The Girl with No Face Read online

  “Mr. Yanqiu, I don’t think she’s Xu Anjing. So what is she?”

  On my shoulder, the eyeball watched her, contemplatively, tapping a finger where a chin would be. “She’s not a ghost, Li-lin, but she’s some kind of yaoguai. I would take out your peachwood sword if I were you.”

  He was right, of course. I had no idea what she truly was, what her capabilities might be, or her intentions.

  “No,” I said. “I will not draw a weapon against a child.”

  “Li-lin, she only looks like a child! She could be a hundred years old.”

  He was right again, but still, I wasn’t going to draw my sword. Not on a child. At the back wall of the alley, she crouched in the shadows.

  “Little girl,” I said, raising my voice. “Are you Xu Anjing?”

  She shook her head, no.

  “Then who are you?”

  The blank face showed no reaction, but her posture made me think of helplessness.

  “Of course,” I said, “you can’t speak, can you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I see,” I said. “That’s going to make this difficult.”

  She raised a hand, finger extended. Pointing at my shoulder. “That’s Mr. Yanqiu,” I said. “He’s the spirit of an eyeball. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Slowly, the faceless girl nodded her head.

  “Are you in danger, little girl?”

  Nod.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I will keep you safe.”

  She shook her head, no.

  “I can protect you,” I said.

  She shook her head again, firmly. I swallowed.

  “Are you a human child?” I asked.

  No.

  “Did something take your face away?”

  No.

  “Was there ever a time when you had a face?”

  No.

  “Do you know anything about Xu Anjing?”

  Nod, yes.

  “So there is a connection between you and her?”

  Nod.

  I nodded back, feeling aware of her fear.

  Behind me, something hissed. I spun, concealing the girl with my body. I lowered my stance and took a grip on the wooden sword at my belt. Standing near me, smaller than the girl, less than three feet tall, was a rat wearing human clothes.

  Not a rat moving around inside rags, but a rat, standing on its hind legs. He was richly dressed, wearing the black silken robes of a royal official of our presiding Qing Dynasty, with a rectangular patch of blue silk along his chest, and golden rings twinkling on his fingers. His eyes, I noted, weren’t eyes at all; they were a pair of green jade marbles.

  The soft reddish shade of his skin and fur reminded me of the rouge powder American women use as makeup. His snout twitched and turned from side to side, an alert little feature.

  Was this the bad rat Mao’er mentioned? It seemed likely.

  “A garden is dark when one flower wilts,” he said, intoning it rhythmically, as if he were reciting classical poetry. “I am here to find my master’s wife. Have you seen her?”

  “No,” I replied quickly. Too quickly, perhaps; his snout stiffened and pointed straight at me.

  “A lie once told cannot be returned, no more than wine poured on the earth can be gathered back into the bottle,” he said, with that same portentous recitation. “How do you know you haven’t seen my master’s wife? I haven’t even told you what she looks like.”

  I swept an arm around myself, gesturing toward the alley and the street. “This is Chinatown. Look around you, Rat Boy. Have you seen any women?”

  His nose continued twitching, triggering. It reminded me of a flag on a windy day. “I thought I was speaking with a woman, but perhaps I was mistaken,” he said. “And do not call me ‘Rat Boy.’ Such an uncouth phrase. I am Gan Xuhao.”

  The name startled me. Not from fear, but from fame. “You are the Gan Xuhao? The rat who lived in the tomb of a great scholar, and read all his books?”

  “Indeed,” the rat boy said, preening.

  “The rat-scholar whose poems and essays won him great acclaim?”

  “That is I,” he said.

  “Who stole the Emperor’s jewels?”

  “I am that notorious rogue,” he said.

  “Didn’t you murder two women in their sleep?”

  The rat-man shrugged. “They were merely concubines.”

  I drew my peachwood sword.

  His eyelids narrowed around the green jade marbles.

  “Weren’t your eyes torn out and eaten,” I said, “by the great ghost hunter, Zhong Kui?”

