SEVEN
"Hells." Wen bumped into a table, cursed again and damned Pocapetl for keeping his wine-shop so dim. "Hells! All of them!"
"Look on the bright side," One-Eyed Lum said. "At least you know where he is." He paused. "You do know that, don't you?"
"No, I don't! That's the point!" Wen sat down, heavily. "He's supposed to be in hell. It's what happens to all of us when we die. But going to hell is routine, whether it's a Daoist hell, a Confucian hell, or a Buddhist hell. And part of that routine is that he's supposed to be in communication with our ancestors and his children—we are the ones who are supposed to speed his way through the bureaucracy." He put his head in his hands. "But I can't see him, and I don't even know which type of hell might apply. He was a Confucian scholar, after all but he was also a Daoist. And for all I know he might have been a secret Buddhist too."
"In which case you have to ask, Which Buddhist hell?" Lum asked. "According to some scrolls there are eighteen of them."
"Whereas other scrolls say there are a mere ten, so gods help you if you think you should be looking in Number Twelve Hell and your parent only believed in Numbers One through Ten. Then there are the nine or thirty-six there might be in Daoist hell." Wen picked up a wine-cup and drained it. "Why didn't anybody tell me what would happen if my father didn't end up in the correct hell?" Wen got up and resumed his pacing.
"What you really mean," Yin Fengzi said from her usual corner of the room, "is, Why didn't I pay attention when my father was telling me all about this?"
"Oh, so it's my fault all of a sudden, is it?"
"Yes." Fengzi, Lum and Pocapetl spoke as one.
"I can't believe that nobody ever told you about hungry ghosts, captain," Lum said. "If nothing else, it's a story every mother uses to scare her kids into behaving themselves."
"But those are children's tales! Nobody's supposed to take them seriously." Wen returned to Lum's table and sat down heavily; the chair creaked a protest and threatened to join the alliance against him by pitching him to the floor. Why won't somebody just tell me that this will all work out, he asked himself. Is that so hard to do?
"Anyway," he said, "I thought that hungry ghosts were people who had done evil or shown exceptional greed in their lifetimes. Though I'm hard-pressed to imagine what anyone in Fusang would consider exceptional greed. The point is, that doesn't describe my father. Father was a mild man who spent pretty much all of his life over his head in something or other."
"You're thinking of the hungry ghost festival," Fengzi said. "Not quite the same thing. People can also become hungry ghosts if their children fail to perform the correct rituals. In Daoism, if a spirit doesn't have the food, water and wine needed to make it through the hells—and they get those when someone performs the proper burial rituals—they return to earth to feed amongst the living." She looked at him pointedly. "So the rituals weren't performed, and now your father's a hungry ghost."
"It wasn't my fault the rituals weren't performed," Wen said. "Those obnoxious ancestors of mine were supposed to keep Father alive until I could reach him with enough money to pay for the doctors needed to cure him. And when they let Father die they didn't say anything about hungry ghosts—their only concern was with themselves!"
"And nobody else we know thinks that way," Fengzi said in a sour tone. "You should consider yourself lucky, Wen, that your father didn't die until the eighth month. That means you've got the better part of a year in which to make things right before his fate becomes permanent."
"Nothing is permanent."
"Strictly speaking I suppose you're right." She grinned at him, looking unpleasantly feral. "But somehow I don't see you as the modern incarnation of Mu Lian. And I sure don't see you being able to persuade all of the Bodhisattva in the universe to join together in a festival of pure joy in order to free your father. Especially if he's suffering a Daoist torment."
"Thank you for the theology lesson. Now would one of you mind telling me what I should do about this?"
"Didn't Wu Ming already tell you that?" Pocapetl asked. "And could you start doing it pretty soon? The lunch trade is going to be coming in, and I'd rather not have you crashing around here and complaining about your ancestors again. You're my best customer when you're in town, Wen, but at the moment I think you're going to be bad for business."
"I want a solution that doesn't involve unsealing those crotchety old men," Wen said. "Isn't there something I can do that involves spending money?"
"You don't have very much money to spend," Fengzi said.
"Not right now, but I will have when I've recovered the Meiyou treasure from Chin Gwai."
"Didn't we talk about this, captain?" Lum fiddled with his fingers, dropping his dagger in the process. Wen saw a bit of blood, but not enough to stand out from the general trend of Pocapetl's décor. "None of the crew wants to go after that ship again, and they certainly don't want to go into battle while you're dealing with some sort of curse."
"I am not cursed. Well, not anymore. So long as my grandfathers are pressed into that wine-jar, arguing with each other over who gets what bit of grilled pork, the Jade Maiden is free of malign influence. And so are all who sail in her."
"That's not how the Lady Fengzi has explained it to us," Lum said. He stared down at the tabletop, unhappiness painted in bright red all over his sun-darkened face. "According to her readings, your father's ghost is going to haunt you until you properly perform the rituals for him. And in the process he'll haunt anyone and everyone next to you."
"She's not even a real scholar!" Wen realized he'd made a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, but that knowledge didn't help much. Yin Fengzi didn't say a word, but she was gone from the tavern before Wen could open his mouth to apologize.
"You're probably right, captain," said One-Eyed Lum. "A real scholar probably couldn't vanish that way."
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