Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Perhaps Grandpa Yama saw how horribly I had died and how deep my grievance ran, because even a year after my death, no one from the underworld had come to collect me.
That year, Father divorced Mother under the Seven Grounds for Divorce, claiming that she had failed to bear him a son.
Not long afterward, he took a new wife—the deputy magistrate’s daughter by a concubine.
The deputy magistrate was a learned man. He could not abide having a shabby, penniless scholar for a son-in-law, so he ordered Father to pursue an official career.
Good heavens. Father was already getting on in years. The work left him looking like the old yellow dog that used to lie beneath the willow tree.
Whenever I saw him studying so desperately that he practically had to tie his hair to the rafters and stab his thigh to stay awake, I clapped my hands in delight.
Served him right!
After Father cast her out, Mother returned to her family, only to endure endless sneers from her brothers’ wives.
Unable to remain there, she humbled herself and became Physician Li’s concubine.
Physician Li was fifty. He was old enough to be my grandfather.
When he put his arms around Mother, the medicinal smell clinging to him was so strong that even I, a little ghost, wanted to hold my nose.
Yet Mother could call him “husband” without so much as a change of expression.
The storybooks all said a concubine’s life was never easy.
Father and Mother were both miserable, but they had forgotten me and begun new lives.
I could not accept it.
I would not.
The Crown Prince had galloped his horse through a crowded street. Eight-year-old me had been eating peach crisps Mother had baked.
His pounding hooves crushed my scrawny little body, drowning out my shrieks. The peach crisps were ground to crumbs beneath them.
I had died so horribly, yet Father and Mother had forgotten me.
I drifted through the mortal world like a lost, homeless spirit. My only obsession was revenge—against Mother, against Father, and against the Crown Prince.
I had only been eight. Children could want revenge too.
I wanted the Crown Prince dead.
I wanted Father and Mother to come down here and keep me company.
Grandpa Yama was so kind to me that, even in the second year after my death, I was still here.
Mother was drying herbs in the courtyard. I deliberately tried to frighten her, gathering my feeble spiritual strength and tipping over the basket in her arms.
Herbs scattered across the ground.
Mother frowned up at the sky, rubbed her arm, and murmured, “Is it going to rain?”
Once I had finished tormenting her, I went to find Father.
He was still reciting his books.
“Only after the family is ordered can the state be governed. The state governed, the state governed…”
Only after the state is governed can there be peace under heaven.
I supplied the next line without thinking.
His memory had grown dreadful with age. He repeated the same sentence over and over.
Even I knew it by heart!
The night was deep and heavy with dew. Candlelight danced as I deliberately blew out the candle in Father’s room.
The lantern beneath the eaves swayed. Shadows of wind swept across the walls, as though some unclean thing lurked nearby.
Father was frightened exactly as I had hoped. He put down his book, rubbed the gooseflesh on his chilled arm, and stared blankly through the window behind me.
What fun.
I giggled and giggled.
Then, somewhere in the middle of laughing, I began to cry.
Ghosts had no tears.
All I could do was pout and think bitterly, I would have turned ten this year.
Among ordinary families, a child’s tenth birthday was marked by a little coming-of-age ceremony, known more simply as “growing a tail.”
The child’s maternal grandparents, or an aunt and uncle on the mother’s side, would bring rice, clothing, shoes, and hats to celebrate.
Father. Mother.
Do you still remember that today is Rujun’s birthday?
Of course you do not.
In the third year, Father, Mother, and the Crown Prince were all still perfectly alive.
Physician Li died, and Mother took over his clinic.
She could not diagnose ordinary illnesses, but she was a skilled midwife and possessed an ancestral prescription for restoring a woman’s health.
In time, she became famous throughout the region as the Lady of Fertility. Even noble households invited her in with the utmost respect.
Every day, I floated to the Temple of the City God and knelt outside, because Grandpa Yama was utterly useless.
“Grandpa Zhong Kui, you punish evil and defend the good. Please take pity on this little ghost and grant me power.
“I am too weak to take revenge.
“Grandpa Zhong Kui…”
I did not know whether Grandpa Zhong Kui heard my prayers, but Mother truly did meet with trouble.
On a quiet night, while Mother slept in the back room, someone pounded on the clinic door.
“What is it, officers?”
Without explanation, they seized her and dragged her straight to the brightly lit Crown Prince’s residence.
The Crown Princess was in obstructed labor.
Let my enemy’s wife and child suffer. What did it have to do with us?
Furious, I floated into the doorway and tried to block Mother’s path.
“Don’t go!”
“You can’t go!”
“Mother! They are your daughter’s enemies. Please don’t go…”
Mother lifted her skirts and walked straight through me.
My soul scattered like smoke in the wind, then slowly gathered itself again.
Usually I loved this little game. I would pass through Father or Mother on purpose, leaving an icy gust behind me.
It made me feel as though I were still there.
But now I could only turn and stare as Mother entered the Crown Prince’s residence without looking back.
The residence was enormous, nothing like our poor and shabby home.
Servants hurried past with hot water, ginseng, and glossy ganoderma.
The Crown Princess was surrounded by imperial physicians, midwives, and renowned folk healers. None of them knew what to do.
She was drenched in sweat, her strength fading as she screamed, “Ah… it hurts!”
They said Mother had hemorrhaged while giving birth to me. She had suffered just as badly and cried out through an entire night.
The midwife had said, “A difficult birth means a boy. Madam is surely carrying a son.”
But after Mother suffered all night, the child she delivered was a girl.
Was that why they had never loved me?