The Terracotta Bride (5 page)

"But some people take up religion, you know, when they
get old. When Ling'en scolded me about Yonghua, I thought:
Maybe soon she
will give up and turn herself in, let them process her into the next life.
I was right about that. But I was not so clever as I thought. I did not predict
that she would take Yonghua with her."

"How do you know where she has gone?" said Siew
Tsin. "Was there a message?" Wouldn't Yonghua have left her a
message?

But that distant absorbed ecstasy in Yonghua's
eyes—no. She would not have been thinking about anyone else.

Oh, love was so cruel.

"Where else would she go?" said Junsheng.
"She knows she could not evade me if she stayed here, and she would hardly
have escaped to any of the other courts of hell. No. She has gone down the
bridge."

Of course Ling'en had thought of it before Siew Tsin did.
Ling'en had done everything first—married Junsheng, kissed Yonghua, run
away with her to find the next life.

"And she just had to take Yonghua with her," said
Junsheng. He shook his head. "Ling'en was not spiteful in the old days. I
remember her when she was young. You are a nice enough girl, and Yonghua was a
work of art, but Ling'en was a real woman. I died before she did, you know, and
in the five years after I died our family's wealth tripled under her
management. I never met anyone like her. And now we have come to this."

"What will happen to them?" said Siew Tsin.

"Ling'en will die," said Junsheng. "Yonghua will
probably get smashed to pieces once the authorities realise what she is. May
Ling'en be reborn as a cockroach for this turn. What is it?"

A paper servant put his head in at the door. He was
fluttering as he came forward, his face pale.

"Master, we interviewed Lady Meng, as you ordered, and
it appears—it appears—"

"Ling'en drank the tea?" said Junsheng.

"Both Mistress Ling'en and Mistress Yonghua did,"
said the servant.

Junsheng frowned. "That would have had no effect on
Yonghua. She cannot be reborn. She is not real."

"Lao Ding told Lady Meng this," said the servant.
"Lady Meng replied, 'Then this will make her real.'"

"That is impossible," scoffed Junsheng.

"Master, there is more," said the servant.
"At Lady Meng's pavilion, it seems they purchased this."

He opened his hand. In his palm lay a twist of red thread.

Junsheng could not have looked more shocked if the servant
had slapped him in the face. He reached out and picked up the string.

When a spirit is ready to go on to the next life, there is
one way for it to cling to the things its old self valued. Only one thing may
be chosen—the most precious thing. The one person amongst all people in
the cosmos, living and dead, it wishes to hang on to, when it becomes necessary
to let everything else go.

The spirit and its chosen one bind their ankles together
with red thread. They may take each other's hands and smile at each other. When
they walk down the bridge into the world of the living, they know it won't be
the last time they see one another. The red thread is better than a
promise—it's a guarantee. It means they'll meet again in the next life.
It means they'll love each other there, too.

Siew Tsin would not have thought of that. She didn't know
women were allowed to bind themselves to each other. She would have sacrificed
herself and Yonghua on the mere hope that the next life would be better.

There were so many ways in which she was a fool.

"I don't understand," said Junsheng. Siew Tsin
recognised the tremor in his voice. That was how she had felt when she'd seen
Ling'en and Yonghua in the music room. But they would each have to suffer their
betrayals alone.

She got up from the table and walked out of the room.

She kept walking: out of the house, down the slope, into
the streets of the tenth court of hell. In her cotton samfu she drifted through
the crowd, jabbed by the elbows of busy spirits. Blue-faced demons threw
suspicious glances at her. She almost got mowed down by a sedan chair. She kept
walking.

Lady Meng's pavilion was on the other side of the
settlement. The farther she walked, the emptier the streets became. The
buildings thinned out, until the signs of commerce and habitation had dropped
away. The road opened out. She saw the end of the line.

It snaked down to Lady Meng's pavilion, perched on the edge
of a cliff. Past the pavilion was the bridge, gleaming faintly in the shadows.
Siew Tsin's ears filled with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks
below.

The spirits in the queue ... Siew Tsin averted her eyes,
then remembered her purpose and forced herself to look. There were spirits who
had been dragged from their comfortable homes in the tenth court when they fell
out of favour with the hell officials. They hit out wildly and wept, promising
gold, their houses, their women, anything if only they were granted a reprieve.