  “Zhong Kui is not great, at anything!” he shouted. “He’s just a big ugly oaf who was jealous because my essays were better than his!” He was twitching so much that his silken robes seemed to shimmer.

  “Gan Xuhao, please forgive me for suggesting this if I am incorrect, but, are you a yaoguai? Are you here, in Chinatown, a murderous goblin moving among the living, without the blessing of gods or Daoshi?”

  “I have the dispensation of the spiritual ruler of these parts,” he said.

  That shut me up. “Who is this spiritual ruler?”

  “I am a member of the household staff of this region’s Tudi Gong,” he said. “The City God sent me to retrieve his wife.”

  “There is no Tudi Gong in this region,” I said.

  Somehow, the little rodent mouth smiled, showing tiny spikes of teeth. “Oh, but there is! My lord has chosen to assume his duties, even though his Investiture is not yet complete.”

  “So you’re part of a group planning to Invest a Tudi Gong, without going through the proper channels to request the blessings of the Celestial Offices.”

  The rat sniffled, heavily. “My master’s wife is behind you. Get out of my way.”

  “No,” I said. “She doesn’t want to go with you.”

  “She’s my master’s wife,” Gan Xuhao said with a dismissive laugh. “Does a carriage decide where it will be driven?”

  I aimed my sword at his chest.

  Along the side of his rodent face, I could see him trying to suppress a sneer. Then I watched him, with slow and clumsy deliberateness, retrieve a tiny sword from within his robes. He pointed it at me formally. It was the size of a chopstick.

  “He’s so cute,” I told Mr. Yanqiu.

  “Prepare to die,” the rat-boy said.

  I flicked out my peachwood sword and poked Gan Xuhao’s little paw with the tip.

  “You cut me,” he said, disbelieving.

  “Gan Xuhao, since you have entered this area with the permission of someone who may soon be our City God, I am not certain if it would be appropriate for me to kill you. But believe me when I say, I can; if necessary, I will; and if I do, I will feel no regret. Leave here, now. Cause no more trouble and you will face no further consequences.”

  “She cut me,” the rat repeated, staring at the shallow incision on his forepaw.

  “And she’ll do it again!” said Mr. Yanqiu. “That’s the kind of woman she is.”

  I smiled at that.

  Gan Xuhao looked behind me and to one side. I guessed he was facing the girl. “Come with me, Fourth Wife.”

  I pivoted to see her. Her face, featureless and empty, told me nothing. She was standing perfectly still. She did not speak, and there was no way to interpret her feelings from her posture. But her husband’s servant had commanded her, speaking with her husband’s authority, and yet she did not move.

  I stepped between the girl and Gan Shuhao. He drew back, squinching his face, angry, around the emotionless jade of his eyes. I readied myself for an attack.

  He turned around, dropped to all fours, and scurried off down Jackson. Not what I’d expected.

  “Can you believe it?” I said. “I just defeated a monster who fought Zhong Kui himself.”

  My father’s eyeball sighed, his pupil big in the semi-darkness. “I don’t think the rat was running away, Li-lin.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Yanqiu?”<
br />
  “I think,” the eyeball said, “he was going to get help.”

  “The Bigs,” I said. “Mao’er’s Bigs are coming for me.”

  TEN

  The heavy footsteps told me I was in trouble. I looked over, and there, parading down Jackson Street, came the red rat, followed by hulking figures. Gan Xuhao walked like a man, like a miniature scholar, proudly; the black robe of an Imperial official gave the ridiculous figure a sense of the somber.

  Behind him, two large, humanoid monsters lurched out of the shadows.

  They had the legs, torsos, and arms of muscular men, enlarged to perhaps six feet at the shoulder. Everything below the shoulder was human. They wore armor made of square metal plates bound together with dark green cords, only the metal looked worn and beaten while the cords looked frayed; and from the top of each chestplate, where a man’s neck and head would rise, they had the necks and heads of beasts.

  One had a horse’s head. The other had the head of an ox.

  Very slowly, I swallowed; my blood felt cold. I had come face-to-face with a pair of the beings who guard Hell’s gates. In addition to their bulk and their beastly strength, all of the Niutou and the Mamian were trained warriors; all spent decades honing, refining their military formations, their martial arts, and their weapons training.

