Into the Light
Fiction - by Lucy Zhang
When we bury our young, we carve out their hearts to offer to the mountains.
The mountains climb the sky, reaching into the white smoke and fog where it’s said trapped spirits linger, watching over the living, even when we disappear into the night to explore the caves of the dead, mining for gems we can exchange for chicken gizzard skewers that we’d snack on for an entire day. We bury the young close to the mouth of the cave because we’re afraid the children won’t know the way out. But if they can see where the sun reaches and licks their rotted toes, they should know how to follow the mountains and find their way above the clouds.
We call them the Frozen because like ice, they melt before they can see the days grow long and warm and welcome the season of apricots plumping on the ends of trees. The parents of the Frozen don’t take part in the heart-carving ceremonies. They are given time to mourn while the rest of us dig the hearts out of the babies. When we move fast, we can still feel the heat from the blood. After we take out the hearts, we bury the bodies in wood boxes built from the trees growing on the other side of the mountain, said to be strong and blessed by the spirits. We return the hearts to the parents who must hike up to the tree just below the sheet of clouds and string the hearts on branches. Parents must prepare the hearts meticulously, surround them with wire to prevent wolves from gnawing into the flesh, and tie them up with twine on the highest branches, as close to the spirits as they can get.
While the parents of the Frozen make the trek up the mountain, the rest of us light the streets with glass jars full of snapped rib cages of the Bai Gu Jing. The bones absorb sunlight during the day and shine bright in the evening. But hunting these demons is harder than wrestling a shark from the ocean, so we only use bones to illuminate the town when we know people are returning from boundaries between realms, trying to find their way home.
***
Once, I went hunting for a Bai Gu Jing.
Jin’s four-month-old sister, Kaiya, had died overnight, and though nobody said anything, nobody was surprised. Kaiya had been a weak baby, born early to a mother who refused to drink milk from the sole two cows in our town. Jin’s mother believed that to build a strong baby, you had to pray at the caves from dawn to dusk, and only afterward could you eat the shrubs and berries growing by the entrance, and this was how you gained the Frozen’s protection. The Frozen always struck me as lonely kids, so I figured they’d be more inclined to take the children as their own than to keep the children alive. After Kaiya died and the other adults pried the body from Jin’s mother’s arms, she locked herself in her home and refused to receive Kaiya’s heart. The heart sat in a parcel in front of their home for three days before Jin finally took it in. I stood watching Jin pick it up with two fingers, both of us grimacing as we saw the weight of the heart pull at the bottom, the packaging dried brown from blood. We wouldn’t learn how to carve hearts until next year when we both turned sixteen, so neither of us knew what to expect. We spent more time joking about why spirits would want hearts in the first place, and how crows and vultures could probably make better use of them, pecking at the tree with dangling organs like one massive bird feeder.
Jin and I didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids. Or maybe we liked to think we didn’t fit in. We didn’t pay much attention to what they did because we were always skipping class to go searching for sparkly rocks that made us feel like we were discovering something new. We’d tried selling them once, but the adults laughed and so we hoarded them in a drawer in my house, certain they would one day be worth something. We hid everything in my home. My mother and father had disappeared last winter while hiking up to the spirit boundary, not because they had a heart to hang, but because they wanted to know what happened to the hearts of my grandparents. They were always curious, disappearing and appearing home days later with bundles of strange-looking wood capable of resisting warping or rocks that purified water. Jin and I figured they were gone for good after several months passed without their reappearance. Winters are tough, they’re probably with the spirits now, the townspeople told us. I spent most of my time at Jin’s place, and we used my place to hoard souvenirs and “treasures” from our adventures.
Folks noticed when Jin took the heart. Townspeople passed Jin’s house daily, checking up on the parcel on their doorstep, questioning Jin’s mother’s mental state, cautioning me from sticking too close to Jin because hoarding a heart too long would anger the spirits, summon them down to earth to demand penance. After a month passed, during the height of winter, with no sign of Jin’s mother emerging from the house and leaving for the mountains, they demanded that Jin take Kaiya’s heart up instead. I told Jin I’d go too because I had nothing else to do, and maybe I’d find my mother and father along the way. Jin said no, and when Jin said no, that was final.
