by Rebecca Lim
Harley blinked in astonishment at the roughly reconstructed vase, radiating out in an exploded two dimensions from the base piece. Apart from the piece with the red markings, the entire vessel – still covered in a very fine network of cracks – now appeared to be white on both sides with the merest faint tint of blue in the glaze. The vase might never have had a dragon painted on the outside of it at all.
The old man placed a jeweller’s loupe into one of his eyes and bent low, his pudgy nose almost touching the surface of the shattered vase as he swept his gaze across it. ‘As fine as polished bone,’ Garstang murmured, running a gloved fingertip over the surface of one of the pieces. ‘Not Ru Ware, as I initially thought, but something even finer. If this potter’s mark is to be believed …’ Garstang took the magnifier out of his eye and made his way across the room, with an ungainly, rolling gait, to the far corner, searching for something on a table covered in old scrolls of different sizes, ‘… the maker only ever made fourteen vases. Eight of which he never painted and left blank – in that exact shade, like snow with a hint of blue ice at its heart.’ The old man flicked his gloved fingers in the direction of the shattered vase. ‘I’d thought the unpainted ones were all safely locked up in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The curator told me himself, many, many years ago when I was posing as a— Oh, never mind. Anyway, he said that the other six vases were each said to feature a unique dragon, each one painted in a different dominant colour.’
‘This was the blue one,’ Harley said quickly.
‘But it’s blank,’ Garstang replied, looking across at Harley in disbelief. ‘The fired image should never change.’
Harley’s voice was insistent. ‘Before it broke, it had a bright blue dragon on it, I swear.’
Qing shook her head fiercely as if disagreeing with them both and said, ‘Qīng,’ the exact same way she said her own name. To Harley’s untrained ear it sounded like Ching.
‘This was the legendary Qing Long vase?’ Garstang gaped from across the room, the scroll he’d been searching for clutched in one white-gloved hand. ‘The vase that featured the Azure Dragon?’
Harley blinked as Qing nodded as if she’d understood every word the old man had just uttered.
‘But how?’ Garstang exclaimed.
He stumped across the room, sweeping a host of stone ink chops, bamboo-handled paintbrushes and rolls of silky paper to one side of a table before laying the scroll he was holding down gently, as if it were a sleeping baby. He carefully unrolled the brittle, handpainted scroll to its full length, gesturing impatiently at Harley to weigh down the edges with two carved stone lion statuettes that happened to be resting on the next table.
The script of the scroll was in a running, fluid calligraphy even more impossible for Harley to make out than the printed Chinese characters he was used to seeing on shopfronts. There were no pictures, but the scroll was edged in a particularly complex and beautiful handwoven red and gold silk embossed with a repeating pattern of rampant dragons.
Qing made a bird-like noise of excitement, running her eyes down each column of characters until she came to a section near the end of the scroll that made her suddenly cover her mouth in distress. Fat tears fell out of her eyes onto the edge of the table.
When she looked across at Harley and Garstang, her lashes were still damp, and her eyes were bleak, the blue ring around each iris more prominent than usual. She did that thing with her hands that Harley had come to understand as meaning Where?
‘Do you know what it says?’ Harley asked the old man, who nodded his ponderous, shiny head.
‘This scroll tells the legend of the five dragon sisters of the Wudang Mountains, near modern Hubei,’ Garstang recounted quietly, looking from girl to scroll with a deep frown. ‘All were daughters of the First Dragon, who ruled that region of China with a firm and just hand. Their names were Zhu Long (Vermilion Dragon), Huang Long (Yellow Dragon), Qing Long (Azure Dragon), Bai Long (White Dragon) and Hei Long (Black Dragon).’
Qing nodded and nodded as Harley pulled a drum-shaped porcelain stool out from under one of the work tables and sat down cautiously. Qing stood straighter, letting the trailing cuffs of her magnificently embroidered sleeves fall over her clasped hands, assuming a listening attitude.
