Jiankang, China, on an icy winther evening in the year of the rooster (326 C.E.)

1
The Carp

The small red door hung on worn leather straps. It led from the women’s quarters into the great park, and the Elder Master’s residence.

‘It should go without saying, but don’t let anyone catch you in there!’ Mrs Wu had announced upon our arrival in the capital, raising her thin, kohl-defined eyebrows. ‘I say this because you need to be told the simplest things.’

That had been last winter.

Since then, I had waited. Hidden behind silken curtains, I had sat on my high divan and waited. The girls in the courtyard came and went, laden with food and firewood, while the moon waxed and waned and time flowed away.

Another winter came. The full moon rose and cast its light on the little red door. The pale rays trembled as if the moon were afraid.

This was not a night to leave the courtyard. But my patience was spent.

In my thin stockings, wooden muji in hand, I crept into the antechamber. Mrs Wu was sighing softly in her sleep. Little Cloud had curled up in front of the door. In the hall below, the other girls huddled under their tattered blankets.

The courtyard lay deserted and silent. Dented buckets and smashed bowls cast sharp shadows on well-worn flagstones. I slipped into my muji and picked my way through the debris toward the little red door. As I pushed it, lacquer crumbled under my fingers. Once again, I looked around and strained my ears towards the house. Not a sound. Then I stepped out into the park.

The carp was floating in the dark water under a small, curved bridge. Perhaps he could understand my language.

I’m on my way to Mali Who Never Sleeps, I explained to him.

He blew a silvery bubble.

When someone is alone too long, their heart turns to ice, I added.

Another bubble popped. Then he swam away. He was no different from anyone else here.

The path led through a small bamboo grove. As I stepped out from between the last of the canes, I stopped. Mali was squatting, her legs wide, in front of a fire, and drumming with a ladle against a soot-blackened iron cauldron.

Her rough voice pierced the night. ‘You dismal crawlers and hungry creepers, hear my song! Old Mali Who Never Sleeps, sprinkles you with sulphur wine. She smokes you out with mugwort. She dances and stamps until you burst.’

Dry leaves crackled under my hard soles. The stiff brocade of the dress scratched and itched. How strange Mali had become to me!

I should turn back.

Then she looked up and set the spoon aside. ‘There you are! I thought you’d never come back. Come sit with me!’

Her huge belly bounced with pleasure.

2

MILLET AND LILIES

Carefully, I picked my way over remnants of chopped roots and shrivelled vegetable peel. Then I stood in front of her.

Mali grasped my hands and looked me up and down. ‘By the one-legged demon! Up close, I’d almost take you for a bloodless ghost: your curly hair stiff with wax; all that white greasepaint on your face and your body covered in this stiff, crackling fabric. Where have your beautiful clothes gone, the ones with the rainbow-coloured goldfinches and flying ships?’

My hands lay icy in her warm paws.

She clicked her tongue, ‘Embroider new ones! A woman should know how to embroider.’

Mrs Wu said the same thing. She spent all the long day kneeling on her bed, sorting pale silk threads. But her mandarin ducks and pine branches bored me.

Mali let go of my hands and raised a finger. ‘Embroider what you please! We humans don’t have feathers. We have to decorate our skin, or at least wrap ourselves in something by which our dead can recognise us. Otherwise we’ll be lost among the spirits.’

Oh Mali, I wanted to say, such clothes are not welcome here. The Elder Mistress tore them off me the moment I arrived at her estates, in front of all her white-painted ladies. She called me a savage.

‘I heard about her,’ Mali growled.

She could still hear my thoughts: she was a Yue – a dark woman from the sultry forests of the South.

As a child, I had not minded.

But the Elder Mistress and her distinguished servants found everything that came from the South sinister. Backward, they said. Uncivilised. Perhaps they were right. I could barely remember the old country.

‘The old woman is dead. Dead as the pig in a blood sausage. You’re the new Elder Mistress. Why have you waited all this time?’

I bowed my head.

‘Forgot old Mali, did you? Too good for someone like me?’

My face reddened under the thick paint. It wasn’t like that; my head was so full of fog, every thought lost its way.

‘It’s all right, child. Sit down!’

