Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  “Auntie Pearl has said we’ll go back to California maybe in a few weeks,” Brenda finished, “but I can’t get by here on what I’ve packed until then.”

  Mom agreed, and Brenda hung up, feeling, despite her excitement, a bit choked up.

  Thank heavens for cell phones, she told herself. I can call Mom every day if I want.

  Almost as if he’d been waiting for something like this to happen, Dad finished up his business. He left for South Carolina the next day.

  As soon as Gaheris Morris had left, Brenda and Riprap relocated to Des Lee’s house.

  Pearl made reservations on a morning shuttle to the airport, promising to call when she arrived in Virginia. She suggested that if Gaheris asked, Brenda simply imply that Pearl had remained in Santa Fe.

  “Otherwise, it’s going to be a bit difficult explaining why I abandoned my new intern almost as soon as I acquired her.”

  “What if Dad calls and asks to talk to you?”

  “I trust you to be creative. I am napping. In a meeting. ‘Indisposed’ is always a good word to use. Especially when said to a man with just the right inflection, it can stop all questions cold. Then you call me, and I’ll call him back. I don’t expect to be in Virginia long, so we won’t need to maintain the charade for more than a few days.”

  Brenda grinned. “I’ve done things like this for roommates who were staying the night with boyfriends, but I never thought I’d be making excuses for a movie star.”

  “Get used to it,” Pearl said, patting her hand. “Making excuses for others is the backbone of middle management.”

  Des Lee might have lived by himself, but his house was roomy enough for a family and there were pictures of the same kids at various ages, ranging from babies to young adults, displayed in the living room. Brenda saw others when she peeked into Des’s room.

  “Are those your kids?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Des said. “Three of them. Two girls and a boy. They’re about your age, give or take. My son is in grad school. My elder daughter is in college, the younger finishing high school.”

  “Man,” Riprap said. “You got an early start.”

  “I did,” Des agreed, “part of the reason the marriage didn’t work. We were young and thought we knew everything. Got married in college. My wife had our son before we graduated. Time passed, we grew apart. She got custody on the grounds that I was less fit to provide a stable home environment, but the kids always visited me and I made sure to let them know I cared about what was going on in their lives. That’s why I kept this big house—wanted them to have their own rooms when they came.”

  “So you’ve lived here awhile,” Brenda said.

  “That’s right,” Des said. “I fell in love with the West—not the geographic west, the idea—when I was a boy. I wanted to be a cowboy in the worst way. Then I started noticing that there were very few Chinese cowboys. The Chinese you saw on TV and in movies were usually cooks or doing laundry, maybe running a shop. I started reading and discovered there had been Chinese working the railroads, punching cattle, panning for gold—all the ‘leading man’ roles. Sometimes they did them so well that they came to odds with both their own people and the dominant ‘white’ population. Putting the Chinese back into the story became my personal obsession. Didn’t do my marriage much good. Like me, my ex was ethnically Chinese, but she was interested in blending in, in assimilating, not standing out.”

  Des sighed and shrugged, a gesture that involved his shoulders rising almost as high as his ears before dropping back.

  “Sorry. I’ve lived alone too long, I guess. The kids are beyond custody agreement mandatory visits. My friends here already know my sad song.”

  “That’s all right,” Brenda said. “I really did want to know.”

  Des showed her to a tidy room at the end of a long hallway.

  “This bedroom has an attached bath, so why don’t you take it. Give you an element of privacy. Riprap …” He turned to face the other man. “I’ll put you here. You’ll have to share a bathroom with me, but you get the better view.”

  Riprap followed Des into the indicated room. Brenda, moving into her own temporary quarters, heard him say, “Those the Sangre de Cristo Mountains?”

  “Yep, and a good view of them, too,” Des said. “I couldn’t touch this house at today’s prices, but back when I bought it, this part of town was considered too far from the Plaza to be convenient and not in the least fashionable.”

