Despite her embarrassment, Springshadow did think about what the goddess said. "Perhaps because I'm not certain who I am."
"You are a Heavenly Fox," the goddess said.
"Yes, but what is that? And by the way, when we first met, you said there was something you wanted me to do. What is that?"
Guan Shi Yin smiled. "You've learned to ask the right questions. It's a start. So. I have business here, and it seems, so do you. Perhaps we'll talk later about that other matter."
The goddess disappeared, leaving Springshadow alone on what appeared to be a road of hard stone and gravel. The Hell of Hungry Ghosts was a bleak place, with coarse sand and spires of rock. It was neither particularly hot nor particularly cold. Springshadow looked around her, puzzled.
"What is the punishment?"
There was no one around to answer her. Other than Guan Shi Yin, she had seen no one since her arrival. Her little golden cloud had been too frightened to follow her into the hell, so Springshadow was reduced to walking if she wished to get anywhere at all. She continued down the road for want of a better direction.
In time she did begin to see others. She hesitated to call them "people", as there didn't seem to be much about them that was a person, as she understood the term. Their shapes were oddly changed. One man had enormous hands and no mouth. Another had large ears but no eyes. A woman crawled on four stubs and had neither eyes nor mouth, only a large nose, which she ran along the ground like a hound sniffing for a spoor. All seemed to be searching for something, and those who had mouths and tongues to form sounds would occasionally emit a low moan or a wail or a shriek, but for no apparent reason.
Springshadow understood that the denizens of the Hell of Hungry Ghosts were being deprived, but of exactly what she wasn't sure. Perhaps everything. To call the place thoroughly unpleasant hardly did it justice, but mostly she found it puzzling.
"Why would Sunflash come to this wretched place?"
The Hell of Hungry Ghosts was clearly a vast domain, and without her little golden cloud, Springshadow could not cover a great deal of distance quickly, even as a fox. She considered that she might be weeks, months, or years walking along this hard, stony road. And then Guan Shi Yin was walking beside her again as if she had never left.
"It seems our business here is with the same person."
"Sunflash? Do you know where he is?"
"The same, and of course I do. I know where every denizen of every hell is, or else how could I find them when their time has come to leave?"
Springshadow bowed. "Please, Your Immanence, would you take me to him?"
"Would I? I actually insist upon it. He's being very stubborn.”
Springshadow smiled. “Ah. I knew you wanted something from me, back when I first transformed from a mortal fox. So this is what that was all about.”
“Actually it is Sunflash who wants something from you. And speaking of transforming, would you mind taking human form again? It might make things easier."
Springshadow quickly changed back into a young woman, but she did not look like Guan Shi Yin this time. She took the appearance of the girl Xiaofan had loved, and the Goddess of Mercy took her by the hand. In an instant the landscape was flashing past them in one great blur. Springshadow had the strange feeling that the hell itself was moving, parting around them just as the clerks in the Hall of Records moved to accommodate a foreign presence. In another moment the shifting terrain slowed, then stopped. The two women stood beside a clump of the sort of stone spires that Springshadow had noticed earlier. The spires almost looked like a small mountain range, though their tops were sharper and more pointed than any mountains Springshadow had ever seen. Springshadow was still trying to catch her breath after the sudden shift, but Guan Shi Yin put her hands on her hips and was staring at a narrow defile between two of the spires.
"He's in there. He's waiting for you."
"That's what the Master of the Hall of Records said. Why would he be waiting for me?"
The goddess just sighed. "I think it's best that you ask him that yourself. It's time for him to leave this place, but he refused to budge until he spoke with you. I'd consider it a personal favor if you can reason with him."
"I'll try," Springshadow said, even though she felt much too confused to be reasoning with anyone. She'd sought out Sunflash's guidance only to discover that he'd locked himself away in the Hell of Hungry Ghosts, apparently of his own volition. Now Guan Shi Yin said it was time for him to leave? If he was here by choice, how could there be a set time? She considered questioning the goddess further, but the person she really wanted answers from was waiting for her in a narrow valley somewhere in the Hell of Hungry Ghosts.
