Previous generations of his family were buried in the Huan ancestral tomb in the Mang Hills behind Luoyang, but out beyond the fields Tao found several tombs where farm workers had been buried. They were almost hidden by overgrown grass and brambles. There were no recent growths. Closer to the compound was the place where cremations took place for those who had accepted belief in the Blessed One. There was an ashy patch where a camphor wood pyre had recently been burned, but this wasn’t where a child had been cremated. It was the remains of Wei’s pyre. Tao knew his brother was in his next life, so he hadn’t visited that place since he’d returned. Still, he lingered there for a moment.
Whoever the ghost girl was, it was Tao she had chosen to haunt. He must have some connection to her. Had there been another sister born before Meiling – a first child who died young? Her death so painful that his parents had never spoken of her? She might have been quietly haunting the compound for a long time, happy to drift unseen among the living members of her family, watching her parents, her brothers and sister live their lives. Tao had never been aware of her before, but perhaps that was her choice. That would explain why she had focused on him, the remaining member of her family. Whoever she was, she had been left behind and she was furious.
Tao felt a lance point in his back. The nomads were returning after searching all night for the bandits.
“I’m not trying to escape,” he said. “I was visiting the remains of my brother.”
The Zhao soldiers hadn’t found any of the Black Camel Bandits. They were dejected and exhausted. Tao was relieved that they hadn’t captured Pema. As they marched him back to the compound, he thought about how he could get the trust of the ghost girl, this shadow sister.
In the daylight, Pema’s explanation that there had been no ghosts of the Shenchi villagers made sense. No spirits had followed them into the underground cave. It was the invisible naga who had touched him in the dark, whose cold breath had chilled him. But it didn’t matter how much Tao reasoned with himself, he still remembered the sensation of the ghosts departing when he’d finished his inscription, their sigh of release when he recited a sutra for them and they’d passed into their next lives. He hadn’t imagined that. He hadn’t imagined the ghost girl either. She was a child without knowledge of spiritual matters. Perhaps she didn’t understand why she had been left behind. Tao had to help her let go of her past life and begin a new one.
Tao thought about what he would’ve done if he’d had a real little sister who he wanted to please. He would probably have given her a gift. He remembered the toys his father had made for him and Wei when they were children. For Tao, he’d carved a horse and a little cart with wheels that turned, some liubo pieces, a small bow and arrow. For Wei, he’d made animals – a monkey, a bear and a tiger – and hung them from the rafters where Wei could see them. Their father had made all those things from wood, using just his knife and chisel. Tao decided he would make a toy for the ghost girl. None of those toys were suitable for a girl, but Tao remembered that when Meiling was young dolls were all she was interested in. Hers were made from baked clay, but there was no reason why he couldn’t make a wooden doll.
When he got back to the compound, Kai was waiting for him.
“Where have you been?” The dragon sounded like a mother berating a wandering child. “We were supposed to talk about our plans when we woke this morning. It was dangerous for you to go out. The guards on the wall could easily have shot you to relieve their boredom.”
“I was looking for the remains of the ghost girl.”
Mist streamed from the dragon’s nostrils. “Put this ghost girl out of your mind. She does not exist!”
Tao ignored Kai’s comment. “Before we leave, I must do this one thing – I have to help her move into her next life.”
He went to open the stable door, and Sunila bounded out, refreshed and full of energy.
Fo Tu Deng emerged. “What are these dragons doing loose?”
“I let them out,” Tao said. “They will be powerful allies if you treat them well.”
The monk made the exhausted nomads assemble and started admonishing them for their failure to find their enemies.
“You’re useless,” he shouted. “You don’t deserve to call yourself Zhao!”
The nomads were too tired to react to his jibes. As soon as he finished, they stumbled to their quarters to sleep.
“You must find out more information,” the monk said to Tao. “I need to know exactly where this bandit hide-out is.”
Tao bowed politely. “In the evening, before the men go out again, I will seek another vision.”
“Do it now!” Fo Tu Deng ordered.
“First I must meditate to prepare myself,” Tao said.
