餓鬼 (èguǐ) - the suffering ghosts of people who were bad during their lifetimes.
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Nightfall brought a coldness with it that saw Miss Fén wrapped warmly in a wool cloak. In her long-fingered hands she carried a tray on which were set a small jar of rice wine, an incense stand, and a bowl of still warm rice with a pair of chopsticks stuck directly upright within.
She stopped once more at the edge of the water where she had played her little charade that morning to frighten away the villagers, at ease and humming as she sat and set down the tray, lit the incense, and poured the contents of a bottle in her bag into an empty bowl on the same tray. The scent of chicken blood and incense melded and drifted across the lake where the lotus blooms floated, glowing even in the scant light of the crescent moon.
Then she waited.
There was no sound. She felt it keenly, the silence of the natural world around her as if everything were holding its breath, also waiting. She emptied her flask of its contents, then dipped it into the lake to refill it. All she had been drinking was water.
And then she heard it – a faint rustle amongst the lotuses at the far end of the lake. Lazy ripples spread slowly across the previously still lake surface, creeping towards her.
Miss Fén made no indication that she had noticed.
Something was approaching.
A dark shape moved between the lotuses. From where she sat, it looked to Miss Fén like the head of someone swimming towards her. Long black hair trailed like oil through the water behind the figure.
So far, so normal. This would be a simple ghost exorcism, surely?
Miss Fén called out gently to the figure. "Are you hungry? Please come and eat. I've brought blood and rice and wine for you."
The figure paused, hair drifting around it. Miss Fén raised the tray in front of her.
The figure slowly began moving again, swimming closer and closer. When it reached shallow water, it slowly stood up, hiding its face behind the long, lank hair that now hung around it without the support of water. A pale hand pushed it upright. The standing figure was only a little taller than the height of Miss Fén's elbow.
Miss Fén's gaze focused sharply on the hand. This really wasn't right!
A tiny hand, the very bones showing through skin so thin it was almost translucent. The skin was wrinkled from soaking in water for so long. That hand was shaking, the figure's shoulder lifting and falling as they gasped for breath, as though swimming had taken a huge effort.
Ghosts don't need to breathe!
The hair was far too fine to belong to a weak little ghost trying to project a fake image of normalcy. And when the figure finally crept to the shore, white robe clinging to a terrifyingly thin body, bones jutting, shivering in the cold air, Miss Fén could clearly see a pair of little feet, bruised to blueness.
Ghosts don't have feet.
This... This is a living being!
Miss Fén showed no surprise. She put down the tray and quickly mixed the still warm chicken blood with the rice, then offered the bowl to the figure.
Hesitation, so much hesitation.
But Miss Fén held the bowl aloft without wavering, and slowly, slowly, the figure reached out to take it.
Their fingers met.
The figure's hands were freezing, and weak, and Miss Fén could tell immediately that if she handed the bowl over, it would fall almost at once. She patted the ground next to her.
"Sit and let me feed you."
The figure hesitated, as if unable to believe what it had heard. Then it nodded, and shuffled to the spot Miss Fén had indicated, crouching with excruciating slowness. Miss Fén reached out a hand to steady the figure, so light they could blow away with the slightest breeze.
She took the chopsticks and picked up some rice, and held it out patiently.
The figure paused, then gingerly swept its hair to one side to access the food.
What she saw made Miss Fén's eyes widen.
There was a little face under that long, matted mess of hair that could barely be described as human. Skin the colour of a fish's underbelly and wrinkled by years of exposure to water, even sloughing off in some places. Bloodshot eyes, crusted half shut with sand and mud. She could see the figure was missing teeth through the torn lips, and there were gashes and scratches everywhere, some weeping an ugly looking fluid.
The figure did not notice Miss Fén's look. It desperately shoved its mouth towards the food and swallowed instantly without chewing, opening that terribly damaged mouth again to demand more.
"Don't eat too fast," Miss Fén said, trying hard not to stare that the discoloured cracked tongue. "You'll throw it all up if you eat too fast."