Jin prepared little while I spent days putting together a pack of food and clothing made from layers of old shirts I’d sewn together in hopes of creating an insulating effect. Jin pocketed the heart in a large pouch I’d sewn on the inside of the coat right above the left breast. “Make sure to come back soon,” I imagined telling Jin. But we never said such things—we didn’t like sentimentality and instead hugged briefly before Jin turned toward the mountain, silhouette shrinking until I could only see the trees sagging toward the trail.
In theory, we light the jars of Bai Gu Jing bones whenever someone leaves and is meant to return, but people are always leaving and no one knows if they’ll be back. The ones who return claim there’s nothing out there and the others who don’t must’ve gotten lost or eaten by camouflaged demons who masquerade as snow hares or foxes or beautiful women. As a result, we only light the town with jars when someone everyone cares about heads out, like the chief’s son who helps chop wood or deliver jars of milk to houses, or the seamstress who can transform even the ugliest shirt into a fine-looking blouse. Those days are like festivals, the streets brighter than the moon, more magical than the day. No one is afraid of walking around on those nights. We are all too busy watching the glows, trying to catch them with our hands, trying to hold them to the sky and compare them to the stars.
After Jin left, the streets remained dark. I asked where the jars of demon bones were. The adults scoffed and told me the bones were a limited resource even though the bones had been shining bright since before my birth. I didn’t even remember the last time a Bai Gu Jing was caught. I doubted the others knew either. Jin and I theorized that the bones lasted forever and we could light up all nights if only the townsfolk weren’t such scaredy cats.
Empty-handed, I decided to hunt a demon on my own. All I knew about the demons was rumors—like how the Bai Gu Jing likes pretty, meaty children and I was neither of those. I hoped these tales were untruths warped by time. I also didn’t have glass jars since glass was precious, but I figured once I acquired the bones, I could stick them in the dirt, surrounding both my and Jin’s house.
I headed out in the morning while I could still make out the beginning of the path Jin had traveled. I brought a bag of walnuts and sunflower seeds and boiled chicken eggs, relying on recognizing edible berries along the trail for the rest of my sustenance. I took the shortest but steepest paths upwards because those would be the paths Jin took, and where Jin was, the demon also likely lurked. Jin was the better-looking one, almost like an angel under moonlight. If I were a demon, I’d go after Jin, not me.
While regaining my breath after another interval of climbing, I came across a white fox. It padded up to me on the snow, not showing any signs of fear. I crouched down, trying to shrink and bring myself to the same eye level as the fox.
“Hungry?” I asked. I never saw many animals around—no birds or rodents or hares, so I wasn’t sure what it was surviving on out here. I untied my bag and pulled out a boiled egg and pushed it toward the fox, watching the egg roll and stop in front of its paw. The fox bent its head down to sniff, then snatched the egg in its jaw. After it finished eating, it stared at me, padding closer and then stopping and then moving closer once again.
“I don’t have any more eggs to spare you,” I said, but it continued to near until I stood. It stopped. It turned around, looking back at me before walking away. As I began to follow, it began to trot. The fox seemed like it knew what it was doing—at least more than me. I imagined Jin trailing after the fox too. The fox slowed when my breath shortened from the incline and sped up once I rested enough. The sky began to darken but the lingering light reflecting off the fox’s white coat glowed bright enough for me to keep up from behind. We continued like this until we reached an opening in the forest.
We stepped into a town. I wished I could’ve shown Jin. The trees and streets were adorned with glowing jars of bones. They hung from branches and surrounded every doorway. It seemed even brighter than foggy mornings. There were even houses resembling ours decorated in jars, more than enough bones to illuminate our dark rooms until we grew old and died.
The fox was several steps ahead, already wandering through the main road. I began to walk, but as I did so, a nagging doubt began to grow, like I had left something behind, a lung or a liver or a kidney, and my chest felt oddly light—lighter as I grew closer to the lights and the fox.
I stopped. Then I returned to the trail up the mountain. When I made my way back to where I first encountered the fox, I found a long, thin, glowing bone by the tree I had leaned against. I picked it up and stuffed it into my pack before descending the mountain. I’d plant it by Jin’s house. I’d wait patiently.
We are told not to stray too far because demons live in another village hidden from sight, beyond a boundary. This boundary moves as it pleases, welcomes people on a whim, sits at the thin field between our reality and theirs. Demons are always hungry, and according to the adults, will steal human hearts to eat from the spirits who watch over us. It’s only fair that we extract bones from demon bodies, the adults say.
Can these bones and hearts not be a gift exchange? We ask.
No, those who think like that disappear into the mountains forever, we are told.