Chapter 17

The first to move at that scream was Ning Hengtao.

He ran for obstetrics, and her grandmother went after him on her stick, frantic.

"Mum, slow down." Her uncle ran over to hold her up.

Her grandmother could not get her breath and pushed him off. "Go. Go and see to your sister."

"Mum, I have to help you."

Ning Shu was quick on her feet and was down the stairs in a few strides. "I'll go."

But she had only just reached the door of obstetrics, before she could get inside, when three strokes of a gong came at her ears, loud enough to split the world.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Those three strokes went through her and tore her open. Every organ in her felt ready to burst and her head rang with it.

She clapped her hands over her ears, and the floor turned under her.

What was that?

Who was banging a gong in a hospital? Were you not supposed to keep quiet in here?

And the sound of it was horrible. It had shaken her until she nearly brought everything up.

Ning Shu stood with a hand on the wall, getting herself back, and she watched the people along the corridor. Their faces had not changed at all. Not one of them had heard a thing.

Strange.

While she was still puzzling at it the black teardrop at her neck began to burn, hot enough to hurt the skin.

She hissed and pulled the drop out from under her clothes, and the surface of it, which had always been pure black, had fine red threads coming up through it.

Tuanzi.

Something had happened to Tuanzi. She knew it without being told.

There was no time to think about it, and she went up to her mother's room in a few strides, and ran into an old cleaner on the way. Ning Shu apologised, and the old man said, taking his time about it, "Slow down, girl. There's no need to hurry like that even if you're on your way to be born again."

An unpleasant way to put it, but Ning Shu could not be bothered with him.

There was uproar at the ward and a crowd jammed outside it, doctors and nurses and other patients come to watch, and nobody able to do anything.

Ning Shu pushed her way through with difficulty, and the moment she got near the door the smell of blood came at her thick.

Ye Furong's eyes had rolled up and there was nothing left of her at all.

Several doctors and nurses were round the bed trying to hold her down, and one of them had a syringe and was getting a drug into her.

Below her legs the sheet was soaked red all the way through, and it was a sight to turn you over.

And inside that round belly something seemed to be biting its way out. The skin of it was rising and falling in waves.

A young nurse screamed. "What is that?"

Nobody knew what it was. Even the doctors with years behind them stood and stared at it.

They had never seen anything like it.

The old woman was curled up in the corner, badly frightened herself, both hands shaking and her lips working. "A ghost. There's a ghost fighting in there."

Ning Hengtao ran over and got his mother up. "Mum, are you all right? Doctor. Doctor, come and look at my mother."

Two nurses came and helped the old woman to a bed. Her grandmother reached the ward at that moment, and the moment the old woman saw her she went off like a rocket, threw both nurses aside and flew at her with her hands up, ready to tear her to pieces.

"This is your doing. You old witch. You've let a ghost out to murder my grandson. I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

The old woman was out of her mind, and if Ning Hengtao had not held her she would have got her hands on Ning Shu's grandmother.

Her grandmother took no notice of any of it. She went straight to Ye Furong.

Ye Furong had gone right under by now and had stopped moving, and still the belly heaved and fell.

The doctor said it was an emergency and they had to do a caesarean at once and could not wait, and told them to get her to theatre, and brought the consent form for a relative to sign.

Her grandmother swept her arm across. "It can't be born. That child must not be born."

"You madwoman! I'll have your life!" The old woman threw herself at her and a doctor caught her.

Her grandmother turned to the doctor for help. "That child can't be born, it absolutely cannot. Doctor, is there any way to get rid of it? What's in there is a demon, and if it's born something terrible will happen."

The doctor looked at her the way you look at a lunatic. Was there one normal person in this family?

"The mother is in a very dangerous state. Any more delay and we may lose both of them."

The old woman heard that and would not have it. "You save the child. It doesn't matter if the adult dies. Nothing must happen to that child."

"We'll do our best to keep both of them safe."

The old woman snatched the form out of the doctor's hand and put it in front of Ning Hengtao. "Son. Sign it."

Ning Hengtao looked at her grandmother, and then at the form, and hesitated. "This child… Mum, I don't think this child can be born."

"What did you say?" The old woman was beside herself. "That's your son in there."

"Mum, no. That isn't my son. My son is already dead."

The old woman hit him across the face. "You wretch!"

