Chapter 47

Liu Zhiyi saw a little boy get squeezed out of the cluster of children.

He circled the crowd once, and once he was sure he couldn't push his way in, walked over to the tree by the pond.

The tree grew crooked, its roots planted in the mud at the pond's edge, its trunk leaning out over the water.

The little boy climbed up, reached out, and hooked his net down toward the water.

His body was almost entirely suspended over the water.

Liu Zhiyi watched with her heart in her throat; she wanted to call out and stop him, but was afraid a shout would startle him into letting go and falling.

While she was still thinking how to handle it, there came a crack — the branch split.

The little boy dropped straight down.

Liu Zhiyi ran out without a thought.

"That Liu Yang boy, so pitiful."

She heard Yindi's voice, chatting with someone, come from behind her.

Yindi: "Should we just cut down the tree by the pond?"

The pond wasn't far; a few steps and she'd be there.

The children at the pond's edge had run off somewhere — a moment ago they'd been right there, and now there wasn't a soul at the water.

Yindi: "Only I'm afraid cutting it would be no use — without a substitute, he can't be reborn…"

Liu Zhiyi stood at the pond's edge.

She saw a child floating in the water.

Upper half floating on the surface, legs sunk below.

His hand reached out, just as it had scooping fish before, and caught her foot.

—Splash.

Liu Zhiyi fell into the water.

The water rose over her.

The cold water covered her face.

Was the water at the pond's edge really this deep?

Liu Zhiyi struggled, slapping at the surface, but her two legs kept sinking, as if something had hold of them.

She kicked hard and stretched a hand up to hook the branch hanging over the water.

The dragging force at her feet suddenly eased; her body shot up, and she caught the branch.

"Those who drown are pitiful and hateful both."

Liu Zhiyi heard Yindi's voice again.

Yindi: "When they hauled Liu Yang out of the water, his whole body was black and blue."

—Crack.

The branch in Liu Zhiyi's hand split.

Yindi: "Even finding a substitute, they won't let a person die easy — they've got to make the living taste the pain they felt before they died."

Liu Zhiyi dropped and sank toward the bottom.

Under the water it was pitch black; the pond bank had vanished, and the little fish swimming about were gone too.

As if she'd sunk into a black swamp.

Her lungs burned; maybe she'd swallowed too much water — she'd lost the sense of suffocating.

Bubbles rose from beneath her.

She felt a current move past her side, and a black shape floated up from below.

It was the little boy, Liu Yang.

He swung his arms, swimming up, while she sank down.

Liu Zhiyi moved her arms and legs, wanting to swim up too, but the instant she raised them they were dragged back down.

No… he mustn't go up…

Liu Zhiyi remembered her grandmother saying to call a grown-up, and opened her mouth.

"Gran…"

No sound would come out underwater; bubbles kept streaming from her mouth.

"Gran… Grandma…"

—Splash.

Someone jumped in.

Liu Zhiyi saw loosened braids, and a pot with a hole in it…

…a pot?

How could there be a pot in the water?

The broken pot swept through the water and struck the little boy, near the surface now, straight back down.

Yindi: "Liu Yang — damn your ancestors!"

When she was lifted out of the water, Liu Zhiyi was still dazed.

Yindi wrapped her in a quilt.

Yindi was soaked too, both braids come undone and plastered to her head, looking quite a sight.

Even so, one hand on her hip, she stood at the pond's edge cursing at the break in the water, and beat the surface with the pot as she cursed.

Liu Zhiyi was still muddled, but a blessing in disguise — she looked at her watch.

Another task complete.

[Water Ghost Takes a Substitute: children must take care playing near water, or a water ghost may snatch you away.]

Careless, Liu Zhiyi thought, and sneezed.

Because this dungeon's air was peaceful most of the time, her guard had dropped a good deal, and for a moment she hadn't told the person from the water ghost.

Yindi cursed for a solid ten minutes and more before she carried the pot back and handed it again to the woman mending it.

"Go change your clothes." Yindi's voice was hoarse — she must have cursed too hard.

Liu Zhiyi: "Why did you curse at it…"

Yindi lifted her up off the ground.

"If you don't curse it, it might keep following you."

What custom was this?

Liu Zhiyi: "Cursing drives it off? Then if I curse when I fall in the water, does that work too?"

Yindi laughed. "Even ghosts fear a fierce one. How old are you — how fierce could you get?"

Liu Zhiyi pressed her face to Yindi's chin; the water below had been so cold that even wrapped in a quilt on land, the chill lingered inside her, setting her shivering without meaning to.

Yindi: "Scared?"

Two dungeons in, Liu Zhiyi's tolerance for fear had risen a good deal.

She shook her head.

But the gesture seemed to give Yindi the wrong idea.

"It's not that I want to scare you with ghost stories — it's that children sometimes don't know their limits. Doing something wrong is a small thing; hurting yourself is a big one."

Words like these, her mother had said too, when she was alive — back when a small Liu Zhiyi asked her, crying, why her grandmother always loved telling ghost stories.

Her mother: "Your grandma's just stubborn-mouthed, always feeling it's shameful to say what's in her heart. I only wish she'd tell me everything she thinks."

"Telling you all this." Yindi brushed the wet strands off her face. "Do you understand?"

Liu Zhiyi hugged her neck.

"Mm."

Seeing her downcast, Yindi suddenly asked.

"There's a film tonight. Want to watch?"

