Chapter 91 — The Watcher Under the Moon

"This is Fengdu. Forbidden ground for the living."

The bird-headed freak spoke through its beak, and its voice was very strange, not smooth the way a human voice is. "You are a living man. You should not have come here."

The Village Head's face was grave. He smiled and said, "I have come all the same."

The bird-headed freak said, "If you wish to leave, you must pay a price."

Curious, the Village Head asked, "What price?"

"There is a Yama in Fengdu."

The bird-headed freak's eyes seemed to be looking at the tip of its own beak. "Yama has noticed you. He admires you greatly, and so Yama has a request. Grant it, and you may go."

The Village Head's expression stirred a little. Politely he said, "What request?"

"After you die, you belong here."

The Village Head mused a while, then suddenly laughed. "The Realm of the Living Dead — a world where the dead live on, and where the living die. If after death I can go on living here, why should I not gladly agree? The life of the outer world is death here; the death of the outer world is life here. If I can live here after death, that is a good thing. I agree. But first, could you answer a few questions?"

The bird-headed freak tilted its head. "Ask. I may not answer."

The Village Head smiled faintly. "That Soul Boat — is it the Land of No Sorrow?"

"No."

The Village Head was taken aback, and blurted out, "It is not the Land of No Sorrow? Then why does it draw Shen'er's jade pendant? Why does it make the jade pendant point to this place? And why has the Soul Boat appeared here at all?"

The bird-headed freak frowned; its eyeballs were glaring at the tip of its own beak again, plainly annoyed by the number of his questions. "The Moon Herders of the Soul Boat all died. Every last one, extinct. So the Soul Boat was sent here by the last Moon Guardian. A dead man lives aboard it. Go and ask him. He very likely knows."

"A dead man? A Moon Guardian, then?" said the Village Head doubtfully.

The bird-headed freak lifted one leg and scratched at the feathers on its neck, kicking out a golden-yellow worm, which it snapped up and swallowed. Impatiently it said, "You ask too many questions."

The Village Head said, "And the demon god that attacked me? Is Fengdu not the domain of the Heavenly Demons?"

"She is a resident here. This place belongs to Yama, not to the Heavenly Demons."

The bird-headed freak, as though he did not exist at all, groomed its ruffled feathers with its beak. "In time you will live here too, as she does. Yama admires you greatly."

The Village Head let out a breath of turbid air. He had thought this place the world of demons, and it seemed he had guessed wrong yet again. So the demon god he had trapped was merely one of the great lords of the Realm of the Living Dead.

He asked again, "Where is the Land of No Sorrow?"

The bird-headed freak had quite lost patience with him. It spread its wings and flew off. "You ask too many questions. I find you very annoying. Do not forget your promise. When you die, I will come to fetch you. Do not go off with the underworld envoys!"

The Village Head watched it fly far away, then looked at the Soul Boat. The enormous Soul Boat had risen to its feet and was dragging the moon along on a purposeless journey.

"I have been spurned. Is it that a man grows talkative once he is old?"

The Village Head did not know whether to laugh or to weep. He walked toward the Soul Boat. The vortex still hung in the sky, still bleeding, and the demon god was still struggling within it, trying to break out.

"That demon god borrowed the Soul Boat to draw Shen'er here — she must know some secret of the Land of No Sorrow. A pity I can only trap her, and cannot force her to tell me what she knows."

He boarded the Soul Boat and came onto the hull that rested upon the toad's back. Looking out, he saw palaces standing rank upon rank, all in ruin: broken walls, crumbling eaves, and great fallen weapons — most of them crescent-moon blades, some of them mirrors and the like.

The palaces here were vast, no dwelling for ordinary folk.

He passed a great hall and stopped to study the sculpture before it.

The sculpture was a three-legged jade toad: three legs, the body of a man and the head of a toad, half man and half toad.

"Hee hee hee..."

An eerie laughter came from among the halls, and that gloomy voice was singing, singing a nursery rhyme: "Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, rocking to Grandma's bridge..."

The Village Head hesitated, paid the voice no heed, and walked into the hall before him. The hall was in utter disorder: censers overturned, incense ash strewn across the floor, bronze sparrow lamps smashed, screens snapped in two, jade couches shattered. Plainly it had passed through some tremendous upheaval.

He looked all around, then halted before the murals of the great hall. The murals depicted tall, slender giants in white robes herding the moon; they drove the Soul Boat, and appeared in the night.

Outside the Soul Boat were many fierce and hideous demon creatures, assaulting the vessel, but the giants aboard beat them back with bows and spears, swords and blades.

With the coming of day, the darkness receded, and the Soul Boat would return to an abyss. That must be the Soul Spring.

The Village Head looked closely. The giants aboard the Soul Boat were exceedingly handsome, and between their brows lay a crescent moon.

"So the bird freak spoke the truth. Shen'er truly is no Moon Herder. Between Shen'er's brows there is no crescent moon."

He made a circuit of the hall and found nothing more, and only then came to the great pillars at the center of the palaces. Around the colossal pillars coiled chains, and the far ends of the chains trailed up into the sky, tethered to a broken moon.

As the Soul Boat moved, the broken moon in the sky was dragged along with it; and when that broken moon rolled, great fireballs came tumbling down from the heavens — the mountains and stones of the broken moon.

The moon had been battered into ruin; the moment it moved, stones fell from it and became shooting stars.

Some meteors did not burn away, and they crashed down into the Land of No Sorrow, smashing pit after pit into the ground — a most perilous thing.

"A packet of sweets, a packet of fruit, Grandma buys a fish to cook. The head's not done, the tail's burnt black, it squeaks in the bowl and in your belly hops and jumps! Heh heh heh heh heh..."

The singing grew ever more bizarre. The Village Head frowned slightly and swept his gaze around him, but still he saw no one, and a chill crept up the back of his heart.

Then he saw the source of the voice. On the flat ground at the center of those great pillars lay a face, an enormous face.

The enormous face was singing, and what it sang was that somewhat sinister nursery rhyme. Its hair was in disarray, like a madman sealed inside a mirror — yet between its brows lay a crescent moon.

"A Moon Guardian of the Moon Herding Clan..."

The Village Head sighed and sat down. He picked up a stone and carved it into the likeness of the jade pendant that hung at Shen Mu's breast. "Moon Guardian, have you ever seen this jade pendant?"

"In your belly it hops and jumps!"

The enormous face laughed heh heh. "Hops and jumps!"

The Village Head frowned. This Moon Guardian must have died after fusing wholly with the Soul Boat. He had spent his last strength guiding the Soul Boat into the Realm of the Living Dead, yet he himself had died within the hull. Even if he came to life again in the Realm of the Living Dead, he could only live inside the hull, unable to come out.

He had gone mad after death.

The Village Head rose and was about to leave when suddenly the face in the ground said, "The jade pendant of the Land of No Sorrow?"

The Village Head halted and hurriedly turned back. "You know where the Land of No Sorrow is?"

"Of course I know."