Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  Brenda moved a few steps closer, intrigued and curious. She caught a glimpse of a not overly tall, powerfully built, round-faced Asian man, dressed in khaki trousers and a tan sports shirt, moving briskly down the sidewalk away from the museum grounds.

  Brenda considered following him, but Des and Pearl had been adamant about their not going anywhere alone. In any case, what would she do? Accuse him of picking the flowers? The man was out of sight almost before Brenda finished shaping her thoughts.

  “Too late,” she murmured to herself, and realized she felt relieved. She was tempted to dismiss the entire thing, but a sense of responsibility made her confide in Des.

  “Had you seen that man before?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. He could have been one of those people I saw in Santa Fe, but then again …” She shrugged.

  Des nodded. “Better not to jump to conclusions. In any case, even if the man you saw was one of our enemies, he couldn’t have harmed you there. The Rosicrucian Gardens are well protected.”

  “I thought they must be,” Brenda said, “since we’re allowed to go there alone.”

  “So relax,” Des said. “But not too much. We’re going to do fake combats. Test how fast you can get bracelets off and into action.”

  “Good,” Brenda said. “I could use some exercise.”

  That evening, edgy despite herself, Brenda tried to distract herself with a mystery novel. Instead, she found herself peeking over the edge, her attention drawn to where Lani and Foster were playing a strange version of Go Fish. The little girl chattered almost constantly, but her version of English was quite difficult to understand. Foster’s English consisted mostly of nouns, occasional verbs, and very few modifiers. Despite this, the pair were managing to communicate.

  Lani held up a card that depicted three blue fish along with a large number three. Foster made a great show of carefully inspecting his hand. Then, with feigned reluctance, he handed over a matching card. In this version of the game, you needed four of a kind to make a set, and when Lani triumphantly set down three cards, Foster shook his head and counted off “One, two, three … No four. Go fish!”

  “Aw!!!”

  But Lani picked up her hand and drew another card.

  The game went on until Foster went out with a quartet of Two Green Fish. Nissa, who had been watching from the doorway, now stepped forward.

  “Time for your bath, then to bed, Lani.”

  Lani knew better than to argue. Nissa was a gentle mother, on the whole, but certain events—bed and nap times among them—were not negotiable.

  “The schedule is as much for my sanity as for her health,” Nissa had admitted. “I need to know that after about seven-thirty, my evening is my own, even if all I do with it is stare at the tube.”

  When mother and daughter left, Brenda was suddenly very aware that she was alone with Foster. Des and Riprap had gone to run errands. Then they were going to some sports event. Pearl was sequestered in her office, researching the spell that would let them release the memories trapped in the dragon crystals.

  Foster was making himself very busy tidying up the cards, but Brenda sensed that he, too, was aware that they were alone. Over the days that they had shared a house, this had not happened very often. Lani made an excellent, if unintentional, chaperone. Foster was not welcome at the daily lessons that occupied so much of Brenda’s day, nor at the practice sessions that were “lab” to Des’s “lecture.”

  The rest of the time, either Nissa or Riprap was around, but now, for at least the next half hour …

  Brenda put her book down, and motioned to the deck of cards in Foster’s hand.

  “Want to play?”

  Foster looked at the cards and grinned, a spontaneous expression that not only welcomed her overture, but showed he was fully aware of how ridiculous it was for two adults to play this game.

  They ripped through a few hands of Go Fish in very little time. Foster proved to have a good memory, and after he poached from Brenda’s hand a couple of times, Brenda found herself taking care not to ask for a card unless she was almost ready to complete a set.

  She wanted to teach him a more complex game, but wasn’t sure that the different suits on a standard set of cards would be as obvious as these brightly colored fish. Then there were the face cards. Brenda was trying to figure out how to explain that kings outranked queens, but that they didn’t outrank the almost identical jacks, and that the non-face-card ace outranked everything else, when a wonderful, if somewhat terrifying inspiration hit her.

