The beheaded tilapia nudged teasingly against the riverbank in a bloody soup, staining the lush weeds beneath the little girl’s feet. Oblivious to the stench, she squatted beside the muddy water, her gaze tracking over the dead fish. There were a dozen of them, freshly killed. Flies had only just begun to settle over silver flanks, scuttling shyly over tooth marks.
“Otters,” said the girl in Hakka, straightening up. “Popo, why don’t they eat the whole fish?”
The girl’s grandmother shuffled through the weeds, surveying the river. Fine hair, still dark, had been combed into a neat bun over a long neck sheathed in a high collar despite the heat. Embroidered flowers picked down her pink kebaya blouse to a lush yellow sarong, brushing over beaded slippers growing muddy from the bank. “A-Ling, don’t stand so close to the water. Come back here.”
A-Ling reluctantly forged back through the weeds, which pulled at her blouse and shorts. Her Popo wiped her cheek with a handkerchief, smiling helplessly. “How will you get married if you always act like a boy? Running up and down the river.”
“I don’t just run up and down the river. Sometimes I jump in it too,” A-Ling said, unrepentant. “My brothers do the same thing, and no one asks whether they’d get married.”
“There’s a difference between being married and marrying. Your fate will be the former, as a woman. Theirs, the latter.” A wry smile pulled at Popo’s mouth. “Such is life.”
“It isn’t fair,” A-Ling muttered, glowering at the water.
“It could be worse. A long time ago, you’d have had to learn embroidery, qin, painting, brewing tea, poetry—”
“Blergh.” A-Ling grimaced. “I’d rather swim in the river.”
The grandmother laughed. “I thought that way too, once.”
“What changed your mind?”
Popo gestured at the fish. “I met the one whom the otters leave the best parts of their catches for. The God of the River.”
“A God?” A-Ling looked excitedly at the river. “What did he look like? What did he say?”
“He told me that there was only one way to escape my fate, which was to join him in the river. But if I were to do so, my younger sister would be married off in my place, because the marriage contract between my family and your grandfather’s was a matter of clan alliances.”
“You didn’t want to marry A-Gung?” A-Ling asked.
Popo gently touched A-Ling’s head. “Surprised?”
“No.” A-Ling’s grandfather was rather like the Hearth God that her brother said inhabited their house: a presence that weighted down cause and effect for the entirety of their family, yet intangible, never there. He preferred to spend his time in a house in town rather than on the family plantation. During the Lunar New Year, he would sit unsmiling beside Popo as A-Ling waited her turn behind aunts, uncles, and cousins to present him with tea. Every year, Popo would have to remind him what her name was.
“The God of the River said that my fate would be my sister’s instead—married to a husband who already loved another. So I chose forbearance. Still, some days I think I chose wrongly. My sister’s husband turned out to be a scoundrel.”
A-Ling knew this too. “If you can talk to a God, why don’t you ask him to change grand-uncle? Make him stop gambling.”
“The Gods aren’t as powerful as you think. Not anymore.”
“But—”
“Stubborn girl. If you want to try it for yourself, catch your own fish. Don’t stay out too late.” Popo turned, threading her way through the weeds, towards the white house on stilts that peeked through the towering angsana trees, their sprawling crowns mottling sunlight over the undergrowth.
• • • •
After leaving out a few tilapia, a loach, and a catfish, A-Ling huffed as she located Popo in the kitchen. “Popo! The River God never showed up. Were you just telling me a story?”
Popo paused in the middle of measuring out cups of sugar onto crushed peanuts. “Did you leave out fish that you caught by yourself?”
“Six! Five,” A-Ling amended, under Popo’s steady stare. The catfish had been her brother’s catch, begged off him in exchange for a marble.
“Did you behead the fish?”
“Three,” A-Ling said. It had been a gruesome procedure, more bloody than she’d thought.
“Eat the heads?”
“What?” A-Ling stiffened. “Raw?” Nausea rose as Popo chuckled and began cutting soft cubes out of the steamed rice cake into the mixture of sugar and peanuts. Rolled through, the peanut and sugar stuck to the cubes, forming A-Ling’s favourite dessert. Popo portioned out some of the muah chee into a blue-and-white porcelain bowl, handing it to A-Ling with toothpicks stuck into a cube. A-Ling blew out her cheeks in disgust as she ate. “I don’t want to talk to the River God anymore. Or. Are you joking with me after all?”
“Why do the otters leave out the best parts of the fish for the God?”
“Out of respect? But I’m doing the same . . . wait! Is it because the God has to share a meal with you before he appears?”
“The otters understand that greed drives the God of the River.” Popo popped a piece into her mouth and chewed slowly. “A-Ling. Why do you want to talk to the River God?”
A-Ling frowned at her grandmother. “I want to ask him how to make you happy. Obviously.”
