I’d need something great. The sooner I filled Ren with qi, the sooner I could be home with my family.
Eventually, my mind quieted and I sank into a dreamless sleep. At sunset, I woke to stretch my legs, surprised that Ren didn’t stir at all. I studied his breathing form, thinkinghow strange it was to travel with another living person after working alone for so long, to have to consider another’s needs and opinions.
While I waited for the streaking oranges and blues to darken into night, I nudged Ren awake and offered him a rice roll from my pack. The shadows beneath his eyes had deepened during the day, and not just from insufficient sleep. His face had taken on the same deathly pallor it’d borne in the abandoned battlefield. He moved as if his body were a heavy sigh. I didn’t need Mistress Ming to tell me what was wrong.
Ren’s qi was weakening.
I studied the Fu talisman on his forehead, pressing my lips together to hide a frown. The talisman was as powerful as ever, but even its qi couldn’t supplement Ren’s for long. Not when his spirit was hanging from the edge of death.
After he finished his rice roll, I handed him another. Food provided energy, and he’d need whatever energy he could ingest, even if it eventually seeped from his body like wine in a cracked jug.
“What’s in Fuzhou?” Ren asked when I told him of our plans for the evening.
“A haunted forest,” I said, chasing down my dinner with water from my gourd.
“Who haunts it?”
“The spirit of a woman who hanged herself.”
As we began our journey to Fuzhou, I told him what Mistress Ming had said of the woman.
A few years ago, a local girl had had the good fortune of marrying into a wealthier family in the village. After a year of trying for a son, she gave birth to a daughter—worse, a stillborn baby. Heartbroken and ashamed, the woman ran to theforest behind the family property and hanged herself from the branches of an oak tree. Her name was quickly removed from the family register and forgotten.
Two months later, a woodcutter returned from the forest, pale, shaking, and covered in cuts. He claimed that he’d heard a woman crying and followed the sound into a denser part of the woods. Suddenly, the weeping stopped, and he felt the rough bark of a tree branch wind around his throat, yanking him upward. He only managed to escape by hacking himself free with his ax.
After that, similar stories emerged from locals and travelers alike. All felt certain of one thing: The hauntings must have been done by the spirit of the wronged woman, abandoned in life and forgotten in death.
“What does the husband’s family say?” Ren asked as we passed the worn wooden sign pointing toward Fuzhou. In the distance, dots of yellow light distinguished the village from the ink-black landscape. It was a moonless night, the stars shielded by a gauzy layer of clouds. I could hardly see the outline of the mountains on our left.
“The family denied the accusations that the spirit is related to them or their former daughter-in-law,” I said. “It’s their influence that has kept the village from hiring a more skilled exorcist.”
According to Mistress Ming, some had already tried and failed.
While I sympathized with the spirit’s reasons, I didn’t agree with her methods. Anguish had rotted into evil, and now it fell to me to purify it.
I turned off the main road onto a tapered path that cut between farmland and swerved into the forest. There was noreason to visit the village, especially with Ren, who resembled a corpse even without the talisman on his head. What we needed lay waiting for us in the woods.
As the trees ushered us into a cold darkness, I lifted the lantern so I could peer at the branches, still and bent like broken bones. They had almost strangled the woodcutter, and I couldn’t fall victim to the same attack.
“The spirit will likely sense us before we see it,” I said, “so we’ll need a diversion to give me time to purify it.”
“A diversion, eh?” Ren brushed aside a stray branch just before it thwacked his face. “Sounds exciting.”
“I’m glad you think so.” I stared straight ahead. “Because I need you to act as bait.”
He made a startled sound. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” I looked at him then, brow raised. “Unless you want to purify the spirit?”
He shook his head. “No, no, I’ll be bait.”
I almost smiled. “Good. Once we’re closer to our destination, you just need to go ahead of me—provoke the spirit if you must—and when it tries to attack you, I’ll take it by surprise. Simple enough.”
“Oh,sosimple,” he said, sardonic. “And how will you purify it?”
“The same way I purified the jiangshi in the battlefield,” I said, donning a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “With a talisman.”
“A flimsy piece of paper against a dangerous spirit? That’s not very comforting.”