‘The Second Dragon,’ the old man continued, ‘who had nine sons and considered himself greater in power and majesty even than his own brother, had all five of his nieces abducted and delivered to a crippled old magician – Tiān Àn Jìn – to be killed.’ The old man tapped a series of three characters on the scroll, indicating with a flick of his pudgy fingers that they had something in common with the potter’s mark.
‘The old magician – whose mark this is reputed to be – was servant to one of the four Diamond Kings of Heaven; the very Diamond King that you saw on the floor below, Mo Li Qing. And though the old magician owed the Second Dragon a favour for once having saved his life, the magician was very fond of the five girls. Legend has it that he cast each girl into a plain pottery prison, rather than kill them outright.’
Harley and Garstang both looked at Qing, whose face was unreadable. ‘She can’t possibly be …’ the old man’s voice fell to a mere whisper, ‘…number three dragon daughter, can she? According to the scroll, the vases were made then dispersed across China by the magician himself – in a series of arduous personal journeys – to keep the girls safe. Even if a word of it were true, boy, it would have happened almost two and a half thousand years ago.’
Stunned, Harley darted a glance at Qing, whose eyes were now screwed shut as if she were deep in thought. ‘Say it was possible to, um, survive imprisonment inside a, ah, vase for that long,’ Harley said, ‘would it mean that there’s a chance that the other sisters may also have survived? And why are there five other vases? Not four? You said there were six dragon vases. But there were only five sisters. I don’t understand.’
Garstang shrugged, fumbling for his own porcelain Chinese stool and sitting down heavily, his rear end overflowing the drum-shaped seat all around. ‘The scroll is a creation myth, Harley. It can’t be real. Whoever heard of a Diamond King? Or magicians with real powers like these? Dragons?’
Qing’s eyes flashed open and she said fiercely, ‘Real. Where?’ She jabbed her finger at the pieces of her own vase then spread her hand wide: five fingers to indicate five sisters.
She made that Where? gesture again as she pointed at the potter’s mark, and the old man shook his head. ‘If he ever was a real person, child, he would be dead. It’s been too long.’
‘No!’ Qing hissed.
The old man replied gently, ‘Apart from the eight blank vases, child, I know of only one other dragon vase in existence today. It’s the centrepiece of a magnificent private collection in Singapore, owned by a very wealthy family that made its fortune in importation. Before the vase entered their collection, it was offered to me almost twenty years ago now, by the very person who—’
There was a resounding crash from the floor below, as if someone had just blundered face first into a giant terracotta warhorse and brought the whole beast tumbling down.
Garstang surged to his feet, searching in vain for his handgun. ‘NO!’ he cried, waddling for the staircase.
Qing and Harley exchanged glances, the girl’s hands moving so quickly that Harley couldn’t catch where she’d tucked away the piece of vase bearing the magician’s mark inside her voluminous clothing.
They ran for the staircase leading down to the lower floors, but were stopped by Garstang J. Runyon’s ample buttocks re-entering the room backwards, followed swiftly by the rest of him. ‘The roof,’ he said in a strangled voice over his shoulder. ‘It’s the only place to hide. Five of Chiu Chiu Pang’s strongest bodyguards are coming up the stairs. I caught a glimpse of them through the glass skylight below. I don’t know how they found out it was here, but they must want the vase – even in pieces it’s worth more than half the buildings in Chinatown! You will understand, children, when I say
trust in Guan Yin to save you. It is the only way. I beg you, go.’
Qing’s eyes flashed to the giant jade Goddess of Mercy standing before the wall on the far side of the huge workroom, and she nodded quickly.
Harley and Qing backtracked towards the tall jade statue, avoiding stepping on the clear skylight in the floor so that their progress would not be seen from below. But they froze in their tracks as a woman’s bloodcurdling shriek cut through the air, accompanied by sounds of violent struggle and breaking pottery.
‘Run, Harley, run!’ they heard Delia yell from two floors down.
Across the room, at the head of the staircase, Garstang made a strange grunting noise and crashed to the ground on his back. ‘Run!’ he gargled, echoing Delia’s warning.
