The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  “Daughter, she has no soul.”

  “What of it? The wind has no soul, yet we feel no need to execute the wind.”

  My father pursed his lips, thinking. I turned to the kowtowing creature.

  “Demoness,” I said. “There are human souls imprisoned in your garments, and you possess a power my father and I are obligated to contain. If you wish to live, I will make a contract with you. Do you understand?”

  “What terms,” her voice was soft and frightened, “do you ask of me, priestess?”

  “Listen carefully. First, you will find me within seven days; you will release all of your imprisoned souls into my custody, so I can work toward their salvation. Second, within the following seven days, you will find my father; he will bind your power, so you will never be able to control men’s wills again.”

  “Oh no, priestess, not that,” she said. “I beg you, as a woman, please let me maintain that ability.”

  “The power to enslave men’s wills and force them to do your bidding? Absolutely not.”

  A long, slow moment passed, with the demoness’s forehead pressing to the dirt. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded like a whimper. “Priestess, please, I beg of you, as a woman, please understand what the male demons will do to me if my power is sealed away.”

  That made me pause. I bit my lip and stared at the prostrate demoness. “If you were not so beautiful, would you be in less jeopardy from the male demons? We might be able to seal away both your power and your beauty.”

  The demoness’s breath left her in a rush. “That would spare me the amorous predations of the male demons, priestess,” she said, “and I am grateful for the suggestion; but to be physically weaker than the males, and have nothing that would make me valuable to them, would leave me defenseless, with no means to feed myself, or defend against the ones who hold grudges against me.”

  “Very well,” I said. “We will not seal your power, but you will forswear using it on humans.”

  Shuai Hu coughed.

  “Or tigers,” I said. “Or ghosts. No, let’s rephrase this: you will swear contractually to use your power only on demons; and if you use it on demons, you shall not command them to harm anyone except other demons. Is that something you can agree to?”

  “Yes, priestess.”

  “Wait, another thought has occurred to me. Is the Ghost Magistrate susceptible to your charms?”

  “No, priestess. I do not know how, but he has some form of magical resistance.”

  I nodded. “Did he command your husband to attack me?”

  “No, that was all my husband’s doing,” she said.

  “Very well,” I said. “We have agreed upon an outline for this contract. Let us write and seal it; then you will send a message from me to the Ghost Magistrate, and then you will be free.”

  My father’s lips took on a wry shape. “A message?” he said. “I take it you will send Biaozu’s widow to carry her husband’s severed head to the Ghost Magistrate, to let him know his days are numbered?”

  “I would never do such a thing to a widow,” I said, “even with a marriage as damaging as hers seemed to be. But no, I will send her to apologize to the Ghost Magistrate on my behalf. She will make sure he understands my remorse for slaying two of his senior servants. She will humbly make certain the Guiyan understands that Biaozu and Gan Xuhao challenged me to a duel and not vice-versa, and that I am willing to offer reparations in exchange for what I have cost him.”

  “Why, Li-lin? Why are you sending apologies to a man you despise?”

  “Because he will have power over us.” I looked around, making sure no one else could hear me, before I continued. “All my life, men have drawn limits around my strength, and now this Ghost Magistrate will have control over how much power we can draw from the universe and the gods. He also is sole caretaker of my husband’s name. Until I capture the pink bird, the rainbow frog, and the fish clear as glass, he must see me, see us, as faithful, subservient subjects, until the day I come to take his world from him. And on that day I shall—how did you put it?—rip out his intestines through his asshole and stuff them in his mouth.”

  “Truly, Daughter,” my father shook his head, “I am glad never to have made an enemy of you.”

  I smiled; that may have been the greatest compliment my father had ever given me.

  Father, Shuai Hu, Meimei, and I trudged back toward the train station, accompanied by the thin music of cawing, crying seagulls, freed from their golden cages.

  Meimei held my hand. I wished I knew how to communicate with her.

