That night, however, cries again woke the household. Pao rushed out ahead of the other servants, and found Widow Kang slumped against the garden bench, under the tree. Pao pulled her mistress's open night shift over her breast and hauled her up onto the bench, crying 'Mistress Kang!' because her eyes were open wide; yet they saw nothing of this world. The whites were visible all the way around, and she stared through Pao and the others, seeing other people and muttering in tongues. 'In challa, in challa', a babble of sounds, cries, squeaks, 'urn mana pada hum'; and all in voices not hers.

'Ghosts!' squealed Shih, who had been wakened by the fuss. 'She's possessed!'

' Quiet please,' hissed Pao. 'We must return her to her bed still asleep.'

She took one arm, Zunli took the other, and as gently as they could, they lifted her. She was as light as a cat, lighter than she ought to have been. 'Gently,' Pao said as they bumped her over the sill and laid her down. Even as she lay there she popped back up like a puppet, and said, in something like her own voice, 'The little goddess died despite all.'

Pao sent word to the hui doctor of what had occurred, and a note came back with their servant, requesting another interview. Kang snorted and dropped the note on the table and said nothing. But a week later the servants were told to prepare lunch for a visitor, and it was Ibrahim ibn Hasam who appeared at the gate, blinking behind his spectacles.

Kang greeted him with the utmost formality, and led him into the parlour, where the best porcelain was laid out for a meal.

After they had eaten and were sipping tea, Ibrahim nodded and said, 'I am told that you suffered another attack of sleepwalking.'

Kang coloured. 'My servants are indiscreet.'

'I'm sorry. It's just that this may pertain to my investigation.'

'I recall nothing of the incident, alas. I woke to a very disturbed household.'

'Yes. Perhaps I could ask your servants what you said while under the… under the spell?'

'Certainly.'

'Thank you.' Another seated bow, another sip. 'Also… I was wondering if you might agree to help me attempt to reach this… this other voice inside you.'

'How do you propose to do this?'

'It is a method developed by the doctors of al Andalus. It involves a kind of meditation on an object, as in a Buddhist temple. An examiner helps to put the meditating subject under a description, as they call it, and then the inner voices sometimes will speak with the examiner.'

'Like soul stealing, then?'

He smiled. 'No stealing is involved. It is mainly conversation, you see. Like calling the spirit of someone absent, even to themselves. Like the soul calling done in your southern cities. Then when the meditation ends, all returns to normal.'

'Do you believe in the soul, doctor?'

'Of course.'

'And in soul stealing?'

'Well.' Long pause. 'This concept has to do with a Chinese understanding of the soul, I think. Perhaps you can clarify it for me. Do you make a distinction between the hun, the spiritual soul, and the po, or bodily soul?'

'Yes, of course,' Kang said. 'It is an aspect of yin yang. The hun soul belongs to the yang, the po soul to the yin.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'And the hun soul, being light and active, volatile, is the one that can separate from the living person. Indeed it does separate, every night in sleep, and returns on waking. Normally.'

'Yes.'

'And if by chance, or design, it does not return, this is a cause of illness, especially in children's illnesses, like colic, and in various forms of sleeplessness, madness and the like.'

'Yes.' Now the widow Kang was not looking at him.

'And the hun is the soul that the soul stealers supposedly roaming the countryside are after. Chiao hun.'

'Yes. Obviously you don't believe this.'

'No no, not at all. I reserve judgment for what is shown. I can see the distinction being made, no doubt of that. I myself travel in dreams – believe me, I travel. And I have treated unconscious patients, whose bodies continue to function well, in the pink of health you might say, while they lie there on their bed and never move, no, not for years. I cleaned her face – I was washing her eyelashes, and all of a sudden she said, "Don't do that." After sixteen years. No, I have seen the hunsoul go and return, I think. I think it is like most matters. The Chinese have certain words, certain concepts and categories, while Islam has other words, naturally, and slightly different categories, but on closer inspection these can all be correlated and shown to be one. Because reality is one.'

Kang frowned, as if perhaps she did not agree.

'Do you know the poem by Rumi Balkhi, "I Died As Mineral"? No? It is by the voice of the sufis, the most spiritual of Muslims.' He recited: 'Died as mineral and came back as plant, Died as plant and came back as animal, Died as animal and came back a man. Why should I fear? When have I ever lost by dying? Yet once more I shall die human, To soar with angels blessed above. And when I sacrifice my angel soul I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

'That last death I think refers to the hun soul, moving away from the po soul to some transcendence.'

Kang was thinking it over. 'So, in Islam you believe that souls come back? That we live many lives, and are reincarnated?'

Ibrahim sipped his green tea. 'The Quran says, "God generates beings, and sends them back over and over again, till they return to Him. – 'Really!' Now Kang regarded Ibrahim with interest. 'This is what we Buddhists believe.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'A sufi teacher I have followed, Sharif Din Maneri, said to us, "Know for certain that this work has been before thee and me in bygone ages, and that each person has already reached a certain stage. No one has begun this work for the first time. – Kang stared at Ibrahim, leaning from her wall seat towards him. She cleared her throat delicately. 'I remember bits of these sleepwalking spells,' she admitted. 'I often seem to be some other person. Usually a young woman, a – a queen, of some far country, in trouble. I have the impression it was long ago, but it is all confused. Sometimes I wake with the sense of a year or more having passed. Then I come fully into this world again, and it all falls apart, and I can recall nothing but an image or two, like a dream, or an illustration in a book, but less whole, less… I'm sorry. I can't make it clear.'

'But you can,' Ibrahim said. 'Very clear.'

'I think I knew you,' she whispered. 'You and Bao, and my son Shih, and Pao, and certain others. I… it's like that moment one sometimes feels, when it seems that whatever is happening has already happened before, in just the same way.'

Ibrahim nodded. 'I have felt that. Elsewhere in the Quran, it says, "I tell you of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity will be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and names. – 'Truly?' Kang exclaimed.

'Yes. And elsewhere again, it says, "His body falls off like the shell of a crab, and he forms a new one. The person is only a mask which the soul puts on for a season, wears for its proper time, and then casts off, and another is worn in its stead. – Kang stared at him, mouth open. 'I can scarcely believe what I am hearing,' she whispered. 'There has been no one I can tell these things. They think me mad. I am known now as a…'

Ibrahim nodded and sipped his tea. 'I understand. But I am interested in these things. I have had certain – intimations, myself. Perhaps then we can try the process of putting you under a description, and see what we can learn?'

Kang nodded decisively. 'Yes.'

Because he wanted darkness, they settled on a window seat in the reception hall, with its window shuttered and the doors closed. A single candle burned on a low table. The lenses of his glasses reflected the flame. The house had been ordered to be silent, and faintly they could hear dog barks, cart wheels, the general hum of the city in the distance, all very faint.