d burned for him, Rocket was smiling. The smile was not phony, but somehow it was not genuine either, not the kind of smile that expressed profound happiness. Yet also, it was not a smile to conceal suffering. I knew his face so well, and I pondered, what were his eyes telling me? The polite expression. Discomfort yes, pain no. He was uncomfortable for some reason, and smiling because he did not wish to inconvenience the people around him.
Others milled nearby, a crowd of souls in too small a space, and they all wore similar smiles. Each was making a kind and va
liant effort to treat the rest with decency and respect. Each of them wanted to care for and protect all the others.
Yet above them all, the storm of filthy black smoke was clearly the sky of Diyu, the earth-prison. Hell.
I sank into myself, feeling small, hard like a pebble, dropping down to the silent bottom of the ocean, beneath seaweed and darkness, where no one will ever think of it again.
“Do you know where your husband is, little priestess?” The Ghost Magistrate tried to keep the gloating tone from his voice. He failed.
“He is in Wangsi Xu,” I said. “The City of the Unjustly Slain.”
“Indeed,” the Guiyan said. “The city in Hell populated by people who died before their scheduled time, who wait for centuries for their day in court, to be resurrected.”
“But that isn’t right,” I said. “It can’t be. For a soul to be sent to Wangsi Xu, dying before his appointed time wouldn’t be enough.”
“No? Then remind me, little priestess: what circumstances must be met for souls to be sent to that City?”
“First,” I said, “a soul must be a Zhenren, good and true. But even then, those true-hearted people would only be sent there if they were slain by accident or due to mistaken identity.”
“Is that not the case here, little priestess?”
“It is,” I said, “but there’s more. The souls in the City of the Unjustly Slain are not only good people who died accidentally, but their deaths must have been caused by a mistake made by a duly-appointed official who was actively following the commands of the Celestial Orders.”
“Did your husband not die that way?”
I watched Rocket’s face in the water, eternally kind, politely inconvenienced, long frustrated, surrounded by the souls of good people yet ultimately alone. Seeing his face again, at all, felt like a miracle. “He was killed by American constables,” I said. “Not by the Heavens’ lawfully appointed officers.”
“Did not the young Emperor make a formal proclamation commanding all Chinese citizens living abroad to obey the laws of the countries they inhabit? Making the laws of this land an extension of the Emperor’s rule?”
“Yes,” I said, “but that is of no consequence. The Emperor is a worldly ruler, not a commander over Divine Order.”
“Little priestess,” the Ghost Magistrate said, prodding, “what is the Emperor’s title?”
It hit me then. A moment passed, and then another, while my mind spun, whirled, turned upside-down, and then I suppressed a sob.
How had I been so foolish? How had it taken me so long to realize?
The Emperor’s title was the Son of Heaven.
It was true. All true. My husband’s soul had been waiting, a captive of Hell’s interminable bureaucracy, in the City of the Unjustly Slain. He’d been waiting for three years. Three years of boredom, three years missing me, three years stuffed together with other good souls like fish in a net. I had missed him so much, been so lonely, so griefstricken. Now he could be saved. Rocket could come back to me.
I pivoted from the water in order to face the Ghost Magistrate. “Tell me again what you want in exchange for my husband’s return.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Shadows slithered and squirmed below the furniture, cast by nothing. Un-bodies carved from smooth night and enameled to a gleaming darkness, their agile, ink-slick, and oily shapes went sliding frictionlessly through the fancy interior chamber; they prowled over surfaces, slowed down to lick the legs of a chair or caress the silky fabric of the rugs. Only the walls’ arms were spared the touch of the living shadows.
The disembodied darknesses, perhaps emboldened by their master’s presence, coiled back and writhed; they snapped their jaws like rabid dogs, gnashed their teeth like hungry cannibals, reared up like cobras about to strike.
In this private audience chamber within the Ghost Yamen, the air tasted thick with whispers. At every breath I inhaled the secrets people kept in guilt and fear, the shameful privacies ghosts would share only after they died, alone. That was it, exactly: the Ghost Yamen’s air tasted like a last confession. The murmuring, moving shadows felt like conspiracy, blackmail, extortion.
The Ghost Magistrate had found an effective bribe, offering to bring my husband back. The happiness that had been torn away three years earlier, a day of trauma that I would never recover from; yet I could recover him.
The man who loved me could return to me.
And all I needed to do was betray my oath to the Haiou Shen.
“How would he resurrect, Ghost Magistrate? His corpse is bones, and the bones are buried far away.”