  These two Hell Guards lived up to their impressive reputations. The size of them was imposing; even yards away, I felt inclined to take a few steps back and make room for them. They both carried long polearms, but the ox-head’s weapon forked to a large steel trident, while the horse-head’s ended in a black iron bludgeon punctuated with sharp spikes, like a wolf’s-tooth rod. Both weapons looked longer, heavier, and more lethal than any a human being could use.

  If that weren’t intimidating enough, each had another weapon strapped to his back. And what weapons they were! A hexagonal wooden tube was strapped to the ox-head’s back, and recognition spun me dizzy: the Yi Wo Feng, or Nest of Bees, was a Ming Dynasty invention. It carried thirty-two small rockets, which would launch all at the same time, for the purpose of shredding enemy hordes.

  Worn on a black diagonal sash, the horse-face’s second weapon was a Pen Huo Qi, a pair of gunpowder-activated pistons which would send out a continuous stream of fire. Both weapons usually required an entire brigade to wheel them onto the battlefield, but the Niutoumamian in front of me carried them as lightly as I carried my bagua mirror and bottleneck gourd.

  The Hell Guards carried their hand-weapons with the pride and grace of warriors whose mastery is absolute, and they moved with the implacable authority of military officials. For a moment I boggled at myself, my poor judgement; what had I gotten myself into? I could not hope to stand against even one of the Niutou and the Mamian, let alone two of them.

  Yet here they were, the reinforcements summoned by the rat-boy, hulking, armed for war, and absurdly far beyond my level in a fight.

  It was the red rat who spoke. “It’s time to stop pretending, priestess. You are nothing; you can’t protect the girl. Give me my master’s wife, or face his servants; they are the guardians of Hell’s gates.”

  “So why are they here?” I said. “Why have they derelicted their duty?”

  The horse-headed beast threw back his head and neighed, furiously.

  “And you, Niutou,” I said, addressing the ox-head. “Why have you not maintained your armor? Do you take no pride in your appearance? Or do you have pride in nothing at all, that you have fallen far enough to take orders from a rat that murdered two women in their sleep?”

  “My compatriot and I are numbered among the Hell Police,” the ox-headed soldier said. His voice was not human, more mountainside than speech, but somehow I understood it.

  Something was not right in the Niutou’s words; something was off about them, but I couldn’t think of what it was. What was bothering me? I pursed my lips, trying to work out why his words made me uncomfortable. And then it came to me. There is supposed to be a sanctity to the speech of Hell Police; living humans cannot understand when they talk, because they are apart from us, in a sacralized way. Before a living human being can understand their sacred language, the human must perform a ritual show of humility. I had done nothing of the kind; yet I understood him anyway.

  I looked squarely at the ox-head. Then I raised my peachwood sword and held it between him and me.

  “You are not who you say you are,” I declared. “Who are you really?”

  The horse-head spoke up. “We are Hell Police. Why do you not believe him?”

  “You are not Hell Police,” I said. “I should not be able to understand your words.”

  They took a moment to comprehend what I meant.

  “She can understand us,” the horse-head said to the ox-head. They both seemed stunned by this. Their farm-animal heads hung, mourning. “She has not knelt, has not prostrated, has not eaten a ball of mud, and yet she can understand us. The sacred speech has been stripped from us.”

  “You were removed from your positions,” I said, piecing things together. “Exiled, perhaps? But you are hoping to perform works that gain you merit, in order to earn your way back to the ranks of the Hell Police.”

  The Mamian turned, his equine face in profile. I could only see one of his eyes, but that eye was round, big, and clouded with sorrows. “You perceive much, priestess,” he said, his voice all neighs and whickers and whinnies.

  “So then leave here, leave this child with me, and I will make a deal with you, adding your redemption to the prayers I chant each day. Do we have an agreement?”

  Gan Xuhao swept forward, his silky elegance incongruous with his jade eyes and red rodent-face. “The Niutou and Mamian are far too intelligent to accept the flimsy prayers of a low-Ordination Daoshi, a female one, when they have been given orders by the Ghost Magistrate.”

