The Bones by the Wall

When the sun was up, Ning went out into the courtyard and saw what the night had left. The ward above his door lay in ash, and on the stones beyond the threshold there was a scorched mark where something had struck and struck in vain.

Yan was already packing his own things. He did not offer to go with Ning, and Ning did not ask him. Some debts, Yan said, are between a man and a ghost, and I am not the one to pay them. The thing is broken; it will trouble this place no more. But the girl's bones are still out there, and they are waiting for you.

He pointed to the corner of the graveyard behind the hall, where a single leaning stele stood under a willow, its characters worn away by the rain. There, he said. She told you the truth about herself. There are her bones, and she has asked you to take them home.

Ning went to the willow. The earth was soft from the rain, and he knelt and began to dig with his hands, for he had no spade. The soil gave easily; it had not been kept, and no one had wept at that grave in a great many years. Under it he found the small, sad skeleton of a girl, still wearing the faint traces of her burial robes.

He gathered the bones carefully, one by one, and wrapped them in the cleanest cloth he had, and bound the bundle with cord as though it were a sleeping child. He did not pray over them, for he did not know the rites she would have wanted, but he spoke to them as he worked, and told her he would keep his word.

When he looked up, Xiaoqian was standing a little way off, watching him. She was not afraid of the daylight now that the thing that had bound her was gone. She stood in the open sun, and though she still cast no shadow, she looked, for the first time, at peace.

You will carry me so far? she asked. Ning held up the bundle. As far as home, he said. She shook her head. You do not understand, she said. A ghost cannot ride in a bundle across the country. The living air of the road will scatter me. But if you lay my bones in the grave of your own family, and call me by my name when you do it, I will follow, and I will stay.

Then I will do that, Ning said. He said it as simply as one agrees to share a meal, and Xiaoqian looked at him as though she could not believe her ears. She had asked for so little, for so many years, and the first man who had not used her for her beauty had agreed to it without a second thought.

He stood a long moment over the filled grave, then brushed the earth from his knees. The temple behind him was already a ruin in the morning light; it would be a ruin when he was an old man, and that was as it should be. He had taken from it the one thing worth taking, and he left behind the thing that had eaten so many.

Yan watched him from the gate and said nothing more. He was not a man for goodbyes, and Ning did not press him. Some understandings, Ning was learning, need no words between them; the swordsman had kept his promise, and Ning would keep his, and that was the whole of their bargain.