by Rich Horton
Winter Solstice, the Twenty-Second Solar Term:
This winter has been both dry and cold, but I often hear the sound of thunder in the distance. Xiao Qian says that it’s the Thunder Calamity, which happens only once every thousand years.
The Thunder Calamity punishes demons and ghosts and lost spirits. Those who can escape it can live for another thousand years. Those who can’t will be burnt away until no trace is left of them.
I know perfectly well that there’s no such thing as a “Thunder Calamity” in this world. Xiao Qian has been a ghost for so long that she’s now gone a little crazy. She holds onto me with her cold hands, her face as pale as a sheet of paper. She says that to hide from the Calamity, a ghost must find a real person with a good heart to stay beside her. That way, just like how one wouldn’t throw a shoe at a mouse sitting beside an expensive vase, the Duke of Thunder will not strike the ghost.
Because of her fear, my plan to leave has been put on hold. In secret I’ve already prepared my luggage: a few stolen potatoes, a few old shirts. My body isn’t growing any more anyway, so these clothes will last me a long time. I didn’t take any of the old copper coins from Xiao Qian though. Perhaps the outside world does not use them.
I really want to leave Ghost Street. I don’t care where I go; I just want to see the world. Anywhere but here.
I want to know how real people live.
But still, I linger.
On Winter Solstice it snows. The snowflakes are tiny, like white saw dust. They melt as soon as they hit the ground. Only a very thin layer has accumulated by noon.
I walk alone along the street, bored. In past years I would go to Lanruo Temple to find Yan Chixia. We would knock an opening in the ice covering the lotus pond, and lower our jury-rigged fishing pole beneath the ice. Winter catfish are very fat and taste fantastic when roasted with garlic.
But I haven’t seen Yan Chixia in a long time. I wonder if his beard and hair have grown out a bit.
Thunder rumbles in the sky, closer, then further away, leaving only a buzzing sensation in my ears. I walk all the way to the Old Ghost Tree, climb up into its branches, and sit still. Snowflakes fall all around me but not on me. I feel calm and warm. I curl up and tuck my head under my arms, falling asleep like a bird.
In my dream, I see Ghost Street turning into a long, thin snake. The Old Ghost Tree is the head, Lanruo Temple the tail, the slate slabs the scales. On each scale is drawn the face of a little ghost, very delicate and beautiful.
But the snake continues to writhe as though in great pain. I watch carefully and see that a mass of termites and spiders is biting its tail, making a sound like silkworms feeding on mulberry leaves. With sharp mandibles and claws, they tear off the scales on the snake one by one, revealing the flesh underneath. The snake struggles silently, but disappears inch by inch into the maws of the insects. When its body is almost completely eaten, it finally makes a sharp cry, and turns its lonesome head towards me.
I see that its face is Xiao Qian’s.
I wake up. The cold wind rustles the leaves of the Old Ghost Tree. It’s too quiet around me. All the crows have disappeared to who knows where except one that is very old and ugly. It’s crouching in front of me, its beak dangling like the tip of a long mustache.
I shake it awake, anxious. It stares at me with two broken-glass eyes, croaking to me in its mechanical, flat voice, “Ning, why are you still here?”
“Where should I be?”
“Anywhere is good,” it says. “Ghost Street is finished. We’re all finished.”
I stick my head out of the leaves of the Old Ghost Tree. Under the slate-grey sky, I see the murder of crows circling over Lanruo Temple in the distance, cawing incessantly. I’ve never seen anything like this.
I jump down from the tree and run. As I run along the narrow street, I pass dark doors and windows. The cawing of the crows has awakened many of the ghosts, but they don’t dare to go outside, where there’s light. All they can do is to peek out from cracks in doors, like a bunch of crickets hiding under houses in winter.
The old walls of Lanruo Temple, long in need of repairs, have been pushed down. Many giant mechanical spiders made of steel are crawling all over the main hall, breaking off the dark red glass shingles and sculpted wooden molding, piece by piece, and throwing the pieces into the snow on the ground. They have flat bodies, blue-glowing eyes, and sharp mandibles, as ugly as you can imagine. From deep within their bodies comes a rumbling noise like thunder.