Liu Zhiyi said, surprised, "There's actually a film?"

Yindi turned her head and smiled. "So surprised? Isn't it the same in the city? Out in the open, everyone sitting together watching a film."

An open-air film.

Liu Zhiyi hadn't imagined the sixties countryside would have open-air films; she'd been ill-informed.

Liu Zhiyi: "Yes, let's watch, let's watch."

She was quite interested in these black-and-white films.

For the film that night, Yindi even changed her into a new set of clothes and packed a plastic bag of puffed rice.

But her excitement hadn't lasted long before Liu Zhiyi came down with a high fever.

The fever came on fierce; she was analyzing in her head all she'd seen and heard in the dungeon when suddenly everything went black and she lost consciousness.

When her mind came back, she heard Yindi's voice again.

She must be quarreling with someone, because her tone was fierce and rose and fell sharply.

Only it was all local dialect, spoken fast, and Liu Zhiyi half-caught it, half not.

Yindi: "Your family's child is pitiful — mine isn't?"

Yindi: "Being someone's mother, someone's father — keep your own child in line, or I'll be coming after your household again."

Liu Zhiyi crawled up off the bed and walked, head swimming, toward the hall.

A fire basin was burning paper money in the hall.

The wooden front door was shut, but there was a crack down the middle.

Looking out through it, she saw a man and a woman standing before Yindi, and Yindi raising a hand to point at their noses.

"I'll say the ugly part first — if you can't keep them in line, I'll get someone to come and take a look."

Liu Zhiyi's gaze swept to a puddle of water that had appeared on the grass by the pond.

She thought for a few seconds, stood the watch face up, and opened the camera at the puddle.

A little boy dripping water appeared on the screen.

His face was ashen and a bit swollen, yet he was shrinking behind the man and woman in front, looking rather pitiful.

It wasn't quite the right way to put it.

But it really was like a scene where a family's child has been bullied, and the parents run to the other child's home to have it out.

As the one on the venting side, though, Liu Zhiyi found it very satisfying.

But joy soon turned to grief.

Yindi: "I'll say no more to you."

With that she waved a hand toward the village entrance, a smile going up on her face at once.

"Dr. Yang!"

A middle-aged woman with a medicine box on her back came walking up the stone path.

Alarm bells went off in Liu Zhiyi's head.

As a child she'd had a deep impression of this country doctor.

The thickest backside needle she'd seen in her life had been right here.

The woman doctor came in, first asked Yindi about her symptoms, and finally gave her diagnosis.

"She needs a shot in the backside."

The needle was near as thick as a knitting pin.

Liu Zhiyi even doubted whether this one shot would poke a hole clean through her backside.

Liu Zhiyi: "No, no, no…"

She'd never thought she'd live to see the day she'd be held down for a shot.

Yindi was enormously strong; one hand seized Liu Zhiyi's calf and dragged her from the head of the bed to the foot, tucked her under one arm, and yanked her trousers down.

How had she dodged the backside shot in the countryside as a child?

The thought suddenly popped into Liu Zhiyi's head.

It seemed she'd…

cried and said the needle was for cows, which set all the grown-ups laughing, and got them to change the needle.

But this time, before she could even cry out, the needle stabbed in.

Round and round it went, and in the end the backside shot of her childhood had landed on her backside after all.

At last, tears in her eyes and puffed rice in her mouth, Liu Zhiyi watched with Yindi as the doctor left.

The good news was the fever did break.

---

The film showed at night.

But the showing wasn't in Yindi's own village.

Yindi: "Our village is small — we've got to go to the next one over."

Liu Zhiyi was still a little afraid of walking at night; the bamboo grove ghosts had left a deep impression.

But when she followed Yindi to the village entrance that night, a few people were already waiting there.

"Quick, quick, quick, Yindi, we've only been waiting on you."

Liu Zhiyi's eye was drawn to one girl in the group.

Her back was stooped, as if she were sitting on the ground.

Only when they started walking did Liu Zhiyi realize she wasn't sitting — her legs were short, her knees bent outward.

It was rickets.

There were no lights on the road, but there were plenty of people.

Liu Zhiyi held Yindi's hand, listening to the young men and women around her chat — mostly about funny things among family and friends; at the funny parts they'd all laugh together, chattering and closing in.

A night walk like this wasn't frightening at all.

Liu Zhiyi couldn't get a word in, and tipped her head up.

The night sky was like someone had scattered a handful of rice — a black ground all over with flickering white points.

Liu Zhiyi was caught by one glance of it.

In the city she could see the moon at most, and hardly a few stars.

But now, one look up, and it was all stars.

The young people's talk had no head or tail, jumping to whatever came to mind.

"Yindi, we're at the Zhuan Temple — shall we pay our respects?"

Liu Zhiyi lowered her head and felt someone rub the top of it.

Yindi: "Want to pay respects?"

"Yes!" Liu Zhiyi remembered the real-world Zhuan Temple held a two-faced Buddha; this dungeon's safe point was probably this place, and she wanted to go look.

So the group jostled and joked their way off to one side.

She really didn't know how they told directions in the dark.

Liu Zhiyi couldn't see a thing, and walked holding Yindi's hand.

Only after they'd gone down a slope did she see a few points of fire — lit candles.

It was the safe room, but not activated.

Liu Zhiyi glanced at the empty censer.

The candlelight was a bit dim, lighting only a small patch around it.