by Lydia Kwa
He turned his attention to raking in some new hay, then he started to brush down the horses, going from one stall to the next. Qilan took over when it came time to brush down her horse. He stood just outside the stall and watched her.
“Yes—you know, I am proud of her, of how she’s grown up into a strong and sensitive person,” Qilan said. “She may be young, but she’s gained a lot of wisdom.”
“Indeed.”
“I want you to keep an eye out for her.”
“What could you possibly mean? She’s there in the temple under your guidance and looked after by the Abbess and all the other nuns.”
“Yes, of course. But you have a special place in her heart. She knows she can talk to you if she needs to. Your own children are grown up now, but could you find it in yourself to look out for this one …?”
It dawned on Old Chen why they were having this conversation. “You’re … going away?”
She nodded, not breaking the rhythm of her brushing routine.
“For how long?”
Qilan shook her head. “Don’t know, can’t say yet.”
“Another one of your secret missions.”
“You could say that …” She turned to him. “Please prepare my saddle and equip me with my usual weapons. I’ll be heading out very early tomorrow.” Qilan put down the brush and nuzzled up to her horse.
Old Chen felt disturbed. It was the way she didn’t say things, how she was silent between the few words she uttered, that told him that what she was about to do was quite serious. “It’s about your father, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been listening to the gossip.”
He wished he could protest but he dared not, so he remained silent, remembering his own counsel to Ling years ago. He too had to accept what Qilan was about to do. “I respect that you have your reasons, Sister Orchid.” He bowed deeply to her.
“Thank you, Old Chen,” she said, bowing back to him.
She placed one hand firmly on his shoulder. Such a powerful grip; it sent shivers through him. Tears came to his eyes. He wanted to say, Don’t go, you’re like a daughter to me. But he refrained from speaking further—it would only make the parting that much harder.
Very early the next morning, while it was still dark, Qilan went to the Abbess to say goodbye. Next she crept into the nuns’ shared sleeping quarters and slipped a note under Ling’s pillow.
It was raining outside when Qilan left the temple. She had a large conical straw hat on, worn at a forward tilt to conceal her face, though there was hardly anyone on the streets outside to see her. The air was damp, and a thin film of sweat formed on her upper lip. She curled her tongue up to taste it. Salty.
Qilan reached the Yanxing Gate just as the drums sounded the ending of the curfew. She was the first to leave the city when the guards opened the gate.
Even travelling at top speed, the journey would take about a day and a half. She estimated that she would arrive at the full moon, on the Feast of All Souls. After riding hard and fast past sunset, she stopped at a small inn off the main route and asked that she be allowed to sleep in the stable. Her stallion needed hay and water and she wanted a large meal. Qilan paid the innkeeper generously with some silver. She was tired and fell asleep quickly, the oracle bone in a hemp pouch tucked inside her tunic jacket. Many images visited her that night.
Waking up in the half-light before dawn, she had a vision of her mother, an apparition sent from a remote distance. “Dear heart, I am safe. I will guide you to the temple.”
She quickly departed to resume her journey.
Ling sneaked out to the stable instead of attending the morning prayers.
Old Chen was snoring, lying in the hay with a bottle of ale next to him.
She poked at his belly. “Did she just leave? Where did she go?”
He opened his eyes and looked dazed. “How would I know?”
“I need to find her.”
“Don’t be silly. She doesn’t want you to do that.”
“Stop sounding like her!”
“No one knows where she’s gone,” Old Chen replied.
“Do we simply just wait here? I mean, she’s gone on a dangerous mission. How can we do nothing?”
Old Chen cleared his throat by spitting into the corner. He took up his empty bottle of ale and looked down into it. “Huh, I didn’t think I drank it all already. Bah, that was a short night of sleep. I need to get more ale.”
“How can you be thinking of ale at this time?” Ling felt a flush of impatience and anger. “I’m going to take a horse and ride out.”
“Where would you go? Tell me.”
