“He took two steps out the door and collapsed,” he called back.
I stared up at him, my mouth open. My father was one of the yaozhizhu’s bundled victims, a webbed captive spirit to be fed upon. Missing a significant portion of his spirit, he would weaken, sicken, and eventually die; but not before he was lost and broken.
The sight of the goblin spiders made me feel ill. Liu Qiang must have sent them to harm my father, or keep him out of the way long enough for him to complete his ritual and raise the Kulou-Yuanling.
Once again Liu Qiang saw my father as an obstacle, and once again he saw me as nothing. The yaozhizhu were here, but they hadn’t been sent for me. I didn’t even need to face them.
Looking at the grotesque monsters, I realized I could turn around and walk away. I could still find a way to stop Liu Qiang’s ritual, without facing the baby-faced spiders. There was no need for me to fight them.
The goblin spiders had trapped a portion of my father’s spirit, but it was merely a third. He would wake up and still be two thirds of what he was. He’d be strong enough to kill the yaozhizhu by himself. Once Father knew what he was facing, he could incinerate the goblin spiders with five syllables and a two-handed gesture. He could reclaim the missing portion of his spirit without my help. Even diminished by a third, my father was still stronger and more experienced than I could ever hope to become.
I stood at the corner, thinking. I could walk away. The thought of it felt like a breeze on a hot day. It felt like freedom. Let someone else handle this. I didn’t need to scar my mind by confronting the yaozhizhu.
I stood still, watching the skittering spiders and hearing their babyish cries. Behind them, webbed up, a portion of my father’s spirit was struggling, trapped.
When my spirit was trapped, my father sacrificed his eye to rescue me.
Drawing my peachwood sword, I charged at the goblin spiders. The closest locked its infant eyes on me with a false look of innocence, and it died on the point of my peachwood sword. I impaled a second, and a third, and the twitchy crowd of monsters turned on me. Hundreds of baby eyes, thousands of hairy, skittering spider legs, the entire horde of the yaozhizhu advanced.
I stepped back, and swung my sword to clear it of the guts and parts of goblin spiders. The rest of the yaozhizhu were coming after me. There were too many of them. One girl with a sword would never be enough to hack her way through this disgusting swarm. My arm would tire long before they were finished.
I needed to fight them on my terms. From a better vantage point. But where?
I continued stepping back, one step back and then another, while all of the goblin spiders swarmed toward me.
Then an idea occurred to me. I could fight them from behind the doorway, protected by a string of cloth talismans.
The only problem was, the yaozhizhu were massed between me and the door.
I bolted to the left and the goblin spiders sped after me, a multitude of clicking legs and crying faces. Angling my feet toward the wall, I began the dynamic shifts of weight and motion that make up qinggong. I only needed to lighten my body a little. My feet hit the ground, lighter from one moment to the next, and I had done enough by the time I reached the wall.
One foot against the wall, push up, and spring off: I flipped over the seething moat of goblin spiders. They had all come at me together, and I was behind them now. Their animal intelligence was basic, but cunning. One alerted the others to my whereabouts with a warbling screech, and the mob of baby-faced monsters pivoted toward me again.
But I had already crossed to their other side, and I was running. I sped toward the door of the infirmary, wielding my wooden blade in both hands. I heard Dr. Wei’s voice. He called down warnings from the second floor. But I saw things he could not see, and I swung my peachwood sword at the pale fleshy web the yaozhizhu had spun over his doorway. The peachwood sliced down, and the web shredded into flimsy strands of gossamer.
I burst in through the doorway, panting. The goblin spiders charged after me, but when they hit the perimeter marked by my father’s talismans, they stopped in their tracks. I heard them chitter in their rage and frustration.
Dr. Wei ran down the stairs. “What are you doing, Li-lin? You said you’d go away.”
“Yes, Dr. Wei,” I said, catching my breath. “I did say that. I was lying.”
He stopped and stared. “You are a very strange girl,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come back. You’ll have to stay inside the quarantine now.”
