Chapter 4
Before bed, Mistress Ming gave me a hand-drawn map and pointed out places we should go.
“I’ve heard stories about evil spirits here and here,” she said, marking different towns in Wen and Sian. “If you go off your usual route just slightly, you can find them.”
“Are you sure these spirits are real and not just local folktales?”
She held my gaze, her eyes deathly serious. “Ask the exorcists who barely lived to tell the tale.”
“All right.” I suppressed a shudder. “Tell me what you’ve heard.”
Ren and I departed before dawn, exchanging quick goodbyes with Mistress Ming at the door.
The sky was a deep, sweeping black flecked with stars, the air crisp and delicate as frost. I lit a lantern, my cold-nipped fingers stinging from its heat.
Behind me, Ren stood with his hands held in Mistress Ming’s as the wisewoman bowed her head.
“Please take care of yourself, Your Highness,” she said with the unfeigned deference I still couldn’t get used to.
“Won’t you accompany us?” he asked.
“I can’t purify spirits like Mistress Kang; she’s all you need, Your Highness. Besides, it’s impossible for me to return to Sian. I’m still wanted for your mother’s death.”
“Once I’m well, I’ll find out who the real culprit is,” he said, determined. “Then you can come home.”
“Wen is my home now. There’s nothing left for me in Sian.” Mistress Ming smiled, melancholic. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help you.”
Ren patted her hand. “You’ve done enough, Lady Ming.”
“I appreciate Your Highness’s kindness, but I’m no longer Lady Ming.”
“Nonsense. You’ll always be Lady Ming to me. You may not know it, but you were one of the few people who brought me joy in the palace. For that, I’ll forever be grateful.”
Mistress Ming bowed lower, flustered by the praise. Then her eyes flitted up and caught mine. Seeming to remember the business at hand, she cleared her throat and said more authoritatively, “Well, you two had best be on your way. Time is precious.”
Ren nodded, stepping in my direction.
“Thank you again, dajie,” I said, dipping my head politely.
The wisewoman pulled her shawl tighter around her chest. In a more casual tone than she’d used with Ren, she said, “Thank me when you’ve successfully completed the mission. And don’t forget to bring what I asked for the next time you visit.”
“Yes, yes.” I passed the lantern, a collapsible paper barrel dangling from a short stick, to Ren, my feet already turning toward the path out of the bamboo forest. Over my shoulder, I said, “Now hurry back inside before you catch a cold.”
Mistress Ming didn’t need to be told twice, though I suspected she watched our departure from the window. For all her sharp edges, the wisewoman had a gold heart hidden inside. I was sad to leave so soon. But I’d visit Mistress Ming another time and learn more about her mysterious past.
“We’re traveling on foot?” Ren asked when he realized I intended to walk the entire way home.
“Did you expect a royal carriage?” I led the way through the bamboo forest, the faint moonlight softening the lines of the leaves above and the earth below. “Unfortunately for you, Your Highness, I don’t care to spend money on such frivolities. And besides, I prefer to walk.”
“You prefer,” he said, taking two long strides to catch up with my pace. “Just as you seem to prefer traveling in the dead of night, the hour of robbers and ghosts. Why is that?”
I nearly flinched at his closeness. I’d grown accustomed to being the lone leader at the head of silent companions, with only the grass and trees on either side of me. Ren’s nearness unnerved me, and his voice, substantial and colored with life, felt jarring to my ears.
Not that I’d let him see it.
“Truly, you must’ve lived a lavish life,” I said, “for you to know so little of corpse-driving.”
Instead of being offended, he shrugged and said, “I’ll admit I was sheltered. Cure me of my ignorance, Mistress Kang.”
I paused before responding. “It’s cooler at night, better for preserving a corpse’s condition with the talisman’s magic. And, as you say, it’s a time of robbers and ghosts, meaning one is less likely to cross paths with an innocent living human.”
“Bad luck to see the reanimated dead?” Ren guessed.
“Quite.”
We’d been speaking as if it were some other poor soul who’d been unfortunate enough to become a corpse needing to be transported.
But then we seemed to remember at the same time why we were there, trekking through the shadows toward an even darker destination.
Though Ren was an unconventional client, my position hadn’t changed.
I remained a ganshi priestess guiding my reanimated dead.
Or, in this case, my reanimated almost-dead.
