I Embroidered Sister's Daughter's Cap, But Mother Wasn't Her

My junior sister and I are the last two heirs of the Southern School of yin-yang embroidery.

I embroider the dead with a bone needle, stitching souls back for those who cannot close their eyes; she embroiders the living with living thread, changing people's fortunes.

Three years ago, one accident after another struck the coal mine of Mr. Dickerson from the county town, and his cash flow was about to snap.

Maxine Pruitt embroidered a mountain-warding beast charm into his back, and the mine turned safe overnight.

He came to ask for her hand with eight hundred and eighty thousand and three pounds of gold jewelry, and their first pregnancy gave him triplet sons.

Yesterday Mr. Dickerson delivered his daughter's hundred-day invitation himself: "She'll only take the sect's needle. The tiger-head cap will have to trouble her sister-embroiderer."

I remembered how Maxine had once taken the backlash of yin embroidery for me, so I stitched through the night and went to the celebration, setting the cap on the child with my own hands.

While the toasts went around, Maxine bent down to ladle soup, and the child tugged her cheongsam collar open.

I meant only to see whether the peach-blossom-and-koi charm she had embroidered before her wedding had grown in, but instead I saw the koi belly-up and the blossoms weeping blood.

That was the death-stitch that shows only after a corpse's soul has scattered.

The glass slipped from my hand.

If Maxine's soul had left this body long ago, then who was this woman on Mr. Dickerson's arm, smiling and calling me sister?

"Sister, what's wrong?"

The woman in front of me tilted her head slightly.

Her voice was the same as three years ago, soft with the lilt of the southern waterlands.

I looked down at the shards of glass by my feet.

"My hand slipped."

I bent to pick up the broken pieces.

The moment my fingertips touched a shard, a pale hand pressed down over the back of mine.

"Don't. You'll cut yourself."

She turned to the waiter beside us.

"Could you bring a broom, and a fresh glass for my sister?"

I stared at the hand pressed over the back of mine.

It was Maxine's hand.

There was a faint red mole on the back of it.

But in the instant she touched me, what I felt wasn't a living person.

Under the warm skin lay a knot of dead air.

Clement Dickerson came over from another table, drink in hand.

"Sis, how'd the glass get knocked over? Is the wine not to your liking?"

He called me sis.

Because Maxine had always called me sister.

I stood up, and used the motion to draw my hand back.

"No. I was up late finishing the tiger-head cap. I didn't sleep well."

Clement broke into a grin so wide his eyes vanished.

"Thank you for all your trouble, sis. Maxie's been going on about it for days, saying the hundred-day gift for her daughter had to be made by your own hands."

He reached out and slid an arm around Maxine's shoulder.

Maxine leaned into him and looked at me, gentle.

"There's no one I trust more than my sister's hands."

The collar of the cheongsam had closed again.

That belly-up dead koi was covered once more.

The peach-blossom-and-koi charm was a soul-guarding brocade the Master had embroidered for Maxine with his own hands.

Koi belly-up, blossoms weeping blood.

The deadliest death-trap in all of yin embroidery.

The soul gone, only the shell left.

I took out the tiger-head cap I had embroidered through the night.

"The cap's done. Let me put it on the baby and see how it fits."

Clement quickly had the nanny bring the child over.

I took the baby, pinched the brim of the tiger-head cap between my fingers, and eased it down over her head.

Using the motion of straightening the brim, I let my left hand slip aside and brush across "Maxine's" wrist pulse.

The bone needle tucked in my nail bed pricked a bit of her skin.

The bone needle brought back no warmth of a living meridian.

I drew my hand back into my sleeve.

"It fits well."

Maxine smiled and stroked her daughter's cheek.

"Thank you, sister. Stay here at the house tonight. I've already made up the guest room for you."

I looked into her eyes.

"There's still work waiting at the shop. The dead keep to their own hours, and those can't be put off. I have to get back."

Clement smoothed things over from the side.

