“Why are you angry?” Pushing back his hat, I searched his face. It was a mistake, for faced with his unnerving good looks, I could only drop my eyes.
“You might have broken your neck. Why can’t you leave these things to the proper authorities?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.” Incredibly, we were arguing again. “And where were you all this time? You could have sent me a message!”
“How was I supposed to do that when you never left the house alone?”
“But you could have come at any time. I was waiting for you!”
Er Lang was incensed. “Is this the thanks I get?”
If I had thought it through, I would never have done it. But I grasped the collar of his robe and pulled his face to mine. “Thank you,” I said, and kissed him.
I meant to break away at once, but he caught me, his hand behind my head.
“Are you going to complain about this?” he demanded.
Wordlessly, I shook my head. My face reddened, remembering my awkward remarks about tongues last time. He must have recalled them as well, for he gave me an inscrutable look.
“Open your mouth, then.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to put my tongue in.”
That he could joke at a time like this was really unbelievable. Despite my outrage, however, I flung myself into his arms. Half laughing, half furious, I pressed my mouth fiercely against his. He pinned me against the well shaft. The stone chilled my back through my wet clothes, but my skin burned where he held my wrists. Gasping, I could feel the heat of him as his tongue slipped inside. My pulse raced; my body trembled uncontrollably. There was only the hard pressure of his mouth, the slick thrust of his tongue. I wanted to cry, but no tears came. A river was melting in me, my core dissolving like wax in his arms. My ears hummed, I could only hear the rasping of our breaths, the hammering of my heart. A stifled moan escaped my lips. He gave a long sigh and broke away.
“Aren’t you getting married next month?”
My face was red, my hands shaking. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Congratulations, then. You must be very happy.”
I scarcely knew where to turn in that confined space. Er Lang wouldn’t look at me either. Instead, he glanced up at the narrow slice of sky, heavy with rain clouds.
“We should get out of here.” His tone was sober. I had no words left.
With little effort, he slung me over his shoulder and began to climb. I didn’t know how he found foot- and handholds in the slippery shaft, but he ascended with ease. His body was light and strong, far stronger than any normal man, as I had long suspected. Dizzy, I clung to him, feeling like a sack of rice. If I opened my eyes, there was only the darkness below. The pulse in my neck was throbbing. With each movement, I could feel the muscles of his back contracting and relaxing beneath my fingers. When we reached the top, he set me down. I cradled my cut hands, exhausted. I was terrified that he would leave me again.
“What happened to Lim Tian Ching and Master Awyoung?” I asked, after a strained silence.
“Well,” he said, “thanks in part to your evidence, a number of arrests were made, including your erstwhile suitor. They’ve been sent on to the courts for judgment.”
“What about Fan? An ox-headed demon said it was taking her to the Lim mansion.”
“She never arrived. I’m afraid there’s no trace of her.”
I was silent, digesting this. It was a terrible end for Fan. Er Lang made no comment, but he studied me intently.
“I’ve done you a disservice,” he said at last. “It’s only fair to let you know, but you won’t have a normal life span.”
I bit my lip. “Have you come to take my soul, then?”
“I told you that’s not my jurisdiction. But you’re not going to die soon. In fact, you won’t die for a long time, far longer than I initially thought, I’m afraid. Nor will you age normally.”
“Because I took your qi?”
He inclined his head. “I should have stopped you sooner.”
I thought of the empty years that stretched ahead of me, years of solitude long after everyone I loved had died. Though I might have children or grandchildren. But perhaps they might comment on my strange youthfulness and shun me as unnatural. Whisper of sorcery, like those Javanese women who inserted gold needles in their faces and ate children. In the Chinese tradition, nothing was better than dying old and full of years, a treasure in the bosom of one’s family. To outlive descendants and endure a long span of widowhood could hardly be construed as lucky. Tears filled my eyes, and for some reason this seemed to agitate Er Lang, for he turned away. In profile, he was even more handsome, if that was possible, though I was quite sure he was aware of it.
“It isn’t necessarily a good thing, but you’ll see all of the next century, and I think it will be an interesting one.”
“That’s what Tian Bai said,” I said bitterly. “How long will I outlive him?”
“Long enough,” he said. Then more gently, “You may have a happy marriage, though.”
“I wasn’t thinking about him,” I said. “I was thinking about my mother. By the time I die, she’ll have long since gone on to the courts for reincarnation. I shall never see her again.” I burst into sobs, realizing how much I’d clung to that hope, despite the fact that it might be better for my mother to leave the Plains of the Dead. But then we would never meet in this lifetime. Her memories would be erased and her spirit lost to me in this form.
“Don’t cry.” I felt his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. The rain began to fall again, so dense it was like a curtain around us. Yet I did not get wet.
