Chapter 5 #2
But even as I spoke the words, I could feel myself losing grip on what I was saying, where I needed to be. My feet stumbled, though I didn’t recall taking a step. The man caught my arm again. With a disapproving sigh, he tugged me into motion, away from the forest and Ren.
The man’s name was Liu Guowei.
“I make bread for a living,” he told me as we entered a congregation of houses puffing smoke from their chimneys.
He’d gone to the forest to gather firewood, as the night had suddenly been overtaken by a cold wave.
That was how he’d heard my struggle with the evil spirit.
Without his intervention, I would’ve been killed.
“I was carrying out a … a job,” I mumbled weakly. “As a ganshi priestess.”
“Priestess or no,” he said, “you shouldn’t be wandering the forest at this time of night. Just look at the state you’re in.”
Though gruff, his concern reminded me, fleetingly, of my father. He gestured at my disheveled appearance, at the scratches and bruises marring my uncovered skin. Beneath the physical wounds, my head was screaming for relief, my feet tripping over each other as I walked.
“But I must … go back,” I slurred, gripping the side of my head. “Ren … he’s still in there.”
So was my peach staff. Already its absence gnawed at my vulnerability.
“You’re no help to him in your condition,” the baker grumbled, holding my elbow to steady me while he pulled me along.
“He’s injured too,” I protested, remembering Ren’s broken body. Another wave of nausea rolled through me. “And I—I—”
I need him. I’d bet everything on the prince. I couldn’t risk losing him. Regardless of what I’d told Ren about prioritizing my own safety, when faced with the decision, I realized I couldn’t abandon him. Baba’s life was counting on Ren’s survival.
“Don’t worry,” Guowei said. “She can’t hurt one who’s already dead.”
He’s not dead, I was about to say. But then my focus latched on to the baker’s choice of words, his tone casual with familiarity. I echoed, “She?”
The baker muttered something indiscernible, his shoulders hunched. He said nothing more as we neared our destination. Still dazed and exhausted, I had little choice but to follow.
Liu Guowei lived in a cramped two-story house made of wood and rammed earth. Overhanging roofs weighed down by black tiles loomed over us as we approached.
The ground level was for business, cleaning, and cooking.
The second level comprised the living area.
Guowei motioned toward the latter, leading me past a warm, sweet-smelling kitchen and up the creaky stairs to a guest room tucked inside a narrow hall.
He left a candle for me on a low desk and said, “I’ll have my wife bring you tea and treatment for your wounds. ”
“Tea?” I said, pushing past my dizziness. “Thank you for your kindness, Mister Liu, but I can’t stay long. I must return for my companion.”
Though Guowei had assumed Ren was a normal corpse, I knew better. What condition was Ren in now? How long did he have before his qi faded? What if the spirit had already killed him? I bit the inside of my lip, refusing to believe it, to even dwell on such hopeless thoughts.
Rather than arguing as he had before, the baker simply grunted and disappeared out the door, folding it shut behind him.
In his absence, I glanced around the room, too awkward and tired to move.
The furnishings were modest, with a sleeping mat and blanket rolled up against the far wall.
Beneath the latticed window was a desk and a small two-drawer dresser painted with peonies.
A clay vase sat on a cabinet to my right, bearing stalks of dried flowers reminiscent of the pressed blossoms my sister liked to collect.
I found a flattened cushion and stiffly knelt on it as I waited, my nose itching from a hint of dust. I breathed shallowly, head bent to still my throbbing skull.
The way Guowei had said she—almost with affection—made me suspect that he personally knew the evil spirit haunting Fuzhou’s forest. Perhaps he or his wife had information that could help me defeat her—information that was worth delaying Ren’s rescue.
The door unfolded, and a middle-aged woman stepped over the raised threshold, bearing a tray in her hands.
Her white-streaked hair was pinned back in a low bun.
The wrinkles lining her eyes matched the creases of her khaki ruqun, which appeared dusted with flour.