Harley, looking over his shoulder as he fled, felt his skin almost leap off his body as a man dressed in head-to-toe black with a balaclava over his face and wielding a thick length of bamboo pole as long as a man’s forearm, stepped over Garstang’s sprawled body. The stranger’s brown eyes gleamed through the gap in his mask. Behind him, three more similarly dressed bandits spilled into the room holding their own bamboo staves. The leader’s eyes zeroed in on the shattered vase on the work table before flicking to Harley and Qing across the room. His eyes widened slightly as they rested on Qing before narrowing once more.
‘Give us the portion bearing the mark of Tiān Àn Jìn,’ the man demanded as the three men behind him fanned out and began moving slowly around the skylight in the floor towards them. Darting a glance at Qing beside him, Harley saw her gaze sharpen at the mention of the mystical potter’s name.
‘Surrender the piece without struggle,’ the man continued, ‘and we will vanish from your lives like smoke. Tell Ray Spark he did Grandmaster Pang a great disservice in sending the Qing Long vase to the house of his greatest rival. It will not be forgotten.’
Qing shook her head curtly, and the leader cast his bamboo staff away in a gesture of disgust. His stance changed, and his hands curled into hooks, the right one higher than the left. Without hesitation, the three other men did the same, their stances lowering, their steps quickening to mimic the movements of …
Harley tilted his head to one side. ‘A monkey? Is that what they’re doing? And what’s with the hands?’ He made exaggerated hooks in the air with his own hands and Garstang groaned from the floor near the stairs, ‘They are masters of the Northern Praying Mantis kung fu style – go! Before they take out your eyes and grapple your heads straight off your necks!’
Ignoring Harley with his sticky-up hair, badly fitting clothes and wild-eyed air, the leader of the men made his way directly across the room to Qing. He loomed over her threateningly as his men took up position around the room behind him; the three of them blocked off any hope of access to the staircase. The lead bandit snapped his hands from claws into two stiff blade shapes, thumbs tucked in against his palms, right hand raised at the level of Qing’s exposed jaw, left hand protecting his centre line, ready to chop her down at a moment’s notice.
As Qing glared up at the man defiantly, he snarled at her, ‘Gěi wǒ.’ The fingers of his right hand twitched in an attitude of give it here in case his words weren’t clear enough.
Across the room, Garstang wheezed painfully from where he was lying on his back on the floor. ‘Give him the mark, child. Chiu Chiu Pang is not to be trifled with.’
Qing shook her head again, and the man took a step back in surprise. The girl’s eyes had turned black with fury.
‘You’re in for it now, mate,’ Harley murmured, almost to himself.
The girl sagged suddenly, as if she were about to fall sideways to the ground, causing the man to lower his guard, before she crouched low and swept the man off his feet with her non-weight-bearing foot. The man clipped his head on the edge of a nearby work table as he fell, then lay still on the wooden floor. The three remaining bandits took a step backwards, looking at each other uncertainly.
‘Lóng yǒu sōu gǔ zhí fǎ,’ Qing hissed. ‘Dragon defeats mantis.’
Harley was gobsmacked. He was still standing in exactly the same position – between Qing and the jade goddess, with the air of a stunned mullet – while Qing was already leaping across the fallen man’s body and running in the direction of the next nearest brute.
The masked bandit retreated several steps, abandoning his praying mantis–style claws and extending his arms as if he wanted to bear-hug the small girl into submission. Before he could close his arms around her, though, Qing ducked and grabbed hold of one of the man’s wrists, pulling down on it to upset his balance. As the man rocked forward, Qing pressed down, hard, on a point near his inner elbow with two bent fingers of her free hand. The man cried out in pain and, still latched on to his arm, Qing pivoted slightly and followed the sharp stab to his pressure point with a short action roundhouse kick to the lower ribs. The man gagged and fell forward and Qing changed her stance again, pushing the already off-balance man into the edge of a nearby work table. Multiple pieces of pottery fell to the floor with a shattering crash. Using the man’s own falling weight against him, Qing pivoted her whole body one last time and pulled his arm back with a sharp motion. Harley could hear it pop right out of the man’s shoulder just before the man fell to the ground, shrieking and rolling around beneath the table in agony, his arm at an unnatural angle.
