The Lantern Charm

There was a scholar of Lin'an, Shen Yan by name, of a solitary temper, who would read by lamplight until the third watch. His lamp was an old thing, its gauze shade cracked, and its flame ever of a greenish cast. One night there appeared upon the wall a shadow, the likeness of a woman in plain white, standing as if with a scroll in hand. At first Yan thought it a trick of his eyes; but when he rubbed them and looked again, the shadow rose and faded with the flame—bright when the lamp blazed, faint when it guttered, like a figure beneath water. So it was for ten days. The shadow grew clearer, till he could mark her lowered brows and the moving of her lips in some silent verse. Then Yan bethought him of a year gone by, when he had plighted troth with the neighbor's daughter, Liu Niang, their exchanged poems the pledge. But when he went up to the capital for the spring examinations, Liu fell sick and died before his return. Grief-struck, Yan burned all their verses beneath that very lamp, the ash falling like snow. Ever after, the sight of the lamp wrung his heart. Now, he thought, this shadow must be Liu's soul, come seeking her old lines. And so each night he read aloud the poems they had sung together. The shadow would bow her head, as though comforted. One night the wind rose, and the lamp burst into a flower of flame; the shadow on the wall stepped forward a foot and, with a finger, traced upon the plaster the two characters cold ash, her hand as delicate as ever. Soon the lamp died, and the shadow with it. After that the wall held no shadow. Yan gathered the scattered remnants and the half-burnt leaves, and kept them wrapped away all his life, never burning another page. The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: Fire may consume the verse, but not the feeling; the ash grows cold, yet the soul does not. And those who burn their books to be rid of memory—know they that a shadow walks the wall, seeking its characters night by night?