Chapter 16

"What in God's name have you done?"

Her grandmother was shaking with it, and even the lines of her face were shaking.

Ning Shu guessed that her grandmother already knew the whole of it, or had at least felt what the thing in that belly was.

Ye Furong had the mask on and could not speak. All she could do was look at her mother as though begging her, making that hopeless noise in her throat, with the tears running out of the corners of her eyes.

She was begging her mother to save her.

"That child must never be born." Her grandmother said it flat. "Born, it will bring down a disaster, and there will be no end to what comes after."

Ye Furong heard it and shook her head and went on shaking it, and the tears came faster, like beads off a broken string.

"You still won't see it." Her grandmother looked at her in real pain. "What you're carrying is not a good thing. Will nothing satisfy you until she's drunk you dry and taken your life?"

Ye Furong shut her eyes.

Just then the old woman shoved the door of the ward open and came in swinging her stick, shouting. "He's your grandson too. How can you have the heart to want him dead?"

Her grandmother did not blink. She looked back at the old woman coldly and said, quite calmly, "In-law, your grandson was eaten clean by the ghost fetus in that belly a long time ago. And if the thing is ever born, your whole family will suffer for it, and none of you will die well."

"So now you're putting a curse on me!"

"I'm not cursing you. That is what has happened."

The old woman banged the stick down on the floor and pointed at her and shouted. "You open your mouth and say ghost fetus and so it's a ghost fetus. Where's your proof?"

"Does my daughter bleed once a day, at noon, without fail?"

"And if she does?"

"That blood is not ordinary blood. That blood is your grandson."

The old woman heard that and went white, and something in her gave way. In truth, with Ye Furong put through this for days on end and lying there half dead, it was not possible that no doubt had got into her. Whoever heard of a baby costing its mother half her life?

But it was out of the question now for her to give up her precious grandson. Ghost or human, with a tail or without, the thing had to be born first and looked at after.

"It's being born and that's the end of it." The old woman had set her heart on it and would fight to the last.

Her grandmother shook her head and said it flat. "You won't weep till you see the coffin. Then let me tell you. With Hu Ying standing here, that child is not getting born."

Ning Shu watched and was quietly amazed. Half a lifetime making her way in the trade, and it showed. There was nobody to touch her grandmother at that moment. She was magnificent.

The old woman was shaken by it and her blood pressure went up and she nearly fainted with rage, and her daughter and son-in-law and Ning Shu's father got her into a room to rest. But once her blood pressure had come down she came storming back to Ye Furong's room, fetched a stool, and sat down in the doorway with her stick, letting nobody in. Even the nurses coming to put a drip up had to do it under those sharp little eyes.

She had plainly decided to sit guard over her unborn grandson and let nobody near him.

Ning Shu went down to the canteen for a children's meal for Gouwa, and brought a tray up for her grandmother as well. Her grandmother was under the white light of the ward, working steadily through an old book.

Gouwa was watching Journey to the West, and her aunt told him to turn the sound down so as not to disturb her grandmother, and he did as he was told.

Ning Shu put the tray down in front of her grandmother. "Grandma, eat something. You haven't had so much as a drop of water since this morning. Eat first and read after."

Her grandmother put the book down and sighed. "Your mother is still suffering. How am I supposed to eat?"

Her uncle was feeding Gouwa, careful of the stitches on his lip, and he said to Ning Shu, "Your mother has never been strong, not since the day she was born. Your grandmother always loved her best."

"Flesh of my own flesh. How could I not?" Her grandmother said it helplessly. "The day she was born there was a strange star in the sky, which is no good sign. So her fate ran thin from the start, and every master who ever saw her said she wouldn't live. I begged the Heavenly Master to keep her safe, and it cost me everything I had to get her raised at all. And she still hasn't got past it."

"Mum, don't think so much about it. Furong will be all right," her aunt said.

Just then her grandmother seemed to remember something, and asked Ning Shu, "The thing in your mother's belly. Have you seen it too?"

Ning Shu nodded and kept nothing back. "I saw it."

Her grandmother's eyes on her went complicated and deep. "Then heaven means it. Ningning, when we get home I'll teach you. Feng shui and the arts, both. Never mind whether the Heavenly Master agrees. I'll teach you myself."

That lifted Ning Shu right up. "Yes, Grandma!"

"But the first thing is to find a way to stop that grandmother of yours. This ghost fetus absolutely cannot be born. If it is, the Ning family are finished."

Her grandmother went on, "And it isn't only them. When a demon comes into the world, do you imagine the Nings are the ones who suffer for it? The whole country will be thrown over."

Ning Shu asked, "Grandma, do you know how this ghost fetus came about?"