Popo stabbed yet another piece of muah chee. She raised it to her mouth, flashing white teeth. “I’m very happy,” she said and bit down, tearing the piece in half.
“Are you?” A-Ling shot back. “You didn’t want to get married. This isn’t the life you want.”
“Shh,” Popo said, smiling mirthlessly. “That’s not something that a woman can say. Besides, I have eight filial children and grandchildren who love me—especially a stubborn little girl called A-Ling. Why shouldn’t I be happy?”
“I could . . . I could ask the God of the River to make A-Gung fall in love with you!”
“Him?” Popo sniffed. “What for, when I have no love for him? On the other hand, we have both done what our families needed us to do.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Your A-Gung didn’t marry the other woman as a second wife, even though he could have. He hasn’t had children with her, as far as I know, or if he has, he hasn’t allowed them to intrude into our lives. He supports his family and isn’t violent. That is all I ask out of a man.” Popo ate the rest of the piece she had stabbed. “Before you understand the nature of greed, you’d never be able to call the God of the River. Even if you did, if you waste your chance with irrelevant questions, you’re no granddaughter of mine.”
A-Ling stalked angrily out of the kitchen. Sprinting to the river, she found her youngest brother already fishing at their usual spot under a casuarina tree. He gave her a startled look as she shoved the still-warm bowl of muah chee into his hands and sat down with a huff, grabbing her fishing rod.
“Quarrelled with Popo again?” Her brother shovelled muah chee into his maw.
“She’s not my Popo. She said I’m not her granddaughter.” A-Ling glared at the river.
Her brother laughed. “How could that be? You’re just like her . . . wah! Oi! Don’t kick me!”
• • • •
A-Ling scaled the head of the catfish, then grilled it while watching its body float in the river. The river weeds rustled behind her as she blew on the charred flesh and took a bite. Popo laughed softly as A-Ling scowled at the still river. Throwing the grilled head into the water, A-Ling said, “I think you were lying to me from the start.”
“You shouldn’t waste food,” Popo said. Where nights by the river had once been quiet but for the cicadas and frogs, the cicadas’ cries were now overlaid by distant chatter, punctuated by the occasional wail of a baby. The latest batch of refugees was settling in awkwardly. “What are you wishing for?”
“For the war to be over.” A-Ling’s grandfather had taken in anyone who had presented themselves at the gates of their estate, packing it to the gills.
At first, the new playmates had made it fun for A-Ling and her brothers. Now food was growing scarce, but people were still streaming in, displaced by a threat A-Ling vaguely understood. The occasional warplane droned high overhead during the day, scattering everyone into hiding and children into speculating whether it was a British Spitfire or one of the Japanese Zeroes. The adults shivered with dread, waiting for an attack on their camp that hadn’t yet come.
“I’ve told you that the River God doesn’t have that much power. None of the Gods do. It’s useless asking them for favours.” Popo nodded at the floating fish. “Even the otters understand that. All they ask their God for is for him to leave them alone. It’s a protection fee.”
“What is the point of them, then?” A-Ling said, exasperated.
“They were here before us. That’s a rude question, in the scheme of things.”
A-Ling hissed, tugging at her hair, now hacked short to make her look like a boy. All the girls in the camp had undergone the same treatment and dress. They hadn’t been told why, but A-Ling could guess. A haggard look of worry had long replaced the gentle indifference that Popo used to wear as armour and weapon both, contorting her into a form far more mortal than A-Ling was comfortable with. Her grandmother had always seemed indomitable before.
“I still think you’re lying about the River God.” A-Ling wiped her greasy hands on her shorts. “Adults lie. Every time we women have to run away to hide from the camp. Or the planes overhead. Gods in the river, ghosts in the banana trees. It’s all a lie.”
“Oh?” Popo asked, amused rather than angry. “To what purpose?”
A-Ling hadn’t thought this far. “To teach us a lesson over something or other. I guess.”
Popo shook her head. She stepped forward, raising the candlestick in her hand over the water as she squatted by the riverbank. Her other hand shot into the murky depths, then pulled back, with delicate fingers clenched tightly around a wriggling catfish. Passing the candlestick, she hacked the head off with A-Ling’s filleting knife and tossed the still-twitching body into the water. A-Ling stifled a gasp of shock as Popo raised the bloody head to her lips, tearing off a chunk as delicately as she ate muah chee.
The river’s dank surface stirred. Something large and wet undulated beneath, scales gleaming under the moonlight. Popo’s beheaded fish disappeared, sucked into the depths. A-Ling opened her mouth to scream and hummed instead as Popo clapped her bloody palm over her lips, the head of the fish rolling away into the weeds.
