“Thank you all for your kindness. But I do not say this because I care for her. I say it because I am thinking of the child she carries. You do not know. She is already carrying my brother’s child. I believe that is why she has acted so cruelly toward me. My parents would not agree to ending my engagement and having him marry her instead.
She has laid these traps because she is thinking of the child. It is wrong. I know it is wrong. But the child is innocent. I cannot bear to see harm come to it.”
The crowd fell silent. They still thought her foolish, but the news that Du Qinghui and Zhao Zilin had been intimate before marriage was electrifying. Could it be true? She spoke so plainly she could not lie. It had to be true. The crowd stirred with eager interest.
Du Qinghui had thought Song Mianmian was genuinely trying to speak on her behalf and had felt both relieved and amused at her simplicity. Now she stared in horror. She shook her head wildly trying to dislodge the cloth from her mouth. It fell away after a moment. The crowd let her speak, curious to hear what she would say.
“You lie! I am not with child! Nothing like that ever happened. Do not speak such lies against us.”
She hated Song Mianmian but still did not believe the girl meant her harm. She thought Song Mianmian simply did not understand how grave this was. Not only her reputation, but Zhao Zilin could lose his position, even be dismissed. Everyone believed the same, for they had always known Song Mianmian as gentle and harmless.
The neighbours were excited. Zhao Zilin was terrified. If this spread his future was ruined. He raised his voice.
“We are innocent. There is no truth to this. Do not misunderstand.”
He signalled Du Qinghui to stand firm. But it was too late. Two elders skilled in traditional medicine had stepped forward to take her pulse. Bound hand and foot she could not refuse. They examined her gravely in turn then spoke words that struck him like lightning.
“She carries a child. More than two months along.”
“Seventy days perhaps. Not quite eighty.”
A murmur rose from the crowd, half shocked half delighted. Du Qinghui and Zhao Zilin turned pale. She looked at him in alarm.
“It is not what you think, truly.”
Zhao Zilin had known her little more than a month. They had been intimate almost from the first, yet he had believed her pure. To hear she was already two months pregnant he realized he had been deceived and burned with shame and anger. He stepped toward her but heavy footsteps sounded outside.
A detachment of police entered and ordered everyone still. They took Du Qinghui and Zhao Zilin away and posted guards at the house. Song Mianmian and Zhao’s mother were told to remain in their rooms and not speak to anyone.
This was exactly as Song Mianmian had expected. She was glad for the quiet and turned her attention inward to the space. As its rightful owner she could enter in body or in mind, but with guards posted outside she chose to enter only in spirit.
In her past life when she had first seen it, the space was simple and bare. A two-story wooden house with three rooms, a hot spring, and ten mu of dark fertile land. The house preserved everything exactly as it was placed within it, fresh and unchanged. The spring water strengthened the body and preserved beauty. Fruits and vegetables watered with it grew ten times faster than in the outside world and tasted sweeter. Over the years Du Qinghui had filled the house with provisions, built a storehouse, and hoarded treasures.
Song Mianmian had expected to find it in its original empty state. Instead she found it exactly as it had been at the moment of her death, fully stocked and arranged. Her heart leapt. She took her time walking through every room confirming all was as she remembered. She reached into the drawer of her bedside table and brought out an apple, pretending it had been there all along.
For more than fifty years as a spirit she had known hunger only in longing. She bit into the apple and sighed with pure delight. She would spend this life eating well and enjoying every good thing. Tears ran down her face, not from sorrow but from sheer pleasure. The policewoman watching outside heard her and thought she wept over a lost love.
Song Mianmian did not yet dare drink from the spring for it would draw out impurities and make her sweat. She reached for an orange next. She longed for strawberries, cherries, tomatoes and mangoes too, but those were not in season and she dared not risk suspicion. She placed the core in the garden to fertilize the soil and reached for the orange. Then a soft child’s voice rang out.
“Master, I have waited so long for you.”
A little girl appeared beneath the tree, no older than four or five, with braids tied neatly, dressed in red and gold, eyes bright and round as stars. Song Mianmian started in surprise then realized who she was. This was the spirit of the jade space.
The little girl bowed and began to speak.