Chapter 18

In the ward her grandmother sat on the edge of the bed with Ning Shu on one side of her and Gouwa on the other.

She was worn down to nothing. In a single night she had got very old.

Ye Furong was still in theatre and had not come out, and the Ning grandmother was sitting guard on the door of it. The moment Ning Shu's grandmother came anywhere near, she went up like a fighting cock with every feather on end, ready to die for her precious grandson.

Ning Shu held her grandmother's hand and tried to settle her, and her grandmother began to talk about Ye Furong as a child.

"Your mother was always one to win. When she was at school in the town, if anyone in her class called her a country girl she'd have her sleeves up and be fighting them. She got into a great deal of trouble as a girl. Later all she wanted was out of the country and into the city, and she went off to work there before she'd even finished high school, and that was how she met your father. After she married she hardly came back."

Her grandmother sighed. "I know what it is. She holds it against me."

Ning Shu asked, "What does Mum hold against you?"

"I told you before, didn't I. I have an old friend in Hong Kong doing this work for people, and she made her fortune at it."

Ning Shu remembered. The friend with the heavenly eye open, who charged six figures before she so much as turned up.

"I took Furong with me to her birthday party, at the Victoria Hotel in Hong Kong. All the rich men and the politicians who came to wish her well, the size of it. She took us round the great houses in Hong Kong, and Furong could not take her eyes off any of it, and she came home with a knot in her that never came out."

"I know what it is. She holds it against me that I have everything my friend has and still sit in a little village like this."

That was true enough. If her grandmother had come down from the hills she would have been a master with a name across the country, and never mind great houses. She could have had anything she asked for.

Her grandmother looked at her son and sighed. "It's my fault I couldn't make a better life for the two of you."

"Mum, don't ever say that." Her uncle said, "I hold nothing against you. I know everything you did was for us."

"Ah. If only Furong had been like you, how much…"

Her grandmother did not finish. She came suddenly to her feet and said, half under her breath, "It's coming. It's coming."

Just then a baby's cry came up, loud and clear, and it made something in Ning Shu's chest tighten, as though she were being held in something, and it was horrible.

And at the same moment the weather turned over outside the window. A clear sky with the sun in it went dark, and the cloud piled up and came down low, and the weight of it rolled over everything.

In the cloud not far off a line of lightning cut the sky open, and the thunder came after it, deafening.

Her grandmother took up the peachwood sword and was off down the stairs. "Furong. Furong."

Ning Shu went after her to the delivery room. The old woman had the baby in her arms, delighted with herself, playing with him and not able to stop.

"It's a boy! It's a boy!"

That had made her year.

The father's sister and her husband and Ning Hengtao were all round the child too, beaming. Her grandmother hurried to the bed to see her daughter and the doctors and nurses stopped her at the door.

"Furong. Doctor, how is our Furong?"

A nurse explained. "The mother is very weak and she isn't out of danger. We need to work on her. The family must wait outside."

"Doctor, you have to save her." Her uncle was urgent about it. "She's the only sister I have. You have to save her."

"We'll do everything we can."

Her grandmother backed two unsteady steps away with a hand over her mouth, shaking her head and going on shaking it. "No. No."

Ning Shu followed where her grandmother was looking. Down the dim corridor not far off stood two men in long black robes, like two shadows, and there was no telling how long they had been there.

They wore pointed hats and their faces were lost in the shade of them, with nothing of the faces showing, and a mist was coming up around them, and the corridor they stood in had gone dark, as though it led down to the underworld.

And Ning Shu saw that apart from her and her grandmother, nobody there reacted to the two men who had appeared in the corridor out of nowhere. It was as though they could not see them.

Just then Gouwa, who had come along with her aunt, gave a scream and pointed at them with his arm shaking.

"That. That's…"

Her grandmother turned a look on him and Gouwa clapped both hands over his mouth and went quiet.

Ning Shu's own voice had gone cold on her. She asked under her breath, "Grandma, who are they?"

"The underworld officers."

The underworld officers.

Then. Ning Shu looked towards the delivery room, where the doctors were still working.

Was Ye Furong going?

A few minutes later the doctors came out one after another and shook their heads at the family and pulled their masks down. "I'm sorry. We did everything we could. She was too weak."

Her uncle's eyes went red. "Sister."

Her grandmother stood blank for two seconds, then caught Ning Shu by the sleeve and held on to her, shaking. "Ah-Ning, every word I say to you now you are to listen to. Not one word is to get past you."

Ning Shu had never seen her grandmother in such deadly earnest. She opened her mouth and nodded. "I'm listening. Tell me, Grandma."