  The tiger was silent; seemed shaken; his cheeks had lost their jolliness. I tried to approach my friend to assess his mental state, but he tensed at my approach, and I withdrew. He was hurt, emotionally, I could tell, and I ached for him; how devastating it must be for him, after over a century trying to transcend his animal desires, to have a demoness draw out enough of his animalistic side to enslave him.

  I found myself clueless as to how to comfort my Buddhist friend. Not knowing how to help him caused something to ache inside me.

  A commotion took the seagulls; they began to alight in our path, so we came to a stop.

  “Xian Li-lin, ahwrk!” a seagull cried. Somehow my eyes selected Jiujiu from the crowd. “You are not ready—aaahh!—for the Butterfly Man!”

  “What danger does this Butterfly Man pose, Jiujiu? What must I do to become ready?”

  “You must awaken, ahhhahh!” she said, and at this the flock started to take wing, “from the Blood Dream!”

  The phrase left me too stunned to speak, too shocked to formulate a question. “Wait,” I said, but the seagulls had flown away.

  A few minutes later Father, Shuai Hu, Meimei, and I arrived at the train station, finding it nearly empty. A procession of candle-flames (absent of their candles) drifted, seeming almost blown like leaves in autumn wind. A few egui, hungry ghosts, huddled in a corner, emaciated and desperate. A huge bare foot, the size of a man, shuffled impatiently along the concrete. The largest piece of ginger root I’d ever seen, its size and shape bulbously human, pushed a wide broom along the corridor.

  The train pulled in. We climbed aboard and found seats. I felt weary, in a heap of emotions. Meimei leaned against me, seeming to drift toward sleep. I had, at least, rescued her and freed the Haiou Shen; but at what cost, I wondered? My husband’s name had been stolen from me, and erased from the world; Father and I would need to consent to allow the Investiture of a manipulative slaver as our region’s deity. Were these bitter developments off-set, at least, by the killing of Biaozu and Gan Xuhao? The world would be slightly better with one less demonic torturer and one less murderous rat.

  The train started, chuffing and chugging down the benighted track of the Railroad of the Spirits. My father looked at me. “Let us speak, in confidence, Li-lin.”

  I glanced at the faceless girl, who clung to my hand. “Excuse me, Meimei, my father and I need to talk.”

  She nodded her understanding, and I stood up and went to sit beside my father. “Li-lin,” he said, “I want you to think carefully about your plans regarding the Ghost Magistrate. You want him to be Invested, and then you aim to destroy him. He’s a cruel and selfish ghost, but he will bring order to the region. He is preserving tradition.”

  “For your sake,” I said, “I hope the Ghost Yamen is allowed to continue, after the New Year.”

  Father’s eyelids widened. “What have you done, Li-lin? What will happen at the end of the year?”

  “Just before the start of the Lunar New Year, the Jade Emperor will strip the Ghost Magistrate of his titles, and divest him of the authorities of Tudi Gong.”

  “What are you talking about? You had no opportunity to send a message to the Celestial Palaces, Li-lin, and now you are sworn not to.”

  “We sent them a message from within the Ghost Yamen.”

  “I did no such thing,” he said. “And the Celestial Palaces would ignore the messages of a Daoshi of the Fourth or F
ifth, especially a female one.”

  “This is true, Sifu,” I said. “But the gods listen to you. And you spelled out the Ghost Magistrate’s crimes one by one, and you condemned him.”

  “Do you think the gods listen to every word I say, Li-lin? You overestimate the divine interest in the goings-on of humanity.”

  “When you stand in front of them, they listen to what you say, Sifu. And you condemned the Ghost Magistrate while you were standing in front of a stove.”

  His lips pursed. He held his head more rigidly on his neck, and his shoulders tightened. “The Kitchen God,” he said.

  I nodded. “On the twenty-third day of the last month of the year, the Kitchen God will report what he has witnessed to the Jade Emperor. And the Kitchen God heard the Ghost Magistrate forcefully condemned, by a Daoshi of the Seventh . . . .” I let my voice trail off.

  My father was silent for a while, his human eye blazing, the glass one empty, glossy. Eventually he spoke again. “Why do you do this, Li-lin? Why are you like this?”