“I am going to ride into the city. I have to seize provisions.”
Tao thought of the hungry inhabitants of Luoyang having to give up their meagre food stores.
“I expect a vision when I return,” the monk said. “And make sure the naga doesn’t escape. I’ve sent men to get more frogs.”
Fo Tu Deng rode off with a guard of six men, none of who were happy that they were again denied sleep.
There was still grain in the cellar, and vegetables in the earth. When Tao had fed himself and the dragons, he went to his father’s workshop. He spent some time selecting the right piece of wood, settling on a block of pale poplar. He knew it would take most of the day for Fo Tu Deng to ride to Luoyang and back, so he fetched his father’s carving tools and settled down on a garden seat in the sunshine.
Sunila had found a grasshopper and was amusing himself making it jump. Tao was worried that the naga would unintentionally kill it.
“What are you making?” Kai asked.
“Something for the ghost girl. I thought if I gave her a gift, she might be willing to move into her next life.”
“The ghost girl does not exist, Tao. Except in your imagination.”
“I know you think I’m imagining her, but I’m not. And I am sure this will make her happy.”
“Forget about this foolish enterprise.” Kai looked around the ramparts. “There are just six men awake. Now is the time to escape.”
“The only way you can get out is through the gate. The guards would see us and raise the alarm. The rest of the Zhao would be roused and they would haul us back again. They might be bad tempered enough to kill us.”
“So we sit and wait? Is that your great plan?”
“I will not leave until I know Pema is safe.”
Kai stalked off.
Tao gave Sunila the job of keeping birds off his newly sown garden beds. It took him a while to explain to the naga that he couldn’t hurt them. Once he understood, Sunila made himself invisible and whenever a bird came near the garden, he reappeared with a squawk.
With his father’s knife, Tao fashioned a head and a body from the piece of wood. He carved delicate features on the doll’s face – downturned eyes, a small smile, a pretty little nose. He shaped arms from a smaller branch, drilled a hole through the body and threaded a length of string through it to attach an arm to either side. He cut another strip from Meiling’s abandoned gown. He’d always mended his own robes when he was a novice, so he was quite good with a needle and thread. He made a tiny version of the gown from the cloth, tying it around the waist with a length of ribbon. Finally, he carved small feet at the end of the piece of wood, so that they peeped out from under the gown.
He needed something for hair, and after searching the entire house he could find nothing suitable. He was watching Sunila startle a blackbird when he realised that he had exactly what he needed at hand. Sunila’s mane grew in a narrow band from the base of his horn to his shoulder blades. Kai’s mane consisted of coarse brown hair like frayed rope, but the naga’s was the colour of wheat, and the hair was as fine and soft as strands of silk. It was quite pretty.
When the naga settled down for an afternoon nap, Tao crept up to him and cut off a lock of his mane with the knife. He punche
d small holes in the doll’s head and pushed a few of the dragon’s hairs in each hole. He glued them in place and pulled the hair back into a tiny plait, tying it with some coloured thread. It was an unnatural colour for human hair, but it was the best he could do. Finally, he painted the doll’s face. He made a sort of ink by grinding charcoal into water and outlined the eyes. He used the juice of a wolfberry to colour the lips. He found a little pot of blue cream that his sister had used to colour her eyelids. He painted blue dots in the centre of the doll’s eyes, so that they were the same colour as Pema’s.
Kai had been sitting, watching the process suspiciously from a distance. “Is it a Buddhist figure?”
Tao laughed. “No. It’s a doll.”
The dragon made an impatient sound, like someone banging a spoon on a bowl. “Even if this ghost did exist, she would not be able to hold a doll. How could she take it with her?”
Tao looked at the doll. It wasn’t as pretty as Meiling’s. His confidence in his plan was fading.
“I know she can’t take it into her next life, but I thought if she saw that someone cared about her, she might stop being angry.”
“That would make her want to stay here even more.” Kai shook his head. “I do not know why we are having this discussion. There is no ghost girl!”
Tao didn’t argue with Kai. He knew that the ghost girl existed. And he knew that she needed something.
