Chapter 6

Ning Shu saw it perfectly clearly. There was a small child in black silk clothes clinging to Zhou Honghua's shoulders.

The child's skin was bloodless white, and its pupils were so black and so large that there was no white left in the eyes at all. It looked exactly like the child out of that Japanese film.

It sat up on Zhou Honghua's neck the way a child rides on a grown-up's shoulders.

It was ghastly. It was far more real than any horror film.

Ning Shu was frightened out of her wits and went several steps backwards, stumbling.

Zhou Honghua noticed nothing. She rolled her shoulder and snapped at Ning Shu, "Now you know to be afraid. Keep your mouth shut, then. Don't go saying things you shouldn't."

Ning Shu looked at her again. The child on her shoulders was gone. There was nothing there now but the knot of black cloud over her head.

Ning Shu rubbed her eyes hard. It really had gone.

Had she imagined it?

She could not have. She had seen it clearly, and there had absolutely been a ghost child riding on Zhou Honghua's shoulders.

Zhou Honghua had no idea why the girl was staring at her like that. She worked her aching shoulder, swore at her a few more times and started to go off with the children, and Ning Shu called her back.

"Hey. Have you got pain in your shoulder? As though you were carrying something?"

Zhou Honghua turned round, vicious. "What's that to you!"

Ning Shu was about to say that she was in serious trouble and should find a feng shui master. Then she thought of how this woman had nearly cost her her life, and decided she was not going to help her that easily.

So Ning Shu said, "That day when I walked in on you and Li Mazi. When you pushed me down the slope, did you have any regrets?"

"What did you say! Don't you go slandering me! When did I push you? You weren't watching your feet and you fell. And who's been doing anything with Li Mazi? Say that again and I'll tear your mouth open!"

Not a trace of regret, then.

Ning Shu gave a cold breath of a laugh, shook her head, turned and walked away.

Since the woman would not see it, and would not apologise, and would not even admit it, there was no call for Ning Shu to warn her. Cause and consequence. She had planted it herself, and now the consequence had come, and she could carry it herself.

For several nights running Ning Shu went out to the toilet in the middle of the night and saw nothing of Ning Yuanzi.

She rather missed the small wretch.

Ning Shu lay in bed looking at the black ceiling and could not help wondering what Lu Zheng would do if he knew he had a son and a daughter, and that both of them were ghosts.

He would be frightened to death, surely.

Mm. Probably not. A man like Lu Zheng would not change his face if a mountain came down in front of him. At twenty-six he already had the whole of Jiangcheng's property trade in his hands, and ran the Lu Group, and decided things and carried them out, and his hand covered everything.

A man that far gone would not be frightened by anything at all.

Thinking of him made her shiver.

But then it struck her. What was there to be afraid of? She was twelve. Lu Zheng was thirteen at the very outside, and a small boy. What was frightening about that?

She had been reborn. Even if they met one day they would be strangers to each other, and all she had to do was not speak to him and not go near him.

That made her feel a good deal lighter.

Over the days that followed, Ning Shu felt her senses opening up more and more. It showed most in her hearing and her sight. If she held still and held her breath she could see things a long way off and hear very small sounds.

Only now was she starting to believe that the heavenly eye really was going to open.

Then it would not matter whether the Heavenly Master took her through the gate or not. She could make her living as a yin-yang master either way. If he would not have her she could teach herself. There is more than one road, and she did not have to learn his family's art. If he would not take her, somebody else would.

With that thought Ning Shu closed her eyes and went to sleep easy.

She slept very well that night. Lu Zheng did not come out and trouble her dreams.

Early the next morning Ning Shu was woken by people making a noise outside her window.

She came out rubbing her eyes. There were several men in the yard, and the one in front was the Zhu family's man, Zhou Honghua's husband Zhu Yongrui. He looked like an honest sort too, except that he was bent over with a hunched back.

He was very anxious. He stood in the yard with his hands in his pockets, turning something over and over.

He looked as though he could not wait a moment longer.

The instant her grandmother came out he went to meet her. "Aunt Hu Ying, come and look at my wife, please. She's nearly finished!"

Her grandmother asked at once, "She was perfectly well the other day. What do you mean, finished?"

"I don't know. Yesterday her whole face swelled up like a melon. The doctor can't do anything with it either. She's had medicine and she's had injections and none of it does a thing. There's nothing else for it, so I've come to ask you to come back with me and see whether she's been got at."

Her grandmother heard that and said quickly, "Right. Let me get my things together and I'll come with you."