A horned head rose from the murk, weedy, thick tresses framing a snake-like muzzle with a crest of long fins. The River God’s serpentine head was as long as Popo was tall, his scaly lips indented by rows of unevenly sharp teeth. Two sets of golden eyes blinked wetly as the God scrutinised them both, then he brought his head higher, level with Popo.
“Speak,” he said. His mouth did not move, nor did he seem to speak any known words. Instead, the will of a God churned in A-Ling’s head, and comprehension reverberating through her skull. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she clapped her hands to her ears, trembling.
Popo’s hand on A-Ling’s mouth tightened in warning even as she stared down a God. “My granddaughter wished to see you,” Popo said.
The vibration in A-Ling’s head grew into a rhythmic patter that A-Ling belatedly recognised as laughter. “You were not so frivolous when you were young,” said the God.
“Yet you came anyway,” Popo retorted.
The God turned his head, the slit pupils in his golden eyes widening and thinning. “Your hunger hasn’t changed. As vengeful as a ghost’s; as limitless as a God’s.”
A-Ling shoved at Popo’s wrist until her grip loosened. Taking a few breaths to steady her panic, she forced herself to look into the River God’s eyes. “Tell us how to stop the war,” she said.
This time, the laughter of a God was painful enough to drive A-Ling to her knees. Even Popo stumbled, digging her nails into her palms until the God drew back and glanced at her. “Did you not talk to her about my kind?” he asked.
“She is my granddaughter,” Popo said, as though that was any sort of explanation.
“I’ll give you a warning in exchange for the fish, which is all that I can give,” said the God, as he began to sink back into the river. “Leave this place.”
“There’s going to be an attack after all? When? Where can we go?” A-Ling demanded, but the god was gone.
Popo wiped her fingers with a handkerchief, then took the candlestick back from A-Ling. “Time for bed,” she said, dabbing the blood off her lips.
A-Ling stared at her, incredulous. “That’s it? You summon a God and then—time for bed?”
“You’ve seen the limits of what it can do,” Popo said, her lip curling. Her eyes blazed, the rage and despair in them so intense that A-Ling took a step back. Popo blinked and took a slow breath; then her indifference was back. “I’ve long known not to bother with such things. Ghosts, demons, Gods—it’s people we should fear.”
On the way back to the house, A-Ling glanced over her shoulder at the still river, then back at Popo. “The God once asked you to join him in the river.”
“No. He said it was one possible choice that I could make.”
“He didn’t mean for you to kill yourself, did he?”
“Who knows?” Popo said, though her hands curled briefly into claws. She stroked A-Ling’s shoulders lightly. “Go to bed.”
“I don’t understand what he said about hunger,” A-Ling persisted. “I did want to meet him.”
“While I still live, my children and grandchildren will never be able to summon the River God,” Popo said. She clenched her hand tightly over A-Ling’s shoulder, making her squeak in shock. “Do you understand?”
“Popo!” A-Ling yelped.
Popo’s grip eased. “May all of you never understand the nature of hunger. That is my wish.” Her lip curled into a snarl. “One that I’ll fulfil myself—God or no God.”
• • • •
The attack, when it came, wasn’t helmed by Japanese soldiers, but by bandits. Screams and howls marked time between the occasional loud bark from a gun. A-Ling’s youngest brother flinched and sobbed at a despairing cry from the tofu-maker’s family house to the east, which melted into a string of escalating screams. Grim-faced, Popo drove A-Ling and the other children toward the river, stumbling over roots in the growing dark. They hunched down into the river weeds. “Quiet,” Popo hissed as one child began to cry. A-Ling clamped her hand over his mouth, letting him go only when the boy receded to soft whimpers.
“They should fight the Japanese,” whispered A-Ling’s brother. He winced as Popo pinched him.
“They’re hungry,” A-Ling murmured, near-inaudible. Popo glanced at her, then back at the camp. She clutched a cleaver in her spare hand, her pianist’s fingers white-knuckled over its hilt.
“Can A-Gung and the others fight them off?” murmured another brother, only to be pinched in turn. Popo gestured for them to lie down in the grass. The wait felt eternal, marked with an endless refrain of misery and death.
Fear had long ebbed away in A-Ling when her limbs started to cramp, replaced by budding rage. How was this even happening? Had the bandits presented themselves politely at the gate, her grandfather would’ve likely let them in. They’d been maddened by war, the insanity that was war. This damned war. What was even the point? A-Ling had overheard her grandfather talking to her father about it but had understood little. Where even was Germany? How had a country that she couldn’t even pick out on a map sparked off a conflict that had now torn through the world, pulling people into madness? Why even were the Japanese killing their way here? Her father had mentioned hope that the British would be able to stop the advance in Singapore and had suggested that they flee south, but her grandfather had been sceptical. A-Ling squeezed her eyes shut. Before, she’d been glad that her grandfather had vetoed leaving their home. Now, she wished they had.