The crows swoop around them, picking up bits of broken shingles and bricks on the ground and dropping them on the spiders. But they are too weak and the spiders ignore them. The broken shingle pieces strike against the steel shells, making faint, hollow echoes.
The vegetable garden has been destroyed. All that remains are some mud and pale white roots. I see one of the Monk’s rusted arms sticking out of a pile of broken bricks.
I run through the garden, calling for Yan Chixia. He hears me and slowly walks out of his cabin. He’s still wearing his battle gear: sedge hat over his head, the sword Demon Slayer in his hand. I want to shout for him to fight the spiders, but somehow I can’t spit the words out. The words taste like bitter, astringent paste stuck in my throat.
Yan Chixia stares at me with his sad eyes. He comes over to hold my hands. His hands are as cold as Xiao Qian’s.
We stand together and watch as the great and beautiful main hall is torn apart bit by bit, collapses, turns into a pile of rubble: shingles, bricks, wood, and mud. Nothing is whole.
They’ve destroyed all of Lanruo Temple: the walls, the main hall, the garden, the lotus pond, the bamboo grove, and Yan Chixia’s cabin. The only thing left is a muddy ruin.
Now they’re moving onto the rest of Ghost Street. They pry up the slate slabs, flatten the broken houses along the sides of the street. The ghosts hiding in the houses are chased into the middle of the street. As they run, they scream and scream, while their skin slowly burns in the faint sunlight. There are no visible flames. But you can see the skin turning black in patches, and the smell of burning plastic is everywhere.
I fall into the snow. The smell of burning ghost skin makes me vomit. But there’s nothing in my stomach to throw up. So I cry during the breaks in the dry heaves.
So this is what the Thunder Calamity looks like.
The ghosts, their faces burned away, continue to cry and run and struggle in the snow. Their footprints criss-cross in the snow, like a child’s handwriting. I suddenly think of Xiao Qian, and so I start to run again.
Xian Qian is still sitting in the dark bedroom. She combs her hair as she sings. Her melody floats in the gaps between the roaring, rumbling thunder of the spiders, so quiet, so transparent, like a dreamscape under the moon.
From her body come the fragrances of myriad flowers and herbs, layer after layer, like gossamer. Her hair floats up into the air like a flame, fluttering without cease. I stand and listen to her sing, my face full of tears, until the whole house begins to shake.
From on top of the roof, I hear the sound of steel clanging, blunt objects striking against each other, heavy footsteps, and then Yan Chixia’s shouting.
Suddenly, the roof caves in, bringing with it a rain of shingles and letting in a bright patch of grey sky full of fluttering snowflakes. I push Xiao Qian into a dark corner, out of the way of the light.
I run outside the house. Yan Chixia is standing on the roof, holding his sword in front of him. The cold wind stretches his robe taut like a grey flag.
He jumps onto the back of a spider, and stabs at its eyes with his sword. The spider struggles hard and throws Yan off its back. Then the spider grabs Yan with two sharp claws and pulls him into its sharp, metallic, grinding mandibles. It chews and chews, like a man chewing kimchee, until pieces of Yan Chixia’s body are falling out of its mandibles onto the shingles of the roof. Finally, Yan’s head falls off the roof and rolls to a stop next to my feet, like a hard-boiled egg.
I pick up his
head. He stares at me with his dead eyes. There are no tears in them, only anger and regret. Then with the last of his strength, Yan closes his eyes, as though he cannot bear to watch any more.
The spider continues to chew and grind up the rest of Yan Chixia’s body. Then it leaps down from the roof, and, rumbling, crawls towards me. Its eyes glow with a deep blue light.
Xiao Qian jumps from behind me and grabs me by the waist, pulling me back. I pry her hands off of me and push her back into the dark room. Then I pick up Yan Chixia’s sword and rush towards the spider.
The cold blue light of a steel claw flashes before my eyes. Then my head strikes the ground with a muffled thump. Blood spills everywhere.
