Archive of Our Own

If I wrote letters home, where would they go?
Back with the wild geese to Luo Yang far below.
     - Wang Wan

The Chen family home is a Greco-Roman nightmare in white and gold, walls as smooth as an opera performer's painted face.  In the driveway a middle-aged gardener is at work washing cars: her mother-in-law's silver Lexus sedan, father-in-law's black Mercedes.

Her mother-in-law is standing on the front step, immaculate in an electric blue jacket of nubby wool and matching house slippers.  Inari suddenly feels exquisitely conscious of her own dress, a green and white print that's decades behind Earth style.  A little foo dog rushes out from the house and barks furiously at her ankles.  She flinches.

"Ah-Wei!" Chen's mother says loudly.  Her perm is tight enough to hold pencils.  "At least you visit your old mother for the Winter Festival, but why you never call ah, my only son could have dropped dead in Yau Ma Tei and I would not even know—"  To the dog she says, "Siusiu!  Be quiet."  Her glance flicks to Inari.

Inari says meekly, "I hope you're well, Lailai.  Please forgive me for keeping your son away from you for so long."  She hands across their gift in its plum-coloured wrapping paper.  Her mother-in-law just sniffs as she takes it and says, mainly to Chen, "Come in, come in, have you eaten yet or not?"

The inside of the house is as sterile as the outside.  The expanse of white marble and tile is punctuated with carefully separated knick-knacks: an artificial bonsai tree with a trunk of twisted gold wire.  A bunch of purple glass grapes.  The remote controls for the TV and Bose soundsystem are covered with plastic wrap, perfectly aligned with the edge of the coffee table.

"Go call your father, he's downstairs listening to his music," Chen's mother says.  Chen heads off down the corridor and Inari can hear him calling, "Ah-Ba—"

Chen's mother turns and says abruptly, "You drink tea or not?"

Inari manages a nod rather than a flinch.  Of course she drinks tea—she may be from Hell, but she's not a total barbarian.  Her mother-in-law just looks at her and says, "Amah is away for the holiday, you can help in the kitchen."  She rattles off a list of things for Inari to get out of the fridge: lor bak go and dong gwa tong and tong jyun.

The contents of the fridge are completely baffling.  Inari stares helplessly.  Her mother-in-law makes a sound of exasperation and says, "What, your blood is so cold you have to stand in front of the fridge all day even in winter?"  She pushes Inari to the side and starts taking containers out of the fridge.  "Here."  She hands one to Inari.  "Make yourself useful."

Lor bak go turns out to be a greyish brick of indeterminate texture.  Inari heats the peanut oil in the wok, waiting for it to shimmer before adding thin slices.  Despite her best efforts, though, the slices immediately start to stick and burn, and her mother-in-law clicks her tongue and quickly snatches the wok tan.  "Come on, girl, is it really so different from your food?"

But this time her the tone is less mean, almost a little bit curious, so Inari tells her about a few Hell dishes: eggs marinated in ash for a hundred years; nests of the thread-like black algae that looks like a drowning woman's hair; tetrahedral zong wrapped in black lotus leaves.

Inari's nostalgic smile falls instantly when her mother-in-law sucks in a sharp breath of distaste and says, "No wonder I feel sick walking down Temple St now ah—you all and your foodstalls, multiplying like mouse droppings!"  Warming to her theme, she adds, "And not just illegal hawkers is it, but your labourers also—coming in with your low wages, all the shops flooded with your cheap goods that fall apart in three days.  Your husband's father, he's so into his electronics, but now he makes sure it's all from Japan.  It's not cheap ah, but how else can you be sure these days that it's quality—"

Her husband comes back in on the tail end of the rant, trailing his father.  Her father-in-law grunts at Inari in bare acknowledgement and says grumpily, "Where's the tea?" Chen's mother thrusts the pot of tea into Inari's hands to take to the table.  It's a beautiful teapot, a smooth wheat yellow glaze with a single meandering brushstroke suggesting white clouds.  It probably cost more than a month of her husband's salary.

She sits quietly as they eat, the Cantonese flowing over her like one of Hell's lumpy rivers.  Her husband is explaining his current case: twenty demon illegal immigrants drowned when their shipping container fell off a barge into the Ocean of Discharged Sorrows, bodies discovered floating dead amongst the wreckage of rice cookers and cheap TVs.

"Back to the Yellow Springs where they belong," Chen's mother says dismissively.  "Oh!  Have I told you yet or not, Mrs Ho's oldest son, Little Tony you know, just got married to a girl from the mainland.  Aiya, such a beautiful wedding!  And his wife is pregnant now already—she says only four months but it's surely six, and the wedding it was only this last September—"

There's a coldness in Inari's chest, an icy white star shrinking and shrinking until she thinks her insides are so squeezed she's going to start vanishing from the inside out.

Someone says something to her, and she looks up with a start.  Her father-in-law repeats the question, ending with what sounds like a grunt.  The name of some Earth musician.  She shakes her head, confused, until he snorts ill-temperedly and says, "Just back from Mars aren't you, huh?"

"Get the tong jyun will you," her mother-in-law interrupts.  When Inari gets the serving bowl from the kitchen counter, her hands shake enough to slop the sugar soup over the edge as she carries it back to the table.

"Ah-Wei, why don't you move back in, look after your old mother?" Inari's mother-in-law says, spooning dumplings into bowls and handing them around the table.  "That busybody Mrs Leong is always asking me where you live, and here I am, too ashamed to say that my son is a cop but not even earning enough to buy an apartment—"

Inari looks down at her hands clenched in her lap, but her husband just makes a non-committal noise and slips some of his extra dumplings into her bowl.

Afterwards, sitting together in the back of the taxi, he says, "You know what they're like, Bak Sei Juen."

It's his fond nickname for her: the white snake who became human for the love of Hsui Xien.  She'd like it more if the story had a happy ending.  He takes her hand, his palm human-warm and tough with scar tissue, and she looks down to stare at the gold wedding band on his finger.

It's not quite an apology, but it's good enough.  She looks back up at his handsome profile, the beginnings of grey in his short hair, and feels a surge of emotion so strong it makes her tremble.

She doesn't even bother to reach into her purse and throw the coins.  This day each year, the winter solstice, there is only ever one possibility.  Fu.  The turning point, the return, reversal, reciprocity.  It's a strong, comforting hexagram that sounds like fu, fortune.  And she is fortunate, she reminds herself sternly.