Her grandmother had no attention left for any of them. She went to Ye Furong's bed, and the soul seemed to have gone out of her, and she stood looking down at her. "Furong."

Ye Furong was almost gone, with one breath left in her, and she put everything she had into reaching for her mother's hand.

"Mum." The tears came out at the corners of her eyes and her voice was thin. "I was wrong. I was wrong, Mum. Save me. Please save me."

Her grandmother looked at the belly swelling higher, and she knew the thing was about to come through it.

Her uncle came up too, urgent about it. "Mum, save her. Save my sister."

Her grandmother let out a long breath. "It's too late."

"No!"

"Ah-Ning. Fetch me my peachwood sword."

"Grandma."

"Go." Her grandmother roared it, and Ning Shu did not dare refuse. She ran back to Gouwa's room and pulled the peachwood sword out of her grandmother's case.

The sword was under a metre long and looked old and plain, and the edge was blunt and had never been ground.

But for some reason, the moment it was in her grandmother's hand, a shine came up along the blade and the edge of it turned sharp.

Her grandmother had been going about this trade for years and had never once been without that sword, so it had to be a fine thing of its kind.

And now she held it and pointed it at Ye Furong's belly.

"Foul thing. With Hu Ying standing here today, you will never see daylight."

The old woman saw it and could not get her breath past it and fainted. And the moment she went down, the whole world was quiet.

The peachwood sword had barely touched Ye Furong's belly when the thing inside answered it and began to fight hard, and with it came Ye Furong's screaming, one wave of it higher than the last.

There is no describing that sound.

Her uncle saw where this was going and said quickly, "Mum, what are you going to do to my sister?"

Her grandmother slowly closed her eyes. "I am Hu Ying. Sixty-two years I have gone about this trade, and I can say I have never done a thing against heaven or against any man. Putting down demons and upholding the Way, my conscience is clear. To stop a demon coming into the world and setting it on fire, today Hu Ying will put what is right above her own blood."

She said it with iron in it, and then her hand turned the blade over and the quilt across Ye Furong's belly opened and left the belly bare. The white skin of it was covered all over in close black lines, like a black flower opening across her.

The point of the sword came to rest on the belly.

Only then did it get through to Ning Shu. Her grandmother meant to kill Ye Furong along with the ghost baby.

Ye Furong had turned hideous. The whites of her eyes had gone red and she bared her teeth at the old woman.

Ning Shu understood. The thing had taken her mother's body and was using it to hold her grandmother off.

But her grandmother did not move. Her face was set and cold, and she had made up her mind to it.

Ye Furong saw the threat was not working and pulled the viciousness in at once and began to weep, pitifully. "Mum. Mum, Furong hurts so much. Mum, save me. I don't want to die. I don't want to die."

Her grandmother opened her eyes and looked down at her in grief, and the tears ran out of them, clouded. "Furong, your mother is sorry. Go in peace. It won't be long before I come down and keep you company. You won't be alone."

At that Ye Furong turned savage again. "You old hag. You stop me becoming a demon and I'll never let you go, dead or not. I'll eat your bones and drink your blood, and I'll eat your granddaughter too."

Her grandmother lifted the sword and brought it down hard at the belly.

The blade pulled a hard wind after it that lifted the hair on Ning Shu's forehead, and Ning Shu looked away so as not to see it.

Those few seconds seemed to set hard. Then there was one clear ringing note, and the sword hit the floor.

Ning Shu looked up again, and the sword was down, and Ye Furong was lying there as she had been. She was not dead.

Her grandmother shut her eyes, finished. She had not been able to do it. Even a tiger will not eat its own cubs, and she could not end her daughter's life with her own hand.

Ning Shu let her breath out. If she had killed her, nothing else aside, her grandmother would have gone to prison for it.

The peachwood sword lay on the floor with the shine gone out of it, an ordinary wooden sword again with no edge on it.

Her grandmother stumbled two steps back, and she seemed to have aged ten years in that moment, and every hair on her head had gone grey.

The old tears ran down her face.

The hospital security came then and got hold of the family, and the doctors and nurses all moved at once and got the mother off the bed and onto a trolley with the last of her breath in her, and hurried her away to theatre.

Ning Shu ran over and held her grandmother up, and heard her say, with nothing left in her, "It's finished. It's all finished."