This was humiliating enough, but worse were the spirits who
had come up from the other levels of hell. The inventive tortures inflicted
there had left them looking scarcely human. Siew Tsin passed a skinless person
who flinched from the touch of the air; a groaning woman whose tongue rolled
out of her mouth onto the ground, an unnatural red length; a man whose body had
been so distorted by cruelty that he lay on the ground, curled up on himself
like a caterpillar, and had to be pushed along by demons.

But there was something odd about these spirits. They were
not weeping like the spirits of tenth court, made craven by prosperity. There
was peace in their eyes, a serene understanding of unhappiness. They had come a
long way. They knew themselves better than any living human was allowed to.

Suffering purifies the soul. That was what the nuns had
taught her.

But the nuns had been wrong. She put her hand on her chest,
as if she could press out the pain in her heart.

The hell officials dourly standing guard along the line did
not even look up as she passed. Now that Yonghua had left her, Siew Tsin had
become invisible again. Her breath did not stir the air. Her feet left no marks
on the ground.

Where was Yonghua? Had Ling'en and Siew Tsin figured out
the truth, or was Junsheng right when he said Yonghua could not be reborn? If
she was still here, the attempt failed, she must not be smashed to pieces or
torn apart by spirits wanting her immortality. Siew Tsin must save her.

If the plan had worked and they had both got away, Siew
Tsin would never see Yonghua again. If the pact had failed and left Yonghua
alone, she would be in danger, and she would need Siew Tsin.

That was a horrible thought, a horrible thing to desire. It
had all gone wrong, and Siew Tsin had gone wrong with it.

A hand touched her elbow. A little old lady smiled up at
Siew Tsin.

"You are one of the willing," she said.

"I don't know," said Siew Tsin. But when the old
lady said,

"Do you want to see the sea?"

Siew Tsin said, "Yes, Auntie Meng."

They walked arm-in-arm towards the sound of the waves. Siew
Tsin found herself telling Lady Meng everything, from the beginning—when
she had died, no more than a girl. She felt very old now. If she were still
alive she would be 19 years old.

"Did it work?" she said. "Did Yonghua
escape? Junsheng said she has no soul."

Lady Meng said:

"
This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my
soul.
What passes to the next life is the inexorable force of kamma.
Someone like you has no more soul than the terracotta woman did."

"Ling'en and I thought she could be reborn," said
Siew Tsin, mostly to herself. "So we were right."

Lady Meng's eyes creased in a smile.

"Insofar as there is a you," she said. "We
are at the bridge. Look."

The bridge arced out into space. At the end of it shone
light—light as she had not seen it since she had died—the warm
yellow light of the sun. Beneath the bridge lay a dark sea.

The bridge led nowhere. There was no end to it. The brave
leapt off it and dived into the unknown sea. The cowardly inched along until
the light swallowed them up. But the end was the same. It was a beginning.

It gave Siew Tsin an odd feeling, standing there with the
sea breeze in her face and her hand in the old woman's. It made her feel like a
child again.

"When I was little, I used to dream about
falling," she said. Her own voice seemed to come from far away. "I
dreamt I fell from the sky, through the clouds, and it went on for a long time
... I never hit the ground. I used to wish, when I woke up, that I could do it
for real without getting hurt."

"Yes," said Lady Meng.

"Does it hurt?" Siew Tsin whispered.

"By the time they get here, everyone has suffered as
much as they ever will," said Lady Meng.

"Don't I need to drink your tea?"

"Not if you jump," said Lady Meng. "The wind
takes your memories from you."

"Will I meet her?" said Siew Tsin. "Will I
meet Yonghua in my next life?"

"Listen," said Lady Meng. "You will be born
again. You will be a baby again. You will smile up at your parents again. You
will feel the sun on your face again. You will be young again. Everything you
know, you will learn again. You will find love again."

She helped Siew Tsin onto the ledge. She was surprisingly
strong for an old lady.

"This time, let us hope you will get to be old,"
she said. "It is a great suffering to know youth only."

"Goodbye," said Siew Tsin.

"See you next time," said Lady Meng, more
accurately.

"Will you remember me when I come again?"

"Of course," said Lady Meng. "I miss you
every time."

Siew Tsin closed her eyes and fell off the bridge
backwards. She fell forever. The light on her eyelids went from lurid red to
warm gold. The smell of sea water was taken over by rain and fresh air. The
clouds came up to meet her.

She never hit the ground.

End

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