Strange how it doesn't always feel that way.

***

In the houseboat her life is one long sameness: days and nights of aimless floating, as though she's a lost spirit wandering the grey places between worlds.  Looking out at the city's glittering skyline, she finds herself thinking of the poem by Du Fu:

A homesick traveller upon the river,
Outmoded scholar between earth and sky,
A scrap of cloud adrift on the horizon,
A moon in an eternal night, am I.

During her next trip into the city, she starts looking.  It's almost accidental, at first.  She slows to read the help wanted notices in shop windows on her way home from the wet markets; makes enquiries at offices simply to pass the time.  Her glance skips over advertisements for funeral parlour attendants, I-Ching interpreters, Gweilin-speaking migration consultants.  Instead, she finds herself lost in her imagination gazing at notices for secretaries, factory assembly workers, nursing services for the elderly.  Normal jobs, normal lives.  Normal people.

The first time she applies, it's on a whim: tea-lady.  She gets as far as the receptionist, who looks her up and down and says flatly, "The position has been filled already."

She hears the same thing the second time.  The third.  The fourth doesn't look up from the keyboard when she hears Inari's accent, simply says in a bored tone, "No illegals."

She stops counting.  The whim has gone; in its place there's a strange desperation, as though the endless process of rejections is still better than the thought of retreating back into the houseboat.  She learns to keep her sunglasses on; to keep her mouth shut until the last possible moment.  Her clothes still give her away.  Hell's fashions are elegant and restrictive, antiquated compared to what the human women wear.  She can't afford to buy a new wardrobe – and even if she could, she can't shed her scales to wear their plunging necklines and sleeveless styles.  When she wears her favourite musk pink and white pearl cheongsam her father bought for her for that last Spring Festival, she feels ashamed.

It's late on a Thursday, the pavements speckling with dirty rain, when she applies at the wholesaler at the end of the metro line.  The manager is a ruler-backed woman who just looks at Inari and says, "Six and a half days a week, no holidays except Spring and Autumn Festivals, five hundred Sing a month."  She holds Inari's eyes and adds coolly, "But no need for documentation, if you know what I mean."

Five hundred a month is nothing on earth.  But it's the same as the salary of a mid-level official in Hell's Ministry of Wealth, where her father worked.  She takes it.

The walls of her new office are covered with fake wood and free promotional calendars, the floor with dull green tiles worn black in the centres.  The warehouse downstairs is full of goods in dusty metal tins and cardboard boxes on which the glossy pictures have all faded white like ghost-pictures.

"How shall I address you?" Inari asks the manager.

"My husband's name is Teo."  Mrs Teo plumps down a stack of pink duplicate forms: accounts, inventories, billing.  She launches into a detailed explanation in rapid Cantonese, but after a look at Inari's face she says in imperfect but understandable Gweilin, "Too fast for you is it?"

Inari's never heard another human apart from her husband bother to learn Gweilin.  The surprise propels her hand across the page, filling the columns with neat characters.  Mrs Teo watches for a few minutes, nods once, and turns back to her own work.  The sound of a typewriter fills the room.

The sheer normality of it all is a revelation.  Inari finds herself savouring the details, the grubby grimness of it all; feels as though she's purging her own alienness with every grimy pink billing form.  The beat of the day is: normal, normal, normal.

On the metro she feels a tired satisfaction, a warm glow that matches her burning feet.  It's strange to be one of the commuting masses after her long sequestration, and she feels a pleasant sense of kinship with the other people in the carriage.  It's only after three stops that she realises the space on either side of her persistently refuses to fill, even though the carriage is growing crowded elsewhere.  She can hear schoolgirls giggling.

"I'd put up with some scales if my skin looked like that—"

"I wonder if the men have scales down there—"

"Would you go out with one?"

"No way, my parents would kill me!"

Once, when the mass of humanity shifts slightly, she catches sight of another demon down the end of the carriage: a young man with a ruddy dark purple face in rough labourer's clothes.  She looks away quickly when their eyes meet.

Back in the houseboat she cooks dinner, bland food like Chen's parents eat.  She cuts the beef into small strips across the grain, marinating it in sugar and dark soy before frying it with diagonal slices of green onion.  Pickled vegetables and preserved duck egg to serve alongside.

Chen hurries in late, holding his suit jacket over his head in an apparently futile effort to keep dry.  Her chest immediately clenches at the sight of him looking wet and tired, but he greets her warmly with a kiss.  Her lips come away wet from his skin.  It reminds her of Bak Sei Juen, collecting human tears in her quest to become a goddess.  The thought nearly makes her laugh.  Bak Sei Juen might have wanted to reach Heaven, but Inari's own goals are lower than that.

Chen washes his hands, looks at the food ready on the table and says with gratitude, "You've really done too much."

"It was nothing complicated," she says, rising to serve him rice.  "I found a job today."

He pauses as he takes the bowl of rice from her, surprised.  "Is that what you want?"  There's something unfolding in his face: guilt.  As though all this time he's been thinking about her on the houseboat, worried that he's been keeping her trapped like a songbird.

She touches his hand.  "I haven't been unhappy," she says quickly.  "I just want to—to be like everyone else."

He looks at her, squeezes her hand gently.  "I hope they know how much you're worth."

The way he looks at her is always a bit wondering, soft and appreciative, a look that makes her feel not quite worthy.  Like he can't imagine her not receiving the sun and moon as her due.  Almost, she thinks, as though he doesn't realise how much she has to be thankful to him for: every aspect of this life she has, out of Hell.

When he's asleep that night, she kneels in the dark kitchen in front the ancestral shrine and sets a match to the Hell money.  The glow of the burning paper flutters and fades, the red-inked names dissolving into ash that falls downwards like a sigh.  She watches the joss sticks and thinks of her parents.  Her once-beautiful mother getting up before sunrise to make dumplings, her father sweeping a floor in a janitor's uniform.  Their own mansion long gone, traded for a single room in a shabby lodging-house.

Sometimes, she thinks bitterly, Earth and Hell can be exactly the same.  Nobody cares about you when you've lost your fortune.