  “Who is this Ghost Magistrate?” I said.

  The rat snickered. “He is my master, the girl’s husband. He owns her. And he will be the official City God of San Francisco, the Land God of California, the day after tomorrow.”

  “Who is your master?” I said. “What is the name of this ‘Ghost Magistrate’ who is receiving the Rites of Investiture? And why, tell me, does this girl have no face?”

  “Believe me, priestess,” the rat-goblin said, “we are as mystified as you are by her missing face.”

  “You don’t know what she is either?”

  “That’s not what I said, priestess. I know exactly what she is. I know what purpose she will serve, but I expected her to have a face.”

  In my mind, the pieces of a puzzle started coming together. One girl died; a spirit girl had no face; she told me there was a connection between the two . . . “What was your master hoping to accomplish by this ritual, Gan Xuhao? Who is her husband? And who,” I asked, “is your accomplice among the living who is performing these rituals?”

  “I have told you quite enough, priestess,” Gan Xuhao said, blinking his jade eyes. He faced behind me and said, “Fourth Wife, come join me now, unless you want to see the Niutou and the Mamian slaughter the woman who is protecting you.”

  I heard small feet shift behind me. The faceless child was walking toward the rat-boy. It caught me by surprise.

  There are moments when the world falls into silence, and the drumbeat of events becomes clear; moments that change you, change your world, forever. The sound of the girl’s footsteps, trying to walk past me to surrender herself, because I had been threatened, was one of those moments.

  The girl wanted to sacrifice herself to protect me. She could run, escaping her captors; she could hide behind me. But she would not do either of these things . . . because she wanted to protect me. My feelings spun.

  All Gan Xuhao needed to do to convince her to give herself up was to threaten to harm me. He must have known this about her. He knew that this was the way to get to her. He knew she was the kind of person who would sacrifice herself for others.

  Earlier, when I saw the faceless girl try
ing to hide in the alley, she reminded me of myself on the day my mother died. But now, with the girl bravely trying to offer herself up rather than see me harmed, this . . . was the day my mother died, all over again. Another unarmed, defenseless female was offering to sacrifice herself to protect me, and the fact crushed the breath from my lungs.

  Mother died protecting me, and I would feel grateful to her until the end of my days. And I would never, ever allow another defenseless person to sacrifice herself for me.

  I stepped to the side, blocking the faceless girl’s path. “She isn’t going with you,” I said.

  “Do you think a woman with a peachwood sword can hope to fight Hell’s guards?” Gan Shuhao said.

  “Hell’s guards are righteous soldiers,” I said, hoping to appeal to their decency. “They will not harm me, and they will not take this child against her will.”

  “She belongs to my master,” the rat said. “She is the property of the Ghost Magistrate.”

  I addressed the former Hell Guards. “She’s a girl,” I said, “not someone’s property. I implore you, do not force her to go with Gan Xuhao, against her will.”

  Horse-head contemplated me. “She’s not a girl,” he said, his voice rustling and snapping.

  And then he told me what she was.

  ELEVEN

  The world went still. It all made sense. I knew Horse-head’s words were true. I knew what the girl was, and why she had no face.

  Looking at me with mournful eyes, the horse-headed guard had spoken a simple statement.

  “She was made of paper,” he said. “She is a burnt offering.”

  Like the burnt horses, the burnt clothes and houses. Someone made this little girl out of paper. Someone set her on fire to turn her into a thing of spirit.

  I wondered why they left her face blank. So much detail had gone into her making: the bound feet, the black edging on her blue silken long jacket. And yet her maker hadn’t taken the time to give her eyes or a mouth. She would never be able to speak.

  The girl had been created to be used as part of a ritual, one I didn’t yet understand. But why? How was it related to the unsanctioned Investiture and the vampire tree that killed Anjing? And all these rituals required a human component; who was the ritualist among the living who was performing these acts? Still too many things I didn’t understand. For now, all I could do was protect this faceless girl.