The Priest Kept a Ghost in His Gourd and Let Him Out Every Night novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Stopper
At dusk on the Qinghuai Ferry a dead thing is draining the warmth out of a woman, and priest Gu Pingan pulls the stopper on his gourd; the ghost inside is see-through until the priest grabs his wrist, kills the thing, and watches it smile with the ghost's own mouth before it vanishes into him. The innkeeper recognizes the ash-grey hair: this is the ghost who killed three hundred of them.
The gourd had been silent for three days, and Gu Pingan knew exactly why.
At the last river crossing he had eaten a hot steamed bun in front of it and said "mm" out loud.
The ghost inside had not forgiven him.
"Zhuoran," Pingan said, patting the red lacquer at his belt, "I said I was sorry."
The gourd said nothing.
"It was a very small bun."
Nothing.
He climbed the last stretch of road toward Qinghuai Ferry with his stomach growling and his patched robe still damp from the rain.
The sun was a thin red line on the river.
Pingan was twenty-six, a wandering priest of no famous school, and he owned a brush case, a bundle of yellow talisman paper and one ghost.
Three weeks ago, at a crossroads, the ghost had asked him for something for the first time in four years.
"Take me to Qinghuai Ferry."
That was all.
Pingan had asked why, and the gourd had gone quiet, and he had turned the cart road toward the river without another word.
Now the ferry gate stood ahead of him with white paper lanterns hanging dead still in the damp.
Nobody was walking in the street.
Every shutter was closed.
Pingan had been a priest long enough to know what that meant.
Then a woman screamed in the inn yard.
He ran.
The yard was small, with a well, a woodpile and a lantern lying on its side in the mud.
A woman lay on her back by the well, and something thin was bent over her.
It wore scorched black and crimson cloth, and its hands were long and grey.
Where its mouth touched her face, her breath came out as white frost.
Her cheeks were already the color of ash.
"Hey!" Pingan shouted, which was not a technique.
The thing lifted its head and looked at him.
It did not look long.
Its eyes slid to the gourd at his belt and stayed there.
Pingan did not wait for it to decide.
The sun had gone down.
He yanked the peach-wood stopper out of the gourd with his teeth.
Cold smoke poured out and stood up beside him in the shape of a tall man.
Pale skin, short ash-grey hair with burnt ends, a scar of old fire down the left side of his neck, and faded black and crimson robes.
Feng Zhuoran looked at the thing in the yard, and he looked at Pingan.
Through his chest, Pingan could see the woodpile.
"Three days," Zhuoran said. "You wake me after three days of silence to watch you shout at a corpse."
"It's drinking her warmth!"
"I can see that. I can't touch it. Hand."
"What?"
"Your hand, little priest. Quickly."
Pingan grabbed his wrist.
The skin under his fingers was as cold as river stone, and for a heartbeat it was only a wrist.
Then it was real.
Zhuoran's body filled in from the inside, with weight and color and breath he did not need.
His robes snapped in a wind that was not there.
A long, thin black sword appeared in his free hand, narrow as a knitting needle.
Pingan had seen it happen a hundred times, and it still made the hair stand up on his arms.
Zhuoran moved.
He crossed the yard in two steps and the Rain Needle went through the thing's shoulder, and it hissed and tore itself free.
It did not run at Zhuoran.
It ran at the woman, at the lantern, at anyone near him.
Zhuoran caught it by the throat with his left hand, and the sword went in under the ribs.
"Stop," it said.
Its voice was rust and wet leaves.
"Zhuoran."
Pingan went still.
It had said the ghost's name.
The thing looked up at the man killing it, and it smiled.
It had Zhuoran's mouth.
The same long curve, the same sharp corner on the left, a crooked smile made out of grey rot.
Then it came apart into black smoke, and the smoke poured into Zhuoran's chest.
Zhuoran stood with his sword hanging from his hand.
He put his palm flat against his ribs.
"That was cold," he said slowly.
Pingan looked at his eyes.
They were dark, with a thin ring of red around the black, and the ring was thinner than it had been that morning.
He noticed because he always noticed.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"You went white."
"I am a ghost. I was white before you met me."
Pingan realized he was still holding Zhuoran's wrist.
He had been holding it for a full minute.
Zhuoran had not pulled away, and he was looking down at Pingan's big hand, stained cinnabar red at the fingertips.
Pingan was twenty-six years old, and no one had ever kissed him.
No one had ever held him back like this, either, and it was a ghost who did it.
"You can let go," Zhuoran said, "or you can not."
Pingan let go.
The black sword melted away.
Zhuoran thinned back into a see-through man with a lantern flame showing through his shoulder, and he smiled his dry smile, the real one.
"Forgiven about the bun," he said.
"Really?"
"No."
Behind them, the inn door banged open.
Torches filled the yard.
Auntie Xu, who ran the ferry inn, came out first, a short, broad woman in a flour-dusted apron with a cleaver in her fist.
Behind her stood the whole village.
She looked at the woman by the well, who was coughing and warming up under Pingan's talisman paper.
Then she looked at the tall man made of mist, with ash-grey hair, a burn scar on his neck and black and crimson robes.
The cleaver dropped from her hand.
She stared at the yellow paper string running from the open gourd to Pingan's belt.
"My grandmother described that hair to me when I was six," she said quietly.
"Auntie, he's not," Pingan began.
"That is the Red Moon of Qinghuai Ferry."
The torches leaned in.
"You carried him back," she said, "to the place he killed three hundred of us."
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