“Will I really die that quickly if I don’t gather enough qi?” Ren said, as if he didn’t want to ask but couldn’t help doing so.
“Yes,” I replied. “Which is why we should talk less and walk faster.”
My tone shut down any response, not that he seemed as eager to chat as before. Worry deepened the lines of his face, a tension I was accustomed to seeing in the mirror. We said nothing more as we broke from the bamboo forest and followed the main road east, in the direction of Sian.
The chime of my staff accompanied our progress, filling the nighttime quiet. Though Ren was not quite dead, he still wore a Fu talisman, which would be enough to terrify any passerby. Most people didn’t want to test their luck with the supernatural.
It’d be several days before we reached the border. First, we had to cut through quilted farmsteads, bypassing local villages, and walk within the far-reaching shadows of mountains lush and untouched by human hands.
Fortunately, I’d traveled the meandering roads enough that my feet remembered the rhythm of the land, could force sense into the forks and turns and timeworn road signs.
I also knew when to deviate from the path as the sky lightened from black to blue.
It didn’t take long to locate a cave where we could wait out the daylight.
Ren was more than happy to make up for the sleep he’d lost. Through the night, I’d caught him dozing off on several occasions, my iron bells the only thing compelling him to follow. Now he fell quickly asleep with his cloak rolled up and propped beneath his head.
I sat with my back against the cold, dewy wall, watching the rise and fall of his chest—still an unnerving sight to behold on a boy with a Fu talisman shielding his face. He slept as if his worries were nothing but lashes brushed off his cheeks.
I, on the other hand, had never been able to fall asleep quickly. I was the most alert when my body was worn, all my energy gathering within my skull and flitting about like birds in flight. Sitting there, thoughts of my family, my father, flew in familiar old circles.
When I could no longer bear the weight of my own helplessness, I turned my attention to something I could control—my plans for nightfall.
Our first destination was the village of Fuzhou, or rather the forest beside it, which was said to be haunted by a woman who’d committed suicide.
Back at the hut, as Mistress Ming and I examined the map she’d given me, I’d decided to make no more than three stops, excepting Baimu, on the way to Hulin—Fuzhou, Guangli, and Xiatang.
Each claimed to suffer from the greatest evil.
I’d need something great. The sooner I filled Ren with qi, the sooner I could be home with my family.
Eventually, my mind quieted and I sank into a dreamless sleep.
At sunset, I woke to stretch my legs, surprised that Ren didn’t stir at all.
I studied his breathing form, thinking how strange it was to travel with another living person after working alone for so long, to have to consider another’s needs and opinions.
While I waited for the streaking oranges and blues to darken into night, I nudged Ren awake and offered him a rice roll from my pack.
The shadows beneath his eyes had deepened during the day, and not just from insufficient sleep.
His face had taken on the same deathly pallor it’d borne in the abandoned battlefield.
He moved as if his body were a heavy sigh.
I didn’t need Mistress Ming to tell me what was wrong.
Ren’s qi was weakening.
I studied the Fu talisman on his forehead, pressing my lips together to hide a frown. The talisman was as powerful as ever, but even its qi couldn’t supplement Ren’s for long. Not when his spirit was hanging from the edge of death.
After he finished his rice roll, I handed him another. Food provided energy, and he’d need whatever energy he could ingest, even if it eventually seeped from his body like wine in a cracked jug.
“What’s in Fuzhou?” Ren asked when I told him of our plans for the evening.
“A haunted forest,” I said, chasing down my dinner with water from my gourd.
“Who haunts it?”
“The spirit of a woman who hanged herself.”
As we began our journey to Fuzhou, I told him what Mistress Ming had said of the woman.
A few years ago, a local girl had had the good fortune of marrying into a wealthier family in the village.
After a year of trying for a son, she gave birth to a daughter—worse, a stillborn baby.
Heartbroken and ashamed, the woman ran to the forest behind the family property and hanged herself from the branches of an oak tree.
Her name was quickly removed from the family register and forgotten.
Two months later, a woodcutter returned from the forest, pale, shaking, and covered in cuts.
He claimed that he’d heard a woman crying and followed the sound into a denser part of the woods.
Suddenly, the weeping stopped, and he felt the rough bark of a tree branch wind around his throat, yanking him upward.
He only managed to escape by hacking himself free with his ax.