Page 14 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“I specifically wanted you at this meeting,” said the triad queen, eyeing her carefully. “Are you well enough to attend, or should I request a postponement?”
The words were kind, but beneath them lurked a more sinister question: about Mercy’s usefulness, her poise, her propensity to help or embarrass the leader of a triad. It was a dicey thing, sometimes, to be one of Cobra Lily’s favored employees.
“I feel focused and fine,” Mercy lied, offering another bow. “I’ll be right by your side, boss.”
“Good.” Cobra Lily’s features relaxed into a cool smile. “Then I will pour us a drink, and we will review the documents one more time.”
5OCCUPIED TERRITORY
Thirty-three years ago…
A few of the villagers chase, but Mei Chi has a head start and they don’t really want to catch her. Just scare her off. She is soon able to reach the woods. They can’t follow her so easily there, or perhaps aren’t willing to venture among the trees after her. If she really were a demon, that would be foolish of them.
When her lungs and legs burn too much to keep going, she stumbles to a halt and bursts into tears.
She shouts at the trees for a while, demanding to know what is wrong with her. They don’t answer. Nothing makes sense. She thinks about sleeping, doesn’t dare, is afraid to have more nightmares.
Slowly, Mei Chi gets to her feet. It is past noon, now. She cannot stay here forever. Numb, exhausted, dehydrated, hips and feet aching, she limps barefoot through the woods, seeking a way out, some kind of path.
She gets lucky, again. Eventually, she emerges from the woods at a paved crossroads. One path is unmarked; the other has signs pointing toward the city. Mei Chi looks northward, where the unpaved path winds into denser trees and stubby hills. She does not know how to live out there. She has vague memories of a farm, and maybe fishing, but they are truly vague, and anyway that is untamed land. Not a tilled and managed farm.
She looks southward, where buildings rise in the distance.
Hong Kong belongs to the Japanese, or so the village man told her. She has a sense of what that means, understands the vague concept of war, even if “Japan” as such doesn’t conjure up any associations. War sounds bad, but surely the city will be calmer now it has surrendered.
Not like she has any better options, either.
She sets off walking, keeping her gaze on the buildings ahead.
Mei Chi soon figures out why the man warned her against going to Hong Kong.
It takes at most an hour and a half to walk to the city boundary, windingthrough the rural New Territories. She doesn’t know at the time how lucky she is not to encounter soldiers.
The corpses are the first thing she sees here. Corpses in the streets and alleys, corpses on the boardwalks and slumping against doorframes. Corpses piled on corpses in great stinking mounds of flesh.
War has left its mark.
Oddly, the sight of death doesn’t bother her, and she isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing or not. But it does make her cautious, because where there are bodies, there are also killers and weapons.
Many of the bodies have a warding fu talisman stuck on them, deterring any ghosts from arising. In some cases, multiple bodies are arranged in a large pile or pit, with one enormous fu talisman on the lot. Occasionally she spies captured monks standing over mass graves, being forced to pray and ward to the point of exhaustion.
The Japanese have been efficient in their takeover. They do not want the dead interfering with occupation; such ghosts would wreak terrible vengeance. It is almost admirable, this level of organization.
She picks her way around corpses and ashen-faced pedestrians, none of whom meet her eye, and sticks to the shadows. Soldiers are everywhere, now. Men in uniform practice drills in courtyards, congregating outside the bigger buildings like the hospitals and government offices. If any civilians catch their attention, it is a toss of the die whether they murder, beat, ignore, or drag someone away.
Mei Chi, after watching in horror as a pair of soldiers batter an old man to death for no discernible reason, decides to exercise extreme caution. She flits from alley to alley, avoiding the main roads.
She is still hungry and thirsty, and has no money. Not that it matters, since no shops are open. Money is likely worthless, too. She manages to find a shop front that has been bombed to rubble. Most of the foodstuffs are destroyed or looted. She searches anyway, picking through slag and brick dust to find a jug of juice, a few dried mushrooms and—immense treasure!—two small jars of salted fish.
She drains the juice, finishes the mushrooms, and is midway through the first jar of fish when she spies an elderly lady, small and wiry, peering at her through one of the shattered windows.
Unlike the man at the village, the elderly lady smiles, open and warm. She gestures at Mei Chi and says, “Any to share for a hungry old woman?”
Mei Chi hesitates. She’s hungry herself, and one jar wasn’t enough food. But the elderly lady is even leaner than she, and twice as frail.
Reluctantly, she nods and holds up the last jar. “Yours if you want it, grandmother.”
“Thank you. Such a kind heart.” The elderly woman steps inside with delicate agility and crouches next to her, two souls taking shelter in a destroyed building. “I am not so fast as I used to be. I cannot outrun the young people who are looking for food.” She pops the lid, pulls out the scrap of fish. “My name is Poon Li Fan. How are you called?”