"Sis is busy. We won't press you to stay. In a few days I'll send a car to bring you over, and the whole family can have a proper get-together."

After the banquet broke up, "Maxine" walked me all the way to the hotel door.

The wind came up, and she reached over to tuck my collar closed.

"Sister, when will you come see me again?"

Her fingers were warm, the pressure just as it had always been.

But I knew the thing inside the shell had already been swapped out.

"Once the shop clears up in a few days, I'll come."

Her eyes curved with her smile.

"Good. I'll be waiting."

I turned and got into the taxi.

The moment the door shut, I pushed my hands into my pockets.

My fingertips were still trembling.

Back at the shop, I didn't turn on the lights.

I went straight to the inner room, moved the incense burner in front of the shrine, and took a yellowed journal out of the hidden compartment.

The Master had left it to me before he died.

I ran the flashlight down each page, turning them one at a time.

At the last page, I stopped.

Drawn on the paper was a koi, belly turned up and white.

Beside it, only a single line of small script.

If the koi turns white and the blossoms weep blood, the soul has not scattered. It has only been locked. The silk-shroud crossing rite.

I stared at those words.

The silk-shroud crossing rite.

A forbidden art of the Southern School of yin-yang embroidery, lost for a hundred years.

The practitioner's own remnant soul becomes the silkworm; the victim's body becomes the cocoon.

Then the victim's soul is woven alive into a soul-locking brocade and sealed beneath the flesh.

The parasite takes the place that was hers.

At the very bottom of the journal, one more note in the Master's cinnabar hand.

This art was sealed into the coffin with Eleanor Galloway.

Eleanor Galloway.

The first disciple the Master ever took.

Fifteen years older than Maxine and me. Our eldest sister in the sect.

Eighteen years ago, she practiced the silk-shroud crossing rite in secret and took three lives.

The Master stripped her of her powers and nailed her, living, into a coffin.

That coffin was buried in the hills behind the sect's ancestral home.

I closed the journal.

Master.

You never nailed her all the way dead.

Take me to the hills behind Greenfield.

The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

The middle of the night, out there? There isn't a single streetlight that whole way.

I set two hundred dollars on the center console.

Are we going or not?

He didn't say anything else. He hit the gas.

Two in the morning, and I was standing in the hills behind the sect's ancestral home.

The weeds came up past my knees. Whatever path there had been was long gone.

Going by memory, I found the spot where the Master had sealed the coffin.

The mound was still there.

So were the seven soul-quelling stakes driven in around it.

I dug the folding spade out of my bag and scraped away the top layer of yellow earth.

Half an hour of digging, and the black coffin lid came into view.

The seal the Master had painted years ago was still stuck to it.

The writing had blurred, and the paper had split.

I took out a bone needle and slid it into the gap along the lid.

It turned once inside and touched nothing.

I pushed the lid open.

There were no bones in the coffin.

At the bottom lay only a human-shaped silk husk.

Eleanor had used the forbidden art to shed her shell.

The Master's seal had held the coffin shut, but it hadn't held her remnant soul.

I sat down in the dirt beside it and lit a cigarette.

The ember flared and faded in the dark.

The Master had died of illness three and a half years ago.

Maxine had married into the Dickerson family three years ago.

Exactly half a year between the two.

The moment the Master died, the formation pressing down on the coffin began to weaken.

Eleanor seized her chance and broke free.

She had no body, only a remnant soul.

To go on living, she had to find a suitable vessel.

Maxine had just married out, away from me, away from the sect.

She was living alone in the Dickerson house.

And she still wore the soul-guarding brocade the Master had embroidered by hand.

To Eleanor, there could be no more fitting body.

I drew on the cigarette.

The smoke bit into my lungs, a dull ache spreading.

There was one last passage in the journal.