The world is now tilted: tilted sky, tilted street, tilted snow falling diagonally. With every bit of my strength, I turn my eyes to follow the spider. I see that it’s chewing on my body. A stream of dark red fluid drips out of its beak, bubbling, warm, the droplets slowly spreading in the snow.
As the spider chews, it slows down gradually. Then it stops moving, the blue light in its eyes dim and then go out.
As though they have received some signal, all the other spiders also stop one by one. The rumbling thunder stops, plunging the world into silence.
The wind stops too. Snow begins to stick to the spiders’ steel bodies.
I want to laugh, but I can’t. My head is now separated from my body, so there’s no way to get air into the lungs and then out to my vocal cords. So I crack my lips open until the smile is frozen on my face.
The spiders believed that I was alive, a real person. They chewed my body and tasted flesh and saw blood. But they aren’t allowed to harm real people. If they do they must destroy themselves. That’s also part of the rules. Ghosts, spiders, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has to follow the rules.
I never imagined that the spiders would be so stupid. They’re even easier to fool than ghosts.
The scene in my eyes grows indistinct, fades, as though a veil is falling from the sky, covering my head. I remember the words of the crows. So it’s true. When your head is cut off, you really die.
I grew up on this street; I ran along this street. Now I’m finally going to die on this street, just like a real person.
A pair of pale, cold hands reaches over, stroking my face.
The wind blows and covers my face with a few pale pink peach petals. But I know they’re not peach petals. They’re Xiao Qian’s tears, mixed with snow.
Heaven Under Earth
Aliette de Bodard
Husband’s new spouse is brought home in a hovering palanquin decked with red lanterns, its curtains displaying images of mandarin ducks and kingfishers—the symbols of a happy marriage.
First Spouse Liang Pao has gathered the whole household by the high gate, from the stewards to the cooks, from the lower spouses to their valets. He’s standing slightly behind Husband, with his head held high, with pins of platinum holding his immaculate topknot in place—in spite of the fact that he’s been unable to sleep all night. The baby wouldn’t stop kicking within his womb, and the regulators in his blood disgorged a steady stream of yin-humours to calm him down. He’s slightly nauseous, as when he’s had too much rice wine to drink—and he wonders why they never get easier, these carryings.
The palanquin stops, lowers itself gracefully as the steward cuts off the dragon-breath fields. The scarlet curtains sway, twisting out of shape the characters for good luck and long life.
Husband steps out first, holding out his hand to the spouse inside—he’s wearing his best clothes, white live-worm silk preserved since the days of the colonist ancestors, a family heirloom reserved for grand events.
And the spouse . . .
When she steps out of the palanquin, Liang Pao cannot help a slight gesture of recoil. He wasn’t expecting . . .
Behind him, the servants and the lower spouses are whispering in disbelief. Liang Pao turns, slightly, to throw them a cutting glance—and the whispers cease, but they don’t erase the facts.
The new spouse is unmistakably a woman—not a caihe like Liang Pao and the others, a woman with a live womb and eggs of her own. Except . . . Except that it’s obvious how Husband could afford to bring a woman home even though he’s not a High Official: her calm, stately face under the white makeup is older than it should be. She’s in her late fifties, at best—and her childbearing years are, if not over, very near their end. By the time her seclusion has ended, she’ll be useless.
Husband turns around, presenting her to the household, and Liang Pao’s ingrained reflexes take over from his shock.
From a faraway place, as distant as the heights of Mount Xu, he walks to her and bows, slightly—as befitting a superior to an inferior. “My Lady,” he says. “We wish you a prosperous marriage.” He hesitates for a fraction of a second, but still he completes the traditional blessing. “May you have the Dragon’s Nine Sons, every one of them with their own strength and successes.”
Pointless. She won’t have any sons, or any daughters for that matter.
“First Spouse,” Husband says, equally formally. “This insignificant person by my side is Qin Daiyu, and she humbly begs you to enter the house as a lawfully wedded spouse.”
Liang Pao blesses formalities—the only thing he can hold onto, steady and unvarying and as surely ingrained in his mind as Master Kong’s Classics. “She is welcome under this roof, for the term of her seclusion and for the term of her marriage. May Heaven bestow on both of you a thousand years of happiness.”