  What about teaching Foster mah-jong? He might even already know the game. Des had explained that although the primary knowledge that had created Foster’s homeland had occurred in something like 213 B.C., there was ample evidence that other information had leaked through since.

  Mah-jong shouldn’t be particularly magical for Foster. That association belonged to the Thirteen Orphans alone, their private mnemonic. For millions of people around the world—this world at least—mah-jong was just a game. Why should it be anything different for Foster?

  Brenda held up her hand in the gesture that had come to mean “wait a second” or “hold on.” Foster paused in the middle of shuffling the deck of Go Fish cards and looked at her quizzically.

  “I have an idea,” Brenda said, although she knew he wouldn’t understand.

  She was very conscious of Foster watching her as she unfolded herself from where she’d been sitting across from him on the floor. His gaze followed her as she crossed to a cabinet in which she’d noticed that some board games were stored, among them a completely modern, utterly unremarkable mah-jong set.

  “Do you know this game?” she asked, bringing the plastic case over and opening it to show the tiles.

  Foster looked momentarily puzzled; then his gaze brightened.

  “Yes. Ma que. Ma jiang.” The names were Chinese, but Brenda could hear the familiar echo of the English name, especially in the latter term.

  “Come on,” she said, and gestured to the table set to one end of the room. After all, the tiles couldn’t be scattered on the rug as the cards could.

  Suddenly, Brenda felt shy. What if Foster didn’t want to play? Why was she giving him orders? Why was she assuming he’d want to play?

  But Foster was on his feet, pausing only to stow the Go Fish cards in the basket that held Lani’s toys. When they were sitting across from each other at the table, Brenda felt the language gap more than ever. Did they even know the same rules?

  She took three matching tiles from the case and set them in a line. “Pung.” Then, quickly, before Foster could wonder, she added a fourth. “Kong.”

  Three in sequence—one, two and three of bamboo: “Chow.”

  Foster was nodding now, obviously comparing his own knowledge with her words. He took fourteen tiles from the box and laid them out. They made four sets of three—four pungs—and a pair.

  “Mah-jong,” he said, and his pronunciation was fairly close to her own.

  Brenda grinned. They could do this! She took out more tiles and constructed another hand that would also qualify for mah-jong, although not as highly scoring since this one included runs or chows, not sets.

  Within about ten minutes, she and Foster had worked out their basic rules, establishing that both of them knew that kongs gave bonus points, and that a concealed set scored higher than the same set unconcealed. Winds and dragons, the two honors suits, were familiar to Foster—far more so than the European kings, queens, and jacks would have been.

  Foster’s Sesame Street English worked surprisingly well for this. He had a grasp of “big,” “bigger,” “biggest,” and related these back to scoring points. Other elements of the game were harder to get across, and by the time Brenda took various tiles and used them to mark out one of the simplest limit hands, All Pair, Foster fully understood why she waved her hand over it and said, “No. Not now.”

  “Too much,” he agreed. This was one of Lani’s favorite phrases, usually
used to explain why she wouldn’t finish a meal. In this case, it adapted very well.

  They turned the tiles over, and began the rhythmic shuffling that guaranteed that the playing pieces would be well and completely mixed. The plastic tiles clattered against each other in a fashion that was like but unlike the traditional bone and bamboo.

  Nissa came in at that point, wearing a different T-shirt. Apparently, bathing Lani had been an active event.

  “Mah-jong!” she said, and her inflection held in it all of Brenda’s own rationalization for why this game couldn’t be dangerous, not in and of itself. “But how are you going to play it with only two people?”

  Foster clearly didn’t understand most of this, but he caught the word “two.” His eyes widened and then he began to laugh.

  “One fish,” he said, pointing to himself. Then, pointing to Brenda: “Two fish.” He indicated Nissa last: “Three fish?”

  Nissa laughed and pulled out a chair.

  “Three people,” she said in her best “mom correcting child” voice, but the grin on her face kept this from being a true reprimand.