As night approached Fo Tu Deng returned, saddle weary and bad tempered. The Zhao soldiers were waking up and they filled the courtyard with their bodies, their chatter and the smell of meat cooking. The monk drank some kumiss and shouted at the men, threatening them with punishment if they didn’t bring back news of the Black Camel Bandits that night. He was so tired, he forgot that he’d asked Tao for another vision. He ate some food and went to bed.
Tao made a meal of grain, bean curd and mung beans for himself and the dragons. He mixed a spoonful of honey with Sunila’s portion. The naga reached behind one of his reverse scales and pulled out some grubs that he’d found while Tao was weeding. He sprinkled the grubs on the food and ate it, leaving the beans licked clean in the bottom of his bowl.
Tao waited until the last of the Zhao had left on their night patrol before he carried out his plan.
He propped up the doll on one of the rocks, picked a few of the blue crocuses that were growing around the peony pavilion and arranged them with a sprig of bamboo in a little jar. He brought a half-burnt cone of incense from the kitchen altar, lit it and placed it next to the doll. He also found a scrap of paper.
“I need a poem, Kai. Something that a young girl would like.”
Kai didn’t want to take part in what he considered to be a foolish exercise, but in the end he couldn’t resist the opportunity to compose a poem. He walked up and down the garden path, searching for inspiration. Finally, he made a sound like wind chimes in the breeze.
“Your young life ended too soon.
Do not weep for the past.
Illuminated by the moon,
Make your way at last.”
“That’s perfect!” Tao said. “The best poem you’ve ever composed.”
Tao copied the words neatly onto the paper – or as neatly as he could using charcoal ink and a brush made by chewing the end of a twig. He placed the scrap of paper under the doll.
“What do you think, Kai?”
The dragon snorted. “I think this is nonsense.”
Fo Tu Deng hadn’t ordered the dragons to be locked up, so Kai went off to his hollow in the goat pen and Sunila flapped up to his nest on the wall. Tao was left to keep the vigil by himself. In the moonlight, the doll seemed a little sinister.
Tao lay on the couch and felt sleep pulling on his eyelids.
A gust of wind roused him from a dreamless sleep. The full moon was high in the sky. The bright moonlight had bleached the colour from the garden. The ghost girl was there already, storm-cloud grey and fully formed. Streaks of silver gathered in the folds of her gown. Tao watched as she drifted around the garden. She was no longer transparent. It was hard to believe that she wasn’t made of something solid. From a distance, she was almost beautiful, like a dark deva, like a bad fairy. She stopped when she saw his gift and moved closer, her shadow eyes on the doll. He hoped his plan was working, that the gift would dissolve her anger. But the shadows around her hollow eyes deepened, and she bared her sharp teeth. Tao felt the cold points of her silver-white pupils bore into him like needles. He wanted to run away, but he couldn’t move. The ghost girl whirled around him. Tao remembered how the Shenchi ghosts had circled him, creating a wind before they disappeared with a sigh. Had she accepted his gift? Was she getting ready to journey into her own next life? He muttered a sutra to help her on her way. She circled faster and faster. He waited for her to whirl into the air with a sigh, as the other ghosts had. But she didn’t.
The ghost girl picked up speed until she was a grey blur trailing silver. Moon shadow couldn’t produce wind, and yet she was making the air move somehow, swirling fallen leaves, tearing petals from flowers. The cone of incense tipped over and set light to the paper with the poem on it. But it was the doll that she was focusing on. The ghost girl’s swirling fanned the flame. The doll’s golden hair caught fire. She created a small whirlwind that lifted up the doll, spinning it round and round. The flames glowed brighter and burned off all the hair. And then the doll was thrown out of the vortex, hurled against a tree with such force that it smashed to splinters.
But the ghost girl’s anger wasn’t spent. She rushed from the garden into the house. Tao heard things crash and clatter, but he was too terrified to follow her to see what was happening.
Sunila fluttered down from his nest on the wall. Like all dragons his hearing was bad and he was unaware of the uproar. He scrabbled through the remains of the food left by the nomads. He was just looking for a snack. He glowed softly in the moonlight.