“It’s not an epidemic, Dr. Wei. It’s yaozhizhu. There are goblin spiders outside the door. They can’t get past the string of talismans, but they put up a web outside the door. They’ve caught some spirits in their webs. Father’s spirit is caught.”
If a bird had been flying through the infirmary, it might have flown into Dr. Wei’s mouth at that moment. His eyes bulged wide behind his spectacles as he pieced the information together, then he snapped his mouth shut and gave me a firm look.
“Li-lin, why didn’t you ever tell me you have yin eyes?”
“There’s no time for this, Dr. Wei. I need to kill the yaozhizhu outside, and I need to save the soul portions that they’ve caught. How much lamp oil can you spare?”
“Lamp oil?” he asked.
“Yes, Dr. Wei. Lamp oil.”
He pushed his spectacles farther back on his nose with a sigh. “A lot?” he said.
“I need oil,” I said. “And matches.”
I poured fish oil over the goblin spiders, and lit them on fire. Pedestrians watched and gaped. I heard one say, “That’s the girl who beat up Tom Wong in the street!”
In the spirit world, flames took the baby-faced spiders. They coughed and cried and fled in circles, spinning on their hairy, segmented legs, burning. Mucus dripped down their baby noses. I felt none of the elation of victory. This wasn’t a fight; it was merely an execution.
I carried the buckets of lamp oil to the back door and executed the rest.
When it was done, I went out front. The captive spirits were nearly weightless. Encased in cobweb, their essential matter diminished by hungry goblin spiders, my father’s spirit and the others had started to shrivel.
They would survive. Thanks to me, they would survive, but none would ever thank me for it. We would put all this behind us. For once I was glad of it. I wanted the yaozhizhu gone and forgotten.
Carefully, with my peachwood sword, I sliced the webs off of the spirits. I kept my arm steady, making sure I didn’t even nick the soul portions with the blade. They emerged from the webbing like puffs of steam. I watched them float, indistinct as clouds at night. They would drift back to join the rest of the spirit that had been fractioned. I watched a piece of my father’s spirit pass into the infirmary, unimpeded by his own talisman.
Mrs. Wei approached me from inside the infirmary. I eyed her with suspicion. I never wanted to talk to her again.
“I have been thinking about you, Li-lin. There is so much I could teach you,” she said. Her words came out in an excited rush. “I could teach you to walk the spirit bridge like a Wushi woman. I could show you how to recruit spirit servants.”
I recoiled as if she’d kicked me in the gut. “I am a Daoshi, Mrs. Wei. I am the daughter of a Daoshi, and I am the widow of a Daoshi. I will not shake and gouge my skin, and I will not learn your witchcraft or claim your demons.”
Her body went stiff and her face cold. “They are not demons,” she said. Old anger hardened her voice.
I walked past her to the cot where my father was resting. Fresh bandages covered the side of his face, where he had torn out his eye. For me. He was breathing slowly.
Dr. Wei sat on a stool at his side, checking his pulses. He looked up at me. “Your father’s vital signs are stronger,” he told me. “He was breathing shallowly, and four of his pulses had failed. But now he’s stabilized. He just needs some rest.”
I smiled, nodding. “You can call off the quarantine,” I said.
He gave me a steady
, regarding look, and nodded. “Does your father know about your yin eyes?”
“He did know, once. He thinks he cured me.” I paused. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
“I’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath, Li-lin,” he said, “so I will never divulge a medical secret. But one of these days you and I will need to talk.”
I knew what he would say: women with yin eyes die young. A woman with yin eyes will lead a painful life. Drink this water infused with talismanic ashes. Let me stick needles into your meridians. Drink this herbal tea. Let me touch your meridians with this hot moxa stick. I’d been hearing it from my father ever since I was a little girl.
“I should check on my other patients now,” the doctor said. “But do come talk to me soon, Li-lin.”
“I will return tonight, to see how Father is doing,” I said.
I walked back toward the apartment, feeling tense. Edges grew indistinct in the hazy six o’clock light. Liu Qiang was going to perform his ritual at eleven. It was only five hours away. I needed a plan. I needed allies.