  “What do you mean, Sifu?”

  “Why must you be so clever?”

  “I do not understand your question.”

  Scowling, he turned his face from me to gaze out the window while he spoke. “You tricked me,” he said. “It’s true, I stood by the stove and declared the Ghost Magistrate’s crimes where the Kitchen God could hear me. But I was only in the kitchen because you led me there. I was only by the stove because you motioned me to stand there. Then you verbally manipulated me to make my grievances heard. Why do you act this way, Li-lin? Is it so important for you to outwit me?”

  I was quiet for a long while, gathering my words on the train. Eventually I said, “I was responsible for the act that will cause the Ghost Magistrate’s downfall, and I alone. If he or his underlings choose to avenge him, it is my body they will target. After what you have done for me . . .” I looked pointedly at his glass eye, “I will not allow your body to be jeopardized for my actions. If I act alone, it is because I can’t stand the thought of you being in danger.”

  He closed his eyes. Wiped his brow. Frowned. “I am not so feeble that I need to be guarded like a child or a woman.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know. I know this. You are mighty and you are proud. And you think you are alone. The border between life and death, the metaphorical Ghost Gate, is crowded with monsters and afflictions; you are always aware of the menace to the living, and you see the threat as your sole responsibility.”

  “What of it, Li-lin? Everyone who fought by my side has died by my side.”

  “Not everyone,” I said.

  He tilted his head in acknowledgement. “I will not add your name to the list of people who died because I failed them. I have failed you enough for this lifetime.”

  I gave a small sigh. “You are saying you would rather die pointlessly than ask for my help.”

  “Li-lin, you are the one who chose not to ask for my help. Instead, you manipulated me to accomplish your goals.”

  “That is completely . . .” I started, but I trailed off. “Fair. It’s true. I tricked you into condemning the Ghost Magistrate to the Kitchen God.”

  “You could have asked for my help, Li-lin.”

  “There were shadows eavesdropping on every word we spoke! And would you have done it, anyway?” I said. “When the Guiyan falls, who knows what will happen to his Ghost Yamen. By the next day, it could be demolished, it could crumble down to dust and rubble, the mere ghost of a ghost town. And you love that place. You love its architecture and its bold colors, its lingering splendor.”

  “I do,” he admitted, a sour look on his mouth. “But it is not truly what I hoped it would be.”

  I waited for him to continue.

  “I thought at first we had been given an opportunity to stroll through history’s streets, seeing the past as it was. What a precious experience that would have been, Li-lin. But the Ghost Yamen is not the world as it ever was,” he said, choosing his words as if he were sifting grit from grains of rice. “The Guiyan has not refashioned something old but created an entertainment, a shadow play where puppets dance on sticks to entertain the audience. The Ghost Yamen is not a museum, or a shard out of history. It is a carnival. And only children weep when a carnival comes to an end.”

  A long time seemed to go by when neither of us spoke. We sat together and gazed into distances. At last I said, “Perhaps, after the duel against the demons, a senior Daoshi might see how it would be to his advantage, if he were to Ordain his disciple to the Sixth.”

  A minute passed, and then another; I felt as if I could see a storm moving over his face.

  The first five Ordinations were ranks held by novices; each step forward doubled the amount of power an initiate could draw. The Sixth Ordination was different; it was like graduating from school, becoming a journeyman, entering the professional ranks. A Daoshi of the Sixth held far more than twice as much spiritual power as one of the Fifth; starting at the Sixth Ordination, Daoshi could call upon the strength of all the generations of spiritual masters who came before, and also command an entire roster of orthodox spirit-generals.

  It was a simple matter to confer the five lower Ordinations, requiring no more than a few minutes chanting. Ordaining me to the Sixth would be different. The full Ordination was a Major Rite; it could only be conferred after days of rituals and sacred ordeals, which would take months of preparation. I did not look forward to placing my bare feet on the sharp rungs of the Sword Ladder, and climbing it up its dizzying heights, and I did not joy at the thought of spending half a day sitting on the sharpened nails of the Star Chair.

