9 Returns From Death

The traveler from the North’s hair was peppered with streaks of white. She was too old of a woman to be traveling alone. The other travelers knew very little of her; they called her Bei, for her home in the North was all she had offered as identification. They watched her, expecting her to be the first to speak, for she was the one who had seen them arrive at the inn and had noticed that their flesh was cold to the touch, save for a warm spot underneath the heart. She sat sipping her choujiu 稠酒, unbothered by the silence around the cramped table.

“When I died,” said the traveler from the East, and the traveler from the South whimpered because the phrase seemed too blunt to be spoken. Bei had not offered her name and so neither had the travelers from the East, South, and West, and they called each other Dong, Nan, and Xi. Dong had ink-stained fingertips and the weary eyes of one who had been an official for too long.

“When I died,” he repeated—Xi looked at Nan to see if he would flinch—“I went to the office. My room there was large but cramped, overflowing with books and scrolls so old that, though I did not need to breathe, I feared I would exhale and they would turn to dust. Have you ever had a dream where you understood what you were doing? You have just started dreaming, but you understand how you got here, what you are supposed to be doing, what the story is? That is how it was in Taishan. I don’t know how long I was there or when I got there but I understood how to do the paperwork, how to fill out the forms and add up all sorts of sums, though if I had stopped to think about it I would have had no clue where I was getting my numbers from. I would put the completed forms at the top right of my desk, and periodically attendants with robes of twirling orange would sweep by to take them somewhere else—I never thought to ask where—and periodically more attendants would place more forms to be filled out at the top left of my desk. They never let me get through all my forms before adding more and they never took all the completed papers at once and so in perpetuity all I saw was paper and ink.”

“How did you escape?” asked Nan. Nan was from the South and his voice was shaky, a dust-filled vessel. Bei opened her eyes to glance at them before taking another sip of her drink and leaning back into listening.

“Dear boy, I wasn’t worried about that,” said Dong. “I am an official!” He raised his glass and so did Xi. “I am an official, and was an official, and so this was more of the same. It was just my job and in fact it was not until a manager stopped by my desk, robes of flaming bronze, that I was informed I was dead.”

“How long?” asked Xi.

“Oh, time worked differently,” said Dong, casting his hand about as if swatting away a fly. “My wife, she said it had been two days when I returned, but I had barely noticed. I am an official! What’s one more late night?” His laugh bounced off the wooden walls. Bei opened her eyes again and Dong quieted, reminded of the travelers sleeping in the rooms adjacent.

“Escape?” Nan whispered.

“Well,” Dong resumed, “the manager thanked me for my work and informed me that my position was merely temporary; I still had many years allotted to me. He allowed me to write in a Book of Fate the name of my successor. I chose another official who I had not met but had heard competent things of, wrote in his name, and wiped off mine. The orange-robed attendants escorted me home.” The chair creaked as he leaned back and shrugged.

Noises of insects in the night outside, the rustling of grass as rodents rushed through it. Bei opened the window.

“When I died,” Xi started as Bei gazed out at the night. The traveler from the West was young and sturdy, accessories of flowing ribbon pinned to his sleeves. “When I died, I went up to the courts. Up in the Heavens, the courts. The Heavens are cloudy, these cloudy courtyards, infinite palaces with infinite courtyards, gardens of hundreds of li 里 across. I remember peach trees with golden leaves and lilac flowers. It was warm, always, warm, always that type of warm that makes you want to curl up like a cat and sleep.”

“And what did you do there?” asked Dong, elbows on the table, face resting comfortably in his hands.

“I never met the Celestial Emperor,” said Xi, something wistful curling up in the air as he spoke. “I almost caught glimpses, glimpses of attendants rushing about, purple and gold robes. They called me in one day, called me in to the palace-”

“One day?”

“Time lost meaning. You know. It was three days, my father told me when I returned, but the stars never rose in that place, the sky never darkened, three days. They called me in, and I wondered if I would meet the Celestial Emperor. I walked through the halls and looked in the rooms, the empty rooms of thrones, thrones in the center of empty rooms.”