***

Zhu appears at her office one day, strolling in while Mrs Teo is out at lunch.  He's wearing a long silk coat in imperial yellow, ostentatious and out of place even by Hell standards.  She’s startled.  Her husband had mentioned Zhu was here on secondment, but she hasn't seen him since Hell.  Her first thought is terrible— "Chen Wei," she blurts, fearing the worst, wondering why the teakettle in her handbag hasn't made a sound, surely it would have known—

Zhu looks surprised, then slightly embarrassed.  "Oh no—nothing is wrong.  How thoughtless of me."  His apology is gracious.  "I should have called ahead."  But seeing him look around curiously she thinks he had no intention of letting her know he was coming.

"Why this?" he asks.

"I don't know what you mean, Seneschal Zhu," she says.

He flicks her a sharp yellow look.  "Surely you could have found any number of more suitable employment opportunities.  Something more appropriate for your—background."

"I find this work perfectly appropriate."

"I have a contact at a restaurant that has a lot of business from Hell patrons; it would be no trouble for me to introduce you."

"No, thank you."  Her demurral is firm.

His almost femininely long eyelashes are cast downwards in mild confusion.  "Why not?"

"Seneschal Zhu," she says.  "If you'll forgive me, I have work that needs my attention."

His eyes drift to the pink duplicate book at her right hand.  "Yes, of course.  I'm bothering you too much."

"Please give my regards to my husband."

She turns her attention back to her work, taking pleasure in each crisp stroke as she forms the banal characters.  Eventually she hears him leave.

***

Despite her dismissal, he drops by again later in the week.

"Mrs Chen."  He takes a seat in front of her desk without being invited.  Today his coat is the colour of a blushing autumn pear.

"Seneschal Zhu."

"I hope you're well."

"I am, thank you."

"I'm sorry for causing you concern earlier this week."  He hadn't called ahead this time, either.  But he slips a small box onto her desk, handsome midnight blue wrapping paper.

She opens the gift when he's gone.  It takes her a while to figure out what it is.  A pair of flexible metal inserts, suitable for a woman's high-heeled shoes.  Only he would have realised the pain she's in every day, the hot human earth rejecting her with each step.  He's playing—she's sure he hadn't really been sorry at all—but she still finds herself oddly touched.

When he comes past the next week she tells him, "You needn't have."

He has a wide, mobile mouth that turns into a devastating smile and a pair of neat golden fangs.  "I wanted to."

His charm is strangely self-conscious, and there's an innocence to it that she finds endearing.

"Have you eaten?" he asks.

"Not yet."  Humans take their lunch much earlier than demons.  She's taken up the habit of eating quickly at her desk, mid-afternoon.  Walking had always been too painful to consider.

"Eat with me, then," he says, and she finds herself agreeing.

They walk a block to the small soup-noodle restaurant on the corner.  Under his ridiculous coat Zhu wears a sober business shirt and a thin tie in muted brown: the Hell style.  He has elegant hands, she notices, a single long talon at the end of each little finger.  The silence between them is strangely comfortable.

She says, "Tell me how you met my husband."  After days on end speaking Cantonese, her thoughts feel light in Gweilin.

Zhu laughs and looks down at his teacup.  There's an openness about him, a sweep of hair falling down over his face that makes him look boyish.  He's young, untroubled; she thinks he probably hasn't faced a true hardship in his life.  "Oh, Chief Inspector Chen was trying to kill me."

At her arched eyebrow, he elaborates, "Well, it's true I was trying to kill him first."  He grins at her, and takes a sip of tea.  "Actually, he had the advantage when the misunderstanding was resolved, but please don't tell him I admitted that to you."

She's almost laughs, but manages to hide her smile behind her raised soup spoon.  "No friendship was ever formed without a fight," she murmurs, quoting the old saying.

Zhu grins.  "Need I pick a fight with you?"

She lets him see her smile this time.  "What would we fight about, Seneschal Zhu?"

"Are you a demon or not?" he says, laughing.  "It's in our nature."

"I'm sure you can control yourself, Seneschal Zhu, as can I."

He doesn't answer immediately, and she can feel his mood shifting as he examines her face.  She wonders what he sees: a demon like himself?  A demon wanting to be human?  Neither of these things?  "Strange that you'd want to," he says eventually.  He keeps looking at her as though trying to determine something, long enough to make her feel uncomfortable, before he grins and the moment breaks.

***

"We should try that new restaurant on Anderson Road," he says, the next time he comes around.  "We can take the tram."

"You mean the Hell restaurant?"  She frowns.  "Do you think it's a good idea to be seen there?"

"Why not?  The mapo doufu is excellent, really authentic."

She still hesitates.  He doesn't seem concerned about what other people think—although that, she thinks, is not particularly surprising.

"What are you waiting for?"

She takes her bag and joins him reluctantly.  "It really is too far."

The restaurant is a simple affair: plastic-sheeted tables with stools rather than chairs and the menu taped to the walls on paper banners.  Zhu orders congealed chicken blood congee, hairy crab in black peppercorn sauce, two serves of steamed buns.  Despite her reservations, she can't deny the place triggers a certain wistfulness: the familiar food, the sound of Gweilin around her, the relief of not having to constantly police her habits.

"How is progress on the case?" she asks as she washes their chopsticks in the lukewarm tea.

He takes the pot from her, warming it in his hand, and tells her the broad outline of their current investigation.  "Chief Inspector Chen is an unusually dedicated cop," he says, something bemused and thoughtful in his tone: a young man's admiration.

"He's particularly conscientious, even for a human," she allows.  She thinks of her husband's solidness, his almost perplexing dedication to even the most boring and mundane parts of his job.  Nothing strange about him: he's exactly what Heaven has meant him to be.  She can't help wondering how she fits into this plan; whether despite her ambitious heart, her fate is actually thinner than a piece of paper.

"Conscience," Zhu muses.  "A uniquely human trait, so they say."  There's the trace of uncertainty in his voice.  When she doesn't respond, he says, "Is that why she chose him?"

Inari doesn't need to ask who she is; she can feel the goddess watching them both, a constant judgemental presence that makes her marrow ache as though she's heard the sound of drums.  The unvocalised message is as clear as a temple bell: she's not being good enough; can never possibly be good enough.

"I don't pretend to understand the relationship between humans and Heaven," she says.  "What can I know of such things?"

"Why shouldn't we also understand the mind of Heaven?"

