Second Sister limped over as fast as she could, fell to her knees beside Third Sister’s body, and shrieked, “Third Sister, Third Sister, Third Sister…” She reached under her neck, as if to help her up. But the neck was as soft and pliable as a rubber band, and she merely stretched it out. The head lay in the crook of Second Sister’s arm, like a dead goose. Second Sister quickly laid Third Sister’s head back down on the ground and picked up her hand. It too was as soft and pliable as rubber. Second Sister cried and cried. “Third Sister, oh, Third Sister, why have you left us…”
First Sister neither cried nor shouted. She merely knelt beside Third Sister and looked up at the people standing around them. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze narrow, shallow, diffuse. I heard her sigh and watched as she reached back and plucked a velvety pompon, a stately, gentle purple flower with which she wiped off the blood that had seeped out of Third Sister’s nostrils, then her eyes, and finally her ears. Once she’d cleaned up the blood, she brought the purple flower up to her nose and sniffed it, every inch of it, and as she did so, I saw a strange smile spread across her face and a light in her eyes that belonged to a person in a certain realm of intoxication. I had the vague feeling that the Bird Fairy’s transcendent, otherworldly spirit was being transferred to the body of Laidi by way of that purple velvety pompon of a flower.
Sixth Sister, who concerned me the most, elbowed her way through the crowd of onlookers and walked slowly up to Third Sister’s body. She neither knelt nor cried. She just stood quietly, fidgeting with the tip of her braid, her head bowed, blushing one minute, ashen-faced the next, like a misbehaving little girl. But she already had the carriage and figure of a young woman; her hair was black and glossy, her buttocks rose up behind her, almost as if a bushy red tail were hidden there. She was wearing a white silk hand-me-down cheongsam from Second Sister, Zhaodi. With high slits on the sides, her long legs showed through. She was barefoot, and there were red scratches on her calves from the sharp-edged leaves of couch grass. The back of her cheongsam was soiled by crushed grass and wildflowers – spots of red here and there amid bright green stains… my thoughts leaped across and squirmed beneath the white cloud that had so gently covered her and Babbitt, bristlegrass… bushy tail… my eyes were like bloodsucking leeches, fastened to her chest. Niandi’s high arching breasts, nipples like cherries, were magnified by the silk of her cheongsam. My mouth filled with sour saliva. From that moment on, whenever I saw a pair of beautiful breasts, my mouth would fill with saliva; I yearned to hold them, suck on them, I yearned to kneel before all the lovely breasts of the world, offer myself as their most faithful son… there where they jutted out, the white silk was marked by a stain, like dog slobber, and my heart ached, as if I'd been an eyewitness to the tableau of Babbitt biting my sixth sister’s nipples. The blue-eyed whelp had gazed up at her chin, while she had stroked the golden hair of his head with the same hands that had so viciously attacked my backside, and all I'd done was gently tickle her, while he had actually bit her. This wicked pain deadened my reaction to Third Sister’s death. But then, Second Sister’s weeping unsettled me, while Eighth Sister’s crying was the sound of nature, which called to mind the cherished memory of Third Sister’s magnificence and her lofty actions that could make trees bend and leaves fall, that could cause the earth to tremble and the heavens to quake, and could incite ghosts to cry and demons to wail.
Babbitt took several steps forward, bringing into focus his reddened lips, so tender and soft, and his red face, which was overlain with white fuzz. He had white lashes, a big nose, and a long neck. Everything about him disgusted me. He spread out his arms. “What a shame,” he remarked, “a terrible shame. Who could have imagined it…” All this he said in a peculiar foreign language that none of us understood, followed by some remarks in Chinese, which we did understand: “She was delusional, thinking she was a bird…”
The bystanders began talking among themselves, most likely about the relationship between the Bird Fairy and Birdman Han, possibly bringing Speechless Sun into the conversation, maybe even the two children. But I wasn’t interested, and could not have heard what they were saying anyway, since there was a buzzing in my ear, coming from a hornets’ nest on the cliff. Beneath the nest, a raccoon sat on its haunches in front of a marmot, a round, fleshy animal with tiny eyes set close together. Guo Fuzi, the village sorcerer, who was adept at planchette writing and catching ghosts, also had tiny, shifty eyes set close on either side of the bridge of his nose, and had earned the nickname “Marmot.” He stepped out from the crowd and said, “Elder uncle, she’s dead, and no amount of crying will bring her back to life. It’s a hot day, so take her home, give her a funeral, and put her to rest in the ground.” I didn’t know what apron strings he relied upon to call Sima Ku “elder uncle,” nor did I know who might be able to tell me. But Sima Ku nodded and wrung his hands. “Shit,” he said, “what a terrible turn of events!”
Marmot stood behind my second sister, his tiny eyes shifting back and forth. “Elder aunt,” he said, “she’s dead, and it’s the living who count. If you keep crying like that, now that you’re with child, a real tragedy could result. Besides, was our aunty here a real person? When all is said and done, she wasn’t, she was a fairy among birds that had been sent down to the land of mortals as punishment for pecking at the Western Mother’s immortality peaches. Now that her allotted time is up, naturally she has returned to the fairyland where she belongs. You saw with your own eyes how she looked as she floated down from the precipice, as if drunk, as if falling asleep amid heaven and earth, floating so gently. If she were human, she could not have fallen with such ease and grace…” As Marmot spoke of heaven and earth, he tried to pull Second Sister to her feet. “Third Sister,” she kept saying, “such a terrible death…”
“All right,” Sima Ku said, with an impatient wave of his hand, “that’s enough. Stop crying. For someone like her, life was a punishment. Death has brought her immortality.”
“It’s your fault,” Second Sister complained. “You and your flyboy experiment!”
“I flew, didn’t I?” Sima Ku said. “You women don’t understand such momentous events. Staff Officer Ma, have some men carry her back home, then buy a coffin and take care of the funeral arrangements. Adjutant Liu, take the parachutes back up the mountain. Adviser Babbitt and I are going to fly again.”
Marmot pulled Second Sister to her feet and said to the crowd, “Come, you people, lend a hand.”
First Sister was still kneeling on the ground, sniffing her flower, the one stained with Third Sister’s blood. Marmot said to her, “Elder aunt, there’s no need to be so sad. She has returned to her fairyland, and that should make everyone happy…”
The words were barely out of his mouth when First Sister looked up, smiled mysteriously, and stared at Marmot. He muttered something, but did not have the nerve to say more. He hastily mixed with the crowd.
Laidi held up her purple floral pompon and got to her feet, a smile on her face. She stepped over the Bird Fairy’s corpse, stared at Babbitt, and shifted her body under her loose black robe. Her movements were jumpy, like someone with a full bladder. She took a few mincing steps, threw away her floral pompon, and flung herself at Babbitt, wrapping her arms around his neck and flattening her body against his. “Lust,” she muttered, as if feverish, “suffering…”