Chapter 33 Your Face
YOUR FACE
One year ago …
Early the next morning, you get dressed and take a taxi to the edge of Kowloon Walled City. If Mei Chi is in there, you’ll find her. Even if you don’t, there is still the matter of your wider vengeance to organize.
The first three times you visit are a nonevent, and you leave empty-handed.
Maybe not a surprise; there are so many people, most of them suspicious of an outsider like yourself.
If anyone does know this Chen Mei Chi, they’re not saying, and you don’t want to make too much noise in case you scare off the person you seek.
After the second time, you tell yourself that returning is futile, and yet you go twice more anyway.
Because on every occasion, the district is increasingly fascinating; it’s almost enjoyable to walk around.
To most outsider eyes, it’s a nothing place, full of squalor and crime and broken people, shattered on the hard edge of war.
You, though, look at it and see … an ecosystem.
The city has layers which remind you of the archipelagos and lagoons around which you spent so much time swimming, both as a girl and later as a ghost. The strata of buildings are tiered, and so are the residents; bottom feeders and mud dwellers, normal swimmers trying to get by, and little pipsqueaks who hide in others’ shadows.
There are prey, parasites, lone sharks, huddled groups.
The buildings sprawl and creep like coral, and wetness sticks to everything.
It is an ecosystem, alright. One of ruthless survival and errant growth; it teems and heaves and thrives and surges, a snarled tangle of darkness and human vivacity. All of that is like an ocean, too.
The only thing it is missing, really, is the water.
Now there is an interesting notion. Your imagination wanders into strange places, prompting you to smile.
In your head, you conjure up a wall running round this whole area, building on existing foundations to reach several stories high.
It could be like a reservoir, a vast aquarium filled with water: briny or clear, it wouldn’t matter.
Keep walking. Though crowded, Kowloon is not very big in area. There is one semi-open space at its center, where the old fort’s courtyard used to be. The sky can be glimpsed here, along with the planes which pass overhead frequently.
It’s also the part of Kowloon that most looks like a lagoon reef.
Tilt your head up, gazing around. Imagine: water flowing through those windows, these dank and ramshackle alleys, making every crevice or gap between the city a swimmable passageway. Imagine: water washing everything clean, and a legion of drowned ghosts appearing in its wake.
“Young lady, are you sick?”
An elderly gentleman is at your elbow, peering up into your face.
You straighten, startled to realize you are bent over, fingers snaked through your hair, gripping it tight. On the street around you, people are shuffling past on all sides, a few casting vaguely interested glances your way.
“Thank you, grandfather, but it is only a bad headache,” you say, lamely, still caught off guard by the sudden wave of dark thoughts.
“Drink less beer, then. Or else drink more beer, and improve your tolerance,” the elderly man says, with a grin, then pats your arm and goes on his way.
“Thanks,” you call after him, feeling wryly amused.
You’re still considering how best to begin today’s search when you realize, quite abruptly, that the crowd in Kowloon’s single courtyard has come to a standstill. No one is moving, everyone is watching—something, you can’t see what.
Unexpectedly, the skin of your arms begins to prickle with goose bumps. A sudden curiosity to see what they’re looking at overcomes you. Push your way to the front, ducking beneath elbows and stepping around hips. And stop in your tracks.
A ghost sways and weeps, hands pressed to her face. She is corporeal and glimmering, hair falling like a veil of ink across her shoulders. Burial robes drift around her in a haze of white, stirred by a cold and unnatural wind.
Another woman stands in front of the anguished spirit. Short, stocky, approaching middle age; tattoos all over her body, cheap sandals on her feet. Hands in pockets. You can’t quite see her face; she’s angled away from you, toward the ghost. She must be some kind of medium, or exorcist.
The woman speaks to the ghost in a low tone, the words too indistinct for you to pick out above the bubbling, chattering crowd around. Definitely a medium, if she’s talking and not exorcising. The ghost is listening, its eyes narrowed in guarded interest.
Strange shivers run through you. There is something familiar about her voice, even at this distance.
When the medium is finished, the ghost whirls away and cries out, “Where is my husband?”
You raise an eyebrow as the ghost’s head detaches from her body, neck extending like a stretchy noodle. Been a while since you’ve seen a ghost of that type.