"Go into that room now and shut the door, and whoever knocks, you do not open it." Her grandmother felt in her bag and pushed a white candle into Ning Shu's hand. "Light this and stand it by your mother's head, and whatever you do, don't let it go out. If that candle goes out, your mother's soul is gone."

"I understand, Grandma." Ning Shu nodded and went on nodding.

"And bite your finger through and put the blood on your mother's brow, between the eyes. Your heavenly eye is close to opening, so the blood of your heart is a precious thing, and it can hold your mother's soul where it is."

Then her grandmother pushed Ning Shu into the room and pulled the door shut behind her with a bang.

From outside came a shout. "With Hu Ying standing here today, nobody is taking my daughter."

Straight after that came a crack of thunder, loud enough to have gone off over the roof of the hospital, and it startled Ning Shu so that the hand with the knife in it jumped. She had not been able to make herself bite through her own finger and had picked a blade off the tray instead, and now it went sideways and opened a long cut in her fingertip.

The blood came out and the pain pulled her mouth sideways.

Ye Furong lay on the bed with blood all down the lower half of her and sweat all over her forehead, and the body had gone cold.

Her lips were white. By the look of her she had suffered a great deal before the end, and there was nothing left in her face of the beauty she had carried about with her.

Ning Shu put the blood on the middle of her brow. She did not know how much was wanted, and she had torn her hand open this far already, so she put plenty on to be safe.

They say the ten fingers run to the heart, so the blood at the tip of a finger is the blood of the heart. Her grandmother had said her blood was precious and could save a life.

Ye Furong's face was smeared with red, and it made a terrible thing of her.

Then Ning Shu took the half candle her grandmother had given her out of her clothes and lit it with a lighter.

Once it was burning she stood it on the cabinet by the bed and kept it between her hands, careful of it. That candle was holding Ye Furong's soul, and her life with it.

And outside, a furious shout went up.

"We carry a warrant out of the city of the dead and we do not take souls loosely. If the King of Hell says you die at the third watch, who dares wait for the fourth?"

"What small creature dares to stand in the way of the underworld officers?"

Her grandmother gave not an inch. "My daughter Ye Furong has died a death that was not hers to die, and her years are not up. Open the King's own register and see for yourselves."

"It is the King of Hell who sent me to take her."

"Officers, there's drinking money here for the pair of you, for when you're thirsty on the road. I ask you to be generous and let her go. And if ever there is anything Hu Ying can do for you, she'll do it if it kills her."

Ning Shu held the candle and thought her grandmother was magnificent. The woman was bribing the underworld.

The two officers did not seem to be taking the favour. They meant to have her.

And Ning Shu watched the candle in front of her get weaker and weaker. It was going out.

"I am Hu Ying, direct disciple of the four hundred and fiftieth generation under the Heavenly Master Huang Xianci. Sixty years and more I have gone about this trade, and there are no few great names in it who know me. The ghosts I have taken in, the spirits I have caught, the demons I have put down, if there aren't a thousand there are eight hundred. Standing in the King's own hall he would give me my due, and the two of you are low-ranking officers. What do you imagine you can do to me?"

Ning Shu listened. Soft had not worked, so her grandmother had gone hard, and the speech set her blood going.

Outside seemed to go quiet for a moment. Then the thunder started outside the window, one roll of it after another, until it felt as though her head would come apart.

Ning Shu had her hands clamped over her ears, and she turned her head and saw that the candle on the cabinet had gone out.

She went for the lighter at once, and however she worked at it, the candle would not light again.

That was it.

Ning Shu looked round and saw that Ye Furong's soul had come away from her body. It was a white, half-clear shape of her, and it was drifting slowly towards the door.

Ning Shu ran over and put both arms out in front of it. "You can't go out. If you go out you're dead."

But the soul went straight through Ning Shu's body, and it was going to go through the door as well.

Ning Shu did not know what to do, and she pulled the teardrop off her neck and said her son's name over in her mind, and a few seconds later a red shape appeared. It was Ning Yuanzi.

Tuanzi had not come. Yuanzi had.

There was no time to think about that. Ning Shu said quickly, "Stop her for me."

"All right."

Ning Yuanzi ran over without asking anything and put herself across the door.

The sweet, well-behaved little face turned hideous in an instant. Her mouth opened like a red pit with sharp teeth in it, and she let out one wild shriek, and it frightened Ye Furong's soul so badly that it went backwards and would not come near the door again.

What a new ghost fears most is an old one. They walk past with their heads down.

"Mummy, light the candle!" Ning Yuanzi shouted.