Chapter 4

Of course she knew. Every small thing that had happened in the village when she was young was still clear in her head, and those things were what would keep her safe here this time around.

In the last life that wretched boy Zhang Qiang had landed his own father in it. He stole the underwear of Widow Wang, the prettiest woman at the top of the village, and then he was careless and his mother found it.

His mother was never going to suspect her own son. She took the flowered underwear for proof that her husband had been carrying on with Widow Wang.

The whole village heard about it. Zhang Qiang's father could not hold his head up anywhere after that, with people pointing at his back wherever he went. In the end the couple split up and Zhang Qiang's mother left the village. Zhang Qiang stayed with his father, his father found him a hard stepmother, and the lives of Zhang Qiang and his little brother and sister turned bitter after that.

Ning Shu had not warned Zhang Qiang in order to save Zhang Qiang. The real reason was Widow Wang, who in the last life had taken the blame for nothing. She was a fierce-tempered woman, and being wronged with no way on earth to prove otherwise, she went into the river in the end.

Ning Shu wanted to save Widow Wang's life. That was why she said it.

It was as her grandmother said. To be a great master you have to start with a mind set on good, and do good, and the merit you build up is your own.

Zhang Qiang's eyes were going back and forth while he worked it out. Only a few of his friends knew about the underwear. How could Ning Shu know?

He grabbed the collar of the boy beside him and demanded savagely, "Did you tell her? You dared go blabbing about that? Tired of living, are you?"

"No! I never said anything!"

"Then how does she know!"

Ning Shu said slowly, "Zhang Qiang. Do enough wrong and it finishes you. If you bring it down on yourself that's your own business, but don't drag anyone else into it. You've no idea who that disgusting little habit of yours is going to kill."

Zhang Qiang gave a cold laugh and pointed at her. "I'm not afraid of you. It happens because you say it happens, does it? Who do you think you are? Some immortal?"

The sun had gone behind the clouds by then, and a cold wind came through.

Before Ning Shu could say anything, a small girl in a red dress came running out from somewhere. Her lips were red and her teeth were white, and her skin against that blood-red dress was as white as snow. She was lovely.

The girl skipped over to Zhang Qiang, put out a hand and gave him the lightest push, and he went into the river as though there had never been anything holding him up.

"Ah! Help! I can't swim!"

Zhang Qiang thrashed about in the water.

The other boys stood there stupidly for a second, then got their clothes off and went in after him and hauled him out.

While the boys were splashing about, the girl in the red dress laughed and laughed. She looked back at Ning Shu once, then skipped away and was gone into the long grass.

Ning Shu and Gouwazi walked home along the path between the fields.

The sun had come back out from the clouds and was baking the ground warm again, and everything cold about the last few minutes was gone.

"Sis, that retribution you talked about turned up fast!" Gouwazi was thrilled. "Zhang Qiang went in the river all by himself. Was that heaven helping us?"

Ning Shu said, "Nothing's that fast. The little girl pushed him in. I don't know what he did to upset her."

Gouwazi said, "Sis, what little girl?"

Ning Shu said, "The one in the red dress just now. Very pretty. She'll be a beauty when she grows up. You didn't see her?"

Gouwazi put a hand over his chest and said in a panic, "Sis, don't start telling ghost stories. There wasn't any girl in a red dress. You're frightening me!"

Frightening him? Ning Shu had frightened herself.

"You didn't see her?"

Gouwazi said, "A big wind came up just then and Zhang Qiang went in like something blew him. Nobody pushed him."

Ning Shu shivered without meaning to.

She had seen the girl in red perfectly clearly. She had come running over, she had knocked Zhang Qiang down and she had smiled at Ning Shu. No wonder nobody else had reacted. None of them could see her. Only Ning Shu could.

That evening Gouwazi told his parents and his grandparents what had happened, and her uncle warned him as he always did not to go making trouble, and above all not to go making trouble with the families in the village who had money and standing.

Her uncle was an honest country man, honest to a fault. People got at him and he said nothing back. He had one rule and he lived by it. If nobody wrongs me I wrong nobody, and if somebody wrongs me I swallow the broken teeth along with the blood.

"Uncle, it wasn't Gouwa going at them. It was them coming at us," Ning Shu said. "Getting out of the way forever isn't a plan. People push the meek around the way they ride the quiet horse. Grandma is as strong as she is. Why should we be afraid of them?"

