#zjc

[babylon-crashing]

SUGAR HILL: final thoughts

Speaking only for myself, Sugar Hill is an Opera about Grief, Vengeance and Transformation. But it is also a Conversation about Sound—about what Power might sound like, what Grief might sound like, what the Dead might sound like when they rise.

To the best of my ability, the musical language of Southern Gothic and Dark Americana should not be an aesthetic overlay; I hope that it is the very substance of the work. The Swamp that haunts my dreams is not a setting; it is a Presence. The Guitar and Banjo are not instruments; they are Moral forces.

When the Audience hears the National Resonator's brassy honk, they should feel the City. When they hear the Vega's shimmering sustain, they should feel the weight of Centuries. When the two merge in Act Two, they should hear something new—something that has never been heard before, because it has never been made before.

That is the sound of Sugar Hill. That is the sound of the Swamp. That is the sound of the Dead: rising, waiting, singing.

Thank you. ZJC (2026)

[babylon-crashing]

The Tale of the Tidal Bell 《潮钟记》

a Chinese stage adaptation of The Tempest Re-visioned for the South China Sea

Translation by ZJC (2026)

)(*)(

人物表 (Character List)

岛上之人 (The Islanders)

潮音 (Cháoyīn) — 前"潮钟号"红头船船长。被大副安东

出卖，丢上舢板漂流，最终登上鬼岛。她精通《潮钟册》中的方术，驱使精灵鬼火儿。身披残旧的船长外套，缝补着海藻与鲨鱼皮。 — Former captain of the junk Tidal Bell. Betrayed by her first mate, set adrift, and washed ashore on Ghost Island. She has mastered the esoteric arts contained in the Tidal Bell Manual and commands the spirit Guǐhuǒ'ér. She wears the faded remnants of a sea captain's coat, patched with kelp and shark-leather.

望汐 (Wàngxī) — 潮音之女。十五岁。生于岛上。除母亲与怪物礁生外，从未见过其他活人。她总是望着海天相接的那条线。 — Cháoyīn's daughter. Fifteen years old. Born on the island. She has never seen another living human except her mother and the creature Jiāoshēng. Her eyes are always watching the horizon.

鬼火儿 (Guǐhuǒ'ér) — 圣艾尔摩之火精灵。无分男女，古老而善变。曾被海妖西海妖囚于锈铁柱中，为潮音所解救。现身时为一团青蓝跃动的火焰，亦可化为人形。其声如风过索具，如远钟，如鲸歌。 — A spirit of St. Elmo's Fire. Neither male nor female, ancient and mercurial. Imprisoned in a rusted iron pillar by the sea-witch Sycorax, freed by Cháoyīn. They appear as flickering blue-green light that can take human shape when they choose. Their voice is the sound of wind through rigging, of distant temple bells, of whale-song.

礁生 (Jiāoshēng) / 鲛奴 (Jiāonú) — 亡故海妖西海妖之子。半人半鲛人。肤色灰蓝，糙如礁石。齿尖而密。泪为浓咸黏液，干涸后结成不规则的珍珠。初名"鲛奴"（潮音所赐），后获自由，更名为"礁生"。他言语支离破碎，但当岛屿的魔力贯通他时，他的语言会变得古老而奇特。 — Son of the dead sea-witch Sycorax. Half-human, half-jiaoren (shark-merfolk). His skin is grey and rough as reef-stone. His teeth are sharp and layered. He weeps thick, salty mucus that hardens into irregular pearls. Originally named "Shark-Slave" (given by Cháoyīn), he is later freed and renamed "Reef-Born." He speaks in a broken tongue, though when the island's magic moves through him, his language becomes strange and ancient.

西海妖 (Xīhǎiyāo) — 西考拉克斯。剧前已死。一名鲛人巫女，在潮音到来前统治此岛。其骸骨已织入环岛的珊瑚礁中。仅被提及。 — Sycorax. Dead before the play begins. A jiaoren sorceress who ruled the island before Cháoyīn arrived. Her bones are woven into the coral reef that surrounds the island. Mentioned only.

船上之人 (The Shipwrecked)

这些是欧洲人——荷兰东印度公司的官员与仆从，自巴达维亚启航。身着荷兰华服与本地物件的混搭：丝绸腰带、盐渍的蕾丝、偷来的玉石。

These are Europeans—officers and servants of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), sailing from Batavia. They wear a mix of Dutch finery and local adaptations: silk sashes, salt-stained lace, stolen jade.

范·阿隆索 (Fàn Ālóngsuǒ) — 巴达维亚舰队总督。VOC高官。他深信上帝与火药已赐予他统治四海之权。 — Governor-General of the Batavia fleet. A powerful VOC official. He carries the arrogance of a man who believes God and gunpowder have granted him dominion over all seas.

费迪南 (Fèidí'nán) — 其子。年轻，英俊，在海上传奇故事中长大。他是第一个不把望汐视为"土著奇物"而是视为神启的欧洲人。 — His son. Young, handsome, raised on tales of maritime glory. He is the first European to treat Wàngxī not as a curiosity but as a revelation.

安东 (Āndōng) — 潮音昔日的大副。现为VOC船长。能说流利的闽南语与粤语。吃过她的饭，领过她的银，最终将她的船卖给了荷兰人。他是个通敌者。 — Cháoyīn's former first mate. Now a VOC captain. He speaks fluent Hokkien and Cantonese. He ate her food, collected her silver, and sold her ship to the Dutch. He is the collaborator.

塞巴斯蒂安 (Sàibāsīdì'ān) — 范·阿隆索之弟。懒惰、残忍、野心勃勃。他巴不得兄长死去好继承其位。 — Van Alons's younger brother. Lazy, cruel, ambitious. He would happily see his brother dead to inherit his position.

霍萨洛 (Huòsàluò) — 年迈的VOC绘图师兼博物学者。与他人不同，他心怀真诚的好奇。他在舱房内私设妈祖小龛。他是良心的罗盘，尽管也已妥协。 — An aging VOC cartographer and naturalist. Unlike the others, he is a man of genuine curiosity. He secretly keeps a small shrine to Mazu in his quarters. He is the moral compass, however compromised.

特林鸠罗 (Tèlínjiūluó) — 船上的弄臣兼通译。一个在澳门酒馆里学会了粤语和闽南语洋泾浜的潦倒艺人。他视礁生为可在阿姆斯特丹畸形秀上展出的"奇物"。 — The ship's jester and translator. A broken-down performer who learned Cantonese and Hokkien pidgin in the taverns of Macau. He sees Jiāoshēng not as a monster but as a potential exhibit for the freak shows of Amsterdam.

斯提法诺 (Sītífǎnuò) — 醉醺醺的膳务总管。他从沉船中捞起一箱亚力酒。他成了礁生所拜的伪神。 — The drunken butler. He salvaged a crate of Arrack from the wreck. He becomes Jiāoshēng's false god.

船长 (Chuánzhǎng) — 荷兰船船长。 — The Dutch ship's master.

水手长 (Shuǐshǒuzhǎng) — 水手长。 — The boatswain.

幻景中之神祇 (The Spirits of the Masque)

妈祖 (Māzǔ) — 天后，海之圣母。 — Queen of Heaven, Empress of the Sea.

观音 (Guānyīn) — 慈悲的菩萨。 — The Bodhisattva of Mercy.

龙母 (Lóngmǔ) — 龙母，养育了五条龙子。 — The Dragon Mother, who raised five dragon sons.

饿鬼们 (Èguǐmen) — 饿鬼。溺亡水手的不安魂灵。口小不能食，喉细不能饮。哀嚎乞食。 — Hungry Ghosts. The restless spirits of drowned sailors. Their mouths are too small to eat. Their throats are too thin to drink. They moan for offerings.

其他 (Others)

众精灵 — 侍奉鬼火儿的岛精。 — Island spirits who serve Guǐhuǒ'ér.

四十亡魂 — "潮钟号"上被屠戮的四十名船员。仅以水下幽影、风中语声、潮音术法背后的沉重存在显现。 — The forty crew members of the Tidal Bell, murdered in the mutiny. They appear only as shadows beneath the water, as voices in the wind, as the weight behind Cháoyīn's magic.

)(*)(

第一场 (Scene One)

海上。雷电，狂风，怒涛。夜。 At sea. Thunder, lightning, raging waves. Night.

[雷鸣如鼓。一艘荷兰东印度公司的大船在巨浪中剧烈颠簸。帆索间有青蓝色的鬼火跃动——那是鬼火儿在桅杆间跳舞。远处海面升起磷光，仿佛海底有巨兽翻身。水手们用荷兰语、闽南语、粤语混杂着呼喊，向妈祖祈祷，向上帝祈祷。] [Thunder like a drum. A large Dutch East India Company ship pitches violently in the colossal waves. Blue-green ghost-fire dances among the rigging—Guǐhuǒ'ér playing on the masts. Phosphorescence rises from the distant sea, as if a great beast is turning in the deep. Sailors shout in a mix of Dutch, Hokkien, and Cantonese, praying to Mazu and to God.]

水手长/ Boatswain 快！快！收上桅帆！别管那些火！那是鬼火！盯着看会被勾魂的！Fast! Fast! Furl the topsails! Don't look at those fires! That's ghost-fire! Stare at it and your soul gets snatched!

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò 船长在哪里？船长！Where is the Captain? Captain!

水手长/ Boatswain 在舱下！别碍我们手脚！你们这是在帮风暴，不是在帮我们！Below decks! Don't get in our way! You're helping the storm, not us!

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons 水手长！这船还能撑多久？Boatswain! How long can she hold?

水手长/ Boatswain 你们没听见吗？回舱里去！别来添乱！Didn't you hear me? Get back to your cabins! Don't make things worse!

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 放肆的东西！你知道你在跟谁说话？Insolent dog! Do you know to whom you speak?

安东/ Anton [抓住水手长的衣领] 记着船上载的是谁，你这海狗。[Grabbing the Boatswain by the collar] Remember who this ship carries, you sea-dog.

水手长/ Boatswain [甩开他的手] 我只认得一个比你们更要紧的人：我自己这条命！要是你们会驾船，就来替我；不会，就求你们闭嘴，让我们各尽其职。不然，听天由命吧！[Shaking him off] I only know one man more important than you: myself! If you can sail, take my place. If not, shut your mouths and let us do our work. Otherwise, pray to whatever you believe in!

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò 愿瘟疫烂掉你的喉咙，你这满嘴亵渎的—— May the plague rot your throat, you blasphemous—

[一阵巨浪猛击船舷。远处有人失声惨呼。桅杆发出断裂的呻吟。] [A massive wave slams the hull. A distant scream of terror. The mast groans, splintering.]

众人/ Crew 天哪！完了！我们都完了！God! We're lost! We're all lost!

费迪南/ Ferdinand [从舱内冲出，浑身湿透，头发根根直竖] 地狱空了！魔鬼都跑出来了！都跑出来了！[Bursting from below, soaking wet, hair standing on end] Hell is empty! All the devils are here! All of them!

[他纵身跃入海中。灯光骤暗。雷电一闪。船与海一并吞入黑暗。鬼火儿的笑声在风里飘散——那笑声像碎铃，像鲸歌，像溺死之人的叹息。] [He leaps into the sea. Lights snap to black. A flash of lightning. Ship and sea swallowed by darkness. Guǐhuǒ'ér's laughter drifts on the wind—like shattered bells, like whale song, like the sigh of the drowned.]

)(*)(

第二场 (Scene Two)

岛上。潮音的洞窟前。风雨未歇，但已转弱。 The island. Before Cháoyīn's cave. The storm has weakened but not yet passed.

[洞窟口挂着渔网、旧帆布、晒干的海藻。一口锈迹斑斑的青铜钟悬在洞口——那是潮钟。潮音立于高处，手持一根铁杖。那铁杖原是半截定海神针，如今爬满藤壶。望汐伏在一旁，惊魂未定，泪痕未干。远处海面上，那艘大船的残骸正在燃烧，火光映红了低垂的云层。] [Fishing nets, old sailcloth, and dried seaweed hang at the cave mouth. A rusted bronze bell—the Tidal Bell—hangs at the entrance. Cháoyīn stands on high ground, holding an iron staff. The staff is half of a rusted Dinghai Shenzhen pillar, now encrusted with barnacles. Wàngxī lies nearby, trembling, tear-streaked, still in shock. In the distance, the wreckage of the great ship burns, its glow reddening the low clouds.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲。若是您用法术叫这野浪吼起来的，求您平息它吧。我看他们受苦，自己也像一同在受苦。那样一艘大船……里头想必载着许多高贵的人……如今竟像被撕碎的纸鸢。可怜的人——他们一定都死了。Mother. If it was your art that raised these wild waves, please calm them. Seeing them suffer, I feel I am suffering too. Such a magnificent ship... it must have carried many noble souls... now torn apart like a shredded kite. Poor souls—they must all be dead.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 静下来。别再惊惶。你那颗仁慈的心可以安定了。Be still. Do not be frightened. Your merciful heart can rest easy.

望汐/ Wàngxī 安定了？Rest easy?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 没有一个人遭难。Not a single person has perished.

望汐/ Wàngxī 没有？None?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [放下铁杖] 没有。我所做的一切，没有一件不是为了你。为了你，我的爱女。为了你。而你还不知道你是谁，也不知道我是谁；只知道我叫潮音，是这间破洞窟的主人，也是你的母亲。[Lowering the staff] None. Everything I have done, I have done for you. For you, my dear daughter. For you. And you still do not know who you are, or who I am; you only know me as Cháoyīn, mistress of this poor cave, and your mother.

望汐/ Wàngxī 我从小不敢多问这些。I never dared to ask more.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 那现在是时候让你知道了。把眼泪擦干。坐下。听我说。Then it is time you knew. Dry your tears. Sit. Listen to me.

[望汐顺从地坐下。潮音走到洞口，望着燃烧的残骸。] [Wàngxī obediently sits. Cháoyīn moves to the cave mouth, gazing at the burning wreck.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你方才所见的这场海难，是我用《潮钟册》里的法子安排出来的。正因为你心地仁慈，才会为它痛苦。但你放心——你听见呼号的那些人里，没有一个失去一根头发。至少，现在还不到时候。The shipwreck you just witnessed—I arranged it using the methods in the Tidal Bell Manual. Precisely because your heart is kind, it pains you. But rest assured—not a single hair on the heads of those you heard crying out has been harmed. At least, not yet.

望汐/ Wàngxī 真是这样？Is that true?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 千真万确。告诉我，你还记得在我们来到这洞窟以前的事吗？那时候你还没有出生。你是在这片沙滩上落地的。你的第一口气，吸的是这岛上的盐雾。Absolutely true. Tell me, do you remember anything from before we came to this cave? Before you were born. You took your first breath on this very sand. Your first taste of air was the salt mist of this island.

望汐/ Wàngxī 我什么也不记得。只是有时候做梦……梦见一条红头船。三根桅杆。很多人在笑。有一个男人的脸……我看不清。然后就是水。很多水。I remember nothing. Only sometimes I dream... of a red-headed junk. Three masts. Many people laughing. A man's face... I can't see it clearly. And then water. So much water.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [身体微微一僵] 那是你父亲的船。他叫阿海。是我的水手长。也是我的丈夫。[Body stiffening slightly] That was your father's ship. His name was Āhǎi. My boatswain. And my husband.

望汐/ Wàngxī [轻声] 他在哪里？[Softly] Where is he?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 他死了。十二年前——正是十二年前——你的母亲是"潮钟号"的船长。一条红头船，三根桅，四十个好水手。我们从月港出海，载着丝绸、瓷器和茶叶，去换南洋的香料、檀香和白银。那时候，海上的规矩是我定的。风暴见了我都要绕道。He is dead. Twelve years ago—exactly twelve years—your mother was captain of the Tidal Bell. A red-headed junk, three masts, forty good sailors. We sailed from Yuegang, laden with silk, porcelain, and tea, bound for the Southern Seas to trade for spices, sandalwood, and silver. In those days, I set the rules on the sea. Even storms changed course to avoid me.

望汐/ Wàngxī 那为什么…… Then why...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 因为我信了一个人。他叫安东。荷兰人。他从巴达维亚逃出来，在澳门学了闽南话和广东话，混进了中国船帮。我收他当大副。他吃我的饭，领我的银子，叫我"船长"，像叫亲姐姐一样。我当他是我在海上能找到的最好的帮手。Because I trusted one man. His name is Anton. A Dutchman. He jumped ship in Batavia, learned Hokkien and Cantonese in Macau, and wormed his way into the Chinese crews. I took him as my First Mate. He ate my food, took my silver, called me 'Captain' like I was his own sister. I thought he was the best help I could find on the sea.

[她的声音变冷。洞外的风声忽然紧了。] [Her voice turns cold. The wind outside the cave suddenly tightens.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 他却把整条船卖给了荷兰东印度公司。那个姓范·阿隆索的——就是方才那艘大船的主人——答应给他一个船长衔头，外加香料贸易的抽成。安东便趁夜带着荷兰兵摸上"潮钟号"。他们杀了所有人。四十条命。你父亲也在其中。But he sold the whole ship to the Dutch East India Company. Van Alons—the master of that great ship you just saw burning—promised him a captain's commission and a cut of the spice trade. So Anton led Dutch soldiers aboard the Tidal Bell in the dead of night. They killed everyone. Forty lives. Your father among them.

望汐/ Wàngxī [捂住嘴] 天哪…… [Covering her mouth] Heavens...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 他们把我捆起来，丢上一条舢板。没有帆，没有桨，没有淡水。你还在我肚子里，七个多月。他们以为海会替他们灭口。他们错了。海不替任何人灭口。海只记得。They tied me up and threw me onto a sampan. No sail. No oars. No fresh water. You were still in my belly, seven months along. They thought the sea would silence me for them. They were wrong. The sea silences no one. The sea only remembers.

[她走到洞口，伸手触碰那口青铜钟。钟身发出低沉的嗡鸣。] [She walks to the cave mouth and touches the bronze bell. It emits a low, resonant hum.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 舢板漂了七天。我喝雨水，吃生鱼。第八天，我看见了这座岛。周围的礁石像鲨鱼的牙齿。但舢板自己找到了路，穿过礁石缝，停在这片沙滩上。那时候我就知道：这座岛在等我。或者说，在等我们。The sampan drifted for seven days. I drank rainwater, ate raw fish. On the eighth day, I saw this island. The reefs around it were like sharks' teeth. But the sampan found its own path, slipping through the gaps, and beached on this sand. That's when I knew: this island was waiting for me. Or rather, waiting for us.

望汐/ Wàngxī 那这本册子……《潮钟册》…… And that book... the Tidal Bell Manual...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 是在岛上找到的。在一个老沉船的残骸里。那艘船比我还老，比明朝还老。船舱里有一具白骨，坐在一口钟旁边。白骨的手里握着这本册子。鲨鱼皮做的。海水泡不烂。上面写的是古篆字——我小时候跟一个老道士学过，没想到在这里用上了。I found it on the island. In the wreck of an old ship. Older than me. Older than the Ming dynasty. Inside the cabin, there was a skeleton sitting beside a bell. The skeleton held this manual in its hands. Made of shark-skin. The sea couldn't rot it. It was written in ancient seal script—I studied it with an old Daoist priest when I was a child. Never thought I'd use it here.

望汐/ Wàngxī 上面写了什么？What does it say?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 写了怎么跟海里的东西说话。怎么叫醒睡在珊瑚底下的魂。怎么让风替你跑腿，让浪替你报仇。It tells how to speak with the things in the sea. How to wake the souls sleeping beneath the coral. How to make the wind run your errands, and the waves carry out your vengeance.

[她转过身，看着望汐。] [She turns and looks at Wàngxī.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 十二年了。我一直在等。等那艘荷兰船再开进这片海。如今它来了。带着安东，带着范·阿隆索，带着所有欠我们债的人。Twelve years. I've been waiting. Waiting for that Dutch ship to sail into these waters again. Now it's here. Carrying Anton, carrying Van Alons, carrying everyone who owes us a debt.

望汐/ Wàngxī 您要杀了他们？Are you going to kill them?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [沉默片刻] 我不知道。我只知道他们必须看见我。必须记起来自己做过什么。必须……跪下来。[Pauses] I don't know. I only know they must see me. They must remember what they did. They must... kneel.

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲…… Mother...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 但现在不要再问了。睡意正降到你眼上。让它来吧。这是温柔的恩赐。你挡不住的。 But ask no more now. Sleep is falling upon your eyes. Let it come. It is a gentle gift. You cannot resist it.

[潮音以杖轻触望汐的前额。望汐的眼皮垂下，缓缓睡去。潮音脱下自己的外衣，盖在女儿身上。] [Cháoyīn touches Wàngxī's forehead gently with the staff. Wàngxī's eyelids close; she slowly falls asleep. Cháoyīn removes her outer coat and covers her daughter.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 睡吧。梦见你父亲的船。梦见它还没有沉。 Sleep. Dream of your father's ship. Dream that it hasn't sunk yet.

[稍顿。风声忽然转细。洞口悬挂的渔网开始轻轻摆动，仿佛有看不见的手在拨弄。] [A pause. The wind suddenly softens. The fishing nets hanging at the cave mouth begin to sway gently, as if plucked by invisible hands.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [站直身体，声音变得清亮] 来吧，仆役。过来。我的鬼火儿。现身。[Straightening, voice turning clear and bright] Come, servant. Come here. My Guǐhuǒ'ér. Appear.

[一阵清亮如玻璃破碎般的音响。洞窟内突然亮起青蓝色的光。那光从钟身上升起，从海面飘来，从礁石缝里渗出，聚成一个不断变换形状的形体——时而是人形，时而是火球，时而是展翅的海鸟。] [A clear sound, like shattering glass. Blue-green light suddenly fills the cave. It rises from the bell, drifts in from the sea, seeps from the cracks in the reef, coalescing into a form that constantly shifts—now human-shaped, now a ball of flame, now a seabird spreading its wings.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [声音像风铃，像远处的钟，像鲸鱼在深海的歌唱] 愿您永享尊荣，潮音船长。庄严的夫人。我来听候你的心意。无论是劈风而行，涉水，穿火，还是骑着卷云飞驰——鬼火儿都听你差遣。[Voice like wind chimes, like distant bells, like whale song in the deep] Ever honored be you, Captain Cháoyīn. Majestic Lady. I come to await your command. Whether to cleave the wind, walk through water, pass through fire, or ride the churning clouds—Guǐhuǒ'ér is at your service.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 我吩咐你的那场风暴，可都一一办妥了？The storm I commanded—was everything carried out as ordered?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [形体化作一团跳动的火焰] 一点不差。我先攀上他们的桅杆，在他们的帆索间跳舞，把罗盘搅得发疯。然后我钻进船长室里那个荷兰人的梦里，让他梦见自己淹死在咸水里。那个叫费迪南的小子——范·阿隆索的儿子——第一个跳出船去，头发根根直竖，高喊着："地狱空了！魔鬼都跑出来了！" [Form shifting into a dancing flame] Precisely. First, I climbed their masts and danced among their rigging, driving their compasses mad. Then I crept into the dreams of that Dutchman in the captain's cabin and made him dream he was drowning in salt water. That boy Ferdinand—Van Alons's son—was the first to jump ship, hair standing straight up, shouting, 'Hell is empty! All the devils are here!'

[鬼火儿发出细碎的笑声。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér emits a tinkling laugh.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 他们管我叫魔鬼。他们不知道，我只是一个替四十个死人讨债的鬼火罢了。They call me a devil. They don't know I'm just a ghost-fire collecting a debt for forty dead men.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 他们都平安？Are they all safe?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 都平安。连一根头发也没伤着。照你的吩咐，我把他们分散到岛上各处。国王——他们管那个范·阿隆索叫"总督大人"——正在东边的礁石滩上哭他的儿子。他那弟弟在盘算怎么趁机弄死他。那个叫安东的……[火焰的颜色变深] ……在检查他的枪有没有进水。All safe. Not a hair harmed. As you commanded, I scattered them across the island. The King—they call Van Alons 'Your Excellency the Governor'—is weeping for his son on the eastern reef. His brother is calculating how to use this chance to kill him. And that one called Anton... [Flame darkens] ...is checking if his gun got wet.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 安东。Anton.

[她念出这个名字的时候，洞口的钟发出一声低鸣。] [As she says the name, the bell at the cave mouth hums low.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 至于总督的儿子，我特地把他单独引开。如今他正坐在岛北一处隐僻角落，双臂交叉，叹息不止。他以为他父亲死了。他以为这岛上全是魔鬼。As for the Governor's son, I led him away separately. He sits now in a secluded spot in the north of the island, arms folded, sighing endlessly. He thinks his father is dead. He thinks this island is full of devils.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你做得极好，鬼火儿。可还有事要你去办。眼下是什么时辰了？You have done excellently, Guǐhuǒ'ér. But there is more for you to do. What hour is it?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 已过正午。Past noon.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 那从此刻到日落之间，我们一刻也不能虚掷。Then from now until sunset, we cannot waste a single moment.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [火焰缩成一团，声音变低] 既然你又要使我劳作，就容我提醒你一句：你答应给我的，还没有兑现。[Flame shrinking, voice lowering] Since you require my labor again, allow me to remind you: you have not yet granted what you promised me.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 怎么？闹起脾气来了？你还想讨什么？What's this? A temper tantrum? What is it you want?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 我的自由。你说过，等仇报了，就放我走。不再把我拴在这口钟上。不再让我替你跑腿。让我回到海上去，回到桅杆顶上去，回到风暴眼里去——那才是我该待的地方。My freedom. You said once your revenge was complete, you would release me. No longer bound to this bell. No longer running your errands. Let me return to the sea, to the tops of the masts, to the eye of the storm—that is where I belong.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [声音变冷] 还没到时候。别多说一个字。[Voice cold] It is not yet time. Do not speak another word of it.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [火焰剧烈跳动] 可我忠心服侍了你十二年！从不怠慢，从不差错。你初来岛上时，是我替你驱散了礁石周围的鲨鱼。是我把鲛奴从他母亲的尸骨旁赶开。是我—— [Flame flickering violently] But I have served you faithfully for twelve years! Never slacking, never failing. When you first arrived, I drove the sharks away from the reefs for you. I chased the Shark-Slave away from his mother's bones. I—

潮音/ Cháoyīn [猛地举起铁杖] 你忘了是谁把你从苦刑里救出来的？[Raising the staff sharply] Have you forgotten who rescued you from torment?

[鬼火儿的火焰骤然缩小，几乎熄灭。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér's flame shrinks dramatically, nearly extinguishing.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 忘了那个海妖西海妖？忘了她怎么把你囚进那根锈铁柱里？那根铁柱原是龙王镇海用的定海神针，被她偷来，钉在岛北的礁石上，专门用来关你这种不肯听话的精怪。你在那里面嚎了多久？嗯？Have you forgotten that sea-witch, Sycorax? Forgotten how she imprisoned you in that rusted iron pillar? That pillar was once a Dinghai Shenzhen, used by the Dragon King to calm the seas. She stole it and drove it into the northern reef, specifically to cage unruly spirits like you. How long did you howl inside it? Hm?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [声音微弱] 十二年…… [Voice faint] Twelve years...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 十二年。我来的时候，听见你的嚎声从铁锈里渗出来，像风吹过破笛子。是我用《潮钟册》里的法子，用这口钟震裂了铁柱，把你放出来的。Twelve years. When I arrived, I heard your wailing seeping through the rust, like wind through a broken flute. It was I who used the methods in the Tidal Bell Manual, using this very bell to crack that pillar and set you free.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 我感激你，主人。I am grateful, mistress.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 那就别再抱怨。若你再嘀咕一句，我就把你钉回那根铁柱里去。西海妖死了，但她的咒我还留着。那根铁柱还在礁石上。要不要回去？Then stop complaining. If you mutter another word, I will seal you back inside that iron pillar. Sycorax is dead, but I kept her spell. That pillar still stands on the reef. Shall I send you back?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [火焰几乎伏到地面] 请恕我。我会顺从。我会温驯地履行精灵的职分。[Flame nearly prostrate on the ground] Forgive me. I will be obedient. I will perform my spirit's duties meekly.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [放下铁杖，声音转柔] 这才像话。再过两日——最多两日——我便放你自由。我发誓。以那四十个亡魂的名义发誓。[Lowering the staff, voice softening] That's more like it. In two days—two days at most—I will grant you your freedom. I swear it. I swear it on the forty lost souls.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [火焰重新亮起来] 两日？[Flame brightening] Two days?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 两日。去变作海中的仙女。去把费迪南引到这里来。除了我和望汐，谁都不可见你。快去。Two days. Go now, transform into a sea nymph. Lead Ferdinand here. Let no one see you but myself and Wàngxī. Go quickly.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 遵命。As you command.

[鬼火儿化作一道青光，从洞口飘出，贴着海面向远处飞去。潮音独自站了片刻，然后走到钟前，用手掌轻拍钟身。钟发出低沉的嗡鸣，良久不息。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér turns into a streak of blue-green light, floating out of the cave and skimming across the sea into the distance. Cháoyīn stands alone for a moment, then walks to the bell and pats its side with her palm. It hums low, the sound lingering.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [低声，像是对着钟说话] 四十个弟兄。再等一等。就快轮到你们了。[Low, as if speaking to the bell] Forty brothers. Wait just a little longer. Your turn is coming soon.

[她转身走到望汐身边，轻轻摇醒女儿。] [She turns, walks to Wàngxī, and gently shakes her awake.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 醒来吧，我的孩子。该起身了。你睡得够久了。Wake up, my child. It's time to rise. You've slept long enough.

望汐/ Wàngxī [缓缓睁眼] 母亲……您方才讲的那些……我心里好难过。[Eyes slowly opening] Mother... all that you just told me... my heart is so heavy.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 把它放下。跟我来。我们去见鲛奴——我的奴隶。Set it down. Come with me. We're going to see the Shark-Slave—my slave.

望汐/ Wàngxī [站起身] 他又做什么了？[Standing] What has he done now?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 什么也没做。这就是问题。他该去拾柴了。Nothing. That's the problem. He was supposed to gather firewood.

)(*)(

第三场 (Scene Three)

岛上。洞窟前。日色偏西。 The island. Before the cave. The sun is sinking westward.

[潮音站在洞口。望汐立在她身后。洞前的空地上散落着渔网、木柴、晒干的鱼骨。一阵浓烈的鱼腥味从岩石后飘来。] [Cháoyīn stands at the cave mouth. Wàngxī stands behind her. Fishing nets, firewood, and dried fish bones are scattered on the ground before the cave. A strong smell of fish wafts from behind the rocks.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 喂，奴才！鲛奴！鲨鱼崽子！泥土和咸水生的东西！出来说话！Hey, slave! Shark-Slave! Shark-spawn! Thing born of mud and brine! Come out and speak!

[沉默。只有海浪声。然后，岩石后传来沉重的、湿漉漉的呼吸声。鲛奴从阴影里挪出来。] [Silence. Only the sound of waves. Then, a heavy, wet breathing emerges from behind the rocks. The Shark-Slave shuffles out of the shadows.]

[他比普通人高出一个头。皮肤是鲨鱼皮般的灰蓝色，粗糙，布满礁石擦伤的白色疤痕。他的手指间有退化的蹼。他的嘴很宽，咧开时露出层层细密的尖牙。他的眼睛是黑色的，没有眼白，像两枚湿漉漉的鹅卵石。他穿着一件破烂的旧帆布，勉强蔽体。他走动时，姿态像在深水中行走——缓慢，沉重，带着一种奇异的优雅。] [He is a head taller than an ordinary man. His skin is a gray-blue, rough as shark hide, covered in pale scars from reef scrapes. He has vestigial webbing between his fingers. His mouth is wide; when it opens, rows of fine, sharp teeth are revealed. His eyes are black, without whites, like two wet pebbles. He wears tattered old sailcloth that barely covers him. When he moves, he moves as if walking in deep water—slow, heavy, with a strange grace.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [声音低沉，含混，像在水底说话] 叫……叫什么。我在。一直……都在。[Voice low, indistinct, as if speaking underwater] Call... calling. I'm here. Always... here.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 柴呢？我叫你拾的柴呢？The firewood? The wood I told you to gather?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [指向身后] 那里。[Pointing behind him] There.

[岩石后堆着一小捆湿漉漉的树枝。] [A small pile of damp branches lies behind the rocks.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 就这些？太阳晒了一整天，你只拾了这些？Just that? The sun has been blazing all day, and this is all you've gathered?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [慢慢抬起头] 太阳……晒。我……不晒。我……在礁石那边。听。底下……有声音。[Slowly raising his head] Sun... blazes. I... not blaze. I... over by the reef. Listen. Underneath... there is sound.

望汐/ Wàngxī [轻声] 什么声音？[Softly] What sound?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [转向望汐，黑眼睛盯着她] 母亲。在唱。珊瑚底下。她在唱。唱我……听不懂了。以前……懂。现在……不懂了。[Turning to Wàngxī, black eyes fixed on her] Mother. Singing. Under the coral. She sings. Sings me... I don't understand anymore. Before... understood. Now... don't understand.