She left Guan Shi Yin and entered the valley, though it was little more than a large crack between two dark granite spires. Every now and then she passed one of the creatures who lived there, all of them misshapen, all searching. One or two of them sniffed at her, and she hurried on, out of their reach. Soon she came to a place where the crack widened into something the size of a great hall with sheer stone walls that arched inward, almost meeting overhead like a roof. The interior was shadowed but somehow illuminated from within.
Springshadow hesitated, but finally shook her head. "I've come too far to turn back now."
Springshadow entered the grotto, keeping a close watch for hungry ghosts, but as far as she could tell, she was alone. She followed the light until she realized that it emanated from a lone figure sitting on a large bench of stone. He was in human form and wearing the rich brocade robes of a mandarin, but Springshadow was too familiar with transformation and appearances to be fooled. He was a fox.
He was Sunflash.
"It's certainly about time you arrived," he said as she came into his view. "You kept me waiting so long I was beginning to wonder if you were coming."
She approached cautiously until she was no more than a few feet from where he sat. "How did you know I was coming?"
He smiled. Even in human form he was handsome. Springshadow forced herself to concentrate on the business at hand. So did Sunflash.
"I knew that someone would come, sooner or later. Just as the fox who came before me did. His name was Summerstorm, by the way. Splendid fellow, but I don't suppose you'll have heard of him. No?" Springshadow shook her head and Sunflash went on, "He waited a lot longer than I did, so I really shouldn't complain. Anyway, when my time was getting short, I consulted the Master of the Hall of Records and found that another fox named Springshadow was a mere hundred years away from achieving my status. That's how I knew you were coming."
Springshadow sighed. "My name is Springshadow, but I don't understand any of this. I came to ask you — "
"How to be a Heavenly Fox? And don't ask how I know. That's what I asked Summerstorm. If you'd asked anything else I'd have known you weren't what you appear to be... underneath the transformation, I mean."
"I'm most certainly a fox!"
Sunflash grinned. "And a lovely one, too. Definitely worth waiting for."
Springshadow ignored that. "Guan Shi Yin says you're supposed to leave and won't. Why?"
"Because I was waiting for you, of course. The hundred years was easy enough to measure, but how long before you got the notion to seek me out? No way to predict that. So I extended my time here. It's always easier to find someone who stays put, in my experience."
"But why? What do you want of me?"
He shook his head, smiling again. "You don't understand. I'm here because you want something from me. Like Summerstorm before me, I've chosen to give it. Maybe one day you'll make the same choice. Perhaps not. That's up to you."
"You're telling me you came to the Hell of Hungry Ghosts simply to wait for me?!"
He laughed then. It was a few moments before he could go on while Springshadow, human-like, felt the blood rushing to her face.
"I'm sorry," Sunflash said. "That was rude, but I couldn't help it. No, of course I didn't come here to wait for you. I could have done that anywhere. I was here because I was taking someone's place. Perhaps Her Immanence can explain it better than I."
It was only then that Springshadow noticed that Guan Shi Yin had followed her into the grotto. Her appearance had changed somewhat from before. Now she looked taller, even more splendid. When they had traveled the stony road together, Guan Shi Yin was about the same size as Springshadow. Now the goddess's height, as compared to the foxes', was roughly that of a mother's next to her small children.
"When Sunflash was working toward perfecting the Golden Elixir, he hurt a great many people, just as you did," Guan Shi Yin said. "Over the centuries since then he's been atoning."
Springshadow blinked. "Atoning? Why?"
Sunflash sighed. "I created my potion of immortality the same way you did, by stealing the energy of living mortals. Several died as a result. The last of them was a woman who, for her mistakes in life — myself included, was sentenced to the Hell of Hungry Ghosts. I’ve since taken her place, and I have been here for the span of time she would have lived had I not bewitched her. She was returned to the living and so given a second chance. That was how I repaid my debt to her. I have repaid my other debts as well, in various ways. As I said: she was the last."
"I still don't understand. What atonement? What debts? We are what we are. The Master of the Hall of Records said I was not to blame for the crickets I ate to stay alive as a kit. If you're going to argue that humans are more than crickets, I would say that the difference is degree, not kind. Why should you or I be blamed for doing what is a fox's nature to do?"