  “People,” Foster agreed. “Mah-jong. Four, biggest. Three big.”

  “Poor guy needs more than children’s television comparatives,” she said to Brenda.

  Brenda nodded agreement, feeling a twinge of embarrassment that in her eagerness to find a game Foster might know, she’d forgotten that mah-jong really needed at least three players. Nissa didn’t tease her though.

  “My mom taught my sisters and I to play ages ago,” she said. “We haven’t played much lately—too many kids running around—but I love this game.”

  Brenda admitted to herself that there was another reason that her cheeks felt hot and her heart was thumping along uncomfortably. She’d been momentarily angry when Nissa came butting in. She’d wanted to be alone with Foster, although in this household that would be pretty much impossible.

  Brenda wondered what Foster thought of Nissa. Nissa was pretty in her way, all fair and fluffy, but she was a mom … . Did that make her more or less appealing? Did it make her seem old and settled, or interesting and experienced?

  None of them—not even Foster—seemed to know how old he was, but Brenda had thought of him as about her age, maybe a little older. That would make him Nissa’s age. Brenda felt a surge of competitiveness. She’d seen Foster first, there in the parking garage in Denver.

  When he’d been stealing her dad’s memory.

  Brenda felt suddenly cold, wondering what madness had made her seek to befriend this strange man. They drew tiles for who would have what chair, then shuffled the tiles and built the wall. Brenda was east, so it was up to her to roll for the first break in the wall.

  Brenda rolled and counted, and the wall was Foster’s. He held out his hand for the dice, and she dropped them into his hand, noticing the calluses. They must be from where he held his sword, and even the week and a half that had passed hadn’t been enough for them to grow softer in the least. Did he practice up there, in the privacy of his room, going through the motions without a sword?

  Soon after their arrival in San Jose, Brenda had come down early one morning and seen Pearl out on the patio, alone except for her cats, going through some moves Brenda had thought were tai chi. Brenda had asked about the routine. Pearl had explained that actually they were sword drills, and that when she’d warmed up she’d repeat them with her sword. Brenda hadn’t asked more, but now she wondered whether Foster—another Tiger—practiced with equal devotion, or his daily routines had been taken from him along with his memory.

  Foster counted, one through ten in English, then switching over to Chinese as the count took itself around the bend in the wall in front of Nissa. He reached awkwardly in front of the fair-haired woman and lifted out the appropriate tiles, setting them aside where they would be used to make up for bonus tiles, or for the fourth tile in a kong. No matter what, the hand must contain a minimum of fourteen tiles at the end.

  Just like there must be the Thirteen Orphans, drifted a stray thought through Brenda’s jumbled mind. What happens when there are only four Orphans left, four and one confused junior Rat?

  The game progressed haltingly. Brenda and Nissa both played with a polite convention that the name of a tile should be spoken aloud when discarded, then discarded faceup, so that the other players would have an opportunity to claim it. Foster had clearly learned his game in a more competitive school. His discards were spoken, then flashed down, blank side up in the center of the square. Nissa kept reaching out and turning them faceup, and Foster seemed to think this was a comment on his ability to pronounce the English equivalents of the tiles.

  Brenda wanted to explain that this was just a game among friends, no need to be so competitive, but she didn’t have the words and her impulse failed her. Was this a glimpse at Foster’s true soul, the soul of the Tiger, the soul of the swordsman?

  No, she chided herself, watching as Nissa called out “mah-jong” and turned out the part of her hand that had remained concealed to prove her claim. Foster laughed and patted his palms together in polite approval. He’s just playing the game as he has been taught. That’s all.

  Brenda’s own hand was a mess, hardly any more organized than the mix of tiles she’d drawn at the beginning. Nissa had appointed herself scorekeeper, and snorted as she counted up the minimal points Brenda had managed. Foster was already knocking over the old wall, turning over the tiles, getting ready to shuffle for a new hand. Brenda forced herself to pay attention. She was enough her father’s daughter that she didn’t like making such a poor showing.