[他用蹼手摸了摸自己的喉咙，仿佛那里卡着什么东西。] [He touches his throat with a webbed hand, as if something is stuck there.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 够了。你母亲死了。死了十二年了。她的骨头都化成了礁石。她不会再唱了。你听见的是你自己的脑子里的声音。Enough. Your mother is dead. Dead for twelve years. Her bones have turned to reef stone. She sings no more. What you hear is the sound inside your own head.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [摇头，动作缓慢而固执] 不是……脑子。是底下。你听不见。你是……岸上的人。[Shaking his head, the motion slow and stubborn] Not... head. Underneath. You can't hear. You are... shore people.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 我不管你听见什么。柴。我要柴。天黑以前，把那捆柴再加一倍。去。I don't care what you hear. Wood. I need wood. Double that pile before dark. Go.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [不动] 这岛……原是我母亲的。她葬在珊瑚底下。骨头都化成了礁石。是你……踩在她脊背上。用你那口钟……镇住了潮水。镇住了她。[Not moving] This island... was my mother's. She is buried under the coral. Bones turned to reef stone. You... step on her spine. With your bell... you stilled the tides. Stilled her.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你母亲是个吃人的海妖。我初来岛上时，你从礁石后面扑出来，差点咬断我的手腕。是我手下留情，没把你钉死在铁柱上。是我教你说话，教你认火，教你不用生吞活鱼。Your mother was a man-eating sea-witch. When I first arrived, you lunged at me from behind those rocks and nearly bit through my wrist. I showed you mercy and didn't nail you to that iron pillar. I taught you to speak, to recognize fire, to eat fish without swallowing them raw and alive.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [突然激动起来，声音变得急促] 你教我说话！我得的好处……便是如今学会了咒骂！我咒你这铁册子！[指向洞内的《潮钟册》] 我咒你那鬼火奴才！我咒你那女儿—— [Suddenly agitated, voice quickening] You teach me to speak! The good I get... is now I learn to curse! I curse your iron book! [Pointing at the Tidal Bell Manual in the cave] I curse your ghost-fire slave! I curse your daughter—

[他猛地转向望汐。望汐后退一步，但没有躲开目光。鲛奴的嘴张合了几次，露出尖牙，但没有再说话。他的黑眼睛里有什么东西在翻滚——不是愤怒，是更古老的、无法命名的东西。] [He turns sharply toward Wàngxī. She steps back but does not look away. The Shark-Slave's mouth opens and closes several times, revealing his sharp teeth, but he says no more. Something churns in his black eyes—not anger, but something older, something unnameable.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [声音忽然低下去，几乎像耳语] 她笑起来……像海豚。像海豚。可我……咬不到她。[Voice suddenly dropping, almost a whisper] Her laugh... like a dolphin. Like a dolphin. But I... cannot bite her.

望汐/ Wàngxī [平静地] 我当初可怜你。你那时困在渔网里，浑身是伤。是我替你剪开网绳的。你反咬我一口。[Calmly] I pitied you once. You were tangled in a fishing net, covered in wounds. I cut the ropes for you. And you bit me.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [低下头，看着自己的蹼手] 那时候……那时候我还以为……你是海里漂来给我的新娘。像海豹化成的女子。像母亲说的那些……那些变成人的鱼。我错了。你是岸上的人。你们都是岸上的人。[Looking down at his webbed hands] That time... that time I thought... you were a bride sent to me from the sea. Like a seal-woman. Like the ones Mother told of... fish who become human. I was wrong. You are shore people. You are all shore people.

[长久的沉默。只有海浪声。] [A long silence. Only the sound of waves.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [声音里的锋芒收敛了一些] 去拾柴，鲛奴。拾完柴，今晚给你多一条鱼。[The edge in her voice softening slightly] Go gather wood, Shark-Slave. When you're done, you'll get an extra fish tonight.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [慢慢转身，向礁石走去] 鱼……我自己会抓。这岛……原是我的。[Turning slowly, moving toward the reef] Fish... I can catch myself. This island... was mine.

[他消失在岩石后。潮音望着他的背影，面无表情。] [He disappears behind the rocks. Cháoyīn watches him go, expressionless.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲……他说的那些……珊瑚底下的声音…… Mother... what he said... the sounds under the coral...

潮音/ Cháoyīn 这岛上全是声音。风吹礁石洞的声音。浪退下去的声音。鬼火儿在钟里嗡鸣的声音。还有那些……[她顿了一下] ……还有那四十个弟兄。他们也在这片海底下。他们也在说话。只是你听不见。This island is full of sounds. Wind blowing through the reef holes. Waves pulling back. Guǐhuǒ'ér humming inside the bell. And those... [She pauses] ...the forty brothers. They are under this sea too. They are speaking too. You just can't hear them.

[远处传来一阵音乐——不是人间的乐器，而是风穿过不同粗细的绳索发出的声音，夹杂着细碎的铃声。望汐抬起头。] [Music drifts from a distance—not from human instruments, but the sound of wind passing through ropes of different thicknesses, mixed with the faint jingle of bells. Wàngxī looks up.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 那是什么声音？What is that sound?

[音乐渐渐清晰。那是鬼火儿的歌声，从海面上飘来。] [The music grows clearer. It is Guǐhuǒ'ér's song, drifting over the sea.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [歌声，远处] 来到这片金黄沙岸， 手挽着手， 向狂浪行过礼， 亲吻过海的白沫， 便在这里轻轻起舞……

[Singing, distant] Come onto this golden sand shore, Hand in hand, Bow to the wild waves, Kiss the white foam of the sea, And here, gently dance...

望汐/ Wàngxī 那是谁在唱？Who is that singing?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [嘴角微微上扬] 是鬼火儿。他把鱼饵带来了。[Slight smile at the corner of her mouth] It's Guǐhuǒ'ér. He's brought the bait.

[音乐渐近。一个青年的身影从礁石间走出来——费迪南。他浑身湿透，衣服破烂，赤着脚。他的眼睛红肿，神情恍惚，仿佛刚从一场噩梦中醒来。他循着音乐，一步一步走向洞窟。] [The music draws nearer. A young man's figure emerges from the rocks—Ferdinand. He is soaked, clothes torn, barefoot. His eyes are red and swollen, his expression dazed, as if waking from a nightmare. He follows the music, step by step, toward the cave.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [用荷兰语喃喃自语，然后换成生硬的官话] 这音乐……原先在耳边……如今又远了。它不像人间的声音。莫非这岛上……有神灵？[Muttering in Dutch, then switching to stiff Mandarin] This music... was in my ears... now it's distant again. It doesn't sound human. Could there be... spirits on this island?

[他抬起头，看见了望汐。他停住了。] [He looks up and sees Wàngxī. He stops.]

[望汐也看见了他。这是她十五年来见到的第一个除了母亲和鲛奴以外的活人。她不由自主地向前迈了一步。] [Wàngxī sees him too. This is the first living person besides her mother and the Shark-Slave she has seen in fifteen years. Unconsciously, she takes a step forward.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [用官话，声音发颤] 奇迹……奇迹一般的姑娘……你……你可还是……人？[In Mandarin, voice trembling] A miracle... a miraculous girl... are you... are you human?

望汐/ Wàngxī [困惑地] 我不是什么奇迹。我只是……一个女子。[Puzzled] I am no miracle. I am just... a woman.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [跪下来] 我父亲……那不勒斯——不，巴达维亚的总督……范·阿隆索……若他还能听见，那就是我了。我是他的儿子，费迪南。我方才……方才船沉了。我以为所有人都死了。我以为自己也死了。可现在……我看见了你…… [Kneeling] My father... the Governor of Naples—no, Batavia... Van Alons... if he can still hear, that is me. I am his son, Ferdinand. Just now... the ship sank. I thought everyone was dead. I thought I was dead too. But now... I see you...

望汐/ Wàngxī [转向潮音] 母亲，他在说什么？他说话好奇怪。[Turning to Cháoyīn] Mother, what is he saying? He speaks so strangely.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [冷冷地] 他在说他的来历。他是那条沉船上的。他父亲就是范·阿隆索——那个下令杀你父亲的人。[Coldly] He is explaining where he came from. He was on that sunken ship. His father is Van Alons—the man who gave the order to kill your father.

[望汐的身体僵住了。费迪南听不懂潮音的话，但感觉到了气氛的变化。] [Wàngxī's body stiffens. Ferdinand doesn't understand Cháoyīn's words but senses the shift in atmosphere.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [站起身，向望汐伸出手] 姑娘……我不知道你是什么人。是这岛上的仙女，还是海里的神灵。但我……从我第一眼见到你，我的心就…… [Standing, reaching a hand toward Wàngxī] Miss... I don't know who you are. A fairy of this island, or a spirit of the sea. But I... from the first moment I saw you, my heart...

潮音/ Cháoyīn [打断他，用生硬的荷兰腔官话] 跟我走。别替他说情。他是个叛徒的儿子。[Interrupting, in stiff Dutch-accented Mandarin] Come with me. Don't plead for him. He's the son of a traitor.

[她抓住费迪南的手臂。费迪南想要挣脱，但潮音的手劲出奇地大。] [She grabs Ferdinand's arm. He tries to pull free, but Cháoyīn's grip is surprisingly strong.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [挣扎] 放开我！我父亲会—— [Struggling] Let go of me! My father will—

潮音/ Cháoyīn [换成官话] 你父亲？你父亲欠我四十条命。现在你替他还不了一根头发，但你可以替他做点别的。跟我走。[Switching to Mandarin] Your father? Your father owes me forty lives. You can't repay a single hair for him now, but you can do something else in his place. Come with me.

[她拽着费迪南向洞窟走去。费迪南回头看着望汐。] [She drags Ferdinand toward the cave. He looks back at Wàngxī.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [对望汐] 若不是还能每日看见这位姑娘一次……那其余整个世界的自由，我也并不羡慕！[To Wàngxī] If I could not see this girl once a day... I would not envy the freedom of all the rest of the world!

[潮音把他推进洞窟。望汐站在原地，望着费迪南消失的方向，手不自觉地按在胸口。鬼火儿的歌声在远处飘荡，渐渐消散在风里。] [Cháoyīn shoves him into the cave. Wàngxī stands where she is, watching the direction where Ferdinand disappeared, her hand unconsciously pressing against her chest. Guǐhuǒ'ér's song drifts in the distance, slowly fading into the wind.]

望汐/ Wàngxī [轻声] 母亲……他是谁？[Softly] Mother... who is he?

[潮音从洞口走出来，手里多了一捆绳索。她没有回答。她走到望汐面前，伸手理了理女儿被海风吹乱的头发。] [Cháoyīn emerges from the cave, now carrying a coil of rope. She doesn't answer. She walks to Wàngxī and smooths her daughter's hair, tangled by the sea wind.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 他姓范。这就够了。进去吧。天快黑了。His name is Van. That's enough. Go inside. It's getting dark.

[望汐又望了一眼费迪南消失的方向，然后默默走进洞窟。潮音独自站在洞口，望着西沉的太阳。海面被染成金红色，像一大片稀释的血。她举起铁杖，向海面画了一个圈。远处，鬼火儿的青光闪了一下，然后熄灭。] [Wàngxī glances once more in the direction Ferdinand disappeared, then silently enters the cave. Cháoyīn stands alone at the entrance, watching the setting sun. The sea is stained gold-red, like a vast wash of diluted blood. She raises her staff and draws a circle toward the sea. In the distance, Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light flashes once, then extinguishes.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [低声] 四十个弟兄。第一个已经来了。剩下的，也快了。[Low] Forty brothers. The first one has come. The rest will be here soon.

[她转身走进洞窟。灯光渐暗。海浪声持续了片刻，然后也被黑暗吞没。] [She turns and enters the cave. Lights fade. The sound of waves lingers a moment, then is swallowed by darkness.]

第一幕 终 End of Act One

)(*)(

第二幕 (Act Two)

第四场 (Scene Four)

岛上另一处。一片荒凉而明亮的珊瑚石滩。日头偏西，海面泛着金红色的光。 Another part of the island. A desolate but bright coral strand. The sun is sinking westward; the sea glows gold-red.

[范·阿隆索坐在一块礁石上，浑身湿透，衣服上沾满海藻和沙砾。他的脸上毫无血色，眼睛空洞地望着海面。霍萨洛站在他身旁，手里拿着一本被海水泡胀的航海日志，正徒劳地试图翻开粘连的书页。塞巴斯蒂安倚在一块礁石上，用匕首剔着指甲里的沙，嘴角挂着一丝若有若无的冷笑。安东独自站在稍远处，背对众人，面朝大海，手里握着一支短铳，正在检查火药是否受潮。] [Van Alons sits on a rock, soaked through, his clothes covered in seaweed and sand. His face is bloodless, his eyes stare hollowly at the sea. Huòsàluò stands beside him, holding a seawater-swollen logbook, vainly trying to separate its stuck pages. Sebastiaan leans against a rock, cleaning sand from under his nails with a dagger, a faint, ambiguous sneer on his lips. Anton stands apart, further away, his back to the others, facing the sea, holding a short musket, checking if the powder is wet.]

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [合上日志，叹了口气] 请宽心些，总督大人。咱们虽失去船、货物、水手……可活着这件事，已经比失去的一切都重。只要还有一口气，就能—— [Closing the logbook with a sigh] Take heart, Your Excellency. Though we have lost ship, cargo, sailors... being alive outweighs everything we've lost. As long as there is breath, we can—

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [打断他] 就能怎样？再被海风吹干成咸鱼？你的安慰，霍萨洛，像隔夜的冷汤一样叫人难以下咽。[Interrupting] —do what? Be dried into salted fish by the sea wind? Your comfort, Huòsàluò, is like cold soup left overnight—hard to swallow.

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [没有抬头] 我失去了儿子。费迪南。我的儿子。[Without looking up] I have lost my son. Ferdinand. My son.

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò 大人，我们还没有找到他的—— My lord, we haven't yet found his—

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [声音嘶哑] 我看着他跳下去的。浪那么高。他跳下去了。他才十九岁。他母亲临死前，我答应过她，要把儿子带回阿姆斯特丹。现在……现在我连他的尸首都带不回去了。[Voice hoarse] I saw him jump. The waves were so high. He jumped. He was only nineteen. His mother, on her deathbed, made me promise to bring our son back to Amsterdam. Now... now I can't even bring back his body.

[长久的沉默。只有海浪拍打礁石的声音。安东始终没有回头。] [A long silence. Only the sound of waves against the reef. Anton never turns around.]

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [收起匕首，走到范·阿隆索面前] 兄长，悲伤没有用。我们得想办法离开这座鬼地方。你看见那些火了吗？桅杆上那些青蓝色的火？那不是普通的闪电。这岛上……有东西。[Sheathing his dagger, walking to Van Alons] Brother, grief is useless. We need to find a way off this cursed place. Did you see those fires? The blue-green flames on the masts? That was no ordinary lightning. There is... something on this island.

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [不安地] 那是鬼火。闽南水手都这么说。人溺死在海上，魂散不掉，就变成火，在桅杆上跳舞。是凶兆，也是引路的。有时候……会把人引到礁石上撞碎。[Uneasily] That was ghost-fire. That's what the Hokkien sailors call it. When a man drowns at sea and his spirit cannot scatter, it turns into fire and dances on the masts. It's an ill omen, but also a guide. Sometimes... it guides ships onto the reefs to be crushed.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 引路？引到什么鬼地方？Guide? Guide to what cursed place?

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [压低声音] 我船舱里供着妈祖像。风暴来的时候，我点了香。香烧到一半，自己灭了。三次。我心里就凉了。这岛上……不止我们。[Lowering his voice] I keep a shrine to Mazu in my cabin. When the storm hit, I lit incense. It went out by itself halfway through burning. Three times. My heart went cold. We are not alone on this island.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [冷笑] 妈祖。一个中国木偶。你就靠那个？[Sneering] Mazu. A Chinese wooden doll. You put your faith in that?

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [平静地] 我在这些海域航了三十年。见过的东西比您多，塞巴斯蒂安大人。有些东西，不是靠《圣经》就能解释的。[Calmly] I have sailed these waters for thirty years. I have seen more things than you, Lord Sebastiaan. Some things cannot be explained by the Bible.

安东/ Anton [突然开口，仍然背对众人] 他说得对。[Suddenly speaking, still facing away] He's right.

[所有人转向他。] [Everyone turns to him.]

安东/ Anton [转过身来，短铳已经收进了腰间] 这岛上……不止我们。我闻到了。[Turning around, the musket now tucked in his belt] We are not alone on this island. I smell it.

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons 闻到？闻到什么？Smell? Smell what?

安东/ Anton [缓步走向众人] 烧过的香。旧渔网。晒干的鱼骨。还有……[他顿了一下] ……血腥味。很淡。被海风盖住了。但不是新鲜的血。是很老的血。老到渗进石头里，渗进珊瑚里，每次退潮就泛上来一点。[Walking slowly toward the group] Burned incense. Old fishing nets. Dried fish bones. And... [He pauses] ...the smell of blood. Faint. Covered by the sea wind. But not fresh blood. Old blood. So old it's soaked into the stone, into the coral, and rises a little with every ebbing tide.

[塞巴斯蒂安和霍萨洛交换了一个眼神。范·阿隆索慢慢抬起头。] [Sebastiaan and Huòsàluò exchange a look. Van Alons slowly raises his head.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons 安东。你从前在这片海混过。你知道这是什么地方？Anton. You sailed these waters before. Do you know what place this is?

安东/ Anton [望向远处的海面] 听说过。水手们管它叫"鬼岛"。说是有进无出。礁石像鲨鱼牙，专门咬船的龙骨。还说岛上住着一个女人。一个被海吐出来的女人。她有一口钟。钟一响，风就变方向。[Gazing at the distant sea] I've heard of it. Sailors call it 'Ghost Island.' They say you can enter but never leave. The reefs are like shark's teeth, made to bite the keels of ships. And they say a woman lives on it. A woman vomited up by the sea. She has a bell. When the bell rings, the wind changes direction.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 女人？一个？A woman? Just one?

安东/ Anton [嘴角抽搐了一下] 一个。[A tic at the corner of his mouth] Just one.

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [站起身] 你在说笑话。[Standing] You're joking.

安东/ Anton [迎上他的目光] 我从来不说笑话，总督大人。您知道的。[Meeting his gaze] I never joke, Your Excellency. You know that.

[两人对视。安东的眼神里有什么东西让范·阿隆索沉默了。] [The two stare at each other. Something in Anton's eyes silences Van Alons.]

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [打破沉默] 那我们现在怎么办？天快黑了。在这种岛上，天黑以后……[他没有说完。] [Breaking the silence] Then what do we do now? It's almost dark. On an island like this, after dark... [He doesn't finish.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [深吸一口气] 找淡水。找能生火的东西。找——[他的声音哽了一下] ——找我儿子。活要见人，死要见尸。[Taking a deep breath] Find fresh water. Find something to burn. Find— [His voice catches] —find my son. Alive or dead, I will see him.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [轻声，像是自言自语] 死要见尸……是啊。总要见到的。[Softly, as if to himself] Dead or alive, I will see him... Yes. One way or another.

[安东看了塞巴斯蒂安一眼。两人的目光在暮色中交汇了片刻。范·阿隆索已经转身向岛内走去，没有注意到。霍萨洛跟在他身后，步履蹒跚。] [Anton glances at Sebastiaan. Their eyes meet for a moment in the twilight. Van Alons has already turned to walk inland, not noticing. Huòsàluò follows him, stumbling slightly.]

安东/ Anton [压低声音，对塞巴斯蒂安] 你方才说什么？[Lowering his voice, to Sebastiaan] What did you just say?

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [同样压低声音] 我说什么了？[Also lowering his voice] What did I say?

安东/ Anton "总要见到的。" 'One way or another.'

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [微微一笑] 我说我兄长的儿子。费迪南。总要见到尸首的。怎么，你想到别处去了？[Smiling faintly] I meant my brother's son. Ferdinand. We'll see his body one way or another. Why? Did you think I meant something else?

[安东没有回答。他望着塞巴斯蒂安的背影，手不自觉地按在了腰间的短铳上。] [Anton doesn't answer. He watches Sebastiaan's back, his hand unconsciously moving to the musket at his belt.]

[灯光渐暗。远处，鬼火儿的青光在礁石间闪了一下，又消失了。] [Lights dim. In the distance, Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light flashes once among the reefs, then vanishes.]

)(*)(

第五场 (Scene Five)

岛上另一处。一片向内陆延伸的沙地，周围长着低矮的、被海风吹弯的灌木。天色已近黄昏。 Another part of the island. A stretch of sandy ground extending inland, surrounded by low shrubs bent by the sea wind. Dusk is approaching.

[塞巴斯蒂安和安东走在范·阿隆索和霍萨洛的后面，渐渐拉开了距离。范·阿隆索的身影在前方越来越模糊。霍萨洛时不时回头，但最终也消失在灌木丛后。只剩下塞巴斯蒂安和安东两人，并肩走在暮色中。] [Sebastiaan and Anton walk behind Van Alons and Huòsàluò, gradually falling further behind. Van Alons's figure grows indistinct ahead. Huòsàluò glances back occasionally but eventually disappears behind the shrubs. Only Sebastiaan and Anton remain, walking side by side in the dusk.]

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [忽然开口，声音很轻] 你说，我兄长还能活多久？[Suddenly speaking, very softly] Tell me—how much longer do you think my brother has to live?

安东/ Anton [没有停下脚步] 什么意思？[Not breaking stride] What do you mean?

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 没什么意思。随便问问。一个失去了儿子的父亲，心都碎了，还能撑多久？一天？两天？还是今晚就会走到礁石边，往下一跳？Nothing. Just wondering. A father who has lost his son, his heart broken—how long can he hold on? A day? Two? Or will he walk to the edge of the reef tonight and throw himself in?

安东/ Anton [停下脚步] 你到底想说什么？[Stopping] What exactly are you trying to say?

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [也停下脚步，转身面对安东] 我想说，费迪南死了。我兄长也等于死了。他活着和死了没什么两样。那……那不勒——不，巴达维亚总督的位置，就空出来了。[Also stopping, turning to face Anton] I'm saying Ferdinand is dead. And my brother might as well be. Alive or dead, there's no difference. Which means... the position of Governor of Naples—no, Batavia—is vacant.

安东/ Anton [面无表情] 巴达维亚总督是公司任命的。不是你我能决定的。[Expressionless] The Governor of Batavia is appointed by the Company. It's not for you or me to decide.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [向前迈了一步，声音压得更低] 在这座岛上，没有公司。没有董事会。没有十七人会议。只有我们。我。你。还有那边那个……行尸走肉。[Stepping closer, voice dropping even lower] On this island, there is no Company. No board of directors. No Council of Seventeen. There is only us. You. Me. And that... walking corpse over there.

[他朝范·阿隆索消失的方向扬了扬下巴。] [He gestures with his chin toward where Van Alons disappeared.]

安东/ Anton [沉默片刻] 霍萨洛呢？[Pausing] And Huòsàluò?

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [轻蔑地] 一个画地图的老头。他连只鸡都不敢杀。[Dismissively] An old mapmaker. He wouldn't dare kill a chicken.

安东/ Anton 他看见了。他会说出去。He's seen things. He'll talk.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 说出去？对谁说？对巴达维亚的董事会？[冷笑] 我们能不能离开这座岛还两说。但如果我们能离开……如果只有我们两个离开……那故事就由我们来写。Talk? To whom? The Company board in Batavia? [Sneering] Whether we can even leave this island is uncertain. But if we do leave... if only the two of us leave... then we write the story.

[安东盯着塞巴斯蒂安。他的脸上没有任何表情，但他的手又按在了短铳上。] [Anton stares at Sebastiaan. His face shows no expression, but his hand moves to his musket again.]

安东/ Anton 你让我杀总督。You're asking me to kill the Governor.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 我没让你杀任何人。我只是说，机会就在眼前。绝好的机会。这样的机会，一辈子只有一次。[他顿了顿] 你不是没杀过人，安东。你手上沾的血，比我还多。I'm not asking you to kill anyone. I'm simply saying: the opportunity is right here. A perfect opportunity. Such chances come once in a lifetime. [He pauses] You've killed before, Anton. You have more blood on your hands than I do.

安东/ Anton [声音变冷] 我杀的是该杀的人。[Voice turning cold] I killed those who deserved to die.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 那我兄长呢？他下令杀的那些人呢？那艘中国商船上的人呢？"潮钟号"。四十条命。那命令是他签的字。他该不该死？And my brother? Those he ordered killed? The people on that Chinese merchant ship? The Tidal Bell. Forty lives. He signed that order. Does he deserve to die?

[安东的身体僵住了。他的手从短铳上滑落。] [Anton's body stiffens. His hand slips from the musket.]

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [观察到安东的反应，声音变得更柔] 我知道那件事。公司里人人都知道。你替他办了事，他给了你船长衔头。可你心里……真的服气吗？一个坐在巴达维亚办公室里签字的人，凭什么分走最大的那份？凭什么你替他沾血，他替你数钱？[Observing Anton's reaction, voice softening further] I know about that. Everyone in the Company knows. You did the deed for him, and he gave you a captain's commission. But in your heart... are you truly content? Why should a man who sits in an office in Batavia signing papers take the lion's share? Why should you stain your hands with blood while he counts your money?

[长久的沉默。海风吹过灌木丛，发出沙沙的声响。远处的礁石间，一道青蓝色的微光亮起——鬼火儿正隐形站在他们身后几步远的地方，听着每一句话。] [A long silence. The sea wind rustles through the shrubs. Among the distant reefs, a blue-green glimmer appears—Guǐhuǒ'ér stands invisible just a few steps behind them, listening to every word.]

安东/ Anton [终于开口，声音沙哑] 你想怎么做？[Finally speaking, voice hoarse] How do you want to do it?

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [嘴角露出笑容] 今晚。等他睡着。这岛上到处是石头。一块石头落下去，跟浪拍礁石的声音没什么两样。明天早上，我们就说他自己走到礁石边，失足掉下去了。霍萨洛不会怀疑。他巴不得相信这是个意外。[Smile spreading] Tonight. When he's asleep. This island is full of stones. The sound of a stone falling is no different from a wave hitting the reef. Tomorrow morning, we say he walked to the reef's edge and slipped. Huòsàluò won't question it. He'll want to believe it was an accident.

安东/ Anton [缓缓点头] 今晚。[Nodding slowly] Tonight.

[两人对视。塞巴斯蒂安伸出手。安东握住了。] [They look at each other. Sebastiaan extends his hand. Anton takes it.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [隐形的歌声忽然在两人耳边响起，只有他们能听见]

你若还惜命， 就快把睡意驱散。 睁眼吧，睁眼吧， 小心身边的背叛。 刀在鞘里动， 石在手中攥， 血还没流下， 魂已经先散……

[Invisible song suddenly rising in their ears, audible only to them]

If you value your life, Drive sleep away quickly. Open your eyes, open your eyes, Beware the betrayal at your side. The knife stirs in its sheath, The stone is clenched in the hand, Blood has not yet been spilled, But the soul has already scattered...

[塞巴斯蒂安和安东猛地分开。两人同时拔出武器——塞巴斯蒂安的匕首，安东的短铳——四处张望。但什么也没有。只有海风，只有渐暗的天光，只有远处海浪拍打礁石的节奏。] [Sebastiaan and Anton spring apart. Both draw their weapons simultaneously—Sebastiaan's dagger, Anton's musket—scanning in all directions. But there is nothing. Only the sea wind, only the fading light, only the distant rhythm of waves on the reef.]

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [声音发抖] 谁？谁在唱？[Voice trembling] Who's there? Who's singing?

安东/ Anton [脸色铁青] 没有人。是风。[Face ashen] No one. It's the wind.

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan 那不是风！那是—— That wasn't the wind! That was—

安东/ Anton [猛地抓住塞巴斯蒂安的手臂] 我说了，是风！把你的匕首收起来。走。跟上他们。快走。[Grabbing Sebastiaan's arm roughly] I said it was the wind! Put your dagger away. Walk. Catch up to them. Now.

[他拽着塞巴斯蒂安向范·阿隆索的方向走去。两人脚步仓皇，不时回头张望。鬼火儿的青光在他们身后闪了一下，然后像被风吹灭的烛火一样消失了。] [He drags Sebastiaan in the direction Van Alons went. Their steps are hurried; they glance back repeatedly. Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light flashes once behind them, then vanishes like a candle snuffed by the wind.]

)(*)(

第六场 (Scene Six)

岛上另一处。一片乱石嶙峋的荒地，靠近岛北的礁石群。天色已暗，月亮从云层后露出半张脸。海风带着腥咸味。 Another part of the island. A barren stretch of jagged rocks, near the northern reefs. Night has fallen; the moon shows half its face from behind the clouds. The sea wind carries a briny, fishy scent.

[鲛奴抱着一捆湿漉漉的柴，在乱石间艰难地行走。他的蹼足在锋利的礁石上留下一道道黏液痕迹。他一边走，一边低声嘟囔着，用的是那种含混不清的、像在水底说话的声音。] [The Shark-Slave trudges through the rocks, carrying a bundle of damp firewood. His webbed feet leave trails of slime on the sharp reef stones. As he walks, he mutters to himself in that indistinct, underwater-sounding voice.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng 柴……柴……她就要柴。潮音。船长。岸上的人。她踩在母亲的脊背上。母亲在底下唱。她听不见。她就要柴。Wood... wood... all she wants is wood. Cháoyīn. Captain. Shore person. She steps on Mother's spine. Mother sings underneath. She can't hear. She just wants wood.

[远处传来脚步声。鲛奴立刻伏下身，把自己藏在一块大礁石后面。他的黑眼睛在月光下闪着湿漉漉的光。] [Footsteps in the distance. The Shark-Slave immediately crouches, hiding behind a large boulder. His black eyes gleam wetly in the moonlight.]

[特林鸠罗从灌木丛中钻出来。他浑身湿透，小丑服上沾满沙子和碎贝壳，帽子歪在一边，脸上挂着一种惊恐过度后反而麻木的神情。他手里攥着一只被海水泡涨的皮靴——那是他唯一从沉船上抢救出来的个人物品。] [Trinculo emerges from the underbrush. He is soaked; his jester's motley is covered in sand and broken shells, his cap askew. His face wears the numb expression that follows extreme terror. He clutches a seawater-swollen leather boot—the only personal possession he salvaged from the wreck.]

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [自言自语，用带着广东腔的官话] 好，好得很。船沉了。总督不见了。王子跳海了。我，特林鸠罗——澳门"醉仙楼"连续三年最受欢迎的小丑——沦落到在一座鬼岛上跟螃蟹抢地盘。[他踢了一脚沙子] 连只螃蟹都没有！[To himself, in Mandarin with a Cantonese accent] Good. Very good. Ship sank. Governor missing. Prince jumped overboard. I, Trinculo—three years running the most popular jester at Macau's 'Drunken Immortal Tavern'—reduced to fighting crabs for territory on a ghost island. [He kicks at the sand] There aren't even any crabs!

[他打了个喷嚏。] [He sneezes.]

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo 这什么鬼天气。白天热得像蒸笼，晚上风一吹，骨头缝里都是冰的。要是有口酒就好了。一口亚力酒。一口就行。[他舔了舔嘴唇] 斯提法诺那个酒鬼，肯定在沉船的时候只顾着抱他的酒坛子。现在大概正坐在海底跟龙王喝酒呢。该死的。What cursed weather. Hot as a steam basket by day; when the wind blows at night, the cold seeps into your very bones. If only I had a drink. A sip of arrack. Just one sip. [He licks his lips] That drunkard Stephano probably only grabbed his wine jar when the ship went down. He's likely sitting at the bottom of the sea right now, drinking with the Dragon King. Damn him.

[远处传来一阵含混的声音——是鲛奴在礁石后面挪动了一下。特林鸠罗猛地僵住。] [A muffled sound from a distance—the Shark-Slave shifting behind the rock. Trinculo freezes.]

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [压低声音] 什么东西？[Lowering his voice] What was that?

[他慢慢转过头，向礁石方向张望。月光下，他看见礁石后面露出一截灰蓝色的、粗糙如鲨鱼皮的肢体。那肢体动了一下。] [He slowly turns his head, peering toward the boulder. In the moonlight, he sees a gray-blue, rough-skinned limb protruding from behind the rock. The limb moves.]

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [牙齿开始打颤] 妈祖保佑。观音菩萨。耶稣基督。谁都行。保佑我。保佑我。[Teeth chattering] Mazu protect me. Guanyin Bodhisattva. Jesus Christ. Anyone. Protect me. Protect me.

[鲛奴从礁石后面探出头来。月光照在他脸上——宽嘴，尖牙，黑眼睛里映着月光，像两颗黑色的珍珠。他张嘴，发出一声低沉的、像潮水退去时的叹息声。] [The Shark-Slave pokes his head out from behind the boulder. Moonlight falls on his face—wide mouth, sharp teeth, black eyes reflecting the moon like two black pearls. He opens his mouth and emits a low sound, like the sigh of a retreating tide.]

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [一屁股坐在地上] 完了。我死了。这是地狱。我一定是死了。这是地狱里的鬼差。[Sitting down hard on the ground] It's over. I'm dead. This is Hell. I must be dead. This is a demon from Hell.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [歪着头] 你……是鱼吗？[Tilting his head] Are you... a fish?

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [尖叫] 它会说话！[Shrieking] It speaks!

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [慢慢从礁石后挪出来，整个身体暴露在月光下] 你会……流血吗？母亲说，岸上的人……都会流血。流红色的水。我想看。[Slowly shuffling out from behind the boulder, his whole body exposed in the moonlight] Do you... bleed? Mother said shore people... all bleed. Red water flows out. I want to see.

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [连滚带爬地后退] 别过来！别过来！我是小丑！我肉是酸的！我骨头是软的！你咬我一口会崩掉牙！[Scrambling backward] Don't come closer! Don't come closer! I'm a jester! My flesh is sour! My bones are soft! If you bite me, you'll break your teeth!

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [停住脚步，困惑地] 崩……牙？[Stopping, puzzled] Break... teeth?

[正在这时，远处传来一阵更大、更踉跄的脚步声。斯提法诺从另一个方向跌跌撞撞地走出来。他怀里抱着一只陶罐，浑身酒气，脸上带着一种醉醺醺的、盲目乐观的笑容。] [Just then, louder, stumbling footsteps approach from another direction. Stephano staggers out from the other side, clutching a clay jar. He reeks of alcohol, his face wearing a drunken, blindly optimistic grin.]