Catching my gaze, the baker’s wife startled.
“Forgive me,” she said, laughing nervously. “My husband was right—you are young.”
I attempted a respectful bow. “I’m Kang Siying. Thank you for welcoming me into your home.”
I intentionally left out details of where I was from. While holy servants were accepted on both sides of the border, any mention of Sian could invite ill-timed antipathy.
The woman tutted and came closer, setting her tray on the floor between us. I briefly took in the contents—clean rags, a bowl of water, and a clay teapot paired with a cup already filled with steaming tea.
The baker’s wife examined my face and cringed. “My, my, dear. Even your ears are bleeding.”
I touched my right ear, my fingers coming away dark red. It must’ve been the evil spirit’s screaming, strong enough to knock me to the ground. No wonder my head spun.
Mistress Liu soaked a rag in water and held it toward my aching face. “May I?”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
I sat still while the older woman gently cleaned my wounds.
Her careful touch brought to mind my own mother, and I recalled all the times in my childhood when I’d scraped a knee or cut my fingers while working too quickly with the Fu talismans.
Mama would chide me for my carelessness, but as she dressed my injuries, her hands were always tender.
I inhaled, tucking my memories back into the locked chest in my head. Remembering my mother only reminded me of everything else I stood to lose.
When Mistress Liu finished, she handed me the tea, which had cooled enough to drink. “It’s jujube,” she said. “Good for blood loss. I added a bit of honey for your throat as well.”
“Mistress Liu,” I said after I’d taken a few sips of the lightly sweetened tea and felt my aches ease, “what can you tell me about the spirit who haunts the forest?”
The woman jerked, dropping the rag she’d been wringing back into the bowl of pinked water. Her trembling hands wiped at her skirt. After a moment of hesitation, she met my eyes with unexpected intensity. “So you truly are here to exorcise the ghost of Fuzhou Forest?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice steadier from the tea, “but it proved more difficult than expected. Any information you have would be a big help.”
The baker’s wife glanced at the door, as if expecting someone to burst in and stop her. When the night air remained still, she turned back to me and said, voice low, “What happens to an evil spirit when you exorcise it? Does it disappear? Or will it be able to move on to the next world?”
I recited what Baba had taught me. “Evil spirits are trapped here by their own lingering emotions—anger, grief, fear, and so on. Once purified, their emotional attachments will be severed, and their souls can peacefully depart into the next world.”
As for the remaining qi, it would either return to the earth—or be taken by one who needed it.
The relief on the woman’s face gentled her features, making her seem lighter. She nodded. “Very well. I’ll tell you everything, starting with the spirit’s name. It was—”
“Don’t say another word, woman.”
We both jolted at the sound of Liu Guowei’s voice. I’d been leaning forward, so eager to hear his wife speak that I’d failed to notice the man appearing in the open doorframe. I straightened, taking in his angry, grizzled face while my own lips pressed tightly.
“I told you to clean her up,” he continued, addressing his wife, “not to share private information with a stranger.”
“She’s a priestess,” Mistress Liu countered. “She can exorcise—”
“I know what she is.” He folded his arms, his disapproval evident even as he avoided looking directly at me. “But we already decided—”
“No, you decided,” his wife spat with surprising bitterness. “You didn’t care what I thought, what with your foolish man’s pride. All you care about is vengeance. But our daughter deserves peace.”
I glanced between them, stunned. I’d wondered about the couple’s relationship to the spirit. I just hadn’t realized how close the relationship was.
“She’ll get peace when that cursed family confesses their crimes,” growled the baker. “What they did to our child demands punishment.”
“And you would punish her along with them?”
“Of course not! But this is justice. For her sake, we must all endure.”
His wife laughed, the sound breaking into a sob. “You can’t even say her name, can you? This town, that family—they all treat her spirit as if she was never a living, breathing girl. At the very least, we should remember her. Remember her as she was, not as a curse but as our daughter.”