“Listen,” he said. “When everyone around you has died and it becomes too hard to go on pretending, I shall come for you.”
“Do you mean that?” A strange happiness was beginning to grow, twining and tightening around my heart.
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“Can’t I go with you now?”
He shook his head. “Aren’t you getting married? Besides, I’ve always preferred older women. In about fifty years’ time, you should be just right.”
I glared at him. “What if I’d rather not wait?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you mean that you don’t want to marry Tian Bai?”
I dropped my gaze.
“If you go with me, it won’t be easy for you,” he said warningly. “It will bring you closer to the spirit world and you won’t be able to lead a normal life. My work is incognito, so I can’t keep you in style. It will be a little house in some strange town. I shan’t be available most of the time, and you’d have to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
I listened with increasing bewilderment. “Are you asking me to be your mistress or an indentured servant?”
His mouth twitched. “I don’t keep mistresses; it’s far too much trouble. I’m offering to marry you, although I might regret it. And if you think the Lim family disapproved of your marriage, wait until you meet mine.”
I tightened my arms around him.
“Speechless at last,” Er Lang said. “Think about your options. Frankly, if I were a woman, I’d take the first one. I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of family.”
“But what would you do for fifty years?”
He was about to speak when I heard a faint call, and through the heavy downpour, saw Yan Hong’s blurred figure em
erge between the trees, Tian Bai running beside her. “Give me your answer in a fortnight,” said Er Lang. Then he was gone.
Chapter 39
Tian Bai took me home in a rickshaw that day. He was pale and didn’t speak much, other than to ask if I was all right. I had shivered in my wet clothes, having refused all offers of entering the house to change. My heart was too full, my thoughts a storm of paper fragments. The Lim mansion seemed to frown on me even more than usual that day, the eaves weeping as the rain ran ceaselessly off its roof. The whole household was in an uproar. No one inquired too deeply as to how I had got out of the well. I supposed my scratched arms and cut hands led them to presume I had crawled out by myself. There was no one to insist that I change my clothes, or berate me for catching a chill as Amah surely would have. It was only Tian Bai who, in the midst of it all, quietly slipped his cotton jacket around my shoulders. Later I found out that Madam Lim had attacked him when he had returned home, though I only learned the full story when Old Wong came home that evening.
“She was waiting for him with a kitchen knife,” he told us later. “I don’t know how she got hold of it, but she tried to stab him.”
Fortunately, her frailness betrayed her and Tian Bai had escaped with no more than an ugly cut on the arm. It was this that I saw, bandaged loosely with gauze, when he took me home that day. Alarmed, I had protested he need not accompany me, but Tian Bai merely shook his head. He looked drained, utterly weary, and I wondered whether sending me home was an excuse to escape the hysteria in that house. During our brief ride home, I stole occasional glances at him. The sinister inflections I had previously ascribed to him seemed to have evaporated with my suspicions of murder. There were lines under his eyes, and a smudge of ink on the cuff of his left sleeve. He was just a man whose family was falling apart. A good man, if Yan Hong could be believed. An unexpected tenderness filled me, even as my swollen mouth recalled me to another.
The last subject Tian Bai broached as he handed me out of the rickshaw was a request to keep things quiet about the situation with Madam Lim. I nodded, knowing that duty called and no breath of scandal must touch the Lim family. They were contemplating sending her to a madhouse, although the shame of it would reflect badly on them.
“It would be better to keep her at home, but she needs constant supervision.” Tian Bai glanced guiltily at me. “Would you mind if we postpone the wedding?”
I didn’t mind at all, though I could hardly express it to him. He held my hand.
“Li Lan, I’m glad you’re here.”
Afraid that he might kiss me, I half turned my face away. As soon as I had done so, I was filled with guilt, but he merely tightened his grip.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hardly knowing what I was apologizing for.
“What for?” he said. “Yan Hong told me that you saved her.”
Tian Bai touched my hair briefly. His calm demeanor, his ability to handle difficult situations; these were all qualities that I admired. He would be a good husband, levelheaded and dependable. Amid the frenzy, he had still thought to cover my wet shoulders with his jacket. Remembering this small kindness, I could not help but place my other hand on his face. If I belonged to him, my family and I would surely have a good life.
To my surprise, we received a constant stream of visitors and gifts from the Lim family over the next few days. I would have thought that I was the last person they wanted to see, since I was privy to how Madam Lim had tried to kill first Yan Hong and me, and then Tian Bai. On the third day, Tian Bai’s uncle, Lim Teck Kiong himself, came expressly to see me. Amah rushed to tell me of his arrival, seizing me by the arm and hastily fastening up my hair.
“Your clothes!” she hissed. “You can’t receive him like that.”
