The Death of All Things

  The judge himself had a dark-red face with bulging cheeks and eyes. He reminded Wan Ho of a school teacher he’d once known, an officious man always spouting Party dogma about family values while he kept not one, but two mistresses in addition to his wife. Judge Kan also had a thin black mustache and a carefully trimmed beard that grew out of the center of his chin and hung down to mid-chest. No one wore a hat like his anymore—tall and flat-faced, with flaps sticking out over the ears. But Wan Ho recognized it from scroll paintings of the judge, knowing that it was the traditional sign of his office.

  Ox-Head and Horse-Face stood with their backs to the judge’s counter, staring out at the court. Their large, black, animal eyes didn’t appear to see Wan Ho and Ou Li, but Wan Ho still knew they’d seen them.

  Wan Ho waited with Ou Li a few steps behind the ancient grandmother talking to the judge. Finally, they finished their conversation and the two guards escorted her out a side door.

  “So, what have we here?” Judge Kan said as Wan Ho and Ou Li stepped closer. He blinked, then glared at Ou Li. “You don’t belong here. Not yet.”

  “I know, sir,” Ou Li said. “I am not dead.”

  Wan Ho smiled with pride at how bravely his mortal wife spoke to the judge.

  “I am only here for a short while,” Ou Li continued on. “So that I might properly marry my husband.”

  “I see, I see,” the judge said, stroking his thin beard.

  “Can you marry us, sir?” Wan Ho asked, hopeful.

  “I cannot,” the judge said, his voice tinged with regret. “That is beyond my jurisdiction, I’m afraid.”

  “Can you tell us who could?” Ou Li said. “Maybe a priest who is recently dead.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps,” the judge said. “You should go to the western hills. You might find someone there.”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you,” Wan Ho said, bowing.

  Ou Li also bowed. At first just her head, then with a gasp, realized she could bend from the waist and give the official a formal bow.

  “Thank you,” Ou Li said again as Ox-Head and Horse-Face escorted them to a side door.

  Wan Ho wished that he could take his wife’s hand. All the couples he’d ever seen had done that, even his parents. Or maybe, that he might give her a gentle kiss. That, perhaps, they might even truly live as husband and wife, and share bodies as well as souls.

  Such things were not to be.

  However, he still was able to stand proudly by her side at the top of a low foothill, overlooking a peaceful valley and hills covered in soft green grass.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded, determined.

  Wan Ho recognized it as the look of a woman who would not be stopped by a mere detail, such as death. He’d seen a similar look only once, from his mother, when she was determined to get her son into the best school despite the Party officials denying her access.

  However, instead of taking the easy trail down the hill, Ou Li turned and looked at the path going up into the craggy mountains. “The priest will be this way,” she said.

  Wan Ho followed meekly behind, pitying anyone who stood in her way.

  * * *

  “I won’t be able to stay much longer,” Ou Li confessed as she sat beside a lovely babbling stream with her husband-to-be. That was how she thought of him. Though the minghun had been performed back on earth, she wouldn’t consider herself truly married until after being married in both worlds.

  It was tempting now to think of Wan Ho as more. Especially since it had turned out that they liked many of the same movies and video games. Getting to know him had just cemented his place in her heart, making her think of their connection as real.

  Though how anyone could like that K-pop singer with the long white hair and pretentious English name was beyond her.

  Wan Ho nodded, looking sad. “I will miss you,” he said.

  Ou Li’s heart melted just a little more.

  The priest had warned her that she wouldn’t have much time in the nether worlds. She hadn’t thought it would be so difficult, though, to find someone to marry them!

  They’d climbed out of the peaceful valley and up into the rocks. She was certain they’d find a hermit’s cave up there, or a holy man sitting on a ledge.

  But they hadn’t found another soul. While it was very colorful and delightfully cool in the world of the dead, Ou Li found that she missed the birds who should have filled the nearby pines, the soft plopping of fish in the creek before them. Even a buzzing insect would have been a welcome respite from the aching silence.

  It made her uncomfortable, which, she supposed, was kind of the point, as she didn’t properly live here.