  The hands went around the table. They weren’t really keeping score for an overall game, just one hand at a time, seeing if they could all manage to play out each hand without needing to pause and explain some rule or other. Foster’s version of the game was a little different from the one Brenda knew, but then so was the version Nissa had been taught. The variants mattered little in this simplified version, although the scoring could be tricky.

  The four-person version of the game often ended in a stalemate, each player holding on to honors tiles in the hope of getting a higher score. A three-person game, such as the one they were playing, almost always went to mah-jong because the lack of one player created surplus tiles.

  Something like six games in, Brenda had her hand almost ready to go out before the last of the four walls was even breached. All she needed was a one dot to complete the “pillow,” or pair, that would complete her set of fourteen.

  She’d managed to clear her hand of all suits but dots and honors. She had a nice concealed kong of green dragons and a exposed kong of the round’s wind—west in this case. It was a good scoring hand, but would go for nothing unless someone mah-jonged and the hand was scored.

  All Brenda needed was the one of dots, and only one had been discarded. She hoped no one else already had them set in their hand as a concealed pung or chow.

  “Brenda’s fishing,” Nissa said. “She hasn’t changed a single tile in her hand for a while now.”

  Foster grinned. “Go fish!”

  Brenda drew a tile from the wall and glanced at it. “Red dragon! I could have used that earlier.”

  She discarded it in the center, but no one claimed it. Brenda really hadn’t expected anyone to do so. There were two red dragons out there already, and unlike the suit tiles, which could be used in chows, honors were useful only in sets of three or four—or as a pair to complete the hand.

  The lone, unmatched tile in Brenda’s hand stared up at her like a single eye. She had an exposed pong of four dots, a concealed pong of eight dots, her four lovely west winds, and that fine concealed kong of green dragons. All she needed was that last one dot, and she was beginning to believe it was sitting in someone else’s hand, part of a chow, perhaps, or, with a certain amount of irony, as someone else’s pillow.

  They drew more rapidly now, each player knowing what tiles he or she could use. Nissa claimed one of Foster’s disca
rds, and Brenda held her breath, waiting for Nissa to call mah-jong and go out. That was one of the things that made mah-jong fascinating. The person to go out got a bonus, but didn’t necessarily gain the most points.

  Brenda counted tiles in the wall. Four draws left for each of them. Foster’s lips were pressed together, his gaze darted over the tiles in the discard area. She thought she saw them narrow, as if he’d noticed a discard he hadn’t seen before, and realized he couldn’t make some play good.

  Three draws. Two draws. They went into the final round. Nissa drew a three bamboo and slapped it down in the discard heap.

  “I’m dead,” she proclaimed.

  Foster drew a five characters and said something in Chinese that sounded rude as he put it down next to Nissa’s tile.

  “Five character,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

  Brenda reached for the last tile, noting that Nissa was already starting to spill her tiles out of the rack, because a round in which no one went mah-jong wasn’t scored.

  “Wait,” Brenda said. “I’ve got a tile yet, and I want to see which one of you has my …”

  She stopped in midphrase. The tile she’d turned over was one dot, the tile she needed to complete her hand. She snapped it into place, turning her rack so the other two could see.

  “Mah-jong!” she cried, but even as she said the words, even as she went through the familiar motions, she was aware of a roaring in her ears.

  Brenda pressed the heels of her hands against her ears. The roaring sounded like ocean waves beating hard against a cliffside, pummeling the rock into minute grains of sand. There was a sense of pressure, as if something was pushing against the walls of her mind.

  Nissa also had her hands to her ears. Foster’s expression was shifting from mock anger that Brenda had managed to go mah-jong with that final tile, to confusion at their odd behavior. He was rising to his feet, reaching out toward Nissa, who sat in the seat closet to him, saying something, probably in Chinese.