The baker seemed to deflate, his entire body sagging. He looked around the room, and his eyes settled on the flowers, long dead. Finally, he murmured, “I can’t let her go yet.”
My chest tightened. I knew exactly how he felt.
The baker’s wife reached out and rested a hand on his arm, her own tone softening. “You must. Vengeance belongs to the heavens, laogong. Honor is ours to give. Honor and love.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” he said, staring at the floor. “I failed her as a father.”
His self-condemnation was not unlike the guilt I felt about my mother’s passing and my father’s illness. I understood his reluctance to act when all he’d been awarded was loss. But—
“It’s never too late to right a wrong,” I said. “If your daughter has even a chance of obtaining peace, shouldn’t you try?”
After a pause, he nodded, eyes still lowered. Resigned. “Tell her, then.”
His wife lifted her head to return my stare. Her gaze was proud and unabashed as she said, “Her name was Liu Chunhua.”
Liu Chunhua had indeed married into a family well above her status.
But rather than marrying for wealth, she’d married for love.
Unfortunately, her husband came from a military family loyal to the governor of Wen.
They expected grandchildren who could uphold the family legacy. Namely, they wanted sons.
Aware of their already existing disapproval, Chunhua sought out medicines and miracles from the best wisewomen in hopes of pleasing her in-laws. She became obsessed with the desire to produce a son, an offering that would ensure her place in the family.
But after months of struggle, Chunhua gave birth to her greatest nightmare—a baby girl with blossom-pink cheeks.
Chunhua was devastated; she refused to eat or drink for three days. As a result, her newborn daughter grew deathly ill. And by the time Chunhua woke from her melancholia, it was too late. The child had passed.
The town was told that the infant had died in the womb.
But Chunhua knew the truth. Grieving her loss and driven mad by her in-laws’ reproachful eyes, she escaped into the nearby forest in the middle of the night.
There, she tied a rope around her neck and hanged herself from her favorite oak tree, with no one but the animals to witness.
She died with sorrow in her heart and hate on her lips, her body swinging, forsaken, from the bough.
“Chunhua has become a ghost story,” said Mistress Liu, “to warn children and drunks away from the forest. But that family knows the truth, and so do others in the village. Yet they’ve tried to simplify her into a single nameless spirit born of unjustified hate.
Her husband’s family won’t even acknowledge their part in her death, least of all admit that the spirit is Chunhua.
We had to learn the truth from a loose-lipped servant who conveniently disappeared once the gossip sparked. ”
“We never saw our grandchild either,” said the baker.
“We would’ve loved her, no matter what. But that damned family—they were so obsessed with birthing soldiers that they drove our poor daughter to want the same.
This war with Sian is important, I know, but I never imagined our sweet Chunhua would die for it. ”
I studied the baker and his wife, both weary. Guowei rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder, to comfort and be comforted. She bit her lips as if to keep them from trembling.
Both grieving for their abused child.
One terrified of letting her go, the other desperate to do just that.
No matter how many times I faced the loved ones of the dead, their anguish always felt newly fresh, a current slamming into my soul.
This was why I never liked lingering for long after the burial ceremony.
The less I saw, the easier it’d be to remove myself from emotional distractions.
For how could a single person—a stranger—bear all that grief and still serve the dead without going mad?
This time, I’d seen too much. I’d unintentionally glimpsed the soul behind the corpse, and what I saw was a human crying for relief.
The realization reminded me of Ren, who was the first “corpse” to speak to me, to tell me what he wanted. Such a human thing, to want. To want safety. Freedom. Peace. To want for self and for others.
I looked at the two souls before me now, knowing full well that there would never be enough apologies in the world to balance the wrongs they’d been dealt.
But there was something I could do, something to lessen the suffering they wanted to escape. I was a priestess of death, after all.
“I’ll save your daughter,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “I promise you.”
Mistress Liu looked at me, hopeful once more. “Are you sure, priestess?”
“Yes.” I stood, this time without swaying. I would save them all—Chunhua, her parents, Ren, and my own father.