The Girl with No Face Page 11

  I tightened the circumference of the rope dart’s swath to match the circled skeletal cats, then whipped it down and up, down and up, each dip disassembling two or three of the cat skeletons. In seconds it was done.

  I took a deep breath and looked around. My room was a disarray of disembodied feline bones and red string. The bones continued to shake and pulse.

  Then my door swung inwards and slammed against the wall. My boss burst in, shouting inarticulately, a huge pistol in each hand, completely naked.

  FOURTEEN

  Bok Choy went to put some clothes on. With a broom I started sweeping the scattered cat bones into a burlap sack; they continued to jitter and jump.

  I held one of the feline skulls, still semi-animate. A Hanzi character had been carved into the skull, between the eyes; it looked like the character xiong, which can mean fierce or murder, but it had added some extraneous, nonsensical strokes. It was written with ordinary strokes, not the systematic distortions of cloudscript Daoshi use to write talismans.

  Examining another skull, I saw its sigil was similar but not the same. Looking around, I confirmed they all seemed to be like that, irregular, a mess of gibberish conforming to no standard. It was bewildering. If the sigil held power to animate the bones, then an imperfect replica should not have that power. And yet they had come at me.

  What were the bone-cats? They crawled through my window and attacked me in my sleep. I considered it likely that they were related to the plant that killed Xu Anjing.

  What kind of magic was this? Bones tied together and animated by a clumsy scribble in common Chinese text, not the cloudscript that holds sway over gods and ghosts. Bone-cats, vampire trees . . . . My first reaction was revulsion, and inside me a voice that sounded a lot like my father told me to disregard that response as mere emotion. But what if the revulsion were crucial?

  What if what the spells had in common was that they were horrific?

  I stopped breathing, my mouth dry as a desert, while a child’s frightened phrase rang in my mind. Gong Tau.

  Images of fearsome magic played in my imagination: witches in Yunnan concocting magical poisons in dark crucibles where snakes, scorpions, venomous lizards, and demonic centipedes writhed in fatal embrace; blood orgies in Tibet where narcotic smoke and wild drumming drove cultists into a sexual frenzy for their Black Ox Demon God; brutal wizards in Siam who siphoned oils from the corpses of pregnant women in order to enact cruel, repugnant hexes; self-segmenting vampires from the Philippines, whose bodies detached into discrete components, all malevolent. These were Gong Tau, the witchcrafts of the lands to the south and east of China, an array of torments, afflictions, and bodily horrors more well-suited to the Eighteen Hells than any part of our human world.

  Could the vampire tree and the skeleton cats have been the work of a Gong Tau practitioner?

  My boss returned, fully clothed now. In one hand he carried a glass bottle full of a brown liquid, while a lit cigar blazed in the other, its smoke—and his personality—crowding my tiny bedchamber. His swagger was on, his confidence so much larger than the short and skinny man. He wore a white American suit three sizes too large, which flopped and wrinkled when he moved, and he was wearing a shiny new pair of snakeskin boots. His ungainly gaudiness was such a contrast to his svelte and sultry wife. A gold tooth flashed in his characteristic deranged smirk.

  In the corner of the room, a cat’s femur flopped over, animated by sorcery. He produced a gun from nowhere and took aim at the bone. “Please don’t, Boss,” I said. “Let’s not damage the floorboards.”

  Bok Choy held up his glass milk jug, aswirl with a viscous liquid, dark and brown. He reached the jar toward me, a gesture of offering. “Coca-Cola?” he said.

  With a hesitant hand, I received the bottle. I had tasted a brown American beverage once before, a hot bitter brew, and I was in no hurry to repeat the experience. Yet the man offering to share a drink with me straight from the lip of his jug was my employer. It felt as if he was inviting me to a kind of family ritual, so I raised the jar to my mouth, tilted it up a little, and, bracing for bitterness, I took a sip.

  My mouth was flooded with syrupy sweetness, treacly and medicinal, and warm as urine. “Vile,” I said, grimacing. “Why would you drink it?”

