Chapter 8

The ghost boy turned and went, and Ning Shu went after him at once.

"Tuanzi!"

By the time she had pushed out of the crowd there was no sign of him.

Her head was in a muddle. That boy was her son, and Ning Yuanzi's brother.

The first time she had seen him he had been clinging to Zhou Honghua's shoulders, and he had looked far more frightening then, and she had not known him. Just now, catching sight of him, something in her jumped and she had thought for a moment she was looking at a small copy of Lu Zheng.

Which was how she knew. That boy was Ning Tuanzi. Her son.

He had helped her. He had made Zhou Honghua tell the truth and got her justice for her.

And it worried her, faintly.

"Ningning, what are you drifting about for?" Her grandmother came out of the Zhu compound with the case on her back and called to her from a distance. "Home."

"Oh. Coming."

Ning Shu looked round once more and went after her.

"Grandma, let me carry the case."

"With a little frame like yours." Her grandmother took Ning Shu's hand and walked her home.

"Grandma, how much did the Zhus give you?" Ning Shu asked, curious.

"Twenty thousand or so, I'd think."

"That's good. That's my cousin's lip paid for, then."

Her grandmother sighed. "By rights I shouldn't have taken it. That small ghost going for Zhou Honghua was most likely a case of seeing something it couldn't stand and settling it for you. One thing paid back with another. You've had your justice and Zhou Honghua's had what was coming to her. Taking money for it sits badly with me."

"Grandma, don't think of it like that. You did the work."

"Ah, it's my own fault for not being able enough. I can't even find the money for Gouwazi's operation."

Ning Shu knew her grandmother had never done this work for the money. It was conscience work. She admired her quietly for it, but she could not have done the same. She wanted to earn, and at the least to earn herself some ground to stand on later.

Towards evening her uncle came back from the fields, and the moment he had put his load down he said to everyone, "Have you heard? Li Mazi from the east of the village has gone off a cliff."

Her grandmother was busy in the kitchen, and came hurrying out at that with the lettuce leaves still in her hand, half washed.

"How did he come to fall?"

Her uncle said, "Drunk, by the sound of it. Wasn't watching the road and went straight over."

Her aunt gave a cold laugh. "That's his reckoning come due. That's what he gets for working with the Zhu woman to hurt our Ningning. Heaven's got its eyes open."

Her grandmother's brows drew together, and Ning Shu knew her grandmother would not be thinking the way her aunt was. Whether heaven had its eyes open or not she could not say, but Li Mazi going off a cliff was no accident.

It was Ning Tuanzi's work again, most likely.

"How is he?" her aunt asked.

"He isn't dead. They're working on him at the hospital in town. Broke a leg half through, they say. He'll be lame after this."

After dinner Ning Shu helped her grandmother clear the bowls, and her grandmother asked, "Have you been picking up anything unclean lately?"

Ning Shu's heart jumped and she shook her head fast.

Her grandmother could not work it out. Out of a clear sky, why would a small ghost go to that much trouble to get justice for her own granddaughter?

"I don't understand it either," Ning Shu said, with a guilty conscience. "But Grandma, that day, there was a small ghost on Zhou Honghua. I saw it."

She did not say she knew the ghost, only that she had seen it.

"You saw it?" Her grandmother was startled. "How did you see it?"

So Ning Shu told her grandmother everything that had happened that day, and left out only the part about Ning Tuanzi and who he was. She even told her the whole business of saving the dung beetle.

Her grandmother listened and then was quiet for a long time, and at last said, "Come with me."

Ning Shu followed her back to the Heavenly Master's shrine. It was dim as ever, with the sandalwood smoke curling up, and it settled the mind.

Her grandmother took Ning Shu by the hand and knelt with her on the mat, lit incense and prayed earnestly.

"Heavenly Master, my granddaughter Ning Shu is close to opening the heavenly eye, and she has set her heart on carrying on what Hu Ying has spent her life at. Hu Ying has the face to come before you again and beg that you take the girl as a disciple. Hu Ying will teach her properly, and in time she will put down demons and uphold the Way and set things right."

Ning Shu knelt as well and took the incense from her grandmother's hand and knelt in front of the seat and said, clear and firm, "Ning Shu truly wants to learn the yin-yang arts. I ask the Heavenly Master to take me through his gate."

The words were barely out of her when all three sticks in front of her broke clean across together.

Again.