“I … uh …”
“If you had really wanted to follow her, you would have shadowed her the moment she left the temple. But then, how could you know when she was heading out, short of sleeping in the stable with me all night? Besides, she would have stopped you dead in your tracks with a spell!”
Ling kicked at a bale of hay. “I didn’t suspect she would leave before dawn.”
“She left so early you were probably still snoring away, along with all those other nuns.”
“All right. I’m a fool.”
“Come now. Don’t give me that ugly scowl. We can’t always follow the ones we love, Ling. You’re supposed to be here, at the temple, now.” Old Chen yawned and got up. He stretched and tucked in his shirt. “Listen, I need to go into the market later. Why don’t you come with me and give me a hand? You’re the strongest one in the lot, after all.”
Ling knew this was Old Chen’s ploy to distract her. She nodded reluctantly.
Chushu Jieqi,
Limit of Heat,
Fifteenth Day of the Seventh Lunar Month,
Feast of All Souls
EN ROUTE TO DEMON STAR TEMPLE
Before dawn, Qilan was already awake when the vision of her mother appeared.
“I will meet you outside the temple. Ride for another forty-three li and you will come to a fork in the road. You will recognize that one of the forks eventually leads to our former home. Take the other fork and ride until you see a rock marked with the characters, . The rock is well hidden, so it means you must use your fox vision to find it. Dismount there at the rock. Take the narrow trail leading up to the temple on foot.”
Qilan reached the fork in the road by the early afternoon. A fleeting image of their former home came to mind, but she didn’t dwell on it. The other fork was the one she needed to take. As she rode up the path, her face prickled as if poked by needles. Her horse had to be goaded to travel that way, almost bolting a few times. The sky went from clear to cloudy in an instant.
The sun was halfway past its apex when she spotted the stone marker with her fox vision. Indeed, it was far back from the path and concealed by grass and moss. She alighted from her horse and spoke softly into his ear, reassuring him with a few firm pats on his side. She removed the oracle bone from the saddlebag and tucked it into her jacket. She carried a cloth bundle filled with offerings. She removed her hat and let it fall on her back, held in place by the string against her neck. She took a deep breath before she made her way on foot.
It was a hot, sweltering afternoon. There was no sound other than her boots on the hard ground. The air was still. There wasn’t even the sound of cicadas. No sign of birds.
The distance felt interminable. It must have taken more than a small hour before she spied signs of the temple ahead. The stillness was broken when she saw, just ahead of her, a raven hopping around on the ground at the entrance to the temple. She paused. She and the raven stared at each other for a few minutes before it flew off.
The closer she got to the temple entrance, the heavier her body grew. It was all she could do to move one foot in front of the other. Near the entrance, the vision of her mother appeared. “Dearest, I have guided you here, but I cannot enter. I will help you from a distance. Courage, my daughter.”
Qilan looked back and scanned the landscape around the temple. There were a few bundles of
twigs in one corner of a garden long neglected. A few dead shrubs. No sign of life. Then her eyes caught the quick gleam of an animal scurrying away.
DA FA TEMPLE, WEST CENTRAL CHANG’AN
The chanting of the nuns soothed Ling. It was going to take her a long time to digest what Qilan had shared with her.
Today, the boundaries between all worlds disappeared. Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living were open to crossings and visitations. It was important to honour the ancestors and offer incense and food to the hungry ghosts roaming about.
Sister Lizi was the one leading the chant today. She struck the wooden frog with eyes closed, the short stick never missing a beat. Ling half-listened to Sister Lizi’s voice, her mind riddled with many questions.
For the first time since she had lost her parents, she felt utterly terrified and unmoored. The fear she felt when she’d confronted Shan Hu was nothing compared to how she felt now. Didn’t Qilan care about dying? Wasn’t she afraid? After all these years, Qilan remained a mystery to Ling, though Ling felt as though Qilan knew her through and through. Why had Qilan been so calm when she announced she would leave Da Fa? Had she put on a show of courage for Ling’s benefit? Or did being part fox spirit somehow grant her an extraordinary capacity to be calm?