  The men’s voices continued in quiet conversation. Riprap, it turned out, was interested in the buffalo soldiers, as the black army units had been dubbed by the Indians. The two men were out in the living room and deep in a discussion of the Indian Wars by the time Brenda finished unpacking.

  Des offered her a choice of drinks, and Brenda accepted oolong tea. Her host produced a lovely tea set after the Chinese fashion, the cups small and round, nestling into her hand as a bird’s eggs would into a nest. In Riprap’s big hands the cup completely vanished but for the thin trail of steam rising into the air.

  “Now,” Des said, “why don’t we start your first lesson? There’s a tremendous amount of theory involved, but I’m going to try to keep to the bare minimum. If I skip too much and start confusing you, stop me.”

  Brenda nodded, and Riprap said, “Right, coach.”

  “Good. Now, first of all, I’m not going to try and explain what magic is. You’ve seen it at work. You’ve seen its effects. That’s enough to go on. A child learns about gravity by dropping things and watching them fall. You can learn the principles of magic in a similar fashion.”

  “Seems to me,” Riprap said guardedly, “that a child also learns about gravity by falling. I wouldn’t teach a little kid to play baseball with a hard ball and wooden bat. I’d use a whiffle ball and a plastic bat.”

  “You’re one step ahead of me,” Des said, his tone pleased, although Riprap had just challenged him. “In sorcery, there is no equivalent to that plastic ball and bat, but there are more and less dangerous types of spells. There are also more and less dangerous ways of casting spells.

  “Brenda expressed an interest in knowing how she might protect herself—or someone else—if our mutual enemy was to reappear. That’s where I’m going to start, by teaching you a sequence called the Dragon’s Tail. You can envision the end result as a barrier that will completely surround you on all sides, but not above and not below.”

  “Sort of as if a dragon wrapped its tail around you,” Brenda said, setting down her teacup to gesture.

  “That’s right. The first thing that you need to realize is that this isn’t any force wall or magical barrier. You really will be summoning a dragon to protect you. To the uninitiated the dragon will not be visible, but you will see it, and, sadly, so will those who attempt to attack you with magical force.”

  “Sadly?” Brenda said. Then she understood. “Oh, because they’ll see it, they’ll know the zone of protection isn’t complete.”

  “Precisely,” Des said. “Later, if either of you proves particularly adept, I can teach you other routines, but this one is comparatively easy.”

  “Why easy?” Riprap said. “From what you said about dragons earlier, I wouldn’t think they’d much like being summoned at someone’s whim, especially when that summons involves putting themselves between the summoner and danger.”

  “Easy, because all that you are doing is turning something that’s available to your service,” Des replied. “Chinese dragons are elemental creatures. In one sense, they are omnipresent. In this part of New Mexico, you’re going to find earth and cloud dragons. There are some really powerful dragons nearer to the ocean, but I think starting with weaker dragons is all to the good.”

  Brenda and Riprap traded glances. She saw anticipation and apprehension in his eyes, wondered what he saw in hers.

  “But won’t the dragons turn on us?” Brenda asked.

  “Not if you prepare the spell correctly,” Des said, “and I’m here to make sure th
at you do. We are going to work this spell the hard, slow, tedious way. The end result should be reliable. It will, however, serve for only one summons. Neither of you know enough to prepare a multi-use summons.”

  Riprap set down his teacup. “Got to perfect making baskets before you can learn trick shots. I’m with you.”

  Brenda finished her tea. “What first?”

  Des gave a crisp nod of approval. “Let’s move into the dining room. A wide flat surface will be helpful for the first part.”

  Once they were in the dining room, Des opened a locked drawer in a tall, ornate cabinet. Like all but the most utilitarian furnishings in the house, the cabinet was crafted in a Chinese style, the carved front worked with peonies and songbirds. From the cabinet, Des produced the Rooster mah-jong set. He set this next to his seat at the head of the table, then went to a chest in the corner. He came back with two perfectly normal, modern plastic mah-jong sets. These he placed to either side of him and motioned for Brenda and Riprap to take these seats.