  My boss retrieved his jar with a hurt look. “It’s best when you drink it fresh and bubbly,” he said, “straight from the counter, served in a glass that sat for hours on a block of ice.”

  “It’s too sweet. Do you drink it for some kind of purpose? Does it cultivate qi or tonify the yang?”

  “‘Tonify the’ . . .” he cut off in the middle of mocking my words. “Li-lin, I’m not some herb-licker brewing root tea in a straw hut; this is the modern era. An era of chemicals.”

  I’d learned about chemicals in school. “Chemicals, Boss?”

  “I inhale nicotine,” he indicated his cigar, then the jug of Coca-Cola, “and I drink glucose, caffeine, and cocaine.”

  “And water,” I said.

  “Water?” he repeated.

  “Your drink has water in it too, another chemical.”

  “Water isn’t a chemical, Li-lin.”

  I paused. “Did you attend school, Boss?”

  “It doesn’t take schooling to know that water’s not a chemical.” He called out into the hallway, giggling. “Ginny, Li-lin thinks water is a chemical!”

  A moment later his wife flourished back into my room, radiant atop her high-heeled shoes in the middle of the night. “How silly of her, darling,” she said. “She should know from the word alone. ‘Water’ isn’t a word for a chemical, Li-lin. Chemicals have names like dihydrogen monoxide.”

  I could tell she was playing some kind of game with both my boss and me, but the science education at the Mission School had been lacking. I tried to parse her words. “‘Dihydrogen’ means two hydrogen atoms and ‘monoxide’ means one oxygen . . . .”

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “But don’t try too hard. When men talk about science, just do what I do: look pretty, and silently recite the Periodic Table.”

  “Recite the—”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Facing her husband, Ginny’s expression flirted and beckoned. She twirled her dress in an artfully girlish maneuver, yet the swaying of her hips while she sauntered out of my room was a performance intended for her husband’s eyes.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” Bok Choy said, with wonder on his face.

  “She is,” I said, and meant it.

  “I get to have sex with her,” he said. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I said, and meant it. “Boss, I would like to make a talisman to keep your daughter safe.”

  “So do it,” he said.

  “I will need her Eight Details.”

  Bok Choy turned toward me. “Oh?”

  I nodded. “Could you provide that information, Boss?”

  “You’d have to ask Ginny,” he said. “I don’t keep track of that sort of thing.”

  “I asked her already, and she reacted strangely.”

  Bok Choy’s lips smacked. He gestured to the bones twitching on my floor. “What do you plan to do to whoever is responsible for this?”

  “I will stop them,” I said.

  “You’ll scold them and make them promise they’ll never ever do it again?”

  His sneering left me feeling unmoored. “What would you ask of me, Boss?”

  When he turned toward me, his eyes showed such a naked display of anger that I took a step away. “Those things could have hurt my daughter. So, suppose you find who did it, and you stop them. You defeat them, a clean, solid victory. Maybe you’re even willing to kill them.

  “That outcome is not acceptable to me, Li-lin.

  “Find who’s responsible. Ram a glass bottle up his ass and kick him until it shatters, then make his family watch him hemorrhage from his anus until he dies.

  “That’s what you’re going to do, Li-lin. Or would you be too good fo
r that? Think about that question carefully,” he said. “Somebody needs to die screaming. If it isn’t my enemy, it’s going to be someone who showed mercy to my enemy.”

  Then he giggled and took a swig from his jar of warm Coca-Cola.

  FIFTEEN

  Morning arrived too soon, with too little sleep, but I didn’t feel I had a moment to spare. Xu Anjing’s ghost could still be out there, frightened and alone; and there was a girl without a face who might be counting on me to save her. Ginny expected me to take steps to protect her daughter as well, so this morning, when I woke, I woke driven by a mission, to protect three little girls: a ghost girl, a paper girl, a living girl. All defenseless.