The tofu-maker’s house grew silent. Popo gestured for them to stay put and moved through the weeds, aiming to hide behind the casuarina tree. A-Ling’s youngest brother whimpered as Popo moved further away. A-Ling pinched him and gestured for him to shut up.
A stranger in bloodied clothes walked towards the river, holding a machete. A-Ling stiffened as Popo changed direction, crouching behind a bush. Did she mean to attack? A-Ling shrank back for a heartbeat, then bit down on her lower lip. She crawled toward her grandmother, ignoring the brother who tugged at her sleeve. Halfway there, the man yelled. Popo struck, the chopper sunk into his back. He spun, backhanding her into the grass. Somehow, Popo clawed up to her feet with a roar, grappling for the machete, scratching at his eyes.
Other bandits closer to the tofu-maker’s house looked up, starting towards them as the bandit and Popo went down in a scuffling scrum. When he got his bloodied hands around Popo’s throat, A-Ling sprang forward with a yell. Her weight slammed into his thin body. The bandit tried to get to his feet but slipped on the weeds. Grabbing at A-Ling’s clothes, they both rolled into the river.
The first mouthful of muddy water made A-Ling cough in panic; the second made her angry. A blow struck her across the cheek, driving her to the river bed. Something knocked against her palm as A-Ling struggled to to surface—the machete, sunk into the mud. She grabbed it with both hands, stabbing wildly. Hands grabbed at her hair and shoulders but eventually grew still. A-Ling surfaced against a bloody soup, gasping. The bandit’s body floated beside her, still warm.
Beside the casuarina tree, her grandmother raised the cleaver. The bandits closed in. A-Ling looked around wildly. They were alone—no one would know they were here until it was too late.
Except.
A-Ling groped in the riverbed, desperate for fish. Knowing that pickings would be slim, especially since the camp had eaten the river bare weeks ago. Praying she’d find something, anything—wait. There was still one more thing.
It took a couple of attempts until A-Ling managed to get a steady grip on the dead man’s hair. The closest bandit faltered as she made the first cut along his neck with the machete, wide-eyed in horror. The second cut caught against bone. As A-Ling hauled desperately against the hilt of the heavy machete, the other bandits took a collective step back. Did they know about the River God? A-Ling screamed at them and jerked the machete free, nearly overbalancing into the river. The bandits turned and fled as she raised the machete to make the last cut, shouting in fear.
A-Ling sat down in the river, her knees weak, breathing heavily. The water brushed her chin even as Popo turned around. She glanced at A-Ling, then behind her. “Now you come,” Popo said.
The God’s laughter rattled A-Ling’s teeth. “I was not needed.” The corpse beside A-Ling disappeared, sucked beneath the surface.
“Can you get rid of the bandits?” A-Ling asked, hopeful.
“He isn’t that useful,” Popo said, her lip curling in distaste. She sat by the casuarina tree, breathing heavily, glancing back at the camp. “You advised us to leave. Should we go south? To Singapore?”
“You will die in the south,” said the God. “It won’t be as safe as you think. Not for long.”
Popo didn’t even blink. “What about my children and grandchildren?”
“They will survive.”
“Popo,” A-Ling protested.
“All things fade,” Popo said, indifferent.
“It isn’t fair,” A-Ling said, getting unsteadily to her feet. She glared at the God. “You don’t fade!”
“I will,” the God said, smiling toothily. “The otters will disappear from the lands, as will much of the fish. The rivers will choke on their filth, bloated with human refuse. Even when the water eventually grows clean enough for the otters to return, they’d be few—too few for their sacrifices to give birth to the divine.”
“You’ll be back,” A-Ling said. The God sounded so blithe to his fate that A-Ling dared to paddle closer. When he merely stared at her, she gingerly patted his flank. The scales were icy to the touch. “I’ll help. After all this, if all of us live, I’ll leave fish for you every day. But only if Popo also survives.”
“You would dare bargain with me?” the River God asked, arching back and rearing from the water, flaring his fins.
“The otters pay you a protection fee, don’t they? What’s wrong with me doing that as well?” A-Ling retorted.
The God stared at her, unblinking. A-Ling tried to hold his gaze, her eyes watering. Eventually, she looked away with a hoarse gasp, but the God again began to laugh. He sank into the river, displacing the water against the shore, slithering out of sight.
“Useless,” Popo said of the Gods. She reached over to pull A-Ling to the shore.
“I don’t know,” A-Ling said, as the other children rose cautiously out of hiding. “The otters think otherwise.”
Popo began to sneer, then blinked, her expression growing still. A-Ling looked over at the river, seeing nothing. Popo stroked A-Ling’s hair lightly. “We’ll hide here until morning. Wash the blood off your face.” Gentleness softened the habitual mask she wore, cracking it.