There's no understanding between Heaven and Hell—how could there be?  For all she can pretend at normality, at human goodness, her very being is Heaven's contradiction.  She takes a slice of incense-infused orange from the plate and carefully peels it with her fingertips.  The juice bursts on her tongue, the sweet and bitter taste of homesickness.

"If we demons are pure evil, how come we can recognise goodness in someone?" he says.  "Why did I rescue you that one time; why do you bother working at that place day after day?"  He falls silent, taking a piece of orange.  After a moment he suddenly he tosses the hair out of his eyes and laughs lightly.  "Actually, I know the answer to that first one—I was stunned by your beauty, and fell instantly in love!"

She should laugh, too—love, that other uniquely human characteristic, the subject of a hundred scornful demon jokes.  Maybe the clenching inside her whenever she thinks of her husband isn't true love.  Maybe what moved her to take her grindingly normal job is different from what humans feel as love, but she can't dismiss it as not real.  And there's something in Zhu's joking tone that doesn't invite laughter, either: a rawness that makes her feel like she's glimpsed something she shouldn't.

In Hell there are no discussions like these; no voicing of these tentative, complicated feelings inside them.  Maybe these conversations are only possible on Earth, where demons become more human day by day.

***

Out on the harbourfront the pollution haze obscures any chance of seeing the houseboat.  Zhu buys them fishballs on skewers from one of the vendors, and they sit on a bench overlooking the water to eat.

"The famous fragrant harbour," he says disdainfully, eyeing the rubbish bobbing on the cloudy surface.

A shoal of tiny fish dart past; she feels the faint disturbance of their passage as a tickle in the back of her mind, the same way she feels the wash and lap of water against the quay and the pull of the tides under the moon.  She's a water demon: pollution or not, everything about the scene sings to her.  It's more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen before—islands like the humps of dragons rising out of jade-green water, skyscrapers pointing upwards to Heaven, colourful flags on bamboo poles.

Zhu is talking about their latest case: a raid on a brothel full of trafficked young demons.  "We cracked more than a few heads in that one," he says.  His lip is lifted in ferocious amusement.  "But I guess she saw it as the compassionate route, given what the bastards deserved; I didn't get a single headache."

Her husband hadn't mentioned the brothel case at all.  Trying to protect her, she thinks.  But he can't protect her from living in this world.  Restaurant after restaurant along the harbourfront gives them the same treatment: the up and down look, the refusal to serve.

"Fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation," Zhu says politely to the owner of the third establishment that turns them away.  All the plates on the tables suddenly lift themselves up on cockroach legs and run around frantically in front of the diners.  Pandemonium explodes as the owner screams abuse at them, Zhu just laughing even as Inari cringes in mortified humiliation.

"There's a place a few blocks from here that does bao with an eight-treasure filling," Zhu says as they exit onto the quay.  He looks perfectly calm; amused, even.

Something about his undiminished sense of superiority annoys her, and her rebuke comes out sharper than she'd intended.  "Don't curse humans."

"Why not?"

"You make us seem—"

"Like demons?"  He frowns at her.

"They're not used to us."

He pauses, then says, "Why do you always make excuses for them?"

His earlier confusion is gone, replaced by something new.  Frustration.  Pity.  Now he understands, she thinks uneasily, and has to lower her eyes to avoid his silent accusation.

At the bao stand they take their serves of steamed buns and sit together on the brightly-coloured stools set out on the footpath.  Double-parked cars have caused a furious line of backed-up traffic in the narrow street, the unremitting blaring of horns loud enough to make her ears ring.

Zhu shakes his head and says, "My old parents in the Yellow Springs can probably hear this racket."

It's an unlovely part of town, low-rise businesses and apartments with people's towels and underwear hanging in the windows.  Her husband's office is five metro stops and a tram ride away, and she can't help but wonder at Zhu's willingness to become a lunchtime commuter.

"Seneschal Zhu."  She pauses.  "Is my husband aware we meet for lunch?"

Saying it out loud feels wrong.  She reassures herself by calling to mind her husband's face, feeling the rush of that familiar emotion.  Love, she tells herself, because she can't believe it isn't.

He looks at her in surprise and says, "Of course."

"Is it his idea?"

"Chief Inspector Chen is being considered for promotion," Zhu says, an angular deflection like a clock.  He laughs a little.  "Fortunately, I'm just on secondment.  Nobody cares what I do with my time, and even if they did: they'd be too afraid to ask."

"Does he ask you to keep me company?" she persists.

He looks directly at her.  His beautiful face is serious, mouth set firmly some defiant emotion that makes her flinch.  "I come because I want to."

Mrs Teo is typing when Inari comes in after lunch and takes her seat at the facing desk, reaching for the topmost of the unending pile of pink forms.  The tack-tack-tack of typewriter keys is lulling, and she's almost lost in the work when Mrs Teo says, as direct as a piece of punctuation, "Married already, aren't you?"

Inari stops. "That's right."

"You're not so bad-looking, with that melon-seed face of yours."  The typing continues.  "That your husband then, is it?"

"My husband is a Chief Inspector with the Franchise Police."  She clings to the emotions she feels when she says his name, her validation.  "With so many responsibilities, it's quite impossible for him to leave the office.  He sends his subordinate instead."

When Mrs Teo eventually speaks again, she sounds oddly compassionate.  "One mistake you'll regret a thousand years, girl."

***

The weather stays cold.  At lunch she finds herself staring moodily at the two human women at the neighbouring table, chatting and admiring pictures on each other's handphones.  They seem so relaxed, so perfectly at home and belonging in this world.  Their world.  In the warmth of the restaurant they've taken off their winter coats, revealing sleeveless blouses that show off their smooth necks, their shoulders.

"Why the black face black mouth?"  Zhu looks up from his bowl.

"It's nothing."  She takes a thin slice of pig intestine from the plate between them and places it on her rice, staring down at it.  "I just—"  She stops.  "I wish I could wear clothes like that.  Look like them."  She's surprised by the way her voice comes out, sour as an unripe pomegranate.

Zhu's voice is unexpectedly sharp, making her look up in surprise.  "Don't compare yourself to them.  You're beautiful."  Embarrassed, she wants to look away, but he holds her eyes for a long moment before continuing in a lighter tone, "Should I write poetry to convince you?  Compare your eyes to those of the red phoenix, your eyebrows to willow leaves?"

"Seneschal Zhu," she protests.  Despite her mood, she find herself blushing at his misappropriation of the classic text.