斯提法诺/ Stefano [用带着浓重荷兰口音的官话，舌头打结] 哈哈哈！你们这些旱鸭子！都淹死了吧！我可活得好好的！[举起陶罐] 亚力酒！满满一罐！沉船的时候我抱着它跳海，它比救生圈还管用！[In heavily Dutch-accented Mandarin, tongue thick] Ha ha ha! You landlubbers! All drowned, aren't you! But I'm alive and well! [Raising the jar] Arrack! A full jar! I hugged it when I jumped ship—it was better than a life preserver!

[他踉跄了几步，差点绊倒，低头看见了坐在地上的特林鸠罗。] [He stumbles a few steps, nearly trips, and looks down to see Trinculo sitting on the ground.]

斯提法诺/ Stefano 特林鸠罗！你这老狗！你也活着！Trinculo! You old dog! You're alive too!

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [指着鲛奴，声音发颤] 斯提法诺……你……你看那边…… [Pointing at the Shark-Slave, voice trembling] Stephano... you... look over there...

[斯提法诺顺着他的手指看去。他看见了月光下的鲛奴——灰蓝的皮肤，尖牙，黑眼睛，蹼手。斯提法诺眨了眨眼。又眨了眨眼。然后咧嘴笑了。] [Stephano follows his pointing finger. He sees the Shark-Slave in the moonlight—grey-blue skin, sharp teeth, black eyes, webbed hands. Stephano blinks. Blinks again. Then grins widely.]

斯提法诺/ Stefano 哈！这是什么怪物！是鱼还是人？Ha! What kind of monster is this! Is it a fish or a man?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [盯着斯提法诺怀里的陶罐] 那……是什么？[Staring at the jar in Stephano's arms] What... is that?

斯提法诺/ Stefano 这个？[拍了拍陶罐] 这是神仙水！亚力酒！喝了它，你就是这岛上的王！来，怪物，尝一口。你要是尝了还站得住，我就认你当兄弟！This? [Patting the jar] This is divine water! Arrack! Drink it and you'll be king of this island! Come on, monster, have a taste. If you can stand after tasting it, I'll call you brother!

[他拔开陶罐的塞子，递向鲛奴。一股浓烈的酒香飘散开来。鲛奴的鼻孔翕动着，黑眼睛里闪过一种从未有过的光。他伸出蹼手，接过陶罐，小心翼翼地喝了一口。] [He uncorks the jar and offers it to the Shark-Slave. A strong aroma of alcohol wafts out. The Shark-Slave's nostrils flare; a light never seen before flashes in his black eyes. He extends a webbed hand, takes the jar, and carefully drinks a mouthful.]

[他的整个身体剧烈地颤抖了一下。他张大了嘴，尖牙在月光下闪着寒光。然后，一种奇怪的声音从他喉咙里发出来——不是咆哮，不是哭泣，而是某种介于两者之间的、沙哑的、断断续续的声音。他在笑。鲛奴平生第一次在笑。] [His entire body shudders violently. He opens his mouth wide; his sharp teeth glint coldly in the moonlight. Then a strange sound comes from his throat—not a growl, not a cry, but something in between, rasping and broken. He is laughing. The Shark-Slave is laughing for the first time in his life.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [举起陶罐，对着月亮] 好……神！这是天上的酒！[转向斯提法诺，跪了下来] 我愿跪倒在你面前。[Raising the jar to the moon] Good... gods! This is heavenly wine! [Turning to Stephano, kneeling] I will kneel before you.

斯提法诺/ Stefano [得意地大笑] 看见没有，特林鸠罗！我收了个怪物当奴才！[对鲛奴] 再来一口。拿着。亲亲这宝贝罐子。对着它起誓。[Laughing triumphantly] See that, Trinculo! I've got a monster for a servant! [To the Shark-Slave] Another sip. Take it. Kiss this precious jar. Swear your oath on it.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [又喝了一大口，然后虔诚地亲吻陶罐] 我要……跟着你。你这奇妙的人！你比潮音强。比那口钟强。比鬼火儿强。你是……真神。[Taking another large gulp, then reverently kissing the jar] I will... follow you. You wonderful person! You are greater than Cháoyīn. Greater than the bell. Greater than Guǐhuǒ'ér. You are... a true god.

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [从地上爬起来，拍着身上的沙] 斯提法诺，你疯了。这是个什么东西你都不知道。万一它半夜饿了，把我们俩当宵夜—— [Getting up, brushing sand off himself] Stephano, you're insane. You don't even know what this thing is. What if it gets hungry in the middle of the night and makes a midnight snack of us both—

斯提法诺/ Stefano [挥手打断他] 闭嘴！它喝了我的酒，就是我的奴才。奴才不吃主人。这是规矩。[转向鲛奴] 怪物，你有名字吗？[Waving him off] Shut up! He drank my wine; he's my servant now. A servant doesn't eat his master. That's the rule. [Turning to the Shark-Slave] Monster, do you have a name?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng 潮音叫我……鲛奴。鲨鱼奴隶。Cháoyīn calls me... Shark-Slave. Shark slave.

斯提法诺/ Stefano 鲛奴？不好听。我叫你……"鱼将军"！怎么样？威风吧？Shark-Slave? Not a good name. I'll call you... 'General Fish'! How's that? Impressive, right?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [黑眼睛发亮] 鱼……将军。好。我是鱼将军。你的将军。[Black eyes gleaming] General... Fish. Good. I am General Fish. Your general.

斯提法诺/ Stefano [搂住鲛奴的肩膀，虽然他实际上只够到鲛奴的胸口] 好！鱼将军！现在，带你主人去你住的地方。我要找张床。找堆干草。再找点吃的。然后咱们商量商量，怎么把这座岛变成咱们的。[Throwing an arm around the Shark-Slave's shoulders, though he only reaches the creature's chest] Good! General Fish! Now, take your master to where you live. I need a bed. Some dry grass. Something to eat. Then we'll discuss how to make this island ours.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [忽然压低声音，酒意让他的舌头更含混了，但眼睛里的光更亮了] 我……我知道怎么做。先取她的册子。那本《潮钟册》。没有册子，她的法术就散了。她就和我一样。只是岸上的人。[Suddenly lowering his voice, the alcohol making his tongue even looser, but his eyes brighter] I... I know how. First, take her book. The Tidal Bell Manual. Without the book, her magic scatters. She becomes like me. Just a shore person.

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [凑过来] 什么册子？谁的法术？[Leaning in] What book? Whose magic?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng 潮音。这岛上……原来的主人。她踩在我母亲的脊背上。她有一口钟。一本鲨鱼皮册子。她靠它们叫风，叫浪，叫鬼火。[抓住斯提法诺的手臂，蹼手黏湿] 你帮我取册子。杀了她。这岛……就是你的。她的女儿……也归你。Cháoyīn. The... former mistress of this island. She steps on my mother's spine. She has a bell. A shark-skin book. She uses them to call the wind, call the waves, call the ghost-fire. [Grabbing Stephano's arm, webbed hand slimy] You help me take the book. Kill her. The island... is yours. Her daughter... also yours.

斯提法诺/ Stefano [眼睛亮了] 女儿？她有女儿？[Eyes lighting up] A daughter? She has a daughter?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng 望汐。笑起来像海豚。[他的声音忽然变得古怪，像是两种声音叠在一起——他自己的含混嗓音，和一种更古老、更流畅的、像潮水一样的声音] 我本来……要娶她的。母亲答应过的。海里的新娘。可她现在是岸上的人了。她不要我了。Wàngxī. Her laugh is like a dolphin. [His voice suddenly becomes strange, like two voices layered—his own indistinct one, and an older, more fluid voice, like the tide] I was supposed... to marry her. Mother promised. A bride from the sea. But she is a shore person now. She doesn't want me anymore.

斯提法诺/ Stefano [拍了拍鲛奴的背] 别难过，鱼将军。等我当了岛上的王，我给你找条母鲨鱼。现在，带路。去找那本册子。[Clapping the Shark-Slave on the back] Don't be sad, General Fish. When I'm king of this island, I'll find you a lady shark. Now, lead the way. Let's go find that book.

[三人向岛内走去。斯提法诺抱着酒罐，哼着荷兰水手的调子。特林鸠罗跟在后面，一边走一边神经质地回头张望。鲛奴走在最前面，他的蹼足在沙地上留下一串潮湿的印记，在月光下闪着微光。] [The three move inland. Stephano cradles his wine jar, humming a Dutch sailor's tune. Trinculo follows behind, glancing back nervously as he walks. The Shark-Slave leads the way, his webbed feet leaving a trail of damp prints on the sand, glistening faintly in the moonlight.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [忽然停下脚步，抬起头，像在听什么] 这岛……满是声音。[Suddenly stopping, raising his head as if listening to something] This island... is full of sounds.

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [紧张地] 什么声音？[Nervously] What sounds?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [闭上眼睛] 不是你们说话的声音。是底下。底下传来的。我母亲睡在珊瑚里。她在唱。还有那些……那些你们看不见的。他们也在唱。风吹过礁石洞的时候，像笛子。浪退下去的时候，像叹气。[Closing his eyes] Not the sound of you talking. Underneath. Coming from underneath. My mother sleeps in the coral. She sings. And those... those you cannot see. They sing too. Wind through the reef holes, like a flute. Waves pulling back, like a sigh.

[他睁开眼睛，转向斯提法诺和特林鸠罗。月光下，他的黑眼睛里似乎有什么东西在游动——不是瞳孔，而是更深的、更古老的影子。] [He opens his eyes and turns to Stephano and Trinculo. In the moonlight, something seems to swim in his black eyes—not pupils, but deeper, older shadows.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng 你们听不见。你们是岸上的人。你们的耳朵里……只有你们自己的声音。You cannot hear. You are shore people. In your ears... there is only the sound of yourselves.

[他转身继续走。斯提法诺和特林鸠罗对视一眼，跟了上去。三人消失在乱石和灌木丛的阴影中。海风穿过礁石洞，发出呜咽般的声响。] [He turns and continues walking. Stephano and Trinculo exchange a glance, then follow. The three disappear into the shadows of the rocks and shrubs. The sea wind moans through the reef holes.]

)(*)(

第七场 (Scene Seven)

岛上另一处。林间空地。堆着未劈开的木柴。月光从树冠的缝隙间洒下来，在地面上投下斑驳的银光。远处传来海浪拍岸的声音，节奏缓慢，像呼吸。 Another part of the island. A forest clearing. Unsplit firewood is piled nearby. Moonlight filters through gaps in the canopy, casting dappled silver on the ground. In the distance, the sound of waves against the shore, slow and rhythmic, like breathing.

[费迪南赤着上身，正在劈柴。他的手掌已经磨出了水泡，水泡破了，渗出血来。他的背上全是汗水，在月光下闪着光。他的动作机械而疲惫，但每劈开一块木柴，他就会停下来喘一口气，然后继续。旁边已经堆起了整齐的柴垛。] [Ferdinand, stripped to the waist, is chopping wood. His palms have blistered; the blisters have burst and are bleeding. His back is slick with sweat, glistening in the moonlight. His movements are mechanical and weary, but after each split log, he pauses to catch his breath, then continues. A neat pile of wood has already been stacked beside him.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [一边劈柴，一边低声自语] 这种粗贱的劳役……本该叫人厌恶得难以忍受。我在巴达维亚的府邸里，连茶都是仆人端到嘴边的。可现在……[他劈开一块木柴] ……可我想到她……想到那个姑娘……这劳苦便轻了。[Chopping wood, muttering to himself] This low, crude labor... should be unbearably hateful. In my residence in Batavia, servants brought tea to my very lips. But now... [He splits a log] ...but when I think of her... of that girl... the labor becomes light.

[望汐从树影中走出来。她穿着一件粗布衫，头发用一根鱼骨簪子挽着。她手里端着一只木碗，碗里装着清水。她看见费迪南背上的血迹，停住了脚步。] [Wàngxī emerges from the tree shadows. She wears a coarse cloth shirt, her hair pinned up with a fish-bone hairpin. She carries a wooden bowl filled with clear water. She sees the blood on Ferdinand's back and stops.]

望汐/ Wàngxī [轻声] 你流血了。[Softly] You're bleeding.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [猛地转身] 你——你怎么来了？你母亲—— [Spinning around] You—how did you come here? Your mother—

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲睡了。她每晚这个时候都要去钟那边。我不知道她做什么。她不让我跟。Mother is asleep. She goes to the bell at this hour every night. I don't know what she does. She won't let me follow.

[她走近费迪南，把木碗递给他。费迪南接过碗，但没有喝。他只是看着她。] [She approaches Ferdinand and offers him the wooden bowl. He takes it but doesn't drink. He just looks at her.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 你喝吧。是泉水。岛中间有一口泉。很甜。鲛奴说那是他母亲哭出来的。我不信。Drink. It's spring water. There's a spring in the middle of the island. Very sweet. The Shark-Slave says it came from his mother's tears. I don't believe it.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [喝了一口水，眼睛没有离开望汐] 谢谢。[Drinking a sip, eyes never leaving Wàngxī] Thank you.

望汐/ Wàngxī [看着他的手] 你的手破了。你为什么不歇一歇？[Looking at his hands] Your hands are torn. Why don't you rest?

费迪南/ Ferdinand [放下碗，捡起斧头] 你母亲说，天黑之前要劈完这堆柴。劈不完，明天加倍。[Putting down the bowl, picking up the axe] Your mother said I must finish this pile before dark. If I don't, tomorrow I do double.

望汐/ Wàngxī [伸手按住斧柄] 放下吧。歇一歇。[Reaching out, pressing down on the axe handle] Put it down. Rest a while.

[费迪南看着她的手。她的手很小，被海风吹得有些粗糙，指甲缝里还带着沙。但按在斧柄上的力道很坚决。他松开了斧头。] [Ferdinand looks at her hand. It is small, roughened by the sea wind, traces of sand still in the creases of her nails. But the pressure on the axe handle is firm. He releases the axe.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand 你叫什么名字？What is your name?

望汐/ Wàngxī 望汐。望海的望，潮汐的汐。Wàngxī. 'Wàng' as in gazing at the sea. 'Xī' as in the evening tide.

费迪南/ Ferdinand 望汐……[他用生硬的官话重复了一遍，发音不准，但很认真] 望……汐。[换成荷兰语，像是自言自语] Miranda. Het betekent "zij die bewonderd moet worden." 值得仰望的人。Wàngxī... [He repeats it in stiff Mandarin, the pronunciation off but earnest] Wàng... xī. [Switching to Dutch, as if to himself] Miranda. Het betekent "zij die bewonderd moet worden." Worthy of admiration.

望汐/ Wàngxī 你在说什么？我听不懂。What are you saying? I don't understand.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [摇摇头，换成官话] 没什么。我的名字叫费迪南。我父亲是—— [Shaking his head, switching to Mandarin] Nothing. My name is Ferdinand. My father is—

望汐/ Wàngxī 我知道你父亲是谁。[她的声音变冷了] 我母亲告诉我了。范·阿隆索。他下令杀了四十个人。我父亲也在其中。I know who your father is. [Her voice turns cold] My mother told me. Van Alons. He ordered the killing of forty people. My father was among them.

[费迪南的脸色变了。他张了张嘴，没有说出话来。] [Ferdinand's face changes. He opens his mouth but says nothing.]

望汐/ Wàngxī [盯着他] 你知道吗？你知道你父亲做过的事吗？[Staring at him] Do you know? Do you know what your father did?

费迪南/ Ferdinand [艰难地] 我……听说过一些。商船。中国商船。公司有时候会……[他低下头] 我从来没有问过细节。我不想知道。[Struggling] I... I've heard things. Merchant ships. Chinese merchant ships. The Company sometimes... [He lowers his head] I never asked for details. I didn't want to know.

望汐/ Wàngxī [声音颤抖] 我母亲说，你父亲坐在巴达维亚的办公室里，签了一张纸。那张纸上写着：杀了他们。于是四十个人就死了。我父亲就死了。我在我母亲肚子里，差点也死了。[Voice trembling] My mother said your father sat in his office in Batavia and signed a piece of paper. That paper said: Kill them. And so forty people died. My father died. I was in my mother's belly and almost died too.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [抬起头，眼睛红了] 我不知道。我真的不知道。我只是……我只是他的儿子。我没有选择他是谁。[Looking up, eyes reddening] I didn't know. I truly didn't know. I am just... I am just his son. I didn't choose who he is.

望汐/ Wàngxī 我也没有选择我父亲是谁。他死了。我连他的脸都没见过。只在梦里。I didn't choose my father either. He is dead. I have never even seen his face. Only in dreams.

[长久的沉默。海风吹过树冠，发出沙沙的声响。远处，鬼火儿的青光在林间闪了一下，又消失了。] [A long silence. The sea wind rustles through the canopy. In the distance, Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light flashes once among the trees, then vanishes.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [轻声] 望汐。我可以……我可以不做他的儿子。如果那能让你……[他没有说完。] [Softly] Wàngxī. I can... I can stop being his son. If that would make you... [He doesn't finish.]

望汐/ Wàngxī [看着他] 不做他的儿子？怎么不做？[Looking at him] Stop being his son? How?

费迪南/ Ferdinand 我留在这里。我不回去了。不回巴达维亚，不回阿姆斯特丹，不回任何他替我安排好的地方。我留在这座岛上。劈柴。挑水。什么都行。I will stay here. I won't go back. Not to Batavia, not to Amsterdam, not to any place he has arranged for me. I will stay on this island. Chop wood. Carry water. Anything.

望汐/ Wàngxī [声音很轻] 你连我的名字都念不准。[Very softly] You can't even say my name right.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [认真地] 那你教我。教我念准。教我所有你会的词。礁石。海。月亮。潮水。你教什么，我学什么。[Earnestly] Then teach me. Teach me to say it right. Teach me all the words you know. Reef. Sea. Moon. Tide. Whatever you teach, I will learn.

[望汐看着他。月光下，他的脸上有汗水、血渍、沙砾，还有某种让她胸口发紧的东西。她伸出手，轻轻碰了碰他磨破的掌心。] [Wàngxī looks at him. In the moonlight, his face bears sweat, bloodstains, grit, and something else that makes her chest tighten. She reaches out and gently touches his torn palm.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 礁石。Reef.

费迪南/ Ferdinand 礁石。Reef.

望汐/ Wàngxī 潮水。Tide.

费迪南/ Ferdinand 潮水。Tide.

望汐/ Wàngxī [收回手] 你的手要上药。岛上有一种草，嚼烂了敷在伤口上，两天就好。明天我带你去找。[Withdrawing her hand] Your hands need medicine. There's an herb on the island. Chew it up, put it on the wound, and it heals in two days. Tomorrow I'll take you to find some.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [忽然握住她的手] 望汐。从我第一眼见到你那刻起，我的心便飞到你那里去了。我不知道这是不是这岛上的魔法。我不知道你是不是真的。但如果是梦，我宁愿永远不醒。[Suddenly holding her hand] Wàngxī. From the first moment I saw you, my heart flew to you. I don't know if this is the island's magic. I don't know if you are real. But if this is a dream, I would rather never wake.

望汐/ Wàngxī [没有抽回手] 这不是梦。这是潮钟岛。我母亲说，梦是另一种潮水。来了，又退了。留下的只有沙。[Not pulling her hand away] This is not a dream. This is Tidal Bell Island. My mother says dreams are another kind of tide. They come, and they go. What remains is only sand.

费迪南/ Ferdinand 那我不是梦。我是沙。Then I am not a dream. I am sand.

[远处传来钟声——低沉、悠长，像鲸鱼的歌。那是潮钟在响。望汐抽回手，站起身。] [A bell tolls in the distance—low, long, like a whale's song. It is the Tidal Bell. Wàngxī withdraws her hand and stands.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲在叫我了。我得回去。My mother is calling me. I have to go back.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [站起身] 我还能再见到你吗？[Standing] Will I see you again?

望汐/ Wàngxī [走到树影边缘，回过头] 明天。我带你去采药。[Reaching the edge of the tree shadows, turning back] Tomorrow. I'll take you to gather herbs.

[她消失在树影中。费迪南独自站在月光下，看着自己的手——掌心有血迹，也有她指尖触碰过的地方。他慢慢握紧拳头，又松开。远处，潮钟的嗡鸣渐渐消散。] [She disappears into the tree shadows. Ferdinand stands alone in the moonlight, looking at his hand—blood on the palm, and the place where her fingertips touched. He slowly clenches his fist, then releases it. In the distance, the Tidal Bell's hum fades.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [对着空无一人的林地] 礁石。潮水。望汐。[To the empty clearing] Reef. Tide. Wàngxī.

[他捡起斧头，继续劈柴。但动作变了——不再是疲惫的、机械的劳役，而是一种带着节奏的、近乎虔诚的重复。每一斧落下，他的嘴唇都在动，无声地练习着那几个音节。] [He picks up the axe and continues chopping. But his movements have changed—no longer weary, mechanical labor, but a rhythmic, almost reverent repetition. With each swing of the axe, his lips move, silently practicing those syllables.]

)(*)(

第八场 (Scene Eight)

岛上。潮音洞窟附近的高处。一块突出海面的岩石平台。夜已深。月亮高悬，海面铺满碎银。 The island. High ground near Cháoyīn's cave. A rocky platform jutting out over the sea. Deep night. The moon hangs high; the sea is paved with shattered silver.

[潮音独自站在平台上，手持铁杖。她面前是那口青铜钟，悬在一根鲸骨做成的架子上。钟身上刻满了古篆字，在月光下泛着青绿色的幽光。《潮钟册》摊开在旁边的石台上，鲨鱼皮书页被海风吹得轻轻翻动。] [Cháoyīn stands alone on the platform, holding her iron staff. Before her is the bronze bell, hanging from a frame made of whalebone. The bell is carved with ancient seal script characters that glow faintly green-blue in the moonlight. The Tidal Bell Manual lies open on a stone table nearby, its shark-skin pages fluttering lightly in the sea wind.]

[她闭上眼睛。嘴唇微动，念诵着什么——不是官话，不是闽南语，而是一种更古老的语言，像潮水退去时卵石滚动的声音。钟开始自鸣。不是被敲响，而是从内部发出低沉的嗡鸣，与她的念诵共振。] [She closes her eyes. Her lips move slightly, chanting something—not Mandarin, not Hokkien, but an older tongue, like the sound of pebbles rolling as the tide retreats. The bell begins to ring by itself. Not struck, but emitting a low hum from within, resonating with her chant.]

[海面上升起了磷光。先是几点，然后是一片，像无数只发光的眼睛在水下睁开。那些磷光慢慢聚拢，形成模糊的人形轮廓——四十个。他们站在水面上，仰望着潮音，没有面孔，只有光的形状。] [Phosphorescence rises from the sea. A few points at first, then a whole field, like countless luminous eyes opening beneath the water. The phosphorescence slowly gathers, forming vague human outlines—forty of them. They stand on the surface of the water, looking up at Cháoyīn. They have no faces, only shapes of light.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [睁开眼睛，对着海面上的光影说话，声音沙哑] 四十个弟兄。阿海。你们在底下，冷吗？[Opening her eyes, speaking to the shapes of light on the sea, voice hoarse] Forty brothers. Āhǎi. Down there, are you cold?

[磷光人形轻轻晃动，像在回应。海风忽然紧了，带来一阵低沉的呜咽声——那声音不是从任何一个人形发出的，而是从整片海面升起来的，像四十个人同时在很远很远的地方叹息。] [The phosphorescent figures sway gently, as if in response. The sea wind suddenly tightens, bringing a low moan—a sound not from any single figure, but rising from the entire surface of the sea, like forty people sighing together from somewhere very, very far away.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 快了。我向你们保证。安东还活着。范·阿隆索还活着。他们都在岛上。他们都逃不掉。Soon. I promise you. Anton is still alive. Van Alons is still alive. They are both on this island. They cannot escape.

[她伸手触碰钟身。钟声变了，变得更高、更急，像心跳。海面上的磷光人形开始剧烈地晃动，有些甚至向上伸展，仿佛想要攀上岩石。] [She reaches out and touches the bell. Its tone changes, becoming higher, more urgent, like a heartbeat. The phosphorescent figures on the sea begin to sway violently; some even stretch upward, as if trying to climb onto the rock.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [声音突然变得锋利] 但还不够。光是死，不够。我要他们先看见我。先记起来自己做过什么。先……跪下来。[Voice suddenly sharpening] But it's not enough. Death alone is not enough. I want them to see me first. To remember what they did. To... kneel.

[钟声骤然停止。磷光人形僵住了。潮音收回手，喘息着，额头渗出汗水。] [The bell's tone cuts off abruptly. The phosphorescent figures freeze. Cháoyīn pulls back her hand, breathing hard, sweat beading on her forehead.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [低声，像对自己说] 可那之后呢？杀了他们，你们就能安息了吗？我就能安息了吗？[Low, as if to herself] But what comes after? If I kill them, will you rest? Will I rest?

[没有人回答。海面上的磷光人形静静地站着，没有面孔，没有声音。月亮被云遮住了片刻，然后又露出来。磷光开始消散，一个接一个，像烛火被风吹灭。最后只剩下海面上散落的碎光，像眼泪。] [No one answers. The phosphorescent figures stand silently on the sea, faceless, voiceless. The moon is briefly covered by a cloud, then emerges again. The phosphorescence begins to dissipate, one by one, like candles snuffed by the wind. Finally, only scattered fragments of light remain on the sea, like tears.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对着空荡荡的海面] 我不知道。我真的不知道。[To the empty sea] I don't know. I truly don't know.

[她合上《潮钟册》，转身离开平台。钟在月光下沉默着，钟身上的古篆字像无数只闭着的眼睛。海风停了。海面重归黑暗。] [She closes the Tidal Bell Manual and turns to leave the platform. The bell sits silent in the moonlight, its ancient seal script characters like countless closed eyes. The sea wind stops. The sea returns to darkness.]

第二幕 终 End of Act Two

)(*)(

第三幕 (Act Three)

第九场 (Scene Nine)

岛上。潮音洞窟前的空地。黎明前最黑暗的时辰。海面平静如镜，没有一丝风。 The island. The open ground before Cháoyīn's cave. The darkest hour before dawn. The sea is still as a mirror; there is no wind.

[洞窟前，费迪南睡在一堆干海草上，身上盖着一片旧帆。他的手上缠着捣碎的草药叶子——望汐白天替他敷上的。他的呼吸平稳，脸上带着一种疲惫后彻底放松的神情。] [Before the cave, Ferdinand sleeps on a pile of dry seaweed, covered by a piece of old sailcloth. His hands are wrapped with crushed herbal leaves—Wàngxī applied them during the day. His breathing is steady; his face wears the expression of complete release after exhaustion.]

[望汐坐在洞口，没有睡。她望着费迪南的睡脸，手指无意识地绞着衣角。潮音从洞内走出来，手里拿着《潮钟册》。她看了一眼女儿，又看了一眼熟睡的费迪南。] [Wàngxī sits at the cave mouth, not sleeping. She watches Ferdinand's sleeping face, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her shirt. Cháoyīn emerges from the cave, carrying the Tidal Bell Manual. She glances at her daughter, then at the sleeping Ferdinand.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你没睡。You haven't slept.

望汐/ Wàngxī 睡不着。Can't sleep.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 因为那边那个？Because of that one over there?

[望汐没有回答。潮音走到她身边，坐了下来。母女俩并肩望着海面。东方还没有亮光，但星星已经开始变淡了。] [Wàngxī doesn't answer. Cháoyīn walks over and sits beside her. Mother and daughter sit side by side, gazing at the sea. There is no light yet in the east, but the stars are already beginning to fade.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 母亲。他和他父亲……不一样。Mother. He and his father... are not the same.

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你怎么知道？How do you know?

望汐/ Wàngxī 他看我的时候，眼睛里没有……没有安东那种东西。When he looks at me, his eyes don't have... that thing Anton has.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [沉默片刻] 安东从前看我的时候，眼睛里也没有那种东西。人是会变的。权力、银子、恐惧——都会把人变成别的东西。[Pausing] When Anton used to look at me, his eyes didn't have that thing either. People change. Power, silver, fear—they all turn people into something else.

望汐/ Wàngxī 那费迪南呢？他会变成什么？And Ferdinand? What will he become?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [看着女儿] 你想让他变成什么？[Looking at her daughter] What do you want him to become?

[望汐低下头，没有回答。潮音伸出手，轻轻托起女儿的下巴。] [Wàngxī lowers her head, not answering. Cháoyīn reaches out and gently lifts her daughter's chin.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你喜欢他。You like him.

望汐/ Wàngxī [声音很轻] 我不知道什么是"喜欢"。这岛上只有您，鲛奴，鬼火儿，还有海里的那些影子。我没有见过别的人。我不知道"喜欢"应该是什么样子。[Very softly] I don't know what 'like' is. On this island, there's only you, the Shark-Slave, Guǐhuǒ'ér, and those shadows in the sea. I've never seen another person. I don't know what 'like' is supposed to look like.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [收回手] 我也不知道。我嫁给你父亲，是因为他在我船上干了三年，从不偷懒，从不顶嘴，风暴来了第一个冲上甲板。那不是"喜欢"。那是"信得过"。后来他死了，我才知道，信得过就是喜欢。喜欢就是有一天他不在了，你觉得船上的风都停了。[Withdrawing her hand] I don't know either. I married your father because he worked on my ship for three years, never slacking, never talking back, the first on deck when a storm hit. That wasn't 'like.' That was 'trust.' After he died, I understood that trust is like. Like is when one day he's gone, and you feel the wind on the ship has stopped.

[望汐的眼眶红了。潮音站起身，翻开《潮钟册》。] [Wàngxī's eyes redden. Cháoyīn stands and opens the Tidal Bell Manual.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 天快亮了。今天，我要做一件事。Dawn is coming. Today, I will do something.

望汐/ Wàngxī 什么事？What?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 我要让费迪南见见他的父亲。也让他的父亲见见费迪南。然后——[她顿了一下] ——我要让他们都见见那四十个人。I will let Ferdinand see his father. And let his father see Ferdinand. And then— [She pauses] —I will let them both see the forty.

望汐/ Wàngxī 那之后呢？And after that?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [合上册子] 那之后，看他们怎么选。[Closing the book] After that... we see what they choose.

[她转身走向钟架。东方露出了第一道灰白色的光。潮音举起铁杖，轻轻敲击钟身。钟发出清亮的鸣响，像一只巨鸟从梦中醒来。远处海面上，鬼火儿的青光闪了一下，向洞窟飞来。] [She turns and walks toward the bell frame. The first gray-white light appears in the east. Cháoyīn raises her iron staff and strikes the bell lightly. It rings out clear and bright, like a great bird waking from a dream. On the distant sea, Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light flashes once, then flies toward the cave.]

)(*)(

第十场 (Scene Ten)

岛上。洞窟前的空地。天色渐明，海面被染成淡金色。 The island. The open ground before the cave. The sky is brightening; the sea is stained pale gold.

[潮音站在钟旁。望汐立在她身后。费迪南已经醒来，站在一侧，手上还缠着草药布。鬼火儿悬在半空中，化成一团跳动不定的青蓝色火焰。] [Cháoyīn stands beside the bell. Wàngxī stands behind her. Ferdinand is awake now, standing to one side, his hands still wrapped in herbal cloth. Guǐhuǒ'ér hangs in midair, a shifting, dancing blue-green flame.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对鬼火儿] 去。把范·阿隆索带来。把安东带来。把霍萨洛带来。把所有人带来。但要让他们看不见彼此——只看见我要他们看见的东西。[To Guǐhuǒ'ér] Go. Bring Van Alons. Bring Anton. Bring Huòsàluò. Bring them all. But let them not see each other—only what I want them to see.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 只带来，还是带什么来都行？Just bring them, or bring whatever comes?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 什么意思？What do you mean?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 那个叫安东的，和那个叫塞巴斯蒂安的。昨晚，他们在礁石滩上商量要杀范·阿隆索。刀都拔出来了。是我唱歌把他们吓跑的。The one called Anton and the one called Sebastiaan. Last night, on the reef strand, they conspired to kill Van Alons. They had drawn their blades. It was my singing that frightened them away.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [眼睛微微眯起] 他们要杀范·阿隆索？[Eyes narrowing slightly] They were going to kill Van Alons?

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 石头砸头。推下礁石。假装失足。Stone to the head. Push him off the reef. Pretend he slipped.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [沉默片刻，然后嘴角露出一丝冷笑] 安东。十二年不见，你一点没变。[对鬼火儿] 先不要惊动他们。把所有人都带来。让他们看见彼此。让他们自己把做过的事说出来。[Pausing, then a cold smile at the corner of her mouth] Anton. Twelve years, and you haven't changed at all. [To Guǐhuǒ'ér] Don't alarm them yet. Bring them all. Let them see each other. Let them confess what they've done with their own mouths.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 遵命。As you command.

[鬼火儿化作一道青光飞走。潮音转向费迪南。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér turns into a streak of blue-green light and flies off. Cháoyīn turns to Ferdinand.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你。站到那边去。等会儿不管你看见什么，都不要出声。能做到吗？You. Stand over there. No matter what you see in a moment, do not make a sound. Can you do that?

费迪南/ Ferdinand [紧张地] 你要对我父亲做什么？[Nervously] What are you going to do to my father?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 什么都不做。让他自己对自己做。Nothing. Let him do to himself what he will.

[费迪南还想说什么，但望汐轻轻拉住了他的袖子。他看了望汐一眼，闭上了嘴。] [Ferdinand wants to say more, but Wàngxī gently tugs his sleeve. He glances at her and closes his mouth.]

[远处传来脚步声和低语声。鬼火儿的青光在林间穿梭，像一条发光的蛇。片刻后，范·阿隆索、塞巴斯蒂安、安东、霍萨洛、特林鸠罗、斯提法诺——所有人，从不同方向，被一股看不见的力量推到了空地上。他们神情恍惚，眼神涣散，像刚从噩梦中被拖出来的人。] [Footsteps and murmurs in the distance. Guǐhuǒ'ér's blue-green light weaves through the trees like a luminous serpent. Moments later, Van Alons, Sebastiaan, Anton, Huòsàluò, Trinculo, Stephano—all of them, from different directions—are pushed into the clearing by an invisible force. They are dazed, eyes unfocused, like people just dragged out of a nightmare.]