  My father and my husband had both undergone these ordeals before me, and I was more than willing to undertake the trials, face the fear and suffer the pain, to earn my place among the men I loved.

  Father cleared his throat. “Tell me about the tactics you used against me when I was under the demoness’s control, Li-lin.”

  I felt my teeth clench, my shoulders stiffen, my head drop low. “I do not need to tell you, Sifu. You know what I did.”

  “You took advantage of the fact that I lack peripheral vision due to a missing eye,” he said. “Then you struck my ribcage at the exact point where I’d been shot. Then you went after the injury in my neck.”

  I said nothing.

  “You exploited every vulnerability in my body, Li-lin. You came at me with precise strikes intended to chop me down at my weak points.”

  I said nothing.

  “Li-lin,” he said, “how long have you been planning that?”

  “Planning it, Sifu?” I said. “I never planned for a demon to enslave your mind and force you to attack me.”

  “You didn’t size me up in the moment of the fight, Li-lin,” my father said. “You analyzed my weaknesses a while ago.”

  “Because I’m a bodyguard, Sifu! How could I protect anyone if I did not know where they are vulnerable?”

  “You abused your familiarity with my body in order to incapacitate me.”

  “Of course I did,” I said. “How could I have stood a chance against you otherwise? You’re stronger, taller, better trained, more experienced . . . . I don’t have your power. My only hope was to take advantage of my personal knowledge.”

  “You press me for a full Ordination,” he said, “but seeing how lethally you make use of the limited power you hold right now, how could I trust you with the far greater power of the Sixth Ordination?”

  “Sifu, you and Rocket never made use of underhanded tactics, because neither of you was ever an underdog. I wish I could be strong and honorable like that. But if I relied on strength alone, I would stand no chance against you, or Biaozu. I’m too small, too weak, and you have limited my spiritual power by refusing to give me a higher Ordination. For me to protect the people I care about, I need to use my cunning, I must be willing to employ dirty tricks. You and Rocket never hid knives in your sleeves or threw dust in an opponent’s eyes, but I do not have your strength,
and foolish honor would get me cut down like a fool.”

  My father gazed at me and took a long moment before he replied. “There is merit in what you say.”

  I could only stare. It was very nearly like admitting he’d been wrong.

  We were quiet for a while, staring out the train’s window into a dim expanse. A ghostly cookfire by the wayside caught both of our attention, and we watched its guttering flames while the train passed it by.

  Eventually my father spoke, his words no louder than a whisper. “I have much to think about,” he said, “and you have had a long day. Why don’t you sleep beside me, Li-lin. I will keep you safe.”

  I didn’t know why but it felt like one of the kindest things anyone had ever said to me. It would be so nice to sleep beside my father, knowing I was protected. It would feel lovely, safe, and warm.

  I glanced over at the seat I had vacated, where the girl without a face had fallen asleep, alone. My “little sister” had no one protecting her. I stood and bowed to my father, genuinely grateful for his offer, before I went over to sit beside Meimei and closed my eyes.

  All my worries made my mind feel ragged and torn. What was Xu Shengdian planning? Who was the Butterfly Man the seagulls warned me about? Why did they warn me about my Blood Dream? Where was Anjing’s higher soul? What would the Ghost Magistrate do when he had more power? How was I going to recover my husband’s name and resurrect him?

  Somehow, despite the harsh hands of my myriad stressors, I must have fallen asleep; because it only felt like a moment later when my father said, “Awaken, Li-lin. We have arrived.”

  My eyelids were heavy from the nap, and I felt slow and woozy. Meimei leaned against me, and I allowed my father to herd the faceless girl and me off the train, onto the spirit-infested platform, and down the staircase. From there the tiger-monk, quietly brooding, guided us through an unwinding of the unearthly navigation that had led us into the spiritual realm.

  It was dark in the world of the living; yin energy flowed through the world and through me. It felt like the minutes before First Hour, which ranges between eleven at night and one in the morning. Energies of shadow and evil were at their strongest in this stretch of night, but so were subversive, female energies. My energies.