Shapers of Worlds Volume II

Ghost and Fox

Ghost and Fox

By Marie Brennan

It was to be expected, the doctor said, after such a close call as yours. He spoke in learned terms of excesses of yin, of meridians and flows, stagnation in the blood that he had put right. The woman they said was your mother listened and nodded and paid him with taels of silver, thanking him with her forehead to the floor. She loved you, that was clear—loved you enough to spend a small fortune saving you.

Saving your life, at least. A simpleton now, the neighbours said, wagging their heads in regret. She’ll never be married. Such a shame. But some kind-hearted man might take her for his concubine.

You weren’t meant to overhear their words. And you didn’t hear what came after, because memory overwhelmed you: hands caressing your body, fever-warm against your cold skin, and heat flooding into you like the light of the sun itself.

Then it faded. You were the daughter of a wealthy family, sheltered behind high walls. No man could possibly have gotten that close to you.

You believed them when they said your near-fatal illness had made you simple. After all, you didn’t remember your mother, your father, the house you awoke in. Your own childhood nurse was a stranger. You ate what they gave you and stood like an obedient doll when they dressed you, because no one believed you could manage anything for yourself.

But your mind wasn’t weak. You carried on conversations, read books your Second Brother brought you. The past was a blank, but you remembered new things without trouble.

You lied to them all.

The past wasn’t a blank. It was a bottomless pool of strange recollections, into which you hardly dared dip more than your toes, for fear you would fall into its depths and drown. A house that was not the one you lived in. A slipper too small for your foot. Poems you had never read, songs you had never sung; you eyed your Third Sister’s zither and suspected that if you set your hand to the strings, you could play it better than she did—though everyone said you had never been musical.

The word for that wasn’t “simple.” It was “mad.”

Your family saw your distress and did what they could to set it right. The countryside, they reasoned, would be gentler for your weakened body and mind than the clamour of the city. They sent you to live in a rural house with your old nurse and your Second Brother to watch over you.

Out there, at least, you weren’t surrounded by things you were expected to remember and didn’t. Accompanied by your Second Brother and the things you shouldn’t remember but did, you went for short walks in the fields, watching birds flit from branch to branch and foxes dart into the undergrowth. It brought a kind of peace.

Until you reached the tomb by the side of the road. Then you began to scream and scream, and your Second Brother carried you home, sending your nurse to fetch a doctor to sedate you. But he was not as skilled as the one in the city, and so even when you sank down into dreams, you could not escape the truth: that the weed-haunted tomb was once your own.

There was a time when I hated you.

Such a selfish little ghost, draining the yang energy from my beloved Sang with night after night of love-making, when I had been so cautious. I wanted to stay by his side always, but the danger to him was too great; I made myself stay away, visiting only when I could bear the separation no longer. You, though—you thought only of the love and pleasure the two of you shared. And so, you fed on him, until he nearly died. I would have killed you for that, except you were already dead.

When I caught you, though . . . how could I hate one whose love mirrored my own so well? And you were willing to do anything to save him. Even if it risked your own existence.

When you disappeared, I had everything I thought I wanted: Sang all to myself, with no competition, and my own self-restraint to keep him safe. Only when you were gone did I realize you had become as dear to me as he is.

Do you think it mere chance that he has come to this house and asked for your hand in marriage? There were only two possibilities for what had become of you. One was that some Buddhist monk or Taoist priest had banished you for good, sending your restless spirit onward. The other . . .

Everyone was gossiping. The daughter of the Zhang family, making such a miraculous recovery, when even the doctor thought she would die. Some even whispered she had died, and the doctor brought her back to life. He never confirmed it, but he smiles whenever anyone asks him, because a physician who can revive the dead commands very high fees indeed.

It had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with a wandering spirit and a body freshly vacated.

You did not remember your family because they were never yours to begin with. The memories you could not explain were your own. And so was the tomb.

It took a lot of gossiping where your so-called mother would overhear before I persuaded them to send you to the country. You needed to know the truth before Sang presented himself at the Zhang family door. If you hadn’t strolled in the right direction that morning, I would have contrived to point you there eventually. And if the tomb did not spark your memories, I would have tried other tactics, until you understood.

Now the path is clear. You are a ghost no more; Sang can come to your bed without fear. Once the negotiations with your supposed father are complete, you will return to his house as his flesh-and-blood wife.

Do not embrace me yet, dear sister-in-love. I am the one who is a danger now, to you as well as him. My self-restraint is not as perfect as I might wish, and I would never forgive myself if my touch hurt either of you.

But be patient. It is not so common as ghosts restored to life, but there are tales of fox spirits reincarnating in human form. I will find a way. And when I have, I will return to you and to Sang, and the three of us will live together again—no longer ghost and fox and victim, but alive, and human, and happy for the rest of our days.