[鲛奴也被带来了，但他被鬼火儿单独按在一块礁石后面，嘴里塞着海草，动弹不得。] [The Shark-Slave has also been brought, but Guǐhuǒ'ér pins him separately behind a boulder, his mouth stuffed with seaweed, unable to move.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [揉着眼睛] 这是什么地方？谁——[他看见了潮音] 你是谁？[Rubbing his eyes] What is this place? Who— [He sees Cháoyīn] Who are you?

安东/ Anton [脸色瞬间变得惨白] 潮……潮音。[Face instantly turning ashen] Cháo... Cháoyīn.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [平静地] 安东。好久不见。[Calmly] Anton. It's been a long time.

[安东向后退了一步。他的手摸向腰间，但短铳已经不在了——鬼火儿在带他来之前就卸掉了。] [Anton steps backward. His hand goes to his belt, but the musket is gone—Guǐhuǒ'ér disarmed him before bringing him.]

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [对安东] 你认识这个女人？[To Anton] You know this woman?

安东/ Anton [声音沙哑] 她是……"潮钟号"的船长。[Voice hoarse] She is... the captain of the Tidal Bell.

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [瞳孔收缩] "潮钟号"？那条中国商船？[Pupils contracting] The Tidal Bell? That Chinese merchant ship?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [向范·阿隆索迈了一步] 范·阿隆索。巴达维亚总督。你签了一张纸。纸上写着："清除障碍。不留活口。"四十个人。我丈夫也在其中。我肚子里怀着望汐，被丢上舢板，没有帆，没有桨，没有水。你坐在办公室里，签了字，喝了咖啡，然后去教堂做礼拜。[Taking a step toward Van Alons] Van Alons. Governor of Batavia. You signed a piece of paper. The paper said: 'Remove the obstacle. Leave no one alive.' Forty people. My husband among them. I was thrown onto a sampan, pregnant with Wàngxī. No sail. No oars. No water. You sat in your office, signed your name, drank your coffee, and then went to church.

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [嘴唇发抖] 我……那是公司的命令。我只是执行—— [Lips trembling] I... it was the Company's orders. I was merely executing—

潮音/ Cháoyīn 执行。好一个执行。[转向安东] 你呢？你执行的是什么？我的饭你吃了。我的银子你领了。我的闽南话你学了。你叫我"船长"，像叫亲姐姐。然后你带着荷兰兵，半夜摸上我的船。阿海是你亲手杀的。我看见的。舢板漂走的时候，我看见你站在船头。你手里还拿着他的烟斗。Executing. What a fine word. [Turning to Anton] And you? What were you executing? You ate my food. You took my silver. You learned my Hokkien. You called me 'Captain' like I was your own sister. Then you led Dutch soldiers onto my ship in the dead of night. You killed Āhǎi with your own hands. I saw it. As the sampan drifted away, I saw you standing on the prow. You were still holding his pipe.

[安东的脸色灰白如死人。他的嘴张合了几次，没有发出声音。] [Anton's face is as gray as a corpse. His mouth opens and closes several times; no sound comes out.]

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò [颤抖着] 夫人……我……我只是个画地图的。我没有…… [Trembling] Madam... I... I am only a mapmaker. I didn't...

潮音/ Cháoyīn [转向他，声音变柔] 我知道你是谁。霍萨洛。你船舱里供着妈祖像。风暴来的时候，你点了香。你替那些水手祈祷。[她顿了一下] 十二年前，有人在"潮钟号"被劫之后，悄悄往海里撒了一捧纸钱。是你吗？[Turning to him, voice softening] I know who you are. Huòsàluò. You keep a shrine to Mazu in your cabin. When the storm hit, you lit incense. You prayed for those sailors. [She pauses] Twelve years ago, after the Tidal Bell was taken, someone quietly scattered a handful of joss paper into the sea. Was that you?

[霍萨洛愣住了。他张了张嘴，然后缓缓点头。] [Huòsàluò freezes. He opens his mouth, then slowly nods.]

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò 我……我不知道那些纸钱是给谁的。我只听说有船沉了。有冤魂。妈祖说，见魂要渡。我就撒了。I... I didn't know who the joss paper was for. I only heard a ship had sunk. There were wronged souls. Mazu teaches: when you see a soul, you must help it cross. So I scattered it.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [微微点头] 你撒的那些纸钱，飘到了这座岛上。我看见了。所以今天你还站着。[Nodding slightly] The joss paper you scattered drifted to this island. I saw it. That is why you are still standing today.

[她转身，面对所有人。东方的天空已经完全亮了，金色的阳光洒在海面上。] [She turns to face everyone. The eastern sky is fully bright now; golden sunlight spills across the sea.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 你们都欠我债。有的人欠四十条命。有的人欠一声道歉。有的人只是站在旁边，什么都没做，什么都不说。今天，我要你们把欠的都还上。You all owe me a debt. Some owe forty lives. Some owe an apology. Some just stood by, did nothing, said nothing. Today, I want you to repay what you owe.

[她举起铁杖。钟开始自鸣——不是一声，而是连绵不绝的嗡鸣，像潮水一样一波接一波地涌来。海面上，磷光开始浮现。四十个人形，在晨光中若隐若现。] [She raises her iron staff. The bell begins to ring by itself—not a single toll, but a continuous hum, wave after wave, like the tide. Phosphorescence begins to rise from the sea. Forty human shapes, faintly visible in the morning light.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [瘫坐在地上] 上帝啊…… [Collapsing to the ground] God in heaven...

安东/ Anton [双腿发软] 不是我……不是我一个人……是他签的字……是他—— [Legs buckling] It wasn't me... it wasn't just me... he signed it... he—

塞巴斯蒂安/ Sebastiaan [抓住安东的衣领] 你这条疯狗！是你出的主意！是你来找我们的！[Grabbing Anton by the collar] You mad dog! It was your idea! You came to us!

安东/ Anton [甩开他] 我只是想活着！我只是想—— [Shoving him off] I just wanted to live! I just wanted—

潮音/ Cháoyīn [声音压过所有人] 够了！[Voice overriding all] Enough!

[钟声骤停。海面上的磷光人形僵住了。所有人也都僵住了。] [The bell's hum stops abruptly. The phosphorescent figures on the sea freeze. Everyone freezes.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [深吸一口气] 我不杀你们。[Taking a deep breath] I will not kill you.

[死寂。] [Dead silence.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 十二年了。我每天都在想怎么杀你们。用钟震碎你们的骨头。叫鬼火儿把你们拖进海底。让鲛奴一口一口咬碎你们。我想过每一种法子。每一种都想过。Twelve years. Every day I thought about how to kill you. Shatter your bones with the bell. Have Guǐhuǒ'ér drag you to the bottom of the sea. Let the Shark-Slave chew you up piece by piece. I thought of every method. Every single one.

[她走到范·阿隆索面前，俯视着他。] [She walks to Van Alons and looks down at him.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 但昨天晚上，我站在礁石上，问那四十个弟兄：杀了他们，你们就能安息了吗？他们没有回答我。因为他们也不知道。杀人的人死了，被杀的就能活过来吗？不能。死了就是死了。我杀你们一百遍，阿海也回不来了。But last night, I stood on the reef and asked the forty brothers: If I kill them, will you rest? They didn't answer me. Because they don't know either. If the killers die, can the killed come back to life? No. Dead is dead. If I kill you a hundred times, Āhǎi still won't return.

[她直起身，看着海面上的磷光人形。] [She straightens and looks at the phosphorescent figures on the sea.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 所以我不杀你们。我要你们活着。带着你们做过的事活着。每天闭上眼睛，就看见那四十张脸。每天睁开眼睛，就想起自己是什么东西。So I will not kill you. I want you to live. Live with what you've done. Every time you close your eyes, you will see those forty faces. Every time you open your eyes, you will remember what you are.

[她转向安东。] [She turns to Anton.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 尤其是你。你回巴达维亚也好，回阿姆斯特丹也好，回任何你能逃去的地方也好。但你逃不掉你自己。你每天照镜子，看见的就是杀过我丈夫的人。Especially you. Go back to Batavia. Go back to Amsterdam. Go anywhere you can run to. But you cannot run from yourself. Every day, when you look in the mirror, you will see the man who killed my husband.

[安东跪了下来。不是被迫的——是他的腿自己撑不住了。他跪在沙地上，肩膀剧烈地抖动，但没有发出声音。] [Anton falls to his knees. Not forced—his legs simply give out. He kneels on the sand, his shoulders shaking violently, but no sound comes out.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [转向海面] 弟兄们。我没有替你们报仇。但我也没有让仇烂在自己心里。我让仇人看见你们了。我让他们记住你们了。这够不够？我不知道。但这是我唯一能给的了。[Turning to the sea] Brothers. I did not avenge you. But I also did not let the hatred rot inside my own heart. I made your enemies see you. I made them remember you. Is that enough? I don't know. But it is all I have to give.

[海面上的磷光人形静静地站着。然后，一个接一个，它们开始消散。不是被风吹散，而是像终于放下了什么沉重的东西，慢慢沉入水中。最后一个消失的是站在最前面的那个——比其他人都高一些，光的轮廓隐约像是一个叼着烟斗的男人。他停了一下，仿佛在望着潮音，然后也沉了下去。海面重归平静。] [The phosphorescent figures stand silently on the sea. Then, one by one, they begin to dissipate. Not scattered by the wind, but as if finally setting down something heavy, slowly sinking into the water. The last to vanish is the one standing at the very front—taller than the others, his outline of light vaguely resembling a man with a pipe in his mouth. He pauses, as if looking at Cháoyīn, then sinks as well. The sea returns to stillness.]

[潮音放下铁杖。她的肩膀微微颤抖，但没有哭。] [Cháoyīn lowers the iron staff. Her shoulders tremble slightly, but she does not cry.]

望汐/ Wàngxī [走上前，轻轻握住母亲的手] 母亲。[Stepping forward, gently taking her mother's hand] Mother.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [握紧女儿的手] 我没事。[Squeezing her daughter's hand] I'm all right.

[费迪南从藏身处走出来。范·阿隆索看见他，整个人像被雷劈中一样跳了起来。] [Ferdinand steps out from where he was hidden. Van Alons sees him and leaps up as if struck by lightning.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons 费迪南！我的儿子！你还活着！Ferdinand! My son! You're alive!

[他冲过去想要拥抱费迪南，但费迪南向后退了一步。] [He rushes forward to embrace Ferdinand, but Ferdinand steps back.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [声音很轻，但很清晰] 父亲。那四十个人。你签的字。是真的吗？[Softly, but clearly] Father. The forty people. The paper you signed. Is it true?

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [僵在原地] 我……那是公司的—— [Frozen in place] I... it was the Company's—

费迪南/ Ferdinand [打断他] 是真的吗？[Interrupting] Is it true?

[范·阿隆索张了张嘴，最终低下了头。] [Van Alons opens his mouth, then finally lowers his head.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand [转向潮音和望汐] 我……我不知道该说什么。我父亲做的事……我没有办法替他偿还。但我可以不做他。[Turning to Cháoyīn and Wàngxī] I... I don't know what to say. What my father did... I cannot repay it for him. But I can stop being him.

[他走到望汐面前，单膝跪下。] [He walks to Wàngxī and kneels on one knee.]

费迪南/ Ferdinand 望汐。我昨天说的话，是真的。我留在这里。劈柴。挑水。你教我的词，我都记住了。礁石。潮水。月亮。[他抬起头] 还有你的名字。望汐。望海的望，潮汐的汐。Wàngxī. What I said yesterday was true. I will stay here. Chop wood. Carry water. I've remembered all the words you taught me. Reef. Tide. Moon. [He looks up] And your name. Wàngxī. 'Wàng' as in gazing at the sea. 'Xī' as in the evening tide.

[望汐看着他。晨光里，他的眼睛很亮，但不是安东那种亮——是另一种，像潮水退去后留在礁石坑里的海水，安静，清澈，倒映着天空。她伸出手，把他拉了起来。] [Wàngxī looks at him. In the morning light, his eyes are bright—but not the brightness of Anton's. Another kind, like seawater left in reef pools after the tide retreats: still, clear, reflecting the sky. She reaches out and pulls him to his feet.]

望汐/ Wàngxī 你念对了。You said it right.

[潮音看着他们，沉默了很久。然后她转向鬼火儿。] [Cháoyīn watches them for a long moment, silent. Then she turns to Guǐhuǒ'ér.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 把鲛奴带过来。Bring the Shark-Slave here.

)(*)(

第十一场 (Scene Eleven)

同地。鬼火儿把鲛奴从礁石后面拖出来，去掉了他嘴里的海草。 The same place. Guǐhuǒ'ér drags the Shark-Slave out from behind the boulder and removes the seaweed from his mouth.

[鲛奴跪在地上，浑身发抖。斯提法诺和特林鸠罗缩在一旁，不敢抬头。] [The Shark-Slave kneels on the ground, trembling all over. Stephano and Trinculo cower to one side, not daring to look up.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 鲛奴。你昨晚做了什么？Shark-Slave. What did you do last night?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [声音含混，酒意还未完全消散] 我……我找了一个新神。他给我喝天上的水。他说要替我杀你。取你的册子。这岛……原是我母亲的。[Voice slurred, the alcohol not yet fully faded] I... I found a new god. He gave me heavenly water to drink. He said he would kill you for me. Take your book. This island... was my mother's.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [转向斯提法诺和特林鸠罗] 你们呢？你们想当岛上的王？[Turning to Stephano and Trinculo] And you two? You wanted to be kings of the island?

斯提法诺/ Stefano [扑通跪倒] 夫人！船长！神仙！我喝醉了！我什么都不知道！是这怪物——是这鱼将军——是他出的主意！[Throwing himself to his knees] Madam! Captain! Goddess! I was drunk! I didn't know anything! It was this monster—this General Fish—it was his idea!

特林鸠罗/ Trinculo [也跪下] 我只是路过！我什么也没答应！我是小丑！小丑不当王！小丑只负责笑！[Also kneeling] I was just passing by! I didn't agree to anything! I'm a jester! Jesters don't become kings! Jesters are only responsible for laughing!

潮音/ Cháoyīn [沉默片刻] 都起来。[Pausing] Get up. All of you.

[三人迟疑地站起来。] [The three hesitantly rise.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对斯提法诺和特林鸠罗] 你们跟着船回去。回你们该待的地方。把今天看见的忘掉。如果忘不掉，就当是喝醉了一场梦。[To Stephano and Trinculo] You will go back with the ship. Return to where you belong. Forget what you saw today. If you can't forget, treat it as a drunken dream.

[两人拼命点头。] [The two nod frantically.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [转向鲛奴] 至于你。[Turning to the Shark-Slave] As for you.

[鲛奴抬起头，黑眼睛里满是恐惧。] [The Shark-Slave looks up, black eyes full of fear.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 这岛原是你母亲的。你说得对。她葬在珊瑚底下。骨头都化成了礁石。我踩在她脊背上住了十二年。这是我的债。This island was your mother's. You are right. She is buried under the coral. Her bones have turned to reef stone. I have stepped on her spine for twelve years. That is my debt.

[她从怀里取出《潮钟册》，翻开最后一页。那一页是空白的。她伸手在页面上画了一个符号。] [She takes the Tidal Bell Manual from her breast, opening it to the last page. The page is blank. She reaches out and draws a symbol on it.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 从今天起，你是自由的。不再是鲛奴。你是……礁生。珊瑚礁的礁，生长的生。From today, you are free. No longer Shark-Slave. You are... Jiāoshēng. 'Jiāo' as in coral reef. 'Shēng' as in born, growing.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [愣住] 自……自由？[Stunned] F... free?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 自由。这岛是你母亲的。你愿意怎么守就怎么守。我只是借住。等船修好，我就走。Free. This island is your mother's. Guard it however you wish. I am only a guest. When the ship is repaired, I will leave.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [蹼手摸着自己的喉咙，好像那里有什么东西被取掉了] 礁生……[他尝试着念自己的新名字，像在尝一种从未吃过的食物] 礁生。[他的黑眼睛里有什么东西碎了，又有什么东西重新聚拢] 我……我可以留在这里？母亲在底下唱。我可以听她唱了？没有人再叫我去拾柴？[Touching his throat with his webbed hand, as if something has been removed] Jiāoshēng... [He tries out his new name, as if tasting a food he has never eaten] Jiāoshēng. [Something in his black eyes shatters, and something else gathers again] I... I can stay here? Mother is singing underneath. I can listen to her sing? No one will tell me to gather firewood anymore?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 没有人。No one.

[礁生站在那里，一动不动。然后他慢慢走到礁石边缘，面向大海，发出一声长长的、低沉的、像鲸鱼一样的呼唤。那声音穿过晨雾，贴着海面传向远方。片刻后，从深海的方向，传来一声回应——更古老，更低回，像整个海底都在震动。] [Jiāoshēng stands there, motionless. Then he slowly walks to the edge of the reef, faces the sea, and lets out a long, low, whale-like call. The sound travels through the morning mist, skimming over the sea into the distance. Moments later, from the direction of the deep sea, a reply comes—older, deeper, as if the entire seabed is vibrating.]

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [回过头，脸上有一种从未有过的表情——不是愤怒，不是恐惧，而是某种接近平静的东西] 母亲在。她一直在。[Turning back, his face wearing an expression never seen before—not anger, not fear, but something approaching peace] Mother is there. She has always been there.

)(*)(

第十二场 (Scene Twelve)

同地。天色大亮。海面金光粼粼。 The same place. The sky is fully bright. The sea glitters with golden light.

[鬼火儿从空中落下，化成人形——一个修长的、性别模糊的形体，浑身泛着青蓝色的微光。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér descends from the air, taking human form—a slender, gender-ambiguous figure, glowing with a faint blue-green light all over.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 潮音船长。船已经准备好了。王船——那艘荷兰大船——我把它从礁石缝里拖出来了。帆补好了。水手们也醒了。他们不记得发生了什么，只记得风暴，然后就是现在。风也正好。往西吹。两天到巴达维亚。Captain Cháoyīn. The ship is ready. The royal ship—that great Dutch vessel—I dragged it out from the reef crevices. The sails are patched. The sailors are awake. They don't remember what happened, only the storm, and then now. The wind is also favorable. Blowing westward. Two days to Batavia.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [点点头] 你做得很好。[Nodding] You have done very well.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [停顿了一下] 你答应我的。[Pausing] What you promised me.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [看着他] 自由。[Looking at him] Freedom.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér 自由。Freedom.

[潮音从钟架上取下那口青铜钟，放在地上。她举起铁杖——那截锈蚀的定海神针——对准钟身。] [Cháoyīn takes the bronze bell down from its frame and sets it on the ground. She raises her iron staff—the rusted piece of the Dinghai Shenzhen pillar—and points it at the bell.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对鬼火儿] 这口钟，是西海妖铸来镇你的。我把它沉进海底，你就自由了。[To Guǐhuǒ'ér] This bell was forged by Sycorax to imprison you. When I sink it to the bottom of the sea, you will be free.

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [火焰剧烈跳动] 真的？[Flame flickering intensely] Truly?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 真的。[转向众人] 所有人都退后。Truly. [To everyone] Everyone stand back.

[众人退开。潮音举起铁杖，念诵了一段古老的咒语——用的不是官话，不是闽南语，而是那种像潮水退去时卵石滚动的声音。钟开始剧烈震动，钟身上的古篆字一个一个亮起来，像烧红的铁。然后，她猛地将铁杖刺入钟心。] [Everyone retreats. Cháoyīn raises the iron staff and chants an ancient incantation—not Mandarin, not Hokkien, but the tongue that sounds like pebbles rolling as the tide retreats. The bell begins to vibrate violently; the ancient seal script characters on its body light up one by one, like red-hot iron. Then she drives the iron staff into the heart of the bell.]

[钟发出一声巨响——不是金属的撞击声，而是像整片海被撕开的声音。一道青蓝色的光从钟心冲出，直上云霄，然后炸开，化作无数细碎的光点，像一场倒着下的雨，从天空落回海面。] [The bell emits a colossal sound—not the clash of metal, but like the entire sea being torn open. A beam of blue-green light shoots from the bell's heart, straight up into the clouds, then bursts, transforming into countless tiny points of light, like an upside-down rain falling from the sky back to the sea.]

[鬼火儿站在光雨中。他身上的青蓝色火焰越来越亮，越来越透明，最后几乎变成了纯粹的阳光。他的形体在风中舒展开来——不再是跳动不定的火球，而是一个自由的、完整的存在。] [Guǐhuǒ'ér stands in the rain of light. The blue-green flame of his body grows brighter and brighter, more and more transparent, until it is almost pure sunlight. His form unfurls in the wind—no longer a dancing, shifting fireball, but a free, whole being.]

鬼火儿/ Guǐhuǒ'ér [声音不再是风铃和鲸歌的混合，而是他自己的声音——清亮、年轻、带着笑意] 我自由了。潮音。我自由了。[Voice no longer a mix of wind chimes and whale song, but his own—clear, young, smiling] I am free. Cháoyīn. I am free.

[他跃入空中，在晨光里盘旋了一圈，然后向远海飞去。他的身后拖着一道淡淡的青蓝色尾迹，像彗星，像船尾的磷光，像所有终于能回家的人留下的脚印。] [He leaps into the air, circles once in the morning light, then flies toward the open sea. Behind him trails a faint blue-green wake, like a comet, like phosphorescence in a ship's wake, like the footprints of anyone finally going home.]

)(*)(

第十三场 (Scene Thirteen)

同地。所有人都站在晨光中，望着鬼火儿消失的方向。 The same place. Everyone stands in the morning light, watching the direction where Guǐhuǒ'ér disappeared.

[霍萨洛第一个打破了沉默。] [Huòsàluò is the first to break the silence.]

霍萨洛/ Huòsàluò 夫人。船备好了。风也顺。我们先回巴达维亚，然后……然后您要去哪里？Madam. The ship is ready. The wind is favorable. We will return to Batavia first, and then... then where will you go?

潮音/ Cháoyīn [看了一眼望汐和费迪南] 先去巴达维亚。让他们俩——[她指了指望汐和费迪南] ——在岸上把该办的事办了。然后……我不知道。也许回月港。也许找一条新船。也许什么都不做，就在岸上晒晒太阳。[Glancing at Wàngxī and Ferdinand] First to Batavia. Let the two of them— [She gestures at Wàngxī and Ferdinand] —take care of what needs to be taken care of on shore. Then... I don't know. Maybe back to Yuegang. Maybe find a new ship. Maybe do nothing at all, just sit on the shore and feel the sun.

望汐/ Wàngxī [轻声] 母亲。不管您去哪里，我都跟着。[Softly] Mother. Wherever you go, I will follow.

费迪南/ Ferdinand [握住望汐的手] 我也跟着。[Holding Wàngxī's hand] I will follow too.

潮音/ Cháoyīn [看着他们，嘴角微微上扬] 你父亲呢？[Looking at them, a slight smile at the corner of her mouth] And your father?

费迪南/ Ferdinand [转头看向范·阿隆索] 父亲。我会写信。但我不回去了。[Turning to look at Van Alons] Father. I will write letters. But I am not going back.

[范·阿隆索站在那里，像一棵被雷劈过的树。他的嘴张合了几次，最终只是点了点头。] [Van Alons stands there like a tree struck by lightning. His mouth opens and closes several times; in the end, he simply nods.]

范·阿隆索/ Van Alons [声音沙哑] 你母亲临死前，我答应过她，要把你带回阿姆斯特丹。[Voice hoarse] On your mother's deathbed, I promised her I would bring you back to Amsterdam.

费迪南/ Ferdinand 我母亲会明白的。她比您明白。My mother would understand. She understood better than you.

[范·阿隆索低下了头。] [Van Alons lowers his head.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对所有人] 上船吧。潮水不等人。[To everyone] Get on the ship. The tide waits for no one.

[众人开始向海边走去。安东走在最后，佝偻着背，像一个突然老了二十岁的人。礁生站在礁石上，望着他们离去。潮音走到他面前。] [Everyone begins walking toward the shore. Anton walks last, hunched over, like a man who has suddenly aged twenty years. Jiāoshēng stands on the reef, watching them go. Cháoyīn walks up to him.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 礁生。你不跟来？Jiāoshēng. You're not coming?

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [摇摇头] 我属于这里。母亲在底下。我要守着她。[他顿了一下，黑眼睛里映着晨光] 你还会回来吗？[Shaking his head] I belong here. Mother is underneath. I must watch over her. [He pauses, black eyes reflecting the morning light] Will you come back?

潮音/ Cháoyīn 也许会。也许不会。海那么大。Maybe. Maybe not. The sea is so vast.

礁生/ Jiāoshēng [伸出一只蹼手] 如果你回来……我请你吃鱼。我自己抓的。不用你叫我拾柴。[Extending a webbed hand] If you come back... I'll treat you to fish. I'll catch it myself. You won't have to tell me to gather firewood.

[潮音看着他，然后握住了那只黏湿的、灰蓝色的手。] [Cháoyīn looks at him, then takes his slimy, gray-blue hand.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn 好。如果我回来，你请我吃鱼。Good. If I come back, you can treat me to fish.

[她松开手，转身走向海滩。礁生站在礁石上，望着她的背影，直到所有人都变成了远处沙滩上的小黑点。然后他转身面向大海，深吸一口气，跃入水中。灰蓝色的身影在浪花间闪了一下，便消失在深蓝里。] [She releases his hand and turns to walk toward the beach. Jiāoshēng stands on the reef, watching her back until everyone becomes small dark specks on the distant sand. Then he turns to face the sea, takes a deep breath, and dives into the water. His gray-blue form flashes once among the waves, then disappears into the deep blue.]

)(*)(

尾声 (Epilogue)

潮音独上。 Cháoyīn enters alone.

[海滩上。船已经推入海中，帆已升起。所有人都上了船，只有潮音还站在齐膝深的水里，面朝岛屿。她已卸下铁杖。《潮钟册》留在了洞窟里。她空手而立。晨光从背后照来，把她的影子长长地投在沙滩上。] [On the beach. The ship has been pushed into the sea, its sails raised. Everyone is aboard except Cháoyīn, who stands in knee-deep water, facing the island. She has set down the iron staff. The Tidal Bell Manual has been left in the cave. She stands empty-handed. The morning light shines from behind her, casting her shadow long across the sand.]

潮音/ Cháoyīn [对着岛屿，也对着观众]

如今，我的法阵已散，咒语已终。 那口钟沉了。鬼火儿飞了。礁生回了海里。 四十个弟兄也终于……不再跟着我了。 剩下的力量只属于我自己—— 那不过是凡人的区区微力。

若你们愿意，我便可留在这里， 困在这座岛上，和珊瑚、和潮水、和那些听不见的声音一起。 若你们愿意，我也可启程归去。 我已宽恕了仇敌。虽然我不知道那算不算真的宽恕。 也许只是累了。也许只是不想再听见钟声。

你们的掌声，便是我如今唯一能向你们求的风。 若它肯吹起，便能替我鼓满归帆； 若不肯，我这番经营也就全要落空。

往昔我借精灵与亡魂震人心； 如今我什么都没有了，只剩说话。 而说话能穿透一切。 它能上达慈悲，也能赦免过失。

所以，正如你们也盼望自己有朝一日能蒙赦免—— 且请以尔等慈悲，予我自由。

[To the island, and to the audience]

Now my charms are all o'erthrown, My spells have ended. The bell is sunk. Guǐhuǒ'ér has flown. Jiāoshēng has returned to the sea. And the forty brothers... they follow me no more. What strength remains is only my own— The faint, frail power of an ordinary mortal.

If you wish it, I could stay here, Trapped on this island, with the coral, with the tide, with those unheard voices. If you wish it, I could set sail and return. I have forgiven my enemies. Though I do not know if it was true forgiveness. Perhaps I was simply tired. Perhaps I simply did not wish to hear the bell anymore.

Your applause is now the only wind I can ask of you. If it deigns to blow, it will fill my sails for the journey home; If not, all my efforts will come to nothing.

Once I relied on spirits and the dead to move your hearts; Now I have nothing left but words. And words can pierce through all things. They can reach mercy, and they can pardon faults.

So, as you yourselves hope one day to be pardoned— Let your indulgence set me free.

[她俯身致意。晨光里，她的影子在沙滩上停留了片刻，然后被涨上来的潮水一点一点抹去。] [She bows. In the morning light, her shadow lingers on the sand for a moment, then is slowly erased by the rising tide.]

黑场。/ Blackout.

全剧终。/ The End.

[babylon-crashing]

THE CIRCLE AND THE WOUND «圜与瘢»

Why the West Built Walls and the East Seduced Ghosts

an essay, ZJC (2026)

faut être toujours ivre. — You always have to be drunk. That’s all that matters—it’s the only way, so as not to feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you choose — but be drunk!” — Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris.

I. THE CIRCLE AS TECHNOLOGY OF FEAR

Western magic begins with a line on the floor.

Not always literally, but the metaphysical gesture is unmistakable: here is the magician, whole and defended; there is the spirit, outside, contained, addressed through a triangle of art. The circle is drawn with sword or knife, with chalk or ash, with the magician's own blood if nothing else is available. It is the first act of nearly every grimoire tradition from the Key of Solomon to the Lemegeton to the less respectable penny dreadfuls sold in Victorian London.

Why?

The official answer is protection. Spirits, in the Western view, are deceptive, envious, or malicious bastards. They will lie about their names. They will offer gifts that always have a catch. They will possess anyone if given the smallest opening. Hollywood paranoia writ large. The circle keeps them out there while the magician remains safe and dry inside.

But protection is only half the story. The circle also defines.

Plato had already prepared the ground. His chorismos — the separation of the ideal realm from the sensible world — is the original circle. The philosopher purifies himself from the body's distractions, ascends toward the Form of the Good and leaves the messy, changing, erotic world behind. Neoplatonism deepened the wound (though it would not call it that): the soul's task is to return to the One, shedding attachments like dry, flaky skin. Control is the method. Distance is the goal.

The Hermetic magicians inherited this unfortunate architecture. The circle does not merely keep spirits out. It keeps the magician in — this speaks to a particular kind of self: the bounded, sovereign, patriarchal, the so-called, “unbroken.” Control becomes power. The maniac witch, the grieving witch, the drunk witch, the witch who has just made love or cried or forgotten to eat — these are seen as failures, for they have lost control and let down the wall.

And yet.

The lonely ghost does not live in the world that the circle assumes. The Gūhún Yĕguĭ (孤魂野鬼wandering lonely ghost) is not a demon to be commanded. It is not an earth spirit to be negotiated with. It is not even, strictly speaking, “a free-floating, full-torso, vaporous apparition,” in the Western sense. It is an unfinished life — a desire that never closed, a death that never found its proper ground, a body that rots far from home while the soul wanders crossroads and ruins, looking for warmth.

The circle says: I am untouchable. You from the outside, the other.

The ghost hears: I am unwanted here.

It passes by, which is different than moving on.

)(*)(

II. THE WOUND AS TECHNOLOGY OF AVAILABILITY

If the circle begins with a line on the floor, the wound begins with a door left ajar.

Not literally — though sometimes literally. In the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhi yi), the scholar who meets a ghost is almost always in a state of incompletion. He is lost in the mountains at dusk. He has drunk too much wine and missed the last ferry. He is grieving a dead wife and falls asleep on her grave. He is so absorbed in copying a sutra by candlelight that he does not notice the hour. Ghosts do not break into his world. They slip through cracks that he did not know he had left open.

Pu Songling, the author, understood something that Western ceremonial magic has forgotten: the self is not a fortress. It is a ruin.

Not a sad ruin. A productive one. A ruin with gaps that wind passes through. A ruin where rain pools in corners and moss grows where the roof once stood. The ruin does not need to be rebuilt to be valuable. It is already inhabited — by memory, by longing, by the wandering dead.

The Gūhún Yĕguĭ is not a spirit of location. It is a spirit of interruption. A young woman dies dues to a broken engagement before her wedding. A merchant is robbed and murdered on a mountain pass, his body never returned to his village. A mother who has died in childbirth. These are not ancestors. They have no grave to tend, no tablet to honor, no descendant to pour their tea on the anniversary of their death. They are unfinished.

And they wander.

But they do not wander randomly. They are drawn to the living who resemble them — not in circumstance but in shape. The grieving widow, the lovesick poet, the exhausted traveler, the drunk courtesan singing alone at midnight: these are not victims. These are beacons. Their incompleteness is legible to the ghost. The ghost looks at them and thinks: This one knows what it is to get no satisfaction.

No circle can keep out that recognition. The circle only makes the self invisible.

Consider the Taoist and Buddhist traditions that inform the ghost literature. They do not begin with the question, “How do I protect myself?” They begin with the question, “What am I attached to?” Attachment — to a desire, to a grief, to a name, to a body, to a home — is what creates both the hungry ghost and the living person who can see one. In traditional folklore the hungry ghost (preta) has a tiny mouth and a vast, painful stomach that can never be filled. The hungry ghost is the shape of pure wanting made visible. The living person who practices pudu (universal salvation) does not build a circle. They build a table. They set out food. They chant sutras not to command the ghosts to leave but to release them from their own hunger. Liberation, we’re told.

But release is not the only option.

The erotic revenant — the ghost who does not want to be fed and released, but to stay for a while — requires a different practice. They require someone willing to be, “unreleased,” alongside them. This is not Buddhist orthodoxy. It is folk tradition, literary invention, the shadow of orthodoxy. But it is real in the way that dreams are real.

Pu Songling's scholars do not exorcise the ghosts who visit them. They make them tea. They recite poetry. They fall in love. They wake up with peonies on their pillows and fox fur under their nails. The ghost leaves eventually — they always leave — but not because they were commanded. They leave because the scholar's own incompleteness has shifted, or because the dawn has come, or because they were never meant to stay. The encounter was not a possession. It was a visit. And visits end.