The crowd is far less calm. People scream, and someone faints.
The ghost screams back and then the head dives down, its neck a taut ribbon, flailing body following after.
It is going after one particular person in the crowd: a young man whose nervous expression ripens into horror when he realizes death is coming his way. He tries to flee.
A small white ghost cat comes bounding out of nowhere.
You have enough time to think That looks like the cat on the island before it transforms into a large, lion-sized feline, with ferocious teeth and claws.
The man yells as the maogui knocks him over and pins him down, and then his wife’s ghost is upon him.
The ribbon neck winds and twists as the ghost unhinges her jaws to snip his head off in vengeful glee. Blood explodes in a shower, jetting from the neck stump. People cheer nastily.
“Good for you, big sister! Get your justice!” shouts the medium, half turning to keep the spectacle in view. And you finally get a full, clear view of her features.
Sound fades. Awareness dims. The world narrows to a single point of vision. You stare, and stare.
The woman is wearing your face.
For a moment you are unsure, recognizing but also not recognizing the features in front of you. It’s been a damn long time, and you didn’t own a mirror for most of your life. Maybe it is another woman with similar features. She is well into middle age, too, which makes it trickier.
Then she raises her hands to cup them around her mouth, shouting something above the fray, and you see her bare skin exposed.
All the way down her left arm is the blazing, blood-red scar of a lightning strike. The tattoos obscure the scar, but can’t fully hide it. The mark runs from her shoulder down to her wrist, which is encircled by a slim bracelet strung with a tiger charm.
The face. The scar. The tiger charm.
All of them, yours.
Definitely your body. Scarred and lined from years of hard living, sure, but familiar down to the tilt of the eyes and the mole on one cheek. With every step you take toward her (yourself?), more and more details reveal themselves, and the certainty cements.
Compared to the body you now inhabit, your original vessel is shorter and heavier, dark hair straight and slick in a short bob. The years have worn lines of wisdom and humor around the mouth, cheeks, and forehead.
Can it be? Can it really be, after all this time, all these years? The records you searched, the camps Wing Yun looked in, the years of digging … How the hell has she just been here, this whole damn time?
Daiyu’s words from many days ago rise to your mind: I saw her alive. In the city of ghosts. Those aged shoulders spasming in a shudder. It was not my daughter. Mami must have seen your body, and mistaken it for you. Only to be repulsed on finding Mei Chi inside it.
“Rest now, beautiful lady,” Your Face cries out to the raging, blood-soaked ghost. “Justice is done. Find your peace in the next life.”
The ribbon-necked ghost sighs breathily, head slowly winding back into her body even as her form frays at the edges.
She begins to shrink, robes growing loose around her diminishing form until the remnants of her spirit disperse into shimmering mist. The empty burial robes fold in on themselves into a pile of fabric, which in turn seem to melt into the ground.
In moments, the ribbon-necked ghost is gone as if she never existed in the first place. Nothing remains.
The crowd claps and cheers. Ghosts don’t normally listen to advice or suggestions, but this one did—once its fury was spent, anyway.
Your Face bows respectfully to all and sundry, and makes a sharp gesture. The maogui lumbers over, size compacting with every step until he is once again a small, harmless-looking kitten, albeit fuzzed at the edges with a wisp of transparency.
Definitely the same kitten that Mei Chi owned as a child, and whose ghost used to wander the island. Insane that he’s come all the way out here. He must have real affection for his mistress. The thought of its misplaced loyalty fills you with irritation. If you can kill that cat spirit, you will.
Meanwhile, Your Face gathers the cat up and puts him on her shoulder with genuine affection, then turns and walks through the crowd in the other direction. Her sandals slap the concrete in irregular rhythm.
Still reeling, you grab the sleeve of the nearest person and tug hard to get their attention. The man you grab looks down. “What is it?”
“Who was that? The woman we just saw?”
He laughs around his cigarette. “Don’t you know? That’s Mei Chi Chan. She works under the Cobra Lily triad. One of those exorcists, or mediums. Something like that.” A note of admiration enters his voice. “She’s a strong and canny little auntie. Never met a ghost she was afraid of!”
For a moment you are confused, unsure why he would say the name back to front. He’s also slurred “Mei Chi” quite badly, and transposed “Chen” with “Chan.”