  “Will you come back? If we cannot find a priest?” Wan Ho asked, not looking at her.

  “I cannot,” Ou Li said, her voice heavy with regret. “The priest said I could have a single visit. After that, well, I’d be here for good.”

  “I see,” Wan Ho said. He continued to not look at her. “You know, if we can’t get married down here, I…I won’t hold you to your vows.”

  “Thank you,” Ou Li said, grateful. Though she might try to stick it out, it wouldn’t be right for her to only be half married. Her entire life would feel like a sham. Despite how much she thought she might be able to love him, now that she’d met him. “I would still honor you as a relative,” Ou Li promised. “Burn incense for you and clean your grave during the qingming festival every year.”

  “Thank you,” Wan Ho said. He sounded so sad. But Ou Li wasn’t certain what more she could do.

  “Wait, who’s that?” Wan Ho asked, pointing over her shoulder.

  “I can’t tell,” Ou Li said, raising to her feet gracefully. It was so wonderful to be out of pain! Though the land of the dead bothered her, it was almost worth it to have working hips and knees again.

  Off in the distance, the figure resolved into a short monk. He wore deep-red robes over an orange shirt. His bald head looked very round and his skin was tanned golden.

  It wasn’t until he drew closer that Ou Li realized that the monk was ancient. However, his long years had worn away most of the wrinkles on his smiling face. His neck showed his age the most, with seven deep wrinkles circling his head.

  “Good day, children,” the monk said in greeting.

  “Good day, wise sir,” Wan Ho said, bowing deeply.

  Ou Li joined him, still thrilled to be able to bend her spine so easily.

  “We were looking for someone to marry us,” Wan Ho continued.

  The monk looked from Ou Li, to Wan Ho, and back again. “That is not normally one of my duties,” the smiling monk said. “I generally escort people, such as yourself, my lady, from the earthly plane to this one.”

  As he spoke, the skin on the monk’s face melted, showing white bones and bulging eyes.

  Ou Li gasped.

  Wan Ho looked at her questioningly. He hadn’t seen the transformation.

  The priest’s bulging eyes stared hotly into hers. “Are you certain that you want Death to marry you, my lady? There’s no turning back. No court would grant you a divorce.”

  “I am certain,” Ou Li said. She raised her chin, though she shook inside at the thought of facing Death himself. “This is my husband to be, in this world and all others.” She paused, then added, “The gods must have tied a red ribbon to our ankles, before we were born, to draw us together now.” She truly believed the words as she spoke them.

  The monk looked down.

  Ou Li caught her breath as she suddenly felt a cool ribbon slide around her leg. Was a matching one now tied around Wan Ho’s?

  “Very well, then. I will marry you,” Death said. “I had been coming to take your soul,” he added, pointedly staring at Ou Li. “You’ve been here far too long. You would be a permanent resident after only a bit more.”

  “Thank you for your forbearance,” Ou Li said. Now that she’d met Death, though he was a little scary, she knew she’d never be truly afraid of him ever aga
in.

  “Face each other. Raise your hands, as if to touch palms,” Death ordered.

  Ou Li smiled at Wan Ho and did as the priest asked.

  Wan Ho did the same, giving her a radiant smile.

  “Wan Ho,” the priest said. “Do you promise to honor your wife? To fill her nights with sweet dreams, and to turn away any bad luck that might visit her?”

  “I do,” Wan Ho said. His voice took on a deeper tone, setting the nearby hills to ringing.

  “And do you, Ou Li, promise to honor your husband? To burn incense for him to live on? To send him ghost money every feast day? To keep his grave clean?”

  “I do,” Ou Li said. She heard more bells ringing as the promise took hold.

  She would stay true to her husband for all of her days.

  “Then by the power of the Eight Kingdoms I declare you man and wife,” Death said.

  He sounded surprisingly cheery.

  “Now, you may kiss the bride,” Death said with a wink.

  Ou Li blinked, startled. How could she kiss Wan Ho? She was a ghost and he was dead. They hadn’t been able to touch before.