All this, of course, does nothing to quell the acrid taste in his mouth, and nothing to answer his question—the endless “Why?” swirling in his head like a trapped bird.
As manager of the household, Liang Pao is the one who assigns Fourth Spouse her quarters and servants of her own. The best thing for her would have been caihes, but he cannot very well ask one of the two other spouses to wait on her, when she’s still the youngest member of the household—in seniority if not in age.
Liang Pao selects the only two neutered valets he has, and takes them to help Fourth Spouse unpack her bridal things: three heavy lacquered coffers, antiquities predating the Arrival. If these could be sold, they’d fetch a price even higher than Husband’s silk robes.
Where under Heaven did Husband find her?
Fourth Spouse watches him the whole time, with a frank look of appraisal he finds disturbing—she’s neither as meek nor as demure as a woman should be.
But then, he knows so little of women.
When the servants have left, Fourth Spouse doesn’t move. She only bows her head, with a stately gesture that looks correct—but that sends a tingle down Liang Pao’s spine, a hint of wrongness. She says, “Thank you.”
“It’s my place.” He knows he should stay with the prescribed topics, wish her again health and happiness, but his curiosity is too great. “It’s unusual for our household to . . . welcome such a guest.”
“I have no doubt,” she says, then offers a mocking smile.
No opening, then, and he’s unsure of why he’s ever hoped there would be one. Ritual assigns each of them their place: to him, the running of the household, including that of her quarters; to her, the seclusion and the regular visits from the Embroidered Guards, the taking of her last few eggs to pay the tax on female marriages.
After a last bow, he’s preparing to leave, when she does speak.
“The stars have shifted their course to bring me here from the willow-and-flower house,” she says. Her formal speech is at odds with the frank gaze she trains on him.
Liang Pao stops, frozen in the doorframe. A willow-and-flower. A courtesan. That’s where Husband found her, then, in a high-class brothel—one that can afford a few women from the Ministry of Rites, in addition to their usual fare of caihes and boys.
“So that’s why he could afford you.” He doesn’t even attempt the usual courtesies; but he doubts she’ll be shocked by this breach. That’s why her gaze was assessing him then—as a potent
ial client, even though the idea of a caihe sleeping with a woman is ludicrous.
She shrugs. Her robe slides down her shoulders as she does so, revealing skin the colour of the moon, and tight, round breasts that he could hold in one hand. And, as he thinks of that, the same deep sense of wrongness tightens in his womb.
There’s a smell in the air—blossoming on the edge of perception, a mixture of flowers and sweat and Buddha knows what. Liang Pao’s breath quickens. He knows what it has to be: spring-scents, tailored to arouse her clients. But he’s not one of them. He’s not even a man. It can’t be working on him.
“You’ve never seen a woman before,” Fourth Spouse says, as blunt as he is.
He shakes his head. “I was born the normal way,” he says. In an automated incubator, after his father filled out the necessary forms at the Ministry of Rites.
“I see.” Her lips curl—she’s amused, and bitter, though he doesn’t know why. “You were born a man.”
Liang Pao shrugs. It seems such a long time ago, when he was still a boy and still dreaming of being head of his own household, fantasizing over how many spouses he’d be allowed to take—long before he failed the exams, long before knives and needles cut into his flesh, before regulators moulded him into something else. Now it’s a faded memory, blunted and harmless. He’s caihe now—has always been so.
Fourth Spouse draws herself up, her chest jutting out in what looks like a practised pose. But the ease with which she does it belies that. It’s a reflex, as ingrained within her as politeness and courtesies are within Liang Pao.
His heartbeat has quickened; but underneath is the familiar languor caused by his regulators releasing new yin-humours, and within a few moments his breath grows calm again, his heartbeat steady once more.
He shouldn’t be here. Anything out of the ordinary could endanger the pregnancy; and though Husband’s post as a fifth-rank civil servant entitles him to nine transfers, he doesn’t want to be the one to spoil a perfectly good egg. “I’ll leave you alone,” he says.