But she fed the figure more rice and she could see that the hungry creature made an effort to chew once or twice before swallowing.
Bit by bit, the rice was consumed. At one point Miss Fén even threw her cloak around the figure's shoulders, and although shocked, the creature even leaned in closer, desperate for warmth and food. Miss Fén let it nuzzle up to her. She had seen and experienced worse.
Eventually the rice was gone, but the creature was attempting to lick the bowl clean. Miss Fén extinguished the incense, seeing it had no purpose, and with one deft movement swept the figure up into her arms. Those bloodshot eyes stared at her, stunned.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Well now that I know you're a living thing and not a ghost, you can't stay here," Miss Fén announced. "I'm taking you somewhere warm."
She began to walk back towards the village, but the creature clutched at the collar of her robe desperately.
"What is it?"
A scratchy sound escaped from the creature. It coughed and growled until eventually, a tiny voice crept from that long unused throat.
"... Can't..."
"Can you tell me why?"
The creature looked lost. Having not conversed in so many years, it seemed to have lost its abilities to communicate.
"You can't leave?" Miss Fén asked.
The creature nodded.
"Is something forcing you to stay?"
The creature nodded again. Miss Fén felt like she did when communing with ghosts via the pendulum and board. Swing left for yes and right for no...
Her grey-brown eyes swept the forest around them. Well, why would anyone want to stay rotting in a lake for one hundred years? Clearly this creature is being held here against its will. She didn't sense that anyone was watching but she asked anyway.
"Is someone watching you? Will they hurt you if you leave?"
The creature initially shook its head but then began to look a little bewildered after the second question.
"Is it a curse?"
Nod.
Right.
Still wrapped in Miss Fén's luxurious wool cloak, the creature was carefully lowered into a shallow depression at the foot of a tree.
"You'll be safe there. I've frightened the villagers enough that they shouldn't come looking, and you need medical help. I will call a friend of mine.
"Don't worry, I'll be back soon," she added, when the creature clutched anxiously at the hem of her robes. Reluctantly, it let go, but its eyes clung to her as she darted rapidly back through the forest towards the village without once touching the ground.
"Wake up," she called relentlessly outside the window of the girl who had been assisting her that day.
"Miss Fén? What is it?" The girl tumbled sleepily from her house. "Did you exorcise the ghost?"
"Almost, but I need some assistance from an expert friend of mine. I need a message delivered immediately."
"I'll get my brother," the girl replied, pulling herself into wakefulness. Within a few minutes, the young girl's brother was dressed and mounted on a horse, a piece of paper tucked into a pouch around his neck, and galloping west. Miss Fén patted the young girl on the head gratefully, and the girl in her turn happily accepted this reward. She was much in awe of the tall and slender Miss Fén, who carried herself with a grace and boldness she had not seen in anyone before.
"Miss Fén, I want to grow up to be like you."
Miss Fén broke into a good-natured laugh. "That's flattering. Do your best, little one." She shooed the girl back into the house and as soon as the door closed, she shot away back in the direction of the lake faster than the eye could see.
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"I hope you're not thinking I'll be working for free."
It was a few hours later, and a woman had appeared from between the trees beside the waiting Miss Fén and the 'ghost', still wrapped in her cloak.
This newcomer was simply but elegantly dressed and had a cold and dignified appearance. When she lowered the hood of her cloak, her long hair was pinned back in a relatively severe hairstyle that didn't match her young appearance, but it shone astonishingly silver in the moonlight. The sleeves slipped a little to reveal a bracelet of pearls, smaller, but very similar to those at Miss Fén's ears, around her left wrist.
"Zyu Ji Sang(1)." Miss Fén rose energetically to her feet with a smile.
"Fan Ah Ji(2)," Zyu Ji Sang replied with a cool nod.
Miss Fén's smile suddenly became much sharper as her oddly long canines appeared. "What did you call me?"
"Ze," the doctor amended hurriedly. "Fan Ze(3)."
"Good."