"You don't like willow leaves.  Crescent moons, then.  Try me.  My calligraphy is quite good."

"Oh, so you're a poetry-spouting flatterer like Pao Yu," she says, matching his reference.  Appetite returning, she nibbles decorously on the slice of intestine.

"Pao Yu was uncommonly broad-minded for a human.  Although if I recall correctly, he ended up a monk."

"He had all the men and women he wanted, except Tai Yu," she says, remembering.  "If even the reincarnations of the divine don't get their heart's desires—"

"And we don't even have hearts."  Zhu glances down thoughtfully, then after a minute the corner of his mouth turns up.  "Don't you think that's a good thing?  If Heaven doesn't care about us, we choose our own way."

***

"Sergeant Ma has invited Chief Inspector Chen to dinner tonight."

Inari delicately punctures the dumpling on her soup spoon with her teeth, savouring the hot rush of cow's blood onto her tongue.  "Oh?"

"Our own invitations seem to have been mislaid."

Zhu might be annoyed at the snub, but her own concerns are less for herself than for Chen.  She uncomfortably recalls the time she cursed his office; his humiliation at having to apologise to his juniors for his uncivilised demon wife.  Even if he invited his superiors for dinner, she already knows that none would come.  Another avenue cut off to him, because of her.  And she's conscious that neither Chen nor Zhu has spoken recently about any upcoming promotions.

It's early evening by the time Chen calls.  He doesn't mention the invitation, though, merely saying, "I've asked Zhu to come around to our place for dinner, if that's all right.  Can you prepare one or two dishes?  We'll pick some other things up, too, enough for the three of us."

The thought of hosting a guest, even a familiar one like Zhu, is embarrassing: the houseboat is a single room encompassing kitchen, bed and a compact dining set, without even curtains for partitioning.  The situation in the fridge is worse. Fishcake, fresh rice noodles and yellow-flowering choy sum: bland human foods for weeknight dinners, hardly suitable for guests.

Her hand hovers over the plate of fresh shrimp heads, a popular Hell ingredient that she'd picked up the day before in a moment of homesickness.  Zhu would enjoy them, she thinks, remembering his preference for Hell restaurants.  After another moment of hesitation, she takes the plate.  She'll make fried shrimp heads in tomato sauce, served with a sliced baguette: a Hell speciality her mother taught her how to prepare.  Starting to clean the heads in a small plastic basin, she lets herself drift in the old memories, sweeter today than bitter: her mother and Amah talking in the kitchen as they shelled whole shrimp; the crunch of shells contrasting with soft white bread; the rich sweet-acid taste of simmered tomatoes.

It's past eight when the teakettle whistles sardonically at footsteps on the gangplank.  She greets her husband with a kiss then turns and says, "Please come in, Seneschal Zhu."

Her husband hands her bag of plastic containers as he comes in.  When she takes it to the kitchen to open, she surprised to see the top container has her favourite Hell dish: braised sea cucumbers and abalone, their slippery bodies slicked with a dried scallop sauce.  She can't even remember ever mentioning it.  Standing behind her, he says mildly, "Zhu and I thought we'd stop by Wulei Zing on the way home."  Inari has to smile.  Wulei Zing, an upmarket demon restaurant catering to crossover businessmen and visiting Hell officials, would have been a sizeable detour in the evening traffic.

Her smile fades momentarily.  "Abalone is so expensive, Ah-Wei—"

"Don't worry about it."  He kisses her temple.  "Zhu has contacts there."

He helps her carry the food to the dining table, where Zhu is pouring the rice wine he's brought.  His coat, white with a purple azalea pattern, is hanging on the back of his chair, although he's kept his tie.  Chen settles in a chair and leans back to survey the scene with apparent satisfaction.  "Life is too short for me to spend it biting my tongue in the presence of bigots," he says, then without elaborating further, "Let's eat."

After a few minutes Zhu says with an uncharacteristic tentativeness, "Chief Inspector Chen, for the current case—it's recently occurred to me that the timing may not be coincidental."

Chen looks up.  "Go on."

"All the victims have been children.  But have you noticed how none of them were wearing red?"

"I hadn't noticed.  Is that important?"

"The victims all showed signs of having been mauled by a large animal: something with a dog-like bite, but larger than a dog.  Which is why we were looking at the possibility of a spirit possession of an animal.  But what if it were a nin?"

"Really!" her husband looks impressed.  "That possibility hadn't even occurred to me, although it fits the facts.  But I thought nin were extinct?"

Zhu shakes his head.  "Maybe on Earth, but I think there are still some left in certain parts of Hell.  Is that right, Mrs Chen?"

"People say there are still some in Fengdu," she says doubtfully.  "In the mountains near Mang Po's summer mansion."  She frowns.  "Seneschal Zhu, do you recall those two labourers when we last ate at that Hell restaurant—"

"They said they were going back through Fengdu for the New Year," Zhu says triumphantly, his gaze leaving Inari for Chen.  "They're certainly undocumented, so they'd be forced to find an illegal border crossing.  Fengdu has always been an ancient gateway; it's possible a slipway has opened up there recently, allowing Hell residents to cross at will."

Her husband's face is alight with discovery.  "And as it's close to the New Year, any nin in the vicinity would be coming out of hibernation and looking for food—"

"The closest source of which is local human children," Zhu finishes for him.  "But because Hell's Fengdu no longer maps precisely onto Earth's, we have nin roaming the back blocks of Wan Chai!"

"You continue to amaze me, Zhu," Chen says, smiling with undisguised honesty.  There's an openness in his expression towards Zhu that surprises her.  But of course they would be close, she thinks, given how much time they spend together.

Zhu shakes a cigarette out towards Chen from an open box.  Inari recognises the pale chrysanthemum-yellow foil as a fashionable Hell brand.  "Not a bad result for a night's work over good food and in the company of friends."  There's something charged in his voice: something reminiscent of the way Zhu interacts with her.  Potential.

She watches Zhu grin and lean in to touch a finger to the end of Chen's cigarette until it glows red.  There's an intimate familiarity about the gesture, a practiced ritual just between the two of them.  When Zhu flips his hair and turns away to light his own cigarette, Inari's not entirely surprised to see a faint flush in his cheeks, the tip of a slightly lengthened fang pressing against his lip.  She'd known already, she thinks, reaching back into her memory: Zhu's tentativeness in speaking about her husband, the natural admiration and respect of a young demon that must have slipped too easily into something more tender.