Mrs. Wei offered to help me find spirit allies, but really she was offering to corrupt me. She practiced a forbidden magic. Those ways were wild and ruinous. I had seen Mrs. Wei perform a ritual. She shook and cut herself. Generations of scholars and Daoshi had taken magic and made it civilized. They cleansed it of its madness, its grisliness, and its contaminations.
Mr. Wong had suggested that I go to the Xie Liang tong and ask them for help. But he made sure no one could hear him when he said it. The Xie Liangs were supposed to be reckless, and dangerous in the way of undisciplined men. If I went to the Xie Liang tong for help, I could expect to be shut out from the world I knew.
Even Dr. Wei worked for the Ansheng tong. I thought of him for a moment, how he would react to me if I was no longer welcome among the Ansheng. The thought of him turning away, treating me like some kind of stranger or an enemy, was nearly enough to make me start crying.
And yet I had to do something. I couldn’t sit back and let Tom Wong slaughter innocent men. Rocket would never tolerate such a thing. I could not allow him a legacy that he would find shaming.
I turned and began to walk away from the Ansheng territory. Away from everything I had ever known.
Crossing into the southwest side of Chinatown felt like passing out of one country and into another. My father had always worked for the Ansheng tong, so the territory of the Xie Liangs felt like a hostile foreign land.
It looked the same. The same grungy, boxy buildings. The ramshackle balconies and rickety stairways looked no different. On Sacramento Street there were greengrocers and street vendors. Men walked past with the resolute and tired eyes of those who work hard, and their queues swished behind them as they walked. Nothing here was truly different. There were the same suspicious glances, the same whispers, the same odd mix of vibrancy and despair. The high-pitched music of an erhu floated through the air. Chinatown took its own shape, and neither Mr. Wong nor Bok Choy could force it to take a different one.
It felt to me like the world was sinking. My father—the invincible, the powerful protector of Chinatown—lay in bed, feeble. There was no one else who could stand in his place. No one but me. It was up to me to protect Chinatown.
My father and I had always been with the Ansheng tong, so the Xie Liang tong had always been our enemy. Now Tom Wong wanted to destroy the Xie Liangs. I found myself wondering why I would want to stop him.
I stopped walking. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. The Ansheng tong had sheltered my family since we first came to Gold Mountain. They were good people. They provided Father with his temple, and they paid for my husband’s funeral.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to do this. I didn’t need to do anything. The Anshengs were my people. And who were the Xie Liangs? Strangers. I could simply go back to my life, pretending there was nothing else I could have done. The Anshengs were my people. Why would I step outside the social order? Why would I fight against men who helped raise me?
An old man sat on the corner, playing music. The mournful sound of his erhu made me feel doomed, like the whole world was drowning.
“Pretty girl,” the old man called to me. He gave me a gentle smile that had no teeth. “Let me play you a song.”
I stopped and looked at him. There was so much to read on his face. A wrinkle below the mouth showed me someone who frowned often. The crinkles behind his eyes denoted laughter.
“Is it a happy song?” I asked.
“I know some happy songs.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I will come back tomorrow and ask you to play me a happy song.”
I bowed to the old man and walked deeper into Xie Liang territory. Maybe I was throwing my life away for an old man playing an erhu, but I wanted to hear a happy song. If Liu Qiang were to raise the Kulou-Yuanling, the musician would die and I’d never get to hear his happy song.
I smiled at my own foolishness. For a happy song, I had decided to go to war with the Ansheng tong.
I was wearing the full outfit of a Daoshi—yellow robes embroidered with black trigrams, and a square black hat. I would walk into Bok Choy’s headquarters and no one would mistake me for a contract girl. I had decided to let them see me as powerful, a person of consequence, who must be taken seriously.
“Are you lost, little girl?” called a young man with a cruel face. Beside him, two friends laughed.
“Are you with the Xie Liang tong?” I asked.
The three of them stood in front of me, barring my path. “Why does it matter to you?”