The Guiyan beamed. Some of his hands started tapping surfaces, snapping fingers, or clapping together; percussion music, though the drumming of his plethora of hands missed a beat, or all of them.
“Let me tell you, little priestess, how the souls of the unjustly slain return to life. People die every day, all over the world, and the moments of their death are usually preordained; they die at the time that was appointed for them.”
I nodded, staying silent in the room accompanied by the clumsy drumming of his arms, and he continued.
“When Hell’s officials determine it is time for an unjustly slain soul to be resurrected, they assign Research Officers to pore over the books of death until they find a scheduled death that seems appropriate.”
“Scheduled,” I said, “meaning, the bodies the souls are resurrected into would have died at that moment anyway?”
“Indeed,” the Guiyan said. “The Courts of Hell would not kill someone to stuff someone else’s soul inside the corpse.”
I nodded. “What makes a death appropriate?”
“The corpse cannot die in a way that would leave it too wounded to live,” he said. “They would not resurrect your husband in a decapitated body.”
“I understand. What of the other person’s previous life?”
“You are asking, would your husband be resurrected within a body that already was married, had children, and needed to follow the obligations of that person’s lifetime? All these things can be negotiated.”
“What else can we ask for in negotiations, venerable Ghost Magistrate?”
“Many considerations. I assure you that this deal would be of the sort that would only satisfy me if you find it satisfying. I would use my connections among Hell’s bureaucrats to make sure the body your husband’s soul would reinhabit would be unmarried, male, Chinese, have no children . . . . What other conditions?”
“Not too much older or younger than me,” I said. “He must already live within a hundred miles, he must not be a blood relation of mine, he must not be encumbered by debts from the body’s previous occupant, must not be terminally ill . . . . These conditions are all within your ability to negotiate?”
“They are,” he said. “Any other demands? Would you prefer, for instance, for your husband to be resurrected in the body of a man who is handsome and has a big . . . niao?”
He was trying to embarrass me, so I refused to blush or look away. “Those would be preferable, but neither the attractiveness of his face nor the size of his bird is crucial,” I said.
“So we have an agreement, then?” he said. “I will bring your husband back to life in optimal circumstances, and in exchange you will accept that the seagulls will be my mail carriers, and you will advocate for your father to allow the Investiture to go forward?”
I listened to the drumbeat of all his mess of arms. I looked in the face of the Ghost Magistrate, who was offering to bring my husband back to me. But at what price? To break my oath and betray my allies was unthinkable.
“Let us continue negotiating,” I said. “If you release the Haiou Shen immediately and resurrect my husband, then I will be a fierce advocate for your Investiture, and spend the rest of my life actively looking for ways to repay the debt I would owe you.”
His hands stopped drumming. “You want them both?” he said. “Both the release of the seagulls, and your husband’s resurrection? No, lit
tle priestess, you ask too much.”
“So I can only have one, then? Either my allies will be kept enslaved, or my husband will be trapped indefinitely in Hell’s bureaucracy? Ghost Magistrate, I do not see how someone who forces me to choose between these alternatives could expect to be considered my friend.”
“The little priestess might overestimate the value of her friendship.” A sneer made the Guiyan’s face look ugly.
“Venerable Ghost Magistrate,” I said, sighing, “perhaps you do not realize it, but now that I know where my husband’s soul resides, I can approach Hell’s bureaucrats and petition his resurrection; I do not need your assistance. Whatever concessions you can win from Hell’s bureaucrats, I also can win, though the process may take years longer. I am sure you are more experienced in these matters, and I would appreciate it if we can work out a deal to expedite the process of my husband’s resurrection. But I will not break my oath, betray my allies, and leave them enslaved, simply to speed up the process of resurrecting Rocket when I can resurrect him on my own. So I repeat my offer: please help resurrect my husband and also set the Haiou Shen free, swearing never to harm them again in any way, and I will do my utmost to convince my father to allow your Investiture.”
“No,” he said, and the slamming-down of fists beyond count signaled the finality. “I will offer you only one. Either I will help resurrect your husband and keep the gulls as my messengers, or I will free the gulls and leave your husband in Hell.”
“Set the seagulls free, then, and leave them unharmed forever, and I will convince my father to allow you to be Invested. I will bring Rocket back without your assistance. And you will proceed without my friendship.”
“What could your friendship matter to me, little priestess, once I hold supreme spiritual authority over this region?” The mockery in his tone was plain to hear. “Fine, then. We have a deal. Encourage your father to allow for my Investiture and I will set your seagulls free, and swear never to harm them again.”
It was with a heavy heart that I signed on to the sworn oath.
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