The Mountain Ghost

Shen Yan, a tea-merchant of Huizhou, was journeying through the Wan mountains with his wares when dusk closed in and a great rain fell. He took shelter in a ruined shrine upon the mountainside. The mountain-god's image stood neglected, cobwebs draped the beams, and the incense was cold, the candles spent. Shen laid his pack beneath him and feigned sleep, when there came from the steps a tinkling of girdle-jewels, faint as a lament. He opened his eyes and beheld a woman standing in the rain — clad in white, her garments wet, her hair streaming and bedewed. Her eyes held the limpid sorrow of autumn waters, and to look upon her was to pity her. 'Traveller from afar,' said she, 'have you a light to share?' Shen kindled a dry branch and held it up; the light made her face the more forlorn. Asked her name, she would not answer, but pointed to a lone grave behind the shrine. 'I was of a family below the mountain. Ten years past my husband went to Jinling and pledged to return that autumn. I waited until the snow fell, but word came no more. I fell ill and died here; my soul clings to this place, and on every wind-and-rain night I still watch for the home-comer.' Shen was moved, and sat speaking with her till the cock crowed. She told him the small matters of her life, all of them words of waiting. As dawn approached she drew back into the rain-curtain and wept. 'Your kindness I cannot repay with long company. If you pass Jinling, I beg you — ask after young Master Zhou: does he return, or no?' With that she vanished, leaving only a trail of damp upon the stone, which slowly dried. Shen later reached Jinling and sought the Zhous; and indeed there was a young Zhou who, ten years before, had wed a girl of the Wan mountains, then broke faith and married another, and the girl had pined to death. Shen returned and lodged once more at the ruined shrine, pouring clear wine in offering and telling of Zhou's faithlessness. That night the rain ceased, and before the shrine the mountain camellias burst into bloom all at once, crimson as blood. The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: A fond soul keeps the grave through ten years of wind and rain undimmed; a faithless heart crosses the river, and not a line of word returns. The world laughs at the ghost's folly, not knowing that among the living, breakers of their pledges are all too many — and more than this ghost.