The wound-model does not fear the visit. It hosts it.

The wound-model does not require belief in ghosts as Western metaphysics defines them. It requires something stranger: the willingness to sit in your own incompleteness without trying to seal it shut.

That willingness is the door left ajar.

)(*)(

III. BAUDELAIRE'S DRUNKENNESS AS ACCIDENTAL EASTERN TURN

Now we make a strange leap: from seventeenth-century Chinese ghost tales to nineteenth-century Paris, to a poet who never read Pu Songling, never performed a pudu ritual and would have been baffled by the term Gūhún Yĕguĭ. And yet...

Charles Baudelaire wrote, in Le Spleen de Paris:

faut être toujours ivre. — You always have to be drunk. That’s all that matters—it’s the only way, so as not to feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you choose — but be drunk!”

Most readers take this as hedonism. A few take it as metaphor. I want to take it literally — but not in the way Baudelaire intended. I want to read it as an anti-ceremonial instruction manual for encountering the wandering dead.

Baudelaire did not believe in ghosts, not really. He believed in “correspondences” — the secret sympathy between things, the way a perfume could summon a memory, the way a city street at midnight could feel haunted without containing a single specter. But that is exactly the point. The wound-model does not require ghosts to be ontologically real in the Cartesian sense. It requires the practitioner to be available to the experience of haunting, whether the ghost is “real” or not.

Be drunk — on wine, on virtue, on poetry — is a technology of unfinishing.

Consider: The sober, well-rested, well-fed, fully clothed, fully housed person is as  finished as they come. They have no cracks. They have locked their door, paid their bills, answered their mail and gone to bed at a reasonable hour. No ghost will find them because they have left no opening to be found in. They are the circle made flesh.

The drunk — not the stumbling fool, but the Baudelairean drunk, the one who has chosen to be always in an altered state — has deliberately unsealed themselves. Wine loosens the ego's grip on its own boundaries. Virtue (the intoxication of erotic intensity, of religious fervor, of political passion) uproots ordinary consciousness into a higher level. Poetry is the strangest intoxicant of all: it replaces the self's ordinary language with a language that belongs to no one, that passes through the poet like a ghost through a wall.

Baudelaire's famous sonnet, “Correspondances,” describes nature as a “forest of symbols” that watch the poet with “familiar glances.” This is not animism in the crude sense. It is the recognition that the world is already porous — that the boundary between self and not-self, living and dead, human and spirit, is not a line but a membrane. The sober person sees a tree. The intoxicated poet sees a familiar glance.

The Gūhún Yĕguĭ lives in that glance.

Now consider Baudelaire's other great creation: the flâneur. The idle stroller of Parisian arcades, the one who walks without destination, who gets lost on purpose, who watches and is watched by the city's anonymous, rain-soaked crowds. The flâneur is not a tourist. The flâneur is a seeker of encounters — not because they are looking for something specific, but because they have abandoned the tyranny of destination.

This is exactly the state prescribed for the city scholar who meets a country ghost in Liaozhai. The scholar does not set out to find a haunted house. He becomes lost. He takes the wrong path. He lingers too long at a crossroads. He falls asleep under a tree whose species he cannot name. The ghost finds him not because he summoned them, but because his lostness has made him now visible.

Baudelaire's flâneur is the secular, Western, nineteenth-century version of that lost scholar. The flâneur walks at night. The flâneur is slightly drunk (on wine or poetry). The flâneur has no place to be and no one waiting for him. He is, in the language of the wound-model, available.

What would Baudelaire have made of a Gūhún Yĕguĭ? He would have recognized them immediately. They are the passante of his sonnet “À une passante” — the veiled woman who appears for a single stanza, locks eyes with the poet and vanishes into the crowd, never to be seen again. The poet cries out:

“O you whom I would have loved! O you who knew it!”

That is the erotic revenant. They appears. They are seen. They leave. And the poet is left with an unfinished sentence — the exact state the wound-model cultivates.

Baudelaire never drew a circle. He never commanded a spirit. He never performed a banishing. He got drunk on poetry and walked the midnight streets of Paris, leaving his door ajar. And things visited him. Not ghosts, perhaps — not in the sense that a Taoist priest would recognize… but something. Something that looked at him with familiar eyes. Something that passed and left him changed.

That is the accidental Eastern turn: a French poet, without any knowledge of Chinese ghost literature, reinvented the wound-model because he understood that completion is the enemy of encounter.

The circle says: I am complete. Approach only on my terms. Baudelaire says: I will never be complete. Come as you are.

The ghost, who has been wandering for centuries, finally finds a door that is not locked.

)(*)(

IV. THE CIRCLE CANNOT HOLD THE EROTIC REVENANT

We have traced the circle's logic and the wound's alternative. We have watched Baudelaire stumble into an Eastern metaphysics he never knew he inherited. Now we must test the claim directly: Why does Western ceremonial magic fail with the erotic revenant?

Not fail entirely. The circle works beautifully for what it was designed to do: command earth intelligences, bind demons, invoke angels, protect the magician from deception. The grimoire tradition is not foolish... but it is specialized. It assumes an existence in which spirits are hierarchical, names are power and control is the magician's primary defense.

But the Gūhún Yĕguĭ does not live in that universe.

It lives in ours — the one where death is messy, where love outlasts the body, where a broken engagement can produce a ghost that haunts not a house but a feeling. It is not a demon to be bound by the Seventy-Two Names of God. It is not an earth spirit with an hour and a metal and a sigil. It has no rank in any hierarchy; only longing and longing is not a weakness to be exploited by a magician. It is the only thing about them that is real.

Let me show you this failure through two case studies: one Victorian, one from the Qing Dynasty. The first is a failure of method. The second is a failure of will — which is to say, a success of the wound.

)(*)(

Case Study A: The Victorian Necromancer and the Ghost Who Would Not Be Commanded.

In 1897, an intolerable English occultist — let us call him Arthur D. — decided to summon the ghost of a woman he had loved in life. She had died of consumption three years earlier. He had been a gadabout and had not been at her bedside. The guilt was a knot that no amount of Hermetic study and Latin proverbs could salve. Arthur D. was well trained. He had read Agrippa, Dee and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He had practiced the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. He had a circle of consecrated chalk up in his attic, a triangle of art painted on black wood and a copy of the Arbatel open to the appropriate chapter. He followed every instruction anyone had ever told him: purification bath, fasting, not-fasting, the invocation of the four archangels, the drawing of the circle with a sword that had never cut anything but air. Then he called her name. Nothing happened. He called again, louder, using the barbarous names of evocation that had worked so well for commanding those foolish earth spirits. Still nothing. He waited until dawn, his back aching from standing inside the circle, his voice hoarse from commanding a ghost who would not appear. This is only my opinion, but I think she did not come because she could not. The circle, for all its power, had done exactly what it was designed to do: it had separated Arthur D. from the spirit world. He stood inside a fortress of his own creation, commanding her to appear in the triangle of art — a space designed for binding, not for meeting. The ghost of a consumptive seamstress, who had died sick and in grief and alone, did not recognize herself in that geometry. She had no interest in being bound. She wanted, perhaps, only to be seen — not summoned, not commanded, not placed in a triangle like a specimen. Arthur D. died in 1901, still insufferable, still believing that he had failed because his technique was insufficient. In truth, he had failed because his technique was correct... for a kind of spirit that had nothing to do with the one he sought.

The circle cannot hold the erotic revenant because the erotic revenant does not want to be held. It wants to be met.

)(*)(

Case Study B: The Qing Scholar and the Peony on the Pillow.

Now, through the power of imagination, consider a different scene.

The year is 1679, because that’s when the story is set. A scholar — let us call him Song, though Pu Songling gives him many names — is traveling through the mountains of Shandong. He missed the last inn and then his donkey threw a shoe. Now it is raining a cold, thin, persistent pisser that soaks through his robes and makes the muddy path treacherous. He finds a ruined temple. Not a dramatic ruin — just an old shrine to a local goddess, abandoned when the village below moved to the other side of the mountain, as villages do. The roof leaks. The statue of the goddess has lost her face to time and weather. But there is a dry corner and Song has a flask of wine and he is too tired to be afraid. He drinks. He recites a poem to himself — something about autumn winds being disappointing, something about a man he once loved who only loved Song’s wife. He falls asleep on a pile of fusty straw. He wakes to candlelight. A woman sits across from him. She is beautiful, yes — all the stories say that — but more than beautiful, she is familiar. He cannot place her, but his heart aches as if he has known her for years. She does not introduce herself. She pours him tea from a pot he did not see her bring. She asks him to recite the poem again. He does. She smiles. The smile is the saddest thing he has ever seen. They talk until dawn. Not about anything important — the rain, the mountain, a line of poetry he had misunderstood until she explained it. When the first light touches the broken statue of the goddess, the woman stands. She touches his cheek. Her fingers are cold, but not unpleasantly so. She says: “You will not remember me clearly tomorrow. That is not a cruelty. It is a mercy.” She walks toward the wall and does not turn. Song wakes alone. The candle is gone. The tea cup is cold. On his pillow — his makeshift pillow of folded robes and whatnot — there is a single peony. Fresh. Unfaded. Impossible, because peonies do not grow in the mountains and it is not the right season and he did not have a peony when he fell asleep.

He keeps the peony pressed in a book until the day he dies. He never marries. He never tells anyone the full story, except once, to Pu Songling, who writes it down and changes the names.

)(*)(

WHAT THE TWO CASES TEACH US

Arthur D., the Victorian, did everything right by the standards of his tradition. He failed miserably.

Song the Scholar did nothing right by those same standards. He was “impure” (unwashed, drunk, emotionally porous). He drew no circle. He spoke no barbarous names. He made no attempt to bind or command. He simply sat in his own incompleteness and was found.

The difference is not technique. The difference is metaphysics.

Arthur D. believed:

• The ghost is separate from the self • The ghost must be controlled • Control is the condition of power • The encounter ends when the magician says it ends

Song believed (or, should I say, acted as if he did):

• The ghost is recognizable because the self is also unfinished • The ghost cannot be controlled, only witnessed • Porosity — the willingness to be unfinished, open and not sealed within the circle — is the condition of encounter. The Western reader may hear 'impurity' and think of sin. That is not what is meant. The ghost does not care if you are sexually ‘pure,’ they only care if you are emotionally available. • The encounter ends when the ghost decides — or when dawn comes, which is the same thing

The Western tradition, in its obsession with protection, built a machine that cannot host the stranger without demanding surrender. For me, that is a failure, not a quirk.

The circle protects. But protection is not the same as hospitality.

The erotic revenant does not want to be fought or bound. It wants to be offered a cup of cold tea and a poem recited badly, at midnight, by someone who has also loved and lost and fallen asleep in a ruined temple.

That is not a failure of the circle. It is a category error. You cannot command a wound to heal by drawing a line around it. You can only sit in the wound with someone else who also cannot sleep.

)(*)(

V. WHAT THE WEST LOST

We have circled the wound long enough. Now we must name the loss.

Western ceremonial magic, for all its beauty and rigor, developed a particular neurosis: the fear of contamination. The circle is that expression, but the circle is only a symptom. Deeper than the circle is a metaphysics that treats the self as a fortress to be defended, the spirit as a corrupted enemy and control as the only legitimate source of power.

This is not magic. This is trauma disguised as architecture.

Consider the history: the Hermetic tradition emerged from a world of religious persecution, sectarian violence and the slow death of the pagan gods. The magician drew the circle because the world outside the circle was genuinely dangerous — not because of spirits, but because of witch-hunters, inquisitors and neighbors who would burn you because their god decreed it. The circle was not just a spiritual technology. It was a survival strategy.

But survival strategies calcify. What began as protection became identity. What began as caution became paranoia. By the time we reach the Victorian occult revival, the circle is no longer a response to danger. It is a knee-jerk habit of a dull mind. The magician draws the circle because: that’s what magicians do. The possibility of not drawing the circle — of sitting in the dark with an unlit candle and a cup of cold tea — had become, and continues to be, unthinkable.

In other words, the West has lost the ability to be porous.

Porosity is not weakness. Porosity is the recognition that the boundary between self and world, living and dead, human and spirit, is not a line but a membrane. Things pass through. Some of them are welcome. Some of them are not. But you cannot choose which ones come if you have sealed up every opening. A sealed fortress keeps out the enemy, it be sure, and it also keeps out the lover, the ghost and the strange blessings that arrive only when you are not prepared.

The wound-model risks contamination. That is its danger and its gift. The circle-model avoids contamination. That is its safety and its poverty.

)(*)(

WHAT THE CIRCLE PROTECTS (AT WHAT COST)

I am, perhaps biased, but let me list what the circle preserves:

• The integrity of the ego • The distinction between self and other • The magician's sense of agency • The ability to begin and end the ritual at will • The comfort of knowing that the spirit world is forever over there

Now let me list what the circle cannot access:

• The ghost who does not recognize herself outside the circle • The blessing that arrives only through grief • The knowledge that comes from sitting in the wound with another unfinished being • The strange peace of not being in control • The encounter that changes you because you did not command it

The West chose safety. That was not a foolish choice; but it was a choice with far-reaching consequences. One of those consequences is that Western magic has very little to say to the grieving, the lovesick, the lost [1] — the very people who most need a technology of encounter. The circle tells them to purify themselves before they can approach the spirit world. But their grief is their approach. Their lovesickness is their ritual. Their lostness replaces their circle — not of protection, but of availability.

)(*)(

DESCARTES' CIRCLE

For me, the deepest loss is philosophical.

René Descartes, searching for an unshakeable foundation for knowledge, retreated into the famous cogito: “I think, therefore I am.” He drew a circle around the thinking self and declared everything outside it — the body, the senses, the world, other minds, spirits — subject to doubt. The only certainty was the self's own awareness of itself.

This is the circle of all circles. Western philosophy has been trying to escape it for four hundred years, but since this circle doesn’t have a door, Western philosophy is bound by its own, “mind-forg'd manacles,” as William Blake put it.

The wound-model does not attempt to escape the cogito. It simply refuses to start there. It asks: What if the self is not a thinking thing but a wanting thing? What if consciousness is not the ground of being but a late addition, a fragile flower growing out of the soil of desire and loss? What if the ghost is not a problem for epistemology but a friend of ontology?

The Gūhún Yĕguĭ does not care whether you think, therefore you are. The Gūhún Yĕguĭ cares whether you desire and “therefore you are like me.”

Descartes drew the circle to achieve certainty. He lost the ghosts in the process. They were never the enemy he was trying to exclude. They were just... acceptable collateral damage in times of war. He left them waiting, hoping one day that he'd leave the window open.

He never did.

)(*)(

THE UNMOURNED DEAD

As someone who has worked in hospice and palliative care here is, perhaps, the cruelest loss: the West's obsession with protection has made it nearly impossible to grieve properly.

Grief is the original wound. To grieve is to be unfinished. The person you loved has died and you cannot complete the conversation, cannot finish the sentence, cannot close the door. Grief is porosity — the dead passing through you whether you invite them or not.

The circle-model says: Protect yourself from grief. Banish it. Purify yourself from attachment. The dead are gone. Do not linger.

The wound-model says: Sit with grief. Let it change you. The dead are not gone; they are transformed. If you are lucky, they will visit. If you are very lucky, they will visit more than once.

The West has pathologized grief, medicated it, therapized it, shortened it, hidden it away in funeral homes and cemeteries that are no longer visited. We have drawn a circle around the living and called the dead “over there.” And even though this is just my own opinion, I think we are lonelier for it.

The Gūhún Yĕguĭ is not just a Chinese ghost. It is a universal figure: the dead who wander because the living have forgotten how to host them. Every culture has its version. The West has the banshee, the revenant, the ghost at the crossroads. But we have forgotten how to sit with them. We have forgotten that the cold cup of tea is not an offering — it is a recognition.

I see that you are still here. I am still here, too. Let us be unfinished together for a while.

That is what the West lost; not the ability to command spirits but the ability to recognize them as anything other than slaves.

)(*)(

VI. THE MIDDLE WAY?

We have drawn a sharp contrast: circle versus wound, command versus availability, purity versus porosity. But sharp contrasts are for abstract teaching, not for living. The practitioner who abandons the circle entirely may find themselves overwhelmed. The practitioner who never leaves the circle may find themselves alone.

Is there a middle way?

Not a compromise — compromise weakens both. But a navigation: knowing when to draw the circle and when to leave it undrawn. The wound-model is not a rejection of the circle. It is a contextualization of it. The circle works for some spirits, some purposes, some states of self. It fails for the Gūhún Yĕguĭ. The wise practitioner learns both languages and speaks each when it is called for.

Let me propose a rough map.

)(*)(

WHEN TO DRAW THE CIRCLE

The circle is appropriate when:

• The spirit you are engaging has a known hierarchy, name and function • You require a specific outcome (information, a boon, a binding) • The spirit is known to be deceptive, malicious, or indifferent to human welfare • You are working with others who need the safety of clear boundaries • You are a beginner, still learning the shape of your own psychic boundaries

The circle is good for these purposes. It is not evil or obsolete. It is a tool and tools have their domains and uses.

)(*)(

WHEN TO LEAVE THE CIRCLE UNDRAWN

The wound-model is appropriate when:

• The spirit is an erotic revenant, a Gūhún Yĕguĭ, or any ghost whose primary characteristic is unfinished longing rather than malice • You are yourself grieving, lovesick, lost, or otherwise porous • You seek not a command but an encounter — a meeting that may change you without your consent • You are willing to risk attachment, lingering, or the slow fading that comes from loving the dead • You understand that the ghost may not leave when you want it to • You have already done enough circle-work to know your own shape and can therefore recognize when to let it blur

The wound-model is not for beginners. It is not for those who feel, “psychically fragile.” It is for those who have built a self strong enough to be vulnerable; awesomely, temporarily vulnerable.

)(*)(

THE DOOR WITH A LOCK ALMOST NEVER USED

• The circle is a lock you use often. It keeps things out. That is its function. • The wound is an open door. Things pass through. That is its function. • The middle way is knowing that you have a lock — and choosing, for this night, not to use it.

The lock does not disappear if you don’t use it. It waits on the door frame, silent, ready. You are not a fool for having it. You are wise for knowing when to leave it untouched.

The Western tradition forgot that the lock could be left unused. It became compulsive: draw the circle, banish before and after, never leave an opening, never be vulnerable. That compulsion is not protection. It is fear of the unknown and uncontrollable dressed up as technique.

The middle way restores choice. You may draw the circle tomorrow night, for a different spirit, for a different purpose. But tonight, for the Gūhún Yĕguĭ, you leave it undrawn. You sit in the dark. You say: I am not summoning you. I am not commanding you. I am only here, unfinished, like you.

And if the ghost comes — or if they do not — you have done something the circle could never teach you: you have chosen vulnerability on purpose, without losing the ability to choose otherwise tomorrow.

That is not weakness. That is the hardest discipline of all.

)(*)(

VII. CODA: THE UNLIT CANDLE AS EMBLEM

We have traveled far: from the chalk circle of the Victorian magician to the ruined temple of the Qing scholar, from Plato's chorismos to Baudelaire's drunken flâneur. Now we come to rest on a single image.

The unlit candle.

In the practice of the wound, the practitioner sits before a candle and does not light it. That instruction is not arbitrary. It is the emblem of everything this essay has tried to say.

The lit candle belongs to the circle. It sees. It illuminates. It draws a boundary between light and dark, known and unknown, self and other. The magician lights candles to see the spirit that they have summoned — to verify, to control, to document. The lit candle is the eye of command.

The unlit candle belongs to the wound. It does not see. It does not illuminate. It waits. It could be lit — that is important — but tonight. That also is important. The practitioner sits in darkness not because darkness is better, but because the ghost does not come to be examined. The ghost comes to be sensed, pleasured, enjoyed.

The unlit candle says:

I am not trying to capture you. I am not trying to prove that you exist. I am not trying to write your name in a grimoire or bind you to a triangle of art. I am sitting here, in the dark, with a candle that I could light but choose not to. That choice is my offering. It says: you do not have to be visible to be real. You do not have to be commanded to be welcome.

)(*)(

WHAT THE UNLIT CANDLE TEACHES

1. The suspension of the will. The lit candle is an act of will: I will see. The unlit candle is an act of will suspended: I will not see yet. I will wait. The circle-model exalts the will. The wound-model respects it and then, deliberately, sets it aside.

2. The rejection of evidence. The Western practitioner, trained in Descartes and empiricism, wants proof. Did the ghost actually manifest? Can I measure it? Can I photograph it? Can I write it down in a case study? The unlit candle refuses to answer those questions. It says: Proof is not the point. Encounter is the point. You may never know whether the ghost was real. But you will know whether you were changed.

3. The embrace of darkness as hospitality. Light can be aggressive. A flashlight in the face of a sleeping person is an assault. The same is true for ghosts. The lit candle says: I am studying you. The unlit candle says: You can rest here. I am comfortably nearby if you need anything.

4. The possibility without demand. The unlit candle can be lit at any moment. That possibility is important. The practitioner is not helpless. They have a lighter or a match in their pocket. They could flood the room with light, banish the ghost, return to the safety of the circle. But they choose not to. That choice — renewable every second — is the shape of trust.

)(*)(

THE CANDLE THAT NEVER LIGHTS

Some nights, the practitioner sits before the unlit candle until dawn. The ghost does not come. The candle remains unlit. The practitioner drinks the cold tea alone, pours it onto bare earth, opens the eastern window and is still among the living.

Was the night a failure?

No. The night was a practice in waiting without expectation. That is its own discipline.

• The circle-model cannot abide waiting without expectation — it always wants a result, a sign, a soul in the triangle to command. • The wound-model says: The waiting is the ritual. The sitting in the dark, the refusal to light the candle, the willingness to be unfinished — that is already the encounter. The ghost is everything else.

Sometimes the ghost comes. Sometimes they do not. Both are gifts. The first gift is contact. The second gift is the patience to sit in their absence without despair.

)(*)(

A FINAL DISTINCTION

The circle says: I will make contact. The wound says: I will be available for contact and I will not be broken if it does not come.

The circle says: I will protect myself. The wound says: I will risk myself, because some gifts are only given to the vulnerable.

The circle says: I will know. The wound says: I will wonder.

The circle says: Prove it. The wound says: I believe you — not because you have given evidence, but because you are here, in the dark with me and that is enough.

)(*)(

AFTERWORD: WHAT THIS ESSAY DOES NOT DO

Before we part, a final honesty.

This essay does not teach you how to summon a Gūhún Yĕguĭ. No one can teach that, because no one can command them. It only teaches you how to be found by them — or by something that feels like them, whether or not they are “real” in a Cartesian sense.

This essay does not replace the living traditions of Taoist or Buddhist ghost-feeding. If you or your grandmother performed pudu during Ghost Month then you know more about this than I do. I am a visitor, a guest, a borrower. I have tried to be respectful. That does not mean I have succeeded.

This essay does not promise an encounter. It promises only the possibility of one — and the discipline to sit with that possibility without demanding more.

If you try the practice of the unlit candle and nothing happens, you have not failed. You have practiced porosity. That practice will change you even if no ghost appears. You will become someone who can sit in the dark without fear, who can leave a door open without panic, who can say, “I am unfinished,” and understand it.

That person is closer to the Gūhún Yĕguĭ than any magician standing in a circle of chalk.

And maybe — just maybe — that is enough.

………………………….

Unlit candle waits. The scholar's empty teacup warm in cold moonlight.

Fin

)(*)(

APPENDIX A

A NEW SYSTEM: IMPURITY AS INVITATION

If we take the Gūhún Yĕguĭ seriously and abandon the circle then we need a different kind of practice. Not protection. Availability.

Here are six techniques — call them anti-ceremonial — for becoming legible to the erotic revenant.

1. The Unmade Bed

Sleep one night a week without straightening the sheets in the morning. Leave the pillow dented. The ghost does not believe in order. The ghost believes in warmth that lingers after absence.

Why it works: A perfectly made bed says “No one lives here incompletely.” The ghost passes by. An unmade bed says “Someone left in a hurry, or someone never left at all.” The ghost hesitates at the door.

2. The Cold Cup of Tea

Every night for seven nights, pour a cup of cold tea. Do not drink it. Place it on a windowsill facing north (the direction of the dead in many Chinese traditions). Say nothing. Do not pray. Do not command.

On the seventh night, pour it out on bare earth.

Why it works: You are not offering food. You are offering a gesture that expects nothing back. That is the opposite of ceremonial magic, which always expects a result. The ghost recognizes this as the shape of its own existence: waiting without arrival.

3. The Walk Without Destination

Once a month, after midnight, walk for one hour without deciding where you are going. At every corner, let the next direction be the one that feels slightly wrong. Do not be brave. Be lost.

If you feel afraid, do not stop. If you feel nothing, walk slower.

Why it works: The scholar in Strange Tales never sets out to find a ghost. He becomes lost. That is the key. Being lost is a state — not a problem to solve. The ghost appears not when you are looking, but when you have forgotten to look.

4. The Unfinished Sentence

Before sleep, write a single sentence. Stop in the middle. Do not finish it. Leave the pen on the paper. Turn off the light.

Examples:

• “The thing I never told you was...” • “If I could stay one more hour, I would...” • “I am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of...”

Why it works: The lonely ghost is an unfinished sentence. It cannot end because it never completed its desire. Your unfinished sentence is a mirror. The ghost reads it and thinks: This one understands.

5. The Invitation That Is Not an Invitation

On the night of the new moon (no light — ghosts are not always frightened of darkness, but they emerge in it), sit in a room with one candle. Do not light it.

Say aloud, once, quietly:

“I am not summoning you. I am not commanding you. I am only sitting here, unfinished, like you.”

Leave the candle unlit. Go to sleep.

Why it works: Ceremonial magic says “By my will, I command you to appear.” That is a circle-mindset. The lonely ghost has spent centuries being commanded, exorcised, fed, and released. It does not want another command. It wants one living person to say: I am not whole either. That is the only true invitation.

A Warning (Because There Must Be One)

The circle protects. The wound exposes.

If you practice invitation without protection, you may find that a ghost does come — and does not leave quickly. The erotic revenant is not evil. It is not demonic. But it is hungry for the warmth it never had. And you, with your open door and your cold tea and your unfinished sentences, are warm.

In the stories, the scholar who loves a ghost often sickens, fades, or dies young. Not because the ghost is malicious. Because the ghost's time and the living's time are not the same. To hold a ghost in your attention for too long is to begin to resemble one.

So add one last practice to the list:

6. The Morning Window

Every morning after any intentional encounter (or attempted encounter), open a window facing east. Breathe ten slow breaths. Say aloud: “I am still among the living. I choose to stay.”

This is not a circle. It is a re-entry. The ghost can visit again. But you are not required to live in its house.

)(*)(

APPENDIX B

THE UNLIT CANDLE: A NIGHT FOR THE GŪHÚN YĔGUĬ

To be performed: On or near the new moon (when the sky is darkest). Duration: From nightfall until the first bird sings, or until you sleep — whichever comes first. You will need:

• One candle (any color, but white or uncolored is traditional) • One cup (ceramic, not glass — ghosts prefer things that once held heat) • Cold tea (leftover from earlier in the day, or brewed and left to cool) • One piece of paper and one pen • A window facing north (or the direction you cannot name) • Optional: a small bowl of plain rice (not for offering — for witness)

You will not need:

• A circle • Holy names • Protective amulets • Any command in any language • A single word of Latin, Hebrew, or Enochian

Part One: The Unmaking (Sunset to Twilight)

Do not prepare. Do not purify. Do not shower immediately beforehand. If you are already clean, rub your hands in the earth of a houseplant or touch your own hair without washing it first.

1. The Unmade Bed Go to your bedroom. If the bed is made, pull back one corner. If it is unmade, leave it as it is. Sit on the edge for a moment. Say nothing. Then leave.

2. The Cold Tea Pour the cold tea into the cup. Do not heat it. Do not add sugar. Place the cup on the north windowsill. If you have no north window, place it on the floor in the northernmost corner of the room. Say aloud, without emphasis:

“This is cold, like you. This is waiting, like you. This asks for nothing.”

3. The Unfinished Sentence Take the paper and pen. Write one sentence that you have never finished in your life. Examples:

• “The letter I never sent began with...” • “If my father had lived one more year, I would have asked him...” • “The person I was when I was young wanted...”

Stop in the middle of a word. Put the pen down. Do not complete the sentence. Do not read it again. Fold the paper once, badly (corners mismatched). Place it under the cold tea cup.

Part Two: The Walk Without Destination (Late Evening)

Leave your home. You will return.

Walk without deciding where. At every intersection, turn in the direction that feels slightly wrong: the one you would not normally choose. If you come to a dead end, stand there for ten breaths. Do not turn back immediately. Let the dead end hold you.

If you see a stray animal, watch it until it leaves. Do not follow it. Do not call to it. The animal is not a ghost. But it may be watching one.

If you pass a bridge, stop in the middle. Look down at the water (or the dry bed, or the asphalt — the shape matters less than the crossing). Say quietly:

“I am between. You are between. That is all we share tonight.”

Walk home by a different route. Do not hurry. If you feel afraid, do not run. Fear is not a warning in this case. Fear is attention. The ghost notices attention.

Part Three: The Invitation That Is Not an Invitation (Midnight)

Back in your room. The cup of cold tea is still there. The paper is still under it.

Place the unlit candle in front of you. Do not light it.

Place the optional bowl of rice next to it, not as an offering, but as a witness: something that was once alive, then harvested, then cooked, then cooled, and now sits here with you, also unfinished.

Say aloud, once, not as a prayer but as a statement of fact:

“I am not summoning you. I am not commanding you. I do not know your name. I am only sitting here, unfinished, like you. If you want to be seen tonight, I will try to see you. If you want nothing from me, I will drink this cold tea alone tomorrow and forget I tried. That is the only promise I make: I will not pretend that I am whole.”

Then be silent.

Part Four: The Vigil (Midnight to 3 A.M.)

Now you wait. Not for something. Just being present with the waiting.

You may do nothing. You may close your eyes. You may whisper a poem you remember incompletely. You may hum a song whose lyrics you have forgotten. You may cry if you need to — ghosts are not embarrassed by tears.

IF NOTHING HAPPENS: That is not failure. That is the most common outcome. The ghost may not be here tonight. Or it may be watching from the threshold, deciding. Or there may be no ghost at all and you have simply sat with your own unfinishedness — which is, itself, the beginning of understanding.

Stay until 3 A.M. if you can. If you fall asleep, that is also fine. The ghost does not require your wakefulness. Only your willingness to have been here.

IF SOMETHING HAPPENS: Do not name it quickly. Do not say “Is this a ghost?” That question will end the encounter. Instead, stay with the impression:

• A cold spot that moves • A smell with no source (rain on dry earth, old paper, metal and blood) • A feeling of being watched without fear • A word you did not think first • A shadow that does not match any object

If you feel the presence approach, do not turn around suddenly. Do not demand identification. Say, very softly:

“I see that you are here. You do not have to speak. You do not have to leave. You can stay as long as you want to be seen.”

Then be silent again. The ghost may stay for seconds. It may stay until dawn. It may never leave entirely — but that is a different story.

Part Five: The Morning Window (Dawn)

When the first light comes (or when you wake, if you slept), go to the eastern window. Open it. Breathe ten slow breaths.

Say aloud:

“I am still among the living. I choose to stay. Whatever visited me, thank you for the visit. Whatever did not, thank you for the silence. I close no door — but I open this window.”

Do not pour out the cold tea immediately. Leave it on the north windowsill until noon. Then pour it onto bare earth — not down a sink. The tea must return to ground.

Do not finish the unfinished sentence. Burn the paper instead. Let the smoke go out the eastern window.

Do not make your bed until evening. Let the dent remain one more day. The ghost may come back tonight to check. That is allowed. You are not in a war. You are in a conversation that may last years.

NOTES

[1] As far as I can tell, Western occult magic’s biggest contribution to inter-personal relationships is what gets called, “Love magic,” which is just another term for robbing someone of their ability to say, “no,” and forcing them to do what they would never choose to do under their own free will. “Domination-style” like every other relationship that they have with the divine. Quelle shock!

[babylon-crashing]

THE AUTUMN WIND (based on the life and poetry of Qiu Jin) ~ ACT III

A Play in Three Acts.

By ZJC (2026)

Characters:

QIU JIN (30s) — Revolutionary, poet, swordswoman. She leaves her husband and children to change China. She will not succeed. She will be remembered.

WU ZHIYING (late 40s) — Poet, calligrapher, wife of a Qing official. She helps Qiu Jin escape to Japan. She loves her across distance and death.

XU ZIHUA (40s) — Widowed principal of Xunxi Girls' School. She hires Qiu Jin. She becomes Qiu Jin's partner, her sister, her gravedigger.

XU XILIN (30s) — Qiu Jin's cousin. Revolutionary. He recruits her into the Restoration Society. His failure causes her death.

THE STATE (Actor 5) — Messenger, Official, Executioner, Gulin. The face of the government that wants to erase her.

Setting: Beijing, Tokyo, Zhejiang, Shaoxing. 1903-1908. A single room that transforms — a writing desk, a tea table, a scroll on the wall, a willow branch when needed, a sword that appears and disappears.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes.

)(*)(

ACT THREE: THE ELEGY

SCENE 11: THE MADNESS OF WU ZHIYING

Setting: Wu Zhiying's house, Beijing. July 1907.

The same room as Act One. On the wall, a scroll of calligraphy: 安排嬌骨用鞭摑 — in Qiu Jin's handwriting. It would be droll if anyone was in the mood for such frivolous gestures.

But the room is a wreck. Dark. Curtains drawn. Table overturned. A broken tea set. A black mess where a pot of ink had been thrown against a wall in rage.

A single candle burns low — it has been burning for days.

Books, poems, papers are scattered on the floor. A life of letters has been dropped and not picked up.

