Page 108 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Sound fades. Awareness dims. The world narrows to a single point of vision. You stare, and stare.
The woman is wearingyour face.
For a moment you are unsure, recognizing but also not recognizing the features in front of you. It’s been a damn long time, and you didn’t own a mirror for most of your life. Maybe it is another woman with similar features. She is well into middle age, too, which makes it trickier.
Then she raises her hands to cup them around her mouth, shouting something above the fray, and you see her bare skin exposed.
All the way down her left arm is the blazing, blood-red scar of a lightning strike. The tattoos obscure the scar, but can’t fully hide it. The mark runs from her shoulder down to her wrist, which is encircled by a slim bracelet strung with a tiger charm.
The face. The scar. The tiger charm.
All of them, yours.
Definitely your body. Scarred and lined from years of hard living, sure, but familiar down to the tilt of the eyes and the mole on one cheek. With every step you take toward her (yourself?), more and more details reveal themselves, and the certainty cements.
Compared to the body you now inhabit, your original vessel is shorter andheavier, dark hair straight and slick in a short bob. The years have worn lines of wisdom and humor around the mouth, cheeks, and forehead.
Can it be? Can it really be, after all this time, all these years? The records you searched, the camps Wing Yun looked in, the years of digging… How the hell has she just been here, this whole damn time?
Daiyu’s words from many days ago rise to your mind:I saw her alive. In the city of ghosts.Those aged shoulders spasming in a shudder.It was not my daughter.Mami must have seen your body, and mistaken it for you. Only to be repulsed on finding Mei Chi inside it.
“Rest now, beautiful lady,” Your Face cries out to the raging, blood-soaked ghost. “Justice is done. Find your peace in the next life.”
The ribbon-necked ghost sighs breathily, head slowly winding back into her body even as her form frays at the edges. She begins to shrink, robes growing loose around her diminishing form until the remnants of her spirit disperse into shimmering mist. The empty burial robes fold in on themselves into a pile of fabric, which in turn seem to melt into the ground. In moments, the ribbon-necked ghost is gone as if she never existed in the first place. Nothing remains.
The crowd claps and cheers. Ghosts don’t normally listen to advice or suggestions, but this one did—once its fury was spent, anyway.
Your Face bows respectfully to all and sundry, and makes a sharp gesture. The maogui lumbers over, size compacting with every step until he is once again a small, harmless-looking kitten, albeit fuzzed at the edges with a wisp of transparency.
Definitely the same kitten that Mei Chi owned as a child, and whose ghost used to wander the island. Insane that he’s come all the way out here. He must have real affection for his mistress. The thought of its misplaced loyalty fills you with irritation. If you can kill that cat spirit, you will.
Meanwhile, Your Face gathers the cat up and puts him on her shoulder with genuine affection, then turns and walks through the crowd in the other direction. Her sandals slap the concrete in irregular rhythm.
Still reeling, you grab the sleeve of the nearest person and tug hard to get their attention. The man you grab looks down. “What is it?”
“Who was that? The woman we just saw?”
He laughs around his cigarette. “Don’t you know? That’s Mei Chi Chan. She works under the Cobra Lily triad. One of those exorcists, or mediums. Something like that.” A note of admiration enters his voice. “She’s a strong and canny little auntie. Never met a ghost she was afraid of!”
For a moment you are confused, unsure why he would say the name backto front. He’s also slurred “Mei Chi” quite badly, and transposed “Chen” with “Chan.”
Then you realize, with a jolt, that he hasn’t said Mei Chi: he has saidMercy. An English name, or perhaps just an Anglicized version of the Chinese original. Similar, ish, in sound. Very different in meaning.
“Thanks,” you say, distractedly, brain already churning.
Chen Mei Chi… to Mercy Chan.
Your guess was right. She’s changed her name. She’schangedherfuckingname, dropping the Hakka for a mix of Cantonese and English. Because of course she has. And before that, there were probably no records of her anywhere, thanks to the war. She’s been safely hidden away until you casually found her, today.
Fate, you decide, has a spiteful sense of humor.
The crowd disperses, everyone going back to their daily routines. Mercy, or whatever the hell she calls herself now, is already gone. Time for you to go, too. At least for now. A heat is building up behind your stolen eyes, though you try to ignore it.
You make it two blocks before ducking into a nearby doorway and bursting into tears.
People mind their own business in Kowloon. No one comes over to bother the grown woman who is crouched in a dark, filthy corner, bawling her heart out uncontrollably. Just as well; you’d have probably wrung the neck of anyone who tried, in that particular moment.
Seeing Mami again rocked you, but not like this. You never felt a connection with Mami, the way you once had with Sea Sister—with your aunt.