  Still, she trusted the monk’s words. She closed her eyes and leaned forward.

  Soft lips touched hers. Sweetness enveloped her. She had the sense of falling into the kiss, all the worlds disappearing as they gently touched each other with their lips, softly exploring, his sweet taste filling her.

  Until Ou Li couldn’t hold herself up anymore and she really was falling.

  Down, down, down.

  She landed in her own bed with a start, gasping as real air came back into her lungs.

  She was alive. Here, on earth.

  And finally, properly married.

  * * *

  Wan Ho stood alone next to Death at the side of the softly tinkling river.

  “What will happen to her now?” he asked. His whole soul mourned her loss. Despite the soft green grass beneath his feet, the beautifully stark mountains around him, the world felt, well, dead, without her.

  “She will live a prosperous life,” the monk replied. “I see a son in your future. As well as grandchildren.”

  “Really?” Wan Ho asked. The world seemed slightly brighter. He knew the child wouldn’t be of his loins, but his son would carry on the family name, which was more important. His parents would be well pleased. As would Ou Li’s.

  Wan Ho looked around the valley. “Where should I go now?” he asked. Would Death guide him? Should he go to the city of the dead? Or should he go back and talk to Judge Kan?

  “Now, you wait,” Death said. “It won’t be too long.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Wan Ho said.

  Suddenly he found himself standing outside the grand courthouse again. Ox-Head and Horse-Face stood on either side of the door. The misty river flowed and burbled to itself, the dead marching out of it as they saw fit.

  Wan Ho settled in to wait contentedly for his wife to join him, again.

  He had all the time in the world.

  CICADA SONG, IN A COUNTRY

  SINCE LONG GONE

  Aliette de Bodard

  On the last evening before they leave the old country, Giang finds Cousin Ly in the courtyard, disconsolately staring at a large, heavy box of sandalwood.

  “No space for it?” she guesses.

  Cousin Ly grimaces. “No.” She lifts the lid; stares, for a while, at the keepsakes inside: all the remnants of her life before she came to live with Mother and Giang, the faded photographs of her dead mother, the letters her parents wrote to each other when her mother was posted in the provinces, cramped handwriting on rice paper that’s turned opaque and brittle with age. “I’ll have to pack them inside a bag.”

  Giang kneels by her side. The air reeks of the smoke of burnt flowers, and in the distance is the thunder of bombs falling over the city of Thu Huong. “Want some help?” she asks.

  Cousin Ly grins. “Already packed?”

  Giang shrugs. There was too much she wanted to take, so in the end she took nothing. She looks up, at the apricot trees in flower—there’s the familiar, unrelenting sound of cicadas nesting in the branches: a sign that whatever happens, life goes on.

  She so wishes she could believe it. “I wanted—” she hesitates, but Cousin Ly knows her too well.

  “Your girlfriend?” she asks.

  “She’s not—” Giang starts, and then shakes her head, because it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? “She left yesterday with her parents.” She thinks of Moc Mien’s hands gently running on her shoulder, of her breath, quickening so much her lungs feel too tight and cramped. “I don’t know where.”

  “Ah.” Cousin Ly’s gaze is too sharp, more adult than her sixteen years. “I’m sorry.”

  Giang shakes her head. “Don’t be.”

  It’s nothing, in the grand scheme of things: she should be worrying about the war, about tomorrow and her family’s panicked journey to the border; about whether they’ll survive, whether they’ll find the refuge Mother is so desperate for. Moc Mien leaving shouldn’t feel like the end of the world.

  But it does.

  Cousin Ly says, “What do you think it’ll be like?”

  “In the Everlasting Empire?” Giang forces her mind back from Moc Mien—as, no doubt, Cousin Ly has intended all along. “I don’t know. Mother says everyone wears dresses of brushed silk. And even the peasants have pork and shrimp on the table.”

  Cousin Ly snorts. “Your mother is trying to make it attractive.”

  “Can’t say it’s working,” Giang says with a shake of her head. The thought of leaving their home—the courtyard, the cicadas, the petals scattered on the beaten earth—just makes her sick.

