Nian'an's body jerked on the bed.
Xiulan lunged forward and pressed his shoulders down, her palms slick with sweat. "Nian'an? Nian'an!" The boy's eyes remained shut. The convulsion passed. His breathing steadied, but his brow stayed furrowed, as if wrestling with something in his dream. Xiulan pried open his small fist; his palm was damp with cold sweat. She pressed his hand to her cheek and felt his fingers curl weakly against her skin.
Her tears finally fell.
She had held them back for a day and a night. From the moment Chen Wangtian told her Nian'an had been speaking to "someone" beneath the locust tree, she had held on. Through Old Wu lighting the incense, through the stick snapping in two, through her husband's retelling of Old Wu's words. She had told herself it was nothing. Nian'an was just frightened. A good sleep would fix it. Her grandmother's superstitions were just old tales. Nails could not truly tether a soul.
She could not hold on any longer.
She knelt beside the bed, pressed Nian'an's hand to her forehead, and wept silently. Her shoulders shook, tears dripping onto his hand, onto the quilt, blooming into dark circles.
Chen Wangtian stood in the doorway, watching his wife's back, his fists clenched. He wanted to go to her, but his feet felt nailed to the floor. Old Wu's words echoed in his mind: Wait until the black line travels from base to tip. He walked to the bed and gently opened Nian'an's left hand.
The black line had reached the tip.
Almost there.
"I'll go find Old Wu." He stood, knocking his pipe against the doorframe. Ash scattered to the ground.
"What good will that do?" Xiulan's voice cracked, a string stretched past its limit. She turned, her tear-streaked face fierce, her eyes red as if about to bleed. "He already told us the only way! Lamp oil in the mouth, incense ash in the nostrils—that's murder! Nian'an is not dead, and you want me to let them seal him up and burn him?"
Chen Wangtian's lips moved, but no words came.
"My grandmother once said," Xiulan's voice dropped, hollow, as if recalling something from long ago, "that the one who borrows is not the most frightening. The most frightening is the one who collects for her."
A chill ran down Chen Wangtian's spine.
"Old Wu has been collecting nails for fifty years." Xiulan lifted her head, her eyes swollen but sharp, like a freshly whetted blade. "He's not exorcising anything. He's collecting for her."
Chen Wangtian wanted to argue, but the words died in his throat. He remembered Old Wu's prayer beads. Black beads, each the size of a thumb pad, their surfaces pitted and uneven. He had not looked closely then, but now he saw them clearly in his mind—their shape, their curve. Thin at the edges, thicker at the base. Like nails. Like many, many nails.