Ling’s eyes filled with tears as she recalled the note that she’d found under her pillow yesterday morning: “To the soul that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” She thought to herself, She has commanded me to be still. Not to rush ahead to follow her. Ling looked around the room at the nuns. For the past four years, they had all been kind to her, and she’d appreciated the respect they showed toward one another. She didn’t know how any of them had ended up here at the temple. Did their parents die, like hers? Had they been escaping danger, like Qilan? Did some of them feel a calling to become a nun? She had never dared ask any of them about their histories. Only Qilan volunteered her story. Did donning a nun’s robe somehow change a woman or girl? Was one’s history erased in some way by such a ritual? If she ever did decide to become a nun and remain at Da Fa, she would never forget her former life. But would her commitment to the temple somehow change her relationship to her past?
She brought her mind back to the chanting and looked up at Abbess Si who sat facing them. The elderly nun looked frail. Her lungs were more congested lately, and she coughed often. Sister Lizi was leading most of the rituals and chanting these days.
Ling hadn’t even turned the pages. She realized finally that they were close to the end of the scriptures. She sighed quietly to herself.
DEMON STAR TEMPLE
The sign over the entrance read, .
Qilan maintained the protective spell over her entire person and stepped over the threshold. All at once, a chilling presence descended from above. She felt its force, pressing hard, attempting to force her down to the ground.
She stretched her arms upward and met the chill with a hot, glowing stream of energy that shot out from her open palms. The chill receded enough for her to look around. There was little to be seen with the naked eye except ruins—cobwebs, toppled ritual objects, a broken altar table, some stone stools overturned.
She thought for a few moments about what she needed to do. She brushed the cobwebs off a stool, righted it, and placed her cloth bag carefully on top of it. Then she picked her way through the rubble, sniffing the air as she went. There was a strong smell of stagnation. Energy had become static and sunk downward. After walking around the main hall, she spotted the blocked passageway. What looked like broken parts of chairs and tables formed a web-like obstruction. On studying it more closely, it reminded her of some other pattern, but she couldn’t recall what it was. Is the obstruction really an obstruction? Perhaps not, she thought.
She turned her attention back to the main hall. She placed her right index and middle fingers up against her lips and whispered. Then she aimed those fingers at the cobwebs. They disappeared instantly. She waved her hand toward the broken table, causing it to be mended and the ritual objects to be righted. Next, she directed her fingers at the candles left in the burners, and they became lit.
Qilan glanced outside. It would soon be dusk. She retrieved her cloth bundle, unwrapped it, and placed the dried fruit on a green ceramic dish. On another small plate she poured the melon seeds and pine nuts. Then she brought out the small box which she had obtained months earlier at the Persian bazaar. Opening it, she lifted out a single rod of cannabis resin, the length of her middle finger. It was embossed with the figure of a snake. She placed it in the urn on the altar table.
She took off her outer jacket and placed it on the stone floor, forming a makeshift cushion. She then sat down, legs crossed, and proceeded to recite out loud. “I, Qilan, nun at Da Fa Temple, begin this petition by addressing the divine presences, male and female, in the Heavenly Realm.
“As daughter of the man named Xie, now sorcerer in service to the Empress Wu Zhao, I recognize that his soul has been captured and his body occupied by Gui, the one who originated in the Underworld and that came to occupy this temple for several years before it took possession of my father.
“I invite the Ones Who Dwell in the Stars, the Ones Who Execute Harmers, and the Illuminated Ones of Venus’s Central Phalanx to join with me. Together, on behalf of the seven generations of deceased ancestors of Xie’s household, may you assist me in dispersing the infectious and stale vapours associated with the demonic, forcing Gui to come forth and depart from the family gate. Cut off infectious infusions. Cause Gui to be brought under the control of the Demon Statutes.