I rolled one of the heavy logs away from the hot fire into the darkness and sat.

Her eyes, usually so round and black, like a hedgehog’s, narrowed to tiny slits. ‘Are you still running away from fire?’

The way she said it was so strange. Wasn’t everyone afraid of fire?

‘It seems to me we have much to do.’

Mali’s brown face glowed in the firelight. Deep furrows crisscrossed the black tattooed lines on her skin. Her curly hair was greying. But the dimples in her cheeks, the colourful embroidered sash, the jacket and trousers of black hemp, were all as they had been back then.

She still looked like the cook from long ago, the one who made the best steamed buns in all of Nanhai. The waves of light around her still shimmered paler than other people’s.

Behind Mali rose a crooked little pavilion. In front of the entrance, sieves and nets, ladles and steamers dangled from a bamboo pole. A rickety shelf held stacks of large and small bowls. Bulbous jars lay on the ground, neatly sulphured to prevent vermin from nesting inside. A waxed blanket was spread over unseen treasures: jars of salted vegetables, perhaps, or bamboo canes full of strange liquors. An iron stove stood to one side, its wide mouth open.

Mali did not need a bed.

She reached for a ladle, filled a bowl with steaming porridge, and heaped golden sugar on top from a wooden cask. ‘Here, child. Have something to eat first!’

The bowl felt rough in my hands. I stirred it. Millet and lily seeds. Cinnamon and red dates. I hadn’t come here to eat. But what had I come here for?

‘Eat up!’ said Mali.

Obediently, I dipped the spoon in the porridge. It tasted sweet. Mali was one of the rare women who understood the art of transforming the sap from scrubby sugar cane into sweet crystals. She only needed to smell a dish once to be able to cook it herself.

‘Our kind don’t cook snakes,’ said Mali. ‘We don’t cook them. We don’t eat them. We don’t kill them. Never. Nor do we cook eels.’

Her voice sounded dark. Had she gone mad? Twelve years was a long time.

‘Thirteen years,’ Mali corrected me. ‘It was thirteen years ago we arrived on that ship. And a year before that, you brought the Elder Master to us.’

She stood up, bending so low over me that our noses almost touched. ‘A whole year before that. There was a year in between. Remember that!’

She sat back down on her log and refilled my bowl.
‘You’ve grown thin.’

I stirred the steaming porridge, smelled the cinnamon and red dates, pressed the sweet golden crystals against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. Twelve years or thirteen. Fat or thin.
What did I care? The few thoughts I had were of the Elder Master. Was he not my husband?

‘It was a ghost marriage,’ exclaimed Mali. ‘My heart almost tore in two that day.’

Suddenly, I remembered why I had come to Mali.

3

THE ORACLE OF THE SHELLS

I want a love potion, Mali, my thoughts begged. I want a man who loves me. I want to live as other women do. I don’t want to be alone any longer.

Her dripping ladle pointed to the utensils dangling behind her. ‘Do you see the spider webs between the bamboo poles? A spider spins her web and sings her song. That’s the way of women.
You take a thread, soak it in your moon-blood, embroider your magic and sing your song. Then he’ll walk into your web. If that’s all you want.’

I could learn to embroider. But how could I sing?

I had no voice.

‘All living things have a voice. Even the spiders, even the stones,’ said Mali sternly.

Hot tears welled up in my eyes. Help me, Mali! Please! I’m not just as silent as the spiders and the stones; my heart is sealed up. I’m completely mute. There is no more pleasure there. No laughter. And no hope.

‘I’ve seen it,’ growled Mali. ‘Your beautiful spirit birds have flown! Not all of them – but most.’

She sighed and closed her eyes. The waves of light around her darkened. ‘Oh Abalone of Nanhai! How have you come to this!’ She rocked back and forth, sighing over and over again. ‘Oh Abalone!’

She paused, shook herself, and opened her eyes. ‘It is as it is. This old body has sat idle long enough. At my age, there’s no reason a woman should keep running from Death. Wherever I go, he’s always there, walking beside me, like a witless husband.’

What will you do, Mali?

‘We’ll ask the shells.’

She stood up and walked to her hut. Crawling under the waxed cover on all fours, she began rattling around underneath it. When she emerged, she was brandishing a dusty bundle. ‘Nothing is ever lost!’