“Sunila,” Tao hissed, but he didn’t hear him.
Too frightened to run across the courtyard to warn Sunila, Tao picked up a rock from the garden and hurled it at the naga. His aim was bad, his strength pathetic. The rock fell on the path with a thud, well short of its target, but the vibrations from the impact reached the naga. He looked up, his blue eyes bright in the moonlight. That was when the ghost girl surged outside again and saw the naga. She let out an unearthly howl, high-pitched like the cry of a wild animal. It was the first time the ghost girl had made a sound. Howling with fury, she flung herself towards the naga. Sunila leaped to his feet and turned into a seven-headed snake. The ghost girl stopped in her tracks. The jewelled crests on the snakes’ heads glittered in the moonlight. For a moment she wavered and her moon-shadow body began to disperse. But the naga’s teeth snapped on nothing. The ghost girl’s fury returned. She rushed at him and he transformed into his half-human form, but the writhing snakes growing out of his shoulders didn’t deter her. Then, just as she reached the shape-changed naga, he winked out like someone blowing out a lamp. The ghost girl howled again.
Not a breath of air stirred. The ghost girl seemed calmer, as if her anger was dissipating. Tao wondered if her strength was fading, but the full moon was still in the sky and there were no clouds to hide it. It would be some time before she faded. She drifted over and hovered in front of Tao, motionless apart from the gentle rippling of her shadow gown. Her silver needle-prick eyes pierced him and, though he wanted to run, he couldn’t move. He tried to call to Kai with his mind but no words would form. Close up, he could see that the ghost girl wasn’t beautiful at all. Her coiling hair was in knots. Her skin was pockmarked and decaying. There was no ghost flesh on the fingers of her right hand. It had fallen away completely, revealing bones and clots of black blood. The tip of her little finger was missing.
She slipped into Tao, but this time she didn’t pass through, she stayed inside him. She wasn’t calm at all. Her fury was held in, like water inside a leather skin. But the skin burst, and her wrath poured into him. Tao ga
sped as it filled his body like icy river water. There were no words, but her anger was more eloquent than words. She didn’t want Tao’s gift and she didn’t want to leave this world.
An image of a small cairn of stones formed in his mind. He suddenly realised who the ghost girl was. He understood why she was so angry.
Tao tried to breathe but he couldn’t. While she was inside him, his lungs wouldn’t expand. He tried to stir his qi, but it was thick and slow like freezing water. As his panic grew, he felt her rage turn to pleasure. Sparks of light appeared before Tao’s eyes. His ears rang as if crazed monks were ringing temple bells. She was killing him.
Tao saw Kai bound across the courtyard. He knew the dragon was speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear his words. Kai took in the ruined garden, the smashed and smouldering doll. He ran towards Tao, but stopped as if an invisible barrier blocked his way. Tao had given up any thought of breathing. He saw a burst of light, like a holy vision. He thought it was the Blessed One come to guide him to his next life. He had not avoided death at all.
But the ghost girl left Tao’s body, and he collapsed, gasping for air. The bright light was still in his eyes. He realised what it was – not a holy presence, but the first rays of the sun appearing over the wall. The sunlight had taken away the power of the moon, reduced it to a faint shape in the dawn sky. The rays of light had dissolved the ghost girl.
Kai was leaning over him anxiously. “Are you all right?”
Tao could feel the dragon’s breath on his face, smell his fishy, over-ripe plum smell.
“It was the ghost girl. I know you don’t believe me. But she was here and she tried to kill me.”
“I saw her,” Kai said. “I saw the ghost girl. I am sorry I doubted you.”
“I know who she is, Kai.”
“Who?”
“It’s Baoyu, the granddaughter of the old man from Shenchi.”
Kai didn’t argue this time. He inclined his head.
Sunila reappeared right next to them, making concerned cheeping sounds. Tao pointed at the naga.
“I made the doll’s hair from his mane. I gave her a gift made with the hair of the creature responsible for all her grief, the ruin of her village, the loss of her family. The creature whose bite killed her.”