“Liu Chunhua,” I said quietly. “Please, I know you can hear me. I don’t want to fight you.”
I jolted as a breeze whisked past my ear, carrying with it a voice stained with disdain.Then why are you here?
“I’m here to untether you from this world, so you can go on to the next. I’m a priestess. I can help you find peace.”
Another sharp wind.I don’t want it.
“But your parents do. Your mother, your father—”
Chunhua didn’t seem to care. Her wail ricocheted through the trees.They wronged me, wronged me, wronged me. I won’t leave until I’ve seen them suffer as I have.
I pressed my lips together, knowing who Chunhua meant. I’d heard the story and lived through her memories. Her hatred toward her husband’s family was not unjustified.
But I couldn’t touch the living. I was neither king nor officer nor judge, and I couldn’t guarantee punishment for those who’d driven Chunhua to her death. No matter how unfair that seemed. Because the unalterable truth was that Liu Chunhua was already dead, whereas Ren and my father were not.
“Listen to me,” I said, facing the oak. Since our last encounter, I’d suspected Chunhua’s spirit was bound to the tree from which she’d died. I echoed Mistress Liu’s words to her husbandas I continued, “Vengeance belongs to the heavens, Liu Chunhua. You must trust that the gods will carry out due punishment on your husband and his kin.”
No, no, no. They wronged me. They made me a monster because I didn’t give them a son.
I shivered against the iciness of Chunhua’s voice. “I know. I know what they did to you.”
No, you don’t. You don’t understand. No one understands—
“So tell me,” I cut in. “Help me understand.”
My irritation vanished when she materialized in front of me, flickering madly. Her face just a breath away, she wrapped her hand around my throat, and I was dragged again into another memory—
An older woman setting a cup of tea beside me as I lay curled on my sleeping mat. Her unusually gentle voice saying,Here, Chunhua. You must recover your strength.
The cup empty in my pale hands, the earthy taste of leaves on my lips.
The room blurring around me, then turning to black.
A cool breeze rippling the fabric of my ruqun as something rough and unrelenting tightened around my neck. The last gasp of air sucked in before the ground dropped away from my body, my cries choked by the cord braiding my throat.
I didn’t kill myself.
My eyes flew open, and I stared into the fractured face of Chunhua’s ghost.
“You didn’t kill yourself,” I whispered.
Her in-laws had taken advantage of her loss to rid their family of her. They’d spread the lie that Chunhua had hanged herself when it’d been them all along. That servant who’d disappeared—she was probably well paid for her loose lips.
Chunhua’s form scattered into the breeze.Now you know why I must stay.
“I— No.” I shook my head. “No, Chunhua. You must let justice do its own work. If you continue down this path, you’ll never obtain peace.”
I don’t care.
Well, I care!I wanted to yell. Ren lay helpless and broken nearby. My father was far away in Baimu, growing weaker by the day. Chunhua’s own parents mourned at home for their daughter’s trapped spirit. If I didn’t purify her now, I’d never be able to help anyone.
What could possibly matter to Chunhua more than revenge, more than peace—
And then it struck me, the memory of the warm babe in my arms. The desperation burning my mind as I dug in the garden, searching.
“Chunhua, what was your daughter like?” I asked, changing tactics.
The wind didn’t come immediately, as if startled by the question. After a moment, a current cut past my neck.She was beautiful, so good and quiet in my arms. But she wasn’t enough, like me.