She frowned at my plain baju panjang, but it was too late for such niceties. Besides, I had the suspicion that he had other things in mind than his future niece-in-law’s dress. When I entered the front parlor, he was sitting down with my father as though their friendship had never suffered a rupture. I studied him with new eyes, thinking of the Third Concubine in the Plains of the Dead and wondering how he could have been the lover who had driven her to so much bitterness and damage. But he was still the same, portly and complacent, the image of a wealthy businessman.
His small glittering eyes, so like Lim Tian Ching’s, rested on me, and after inquiring in a roundabout manner after my health, he began to talk of my father’s debts. These, as I knew from Yan Hong, had already been settled by Tian Bai, but now his uncle put a fresh gloss on them, saying that as we were to be relatives soon, he had reinvested the remainder of my father’s capital to secure a modest but stable income for him. He then went on to say that he admired me immensely and had heard a great deal about my scholarship. At this, my father was flattered enough, despite my protests, to retrieve a sample of my calligraphy from his study to show him. While he was gone, Lim Teck Kiong asked me whether I had ever thought to study abroad.
“A girl like you would benefit from a formal education,” he said. “Especially in England, where they have colleges for young ladies. What do you think?”
In another time and place, I would have leaped at this suggestion, but now my stomach clenched. “What about the marriage?” I asked.
“Tian Bai would wait until you came back. There’s no hurry, you’re both young.”
I heard a faint snort from Amah, who had hidden behind the door. Young, indeed! In her mind I should long have been married off, but I could not afford to offend this man. “Uncle, England seems very far and I think I would miss my family and Tian Bai.”
“To be sure! Well, if that is the way you feel, then perhaps we had better have the wedding sooner, then. But remember, if you ever wish to study or travel, you need not worry about the well-being of your family. I would be happy to sponsor you.”
I looked at him, thinking of Yan Hong’s tale of how this man had once beaten Tian Bai until he could not sit down for two days. Yet in the end, Tian Bai had turned out far better than his own spoiled son. But I understood him very well. He would prefer not to have me marry into his family, knowing all the sordid details as I did. If the British authorities should find out about the attempted murders, they might well use them as an excuse to make an example of his household. At the very least, there would be scandal to be explained away. If he could not get rid of me, however, the next best thing would be to have me under his continual scrutiny. But two could play at that game, I thought, completely forgetting my own hesitation about marrying Tian Bai. I leaned forward and gave him an enchanting smile, one that I had learned from observing Fan.
“You are very kind to me, Uncle. And to my father. I’m so grateful to you.”
Although he continued to study me, I noticed a subtle change. His eyes widened and a bemused smile flickered across his face. Fan had once said I did not know how to use my face and body, that they were wasted on me, and now I realized she had been right. It was strange to think that power in this world belonged to old men and young women. Still, I had mixed emotions of shame and triumph after he left. It would be a difficult road, but I thought I could manage marrying into the Lim family.
It was hard to believe that I had gone from having no marriage prospects to two, although you could hardly call either of them ideal. I was happy—that is, I felt that objectively I ought to be happy—but in truth I was quite miserable. Amah had drilled me well. In our community of Straits-born Chinese, m
arriage was a weighty proposition, a transaction that sought to balance filial duty and economic worth. In that sense, Er Lang’s proposal was quite out of the question. In fact, I was still in shock over it.
I knew very little about him. Far less than the Lim family, with all its intrigue, though Er Lang had warned me that his family would be worse. How much worse, I could not imagine. But he had never lied to me. That was certainly one of his inhuman qualities. To follow Er Lang would be a leap into the unknown, the culmination of all my desires and terrors. I wasn’t sure that I was brave enough to act with the same impulsive certainty that he had when he had risked his life for me on the Plains of the Dead. We were too different; it was impossible.
My mind wandered off in tangents, I could barely sew a seam straight. I wished I could speak to my mother again. Of all people, I missed her counsel, experienced as she was with the ways of the living and the dead. I was on my own, however, with no one to confide in. Whatever I chose, there was a heavy price to pay. If I went with Er Lang, I would lead a curious half-life, wandering the fringes of a hinterland peopled with ghosts and spirits, though I clung to the hope that I might meet my mother again. But it wasn’t even clear whether I would have children myself, though I remembered how the Chinese emperors had claimed descent from dragons and wondered if I might bear such an honor, or give birth to a monstrosity.
If I stayed with Tian Bai, I would gain the security of a good marriage and the familiar comfort of my family. It also, however, meant living with the Lim legacy of madness and murder. Besides Tian Bai’s uncle, there were the other wives and concubines to contend with. I must steel myself, learn to manage them the way that Madam Lim, or even Yan Hong, had. In some ways, I was surprised that Yan Hong had even returned for me. It would have been far more convenient for her if I had perished in that well. But she called on me a few days after Lim Teck Kiong’s visit.