Wen bit his lower lip to keep from crying out. It was Father, no doubt about it. But the sight was heartbreaking. Father wore his only good suit of clothes—Wen remembered seeing it, as a child—but the way the robe, tunic and trousers hung on him suggested a boy wearing his father's clothing. "Is it possible," he asked Yin Fengzi, pitching his voice as low as he could in order that the officer not hear him, "that hungry ghosts can actually starve, and shrink?"
"I don't know,
and it doesn't matter. Xia, you have to
get him and get us out of here, fast."
"Why the
hurry? Can't I say hello to my father
before we run away? And anyway, won't it
look suspicious if we greet and run?"
"Wen Xia,"
she said, and her voice reminded him uncomfortably of the way Mother had
sounded when he'd done something she considered to be misbehavior, "take a
look around you. What do you see?"
"It's an
orchard. No surprise in that,
Fengzi. The officer told us that,
remember?"
"And the fruit,
Xia?"
"Very
pretty," he said. "Much nicer
than anything I've seen in Fusang. We
should be so lucky as to be able to grow—oh.
Ah." Suddenly the temptation
to pick and eat the fruit was nearly impossible to resist.
Father was tending a
peach orchard. Don't eat the peaches,
Fengzi had said.
"Who,"
boomed a voice from overhead, "is molesting my Immortality Orchard?"
Too late. "That would be the Queen Mother of the
West?" he asked Fengzi.
"It
would," she said. "Next time I
tell you to run, will you listen to me, please?"
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