Xiang crawled in search of water. She lifted the bucket above her head and opened her mouth wide, but not a single drop came out. Someone reached a hand toward me in the dark. Xiang shouted. The men stepped back in surprise, and from the exterior corridor two crewmen charged in. They kicked Xiang without mercy. Then they looked around and dragged out the young men. One of the crewmen brought out a small club. He beat the young men over the head and on the spine. The beating didn’t stop until the men were flat on the ground.
After they’d each had a smoke, the crewmen dragged Xiang out to the corridor and pulled off her clothes. When she struggled and resisted, they thought nothing of punching her in the face over and over until she, too, went limp. More crewmen came down. They stood around chatting while Xiang’s naked body was turned this way and that, and laid down as they did what they wanted with her. Then they left her passed out on the floor and disappeared.
Number Eight, the middle-aged woman, was slumped to one side and did not move: it became clear that she had died. The crewmen grumbled as they carried her out to the corridor by her arms and legs, up countless metal stairs to the landing, where they cursed and swore again and took a short break before going out to the darkened deck. Two men swung the body back and forth to the count of three and then let it go, into the black crests and white furrows.
*
When did that magpie get here?
The little featherbrain snatched up my spirit, my shadow-like spirit that sometimes stretched out long and sometimes shrank down small. It picked it up in its beak, flew into the air and perched on a metal railing in the dark.
Way down below, like a scene from a play I watched as a child, I saw my body lying flat on the floor, dressed in a traditional white blouse and black skirt. Evil spirits with concealed faces, dressed in black and half-hidden in the shadows, pulled off my clothes. From above, my body looked frail and gaunt. They took knives and carved me up. My spirit self shouted in alarm. They hacked off my arms, my legs, my head, and flung them to the side. Behind them, other dark spirits crowded around. They tossed my severed limbs back and forth. The dark spirits snickered raucously and began feasting on my flesh. The ones with my torso split my belly open, pulled out my intestines, my liver, my organs — and ate.
A storm of pain washed over me, and then all was silent. My spirit self watched as my flesh disappeared, and all that was left were the bones. The dark spirits snatched up my tibias and danced. They kept rhythm to the rattling of my shinbones. O fleeting life!
I fluttered in the passing breeze and dangled from the tip of a branch on the enormous zelkova tree. Did the magpie carry me here? The bird ferried over objects one by one and dumped them at the base of the tree. My leg bone, my arm bone, my little finger, the knucklebones of my toes all clattered together. At the end, something rolled and tumbled and came to a perfect stop at the top of the pile of bones: my skull. The magpie flew to the branch where my spirit hung and perched there. He rubbed his beak against the tree and squawked:
Live or die, live or die. No difference.
Grandmother appeared and shooed away the bird. Then she sat in front of my bones. She sorted through them while Chilsung picked up scattered shards in his mouth and brought them over. Grandmother fit my bones together and sang a slow song:
Throw her out, the little throwaway.
Cast her out, the little castaway.
Over the Mountain of Knives,
the Mountain of Fire,
past the Hell of Poison,
Hell of Cold,
Hell of Water,
Hell of Earth,
through the sufferings
of eighty-four thousand hells,
all the way to the ends of the Earth
where the sun sets in the western sky.
What new hell awaits you here?
Bitter souls, hungry souls,
souls burdened even in death,
endless and innumerable.
Return to life! Return!
My spirit felt as if it was being sucked down off the branch. It swirled around in the air, circling my bones several times as if being coaxed back into place, and then I was in one piece again. New flesh grew. I couldn’t stop touching my arms and legs and stomach, like a person who’d just recovered from a long illness.
Okay, okay, time for you two to go.
Grandmother gestured to Chilsung and me to go back over the dark river.
Grandma, where are you going?
This world is the liminal zone for those awaiting rebirth. I can’t stay here. I’ll come find you in your dreams.
Grandma, Grandma! Don’t leave me!
Grandmother vanished like a bubble popping. Chilsung and I stood together next to the river. I walked back and forth through the grass, searching for the bridge that was no longer there, when I finally remembered the last remaining peony in my pocket. I took it out and threw it into the river as hard as I could. A five-coloured rainbow appeared and arced over the water. Chilsung ran ahead of me, tail wagging, and we crossed over together. The river was calm; I did not hear any shrieks this time. When I got to the other side and looked behind me, all I saw was blackness. But under my feet, the path forked. Chilsung hung back and waited for me to choose. I thought about how Grandmother had warned me to avoid the blue and yellow paths and follow only the white path. I placed my foot on the white path that glowed like the moon was shining down on it. Only then did Chilsung race ahead of me. When the path ended, and I was standing in front of another dark wall, Chilsung took several steps back, stared at me and slowly wagged his tail. I knew this was goodbye again. I heard his voice inside my head.
No matter where you are, I’ll come find you.
I put my hand out to try to pet him, but he, too, suddenly vanished.
Seven
When I arrived in that far-off distant land, I was sixteen years old, and it was autumn.
Our paths split there. I wouldn’t find out until a year later that Xiang had stayed in the house we were taken to on our first night in London. I had no memory at all of how we got there, probably on account of the strange talent I had for separating my spirit from my body. Even the ten days or more that we spent inside a shipping container while the ship sat in the harbour, waiting to clear customs and be unloaded, came to me as nothing more than a vague dream when Xiang told me about it later — after she herself had recovered, of course. She was no longer as talkative as she used to be. She put it to me simply:
“We almost died.”
“How?”
“Not enough air.”
She told me we’d managed to find air by lying flat against the floor of the double-plated container and pressing our mouths to coin-sized holes drilled into the base. I remembered what happened once we were off the boat. We were driven for hours in the middle of the night and dropped off on some London street in front of a tiny warehouse. The men were taken away first.
The following day, Xiang and I were led to a house in a back alley not too far away in Chinatown. We went up a narrow stairway and down a hallway lined with rooms on both sides. The doors opened, and big women with blonde and brown hair peeked out. We were guided all the way down the hallway and into a room with a sofa. A white woman who was so overweight that she huffed and puffed with each breath came into the room and said something in English. The man who’d brought us there told us to strip. The three of us — Xiang, the woman who’d been on the boat with us, and I — hesitated, then slowly began to take off our clothes. The man cursed and yelled at us to move faster. I covered my chest with my arms and hunched over. The fat woman yanked my arms open and regarded my flat chest for a moment before sniggering at me. Xiang and the other woman stayed behind while I was taken alone to another location.