Ning Shu was not going to miss this. She washed and changed in a hurry and went off with her grandmother and the Zhu men towards the Zhu family compound.

The Zhus were one of the better-off households in the village. The house had two storeys and had been done up inside and out, and they had all the furniture and all the appliances, and it was all down to Zhu Yongrui's one great skill, which was wood carving. He had done well out of it over the years. Zhou Honghua was an outsider whose own family had nothing at all, but she had come out fine-looking and fresh, which made her a poor match for a hunchback like Zhu Yongrui.

The story went that when Zhou Honghua married into the Zhus, Zhu Yongrui had laid out more than two hundred thousand in bride price, and the village ate for three days, the tables running one after another, and anybody who wanted to come and eat could come.

The village all said that a short hunchbacked man like Zhu Yongrui got a fresh-faced wife like Zhou Honghua on one thing alone, which was that his family had money.

The pity of it was that Zhou Honghua would not settle, and she put a green hat on him.

Ning Shu went with her grandmother to the Zhu house, and the gateway was a grand thing. Red walls and a high door, with two stone lions standing on either side, savage enough to put a chill through anyone looking at them.

Her grandmother explained that in a great house like this, the stone lions alone are enough to stop small ghosts trying anything. Small ghosts are soft on the weak and afraid of the strong. If you meet one walking at night you can spit at it and curse it hard, and anything without real power will take fright and go.

Which meant that if something wicked had got into the Zhu house and harmed somebody, it had to be vicious.

Ning Shu had not had a chance to tell her grandmother what she had seen the other day. Her grandmother had already followed Zhu Yongrui upstairs to the room on the second floor, and Ning Shu hurried after her.

The house was big and bright and the decoration was decent, a model household of the new countryside. Ning Shu thought that when she had money she would build a big house for her grandmother and her uncle too.

In the bedroom she saw Zhou Honghua, and there was nothing left of the overbearing woman from the other day. She lay weak on the bed making small sounds of pain, and when Ning Shu came in she saw that both her cheeks had swollen up high, as though somebody had slapped her.

One of the Zhu brothers said, "What's happened here? Has Yongrui done this to her?"

Zhu Yongrui said quickly, "How could I? Whatever else I am, I'd never lift a hand to a woman."

Zhu Yongrui was the sort who goes in fear of his wife, and he would never have dared. It was always Zhou Honghua getting at him.

Her grandmother said, "A living person didn't do this. No living person could."

At that, everyone around her went cold.

Zhu Yongrui said shakily, "Aunt Hu Ying, see if there's anything that can save her."

Her grandmother did not waste time. She took the compass out of her case and walked a circuit of the room muttering, and the needle spun fast, and her face began to change.

Ten minutes later she put the compass away, took an embroidery needle and a length of white thread out of her bag and handed them to Ning Shu. "Thread this for Grandma."

Her grandmother's eyes were not good, and Ning Shu had threaded needles for her before when she was making shoe soles at home. But what was there to thread now? Ning Shu wanted to watch her grandmother catch a ghost.

Puzzled as she was, Ning Shu did as she was told and tied the white thread to the embroidery needle and handed it over.

Her grandmother took the needle to Zhou Honghua and pushed it into her left cheek, and then something very strange happened. Black blood ran down the needle and along the thread and stained the white of it black. It ran into a bowl, dark and thick and clotted, and the smell of it was foul.

Ning Shu covered her nose. She nearly brought her breakfast up.

The clotted blood was drawn out of both cheeks, and the swelling went down a good deal, and she began to look like a person again.

Zhu Yongrui let out a great breath at the sight of it and said, "Aunt Hu Ying, you're a wonder. Two needles and you've brought my wife back."

But her grandmother did not look pleased at all. She said, "Your wife has done something shameful that cost her in merit, and she is being slapped by a ghost. All I can do is save her for the moment. That thing is vicious. If it won't let her go, I doubt her life can be kept."

Zhu Yongrui begged her over and over. "Aunt Hu Ying, save my wife. Think of my two children, they're so small. They can't be without their mother. Think of something. Take the thing away. Save my wife."

But her grandmother's eyes went to Ning Shu instead, and stayed there until Ning Shu began to feel uncomfortable. What are you looking at me for, Ning Shu thought. I'm not the one who did this to her.

Her grandmother went back to the bed and stood over Zhou Honghua, and Zhou Honghua was frightened too and whimpered and begged her to help.

Her grandmother said, low, "There is a reason this thing is slapping your mouth. Whatever shameful thing you did, say it out in front of all of these people, clearly, and perhaps the vicious thing will let you off."