Chapter 39 Death and Rebirth
DEATH AND REBIRTH
In the distance, the city recedes like an outgoing tide.
One final glance reveals modern skyscrapers wreathed in rainclouds. All the ferries, boats, and ships are huddled in their docks, cast into shadow by the arriving dawn.
The bottle gourds with their trapped ghosts have been gathered up and returned to the canvas sack. You have left them at a seaside temple, with a note explaining what needs doing. The priests will be able to help with the duty that government officials have neglected for so long.
Individually, the people of Hong Kong are not responsible for decisions that led to the “spiritual cleansing” when the occupation ended.
Only a handful of individuals chose to lock away spirits, rather than placate or honor them.
Nonetheless, ghosts are a legacy of pain that belong to a whole society.
Everyone in the city must bear the cost of that trauma.
Pain cannot be left buried, or it will grow and put down roots, like a cursed tree.
That is not to say you are innocent, either.
Mercy is guilty of her sins; you of yours.
This is irrefutable, as are the deaths which lie at your feet.
In your ghost heart, you sense there will be a reckoning someday, when you must go and confront the aftermath of the lives you took, examine all the harm you caused.
For now, though …
“Faster,” Mercy murmurs. And she dives.
You, carrying your own body like a precious possession, dive after her.
It has been a long time since you’ve swum like this.
Ironic, really, that you have spent more time in the water as a living woman than you ever did as a ghost. Even in your days of infiltrating ships, you preferred to be on dry land, in a variety of skins.
Water was something that bound you, rather than something that freed you.
Today, in ghost form, you feel anything but bound as you propel rapidly through deep green waves, with Mercy at your side. Ocean rushes past, as do wrecks and fish and litter and coral. Clouds of moon jellyfish brush your limbs as you wind through them.
Time passes along with the miles. Both of you are fast and untiring, single-minded in purpose. The burn of suffocation still crunches the lungs in this form, but you are very used to that, and almost consider it a fair exchange for the exhilarating speed that death has granted.
Gradually, the seascape begins to look familiar. You recognize the shapes of certain rocks or islands, certain wrecks and reefs. The water in Sai Kung is a little clearer, a little brighter in its green, especially this time of year.
A strange nostalgia seeps over you. As if you are, once again, a girl on the cusp of adventure, leaving behind the strife of a conflict-riddled city.
In a way, you are.
“Up,” Mercy says, softly, and guides you both to the surface.
At first, you can’t see anything. The typhoon’s presence has cast clouds and mist over the region, even this far out.
A cool breeze rolls in from the east, cloying with the promise of rain.
It eases the dry tightening of your ghost skin.
Squint, shade your eyes, and try to peer vainly into that white haze, seeking a first glimpse of your destination.
Then the sun comes out, quick as child’s smile; clouds part at her warm touch. And Shek Ham Chau seems to rise in front of you like a woman surfacing for air.
Sunlight shimmers on the water. Boxy houses, brightly painted, refract color at unexpected angles. Glossy mangroves fuzz the shoreline. Scintillating peace lingers.
Your breath catches. Not from the beauty, though it is beautiful—but because the entire village is gathered on the shore in all their drowned, horrifying misery. They stand together on the docks in a cluster of whispering dead, watching and waiting.
Strange how they fill you with anxiety, even after all this time.
“Not yet,” Mercy says, skin blistering from sunlight. “We have someone else to see first.”
You both dive again, this time angling around to the island’s south side. Toward the cave and the stone temple within.
Down, amidst the whirl of water and fish and sunlit coral.
Along the rock tunnel, which you notice—for the first time, despite having been through it twice—is carved, rather than natural.
You think briefly of the jiaoren depicted in the temple, and wonder what happened to them, and why they never visit this place anymore.
But that mystery is not yours to solve, and is a story for another time.
Then up, out. Light grows around you, softening the dark. The tunnel widens rapidly. Deep ink giving way to paler and paler shades of verdant water until, finally, impatiently, you break the surface.