"You shouldn't," Guan Shi Yin said. "In a sense the flaws within those mortals called to you, just as the struggles of an injured fish summons a larger fish. You are blameless in their deaths."
"Then I owe them nothing!"
Guan Shi Yin shook her head, obviously amused. "That's not what I said. I said you were blameless: that is, you're not a murderer. Well may you speak of a fox's nature, but know that the universe has a nature as well, and that is to strive for balance and order. Balance requires that debts be repaid, and you owe value for what you took. Just as Sunflash did, and just as the immortal you know as Wildeye does. You own your debt, so only you can repay it and would do so in your next life, or as many as it takes. That's the Law of Karma which all creatures obey, even the gods."
"But I..."
"Am Immortal, yes," Sunflash said. "Though the term 'immortal' is misleading. Not even the xiān truly live forever incarnate. If we live a long time, that means our debts go unpaid for a very long time. However, karmic debts can only be delayed, not forgiven. Sooner or later, they come due. So I decided not to wait. Guan Shi Yin, as is her own nature, was kind enough to assist me."
"But the thousand years! All that struggle, all that time!"
He grinned. "And, like me, I wager you never once thought to ask yourself what it was for, did you? Or perhaps you thought the ideas of communing with Heaven and achieving immortality and power were enough? I did. I learned better, as apparently did you, or you wouldn't have come looking for me."
"It's not my fault Heaven turned out to be such a boring place!" Springshadow said.
"Why do you think I spend so little time there?" Guan Shi Yin asked, smiling again. "Plus, it's a trap in its own way. Too many people confuse it for the goal, as you did. Even the gods make that mistake sometimes."
"But what is the goal then?"
"Something different," said Guan Shi Yin.
"You're throwing my own words back at me!"
"No, I'm confirming what you already suspect: all you've managed to do with the Golden Elixir and all that stolen life force is to trap yourself in some minor eddy of eternity. Nothing will change, and tomorrow will be just like today, for as close to forever as is worth mentioning. Was that what you hoped to gain when you bewitched those mortals?"
"No," she said.
"What, then?" asked Sunflash.
"I don't know!"
"Neither did I nor do I," Sunflash said. "Even after all this wasted time. I'm sorry, but that's why I've chosen to keep looking. That is my purpose now." He turned to the goddess. "She was my last debt. Is it so?"
Guan Shi Yin smiled. "It is so. I'm ready when you are."
"Then let's be off."
"Wait! Where are you going?"
"I'm forsaking immortality for something better. Something different," Sunflash said. "I knew you were coming, so I waited to tell you."
"Something better? What?"
"That thing I worked a thousand years to be rid of. I've worked almost twice as long getting it back, but I've finally succeeded. Now I have a chance to be something other than what I am. The chance to be mortal again.”
"I don't understand," Springshadow said. "We change all the time. We're foxes!"
He shook his head, smiling a sad smile. "We change appearance. Changing what you are requires reentering the field of time. Even gods can't do it. Only mortals. That's what makes them greater than any god. This is the ‘Great Secret of Immortality’ that The Den and Burrow Guide to Immortality hinted at. I had Summerstorm's example before me. To pay my debt to him, you will now have mine. Make of it what you will.”
Guan Shi Yin reached down and took Sunflash's hand like a mother reaching for her child. "Time to go."
"Wait!" Springshadow said. "How do I get out of here?"
"Simple — you don't belong here," Guan Shi Yin said. "So any direction you go is 'out'. We'll meet again, I think."
They vanished. After a moment Springshadow let out a sigh. "Selfish bastard." It wasn't really an insult. Sunflash was, after all, a fox.
For a very long time, Springshadow did not vanish. She took advantage of her human form to sit down on a rock without having to deal with her nine tails, and she thought. When she finally left that place, she summoned her golden cloud and returned, not to Heaven, but to the Middle Kingdom. Specifically, to the mountain home of Wildeye. She found two of his disciples tending a fire inside the cave some distance from the entrance, and at the sight of her both men threw themselves face down on the earth, to Springshadow's considerable amusement.