  I hated taking time out, in this urgent moment, to exercise; but I knew too well how easy it is for martial artists to grow sloppy or lose touch with the core forms of their motions; so I trained, in my little room. I moved through animal forms, embodying each creature’s fighting style: now I am a crane, I can stand motionless on one leg for hours, my motions are relaxed and supple, with an inward curvature, and when I strike, my “beak ” is lethal; now I am a leopard, I move like a whip, my footwork is in short, stable steps, and the quick strength of my strikes is aimed at throat and at crotch; now I am a tiger, strong of back and breathing forcefully, honing my energy with breaths exploding outwards in voiced syllables. I embody the snake and the water dragon.

  I moved on to bagua stepping in circles, then the evasive square footwork patterns of xingyi, followed by ravellings of silk to grow my neidan, internal energy. At each moment, each motion, my limbs and motions grew more coordinated; my energy body, and my spirit, grew more tightly knitted to the physical me. Stiff joints smoothed out, and my motions went from timid to stealthy to assured to strong.

  I hardened a fist and punched it like a thunderbolt into the air, then allowed the reverse force of that motion to spool across my shoulder and down my spine, surging through deliberately loosened muscles and carefully controlled tendons so the drive behind my punch recoiled to pack power into a kick from the opposite leg.

  Perfect. Perfectly unleashed, perfectly balanced, my motions coordinated, economical, and potent, I was a force to be reckoned with.

  I was ready. Ready for a fight, ready for exorcisms, trances, spellwork. Ready to protect a girl, ready to go on a quest, ready to make war.

  My boss, for once, was on my side; he might even provide me with troops to support me; but everywhere I needed to go was in Ansheng territory, where my boss’s rival Mr. Wong reigned, and any intrusion of Bok Choy’s men would result in reprisals. I needed to go alone, making as little fuss as possible among the rival tong.

  A few minutes later, wearing my yellow robes, armed with peachwood and steel, my rope dart’s cord freshly free of tangles and loops, I went out into the hallway, passed the stairway guard, descended the steps, passed the door guard, and exited onto the cobblestone street to face my day.

  I found myself thinking about Xu Shengdian. No one had ever said a negative word about the man, and yet, everything kept leading to Mr. Xu. The “Gambling God,” who had been enslaved in Peru; the charmer, beloved of all, the sharp dresser, candy-sucker, perennial flirt yet never a womanizer, recent widower.

  I would need to speak with him soon. I wasn’t sure how that would turn out; perhaps he would answer some questions for me, and clarify some things. Or perhaps he would try to burn me out of existence with some Gong Tau hex.

  Gong Tau frightened me, and I knew little about it. That made my itinerary clearer. It meant my first step should be to talk to someone who could tell me more about Gong Tau.

  If “cleanliness” had a smell, I imagined it would resemble Dr. Wei’s infirmary. As much as possible, every surface had been sanitized with alcohol, desensitized with laudanum, ventilated and circulated.

  The only human odor came from the patients. Today fewer than a quarter of the infirmary beds were occupied, but that didn’t stop the scent of sickness and desperation and stale, sweaty bandages from reaching my nose.

  Two of Dr. Wei’s apprentices milled about among the convalescents. Both young men wore cloth masks covering their mouth and nose, in case they coughed or sneezed. They moved among the sick and wounded with attentiveness and sincerity, and I found myself envying them; how I would have loved to be a healer. Healers probably didn’t have to fight as often as I did.

  Busy with their patients, the doctor’s interns did not even glance at me as I made my way to the door leading to the inner room, which I knew well. Dr. Wei and my father had been friends for many years; often Father came to the chamber, which doubled as the doctor’s herbal apothecary and his gaming table; they would play games of chance, and argue about the place of tradition in a changing world. Sometimes, quietly watching, I would grow bored and sneak away to look at some of the weirdly shaped roots in the glass jars; when the men noticed, they’d return me to my seat with a swat and make jokes about how my father should’ve stunted my feet. Sometimes the doctor would say, “You know, Zhengying, it’s not too late, if you want I’ll get my surgical knives and chop her feet off right now, and I’ll throw in the tongue at no extra price.” The playful empty threat would make me shriek and giggle, because even such gruesome teasing was a form of affection. I was fond of the doctor.

