"Good afternoon, Wen," said Wu. The scholar had learned his lesson, apparently: as he greeted Wen he handed a glass of chilled fruit juice that also tasted a little of mescal. Interesting idea, thought Wen as he sipped the drink. "What brings you here today? I trust lady Yin Fengzi is well?"
"She is well," Wen said. "But I am plagued by grandfathers. Too many of them. Pocapetl told me that besides doing up letters and documents for people, you have other skills that can help me. Such as, you know of, or can create, spells that will help me—ah, persuade my ancestors to leave me alone."
"What?" The grandfathers, for a moment, had a single voice. This immediately burst into the usual cacophony of geriatric griping. At the same time, Wen's wine-cup began to jitter across the table on which it had been placed. A quick lunge got his hand around it just before it took flight; he drained the cool liquid in a single gulp, lest the grandfathers cause the cup to explode in his hand.
"You see?" He handed the cup to Wu's servant, who looked at it the way a mouse would look at a snake.
"They're here, I take it?"
"Oh, yes. And they don't seem to like my idea. Is there anyplace we can talk that they can't reach? Or will one of your spells at least shut them up?"
"If you do that," said Number One Grandfather, "I promise your pain and suffering will be all the worse when we get our hands on you again."
"I'll just have to make it permanent then, won't I?"
"Sorry?" Wu cocked his head again. "Oh, you were talking to one of them."
"Yes," said Wen, grateful that Wu was so quick to catch on. "So: can you help me?"
"I can start, at least." Wu left the room; a moment later the servant reappeared with a larger wine-cup. This one Wen held onto.
He wound up spilling the wine anyway, because as soon as the servant departed the grandfathers began throwing things at him. Apparently their strength was limited, because they could only pick up larger objects by working as a team, and the scholar's house did not provide the space necessary. And they couldn't attack Wen directly either, it seemed, aside from smacking him on the head the way any parent would a child. Still, being hit with a succession of tied-up scrolls, ink-stones and bundles of brushes became annoying very fast.
"Well," said Wu from the doorway. "This will require some cleaning up."
Wen was embarrassed—and then embarrassed some more when he realized that he was feeling shame for the behavior of his ancestors. "I'd like to say that my grandfathers are usually better-behaved than this," he said. "But it wouldn't be true, so I won't."
"It's all right," Wu said. "I understand perfectly." Stepping over to where Wen had barricaded himself behind a display of old scrolls and bronzes, the scholar handed Wen a scrap of paper. "Read this aloud," he said.
It was a poem, only a couple of lines long, and Wen had finished it almost before he'd realized he was speaking the words. Almost immediately he was aware of a difference. The steady background noise of thin, wheezy grumbling and whining was gone. And while the grandfathers were still visible, they had become even less tangible; they were like the clouds at the top of a mountain you had climbed, wispy things no longer as imposing as they had once seemed.
"Where did they go?" Wen asked.
"I sent them to the top of the hill," said Scholar Wu.
"You can not only get them out of your house, but to a place of your choosing? How?"
"That," Wu said quietly, "would have been the line in the poem about going to the top of the hill."
"Ah. Well, I was never one for literature. But this is remarkable," Wen said. "A few weeks of this sort of peace and I'd almost feel like my old self."
"Unfortunately, the effect is temporary. You don't have weeks; you have maybe a quarter of an hour."
"Pity." Wen got up from his defensible position. "Still, that should be enough time for us to complete our business." He picked up an ink-stone and carried it back to the scholar's desk. "If a few lines of poetry work this well, I'm sure any banishment spell you can give me must be incredibly effective."
"In fact, that is exactly what I'm told." Wu handed Wen a tightly rolled scroll. "Read this to your ancestors and they will be banished from your presence forever. There is nothing they can do to stop it."
"Amazing," Wen said. "That's perfect." He walked to a window and declaimed to the top of the hill. "Do you see this?" he said, laughing at their sudden impotence. "I have your doom in my hand! And I'm not afraid to use it!"
There was no response, and Wu was surprised to feel disappointment. "Do I have to wait until they can see me and nag me again before I can use this?" he asked.
"Not at all," said Wu. "I have seen it work under any conditions. One man read it under water and it worked."
Wen unrolled the scroll. He started to read it to himself, then stopped. "I have to speak the words before it will work, yes?"
"That's right."
Wen read a few words further. "Perhaps," he said, "I should wait until they can hear me again. I want them to know what I'm doing to them."
"I should warn you," the scholar said, "that if they can hear you they will do anything in their power to prevent you from finishing the spell."
"I can live with another ink-stone thrown at me," Wen said.
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