She squatted on the ground and began loosening the faded knots. The dusty bundle opened out into a huge cloth, which she proceeded to spread out on the ground.
Magnificent embroidery glowed in the moonlight: a tree laden with fruit, brightly coloured birds, turtles and flying ships, all shining as they once used to, long ago.

Mali patted the ground next to her. ‘Come, child. Sit next to me.’

I put down the bowl and sat on the ground. Mali opened the pouch that had been wrapped in the cloth. Taking out the wooden figures, she placed them on the cloth, each in its place, just as she used to.

She scraped orange ointment from a bamboo container onto the crown of my head. It felt cold at first, then heat shot through me like a lightning bolt.

The pungent aroma of wild ginger, angelica, lovage and Szechuan pepper filled my nostrils. My head became clearer.

Suddenly, I felt very small again.

Mali sniffed at her fingers. ‘This medicine is many years old, and stronger than ever before.’

Picking up three dusty bamboo pots, she wiped them clean with her sleeve, then placed three abalone shells in each.

Groaning, she got to her feet again, to rummage in her hut. She returned with a gourd bottle, scratched off the wax stopper and passed it to me. ‘Here. Give this to the fire, and ask your question!’

I grasped the bottle, then hesitated.

‘Go on! The fire must be greeted.’

With my face turned away and my arm outstretched, I poured a little of the liquor into the fire.
Blue flames shot up. They snapped at the gourd like snorting dragons. In blind panic, I threw it from me, almost falling back as I did so.

The dragons fell on the gourd, sinking their teeth into it until it burst. Sweat poured from my armpits. My heart pounded.

Mali frowned, but said nothing.

As the gourd charred and I slowly calmed, I silently asked my only question: What must I do, to make the Elder Master come to me?

Mali closed her eyes again and swayed to the guttural sounds of a strange song.
Suddenly, she let out a cry. She was trembling so violently, I had to support her. With her eyes still closed, she took hold of the first pot, shook it, and turned it upside down onto the cloth. Then the second and the third.

In an unfamiliar voice, she said, ‘The shells lie ready. Now push everything to its place.’

I knew what to do: I had watched people seek Mali’s advice, long ago.

I slid one of the dishes to the roots of the embroidered tree, one to the trunk, and one between the branches. Then I sat back in my place and waited for Mali to come to herself again.

‘Well now, let’s see!’ said Mali in her own voice. One after another, she lifted the pots and straightened the tiny abalone shells until they lay in a long row.

She remained silent for a long time, staring at the oracle. Her glow became dull and grey. Finally, she stood up and fetched a new gourd bottle from her hut. She scratched off the wax from the neck, and took a gulp. She held the bottle out to me without a word.

I shook my head. My mouth was dry. I could sense Mali’s fear.

Mali took another swig and sighed. ‘You asked, and I must answer. This is what has been decreed: “Blood for Zhuo Yin”. The snake goddess wants blood. It seems we must brew the Medicine.’

The Medicine? Immortality Medicine?

Mali giggled. ‘We’ll leave that to alchemists like your Elder Master. No, no. Our Medicine is the sealed jar.’

My whole body crackled at her words. I fished my spoon out of the bowl and wrote a symbol in the earth. A tripod with three venomous animals.

Gu. The most evil of all the dark arts.
Was that really what she meant?

Mali frowned as she looked at the strokes in the dirt. ‘I think that’s what the Han call it. Gu.’

She did not shrink from speaking the dreadful word aloud.

‘The Han fear it far too much. What we do is not evil, unless the woman doing it is evil. Sealing jars is our nature. A jar is like our belly. The more powerful our love or our hate, the stronger the brew bubbling within. But sometimes our jar is empty. Like yours. Then we go into the mountains and fill the jar again. As we fill it, we sing until the stones, and the plants, and finally even the obstinate birds sing with us.’

But Mali, I can’t sing.

‘I know. Perhaps Zhuo Yin will show you the way.’

Who is Zhuo Yin, Mali?

‘Are you telling me you’ve forgotten the snake goddess too?’

I nodded.

‘Oh Abalone!’ she sighed, then fell silent.

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