  I expected to see him in his gaming room-slash-herb-storage, but when I knocked, it was a woman’s voice that bade me to enter.

  When I swung the door open, she spoke my name in a startled expression, and stood from the table where she’d been arranging mah jongg tiles. Mrs. Wei looked like no one else I knew, because she was the only one of her kind in Chinatown; even the Japanese and Filipinos were here in family groups. But Mrs. Wei had been raised in a tribe in China, a population native to that region which had developed discretely, for centuries, until, when she was a girl, the forces of the Han conquered her people. They placed their language in her mouth and told her not to speak her native tongue; they dressed her in their clothes; they forced her to obey their officials and worship their gods.

  Perhaps, if I had known more women of her age, I would have been able to point to something in the angles of her cheekbones, the sloping of her forehead, or the structure of her ears, something different about her, which would proclaim her not Han Chinese but a member of a forgotten tribe. Yet she wore her private history and her loss in small gestures: the big wooden hoop earrings, the leather cords looped in her hair, which was showing the first strands of snowy white.

  Mrs. Wei was history’s prisoner as much as any of us; her childhood, her home, her entire culture had been taken from her by force. In the haphazards of time, she’d managed to make a satisfactory life for herself, marrying a decent man whose body and income were both healthy. Yet memory afflicted her, the losses of her past, her people.

  “Li-lin,” she repeated. “I am sorry to say my husband is not here at the moment.”

  “I hope all is well with the doctor,” I said, “but I did not come here to speak with him today. I was looking for you, Mrs. Wei. I hope I have not come at an inopportune time.”

  “Not at all, Li-lin. My friends were scheduled to come to play mah jongg in the parlor. It’s one of the only times I get to spend time with other women, so I always look forward to it. But it takes four to play, and one was not available today, so no mah jongg for the rest of us.”

  “I see.”

  “So, Li-lin, what are you here to accuse me of doing?”

  “Mrs. Wei?”

  “Don’t be shy, Li-lin. You came across Chinatown, crossing into Ansheng territory, just to see me. You must think I’ve done something wrong, cursed someone with my primitive magic. Who are you accusing me of harming, priestess?”

  “No one. I have not come here to accuse you of anything.”

  “Truly?” She turned to face me, a series of emotions gliding over her face. “Then why are you here?”

  “To ask for your help.”

  After a long silence, she said, “What are you prepa
red to offer for my help, Li-lin?”

  “I earn a decent living now, Mrs. Wei. I can pay you.”

  “You probably don’t earn half what my husband makes. Try again.”

  “What do you want? I won’t do anything that harms my father.”

  “You think all I want from life is to do him harm?”

  “You hurt him before, Mrs. Wei. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “Listen, Li-lin. Your father is a bucket of stool. I have no warm feelings toward the man. And yes, in a bout of anger, I did something I shouldn’t have, and caused him some pain. But if I were to spend even a minute every day scheming revenge against each man who has behaved poorly, I would have no minutes left for anything else.”

  I nodded. “So what do you actually want, Mrs. Wei?”

  “I want my people back.”

  I stared at her. “Nothing I can do will bring them back.”

  “Li-lin,” she said, choosing her words deliberately, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day I learned you have yin eyes. I’m not a young woman, and I may be the last person alive who knows the sacred traditions of my people. I want to teach them to you.”

  “You want me to learn wild magic?”

  “You can call it that. There were dances we performed for the seasons, songs we sang to celebrate a birth or mourn a death, there was quilting—”

  “You want to teach me to make quilts?”

  “How my people wove them, yes. How we sang, and called upon the spirits. The names of our ancestors. Stories I was told. My grandmother’s recipe for stew. When I die, my people’s traditions will die with me. I have lived in terror of death, child, because no one else remembers that world.”

  “Mrs. Wei, I have my own traditions to uphold, my own ancestors to give reverence to.”

  “Han ancestors, Li-lin,” she said. “Daoist traditions.”

  “I don’t see how you can expect me to honor your people’s ways while you’re expressing scorn for mine, Mrs. Wei.”