He still would not have her.

And then a deep voice came from every direction at once.

"This girl's nature is not clean. She is sparing of feeling and thin on duty. She must not be taken through this gate. She will bring harm wherever she goes."

Her grandmother got down at once and kowtowed. "Heavenly Master, I have watched Ah-Ning grow up from a baby. She will never do wrong. And if ever that day comes, Hu Ying will be the first to deal with her."

Sparing of feeling. Thin on duty. Harm wherever she goes.

Ning Shu thought back to the last life, the bitter years of living on other people's charity, and then the entertainment industry, where she was set up and laughed at. After all of that, how was anybody supposed to stay a twelve-year-old girl, with nothing in her but a clear child's heart?

And it was for exactly that that the Heavenly Master had turned her down three times over, as though she were some great villain who could never possibly keep to a straight road.

Ning Shu got slowly to her feet, and under her grandmother's astonished eyes she raised her head and glared at the Heavenly Master's seat and said it out, word by word. "What gives you the right to say that about me? What do you know? Of course a person looks after herself first in this world. What is wrong with that? You say my nature isn't clean and I'm thin on duty. I say it's easy to talk when you've never carried any of it, and the lot of you are all high talk and false faces."

And at that moment thunder cracked outside the window.

There was no rain at all and still the thunder came, and it broke as though it had gone off next to her ear, and it was shattering.

The wind came up hard and blew the window open and knocked over the plate of fruit in front of the Heavenly Master's seat.

Ning Shu's legs went to water and she nearly dropped to her knees without meaning to.

The seat in front of her glared back at her, hideous.

Her hands were shaking and she could not stop them, and her grandmother looked terrified too and kowtowed quickly. "Heavenly Master, let your anger pass. The child is young and knows nothing, and she has offended you. I beg the Heavenly Master not to hold it against her."

The wind dropped at last, and the window swung shut, and everything was as quiet as it had been.

The thing that had been pressing down on them, that fear that got hold of the soul, finally lifted, and Ning Shu's heart came back down out of her throat.

The Heavenly Master in a temper. That power was frightening past describing. It had taken Ning Shu a great deal to work up that courage, and one roll of thunder had let most of it straight back out of her.

God, it was frightening.

Outside the shrine her grandmother comforted her. "Ah-Ning, it's all right, don't be frightened. The Heavenly Master only means to frighten you. He won't hurt you."

"Grandma, I'm not frightened."

Which was a lie. She had nearly died of it.

"Grandma, even if the Heavenly Master won't have me, I'm going to be a yin-yang master." Ning Shu was certain of that much.

"If the Heavenly Master says this trade doesn't suit you, he'll have his reasons. Grandma can't make sense of it either, but he'd never do you harm. Have you forgotten? Your life is his doing in the first place."

"But I think he's got something against me." Ning Shu muttered it. "Before, my eye hadn't opened and nobody could say whether I had anything in me. Now the eye is about to open and he still turns me down with that excuse. Thin on duty. I think he simply doesn't like me."

"Ningning, you mustn't talk like that." Her grandmother cut her off. "Still, if what you want is a little of the art to carry with you, Grandma will give you a book. You go and work at it, and how much you get out of it is your own affair."

"Oh. Thank you, Grandma!"

What her grandmother gave her was a book about feng shui and house-reading and telling fortunes. Ning Shu looked at the gaudy cover with A Complete Guide to Fortune-Telling across it, and the title page even had the publishing house and the year, 1998.

Ning Shu did not know what to say.

Her grandmother said that once she had this book down, she could read fortunes and read houses for anybody, anywhere.

What on earth was this?

Never mind. Her grandmother was her own grandmother and would hardly fob her off. One way or another she would read the thing through first, and whether the knowledge in it was any use could wait until she had.

So Ning Shu started on A Complete Guide to Fortune-Telling. Whether it was because the eye was about to open she could not say, but the heavenly stems and earthly branches and the three cycles and the nine stars gave her no trouble at all. She found she understood them easily.

After that she went out on several more jobs with her grandmother, and with the theory and the practice set against each other she had most of it.

That night Ning Shu had just put the light out and lain down when a black shape went through her mind, and the sleepiness went out of her all at once. She came awake, sat up in bed, and because something in her seemed to have caught at something, she got up and went out of the room.

There was no wind again tonight and no moon. She went to the bathroom, took a breath and turned the handle.