She doesn't begrudge Zhu his feelings.  Not when they're the same as hers.

Her husband is still watching Zhu, but after a beat he looks away and takes a lazy drag of his cigarette, raising his wine cup.  "To my brilliant partner and my beautiful wife.  Yam sing."

Later that night when Chen reaches for her affectionately, her mind slides to Zhu.  Remembering the flush of curiosity and attraction in Zhu's cheeks sends a thrill through her, a cheaper pleasure than the guilt-ridden fantasy of Zhu's body against her own.  Zhu with his hands on her husband's practical human body—he'd treat it as something sacred and fragile, she thinks, the same way she'd done.  In her mind's eye she sees Zhu's beautiful face warm with wonder and arousal, fangs sliding out, her husband's lip caught between his teeth and his back arching slightly against the sheets into the movement of Zhu's lower hand—

But it's a demonic thought, not a human one, and she pushes it from her mind as her husband kisses her neck and starts to unzip her dress.

***

The calendar year ends and heads into January.  There's a strange new tension on the metro, the glances turned her way less curious, more hostile.  Chen and Zhu are busy with a rush of new cases. Chen calls in the evenings, or sometimes it's Zhu, telling her not to wait to eat.  She misses them both, pottering around at night with only the silent teakettle for company.  In the mornings the bed is still warm from where Chen has just left.  She can't be bothered cooking for one in the mornings, so buys cha leung on the way to work.  There's no demon equivalent of food this bland and inoffensive, and she's hungry again by ten.

One morning she and Mrs Teo are startled by shouting and banging on the street outside.  The Cantonese is too garbled for Inari to understand, but Mrs Teo's lips thin into a flat line.  "Stay here," she says, heading downstairs.  Inari hears her shouting, and when she comes back she just shakes her head and says, "Better catch a taxi home today, girl.  You can take ten Sing from the petty cash."

The next day all the windows have been broken.  Inari stares numbly at the mess of glass in their office and feels the guilt flooding through her, colder and more despairing than a descent through the lower levels.  "It's my fault," she says.  She feels like she can barely move her lips.  "They— because I'm—"

"Don't be stupid, girl," Mrs Teo says sharply.  "Blame yourself, you're as stupid as they are.  'Enemy', they say—what do they know about enemies, I ask you, boys that they are?  Hell isn't the enemy, and if they'd stayed in school and studied, they'd know that Heaven needs Hell as much as Hell needs Heaven.  Think we could be the Middle Kingdom if there was only Heaven?  Middle of what, huh?"

Inari stares down at the glass on her desk, concentrating on taking deep breaths.  Mrs Teo watches her until her breathing returns to normal, and then says, not unkindly, "Now find a broom, will you."

They manage to sweep up all the glass by mid-morning.  Inari sits blankly at her desk over lunch, looking at the broken windows.  She picks up the phone and puts it down; starts dialling the District Headquarters number and stops.  After a while she bites her lip and dials in a single determined burst.

Her husband listens to her sympathetically and then says, "Just ignore them, Ah-Juen.  People are just worried about jobs, and the immigration issue is making it worse.  It'll blow over in time; no use worrying over what you can't change."

She puts the phone down slowly.  She's not sure what she'd wanted him to say, but what he did say hasn't helped the cold rising up inside her again.  A hopelessness, helplessness that she doesn't want to be the victim of.  The clock seems to be ticking too loudly, too slowly.  She gets up restlessly, sits down, jumps up again and walks quickly over to the window and puts her hand over the jagged edge.  She lets it rest there a minute, gathering her thoughts and feeling the sharpness against her skin, before taking a deep breath and pressing into the pain until she sees blood staining the glass.  The elided syntax of the Classical Chinese prayer is almost as familiar to her as her native Gweilin.  She may not be a chosen one, like her husband is Kwan Yin's, but all demons are Yen Lo's children.  As she soon as she finishes the prayer she can feel Hell's power grinding through her, the flow mirroring her uneven emotional state until the glass's reformed surface is thick and thin like the swell of the ocean.

She hears Zhu's metal-soled boots before she sees him.  It's the first time he's come over this week.  He stands behind her, watching silently as she fixes the third window.  The glass in this one turns out even more rippled than the previous two: it bulges convex and concave until she snatches her hand from it in disgust, leaving a bloody smear.  Before she quite realises it, she's whirling on Zhu and snapping, "He has no idea what it's like—day after day, every day, like this!  Oh, so maybe not quite like this," she gestures furiously, impotently, at the windows, "but—"

Zhu listens to her quietly, then says, "I know."

She drops her throbbing hands and takes a deep breath, trying to bring herself under control.  "I apologise, Seneschal Zhu; I wasn't thinking clearly. Please forget I said anything."

Zhu stays where he is.  He doesn't reach out to touch her, the way a human—her husband—would.  "You're allowed to be angry."

For some reason his understanding is making it harder for her to keep her emotions under control.  She can feel them sloshing around inside her: anger, hate, resentment, shame—her demonic nature that she's been trying so hard to tame, to make human, to make good.  "I just wish I could—" she says.  She can barely think straight.  She doesn't know what she wants.  She just knows she wants something—something to lash out at, to hurt, to wound.

"You can."

Her flimsy control is breaking; she's crying now, big furious hiccupping sobs.  "I want to—I can't—"  For a moment she wants to hurt him, for the horrible understanding in his expression, and then she's half-lunging, half-falling away from him to slap her bloody palm down on the table.  The surge of curse energy arcs into her like inverted lightning, spilling out again into the white haze of the city streets.  She can feel the instant her targets double over to clutch their invisible agony.  Her own pain magnified and made real, doubled back onto those who caused it.  "May you feel what I feel," she curses them, through clenched teeth.  "Suffer as I have suffered."

Zhu catches her when her knees sag.  He holds her as she cries against his shoulder, hot tears of guilt and anger and frustration that keep coming until she's wrung dry.

After work she makes her way to the temple at the end of the street.  The building is dark and quiet, the goddess's raised statue barely visible in the shadows at the top of the steps.  The ground burns her knees as she kneels.  It feels like penance.