The remaining two brutes finally sprang into motion together with wild eyes, their leading legs kicking out, their hands moving from left to right along a sinuous, hypnotic curve, as if grappling at invisible lines of force. Their stances altered again, hands curved once more into mantis claws as they trapped the girl between them in the centre of the glass skylight set into the floor. They would not make the same mistake as their fallen colleagues – it was clear that the girl possessed combat techniques in a style they did not recognise, but of a standard to pose them some danger.
She’d been lucky, but it was curtains, Harley felt sure. They were going to gouge her into submission with their lethal, pointed fingers. No kid could take on two grown men with the ability to turn into giant praying mantises at the drop of a hat. It was so unfair.
He cried out, ‘Qing, please, give them the piece.’
The room went icy. Qing’s hands started to weave through the air between both men, her fingers like blades, then like fists, then back again, pulling at the air around her, pushing at the air around her, until the men seemed near hypnotised by the strange movements.
‘Qì shǒu,’ one of them muttered uneasily to the other, their own hands up now like deflecting blades. They stepped forward together, their leading hands testing the air so that Qing was forced to duck and weave around their clawlike jabs and feints.
The moment one of the men’s raised forearms made contact with Qing’s there was a crack of static electricity so loud and visible that the man fell to the floor with a howl, shuddering for a moment before going still.
Qing swivelled in the direction of the only man still on his feet, and he hesitated before running at her with a warlike cry, his leading fist directed straight at her small face. As she sidestepped his fist, she deflected it with one sharply raised elbow, the energy of her entire small form concentrated in the block. At her touch, the man let out a sharp cry of his own and fell to the floor, juddering on the ground as if he were in the grip of a terrible fit before he, too, went still.
Qing didn’t hesitate, turning and flapping her billowing sleeves at Harley to run towards the jade statue of Guan Yin. They’d almost made it around the body of the stone goddess when a gunshot rang out, freezing them in their tracks. They swivelled around to see Chiu Chiu Pang’s fifth man with Garstang J. Runyon’s forgotten black handgun gripped in his right hand.
‘Last chance to get out with your lives, children,’ he hissed. ‘The piece. Leave it at Guan Yin’s feet or you all die.’ He pointed the muzzle at Garstang’s slumped, grey-faced form on the floor, then at the two of them.
Qing said – in the strangely r
esonant voice that Harley was only just getting used to hearing – ‘Free old man first.’ She pointed at the slumped form of the antiques dealer on the floor. When the masked bandit with the gun looked down at the old man by his feet, Qing drove an elbow into Harley’s stomach so hard that he almost retched. But he got the message, and backed away silently towards the jade statue.
The man with the gun kicked the old man hard in the leg to indicate he was no longer necessary to proceedings. Instead of letting out the howl he so desperately wanted to, Garstang J. Runyon shot the two children an apologetic look, rolled over painfully onto his hands and knees and began crawling away to safety. While the gunman, laughing heartily, watched the old man leave at the pace of a wounded turtle, Harley backed past the right shoulder of the jade goddess and so did Qing.
Still laughing, the bandit with the gun turned to face them. ‘The piece,’ he reminded them menacingly, his laughter dying. The man extended his gun arm and began walking across the room towards them.
In response, Qing lowered her centre of gravity in the way that Harley had come to view as trouble, and crossed her wrists downwards before her as if there were a line running through the centre of her body, her wrists passing through that line.
‘Lěng,’ she barked in a way that sent shivers down Harley’s spine. The word had seemed to bounce off all the exposed wooden rafters of the workroom.
The man paused in his forward progress, sniggering, ‘Sudden? Hardly.’
Qing ignored him and changed her guard so that both her arms were facing up, her wrists crossed just beneath her chin, the backs of her hands framing her face, and uttered the word, ‘Tán.’
The man’s expression shifted into one of bored impatience. ‘To spring?’ he yawned. ‘You’re just standing there wasting my time. The piece, girl.’
Qing changed her guard again so that her crossed wrists jutted out to her right. ‘Kuài,’ she snapped.