The 'ghost' watched, bewildered by the familiar yet strange language the other two had conversed in, but stayed quiet and shrank a little as Zyu Ji Sang turned towards it.
Without wasting any more time, Zyu Ji Sang sat down and extracted a handkerchief from her bag. With it, she picked up the figure's hand and felt for a pulse, grimacing at the state of the skin.
A breeze blew through their hair and ruffled their clothes.
"Female, human, and it's weak but I can feel a spiritual core. Meridians seem to be sealed. A cultivator." She put the 'ghost's' hand down and wrapped the handkerchief up carefully. "It's certainly hard to tell just by looking at her. I would say she's over one hundred years old."
"Not a child? And a cultivator, huh?" Miss Fén looked sympathetic, sipping from her flask. "Did you run into some trouble, shīmei(4)?"
"Now who's showing their age?" Zyu Ji Sang murmured under her breath.
"Miss Fén... older than me?" the cultivator asked scratchily, looking confused. Zyu Ji Sang smirked.
"Enough of that," Miss Fén interrupted. "As far as I can gathered, she has been cursed to be unable to leave the lake, but she needs medical treatment. Can you do anything for her?"
"Can you even afford my services?" Zyu Ji Sang asked bitingly.
"Would you have come here if I couldn't?" Miss Fén countered with a cheerful smile.
"You don't have to keep smiling at me." Zyu Ji Sang pulled a sheet of paper from her bag. "This."
Miss Fén scanned the paper several times without the slightest change of expression. "I can go now."
"Thank you."
"Behave yourself, shīmei." Miss Fén turned a dazzling smile towards the cultivator still wrapped in her cloak. "I just have some errands to run for Zhū Yī Shēng. She'll do a good job on you, so don't worry!"
She was gone before the cultivator could even nod in response. Instead, the patient turned to her new doctor politely, despite resembling a horrifying female ghost.
"Zhū Yī Shēng? Pleased to meet you."
The doctor responded with a non-committal sound as she dug into her bag.
"So... could you tell me... I mean, I know my health isn't good." Her voice conveniently rasped at this point, and she coughed painfully, clutching her stomach as the unexpected food tried to rise again.
"You're evidently severely malnourished, and your twelve organs are practically non-functional, so it's a miracle that you're alive, even if you have some cultivation. It was foolish of Fan Ze to give you food, you'll probably throw it up soon. You'll have clear soup for a week first."
The cultivator rubbed her aching stomach regretfully. She had suspected the rice would not remain within it for long.
"Your moon cycle is long gone, so you'll be infertile. Your whole body is filled with damp Yin energy."
The cultivator responded by painfully vomiting the rice. She shivered and retched, a desperate groan slipping from her damaged throat.
"S... sorry."
Zyu Ji Sang watched dispassionately. The cultivator tried shamefully to sweep the rice away with her bare hands, still trying to be polite as she did so.
"H... how do you and Miss Fén...?"
The doctor didn't respond. She gathered water in the bowl Miss Fén had used to hold the rice, and washed away what the 'ghost' had thrown up. The cultivator awkwardly cleaned her hands in the lake and made shapes with her bony fingers as she thought of something to say. Zyu Ji Sang filled the bowl again and gave it to her to rinse her mouth.
"Is Miss Fén sick? Is that why you know-"
"What makes you say that?" The doctor asked abruptly, staring at the cultivator. Her eyes were sharp and deep brown.
"I... I was just... making conversation..."
The doctor stared at her for another uncomfortable amount of time, then rolled up her sleeves despite the cold night air. She began to palpate the cultivator's body from head to feet, noting when the patient reacted and where she had seemed to have lost all sensation.
"Were these piercings for earrings?" she asked as she efficiently checked the cultivator's ears.
"I... don't remember."
The doctor looked at her tongue, spent several minutes minutely examining the skin on her back, and listened to her cough. Without a word, she turned to her bag and began pulling all manner of strange objects and weird smelling herbs from her bag. Her pearls flashed ominously.
The cultivator swallowed nervously and slowly retreated under the cloak.
Please hurry back soon, Miss Fén!