  “Has to be better than here.” Cousin Ly’s face is dark. “Safer.”

  The echo of a blast deafens them—Giang ducks, but it was still too far away. In its wake is only silence, as if the cicadas were hesitant to start up again. She swallows, tasting only ashes in her throat. “I’m sure,” she says, rising.

  * * *

  They leave the city like thieves or criminals: Mother and Cousin Ly and Giang piled up in the back of a covered cart going into the mountains, towards the border with the Everlasting Empire.

  The cart wends its way higher and higher on the path, behind a steady flow of others, fugitives all desperate to leave before the city falls.

  “Here,” Mother says, handing them rice cakes. Her eyes watch upwards, for alchemical fliers and enspelled messenger birds—one will kill them faster than the other, but in the end they’ll be dead from both.

  Cousin Ly sits, clutching her bag on her knees. “They said the city would fall today or tomorrow. And then—”

  “We’ll be out of the country by then.” Mother’s voice is firm.

  In Giang’s mouth, the rice cake tastes like ashes. “I don’t know—” she starts.

  Mother pauses, for a moment, in her endless staring at the sky; her gaze intent. “We’ll find a house,” she says. “Or build one, if we have to. A garden full of cicada songs. And we’ll never have to leave it. Promise.”

  “You can’t know that,” Giang says.

  “They’re building a wall,” Cousin Ly says. “Between the Everlasting Empire and us. The alchemists and the monks, with cinnabar and peach wood and jade. Shutting us off.”

  “They are,” Mother says. She sighs. It’s hard to tell if she’s angry or sad. “They’re scared. Because the war keeps growing.”

  If Giang closes her eyes she can still see the marketplace; can still smell the smoke and feel the blood on her hands; the words struggling to get out from a too-full throat. A stampede in the New Year’s crowds, the newscast had called it—making it sound distant and without bite. A lie, Mother had said, with more force than usual—hugging Giang and Cousin Ly hard and thanking the ancestors they’d come back safe.

  “But—” Giang starts, stops. “But how will we get out?”

  “The wall isn’t finished,” Mother says. “There is stil
l time.” She leans back, looking at the sky again. She sounds utterly confident, and in spite of herself Giang finds herself believing her—because when has Mother ever been wrong?

  “You sold the shop,” Cousin Ly says.

  Mother shrugs. “There’ll be other shops. Or other people who need clothes sewn.” She shakes her head.

  “I can help,” Giang says. “With the sewing. I’m old enough.”

  She glares at Mother, daring her to contradict her, but Mother doesn’t. She shakes her hand with an odd, soft fondness, and merely says, “Of course. But you’ll have your own life soon enough, child. You both will have.”

  Cousin Ly snorts and holds her bag tighter. “A longer one than we’d have had in Thu Huong.”

  That shuts up conversation for a while: Mother goes back to watching the sky, and Giang doesn’t feel like making the effort of starting up the conversation again.

  The cart stops. Mother drops down to speak with the driver; comes back, gesturing at them to come out, to hurry.

  There is nothing in the sky but faint black specks and a low, rumbling noise that gets louder and louder as they walk.

  Single-file on a narrow path—stumbling over rocks, as clouds pass over the sun, leaving dappled, illusory tracks on the cliff-face—and all the while the sound is getting louder and louder, the black specks resolving themselves into the sharp, tapered shape of fliers, closer and closer, until she can almost count the scars on their hull. Closer and closer—how close do they have to be, to drop their bombs?

  They finally reach a plateau where they pause, out of breath.

  Mother points to the end of the plateau, where the land rises again to a jagged edge. “That’s where the border is,” she said. “They’re closing it, but they’re not done yet. You have to—”

  She never finishes her sentence.

  A whistling sound, like gas from a pierced balloon—an impact that sends Giang reeling to the floor, filling her world with a piercing thunder. Everything goes black for a fraction of a second, as she kneels coughing in the dirt. Then she’s pulling herself upwards, in a rising cloud of dust and smoke—ashes and burnt flowers, a smell that clings to her as if it had claws of its own. “Mother? Cousin?”