WU ZHIYING sits on the floor. Hair undone. She does not move, staring at nothing. She has been here for days.

The candle flickers.

She mumbles — these are not words to be heard by anyone.

WU ZHIYING: "One life..."

(She stops.)

(She tries again.)

"One life..."

(She cannot finish.)

(She looks at the writing brush on the floor. She does not pick it up.)

(Blackout.)

(When the lights come on again time has passed. A couple of days — a thousand years, it is impossible to know.)

(Wu Zhiying has moved beyond grief into a new state — not mania, but she is a woman driven by a feverish goal that has consumed her.)

(But she is ill, gravely ill. A cup of untouched medicine sits on the floor. Cold. Forgotten. She stops once in a while to cough into a handkerchief. Perhaps not consumption, perhaps not blood in the lungs, but a dire illness.)

(Regardless, she sits at her table, now right side up, writing furiously.)

(Whatever sentiment that drove her to say, "I will stay here in this house pouring tea," in Act 1 has been forgotten.)

(The floor around her contains a thousand crumpled attempts at articulating her grief. At her elbow, a small mountain of papers have been stacked; she has been composing Qiu Jin's biography, writing eulogies, writing and writing and writing.)

(She stops. Puts down her brush with ink-stained fingers.)

(Silently reads her lines.)

(Rage at not writing the right words. In a fit she crumples the poem, tosses it aside. There is a horrible moment when she isn't in control. It passes. She takes a fresh sheet of paper and starts again.)

(She closes her eyes. Gathers her thoughts. A long pause.)

(She begins to write. Stops. Adds a thought and puts down the brush.)

(She stands. This should be an agonizing movement; she has been sitting for days, her body forgotten. She walks a little, trying to get the blood moving. She stands over her poem, looking down on it, casting judgment.)

(She picks up the paper and finally reads it out loud.)

WU ZHIYING: "One life, not preserved, / For millennia, a heroic name lives."

(At some earlier time she would have paused to enjoy such a powerful, creative success. Not today. She places the paper on top of the pile of finished work.)

(She sits. Picks up her brush and begins to write once more.)

(Blackness.)

(When the lights come up this time Wu Zhiying has transformed. She is still ill, still weak, but her hair is washed and her clothes clean. Her manuscripts organized into piles in front of her.)

(She speaks as she writes.)

WU ZHIYING (writing and coughing): To Xu Zihua, Principal of Xunxi Girls' School —

(She writes.)

You have suggested a burial site by West Lake. Xiling. The place Qiu Jin herself wanted.

(She writes.)

Already the government is speaking out against — (She finds she is about to write, "Brother Qiu," pauses and includes it.) Already there are rumors her body will be dug up, desecrated, as a warning to others. (She pauses, thinks.) The first priority is to secretly transport her coffin to the lake without the officials knowing. I have found a man in Shaoxing who can help.

(She stops as coughing nearly overwhelms her. Through pure self-will she controls herself, picks up the brush and continues.)

Write to me. We must act quickly.

(She sets the brush down. She reads what she has written. Then she adds one more line.)

WU ZHIYING (writing): She spoke of you often. In her last months, you were the one at her side. I do not know you. But I know she loved you. That is enough for me.

(She folds the letter. She seals it.)

(She holds it in both hands.)

(She speaks — to the letter, to Xu Zihua, to Qiu Jin.)

WU ZHIYING: I do not know if you will answer. I do not know if you are even alive.

(Pause.)

But you are the only other person in the world who loved her the way I did.

(She sets the letter down.)

That makes you my sister.

(She stands. She moves to the window. She opens the curtains. Light floods the room.)

(She blinks as if she had forgotten sunlight was even possible.)

(She calls out.)

WU ZHIYING: Messenger!

(The MESSENGER enters — the same young man from Scene 10. He is frightened. He is always frightened.)

MESSENGER: Madam?

WU ZHIYING: This must go to Zhejiang. Xunxi Girls' School. Do not let anyone else touch it.

MESSENGER: Madam, the roads are dangerous—

WU ZHIYING: Then avoid the danger.

(He takes the letter. He leaves.)

(Wu Zhiying stands alone.)

(She looks at the scroll on the wall — Qiu Jin's calligraphy.)

(She speaks — not to Qiu Jin now. To herself.)

WU ZHIYING: "One life, not preserved. / For millennia, a heroic name lives."

(Whatever she was suffering in the beginning of the scene, she has turned her trauma into a weapon.)

(She bows her head.)

(Lights fade.)

)(*)(

SCENE 14: THE FUNERAL

Setting: West Lake, Hangzhou. Spring 1908.

The stage is bare. A single willow branch hangs from above — the suggestion of a tree, of water, of a place where heroes are buried.

A grave marker. Simple. Unadorned. A mound of earth.

WU ZHIYING and XU ZIHUA kneel at the grave. They have been here for some time.

The sound of a crowd — distant, murmuring. Not loud. Just present. Waiting.

Wu Zhiying reads her eulogy first. Not loudly. Not whispered. Simply.

WU ZHIYING: 

“Are you sated by my great offering of wine?

Looking back at Jiangting, one farewell, many tears.

Today at Xiling I risk a great wailing.

I cannot sing your song, ‘The Precious Sword’."

(She pauses.)

(Xu Zihua speaks.)

XU ZIHUA: 

Those few of us who still keep our promises

will hang up our swords at her grave like the loyal Yanling.

From now on, the waves of Xiling,

when they reach this bridge, will not rest.

(Wu Zhiying speaks again.)

WU ZHIYING: 

Painful is the memory of our parting,

tears of the lone traveler fell like silken thread.

Alone, I gaze upon the sun that sets behind the lone grave mount,

Holding my sorrow, which no one can know.

XU ZIHUA: 

The one who lies here met a bloody end,

though now may rest by a good lake and a green hill, at home.

Oh let my grave be at the right side of yours —

under the bright moon, we will wander together

among the pines and catalpas.

(Silence.)

(The crowd murmurs. Louder now. Restless.)

(Wu Zhiying speaks again — a different poem, one she wrote on the road to Shanyin.)

WU ZHIYING: 

Vast and murky are heaven and earth,

a myriad of feelings assault me.

I gather your bones, my tears soak the kerchief.

Autumn wind, autumn rain,

along the Shanyin road,

Sigh upon sigh,

it is not easy to be a survivor.

(She pauses.)

(Xu Zihua speaks her final poem.)

XU ZIHUA: 

A legend of blood has been written.

Fortunately, there are green hills to hold the white bones.

Nanhu has built a bower for "Mourning Autumn";

Will you visit us there, when the wind comes, and the rain?

(They wait.)

(The wind.)

(Silence.)

(Then — footsteps.)

(GULIN steps forward from the crowd. He is a Manchu official. He is not there to mourn. He is there to control the narrative.)

(He speaks — not shouting. Calm. Measured. Dangerous.)

GULIN: This is not a hero's grave.

(Wu and Xu turn to look at him.)

(The crowd stirs. Murmurs grow.)

GULIN: The Qing did not steal this land. We took it from bandits. You honor a criminal.

(Wu and Xu do not answer.)

(The crowd erupts.)

(Boos. Shouts. Protest. The sound is not organized. It is not clean. It is messy, loud, and undeniable.)

(Gulin looks around. He is surrounded. Not by soldiers. By voices, common voices.)

(He tries to continue but cannot compete.)

(He leaves. Angry. Humiliated.)

(The crowd continues. Their voices swell.)

(Wu and Xu look at each other.)

(A nod.)

(Darkness.)

(The sound of the crowd continues — not fading, not diminishing, but growing, spreading, as if all of China were protesting.)

(The lights are gone. The stage is black. But the sound remains.)

(Long pause.)

(Gradually — very gradually — the crowd begins to fade. Not because they have stopped. Because they have moved beyond this place, this moment, this grave.)

(Silence.)

(Then, very faintly, the sound of wind.)

)(*)(

SCENE 15: AFTERMATH

Setting: West Lake, Hangzhou. The present day. The statue of Qiu Jin.

The stage is bare. A single light rises on the statue — a suggestion, a shape, a presence.

A VISITOR stands before it. She holds a red silk scarf in one hand. A small print — a woodblock image of Qiu Jin's face — is tucked into her pocket, visible but not explained.

She speaks — not to the audience. To the statue. To Qiu Jin.

VISITOR: I have been standing here for an hour.

(Pause.)

People walk by. They mistake me for someone else. A tourist. A student. A ghost.

(She looks at the statue.)

I do not correct them.

(She steps closer. She touches the base of the statue.)

There was a printmaker once. In 1979. She carved your face into wood and pressed it onto paper. She said, "No one can tell how great Qiu Jin is."

(She pauses.)

There was a filmmaker. She made a film where women with swords danced to your poems. She called you a "messy revolutionary." A drama queen.

(She almost smiles.)

I think she was right.

(She is silent for a moment.)

(Then she speaks — a line of poetry. Qiu Jin's line. The one that started everything.)

VISITOR: "Don't tell me women are not the stuff of heroes..."

(She pauses.)

(She wraps the red scarf around the base of the statue. She places the print beside it.)

(She steps back.)

(She bows her head.)

VISITOR: I am not the first person to stand here. I will not be the last.

(The light fades slowly — very slowly — until there is nothing but darkness.)

(Silence.)

(Then, very faintly, the sound of wind.)

(Then — a new sound. Footsteps. Someone else approaching the statue.)

(The play does not end. It continues. Offstage. Into the future.)

(Blackout.)

)(*)(

EPILOGUE: THE JINGWEI BIRD

The stage is dark.

A single light rises on QIU JIN. She stands alone. She holds no sword. She holds no brush. She simply stands, facing the audience.

She speaks — not as the character Qiu Jin, but as the writer Qiu Jin, reaching out across a century to speak directly to us.

QIU JIN: I live in an era of transition.

(Pause.)

I’ve taken advantage of the glimmer of civilization that appears here — small, fragile, like light through a crack in a closed door — to expand the… (Pause, selecting the word.) boundaries of my universe.

(She steps forward.)

I am not very erudite. I have read fewer books than the men who dismiss me. I have studied fewer classics than the scholars who mock me. But I know this: it is always very painful for me to think that women in my country live in a world of darkness.

As if drunk.

As if immersed in a dream.

Without any knowledge.

(She touches her chest.)

There is a bird in the old stories. The Jingwei bird. She was a girl once — a girl who drowned in the Eastern Sea. She did not accept her death. She did not accept the sea's power over her. She transformed. She became a bird. And every day, she carries twigs and stones from the Western Mountains to fill the sea.

Every day.

She will never fill it. She knows this. The sea is vast. The sea is ancient. The sea does not care about her small stones.

But she carries them anyway.

She looks out at the audience.

That is what I am doing. Carrying stones. Writing poems. Starting newspapers. Opening schools. Training women to fight. Small things. Impossible things.

They will kill me for it. I know this too.

(She almost smiles.)

But the Jingwei bird does not stop. Neither will I.

(The light begins to fade.)

(She speaks her final words into the dark.)

秋風秋雨愁煞人.

Qiūfēng qiūyǔ, lìng xīnzhōng chōngyíngzhe nányǐ chéngshòu de āichóu.

Autumn wind, autumn rain, fills my heart with sorrow.

(Blackout.)

)(*)(

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This play is based on the historical lives of Qiu Jin (1875-1907), Wu Zhiying (1857-1918), and Xu Zihua (1873-1935). While the dialogue and specific scenes are dramatized, the major events — the meeting in Beijing, the escape to Japan, the Golden Orchid oath, the founding of Chinese Women's News, the Xunxi School, the failed uprising, the execution, the secret burial at West Lake — are documented in historical sources.

The poetry in Act One, Scene 5 (Wu Zhiying's oath poem) is my own dramatic reconstruction. The poems in Act Three, Scene 14 are authentic translations of Wu Zhiying's "Mourning Qiu Jin at Xiling" and Xu Zihua's response poems, as documented in Hu Ying's Burying Autumn and other scholarly sources.

The author wishes to acknowledge the scholarly work of Hu Ying (Burying Autumn), Li-li Ch'en (Women Writers of Traditional China), Yilin Wang (The Lantern and the Night Moths), and the archival research that has preserved these women's stories.

ZJC (20206)

)(*)(

As supplementary sources go, this was my very first attempt at translating Qiu Jin’s poetry years and years ago; the poem that started it all. The original title reads, “A Reply Verse in Matching Rhyme (for Ishii-kun, a Japanese friend).” At the time I simply wrote, “A first attempt, by a young translator, who found Qiu Jin in an old anthology and fell in love.”

Don’t tell me women

are not the stuff of heroes,

I alone rode over the East Sea’s

winds for ten thousand leagues.

My poetic thoughts ever expanding,

like a sail between ocean and heaven.

I dream of your three islands,

all gems, all dazzling with moonlight.

I grieve to think of the bronze camels,

guardians of China, lost in thorns.

Ashamed, I have done nothing;

not one victory to my name.

I simply make my war horse sweat.

Grieving over my native land

hurts my heart. So tell me;

how can I spend these days here?

A guest enjoying your spring winds?

[babylon-crashing]

TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO [a drama]

Translated and arranged by ZJC (2026) after the film by Mario Bava (1965)

Riceviamo un segnale modulato... sembra una richiesta di soccorso.

(We are receiving a modulated signal... it looks like a distress call.)

ACT 1: THE DESCENT

CHARACTERS: COMMANDER MARK MARKARY: Stoic, driven by duty and 'Volontà.' SANYA: The ship's navigator; sensitive to the planet’s psychic shifts. WES: A junior officer, prone to the physical effects of the environment. THE CREW: Various voices represented as a frantic chorus over the intercom. SETTING: The interior of the spaceship ARGOS. The lighting is expressionistic—deep crimsons and acidic greens. The 'stage' should feel claustrophobic. Outside the viewports, the planet AURA is a swirling mass of toxic mist. MARKARY (Into the comms, voice steady) Attenzione, qui parla il Comandante della Argos. Stiamo entrando nell'orbita del pianeta ignoto. (Attention. This is the Commander of the Argos. We are entering the orbit of the Unknown Planet.) SANYA (Leaning over a glowing radar screen) Segnale di soccorso captato, Comandante. Proviene dalla Galliott. Ma è frammentario... sembra quasi un’eco dal passato. (Distress signal intercepted, Commander. It comes from the Galliott. But it is fragmentary... it feels almost like an echo from the past.) MARKARY Tentate di stabilire un contatto diretto. Aumentare la schermatura antiradiazioni. (Attempt to establish direct contact. Increase the anti-radiation shielding.) CREW VOICE (OFFSTAGE) (Over the speakers, rising in pitch) Pressione esterna in aumento... 4.0... 5.0... la struttura non regge! Comandante, la nave sta gridando! (External pressure increasing... 4.0... 5.0... the structure won't hold! Commander, the ship is screaming!) WES (Clutching his head, stumbling) Sento... un ronzio. Non è nei motori. È qui dentro. Come se qualcuno stesse graffiando il vetro della mia mente. (I hear... a humming. It’s not in the engines. It’s in here. As if someone were scratching at the glass of my mind.) MARKARY (Grabbing Wes by the shoulder) Resisti, Wes! È la pressione atmosferica che gioca con i tuoi nervi. Restate ai vostri posti! (Resist, Wes! It is the atmospheric pressure playing with your nerves. Stay at your stations!) SANYA (Gasps, staring at the viewport) Guardate... la nebbia si apre. Ma non è un pianeta, Markary. È un abisso che ci guarda. (Look... the fog is opening. But it is not a planet, Markary. It is an abyss that is looking back at us.) CREW VOICE (OFFSTAGE) (Now screaming) Non voglio morire così! Lasciatemi uscire! Devo uscire! (I don't want to die like this! Let me out! I must get out!) MARKARY (To Sanya) Inizia la manovra di atterraggio forzato. Non possiamo abbandonare la Galliott nel vuoto. Se loro sono scesi, noi li seguiremo... fino all'inferno, se necessario. (Begin the forced landing maneuver. We cannot abandon the Galliott in the void. If they descended, we will follow them... to hell, if necessary.) STAGE DIRECTION: The lights on the bridge begin to strobe violently. A deafening roar of rushing wind and groaning metal fills the theater. The crew collapses into a heap as the ship pitches forward into the darkness.

)(*)(

ACT 1, SCENE 2: THE FEVER OF AURA

SETTING: The bridge is in total disarray. Red emergency lights pulse slowly, like a heartbeat. The sound of the engines has been replaced by a heavy, rhythmic thrumming from the planet outside. The crew members are scattered on the floor, slowly rising. MARKARY (Coughing, pulling himself up by the command chair) Rapporto... Sanya? Wes? Qualcuno mi risponda. (Report... Sanya? Wes? Someone answer me.) WES (Rising slowly, his eyes wide and fixed on nothing) Perché c'è così tanto silenzio? Il silenzio fa male. È come se... mi stesse mangiando. (Why is there so much silence? The silence hurts. It is as if... it were eating me.) SANYA (In a trance, staring at her hands) Il rosso... vedo solo il rosso. È il colore del sangue, Comandante. Il sangue che scorre sotto la crosta di questo mondo. (The red... I see only red. It is the color of blood, Commander. The blood that flows beneath the crust of this world.) MARKARY Sanya, riprenditi! Dobbiamo controllare i motori. Se siamo atterrati, dobbiamo sapere se possiamo ripartire. (Sanya, snap out of it! We must check the engines. If we have landed, we must know if we can leave.) WES (Suddenly turning toward Markary, his voice harsh) Ripartire? Tu vuoi andartene perché hai paura di me. Ti vedo, Markary. Vedo quello che pensi. Vuoi chiudermi fuori! (Leave? You want to go because you are afraid of me. I see you, Markary. I see what you are thinking. You want to lock me out!) MARKARY Wes, calmati. È l'atmosfera. Respira profondamente. (Wes, calm down. It’s the atmosphere. Breathe deeply.) WES (Lunging at Markary, hands clawing at his throat) Bugiardo! Sei un invasore! Questo posto mi dice la verità su di te! Muori! Muori prima che mi uccidi tu! (Liar! You are an invader! This place tells me the truth about you! Die! Die before you kill me!) STAGE DIRECTION: A chaotic struggle breaks out. It is not a choreographed fight, but a desperate, animalistic brawl. Other crew members (OFFSTAGE) can be heard screaming and fighting in the corridors. The sound is a cacophony of metal hitting metal and human snarls. SANYA (Screaming, not at the fight, but at the air) Basta! Lasciateci stare! Non siamo noi! Qualcosa ci sta usando! (Enough! Leave us alone! It isn't us! Something is using us!) MARKARY (Pinning Wes to the floor, breathing hard) Wes... guardami... sono Markary. Non lasciarti vincere... la tua volontà... usa la tua volontà! (Wes... look at me... it’s Markary. Don't let it win... your will... use your will!) STAGE DIRECTION: Suddenly, as if a switch has been flipped, the rhythmic thrumming outside stops. Wes goes limp. The screaming in the corridors ceases instantly. An oppressive, heavy silence returns. WES (Blinking, his voice trembling) Comandante? Cosa... cosa ho fatto? Le mie mani... perché sono sporche? (Commander? What... what have I done? My hands... why are they dirty?) MARKARY (Helping him up, looking shaken) Non eri tu, Wes. Era Aura. Il pianeta ha cercato di spezzarci non appena abbiamo toccato il suolo. (It wasn't you, Wes. It was Aura. The planet tried to break us the moment we touched the ground.) SANYA (Looking at the viewports, where the mist is thick and swirling) Non ha cercato di spezzarci, Markary. Ci ha provato. Ci ha testato. E ora sa... quanto siamo fragili. (It didn't try to break us, Markary. It tested us. And now it knows... how fragile we are.)

WES

Guardate fuori... il fumo... la nebbia... non si vede nulla.

(Look outside... the smoke... the fog... you can't see anything.)

MARKARY

Dobbiamo trovare la Galliott. Se hanno subito quello che abbiamo subito noi…

(We must find the Galliott. If they suffered what we suffered…)

)(*)(

ACT 1, SCENE 3: THE EXHUMATION OF SILENCE

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Carrying a heavy flashlight and a sensor. SANYA: Her movements are hesitant, her eyes darting to the mist. WES: Armed with a laser-pistol, appearing jumpy.

SETTING: The surface of AURA. The stage is buried in thick, rolling fog (the famous Bava 'nebbia'). Jagged, obsidian-colored rock formations loom out of the mist like broken teeth. The sky is a bruised purple. In the distance, the skeletal silhouette of the GALLIOTT is barely visible. SANYA

Il silenzio... è assoluto. Non c'è vento, eppure la nebbia si muove.

(The silence... it is absolute. There is no wind, yet the fog moves.)

WES

Comandante! Là... tra le rocce. È la sagoma della Galliott!

(Commander! There... among the rocks. It's the silhouette of the Galliott!) MARKARY (His voice muffled by his helmet) Rimanete vicini. Se la nebbia si chiude, ci perderemo in un istante. I rilevatori sono quasi inutili qui... c'è troppo ferro nell'aria. (Stay close. If the fog closes in, we will be lost in an instant. The detectors are almost useless here... there is too much iron in the air.) WES (Aimed his weapon at a shadow) Chi è là? Ho visto qualcosa muoversi tra quelle rocce! (Who’s there? I saw something move among those rocks!) SANYA È solo la nebbia, Wes. Si muove come se avesse una sua volontà. Guarda come si avvolge intorno ai nostri passi... sembra che ci stia assaggiando. (It’s only the fog, Wes. It moves as if it had a will of its own. Look how it wraps itself around our footsteps... it seems as if it is tasting us.) MARKARY (Pointing his light upward) Eccola. La Galliott. È atterrata quasi intatta, ma non vedo luci. Non vedo segni di vita. (There it is. The Galliott. It landed almost intact, but I see no lights. I see no signs of life.) WES Perché non hanno risposto ai nostri segnali? Se sono vivi, perché restano al buio? (Why didn't they answer our signals? If they are alive, why do they stay in the dark?) MARKARY Forse non possono accendere le luci. Sembra... morta. (Perhaps they cannot turn on the lights. It seems... dead.)

SANYA (Stopping suddenly, touching a rock) Questa pietra... vibra. Ma non è un suono. È un pensiero. Un grido congelato nel tempo. Markary, non dovremmo entrare là dentro. (This stone... it vibrates. But it isn't a sound. It’s a thought. A scream frozen in time. Markary, we shouldn't go in there.) MARKARY Dobbiamo farlo. Se c'è una risposta a quello che ci è successo sul ponte, è dentro quella nave. Sanya, Wes... pronti a tutto. (We must. If there is an answer to what happened to us on the bridge, it is inside that ship. Sanya, Wes... be ready for anything.) STAGE DIRECTION: They reach the airlock of the Galliott. The door is slightly ajar, hanging off its hinges as if forced from the inside. A low, sickly green light emanates from within. As they step inside, the sound of the wind outside vanishes, replaced by a rhythmic dripping sound. SANYA (Whispering) L'odore... è come di ozono bruciato. E qualcosa... di dolciastro.

(The smell... it's like burnt ozone. And something decaying... sickly sweet.)

WES

Mio Dio... guardate là. Capitano Markary... è l'equipaggio!

(My God... look there. Captain Markary... it's the crew!)

MARKARY (Shining his light on the floor) Sangue. Ma è secco. E guardate le pareti... ci sono segni di lotta ovunque. Non è stato un atterraggio, è stato un massacro. (Blood. But it’s dry. And look at the walls... there are signs of struggle everywhere. It wasn't a landing; it was a massacre.)

)(*)(

ACT 1, SCENE 4: THE GALLERY OF THE DAMNED

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Methodical, checking pulses with a gloved hand. SANYA: Trembling, her back against the cold metal hull. WES: Keeping watch at the portal, his shadow elongated and distorted.

SETTING: The interior of the GALLIOTT. The geometry of the ship seems skewed, shadowed by Bava’s signature 'Deep Space' lighting—violent purples and sickly yellows. The air is thick with a shimmering haze. Bodies are slumped over consoles, but they are not merely dead; they are positioned like macabre statues. WES (A choked whisper) Dio mio... guardateli. Sono come pietrificati nel momento del loro ultimo terrore. (My God... look at them. They are like petrified in the moment of their final terror.) SANYA (Shining her light on a body slumped over a radar) È Kier. Era il mio migliore amico. Ma guardate il suo viso... non sembra più lui. È una maschera di odio. (It’s Kier. He was my best friend. But look at his face... it doesn't look like him anymore. It is a mask of hate.) MARKARY (Examining a wound on a corpse) Nessun colpo di arma da fuoco. Si sono uccisi con le mani... con i denti. Si sono sbranati l'un l'altro come bestie in una gabbia troppo stretta. (No gunshot wounds. They killed each other with their hands... with their teeth. They tore each other apart like beasts in a cage that was too small.) WES Perché? Perché loro si sono distrutti e noi no? Siamo uomini anche noi... abbiamo lo stesso sangue. (Why? Why did they destroy themselves and we didn't? We are men too... we have the same blood.) MARKARY (Standing up, looking into the darkness of the corridor) Forse la loro volontà era più debole. O forse... il pianeta voleva così. Ma guardate bene... c'è qualcosa che non torna. (Perhaps their will was weaker. Or perhaps... the planet wanted it this way. But look closely... something doesn't add up.)

WES Cosa volete dire, Comandante? (What do you mean, Commander?) MARKARY Le ferite... non sanguinano. È come se il corpo avesse smesso di essere biologico nel momento della morte. La carne è... cristallizzata. (The wounds... they aren't bleeding. It is as if the body ceased to be biological at the moment of death. The flesh is... crystallized.) SANYA (Pointing to a shadow in the corner) Markary! Là! Un’ombra si è mossa! (Markary! There! A shadow moved!) WES (Firing his laser into the dark—a burst of red light) Vieni fuori! Mostrati! (Come out! Show yourself!) MARKARY (Grabbing Wes’s arm) Fermi! Non c'è nessuno. È solo il riflesso della nostra paura. Ma dobbiamo andarcene. Questa nave non è più un rifugio... è un sarcofago. E sento che il coperchio si sta chiudendo. (Stop! There is no one. It is only the reflection of our fear. But we must leave. This ship is no longer a refuge... it is a sarcophagus. And I feel the lid is closing.) STAGE DIRECTION: As they turn to leave, the heavy metal door of the bridge begins to groan and slide shut on its own. The rhythmic thrumming of the planet rises in volume, vibrating the very floorboards under their feet.

)(*)(

ACT 2, SCENE 1: THE CYCLOPEAN RELIC

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Leading with a sense of grim fascination. SANYA: Hypnotized by the sheer scale of the ruins. WES: Nervous, checking the perimeter of the alien hull.

SETTING: A different part of the planet Aura. The fog is thinner here, but the air glows with a pulsing, rhythmic amber light. In the center of the stage stands the 'Relic'—a structure that is clearly not of human design. It is organic, ribbed like a ribcage, and vast. The entrance is a jagged hole that looks like a mouth. WES (Staring up at the structure, his voice echoing) Non è una costruzione umana. Guardate le dimensioni... è ciclopica.

(It’s not a human construction. Look at the dimensions... it is eldritch.) SANYA (Touching the exterior, which pulses with light) Sento... sento il tempo che preme contro queste pareti. Centinaia, migliaia di anni di solitudine. (I feel... I feel time pressing against these walls. Hundreds, thousands of years of solitude.) MARKARY (Pointing his light into the dark entrance) Dobbiamo entrare. Se vogliamo capire cosa è successo alla Galliott, dobbiamo capire chi è atterrato qui prima di noi.

(We must enter. If we want to understand what happened to the Galliott, we must understand who landed here before us.) WES E se sono ancora dentro? Se ci stanno aspettando? (And if they are still inside? If they are waiting for us?) MARKARY Se fossero vivi, ci avrebbero già ucciso. Su Aura, il silenzio è il segno del vincitore. (If they were alive, they would have killed us already. On Aura, silence is the sign of the victor.) STAGE DIRECTION: They step through the jagged entrance. The interior is vast and vaulted. The lighting shifts to deep, bruised blues. In the center of the chamber, two massive, calcified skeletons—three times the size of a man—are slumped in what look like pilot chairs. SANYA I giganti... on sembrano morte per un incidente. Guardate la posizione dei corpi. (The giants... they don't seem to have died by accident. Look at the position of the bodies.) MARKARY (Approaching the skeletons, his light scanning their remains) Guardate i crani. Non ci sono fori di proiettili, né segni di lame. Ma le loro ossa... sono state spezzate dall'interno. (Look at the skulls. No bullet holes, no blade marks. But their bones... they were broken from the inside.)

WES

(Gasps, falling to her knees)

Forse sono rimasti intrappolati, come noi. Hanno lottato contro la stessa forza.

(Perhaps they remained trapped, like us. They fought against the same force.)

MARKARY

No. Guardate il metallo. È corroso dall'interno, non dall'atmosfera. È come se la nave stessa fosse stata... digerita.

(No. Look at the metal. It is corroded from the inside, not by the atmosphere. It's as if the ship itself had been... digested.) SANYA

Comandante, sento una proiezione... un'eco mentale. È una registrazione del loro passato.

(Commander, I feel a projection... a mental echo. It is a recording of their past.)

MARKARY

Cosa dicono? Riesci a decifrare il senso?

(What are they saying? Can you decipher the meaning?)

SANYA

Dicono... 'Non fuggite. Non c'è spazio dove fuggire. Il vuoto è dentro di noi'.

(They say... 'Do not flee. There is no space where to flee. The void is within us'.) MARKARY È una sostituzione. Noi siamo solo gli ultimi arrivati a questo banchetto di ombre. (It is a substitution. We are only the latest arrivals at this banquet of shadows.)

)(*)(

ACT 2, SCENE 2: THE REAWAKENING OF THE SHELLS

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Holding a flare, his face pale behind his visor. SANYA: Paralyzed with a mix of scientific curiosity and pure dread. WES: Panic-stricken, his hands shaking on his pulse-rifle.

SETTING: The 'Graveyard' outside the GALLIOTT. The crew of the Argos has buried their comrades in shallow graves, covered in transparent plastic sheeting. The fog is thick, pulsing with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like thrumming.

MARKARY

Sanya, registra l'ora. Iniziamo l'inumazione dei resti dell'equipaggio della Galliott.

(Sanya, record the time. We are beginning the burial of the remains of the Galliott's crew.)

SANYA

Comandante... sento di nuovo quella vibrazione. Come un battito... sotto i piedi.

(Commander... I feel that vibration again. Like a heartbeat... beneath our feet.)

WES

Guardate le tombe! La terra... si muove!

(Look at the graves! The earth... it's moving!)

STAGE DIRECTION: Slowly, the bodies of the dead crew—Tieri, Kier, and others—rise from the ground. They are still wrapped in their translucent plastic shrouds, which cling to them like second skins.

MARKARY

Perché non parlano? Perché ci fissano così?

(Why don't they speak? Why do they stare at us like that?)

SANYA (A whisper of disbelief) Non è possibile. I parametri vitali erano a zero. Erano freddi... erano cenere. (It’s not possible. The vital parameters were at zero. They were cold... they were ashes.)

MARKARY (Stepping forward, flare held high) Indietro! State lontani dalle lastre! Sanya, guarda... non si muovono come esseri viventi. Come se un unico nervo li stesse tirando su. (Back! Stay away from the slabs! Sanya, look... they don't move like living beings. As if a single nerve were pulling them up.) WES Kier... è Kier! Ma era morto... lo abbiamo visto! (Kier... it's Kier! But he was dead... we saw him!)

IL RISORTO (THE RISEN KIER) (A voice that sounds like grinding stone, echoing in their headsets) Noi... siamo... voi. Abbiamo bisogno... di voi. (We... are... you. We need... you.) SANYA Markary, il pianeta sta indossando i loro cadaveri come se fossero dei guanti! (Markary, the planet is wearing their corpses as if they were gloves!)

WES Vogliono la nave! Vogliono la Argos per andarsene da qui! (They want the ship! They want the Argos to get out of here!) MARKARY Non avrete nulla! Fuoco! Distruggete i simulacri! (You shall have nothing! Fire! Destroy the simulacra!) STAGE DIRECTION: Bright bursts of red laser fire illuminate the fog. The Risen do not flinch or fall; they simply absorb the light, their plastic shrouds shimmering. They begin to walk toward the living with a slow, rhythmic gait.

SANYA

I colpi... non li hanno fermati. Li hanno solo... illuminati.

(The shots... they didn't stop them. They only… illuminated them.)

MARKARY

Dobbiamo decollare. Subito. Se restiamo qui, diventeremo come loro.

(We must take off. Now. If we stay here, we will become like them.)

)(*)(

ACT 2, SCENE 3: THE DISSOLUTION OF WES

CHARACTERS

WES: Isolated, spiraling into total sensory overload. SANYA: (Via Radio / Offstage) The voice of cold, terrifying data. MARKARY: (Via Radio / then Onstage) The commander trying to hold onto a dying reality. SETTING: A ‘liminal’ space on the surface of Aura. The fog here is thick and yellowish, smelling of sulfur. The lighting is low and monochromatic. The sound of the wind has been replaced by a low, dissonant hum that seems to vibrate Wes's very bones.

WES (Stumbling through the mist, his breathing heavy and ragged in his helmet) Markary? Sanya? La nebbia... è diventata solida. Non sento più i miei passi. Rispondete! (Markary? Sanya? The fog... it has become solid. I can no longer hear my own footsteps. Answer me!) STAGE DIRECTION: Figures begin to emerge from the yellow haze. They are the corpses of the Galliott crew, but they move with a fluid, unnatural grace. They do not walk; they glide. Their eyes glow with a faint, internal light.

WES

C'è qualcuno? Kier? Sei tu? Rispondi... la tua tuta è lacerata, come fai a respirare?

(Is someone there? Kier? Is it you? Answer me... your suit is torn, how are you breathing?)

SANYA

(via Radio): Wes! Torna indietro! I rilevatori segnano un picco di energia biologica vicino a te!