"Ah-Ning." Her grandmother put down her chopsticks. "You're too hard-willed. For a yin-yang master that's the worst fault there is."

Ning Shu frowned. She did not follow. "So a yin-yang master has to be a saint? Someone hits you on the left cheek and you give them the right one as well?"

She could not live like that.

No wonder in the last life her uncle's family had been broken and scattered. Her grandmother was as strong as she was, and they had still ended up there. This time around Ning Shu was not going to let it happen. She was going to use what she had to keep her family safe.

That night Ning Shu had a dream.

It was the first time since she had been reborn that she dreamed of Lu Zheng.

The dream was lovely. She was lying on the terrace of a villa above a beach, and in front of her there was nothing but clean blue sea and clean blue sky.

Her eyes were shut and she was sunk in it, and then a soft kiss came down on her mouth.

"I've missed you." Lu Zheng kissed her gently and said all the things lovers say, and said her name. "Ah-Ning. Ah-Ning."

His lips were cold, cold all the way through her. His hand was already under her skirt.

"I don't love you," she said.

"You will."

…

Ning Shu came awake hard, wet with sweat.

It was dark all around. Her body felt sticky, and below the waist most of all, in a way she knew.

She had had that kind of dream, and she had had it about Lu Zheng.

Horrible.

Lu Zheng had been her first man and her last. Before him she had never been with anyone. He had taken up the whole of it.

He had wanted her the way he wanted to own her, which was to say without any limit. During that stretch at the villa in the hills she had spent nearly every day in a haze, worn out to the bone. And it had to be said that he knew exactly how to please a woman, and what he did to her was so strong each time that it felt like dying and coming back.

Sent back to the beginning, and she was still dreaming about him, and dreaming about that.

Ning Shu sat up, went to the table and poured herself water and drank it straight down to wet her mouth.

The night wind came and went. There was no moon again tonight, and no stars.

She looked at the time. Twenty-five past three in the morning. She pushed the door open and went out to the toilet. Country toilets were still pits, a few stones laid together with the pit underneath.

Her grandmother's had been redone, though, and it was a reasonably clean squat toilet.

Ning Shu put the light on from outside. It was a dim yellow thing and barely did the job.

She was pulling her trousers up when the light swayed and went out.

Her heart jumped with it, and then she talked herself down. What was there to be afraid of? The bulb had gone, that was all, and she would get her uncle to look at it tomorrow.

Ning Shu pulled at the door handle. The door did not move.

She put her weight into it and it still did not open. She started to panic and hauled at it.

But the door might as well have been nailed shut.

And then a thin voice came from behind her. "Mummy."

Ning Shu went limp against the door. She turned her head, shaking, and there was the little girl in the red dress, standing down in the pit with half of her under it and half of her above, both hands braced on the foot stone, climbing for all she was worth to get out.

The night was thick, and the small red flowers on her dress were still perfectly clear, as though they had been dyed in blood.

"Oh my god!"

Ning Shu had braced herself for something, and her soul still nearly went out of her.

"Mummy, don't be scared." The girl in red kept hauling herself up, and still found the time to comfort her. "I'm good."

She looked about five or six, round with the fat small children have, and her scrambling was clumsy and ridiculous and even a bit sweet.

"What… what is it you want?"

Once she was out, the girl in red patted her red dress down, put a hand to her mouth and looked at Ning Shu with her face going pink. "Mummy's so pretty! Mm, my brother said I shouldn't come and find Mummy, he said it would frighten her, but I missed Mummy so much!"

She put her arms out. "Can Mummy give me a hug?"

Ning Shu backed up fast. "Don't come near me!"

She might look like a sweet little girl, but she was a ghost.

"I'm not your mother." Ning Shu got her throat to work. "You've got the wrong person."

"No. I haven't got it wrong. Ningning is my mummy."

Ning Shu looked down at her own body, which had not begun to grow yet. "I'm twelve."

"Ah, that's because Mummy died, so my brother and I died in Mummy's tummy. But then somehow we came here, and we saw Mummy when she was little."

Ning Shu's whole body jolted at it. It was a long, long time before she could think again.

She had been carrying a child when she died.

Lu Zheng's child.