  “Eventually, you’ll use your own family sets,” Des said, “but the glory of the magical system our ancestors constructed is that the magics can be worked with any mah-jong set at all. When you are skilled, you can dispense with the tools entirely. They were meant as an aid, not a crutch. When you are skilled, you will not be some wizard in the Western tradition, easily disarmed by the removal of your staff or wand. You will be scholars. No one will be able to take away your power, for your power will be rooted in knowledge.”

  Des’s voice had risen to a triumphant note, but now it fell and he sat rather heavily.

  “That is, of course, as long as no one tampers with your mind. Then, unhappily, as you have already seen, you will be completely helpless.”

  9

  Des broke the awkward silence that followed his statement by opening the box containing the Rooster mah-jong set. Brenda looked at the tiles with interest. They resembled those in her dad’s Rat set, but she could tell that another hand had carved the characters. She wondered if each set had been made by the original Orphan to pass along to his or her descendants, or whether there had been a few gifted artisans who had made the sets among them.

  It did not seem to be an important question to ask now. Des had spilled out his tiles and was sorting through them.

  “I’m going to put up a powerful protection,” he explained, “because two novices at work is going to raise quite a lot of noise.”

  Brenda understood without asking that he meant “noise” in a metaphorical rather than literal sense. Doubtless she and Riprap would be clumsy in their early efforts to do whatever it was Des intended to teach them. If dragons could be summoned deliberately, what might come of its own free will if it thought the pickings might be good? Monsters would probably be the least of it. From the fairy tales her parents had read to her, Brenda recalled that humans were usually more dangerous than any monster.

  Brenda realized she had dozens of questions. If she and Riprap could learn magic, did that mean anyone could, or could only those who shared their strange heritage? Were the Chinese the only culture with “real” magic? Des had spoken of “Western wizards,” and not as if he were speaking of characters from fantasy fiction. Did that mean there were lots of people out there, working magics of various types? If so, why didn’t more people know about it?

  Looking down at the top layer of tiles in the plastic mah-jong set, Brenda knew these questions were just a diversion for what was really bothering her. Would she be able to learn any of these spells or routines or rituals at all? Riprap was the Dog, even if he didn’t know much more than she did, but she wasn’t the Rat. As far as she knew, her dad was still the Rat, even if he couldn’t remember those things that had made him the Rat.

  Brenda swallowed a sigh. Maybe Des was only having her sit in on these lessons to test her, but maybe he believed she had the ability to learn something practical. Either way, she’d do better to be patient and attend to her lessons. A few nights ago, she hadn’t believed that a piece of paper could be a weapon. What other things didn’t she know?

  Des had been selecting a long row of tiles, fourteen in all, Brenda noted, exactly as in a winning hand of mah-jong. He laid them in a straight line, facedown.

  “Our ancestors chose to use mah-jong as an aid to memory not because they created the game, but because it already existed and therefore could not be taken away.”

  “Like a wand or staff,” Riprap said.

  “Right,” Des agreed. “I’ve always thought of their use of mah-jong as a sort of Purloined Letter approach. As I said before, our type of wizard is a scholar, and a scholar’s ability is rooted in knowledge. Inborn aptitude helps, even as perfect pitch is an asset for a singer, but just as a singer can learn music without possessing perfect pitch, so someone who does not have an inborn talent can master the knowledge that will, in turn, lead to the ability to work magic. With me?”

  Both Brenda and Riprap nodded. Brenda wondered if her relief showed in her expression, for Des’s mustache moved as his lips twisted in a knowing smile.

  “Then can anyone learn how to work magic?” Riprap asked. “If so, why isn’t magic as common as knowing how to drive a car?”

  “I didn’t say anyone could learn to use magic,” Des said, “but that one did not need an aptitude. Let me extend the singing analogy. Some people are naturally gifted. They don’t need to be taught to sing; they only need to be taught songs. A larger group of people can learn to sing, if trained. Then there are those who cannot ever sing. They are tone deaf or simply have bad voices.”