The silk-shroud crossing rite cannot be completed in a single day. On the nights of the full moon the parasite must perform the silk-renewing rite, feeding on yin energy. If the feeding stops, her control fades. To turn a borrowed body into a body seized outright, she must nourish the cocoon on four bloodlines of the host's household. Only when the fourth bloodline reaches a hundred days may the cocoon-shedding needle be brought down.

Three sons, and now a daughter just past her hundredth day. The four bloodlines were complete.

But the cocoon-shedding still lacked one final ingredient. A living needle of the same sect.

And what Eleanor wanted was not a dead needle.

She wanted me to bring the needle down alive.

Only when the living breath of the one who holds the needle passes through the bone needle into the soul-locking brocade could she finish that last silk-renewing rite.

That was why she hadn't killed me.

It was why she had insisted I make the tiger-head cap with my own hands, and why she had caught hold of me at the hundred-day celebration to ask when I'd come again.

She wasn't waiting for me.

She was waiting for the breath in my needle.

Once that last step was done, Maxine's soul would be fully consumed.

And then Eleanor would hold this body forever.

I crushed the cigarette out in the mud, stood, and brushed the dirt off my pant legs.

You want my needle, don't you, sister?

I touched the cold bone needle inside my sleeve.

Fine.

You'll have it.

"You'll really stay a few extra days?"

Eleanor's voice on the other end of the line was bright with surprise.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My face showed nothing.

"Mm. The shop's been slow these past few days. I figured, since the baby just turned a hundred days old, I'd braid her a few protective knot charms."

"That's wonderful. Clement went up to the state capital for a meeting. I've been bored here on my own."

"I'll come over this afternoon."

At three o'clock I stood at the front door of the Dickerson villa, my suitcase beside me.

Eleanor came out to meet me herself.

She was wearing Maxine's favorite silk loungewear, her long hair loosely pinned back.

"Come in, come in."

She took my suitcase from me, easy about it.

I followed her into the living room.

The housekeeper brought out sliced fruit.

"Have some fruit. What do you feel like for dinner? I'll have Rebecca make it."

"Anything. You decide."

Dinner was four dishes and a soup.

One of them was a plate of poached beef in chili oil.

Eleanor picked up a slice of beef and rolled it through the dipping dish beside her.

The dish was spread with a layer of green cilantro.

My hand paused on my chopsticks.

Maxine never ate cilantro.

The smell of it alone turned her stomach.

I bent my head and took a mouthful of plain rice.

"Max, didn't you used to hate cilantro?"

Eleanor's chewing stopped for half a beat.

She swallowed the beef quickly and looked at me, smiling.

"After having the baby, my tastes changed. Things I never used to like, I find pretty good now."

"Is that so."

I didn't press any further.

After dinner, Eleanor took me to the nursery to see the baby.

The baby lay in her cradle, fast asleep.

On her head was the tiger-head cap I'd brought.

Eleanor stood at the edge of the cradle and rocked it twice, gently.

"Look how good she is."

"She is good."

I reached out to touch the baby's little hand.

Halfway there my wrist shifted, and I brushed the pulse point of Eleanor's wrist.

With my index and middle fingers, I tapped her wrist three quick times.

It was the signal Maxine and I had set as children.

Three taps meant: "Danger. Be careful."

Eleanor gave no reaction at all.

She didn't even glance down at my hand.

She only smiled and tucked the blanket in around the baby.

"You can sleep in the guest room next door these few days. Anything you need, just call for me."

"All right."

I watched her lift the baby and carry her back to the master bedroom.

The door shut in front of me.

I went back to the guest room too.

Locked the door.

From the inner compartment of my suitcase I took out a small wooden box.

Inside was a coil of black thread.

Bone-listening thread.

An off-path technique of yin embroidery.

When I made the tiger-head cap, I had already sewn a short length of the thread into the lining.

The other end was here in my hand.

I wound the black thread around my left index finger and gave it a light twist.

The thread pulled taut.

At first there was only the baby's faint breathing.

A long time passed before footsteps came from the master bedroom.