Her grandmother said, "Your mother did a wicked thing. She got rid of a child five months gone. The resentment ran wild in that baby girl and she worked herself up into a ghost, and she's come back for her revenge. She's eaten your mother's son and she means to be born out of the same womb."

"But there are so many babies got rid of every day in this world, and you never hear of those women being paid back for it." Ning Shu asked the thing that had been sitting at the back of her mind.

Her grandmother said, "That is the heart of it. Babies are got rid of every day and they wander about with nobody to belong to, and even where there's resentment in them, it never comes to anything much. At most they come out at night and give someone a fright. They're nowhere near being able to do real harm, let alone get into a woman's body and grow into something like this."

"Grandma, you mean that little ghost couldn't have managed it on her own. Somebody helped her."

Her grandmother's eyes went darker. "I don't know who it is your mother has offended. The harm's done, so there's no use talking about it. What matters now is stopping this thing being born, or your mother will die of her."

Her uncle's brows drew in. "That won't be easy. Never mind her mother-in-law sitting guard on the door. Furong's belly is so big now that no doctor will agree to induce."

Ning Shu said, "Perhaps Dad could help with this."

Ning Hengtao was a weak man, but he was still the only one in the Ning family who would listen to reason, and Ning Shu thought he might take her grandmother's word for it.

At about nine that evening Ning Hengtao came from work to see his wife and his mother, and her uncle asked him into Gouwa's room.

He had not forgotten to bring Gouwa fruit and a PSP, and Gouwa's eyes lit up at the sight of the PSP.

Ning Hengtao said to her grandmother, apologising, "Mum, my mother says hard things. Please don't take it to heart."

Her grandmother made a sound. "It isn't as if I don't know her temper. The fuss she made when she wouldn't have Ningning, all those years ago. She's got sillier with every year of it."

There was not much Ning Hengtao could say to that, and he stood against the wall like a boy being punished.

Ning Shu knew her father. Call him weak, and yet he ran the company well. Call him sharp, and at home he did whatever his mother told him and had done a great many foolish things because of it. Everyone around him thought his filial feeling had turned stupid on him. What they all came away with was that he was honest.

Her grandmother said, "There's something I want to ask you. That abortion. What actually happened?"

Ning Hengtao blinked. "Mum, we didn't…"

"Don't try to keep it from me now. If you don't want a thing known, don't do it. There's no wall in this world the wind can't get through. If you did it, don't be afraid of people knowing."

Ning Hengtao saw it was no use and let out a long breath. "Furong and I did have a daughter. What I wanted was to keep her. We already had a son, so another daughter would have been no trouble. But Furong wouldn't have it. She wanted another son. And my mother didn't want the girl either. So there was nothing for it but the hospital."

Her aunt shook her head and sighed over it. "Wicked. That's a wicked thing."

Her grandmother asked, "And after she was got rid of, did that child come back to you?"

Ning Hengtao gave a jump and was about to deny it out of pure reflex, but her grandmother held his eyes, as though one lie would be caught the instant it was out.

Under that look Ning Hengtao gave in and told the truth. "Two months after it was done, Furong started having nightmares. She said she dreamed of a child covered in blood coming to find her, and it frightened her badly. Wanyi said she knew a yin-yang master, so we had him come to the house and look."

Ning Wanyi was Ning Shu's aunt on her father's side, and she had a good deal of faith in this sort of thing.

Ning Hengtao went on. "The master came, and one look and he said it was the daughter we'd got rid of, with the resentment still on her, coming into Furong's dreams at night to torment her. That frightened the life out of us. He said he could take the little ghost in hand, and that in under three months he'd scatter her soul for good."

He stopped, and then said, "That night the Daoist hid himself in the wardrobe, and when Furong was asleep and the little ghost came into the dream again, he set a trap inside the dream and shut her in and took her. We paid him fifty thousand, and Furong never had the nightmares again."

"You fools." Her grandmother rounded on Ning Hengtao, furious. "You were the ones who made that baby girl into a wandering ghost who can't be born again. The fault was yours to begin with, and some resentment in her was only to be expected. All you needed was a proper master to see her on her way and settle it. Instead you let some crooked practitioner with his own purposes carry her off, and God knows what cruelty he put her to, until the resentment in her ran deeper still and she borrowed his strength and made herself into something that could break out. And now she's back for her revenge."

"Mum, you mean…" Ning Hengtao could hardly get the words straight. "Then what's in Furong's belly is…"

"It's the baby girl you killed." Her grandmother said it hard. "That ghost fetus must never be born. It will take Furong's life, and there will be no end to what comes after it."

Ning Hengtao's hands had begun to shake and he could not stop them. "How can there be such a thing. How can this be happening. That Daoist gave us his word at the time. How could he…"

He had not finished when a scream came up from the inpatient block below, a scream like nothing on this earth.

It was Ye Furong.