Bei had not moved from the window, had not looked at Xi. Xi had not looked at her. He was looking at something in some other place.

“It was like your story, Dong; the attendants told me my time was not up. I was released, my name in the book, the records of fate, was not set to take me in now.”

“Why did you die?” said Nan. Something wistful in the center of the air shattered.

“A clerical issue, maybe. An oversight. An overcorrection, a misreading of my name; though the Heavens are perfect and I do not know why, why they’d take me by mistake, so maybe I was just supposed to be there for a day, three days, but my time was not up and I was released back to Earth.” Xi’s voice had lost some loftiness. He had done a remarkable job of maintaining the broken pieces of his limerence, but he sat back in his chair and fell into his body and sighed.

Nan looked at Bei. She did not look at him. She was staring at the stars.

Dong and Xi looked at Nan. The traveler from the South was rickety but not frail, a sculpture of sticks with metal wires strewn through it. His voice sounded like his throat would invert if he used it too much.

Bei had not said much. She was the type of woman who you naturally avoid looking at because you know she is supposed to be the one who looks at you when she wants to see you. Nan looked at Bei, failing not to blink.

She remained in the window.

Something stirred in the dust.

When Bei turned to Nan, she was not unkind when she said “You won’t want to hear it.” Nan nodded. There was something small about him, a rabbit who doesn’t know how to run from a hawk.

“It’ll make it hurt more.” She didn’t wait for a confirmation before continuing. Dong and Xi had the decency to retreat a step, though the room was too cramped to really give her space. “When I died, an old woman took my hand and she walked me through the stars. I was scared because I was dead. She pointed out the constellations to me and taught me to recognize them. It did not make me less afraid but it made the walk beautiful. I saw the interconnectedness of

things, the way the lights make living beings. Each star is part of a mansion, each mansion is part of a being. On its own, the stars are meaningless. Maybe the shapes they form together are too. It didn’t matter much. I was dead and shivering and in love with something.”

Nan was breathing heavily, his floorboard-voice creaking. Bei was as clear as a bolt of night air.

“The Lord of the Northern Dipper wore black and silver robes and his dog the size of a lion bore black fur and silver fangs. The Lord of the Northern Dipper held my shoulders, not so tight that I could not shake him off, and we stargazed.”

Where did the tension in the room come from? Things get tense when discussing death. Dong and Xi said nothing. They did not understand, but they knew from their afterlives not to push at others’ stories.

“Escape?” Nan whispered, a rustle in the dirt.

Bei tilted her head up. “When you view the sky from somewhere other than Earth, the planet can be part of constellations.”

Everything stilled. Everyone breathed.

“When I died,” said Nan, and the words were splinters, “When I died, I was dead for seven days. It was midsummer and my corpse began to decay in the heat but my family felt the warmth under my heart and refused to bury me. My uncle bathed my corpse and kept me cool as I awoke. My family had refused to bury me but I still coughed up mud and bloody clay.”

Xi made as if to place his hand on Nan’s and Dong made as if to make a sound of surprise, but the time wasn’t right.

“It was an earth prison, they said later. My family had to go to the monks for help in figuring out what I meant when I shook the story of what happened to me from my corpse. They said it was an earth prison.

“There are things in the earth. There are insects and iron shackles and screams wet with loam. I shuffled through the hells, never able to see where I was, always hungry, always fearful, the dirt plastered to my body like a second skin.” Maybe it was a little cruel when he looked at Bei and said “There were no stars.” She did not mind. He was shaking.

“My corpse was decaying,” Nan said. “They didn’t want to let me go. But my family didn’t bury me. They took care of my corpse as it decayed and I lived, I was dragged out through the earth. But I was still buried. I was still buried.”

A shudder, a sob. Bei’s hair fluttering in the breeze from the open window. The dried earth on the nape of Nan’s neck.

He put a hand to the warm spot under his heart.

Take a breath, gentle reader. Feel it in your lungs. A breath for me.

Four travelers set off into the night in four different directions.