Then the sound of water being poured.

Then everything went quiet again.

Eleven at night.

Clement was not home.

Eleanor had carried her daughter back to the master bedroom.

There were only the two of them in the room.

I sat against the headboard and didn't sleep.

My fingers never stopped turning the thread.

Two in the morning.

Just as I was about to reel the thread in, the bone thread trembled.

A woman's voice came through from the other end.

Not Maxine's soft, gentle voice.

Low. Raspy.

Yin energy clung to the thread, boring into my ear bit by bit.

"There, there, don't fuss."

"Your mama's watching you."

"She's right in here"

I held my breath.

The Master had said it to me once.

The soul of the one whose body is taken does not die, but it cannot break free. Force the break, and the soul shatters and the person dies.

Maxine wasn't dead yet.

Her soul had been woven, alive, into her own flesh.

For three years, she had been awake the whole time.

Watching someone else take her body, sleep with her husband, bear her children.

Three whole years.

I clenched the bone-listening thread until it cut into the pads of my fingers.

That voice went on.

Through the thread came the dry rasp of cloth on cloth.

Eleanor seemed to have walked to the mirror.

Little Maxie, struggling again?

There was a sick pleasure in her voice.

Three years, and you still won't give up?

A fingernail scraped down the mirror's surface, carried through the bone thread.

It stabbed at my eardrum.

Look at yourself now.

Woven into your own flesh. Don't you look just like a silkworm stitched dead inside its cocoon?

She laughed once.

When the Master sealed me in that coffin for eighteen years, this was exactly how it felt.

You can see, you can hear.

You just can't move.

Eighteen years.

You've only borne three, and already you can't take it?

As a child Maxine was afraid of the dark. At night she used to knock three times through the wall.

I'd knock back twice, to say: Big Sister's here.

But these three years, trapped in her own flesh, how many times had she knocked with no one to answer.

Trapped inside her own body, listening to this monster make a game of her suffering.

Don't cry.

Eleanor's voice went soft all at once, the way you'd soothe something that belonged to you.

Once your big sister finishes the last few stitches for me, I won't need this skin of yours for a cocoon anymore.

Then you can go wherever you like.

She paused.

Oh. No.

By then you'll have dissolved away for good.

Three months left, at most.

Three months.

If the silk-shroud crossing rite couldn't be undone, in three months Maxine's soul would scatter completely.

Not even a chance at rebirth.

I closed my eyes.

All I could see was Maxine at ten, tugging at my sleeve and calling me Big Sister.

That reminds me.

Eleanor's voice suddenly rose, barely bothering to hide the mockery now.

Your big sister touched my wrist three times today.

What was that supposed to mean?

My fingers tightened a fraction.

The other end of the thread went quiet for a few seconds.

Then Eleanor gave a low laugh.

The sound ran along the bone thread and bored straight into my ear.

Looks like she's already started to suspect.

It doesn't matter.

This bone needle, I've waited three years for it.

She can't run.

Down the bone thread came three clear knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The same rhythm, exactly, as when I'd touched her wrist that afternoon.

The black thread trembled faintly and delivered her words into my ear.

Big Sister.

This sound familiar?

I let go all at once.

The bone thread snapped taut in the air, then went slack and drooped.

She had met my probe.

She'd seen through the bone-listening thread I'd laid down long before this, too.

Everything she'd just said hadn't been for Maxine alone.

She'd said it on purpose, for me to hear.

I thought I was investigating her in secret.

In truth, from the moment I stepped into the Dickerson house, I'd walked into the cage she'd made ready for me.

I sat in the dark, looking at the bone-listening thread wound around my wrist.

Run?

Run now, and I could still live.

I found the bone needle inside my sleeve.

But the moment I left, Maxine would be dead for real.

Slowly, I wound the bone-listening thread back into its wooden box.

Three knocks came at the door.

In Maxine's voice, Eleanor spoke softly.

Big Sister.

Heard enough?