None of her native prayers, her language, are likely to be heard by Heaven.  In stumbling Cantonese she says, "Divine Kwan Yin of the Southern Ocean, great treasure of unimaginable compassion—"

The name of the deity feels alien on her tongue, sticking there like mung bean paste.  Thinking of the future makes her feel sick with guilt: her husband losing the goddess's favour, rejected by Heaven because of her and her demonic nature, her innate evil that keeps spilling out time and again to shame him.  She bows her head over her flattened palms, struggling to keep the tears at bay.

There's a gradual ringing in her head.  Heaven's presence pressing in on her mind, tighter and tighter until she squeezes her eyes shut in pain.  She hears herself give a cry.  Suddenly the pain vanishes, leaving a resonant emptiness, and when she opens her eyes she sees the goddess.

Kwan Yin's face is the colour of the morning sky over Tai Mountain.  Her eyes are the terrifying, all-encompassing compassion of Heaven that makes Inari's demonic soul tremble, even as something else inside her reaches desperately for it.

"Daughter," Kwan Yin says.  Her voice is like a thousand iron bells.  "Why do you feel ashamed of what you are?"  She lifts her hand and Inari flinches in anticipation, but when the touch comes it's nothing more than the brush of cool fingers against her cheek.  "You may be a child of Yen Lo, but we are all what Nü Kua made us.  Neither Heaven nor Hell will ever ask anything more of you than that."

The mercy and understanding flowing from the goddess is more devastating than any curse.  By the time Inari wipes the last of the rusty tears from her face and finally looks up, the temple is quiet under the statue's still iron gaze.

***           

The New Year migration is in already in full swing when, over soup noodles, Zhu asks Inari, "When are you going home, Mrs Chen?"

She hesitates.  "I'm not."

"Is it the visa?  It's no trouble for me to ask Senior Superintendent Sung to arrange for a District letter in lieu."  

"Thank you, but there is no need to trouble yourself on my behalf," she says.  "Chen Wei's family will be holding celebrations.  It would be inappropriate of me not to attend."

"You don't always have to do what they want."

There's a ringing in her head, the echo of Heaven's presence.  Zhu's eyes stay on her as she bends her head to her noodles.  After a long while he looks away.

When she's serving rice to her husband that evening, though, she finds herself saying, "Wasn't Sung Su promoted to Senior Superintendent on the basis of your work on the nin case?"

"Not solely that, but no doubt it contributed to the outcome.  Why?"

"Can you ask him for a District letter, a visa waiver?"

He looks at her quietly.  "You want to go back to Hell."

She meets his eyes.  "Yes."

He looks at her face for a long moment, as if assessing something, and slowly his expression lightens into something approaching relief.  "Zhu has requested New Year leave in two days' time; he can accompany you in case you have any problems."

"There won't be any problems; not if I have the letter."

"Ah-Juen."  He touches her hand.  "It's not simply the documentation issue.  Remember the last time.  I'd feel more comfortable if you let Zhu accompany you."

"Why do you trust him so much?"

Chen is quiet for a minute, then his mouth suddenly tips into half a smile.  "In a way, he reminds me of you.  He's—what's that old literary concept?  Cing."

There's no Gweilin equivalent word for cing; all of their translations of the ancient texts render it as a clumsy phrase, a footnote.  She wonders if her husband realises the irony of describing two Hell creatures with a word that doesn't even exist in their language.  Cing, that Heaven-given characteristic of passion, genuine feelings.  Joy, anger, sorrow, delight.  Love.  The essential qualities that make humans human, that define them.

***

She stands waiting for Zhu in the small city park.  On the vast TV screen on the side of a facing building she can see the news is covering the usual tales of stranded holiday travellers, the various incompetencies of the Transport Department.

She sees Zhu walking towards her through the rows of blossoming winter plum trees.  He's wearing a long honey-coloured coat over a flawlessly cut black suit; a crisp white shirt that's open at the neck.  Objectively, as though looking at a picture, she thinks again how beautiful he is: the sharp lines of his cheekbones, the artfully disarrayed hair falling over his forehead as he walks.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Chen," he greets her.  There's an intimacy in his glance as he takes in her rose-brown dress, golden drop earrings, hair swept and held with her mother's gold hairpin, but he merely smiles at her and says, "Chief Inspector Chen has obtained permission for us to make use of the VIP immigration channels at Kwan Yin's temple."  At her look he says, "Don't tell me you'd prefer to queue for three days."

She doesn't, but it's still an ambivalent feeling to step through the gateway and feel the goddess's eyes on her, the warm echo of Heaven's mercy.

When they step out on the other side, her first breath is of her childhood: spent incense and the fragrance of jasmine and night-lilies.  The cool air of Hell wraps around her like a physical thing, the indivisible essence of her homeland.  She stands still, struck by the achingly familiarity of it.  She can already feel the slight stirring of changes beneath her skin, her body relaxing into its natural state.  Her mind is light: everything effortlessly fitting into her understanding of the world, her shared history with this place.

"Shall we find a carriage?" Zhu asks eventually.

"No, let's walk; it's not far."  She wants to stay immersed in this – her – world, the familiarity of it.

As they start walking, Hell around them is in full celebratory swing: white lanterns floating in the branches like replacement moons, the streets full of the discordance of their native music, shadow puppet plays for the children.  She pauses as they pass one of the plays, a historical drama she recognises.

Zhu, seeing her smile, says, "My favourite was always the Battle of Guandu."

"Oh, yes!  But I think my favourite was Cao Ying's stand against Zhao Zilong," she says, delighted.  The memories are rushing in, unclouded by the usual feelings of loss and regret.

Zhu laughs.  "Did you know my family is descended from her in the maternal line?"

"Why, Seneschal Zhu, surely you're aware that claiming descent from old Emperor Wu hardly makes you unique amongst the Old Hundred Names," she chides laughingly.

"Believe what you like."  He grins.

His hand brushes hers as they walk, but he doesn't try to take her hand.  She's exquisitely aware of the situation: the two of them travelling together, the invisible presence of her husband between them.  She can still feel Chen's love, her love for him, like a red string tying the two of them together—but now she wonders if Zhu might not be joined to them, too, tangled in their string.

As they approach her parents' lodging-house, Zhu stops.  "Before you go, Chief Inspector Chen asked me to give you this."  He hands her a small box in wrapped in red paper.