“I invite the Divine One of Vermilion Cinnabar to apprehend the five Gu-Poisons, the Six Goblins, and the demons of malignant disasters and impoverishments that are causing decrement and loss. Annihilate them all.
“I pray to the Most High Beings on behalf of the man Xie and his soul. In order to disperse the inquisitorial pneumas, your servant respectfully offers up this Great Petition.”
After Qilan finished chanting, she bowed and rose up slowly. Her mother’s voice entered her mind. Gui had arrived.
She heard the growling presence approach from behind. Turning around, she saw Xie who smiled coldly at her.
Qilan brought one hand up to the centre of her forehead. She looked beneath Xie’s form and saw the demon crouched inside his guts. It extended its front limbs up and wrapped its claws around the inside of Xie’s throat. Its tongue flicked up and down sporadically.
“You were once my father,” she said.
“I chose the demon,” Xie responded in a tight, raspy voice.
“Xie came to this temple eleven years ago, wishing to save my life.”
“I suppose a father has to do that, doesn’t he?”
“But you are no longer my father.”
“Oh? How unfilial of you!”
Two rays of green light shot out from Xie’s eyes. Qilan evaded them; they struck the stone floor, causing it to crack. An acrid smell rose up from the fissure, like the smell of burning flesh.
“How dare you steal the oracle bone!”
“I only borrowed it. I’m going to return it to Ao.”
The walls of the temple shook and the ground vibrated. A blue mist issued from the top of Xie’s head. His form slumped down to the floor.
“You won’t get your father back,” Gui sneered.
“I’m not here to rescue his body.”
“Oh? Well then, what are you here for?”
“Why explain? You wouldn’t understand.”
“Where is the oracle bone?” The demon uncoiled its body and stretched its front limbs out. It reared up, standing almost twice tall as Qilan.
“Here,” Qilan whispered, tapping her sternum.
“You expect me to fight you for the bone, is that it?”
“Look at the offerings I have laid out for you here. I’m doing this for your benefit.”
“Absurd nonsense!” Gui screeched. “But allow me to commend you for being ingenious enough to have evaded me a
ll these years. Before I annihilate you, I’d like to entertain you with the story of how I came to be a demon.”
Gui blew out a steady stream of blue mist that sank to the ground between it and Qilan. “In my previous life as a human, I was a man of great learning and wisdom. I had a lot to offer the ruler and his people. Yet I was reviled because of my physical deformity. Women mocked me and avoided me. Even though I should have been awarded the top prize in the Imperial examinations, the Emperor refused to do so because he succumbed to popular opinion. All the knowledge and wisdom I possessed was completely ignored, simply because I looked ugly!”
Gui sank down on all fours and began to move in an arc, and Qilan immediately followed suit by walking in the opposite direction. She sensed the demon had a lot more to say before it decided to attack her.
“I was supposed to receive accolades. To stand alone on Ao’s head, the victor in the examinations. Instead, I was robbed of glory. So I hate, I hate the craving of humans for beauty and goodness.”
“And in hating, you’ve become cruel.”
Gui stopped and reared up. “I am justified. Justified.”
A wave of cold radiated toward Qilan and instead of sinking to the ground came within a few cun of her. She shivered, her teeth chattering, before she managed to issue a spell that neutralized it. Water pooled at her feet.
“What would you like to do with the oracle bone?”
“I lied to the Empress,” Gui said, making a succession of rapid sawing noises that expressed its glee. “I told her I would use it for the Feng and Shan rituals in a few years.”
“You want it for another purpose.” Qilan was intently focused on Gui’s every move as they continued to circle around each other in the ancient hall.
“I will use it to destroy human beings,” Gui said. “I’ll start with the Emperor and Empress, all their servants in the Inner Palace, then the ministers, the court, then finally, all the people in this city! That’s only a beginning. For humans are a scourge upon the earth, and they deserve to be eliminated.”