(Wes! Come back! The detectors are showing a peak of biological energy near you!)

WES

Mi stanno fissando... non hanno occhi, hanno solo... ombra.

(They are staring at me... they have no eyes, they only have... shadow.)

STAGE DIRECTION: The figures of the dead touch him gently, almost lovingly, then melt back into the fog.

WES

Ah! Mi toccano... brucia! Brucia come ghiaccio!

(Ah! They are touching me... it burns! It burns like ice!)

MARKARY

(via Radio): Wes, resisti! Stiamo arrivando! Usa il laser!

(Wes, hold on! We are coming! Use the laser!)

WES

(Urlando): Non è la carne... stanno entrando nei miei pensieri! Mi stanno cancellando!

(It's not the flesh... they are entering my thoughts! They are erasing me!)

STAGE DIRECTION: Wes collapses as Markary and Sanya burst onto the stage. Wes is lying face down, his suit strangely collapsed, as if there is no longer a body inside it.

SANYA

(Kneeling beside him, then recoiling in horror)

È... è completamente svuotato. Guardate la pelle.

(He is... he is completely emptied. Look at the skin.)

MARKARY

(Stopping her from touching the body)

Non toccatelo. Il processo è ancora in corso. La sua struttura molecolare sta cambiando. Aura lo sta riassemblando.

(Don't touch him. The process is still ongoing. His molecular structure is changing. Aura is reassembling him.)

)(*)(

ACT 3, SCENE 1: THE PARANOIA OF THE CARRIERS

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Armed, pacing like a caged animal. SANYA: Working feverishly at a computer terminal, her face pale.

SETTING: The interior of the ARGOS. The ship is under 'Blackout' conditions—dim, blue auxiliary lights cast long, nervous shadows. The sound of welding and sparks comes from the lower decks. The air is thick with the smell of scorched metal and ozone. SANYA (Whispering, her voice cracking) L'hanno portata dentro. La sento. È nelle pareti... è nel sistema di ricircolo dell'aria. Il pianeta sta respirando insieme a noi. (They brought it inside. I feel it. It’s in the walls... it’s in the air circulation system. The planet is breathing along with us.) MARKARY Basta, Sanya! Abbiamo sigillato i portelli. La nave è a tenuta stagna. Siamo ancora noi. (Enough, Sanya! We’ve sealed the hatches. The ship is airtight. We are still ourselves.) SANYA Siamo sicuri, Markary? Kier ha detto che siamo 'continuità'. Cosa succede se il contagio non ha bisogno di un morso? Cosa succede se basta la... vicinanza? (Are we sure, Markary? Kier said we are 'continuity.' What happens if the contagion doesn't need a bite? What happens if... proximity is enough?) MARKARY State suggerendo che uno di noi è già cambiato? Che siamo dei traditori del nostro stesso sangue?Perché non hai risposto quando ti ho chiamata, Sanya? Cosa stavi facendo nel buio? (Are you suggesting that one of us has already changed? That we are traitors to our own blood? Why didn't you answer when I called you, Sanya? What were you doing in the dark?) SANYA (Turning slowly, her expression eerily calm) Cercavo di sentire il silenzio, Markary. È l'unica cosa vera su questo mondo. Tutto il resto… è solo rumore. (I was trying to hear the silence, Markary. It is the only true thing on this world. Everything else… is just noise.) MARKARY (Drawing his weapon, but looking conflicted) Sanya... Dimmi qualcosa che solo Sanya saprebbe. (Sanya... Tell me something that only Sanya would know.) SANYA (A cold smile) Il dolore è umano, Markary. E io non sento più dolore. Sento solo... una grande espansione. Come se la mia mente stesse finalmente uscendo da questa piccola scatola di osso. (Pain is human, Markary. And I no longer feel pain. I feel only... a great expansion. As if my mind were finally stepping out of this little box of bone.) MARKARY (Stepping back, aiming at the ship’s reactor core) Se non possiamo fidarci della nostra carne, allora non possiamo lasciare questo pianeta. Se Aura vuole la nostra nave, avrà solo un sole di fuoco. (If we cannot trust our own flesh, then we cannot leave this planet. If Aura wants our ship, it will have only a sun of fire.)

)(*)(

ACT 3, SCENE 2: THE ARRIVAL AT THE THIRD PLANET

CHARACTERS: MARKARY: Sitting in the command chair, his posture rigid, his eyes unnervingly still. SANYA: Standing beside him, looking out at the stars with a faint, distant smile.

SETTING: The bridge of the ARGOS. The ship is silent now, moving through the deep velvet of space. The violent reds and greens of Aura have been replaced by a soft, ethereal blue light emanating from a planet on the viewscreen. The 'stage' feels peaceful, but it is the peace of a tomb. SANYA (Her voice melodic and hollow) Guarda... la nebbia è sparita. Il cielo è così limpido. È quasi... irreale. (Look... the fog is gone. The sky is so clear. It is almost... unreal.)

MARKARY In fondo… (Ultimately…)

SANYA

… abbiamo solo bisogno di un po' di spazio per vivere.

(… we only need a little space to live.)

MARKARY (Touching the viewport glass) Credi che ci accetteranno? (Do you believe they will accept us?)

SANYA

(Without turning her head)

Abbiamo un aspetto così... diverso da loro.

(We look so... different from them.)

MARKARY Sì. È il mondo che cercavamo. Il terzo pianeta di questo sistema. (Yes. It is the world we were looking for. The third planet of this system.

SANYA È piccolo, ma basterà per tutti noi. (It is small, but it will be enough for all of us.)

MARKARY Non ci vedranno nemmeno. Abiteremo i loro sogni finché non diventeranno i nostri. (They won't even see us. We will inhabit their dreams until they become ours.) SANYA

(Leaning forward as the planet grows larger on the screen) Miliardi di menti che gridano nel buio. (Billions of minds screaming in the dark.)

STAGE DIRECTION: The blue light of the planet (Earth) floods the stage, washing out the faces of Markary and Sanya until they are nothing but silhouettes. The sound of a heartbeat—the same rhythmic thrumming from Aura—begins to play, growing louder and louder until it fills the theater. The screen fades to black.

)(*)(

Note:

This is actually the stage directions for a libretto I wrote. Since it is impossible to duplicate the formatting that I used, at least here on Tumblr, you can read entire project on Internet Archive for free. Cheers!

[babylon-crashing]

THE AUTUMN WIND (based on the life and poetry of Qiu Jin) ~ ACT I

A Play in Three Acts.

By ZJC (2026)

Characters:

QIU JIN (30s) — Revolutionary, poet, swordswoman. She leaves her husband and children to change China. She will not succeed. She will be remembered.

WU ZHIYING (late 40s) — Poet, calligrapher, wife of a Qing official. She helps Qiu Jin escape to Japan. She loves her across distance and death.

XU ZIHUA (40s) — Widowed principal of Xunxi Girls' School. She hires Qiu Jin. She becomes Qiu Jin's partner, her sister, her gravedigger.

XU XILIN (30s) — Qiu Jin's cousin. Revolutionary. He recruits her into the Restoration Society. His failure causes her death.

THE STATE (Actor 5) — Messenger, Official, Executioner, Gulin. The face of the government that wants to erase her.

Setting: Beijing, Tokyo, Zhejiang, Shaoxing. 1903-1908. A single room that transforms — a writing desk, a tea table, a scroll on the wall, a willow branch when needed, a sword that appears and disappears.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes.

)(*)(

ACT ONE: THE OATH

SCENE 1: THE CAPITAL

Beijing, 1903. Wu Zhiying's house.

A room. Elegant but restrained. A writing desk. A scroll on the wall: four characters: 宁静致远 ("Tranquility leads to distance"). A tea table. A window.

WU ZHIYING sits at the tea table. She pours tea with precise, careful movements.

QIU JIN stands by the window, looking out.

WU ZHIYING: You have been standing there for ten minutes.

QIU JIN: I like the light.

WU ZHIYING: The light is the same as it was ten minutes ago.

QIU JIN: No. It has moved.

(Wu Zhiying sets the teapot down. She looks at Qiu Jin's back.)

WU ZHIYING: You are not what I expected.

(Qiu Jin turns.)

QIU JIN: What did you expect?

WU ZHIYING: Someone quieter.

(Qiu Jin almost smiles.)

QIU JIN: My husband says the same thing.

WU ZHIYING: Your husband is here? In Beijing?

QIU JIN: He is here. He is always here. That is the problem.

(She crosses to the tea table. She sits across from Wu Zhiying. She does not drink.)

QIU JIN: You wrote to me. After you read my poems.

WU ZHIYING: I did.

QIU JIN: Why?

(Wu Zhiying considers the question.)

WU ZHIYING: Because I have never read anything like them. A woman writing about the Manchus. About revolution. About the lives women are forced to live.

(Pause.)

I did not know women could write like that.

QIU JIN: Neither did I. Until I did.

(Wu Zhiying looks at her.)

WU ZHIYING: You are very strange.

QIU JIN: I know.

WU ZHIYING: I like it.

(Qiu Jin finally picks up the teacup. She drinks.)

QIU JIN: This is good tea.

WU ZHIYING: It is the only good thing in this house.

(Qiu Jin sets the cup down.)

QIU JIN: You are unhappy.

(Wu Zhiying does not answer.)

QIU JIN: I can see it. In the way you pour tea. In the way you sit. You are very still. Too still. Like you are too large and are afraid someone will notice you.

WU ZHIYING: Someone might.

QIU JIN: Your husband?

WU ZHIYING: My husband does not notice anything... except for his work, his colleagues, his position. I am furniture.

(She says this flatly. Not with self-pity, simply a fact.)

QIU JIN: Then why do you stay?

WU ZHIYING: Where would I go?

(Qiu Jin leans forward.)

QIU JIN: Japan. There are women there — Chinese women — studying, writing, organizing. They are not furniture.

WU ZHIYING: I cannot go to Japan.

QIU JIN: Why not?

WU ZHIYING: Because I am a woman.

QIU JIN: That is not a reason.

WU ZHIYING: It is the only reason that matters.

(They look at each other.)

QIU JIN: I am going. As soon as I can arrange it. My husband does not know yet. He will not approve.

WU ZHIYING: Then how will you go?

QIU JIN: I will find a way.

(Wu Zhiying is silent for a long moment.)

WU ZHIYING: I have money. Not much. But some. My mother left it to me. My husband does not know.

QIU JIN: I cannot take your money.

WU ZHIYING: You are not taking it. I am giving it.

(Pause.)

Consider it payment for the poems.

(Qiu Jin stares at her.)

QIU JIN: You do not know me. We met an hour ago.

WU ZHIYING: I know your poems. That is enough.

(Qiu Jin looks down at her hands.)

QIU JIN: I will pay you back.

WU ZHIYING: No. You will not.

(She pours more tea.)

You will go to Japan. You will study. You will write more poems. You will become the woman you are meant to be. And I will stay here. In this house. Pouring tea.

QIU JIN: That is not fair.

WU ZHIYING: No. It is not.

(She hands Qiu Jin the cup.)

But it is the only way.

(Qiu Jin takes the cup. She does not drink. She holds it in both hands.)

QIU JIN: I will write to you. From Japan.

WU ZHIYING: I would like that.

QIU JIN: I will tell you everything. The women I meet. The things I learn. The revolution.

WU ZHIYING: Be careful.

QIU JIN: I am always careful.

(Wu Zhiying looks at her — at her restless hands, her bright eyes, her refusal to sit still.)

WU ZHIYING: No. You are not.

(Qiu Jin almost smiles again.)

QIU JIN: No. I am not.

(She sets the cup down. She stands.)

I should go. My husband will be wondering where I am.

WU ZHIYING: Let him wonder.

(Qiu Jin looks at her.)

WU ZHIYING: Stay a little longer.

(Qiu Jin sits down again.)

(They sit in silence. The tea grows cold.)

(Wu Zhiying reaches across the table. She takes Qiu Jin's hand.)

(Qiu Jin does not pull away.)

WU ZHIYING (quietly): I have never done that before.

QIU JIN: Done what?

WU ZHIYING: Reached for someone.

(Qiu Jin looks at their joined hands.)

QIU JIN: Neither have I.

(They sit in silence. The light changes — the sun moving across the room.)

(Wu Zhiying speaks without looking up.)

WU ZHIYING: When you go to Japan — when you become what you are meant to be — will you remember me?

QIU JIN: I will remember this room. This tea. This light.

(She squeezes Wu Zhiying's hand.)

I will remember your hand in mine.

(Wu Zhiying closes her eyes.)

(Lights fade.)

)(*)(

SCENE 2: THE ESCAPE

Beijing, 1904. The same room.

The tea table is bare. A small bag sits on the floor — Qiu Jin's luggage. A cloak hangs over the back of a chair.

WU ZHIYING stands by the window, looking out. QIU JIN paces.

WU ZHIYING: You should sit.

QIU JIN: I cannot sit.

WU ZHIYING: You are making me nervous.

QIU JIN: You should be nervous.

(Wu Zhiying turns from the window.)

WU ZHIYING: I have done everything you asked. The money is in the bag. The tickets are in your coat. The ship leaves at dawn.

QIU JIN: I know.

WU ZHIYING: Then why are you still here?

(Qiu Jin stops pacing. She looks at Wu Zhiying.)

QIU JIN: Because I am afraid.

(Wu Zhiying crosses to her.)

WU ZHIYING: You? Afraid?

QIU JIN: I have never been outside Beijing. I have never been on a ship. I have never been alone.

WU ZHIYING: You will not be alone. There will be other women on the ship. Students. Revolutionaries.

QIU JIN: I do not know them.

WU ZHIYING: You did not know me. Six months ago.

(Qiu Jin looks at her.)

QIU JIN: That was different.

WU ZHIYING: How?

QIU JIN: Because I knew you before I met you. In your poems.

(Wu Zhiying is silent.)

QIU JIN: I read everything you ever wrote. Before I ever wrote to you. Before I ever asked to meet you. I knew your voice before I heard it.

(Pause.)

I do not know anyone in Japan.

(Wu Zhiying takes Qiu Jin's hands.)

WU ZHIYING: Then write to me. Tell me their voices. I will learn them with you.

(Qiu Jin grips her hands.)

QIU JIN: What if I fail?

WU ZHIYING: Fail at what?

QIU JIN: At becoming what I am meant to be.

(Wu Zhiying looks at her — at her dark clothes, her pinned-up hair, her trembling hands.)

WU ZHIYING: Then why go? Why do... any of this?

(She releases Qiu Jin's hands. She moves to the table. She picks up a small package — wrapped in silk, tied with a red cord.)

I have something for you.

QIU JIN: You have already given me too much.

WU ZHIYING: This is not money. This is not tickets.

(She holds it out.)

This is for when you are afraid.

(Qiu Jin takes the package. She unties the cord. She unwraps the silk.)

(Inside: a small jade pendant. A lotus flower. Worn smooth — old, loved.)

QIU JIN: What is this?

WU ZHIYING: My mother's. She gave it to me when I married. She said it would protect me.

(Pause.)

It did not. Nothing could have protected me from that life.

(Qiu Jin looks at the pendant.)

WU ZHIYING: But it protected me from forgetting who I was. Before I became furniture.

(Qiu Jin holds the pendant against her chest.)

QIU JIN: I cannot take this.

WU ZHIYING: But you will.

(She steps back.)

When you are in Japan. When you are alone. When you are afraid. Hold this. Remember that someone in Beijing is thinking of you. Someone in Beijing is waiting for your letters. Someone in Beijing loves you.

(Qiu Jin's eyes fill with tears.)

QIU JIN: You have never said that before.

WU ZHIYING: I have never had the courage.

(They stand in silence.)

(Outside, a bell rings — distant, insistent.)

WU ZHIYING: That is the curfew. You need to go.

QIU JIN: I know.

(Neither of them moves.)

WU ZHIYING: Qiu Jin.

QIU JIN: Yes?

WU ZHIYING: Do not look back.

(Qiu Jin puts the pendant around her neck. She picks up her bag and pulls her cloak over her shoulders.)

(She moves to the door. She stops.)

QIU JIN: I will write to you. From the ship. From Japan. From everywhere I go.

WU ZHIYING: I will be here.

QIU JIN: Promise me.

WU ZHIYING: I promise.

(Qiu Jin opens the door.)

(She looks back — one last time.)

QIU JIN: I love you, too.

(She leaves.)

(Wu Zhiying stands alone.)

(She crosses to the window. She watches Qiu Jin go.)

(The light changes. Dawn approaching.)

(Wu Zhiying speaks — to herself, to the empty room.)

WU ZHIYING: "Now that things have gotten so dangerous —"

(She stops.)

You wrote that. To me. In your last letter. Before you decided to leave.

(She touches the window frame.)

"Now that things have gotten so dangerous — Please change your girl's garments for a Wu sword."

(Pause.)

I have not changed my garments... but I have changed my heart.

(She turns from the window.)

(She looks at the tea table — bare now, empty.)

WU ZHIYING: I will wait for your letters. I will read them a hundred times. I will write back. I will tell you everything. And I will pretend — every day — that you are coming back.

(She sits down at the table.)

(She picks up a brush. She begins to write — not a poem, not a letter. Just a single character, over and over.)

(The character for "wait.")

(守.)

(She writes it again. And again. And again.)

(Lights fade.)

)(*)(

SCENE 3: THE DISTANCE

Two spaces on stage simultaneously.

Stage left: A small room in Tokyo, Japan. 1904-1905. A writing desk. A window.

Stage right: Wu Zhiying's house in Beijing. The same room.

Both poets sit at their respective desks. They write. They speak their letters aloud. The audience hears both sides of the conversation, but the women cannot hear each other.

The lights come up on both sides of the stage simultaneously.

QIU JIN writes. She speaks as she writes.

QIU JIN: I have been in Japan for three months. The city is loud. The language is strange. I do not understand half of what people say to me.

(She writes.)

But there are other Chinese women here. Students. Revolutionaries. They talk about the future as if it is something we can build with our own hands.

(She looks up.)

I have never met anyone like them.

(On the other side of the stage, WU ZHIYING reads Qiu Jin's letter. She writes back.)

WU ZHIYING: You write about the future as if it is already here. I read your letters three, four, five times a day. I memorize them.

(She writes.)

I showed one to my husband. He asked who had written it. I told him a friend. He said, "Your friend writes like a man."

(She sets the brush down.)

I did not tell him that was a compliment.

(QIU JIN writes again.)

QIU JIN: I have started wearing men's clothing. It is easier to move. Easier to be seen. Easier to be taken seriously.

(She writes.)

The women here call me "Brother Qiu." I like it.

(She pauses.)

I cut my hair. It is short now. When I look in the mirror, I do not recognize myself. But I recognize who I want to become.

(WU ZHIYING reads. She touches the page — as if she could touch Qiu Jin through the paper.)

WU ZHIYING: I dream about you. In the dreams, you are always leaving. Walking away from me. I call your name, but you do not turn around.

(She writes.)

Last night, the dream was different. You turned around. You smiled. You said, "I am not leaving. I am going ahead."

(She sets the brush down.)

I woke up crying.

(QIU JIN writes again. Faster now.)

QIU JIN: I have joined a revolutionary society. The Restoration Society. My cousin Xu Xilin introduced them to me. They talk about assassinations. About uprisings. About blood.

(She writes.)

I thought I would be afraid. I am not.

(She pauses.)

I thought of you. When they asked me to take the oath. I thought of your hand in mine. In your house. That first day.

(She writes.)

I thought: if I die, she will remember me.

(WU ZHIYING reads. Her hand trembles.)

WU ZHIYING: Do not die.

(She writes.)

I am not asking. I am telling you. Do not die.

(She sets the brush down.)

I cannot write the poem I want to write. The words will not come. They are stuck in my chest. Behind my ribs. Where I keep your letters.

(QIU JIN writes one final time.)

QIU JIN: I am coming back to China. Soon. Not to Beijing — to Zhejiang. To start a school. To train women to fight.

(She writes.)

I do not know when I will see you again. I do not know if I will see you again.

(She pauses. She touches the jade pendant at her neck — the one Wu Zhiying gave her.)

But I carry you with me. Everywhere.

(She sets the brush down.)

(On the other side of the stage, WU ZHIYING reads the letter. She holds it against her chest.)

(Both women sit in silence.)

(The lights fade on both sides simultaneously.)

SCENE 4: THE REVOLUTIONARY

Tokyo, Japan. 1905. A small room. A table. A few chairs. On the wall, a map of China. A single sword.

QIU JIN sits at the table. Before her: a letter from Wu Zhiying. She has read it many times. She touches the characters.

XU XILIN enters. He is agitated.

XU XILIN: Are you still reading that, cousin?

(Qiu Jin looks up.)

QIU JIN: Are you still interrupting?

(He sits across from her.)

XU XILIN: I have news. The Restoration Society is meeting tonight. Cai Yuanpei will be there. Tao Chengzhang will be there.

QIU JIN: I know who they are.

XU XILIN: Then you know they are the ones who will overthrow the Manchus. Not the poets. Not the letter-writers.

(He glances at the letter.)

The ones with swords.

(Qiu Jin folds the letter. She sets it aside.)

QIU JIN: You think poetry cannot be a weapon?

XU XILIN: I think poetry has never stopped a bullet.

(She looks at him.)

QIU JIN: What are you asking me to do?

XU XILIN: Join us. Tonight. Take the oath. Become a revolutionary.

QIU JIN: I am already a revolutionary.

XU XILIN: You are a woman who wears men's clothes and writes angry poems. That is not the same.

(She stands. He does not flinch.)

QIU JIN: You came to me in Beijing. Before I left. You told me the Manchus had to go. You told me women deserved better. You told me I could be part of something larger than myself.

XU XILIN: I meant it.

QIU JIN: Then why are you treating me like a child?

(He is silent.)

QIU JIN: I know what the Restoration Society does. Assassination. Armed uprising. Blood.

XU XILIN: Yes.

QIU JIN: You think I am not capable of that?

XU XILIN: I think you are capable of more.

(She stares at him.)

XU XILIN: You are a woman. That is a weapon. No one expects a woman to carry a bomb. No one searches a woman for a dagger. You can go where I cannot.

(Pause.)

You can kill where I cannot.

(Qiu Jin sits down slowly.)

QIU JIN: You want me to be an assassin?

XU XILIN: I want you to be a revolutionary. Assassination is just one tool.

(She looks at the letter from Wu Zhiying.)

XU XILIN: Who is that from?

QIU JIN: A friend.

XU XILIN: A friend, or a lover?

(She does not answer.)

XU XILIN: I do not care what she is to you. But do not let her make you soft.

QIU JIN: She does not make me soft. She makes me brave.

(Xu Xilin stands.)

XU XILIN: Then be brave tonight. Come to the meeting. Take the oath. Stop writing letters and start planning.

(He moves to the door. He stops.)

The meeting is at eight. I will wait for you until eight-fifteen.

(He leaves.)

(Qiu Jin sits alone. She picks up the letter. She reads it again — silently, her lips moving.)

(She sets it down. She picks up a brush. She writes back to Wu Zhiying. She speaks as she writes.)

QIU JIN (writing): My cousin has asked me to join the Restoration Society. He wants me to carry a dagger. He wants me to learn to kill.

(She writes.)

I do not know if I can. I do not know if I should. But I know I cannot stay here forever, writing poems, waiting for the world to change.

(She writes.)

I asked you once to change your girl's garments for a Wu sword. I have changed my garments. Now I must decide what to do with my hands.

(She sets the brush down.)

(She stands. She looks at the map on the wall — China, divided, occupied.)

(She speaks to the map — to China, to the revolution, to herself.)

QIU JIN: I will go to the meeting.

(Pause.)

I will take the oath.

(Pause.)

I will become what they need me to become.

(She finishes the letter to Wu Zhiying with the following words.)

"When the saber is drawn from its scabbard, the heavens shake.

The sun, moon, and stars hide their radiance.

With one chop to the ground, the sea water stands upright.

With three inches of blade, a sinister wind howls."

(Pause. She finishes the letter with.)

And I will not stop writing.

(She leaves.)

(Blackout.)

)(*)(

SCENE 5: THE ORCHID VERSE

Tokyo, Japan. 1905.

A small room. A table. A candle. On the table: a sheet of white paper, a brush, ink.

The room is bare — no map, no sword, no scrolls. Just the table and the candle and the two women who have come here to change their lives.

WU ZHIYING stands at the table. She has not yet sat down. She is looking at the blank paper.

QIU JIN watches her from the doorway.

QIU JIN: You came.

(Wu Zhiying turns.)

WU ZHIYING: You asked me to.

QIU JIN: I have asked you many times. You have not come before.

(Wu Zhiying looks around the room.)

WU ZHIYING: This is not what I expected.

QIU JIN: What did you expect?

WU ZHIYING: Something grander. An altar. Flowers. Incense.

QIU JIN (almost smiling): We are not swearing to the gods. We are swearing to each other.

(Wu Zhiying looks at her. Really looks.)

WU ZHIYING: You have changed.

QIU JIN: Yes.

WU ZHIYING: Your hair. Your clothes. Your face.

QIU JIN: My face is the same.

WU ZHIYING: No. Your face is harder.

(Qiu Jin crosses to the table. She stands opposite Wu Zhiying.)

QIU JIN: I have been learning to kill.

(Wu Zhiying does not flinch.)

WU ZHIYING: I know.

QIU JIN: My cousin — Xu Xilin — he wants me to carry a dagger. I’ve joined the Restoration Society but he wants me to be ready to die.

WU ZHIYING: And what do you want?

(Qiu Jin is silent for a moment.)

QIU JIN: I want to stop being afraid.

(Wu Zhiying nods slowly.)

WU ZHIYING: That is why I came.

(She sits down at the table. Qiu Jin sits across from her.)

WU ZHIYING: I have been thinking about what you wrote. In your letters.

(She pauses. Then she recites — from memory — Qiu Jin's own words.)

"The scent of orchids — heart to heart,/ Like metal and stone — silently in harmony."

(Pause.)

I have been thinking about my own life. My husband. My house. My poems. No one reads them. No one cares. I am a wife who writes. That is all.

QIU JIN: That is not all.

WU ZHIYING: It is all they see.

(She touches the blank paper.)

You wrote to me once: "My soulmate is separated by mountains and rivers."

QIU JIN (quietly): I remember.

WU ZHIYING: I wrote a poem. For you. For today.

QIU JIN: Let me hear it.

Wu Zhiying takes a breath. She recites.

WU ZHIYING: 

“We met in the capital, strangers.

We meet again in Japan, sisters.

The ink on this paper will fade.

The seals will crack. But the vow —

The vow will outlast us both.”

(She looks up.)

That is why I came.

(Silence.)

(Qiu Jin reaches across the table. She takes Wu Zhiying's hand.)

QIU JIN: Then let us swear it. Here. Now. No altar. No incense. Just us.

WU ZHIYING: What do we swear?

QIU JIN: That we are sisters. Beyond blood. Beyond marriage. Beyond death.

(Wu Zhiying looks at their joined hands.)

WU ZHIYING: And if one of us dies?

QIU JIN: Then the other carries her name.

(Wu Zhiying nods.)

WU ZHIYING: Then write it.

(Wu Zhiying reaches into her sleeve. She pulls out a small silk pouch. She unties it. Inside: a brush — not an ordinary one. The handle is carved with orchids. It is beautiful, personal, clearly special.)

(She holds it out to Qiu Jin.)

WU ZHIYING: My brush. The one I use for my best poems. I have never let anyone else hold it.

(Qiu Jin takes it. She looks at it. She looks at Wu Zhiying.)

QIU JIN: This is more than a vow.

WU ZHIYING: Yes.

(Qiu Jin picks up the brush. She dips it in ink. She begins to write on the white paper. She speaks as she writes.)

QIU JIN (writing): We, Qiu Jin and Wu Zhiying, swear before heaven and earth —

(She writes.)

To be sisters. To share each other's joys and sorrows. To protect each other's names.

(She writes.)

If one of us dies, the other will live as if she were still here.

(She sets the brush down. She reads what she has written.)

(Then she hands the brush to Wu Zhiying.)

(Pause.)

(Wu Zhiying takes the brush. She reads the contract. She adds her own lines. She speaks as she writes.)

WU ZHIYING (writing): I, Wu Zhiying, swear to keep Qiu Jin alive.

(She writes.)

I will not let her disappear.

(She sets the brush down.)

(They look at each other across the table.)

(Wu Zhiying folds the contract carefully. She tucks it into her sleeve.)

(They sit in silence.)

(Wu Zhiying stands.)

WU ZHIYING: I should go. The ship leaves at dawn.

QIU JIN: I know.

WU ZHIYING: Will you write to me?

QIU JIN: Every day.

WU ZHIYING: And when you return to China?

QIU JIN: I will find you.

(Wu Zhiying moves to the door. She stops.)

WU ZHIYING: Qiu Jin.

QIU JIN: Yes?

WU ZHIYING: Do not die.

(Qiu Jin does not answer.)

(Wu Zhiying leaves.)

(Qiu Jin stands alone. She holds the carved brush against her chest. She looks at the empty doorway.)

(She speaks — to Wu Zhiying, who cannot hear her, and to herself.)

QIU JIN: I will try.

(She bows her head.)

(Lights fade.)

[babylon-crashing]

SUGAR HILL: a swamp opera (act i, scene ix)

A Note on Origins and Responsibility

Sugar Hill (1974) is a product of Blaxploitation cinema—a genre that, for all its flaws, created some of the first opportunities for Black heroines on screen; even as the directors, writers and producers behind those images were predominantly white and their interpretations of Black stories are through a lens of commercial sensationalism.

I, myself, come to this material as a pale male, a composer of Russian, Italian, Jewish and Irish descent, a relative newcomer to the Southern Gothic and Dark Americana traditions that have shaped this Opera. Spanish is not my native language. I do not claim expertise in the Histories, Spiritual practices, or lived experiences that form the foundation of this story. What I can offer, though, is an act of listening—to the Scholars, Musicians and Traditions that have long cultivated the soil from which this work grows. This libretto has been shaped by deep study and love of Black composers (Harry Lawrence Freeman, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds) and contemporary practitioners (Rhiannon Giddens, Nicole Brooks, Jessie Montgomery) whose work demonstrates how to honor these Traditions with rigor and care.

I have tried, always, to write not as one who speaks for, but as one who listens to—and to let the music that emerged be not my voice, but a Chorus of voices far older and wiser than I will ever be. Any failures of imagination or understanding are mine alone. My admiration and the conversations that I hope we shall have belong to the Traditions ---their sins as well as their blessings--- that brought us all here.

Thank you. ZJC.

_________________________________________

EL MASAJE — LA QUINTA MUERTE (THE MASSAGE — THE FIFTH DEATH)

STRUCTURE NOTE: This scene provides the crucial beat: Fabulous, the most loyal of Morgan's men, dies in a setting of corrupted intimacy, at the hands of the Baron's Brides. The scene also introduces the Zombie Brides as active agents, not just decorations.

_________________________________________

BEAT I

THE BROTHEL — THE TRAP IS SET

SETTING: Masajes L'amour — a massage parlor on the edge of the French Quarter. Pink neon, velvet curtains, the smell of cheap perfume and expensive secrets. A reception desk with a crystal ball that doesn't work. Stairs leading to rooms upstairs.

TIME: Evening. The hour when men come to forget.

ATMOSPHERE: The National Resonator is present, but sick—playing the same few notes over and over, like a heartbeat that won't stop. The Vega shimmers beneath it, patient, waiting. The percussion is soft: the rustle of velvet, the click of heels, the distant sound of a door closing.

SUGAR stands at the reception desk. She's dressed for the part—stylish, composed, other. Across from her, MADAM L'AMOUR—a woman in her fifties, sharp eyes, a mouth that has seen everything and forgotten nothing.

L'AMOUR (counting the money Sugar has placed on the desk):

Si me preguntas, es un montón de dinero para hacerle una broma a un amigo.

(If you ask me, that's a lot of money to play a prank on a friend.)

The phone rings. She holds up a finger.

L'AMOUR [cont.]:

Disculpa.

(Sorry.)

She picks up the phone, her voice transforming into something warm, practiced, professional.

L'AMOUR (into the phone):

Buenas tardes, ‘Masajes L'amour’. Habla L'amour. Sí. Sí. A las seis esta noche. Gracias por llamar.

(Good afternoon, ‘Masajes L'amour’. This is L'amour speaking. Yes. Yes. At six o'clock tonight. Thank you for calling.)

She hangs up. Looks at the money. Looks at Sugar.

L'AMOUR [cont.]:

No sé si debería hacerlo.

(I don't know if I should do it.)

Sugar reaches into her bag. Places more money on the desk.

SUGAR:

Cien dólares.

(One hundred dollars.)

L'amour doesn't move. Sugar adds another bill.

SUGAR [cont.]:

¿Ciento veinte?

(One hundred twenty?)

L'amour looks at the money. Looks at Sugar's eyes—and something in those eyes makes her shiver, though she doesn't know why.

L'AMOUR (taking the money):

Estoy convencida.

(I am convinced.)

SUGAR:

¿Seguro que vendrá?

(Are you sure he will come?)

L'AMOUR (counting the bills, not looking up):

No se ha perdido un jueves en seis meses.

(He hasn't missed a Thursday in six months.)

She puts the money in a drawer. Looks up. Sugar is already walking toward the stairs.

L'AMOUR (calling after her):

¿Quieres que suba alguien? ¿Algo de beber?

(Do you want someone to come up? Something to drink?)

Sugar pauses at the bottom of the stairs. Turns. Her face is calm, beautiful, wrong.

SUGAR:

Na'. Solo el cuarto, ¿me captas? Nadie más sube esta noche. Punto.

(Nah. Just the room—you catch my drift? Nobody else is coming up tonight. Period.)

She climbs the stairs. L'amour watches her go, then shakes her head, counts the money again, and returns to her magazine.

The Vega shimmers. The resonator holds a single, decaying note.