Wet walls drip and shimmer in the faint light. The rock is layered in striations of red and brown, the color of blood at different stages of freshness. The ceiling is high and rent with gaps. Sunbeams pierce the darkness, creating odd refractions and shadows.
Touched only by tides, the cavern is much as you remember. There is even an old bottle, the glass fogged by waves and time, wedged into the crevice of a wall; it looks to be clustered with barnacles. The sight of it jogs a memory of better days.
Slowly, get to your feet in that chest-deep pool, your body cradled close. Slowly, half knowing already what you will see, you turn around.
A stone temple rises at the far end of the cavern where the water is shallowest, carved straight into the rock itself, and illuminated faintly by light which cascades from gaps in the stalactite-riddled ceiling.
All is quiet; the walls are merely stone, the statue within just a statue.
“Where is she?” you ask, nervously. “Where is the goddess?”
Mercy does not reply. Instead, she is riffling around in the water. After a moment she straightens, holding a handful of oysters. You watch with astonishment as she prizes them open, digging out the pearls within.
“There’s a wealth of riches down here,” you say, amazed. “I never knew!”
“I think maybe the jiaoren grew them, once. Just for this.” She discards the shells and carries the pearls and lays them at the doorway, since she cannot enter.
You are not overly familiar with religious rituals, but you know enough to follow her lead as she bows three times, murmuring words of thanks and gratitude. It is shaky, as offerings go, but sometimes the intention matters more than the material reality.
On the third bow, something changes.
Within the temple, the statue begins to stir. Color spreads across the flat stone, taking on life and texture. Fabric softens, limbs twitch. In moments, carved rock becomes divine flesh, and a divine being stands before you on a plinth.
Tilt your head from one angle and she is an elegant lady of ageless features, draped in flowing robes.
Tilt the other way and he is a young man with high cheekbones and a sculpted body.
Viewed straight on and unblinking, they are an androgynous figure, handsome features and a beautiful head of hair, an infinity of arms curving from an impossible number of shoulders.
It is me, of course. I have been waiting for you both.
“Sung Siu Yin.” I incline my head. “And Chen Mei Chi. Together, here, at last.” So saying, I stoop and gather the remains of Mercy’s bones.
Fragile, bitter things. After more than half a century, any normal body would have eroded to nothing, lost in a matter of years to time and tides.
But she asked me to remember her, and thus—impossibly—something of her still remains.
“You knew we were coming?” Mercy says.
“I am a goddess, little one.” Bones held close, I drift quietly out of the temple, to stand on that dark and tiny beach.
“Then why not get involved sooner?” you protest, wading farther ashore. “Always, you watch us from the sides, like a spectator at a game.”
“My power is not without limits, and the weave of human life is complex,” I say, gently.
From a human, your comment would be intolerably rude, but I am willing to give a ghost more grace.
“I am in many places at once, and also in none of them. I hear prayers, but erratically. I have powers, but only in certain places—like my shrines—or at certain times of year, like my birthday. I am wiser than most, but not omnipotent. My existence is infinite, yet also very narrow. I am not what mortals think; I am both less and more than what any of you imagine. Touching one life touches others, and even deities must be careful how they tread across the tapestry of destiny.”
“We recognize that, and acknowledge with gratitude what you can give,” Mercy says, bowing low. “I know we have asked much already over the years, but can you help us one last time, Lady Kwun Yam?”
“That depends. What are you seeking?”
“I wish to set free the ghosts of this island.” Mercy is still bent forward with hands clasped. “To make amends to my niece, as much as I can. And to find my peace.”
“I see.” I come to stand in front of her, looming inhumanly tall in the semidarkness. “Do you understand, Chen Mei Chi, that this will mean the end of your existence in this life?”
There is a heartbeat of silence in the cavern, but Mercy is unfazed.
“I understand, yes,” she says, straightening up.
“And you’re still willing?”
Her shoulders rise and fall in a helpless shrug. “I’ve had a damn good life. Never easy, but always interesting, which is the best anyone can ask for. Though my death was cruel and unmourned, my existence can’t come at the expense of another’s pain. I want to give Siu Yin what I can.”
If you were human, there’d be a lump in your throat.