The Concubine's Daughter Read Free

women had thought of poison, and secretly paid good money for the deadliest of mushrooms—and more for the black magician’s talismans—to see her cursed. But the girl from Shanghai had proved fruitful and was quickly with child before the forces of darkness could find a way to be rid of her.
    These were the thoughts and deeds of One and Two, while Three said little. There was nothing she could do but show the lonely concubine what small benevolence she could whenever the opportunity arose. Secretly, by eyes that met without conflict or by tone of voice and touch when unobserved, they had come to know each other as forbidden friends.
    Yik-Munn’s hand trembled as he placed the brimming cup before the shrine. Why did morbid thoughts crawl through his mind at such a moment? Perhaps they came from his ancestors, unsmiling in an assortment of wood and metal frames. Joss sticks pricked the shadows with sparks of cherry red, beside a bowl of fresh peaches, golden kumquats, and plump pomegranates, their stones and pips assuring many sons. He knew how careful a man with young sons must be. The whim of the gods could be as fickle as March winds. When his sons were infants he had dressed them as girls, with jade anklets, to deceive the evil spirits into thinking they were female and not worth claiming, to be passed over as something unworthy of attention.
    He had given them names like Ah-Gow—the Dog—and a silver collar to wear so that they would be protected from the hungry ghostsroaming the skies, ready to snatch them away. He had entrusted each of his sons to Chang-Hsien, whose portrait, bow in hand, hung where they slept, his heavenly arrow ready to shoot down the spirit of purgatory that sought to devour the precious soul.
    Threads of incense wound among rows of tablets on smoke-grimed shelves. Slips of wood, bone, and ivory bore the names of the long-dead and the reign in which they had lived. On the altar, in a brass urn, paper offerings still curled in feathers of blue flame. It was not surprising that thoughts of his sister should come to him here.
    One day she would join these somber faces, and he prayed daily for it to be soon. Great-Aunt had long outgrown her usefulness and lived only to remind him of his failure. She, who had buried three husbands and accumulated their wealth, was the one who controlled his life and the welfare of his family. When the day came to add her photograph to this grim gallery, he would be a rich man, and a free one.
    He felt no guilt at praying for his sister’s death, but it brought tears to his eyes to think of the cost of her interment; if it had been left to him, her remains would reside in an empty wine jar somewhere in the spice fields.
    For many moons, he had been ready to send her on her way. All preparations had been seen to, and he looked with comfort upon the paper offerings that filled each darkened corner: a splendid palanquin to see that her lotus feet would not touch the ground; her favorite foods and a gourd filled with fresh water; effigies of many servants to wait upon her every need; a magnificent mansion for her soul to occupy on arrival; great wads of heaven money to assure her every comfort in the afterlife—all made of colored paper pasted over frames of split bamboo.
    He was a cautious man, and had made generous offerings at the temple for his unborn son. Freshly roasted pig, an abundance of fruit, flagons of good wine, and pyramids of rice cakes as high as his head had been laid upon the altar, then eaten under a tree by Yik-Munn and his family. There was, after all, no worthiness in waste.
    This he had done for every month that his son grew in the womb.Gold and silver paper had also been burned at the shrine of the earth god, and his prayers had been pinned to the sacred banyan in the village to please the tree spirits. There was nothing to say a man should not travel all roads to heaven and call upon many powers when a son was to be born, and he had beseeched