Slow fade.

_________________________________________

BEAT II

THE RECEPTION — THE BARON AS HOST

SETTING: The reception desk. The pink neon has dimmed. The velvet curtains seem heavier. L'amour is gone—where, we don't know. Behind the desk stands THE BARON, in his ‘Old Sam’ guise, polishing a glass, utterly at home.

TIME: Later that evening. The hour when men arrive.

ATMOSPHERE: The National Resonator is silent. The Vega holds a low, shimmering drone. The percussion is the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

The door opens. FABULOUS enters. He's dressed sharp, but his face is drawn—the strain of the past weeks showing. He's looking for comfort, for forgetting, for something that isn't death.

He approaches the desk. Sees the Baron. Doesn't recognize him.

BARON (cheerful, harmless):

¿Qué puedo hacer por ti esta noche, amigo?

(What can I do for you tonight, my friend?)

FABULOUS (looking around, impatient):

¿Dónde está Opal?

(Where’s Opal?)

BARON:

Está engripada. Ella me pidió que me encargara de ti.

(She has the flu. She asked me to take care of you.)

Fabulous looks at him—this old man, this nothing. Something flickers in his eyes. Suspicion? Recognition? He pushes it aside.

FABULOUS:

¿Tú?

(You?)

BARON (unbothered, beaming):

La atractiva y sensual Frenchie será tu chica esta noche.

(The attractive and sensual Frenchie will be your girl tonight.)

Fabulous hesitates. He should leave. He knows he should leave. But he's tired. He's so tired.

FABULOUS:

¿Sí? Ya que Opal está enferma...

(Yes? Since Opal is sick...)

BARON (pouring a glass of something dark, sliding it across the desk):

No te arrepentirás.

(You won't regret it.)

Fabulous takes the glass. Drinks. The Baron watches him with eyes that are not old, not young, not human.

Fabulous sets down the glass. Moves toward the stairs.

FABULOUS (without looking back):

¿Arriba?

(Upstairs?)

BARON:

Arriba. La última puerta a la izquierda.

(Upstairs. The last door on the left.)

Fabulous climbs the stairs. The Baron watches him go. When Fabulous disappears into the shadows, the Baron smiles—a small, private, terrible smile.

He polishes the glass. Puts it away. The Vega shimmers.

BARON (to the empty room):

Que disfrutes, amigo.

(Enjoy yourself, my friend.)

He dissolves into shadow. The reception desk stands empty. The pink neon flickers once, twice, then steadies.

Slow fade.

_________________________________________

BEAT III

THE MASSAGE ROOM — THE BRIDES RECEIVE

SETTING: A room at the top of the stairs. Velvet walls, a massage table draped in white, candles flickering. The air is warm, close, smelling of oil and jasmine and something else—something old, something patient.

TIME: The same moment. Time is slowing.

ATMOSPHERE: The Vega is dominant now—shimmering, eternal. The percussion is the sound of breathing, of fabric moving, of something waiting.

FABULOUS enters the room. He's stripped to a towel, his body tense, his eyes scanning the shadows. He's looking for Frenchie, for comfort, for something that isn't there.

He lies on the massage table. Closes his eyes. Tries to relax.

The door opens. SUGAR enters. She's dressed as Frenchie—or something like Frenchie—but her eyes are silver, and her skin is cold, and she is not what he came for.

He doesn't recognize her. He's not looking.

SUGAR (her voice low, intimate):

Bonjour. Ce que vous voyez vous plaît?

(Hello. Do you like what you see?)

Fabulous doesn't open his eyes. He's already sinking into the fantasy.

FABULOUS:

Estoy tenso. Mi espalda está rígida. Hazme un masaje. Aprieta fuerte.

(I'm tense. My back is stiff. Give me a massage. Press hard.)

Sugar doesn't move. She stands beside him, watching him with silver eyes, waiting.

SUGAR:

Pourquoi es-tu si tendue, chérie?

(Why are you so stiff, darling?)

Fabulous shifts on the table. His voice is tight, closed.

FABULOUS:

No quiero hablar de ello. ¿Ok, nena?

(I don't want to talk about it. Okay, baby?)

A pause. Sugar's hand hovers over his back—not touching, not yet.

SUGAR:

J'ai une idée.

(I have an idea.)

Fabulous almost smiles.

FABULOUS:

Apuesto que sí.

(I bet you do.)

SUGAR:

C'est un peu calme ce soir.

(Things are a little quiet tonight.)

FABULOUS:

Sí. Pero yo no.

(Yes. But not me.)

Sugar turns. Gestures. From the shadows, two figures emerge. THE ZOMBIE BRIDES—the Baron's companions, the ones who have been waiting in the wings since Act I. They move toward the table, their silver eyes fixed on Fabulous, their hands outstretched.

SUGAR

Tu aimerais que deux ou trois superbes filles s'occupent de toi? Ce serait comme une fête. Je te ferais un prix de groupe, chéri.

(Would you like two or three gorgeous girls to take care of you? It would be like a party. I’d give you a group rate, darling.)

Fabulous opens his eyes. Sees the Brides. Something flickers in his face—desire, confusion, the first stirring of fear.

He pushes it aside. He's come this far. He's not stopping now.

FABULOUS:

Soy todo tuyo.

(I am all yours.)

Sugar smiles. It is not a kind smile.

SUGAR:

Ooo la la, bébé. Reste ici. Je reviens bientôt.

(Ooo la la, baby. Stay here. I'll be back soon.)

She exits. The Brides move to the table. Their hands—cold, silvered, inhuman—begin to work on Fabulous's back.

He closes his eyes again. The candles flicker. The Vega shimmers.

For a moment, nothing happens. For a moment, it's almost peaceful.

Then—

FABULOUS (stirring, uneasy):

¿Con qué me estás rascando?

(What are you scratching me with?)

The Brides do not answer. Their hands continue their work—slower now, deeper, wrong.

FABULOUS (his voice rising):

¡Tus manos están frías!

(Your hands are cold!)

He tries to sit up. The Brides push him back down. Gently. Firmly. Inescapably.

FABULOUS (struggling):

¡No me gusta! ¡Trátame suavemente!

(I don't like it! Treat me gently!)

The Brides do not stop. Their hands are not massaging now. They are gripping. Their nails—long, silvered, sharp—dig into his skin.

He screams.

The Vega swells. The candles extinguish. The room is dark except for the silver of the Brides' eyes, the silver of their hands, the silver of the blood that is beginning to flow.

Fabulous' screams become gurgles. The gurgles become silence.

The Brides step back. Their hands are red. Their faces are still. They have done what they were made to do.

Sugar re-enters. She looks at the body on the table—the man who beat Langston, who threatened her, who thought he was untouchable.

She looks at the Brides. Nods once.

SUGAR:

Gracias.

(Thank you.)

The Brides dissolve into shadow. Sugar stands alone with the body, with the candles, with the silence.

The Vega holds a single, shimmering note.

SUGAR (to the body, softly):

Bienvenido al infierno, Fabulous.

(Welcome to hell, Fabulous.)

She exits. The room is empty. The candles relight themselves—or perhaps they were never extinguished. The body is gone. The table is clean. There is no evidence that anything happened here.

Except the smell of jasmine, and something else. Something old. Something patient.

Slow fade.

_________________________________________

BEAT IV

THE AFTERMATH — WHAT REMAINS

SETTING: Morgan's lair. The same as before. The urn with the heart is still on his desk. He hasn't moved it. Can't move it.

TIME: The next morning. Grey light through the blinds. Morgan hasn't slept.

ATMOSPHERE: The National Resonator is silent. The Vega is absent. Only the Orchestra remains—low strings, a single mournful woodwind. The sound of a man alone with his fear.

Morgan sits at his desk, staring at the urn. Fabulous didn't come back last night. No one came back. He is alone.

A knock. He doesn't move. Another knock.

MORGAN (hoarse):

¿Quién?

(Who?)

Silence. He rises. Crosses to the door. Opens it.

No one is there. But on the doorstep: Fabulous's shoes. Polished. Empty. Waiting.

Morgan picks them up. Stares at them. He knows what this means. He has known since the first heart, since the first death, since the night Langston fell.

He closes the door. Sits back at his desk. The shoes sit beside the two hearts. He doesn't look at them. He can't look away.

The Vega shimmers—once, softly, from somewhere far away.

MORGAN (to the empty room, to the shoes, to the heart):

¿Quién eres?

(Who are you?)

No answer. Only the sound of his own breathing, too loud in the silent room.

Slow fade.

END OF SCENE NINE

[babylon-crashing]

THE AUTUMN WIND (based on the life and poetry of Qiu Jin) ~ ACT II

A Play in Three Acts.

By ZJC (2026)

Characters:

QIU JIN (30s) — Revolutionary, poet, swordswoman. She leaves her husband and children to change China. She will not succeed. She will be remembered.

WU ZHIYING (late 40s) — Poet, calligrapher, wife of a Qing official. She helps Qiu Jin escape to Japan. She loves her across distance and death.

XU ZIHUA (40s) — Widowed principal of Xunxi Girls' School. She hires Qiu Jin. She becomes Qiu Jin's partner, her sister, her gravedigger.

XU XILIN (30s) — Qiu Jin's cousin. Revolutionary. He recruits her into the Restoration Society. His failure causes her death.

THE STATE (Actor 5) — Messenger, Official, Executioner, Gulin. The face of the government that wants to erase her.

Setting: Beijing, Tokyo, Zhejiang, Shaoxing. 1903-1908. A single room that transforms — a writing desk, a tea table, a scroll on the wall, a willow branch when needed, a sword that appears and disappears.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes.

)(*)(

ACT TWO: THE SCHOOL

SCENE 6: THE HIRE

Xunxi Girls' School, Zhejiang Province. 1906.

A small office. A wooden desk, neat. A stack of student essays. A pot of cold tea. A window looking out onto a courtyard.

On the wall behind the desk: a scroll of calligraphy. Four characters: 宁静致远 — "Tranquility leads to distance."

XU ZIHUA sits behind the desk. She holds a letter — Qiu Jin's application. She has read it three times.

QIU JIN stands. She has not been offered a seat. She does not seem to notice.

XU ZIHUA: Your letter says you studied in Tokyo.

QIU JIN: I did.

XU ZIHUA: And before that?

QIU JIN: I was married.

(Xu Zihua looks up. A pause.)

XU ZIHUA: Many of our teachers are married.

QIU JIN: I left.

(Another pause.)

XU ZIHUA: I see.

(She sets the letter down. She folds her hands.)

You understand what we teach here. Girls. Young women. Most of them will marry. Most of them will raise children. We teach them to read, to write, to calculate. To be useful.

QIU JIN: You teach them to be small.

XU ZIHUA: I teach them to survive.

QIU JIN: Same thing.

(Xu Zihua does not rise to it. She waits.)

XU ZIHUA: Why do you want to teach here?

QIU JIN: Because you are the only school that would read my letter.

XU ZIHUA: That is not an answer.

QIU JIN: But it is the truth.

(Xu Zihua stands. She moves to the window. She looks out at the courtyard.)

XU ZIHUA: I have been principal here for six years. When I started, we had forty students. Now we have sixty. The local gentry want me to stop. They say I am creating women who will not obey their husbands.

(She turns.)

They are right.

QIU JIN: Then why do you keep going?

XU ZIHUA: Because my husband is dead.

(Qiu Jin waits.)

XU ZIHUA: He was a good man. He did not beat me. He did not take concubines. By every measure, I should mourn him still.

(She returns to the desk. She does not sit.)

But when he died, I could breathe.

(Qiu Jin's face changes. Something softens.)

XU ZIHUA: I do not teach these girls to be small. I teach them to wait. There is a difference.

QIU JIN: For how long?

XU ZIHUA: What?

QIU JIN: For how long should they wait?

(Xu Zihua does not answer.)

QIU JIN (quoting from memory):

"I often wondered if you were a goddess beyond the clouds.

How fortunate to meet you, to clasp your hand in joy.

Your ambition surpasses even men's.

Such talent in a woman is rare indeed.

Together we shall save our motherland…

How many women have long been submissive, hidden away?

We rely on you to restore our rights to freedom."

Xu Zihua is startled into silence.

XU ZIHUA: You've read my poetry?

(She laughs, as if this is too absurd to even believe.)

Of course you have. Of course you have.

(She shakes her head.)

Look around you. This is a girl's school, not a den of cut-throats and radicals. I am a school teacher, not a revolutionary.

QIU JIN: I think you already are. You just won't admit it.

(A long silence.)

(Xu Zihua sits down heavily.)

XU ZIHUA: The magistrate came to see me last week. He said he has heard rumors about you. About the women's newspaper you started in Shanghai.

QIU JIN: The newspaper is not a rumor.

XU ZIHUA: He said if I hire you, he will close my school.

QIU JIN: Will he?

XU ZIHUA: I do not know.

QIU JIN: Then we find out together.

(Xu Zihua laughs once more — a short, surprised sound.)

XU ZIHUA: You are not afraid of anything, are you?

QIU JIN: I am afraid of dying old. In a bed. Having done nothing.

(Xu Zihua looks at her. Really looks.)

XU ZIHUA: What would you teach my students?

QIU JIN: The truth.

XU ZIHUA: Which is?

QIU JIN: That the world can be different.

(Xu Zihua nods slowly.)

XU ZIHUA: And if I ask you to leave that part out?

QIU JIN: Then I am not your teacher.

XU ZIHUA: I cannot hire you.

QIU JIN: I know.

XU ZIHUA: You will get us both killed.

QIU JIN: Probably.

(Xu Zihua stands again. She goes to the window. She speaks without turning.)

XU ZIHUA: My daughter is eight years old. She is learning to read. She asked me last week why there are no women in the history books. I told her there are. She asked why no one talks about them. I did not have an answer.

(She turns.)

Be here tomorrow. Seven in the morning. The students arrive at seven.

QIU JIN: You just said—

(This time it is Qiu Jin who falls into silence. A small, brief smile.)

(Xu Zihua returns to the desk. She picks up the application letter. She folds it carefully.)

XU ZIHUA: I will tell the magistrate you are teaching physical education. Sword drills. Traditional forms. Nothing political.

QIU JIN: The sword is political.

XU ZIHUA (without looking up): Then teach them to hold it quietly.

(Qiu Jin watches her for a long moment.)

QIU JIN: What is your daughter's name?

XU ZIHUA: Xiao Hua.

QIU JIN: Little Flower.

(Xu Zihua nods.)

QIU JIN: Then she is about to write history books that do not exist yet.

(Xu Zihua looks up. Her eyes are wet. She does not wipe them.)

XU ZIHUA: Seven o'clock.

(Qiu Jin turns to leave. At the door, she stops.)

QIU JIN: One more thing.

XU ZIHUA: Yes?

QIU JIN: The sword drills. They are not traditional.

(She leaves.)

(Xu Zihua sits alone. She picks up the cold tea. She does not drink it. She holds it.)

(After a long moment, she speaks to the empty room.)

XU ZIHUA (quietly): Little Flower. You asked why no one talks about them.

(She sets the cup down.)

You are about to meet one.

(Blackout.)

)(*)(

SCENE 7: THE MAGAZINE

Setting: Xunxi Girls' School, Zhejiang Province. 1906. Xu Zihua's office.

The same room as Scene 6. The desk. The scroll on the wall: "Tranquility leads to distance."

But now there is something new: a printing press. Small. Portable. Ink-stained. Sheets of paper are scattered everywhere — some printed, some smudged, some discarded. Qiu Jin has been working. It is a messy job. Ink is on her hands, her sleeves, her face.

XU ZIHUA enters. She finds Qiu Jin hunched over the press, pulling a lever, checking a sheet, cursing softly under her breath. Ink is everywhere.

Xu Zihua watches for a moment. Then she approaches. She touches the metal of the press.

XU ZIHUA: This is what you spent your money on?

(Qiu Jin does not look up. She is adjusting the type.)

QIU JIN: This is what will change the world.

(Xu Zihua looks at her.)

XU ZIHUA: It's a printing press.

(Qiu Jin looks up. She holds up a sheet of paper — the first proof of the newspaper.)

QIU JIN: It's a sword.

(Xu Zihua is silent.)

XU ZIHUA: How many copies?

QIU JIN: One thousand.

XU ZIHUA: We have sixty students.

QIU JIN: The students are not the only ones who need to read it.

(She picks up the proof sheet.)

The magistrate has soldiers. He has guns. He has the law on his side.

(She holds up the paper.)

We have this.

XU ZIHUA: A gazette? A tabloid? A periodical?

QIU JIN: A truth that will reach those who have never been told they matter. In villages where no revolutionary has ever gone. It will reach anyone who thinks they are alone.

(She sets the paper down.)

The magistrate can kill me. He cannot kill everyone who reads this.

(Xu Zihua is silent.)

XU ZIHUA: You wrote the first issue already. What does it say?

(Qiu Jin picks up the proof sheet. She reads — not the whole thing, just fragments. The most dangerous lines.)

QIU JIN (reading): "The greatest injustice in this world is the injustice suffered by our two hundred million sisters."

(She turns the page.)

"When heaven created people, it never intended such injustice. If the world is without women, how can men be born?"

(She looks up.)

"If we don't take heart now and shape up, it will be too late when China is destroyed."

(She sets the proof down.)

And I mean every word.

(Xu Zihua picks up the proof. She reads it silently. Her face changes.)

XU ZIHUA: They will burn every copy they find.

QIU JIN: Then we print more.

XU ZIHUA: They will arrest the people who distribute it.

QIU JIN: Then we find new people.

XU ZIHUA: They will kill you.

(Qiu Jin looks at her. Steady.)

QIU JIN: Then you will print it without me.

(Xu Zihua stares at her.)

QIU JIN: That is the test. Not whether you will fight when I am standing beside you—

(She stops. A long silence.)

(Xu Zihua sets the proof down. She touches the printing press again — differently this time. Not curious. Committed.)

XU ZIHUA: Show me how it works.

(Qiu Jin places a sheet of paper on the press. She inks the type. She pulls the lever.)

(The press closes. Opens.)

(A printed page.)

(Xu Zihua picks it up. She holds it in both hands. She reads the title.)

XU ZIHUA: "China Women's News."

(She looks at Qiu Jin.)

With this we will shake the world. With this everyone will hear.

QIU JIN: Yes.

(Xu Zihua looks at the printed page in her hands. Then she crosses to the wall. She pins it there — in huge letters, for everyone to see.)

《中国女报》

(She steps back. She looks at it. Then she looks at Qiu Jin.)

(Qiu Jin looks at the stack of printed pages — the newspaper that they both hope will outlast them all.)

(Xu Zihua picks up the next blank sheet of paper. She moves to the machine. She begins the process.)

XU ZIHUA: One thousand copies.

(She smiles.)

You asked me to help. So, I am helping.

(Xu Zihua touches the paper — not the ink, not the type. The edge. The place where the next issue will begin.)

(They turn back to the press. They work together — placing paper, inking type, pulling the lever.)

(The rhythm of it. The sound of it.)

(Lights fade.)

)(*)(

SCENE 8: THE SWORD

Setting: Xunxi Girls' School. 1907.

The room is now a sparring hall. Mats on the floor. A weapons rack against the wall — wooden swords, staffs, a real blade.

On the wall: a scroll with Qiu Jin's personal motto: "Read Books./ Practice Sword."

Qiu Jin is dressed in protective gear, holding a wooden sword. She is in the middle of training one of her students (Actor 5), who is also dressed for dueling.

Qiu Jin has been training her students for months and months and still the young girls are not ready.

XU XILIN enters. He is agitated — always agitated now.

XU XILIN: I finally found you! What are you doing?

(Humoring him but not stopping what she is doing.)

QIU JIN: Preparing.

(He crosses to her.)

XU XILIN: These girls. The ones you are training. Are they ready?

(As if to illustrate the two women duel. The student isn't very good.)

QIU JIN: They are learning.

XU XILIN: Learning is not the same as ready.

(Lowering her sword. Still not looking at him.)

QIU JIN (almost sarcastic): Must I point out that patience is a virtuous trait?

(He looks at her blankly.)

XU XILIN: The sword. You have been practicing.

(For the first time Qiu Jin turns to look at her cousin. There is something wrong with him, something manic, something unhinged.)

(She has no words for this: of course she has been "practicing.")

XU XILIN: Show me.

(He moves to the weapons rack. He takes a wooden sword. The student moves to one side. He takes her place.)

(They face each other.)

(Xu's rage and impatience bubble right under the surface. When he recites his little speech it is clear that he's been saying the same thing over and over for ages. It could be a slogan from a propaganda poster. It isn't poetry.)

XU XILIN: For two hundred years the Manchus have forgotten that we are Han!

(He raises his blade.)

We will remind them!

(He attacks.)

(They spar. The fight is not long — thirty seconds, forty. But it is real. No music. Just the sound of wood on wood, breath, feet on the mats.)

(Xu Xilin is good. But Qiu Jin is far better. She disarms him. His wooden sword clatters to the floor.)

(He picks up his sword as if that round didn't count.)

XU XILIN: Again.

(They circle each other.)

XU XILIN: You are thinking about her. The woman in Beijing. The one who writes you letters.

(Xu attacks — faster this time, harder.)

(She blocks and counters. She disarms him again.)

(For all his revolutionary zeal he has lost his way, his humanity.)

XU XILIN: You are thinking about *her* when you should be thinking about the *blade!*

QIU JIN (calmly): I am always thinking about her.

(He picks up his sword. He does not wait for her to attack. He moves first.)

(This time, she does not hesitate.)

(She drives him back across the room. He parries, blocks, retreats. She presses forward.)

(She strikes his blade from his hand.)

(His wooden sword falls, for the last time, to the ground.)

(She points her blade at his chest.)

(Silence.)

(The Student stares.)

XU XILIN (breathing hard): Fine. So you've "practiced."

(He still only sees her as a girl.)

I have something for you.

(She lowers her sword.)

(He brings out a dagger — small, sharp, ridiculous against the sword Qiu Jin normally wears.)

(He holds it out.)

XU XILIN: It is meant to be hidden. In your sleeve. In your boot. In your hair.

(Qiu Jin looks at the dagger. Then at him.)

QIU JIN: I already have a sword.

XU XILIN (sneers): Yes, yes, that "sword"... what good are swords for assassinations?

XU XILIN: Take it.

(She does not take it.)

(Instead she walks to where his fallen wooden sword lays, retrieves it and places both hers and his back into the weapon rack. Respect for the weapon. For the ritual. A highly trained realist doing what the chaotic zealot can't.)

XU XILIN (again): Take it.

(She takes it. She holds it in her palm. It is light.)

XU XILIN: You will need it. Soon.

(She looks at him.)

QIU JIN: What do you mean?

XU XILIN: I am going to Anqing. Next week.

QIU JIN: Why?

XU XILIN: To meet with En Ming. The governor.

(For once Qiu Jin looks taken aback. This isn't news, this is just crazy.)

QIU JIN: What? You are going to kill him?

(He does not answer.)

QIU JIN (calmly): Xu Xilin. Cousin. You are going to kill him?

XU XILIN: Yes.

(She stares at him.)

QIU JIN: That is suicide.

XU XILIN: It is revolution.

QIU JIN: It is madness. You will die. Nothing will change.

XU XILIN: You do not know that. The People! The People will rise!

QIU JIN: I know that when you fail — and you *will* fail — they will go after your comrades, your friends... and your family. They will come here. They will arrest every student in this building. They will torture them. They will kill them.

XU XILIN: Then you should have trained them to fight harder.

(This is the one moment in the play when Qiu Jin loses her self-control. She slams the dagger down into the floor between them. The sound rings through the room.)

QIU JIN: You are a fool!

(He does not flinch.)

QIU JIN: You are a blind, arrogant fool. You think one dead governor will bring down the Qing? You think all of China will rise up at your call, like a trained dog?

XU XILIN: Someone has to start.

QIU JIN: Starting is not the same as succeeding! You are starting nothing. They'll cut out your entrails and eat you alive. And you are taking the rest of us with you.

(She turns away from him. She cannot look at him.)

XU XILIN: You did not used to be this way. You used to believe in the revolution.

QIU JIN: "Believe"? No, cousin. Back in Japan I "believed".

(She turns back.)

Now I am beyond belief. This is faith. What you suggest isn't even revolution. It is vanity.

XU XILIN: You are a coward.

(Qiu Jin wrenches the dagger from the floor. She is furious.)

QIU JIN: Once! Once I swore that if I ever returned to the motherland, if I ever surrendered to the Manchu barbarians, if I ever deceived the Han people, then "stab me with this dagger"!

(He is silent.)

(She holds the dagger out in one hand.)

QIU JIN: If I am such a coward! — If all of this (gestures to the student, the school, China, everything) — means nothing to you — then go on, use this! Show me what a real revolutionary would do!

(Silence.)

(She drops the dagger on the floor, forgotten — not shouting now. Quiet. Deadly.)

QIU JIN: But I will not follow you into death for no reason. I will not sacrifice my students for some man's pathetic satisfaction.

(She walks to the door. She stops.)

Even if the soldiers come — even if they ask what I knew — I will *never* tell them the truth: that you are a madman and are willing to throw away everything that we've worked for, everything that we've built, for pride.

(She leaves, her student following quickly behind.)

(Xu Xilin stands alone.)

(He looks at the dagger, laying on the floor.)

(It is impossible to read what he is thinking.)

(He picks it up. He holds it in his hand.)

(He says nothing.)

(Lights fade.)

)(*)(

SCENE 9: THE NEWS

Setting: Xunxi Girls' School. July 1907. Afternoon.

Xu Zihua's office. The same room. The scroll on the wall: "Tranquility leads to distance." The printing press is in the corner. The newspaper is still pinned to the wall — 《中国女报》.

Xu Zihua and Qiu Jin sit at the desk. They are grading papers. A pot of tea sits between them. It is ordinary. It is mundane. It is the last ordinary moment of their lives.

Xu Zihua marks a paper. She sets it aside. She picks up another.

XU ZIHUA: This one is good. She wrote about the Tang dynasty poets.

QIU JIN (without looking up): Which ones?

XU ZIHUA: Li Bai. Du Fu. The usual.

QIU JIN: Did she mention that Li Bai died drunk in a boat, trying to embrace the moon's reflection in the water?

(Xu Zihua looks at her.)

XU ZIHUA: No. She left that part out.

QIU JIN: Pity. That is the best part.

(She sets her paper down. She pours tea.)

QIU JIN: How many more?

XU ZIHUA: A dozen. Maybe more.

QIU JIN: We will be here all night.

XU ZIHUA: Is that a problem?

(Qiu Jin almost smiles.)

QIU JIN: No.

(She hands Xu Zihua a cup of tea.)

QIU JIN: No, it is not.

(They drink their tea. The afternoon light is golden. Peaceful.)

(Then — running footsteps. The door bursts open.)

(THE MESSENGER stands there, gasping for breath. His face is white. His clothes are torn. He has run all the way from Anqing.)

(Xu Zihua stands. The cup falls from her hand. It shatters on the floor.)

XU ZIHUA: What happened?

(The Messenger cannot speak. He is shaking.)

QIU JIN (calmly): Tell me.

MESSENGER: Anqing. The governor. Xu Xilin —

(He stops. He cannot finish.)

QIU JIN: Tell me.

MESSENGER: He killed En Ming. At the police academy. In front of everyone.

(Xu Zihua gasps. Qiu Jin does not move.)

MESSENGER: But the soldiers — they surrounded the building. He fought for hours. They captured him.

QIU JIN: Is he dead?

MESSENGER: Not yet.

(Pause.)

But he will be.

(Silence.)

(Xu Zihua looks at Qiu Jin. Qiu Jin's face is unreadable.)

MESSENGER: Madam, you need to leave. They know about the school. They know about the plan. They will come here next.

QIU JIN: When?

MESSENGER: Hours. Maybe less. I rode ahead. They — they are coming.

(Outside, in the distance, shouting, violence. The sound of boots. There is nothing human about this noise: if totalitarianism had a heartbeat it would pound like this.)

(Xu Zihua runs to the window. She looks out. Her face drains of color.)

XU ZIHUA: They are already here.

(She turns to Qiu Jin.)

There is a back way. Through the kitchen. You can climb the wall—

QIU JIN: No.

XU ZIHUA: Qiu Jin—

QIU JIN: If I run—

(She pauses, gathers herself. Self-control is a terrible weight to carry.)

QIU JIN: (trying again): If I run they will take it out on everyone: you, the students, anyone who has ever trained in this room.

(She stands. She is calm.)

I have been waiting for this moment since the day my cousin left for Anqing.

XU ZIHUA: You knew he would fail?

QIU JIN: I knew he would try. That was enough.

(She moves to the desk. She picks up a brush. She dips it in ink.)

XU ZIHUA: What are you doing?

QIU JIN: Writing a letter. To a friend.

XU ZIHUA: There is no time for letters.

QIU JIN: There is always time for letters.

(She writes. She speaks as she writes.)

QIU JIN (writing): To Wu Zhiying, Beijing —

(She writes.)

The uprising has failed. Xu Xilin is captured. They are here.

(She stops. Stares at nothing.)

QIU JIN: (speaking as if Wu Zhiying were there): I do not regret anything. Not Japan. Not the school. Not the newspaper. Not the sword.

(She looks down at the paper. Writes.)

I only regret that I will not see you again.

(She sets the brush down.)

XU ZIHUA (picking up the paper, horrified): You are not finished.

(The noise outside intensifies. If there are students, or teachers, or civilians crying or lamenting or pleading it is lost in the chaos.)

QIU JIN (slowly): No. I am not.

(Xu Zihua rushes to Qiu Jin, as if she is ready to break a thousand years of tradition in this one action and clings to her, desperate, out of her mind with horror.)

XU ZIHUA: No! No, no, no, no! You can't! There is still time. The back way—

(Qiu Jin gently removes Xu Zihua from her.)

QIU JIN: And lose you?

I will not let that happen.

(She moves to the door.)

(Qiu Jin stops. She does not turn.)

QIU JIN: When they ask... tell them that I was not afraid.

(Pause.)

(She turns. She looks at Xu Zihua. Her face is calm. Resolved.)

QIU JIN: Bury me at West Lake. Where the heroes are.

(She leaves.)

(Xu Zihua collapses in shock. She holds the unfinished letter.)

(Chaos outside. Boots on the stairs. Worlds ending.)

(As the lights and noise fade we are left in a bloodcurdling silence of inevitability.)

(Blackness.)

)(*)(

SCENE 10: THE AUTUMN WIND

The room is now a prison cell. Dim. Claustrophobic. One small window.

QIU JIN sits, shackled, at a bare wooden table.

She has been here for days. The interrogation is over. Her hands are shattered. Her lip is split. One eye is swollen. Her clothes are torn.

But her back is straight. She has not broken.

The light outside her cell is bleak, gray, rainy: autumn.

She traces a single word for the wind on the bare table in front of her: 风

These are the two elements that will form her greatest poem.

She stops.

She closes her eyes.

The noise of boots: softer but still just as tyrannical.

The sound of keys, of bolts being drawn of locks opening.

The door opens.

THE OFFICIAL enters. He is the face of the state, come to offer her a way out. He is doing his job.

OFFICIAL: Qiu Jin.

(She opens her eyes. She does not turn.)

OFFICIAL: You have been given every chance. Confess. Name your comrades. The governor is merciful.

QIU JIN: The governor is a Manchu. There is no mercy in him.

OFFICIAL: He will spare your life.

(Qiu Jin turns. She looks at him. They both know that's a lie.)

QIU JIN: And, tell me, what would I do with my life if I "confessed and named my comrades"?

(The Official is surprised. He pauses, considering.)

OFFICIAL: Why, you would live, of course.

(Qiu Jin says nothing. The Official tries reasoning one last time. It has yet to work.)

OFFICIAL: Look, I understand. You are brave, for a woman. You want things better for all of us. So does the governor.

(The Official spreads a blank sheet of paper before her. He brings out ink and a brush. Qiu Jin stares at all this.)

QIU JIN (almost a whisper to herself, almost): "Not a man in the flesh, unable to walk among them;/ But my heart is stronger, more fierce than any man's."

OFFICIAL (confused): What? (Pressing on.) Go ahead. Take the brush. Confess.

(Qiu Jin raises one shackled hand, the chains rattling. She writes. She puts the brush down.)

(He looks at the paper. He reads the characters.)

(He looks at her.)

This is not a confession.

QIU JIN: It is the only one I have.

(He stares at her.)

OFFICIAL: Then you will die at dawn.

QIU JIN: I know.

(He leaves.)

(Qiu Jin is alone.)

(She stands. She speaks — to the room, to the women she loves, to everyone who cannot hear her.)

QIU JIN: They will kill me at dawn. At Xuantingkou. In the square where they behead criminals.

(Pause.)

There will be a crowd. Some will cheer. Some will weep.

(She touches her chest, where the pendant lies.)

I will not close my eyes. I want to see them.

I want to see the ones who will remember.

(Blackout.)

(When the lights rise, the stage is transformed.)

(The prison cell is gone. The square at Xuantingkou. Bare. A single wooden post. Ropes.)

(The gray light of dawn.)

(THE EXECUTIONER stands to one side. His ASSISTANT stands beside him.)

(Qiu Jin is led in. The Guards bind her to the post. Her hands are tied behind her. Her body is upright. Her face is toward the audience. She does not blink.)

(The Assistant moves behind her. He gathers her long hair in one hand, pulling it forward, lowering her head toward the ground.)

(Qiu Jin does not close her eyes.)

(She speaks, her confession, her last lines.)

QIU JIN: "Autumn wind, autumn rain, fills my heart with sorrow."

(Pause.)

(The Executioner raises his sword.)

(The Assistant holds her hair taut.)

(The sword hangs in the air.)

(Silence.)

(Qiu Jin's eyes find the audience.)

(She does not look away.)

(Blackout.)

(Complete darkness.)

(No sound.)

(Long pause.)

(Then, very faintly, the sound of wind.)