I touched the pocket where I kept my rope dart. I might need it. “I want to talk with Bok Choy.”
The young men glanced at each other uncertainly, and then the hatchet-faced youth spoke again. “What do you want with him, little girl?”
I sighed. Such a juvenile way to taunt me. “If I don’t talk to Bok Choy, his gambling halls will burn, his brothels will lie in wreckage. The Xie Liang tong will be no more, and each man who refuses to acknowledge the power of the Ansheng will be hunted down and shamed, broken, or killed. Bok Choy will probably be allowed to live, but the Anshengs will cripple him, cripple his arms and legs, so he will have to earn his living as a beggar, selling listeners the story of how he rose to such a height and fell so far so fast,” I said. “And all this will come to pass, and it will come to pass tonight, if you do not bring me to him, right now.”
The young men had gone as pale as corpses. They exchanged glances, and then the first one spoke again. “We’ll take you to him,” he said.
*
There were no talismans over the door. No Door Gods, nothing to protect against spells or spirits. That was odd. Foolish of them, to leave their business so exposed. Goblins, ghosts, and curses had free rein to wreck the place.
The young men led me down a flight of stairs and into a big, poorly lit chamber. In the dim room, I could see men gambling at the tables, playing fantan, pai jiu, and ma jiang, as well as white people games with playing cards and dice. “Wait here,” hatchet-face said to me. “I’ll go talk to him.”
I watched the faces of the men at the gaming tables. There was so much hope, and also so much devastation. I saw excitement, but I also saw exhaustion—the exhaustion that comes from living for small victories, forever waiting for the next one.
Tiles clinked on the tables, and dice rolled. I heard the sound of pouring liquid and looked over to see a woman serving rice wine to a group of gamblers. She wore American makeup, but the brightness of her face, the relaxation in her posture, and a gentle sense of contentment made her shine with an inner beauty. Behind red lips, rouged cheeks, and shadowed eyes, she had the bearing and expression of a woman who is profoundly loved. I had looked that way once. Yet here she was, looking a few years older than me, and still she radiated.
The waitress met my eyes with a curious look. Who are you, her eyes seemed to be asking, what are you? I wondered the same. But I realized who she was. For such a beautiful
woman to circulate among gangsters without being bothered, she could only be the boss’s wife.
A whore was circulating among the men. Her dress was cut shorter than the ordinary style, and I saw men flirting with her. She turned, and I saw she was wearing a great deal of makeup.
And under the makeup, I could see, clearly, it was a man. I stared. In his face I saw something surprising. He didn’t look defeated.
We faced each other for a moment, and then he walked over to me. “Four bits to feel,” he said with a smile, “six bits to do.” He made no effort to conceal his male voice.
I blushed and looked down. “You,” I said to him, and looked back at his face, “you haven’t been doing this long?”
His face was smothered under makeup, and he began to laugh. “I’m the whore today,” he said. “I lost more bets than anyone else yesterday. Someone else will have to dress up as a whore tomorrow.”
I looked at him. “So you’re not really … six bits?”
“For you, I’d only charge four bits,” he said with a leer. I couldn’t help it, it was so absurd I broke out in laughter.
Then Bok Choy came charging out from a back room. It was hard to miss him. He was wearing a white American suit with diamonds glittering on the lapels. A short man and skinny, he moved quickly, as if he was rushing somewhere.
He saw me and smiled. Gold flashed among his teeth. I knew better than to trust this man’s smile. His hands fluttered like birds in motion. The whore of the day stepped back into the crowd.
“Let me see her, let me see,” he said to his men, and when they stepped aside he looked at me and laughed. “How precious,” he said, “how darling!”
I blinked. So this was Bok Choy, twitchy and failing to be charming, alive with spastic energy. I had gone to school with the missionaries, so I knew a little of the culture outside Chinatown, but I had no idea how I should behave around a tong leader in an American suit.
I bowed. “Mr. Choy,” I began, but his shrilling laughter cut me off.
“No need for us to be so formal,” he said. “But come on, let’s go somewhere private.”