  “Still,” Riprap said, “it seems to me that even that analogy would allow for a lot of people doing magic. Why don’t they?”

  “Lack of knowledge,” Des replied promptly. “Very few people will try something they know is impossible. I wouldn’t doubt that there are those out there who, when playing a hand of mah-jong, have felt something when the tiles were arrayed in a certain fashion. However, without the knowledge of how to interpret that sensation, of what to do to stir potential into actuality, they would simply ignore the sensation and get back to play.

  “However, we’re straying farther than I want into theory. Brenda was right yesterday when she reminded us we have at least one enemy, and that we should take precautions to protect ourselves against him if—or perhaps I should say ‘when’—he returns.”

  Des gestured to the line of tiles set in front of him. “When our ancestors were exiled into China, they found a number of gambling games in common use. Already familiar with these, for variations on the same games were played in their homeland, they adapted one to their use.

  “One advantage,” Des said, “to using the mah-jong set to encode spells was that the same tiles could be rearranged into various patterns. Today, in the game of mah-jong, many of these patterns have come to be known as ‘limit hands.’ Therefore, you may be familiar with the pattern I am about to show you.”

  He turned over the tiles, displaying three each of the tiles for south wind, west wind, green dragon, red dragon, and a pair of white dragon tiles. None of these tiles pictured either winds or dragons. Instead, Chinese characters were inscribed on the surface.

  “That’s the hand called ‘All Winds and Dragons,’” Brenda said. “You can form it with any of the wind or dragons tiles, so in a way it’s one of the easier limit hands to do—if you’re lucky and no one else is collecting the same tiles. It’s also closer to a standard mah-jong hand than lots of the limit hands are, so you can back out and regroup if the tiles you need don’t come through.”

  “However,” Riprap said with a grin that showed he’d tried that gamble at least once himself, “someone else is likely to be collecting those same tiles, which is why I learned early not to try for this. Des, are you saying this mah-jong hand is a spell?”

  “A spell of protection,” Des agreed. “When I work it, I will be calling on two winds and all three dragons to protect us. Because of our location, I have chosen the south and w
est winds. Were we somewhere where other winds dominated, or at a different time of year, I might have chosen differently. However, any combination will work.”

  “When you play mah-jong,” Brenda said, “you can use sets of three—pungs—or sets of four—kongs. Is it the same when you do spells?”

  “It is,” Des said, “but the more tiles you use, the more you need to concentrate, the more patterns you need to hold in your mind. I only extend to four when in great need. Three, especially with an already powerful combination like this, is ample.”

  “I’m beginning to understand,” Riprap said. “So these tiles are not, in themselves, magical. What is magical is what you—or whoever is doing the spell—know they represent. It’s like the words written on that sheet of paper. Words are magic.”

  “Pretty much,” Des agreed, “although you’ll learn that making words do what you want them to do isn’t always easy. Now, what I’m going to do next isn’t very showy, but I want you to watch. Don’t say anything until I indicate I’m ready for questions, just watch.”

  Des raised his hands above the tiles, lowering them until his fingers almost brushed the surface. Then he moved his left hand until his index finger rested above the leftmost tile in the line—the first of the south wind tiles.

  He didn’t seem to be doing anything, but Brenda watched closely as Des moved his index finger to the next of the south wind tiles, then to the third. It was as he was holding his finger over the third tile that Brenda thought she saw something—a pale pearlescent glow—manifest between the tile and the pad of Des’s fingertip.

  It wasn’t as if Des was projecting the glow, but as if the space between his finger and the tile had filled in.

  Now that she knew what to look for, Brenda could look back and see that the glow extended back into the spaces between the previous two tiles. When Des moved his finger forward and continued concentrating, the glow moved forward until, when he finished his concentration with the pair of white dragons, a pale, nacreous band hovered above the tiles.