Inside, there's a round white jade pendant on a simple string.  When she looks more closely, she can see the pendant is formed from the curled shape of a snake.  She traces its curves gently with her finger, thinking of the symbolism: renewal, rebirth, healing.

Zhu helps her put it on.  He's close enough, leaning down, that his hair brushes her face, and she can smell him: demonic, nothing like her husband, still undeniably masculine.  As his fingers skim her throat she has to suppress an involuntary shiver at the intimacy of the gesture.  He says, lips moving close to her cheek, "You love him."

"Do you think we can really love?"

His fingers are still lingering against her collarbone as he looks at her.  There's an openness in his face makes her catch her breath.  "Of course."

She's tongue-tied all of a sudden.  His mouth quirks as he looks at her, pulling back.  His fingertips trail lightly along her collarbone, dropping to fleetingly touch her hand before withdrawing.  Her entire body is radiating heat, glowing from his touch and the complicated feelings that accompany it, but all he says is, "Happy New Year, Mrs Chen."

***

The two weeks of the Spring Festival passes faster than Inari would have thought possible.  Her parents press food and gifts onto her, and she's embarrassed at how they must have scrimped and saved just for her.  "Eat, eat," her mother keeps urging, as though terrified her daughter has been starving to death on Earth, until Inari takes her work-thickened hands and says gently, "Ma, I'm all right."

Her mother is wearing a dress Inari remembers from her childhood, faded now, and a tenderness wells up in her chest that nearly makes her cry.  "You should be wearing new clothes, Ma, since it's the new year already."  She's brought a suitcase of them from Earth, and all the other small things that Hell citizens crave: boxes of sweet chrysanthemum tea, packets of sunflower and melon seeds, dried sour plums.

"What use does an old woman like me have for new things," her mother says, but her eyes are glistening and she pats Inari's hand.  "You're a good girl, remembering your parents like this."

She does cry, when it's time to leave.  "Don't worry," she promises fiercely.  "I'll visit again at the mid-Autumn Festival.  And maybe next year Chen Wei can arrange visas so you can come and live with us, we don't have much, but—"

She's aware of Zhu watching from a polite distance, and when she joins him he doesn't comment on the plum-stain tears at the corner of her eyes.  He's quiet when they start walking, but she catches him looking sideways and after a while he says in a low voice, "You look particularly beautiful today."

She's wearing a celadon green cheongsam with no sleeves, a low collar and plunging neckline.  It makes her feel daring, and when she looks down she sees her shell-white scales shading downwards from her collarbone and over her breasts where they curve beneath the filmy material of the dress.

"Do you miss Hell when you're on Earth, Seneschal Zhu?"

"Hell will always be home."  He shrugs.  "But there are good things about Earth, too."

He doesn't seem inclined to elaborate, but from the way his eyes stay on her she's fairly sure she knows what— who— he means.

Earth is noisy and festive for the Lantern Festival, the streets full of laughing and squabbling family groups wandering in the mild evening.  The worlds are temporarily crossing over from the sheer weight of the migration—almost like a farewell, Inari thinks, smiling, as she glimpses the last few familiar sights from home: a line of black Hell poplars along one particular street; a pair of three-legged crows that hop away from them as they stroll down the waterfront.

Even from a distance she can pick out their houseboat, that other familiar sight.  The lights are on, and her husband has strung dancing red lanterns along the bow.  She looks over at Zhu walking quietly next to her.  He turns his head to catch her glance and smiles, making her chest flutter.  They'd passed the street for his lodging-house several blocks earlier, but somehow there'd never been any question of him not coming back to the houseboat.

Her husband is waiting at the gangplank for them.  He greets her with a kiss, and she's pleasantly conscious of Zhu standing behind them, watching.

"I'm glad you're back," Chen says, grinning over her shoulder to include Zhu.  "If I'd had to spend another day with my family—"  He laughs.  "Ungrateful son that I am.  But more importantly—how was your holiday?"

"It was—" she says, and pauses to search for the right word.  "Wonderful."  And it is the right word, she decides.  She feels settled, certain, in a way she never has before.  This time she hasn't been rescued by her husband, by Zhu; hasn't simply fled, anxious to leave everything of her old life behind.  This time, she thinks, it's her choice.

Chen is searching her face, relieved happiness starting to crinkle the corner of his eyes.  "Have you eaten yet?" he asks, directing the question to her and Zhu. "I have some ingredients from the wet market this morning; perhaps we can make something together."

The three of them make dumplings together, in the shared custom of Earth and Hell.  Dried mushroom and ground pork, in the human style, and the lamb and peppercorn ones famous in Hell's Fengdu region.  Her fingers brush her husband's as they reach at the same time into the bowl of water to moisten their fingertips; touch lightly against Zhu's as they place the finished dumplings in the steamer.  She smiles down at her work, catching their answering expressions in the corner of her eye.

They sit around the table and eat, the whole house bearing them gently up and down on the swell.  After, her husband and Zhu sip warmed Maiden Red shaoxing rice wine, passing a cigarette back and forth, and she finds herself simply watching them as she drinks her own tea: handsome solid human, beautiful swaggering demon.

The night is still warm, but she can feel the charges in the atmosphere building in the prelude to a storm.  When it starts to rain she excuses herself and climbs to the top deck, revelling in wind and the sharp sideways slap of the first raindrops.  The paper lanterns along the harbourside are blinking out one by one, until all she can see past the edges of the deck is falling water lit silver from the houseboat's lights.  Her dress is soaked through.  She can feel her fangs lengthening; pushes away the reflex feeling of shame to focus on the natural pleasure of the sensation.

She's still floating on water somewhere between Heaven and Hell and Earth, but now it's no longer one of the grey places, she thinks.  She belongs to Hell and Earth, and for all she knows—maybe Heaven too.

When she turns around the two of them are standing under the awning of the top deck, watching her.  She can see the tips of Zhu's fangs glinting against his lips, dark gold flashing in the light.  Her husband is flushed, a little tipsy, but his eyes are intent.  She threads her fingers between her husband’s warm human ones and leads him inside, Zhu following, and when they get downstairs in the warm rocking womb of the boat she reaches out and draws the curtains closed.

***

Pear blossoms contend in silence with the beauty of the moon;
The Milky Way curves to reach the embroidered chamber.
I love to burn incense, passing the eternal night,
And have never implored Heaven for anything.
     - Zhang Hongqiao

ENDS