Free The Incarnations by Susan Barker

I add to the cacophony a cry of pain as the Merchant Fang’s baby prepares to come out. As the merchant already has a wife and a brood of eleven children, to him the progeny in my womb is a bothersome thing. So when the baby is born lifeless in a boarding house on Drum Tower Lane, the Merchant Fang sighs with relief. ‘Well, that’s that then,’ he says, pulling a blanket over his stillborn son. He tosses the midwife a string of coppers, bids me farewell and is on his way.
V
    Springtime in Chang’an, the tree peonies in blossom. Bleeding, weeping and limping, I stagger about the streets of the twelve-gated city, to the Imperial Palace in the north. In a daze, I roam in and out of the city wards, gazing in wonderment at the sights. Row upon row of wooden houses, vertiginously soaring up to three storeys in height. Avenues of horse-drawn carts, clattering at breakneck speeds, and magnificent palanquins borne aloft on the shoulders of manservants, velvet curtains hiding the distinguished noblemen inside.
    The Eastern Market teems with common folk and Uighurs and Persians and Europeans trading their wares. I wander by stalls of millet, bamboo shoots, pigs and Tibetan slaves in pens. Arabian stalls of alfalfa, pomegranate, spices and wool. I wander into the market square, where magicians in dark booths sell python’s bile for melancholia and dragon’s bones for fatigue. Troupes of buskers strum zithers and pipas, and a dancing bear shambles on his hind legs as his master waves a birch wand. A storyteller has attracted a crowd with his tale of the Sea-dragon King who lives in a palace under the ocean and feasts on opals and pearls.
    I ask passer-by after passer-by, ‘Excuse me, which way to the Imperial Palace?’
    And in this manner, I gradually find my way there.
    I arrive at the gates of the Imperial City at sunset. Though I am tired and aching to the marrow of my bones, the magnificence of the palace rejuvenates me. Stone lions roar at the Vermilion Gates and the palace rooftops, curved elegantly from ridge to eaves, are shining gold in the setting sun.
    I accost an armoured guard at the gate.
    ‘Excuse me. Could you pass on a message to Eunuch Wu? Could you tell him his long-lost daughter has come to Chang’an to see him. I don’t mind waiting here while you fetch him.’
    The guard beats me so hard with his spear he knocks out a tooth, and this is how I learn that commoners are not meant to approach the gates of the Imperial City without an invitation bearing the imperial seal. I would have to contact you through other means.
VI
    I spend a night shivering in a ditch, then in the morning return to the Eastern Market to look for work. I go to Butchers Lane, Ironmongers Lane, Axe-makers Alley, and Cloth-weavers Lane, in and out of every shop. ‘I am hungry and strong,’ I say. ‘I am willing to work for a crust of bread.’ But no one wants me. Not even the human-waste collectors who trundle wheelbarrows from privy to privy. I am starving. I go over to the gangs of beggars rattling begging bowls in the market square. The first gang of beggars tells me to go away. ‘Only those with missing limbs can beg here,’ they say, waving me away with stump-ended arms. The second gang tells me to get lost too: ‘Only the blind or one-eyed allowed here.’ I glance over at the third gang, swatting at the flies buzzing over their pustule-weeping skin, and realize I lack the requisite skin disease.
    I am at my wits’ end. How will I survive in this black-hearted city? I may as well crawl back into the ditch and wait to die, as the Heavens must have decreed. Then, out of nowhere, I hear the cackling of the Sorceress Wu – borne by the Daemons of Wind from that mud-walled dwelling over a thousand leagues away. ‘Wretched she-brat,’ she cackles. ‘Character determines destiny. Courage and boldness. Not fate.’ And goaded thus, I holler at the top of my lungs, ‘Has anyone any work for me? I am hungry and strong! I can work