by Kylie Chan
My father came up behind her and Simone hugged and kissed him too. He held his hand out to shake Leo’s. ‘Leo, mate, good to see you.’ He squeezed Simone around the waist. ‘How’s my little girl?’
Simone jiggled with excitement. ‘I just got a new horse! He’s only a baby and he talks!’
‘A talking horse, eh,’ my father said, bemused. ‘Come inside and tell us all about it.’
My mother reached one hand towards me. ‘Come on, Emma, don’t hang back. You’re part of this family too, so come on in.’
I took the smallest serpent form I could and followed Leo’s chair inside.
‘So you’re Immortal now, eh?’ my father said to Leo as he handed him a large mug of instant coffee. ‘But you’re still paraplegic. How does that work? I thought Immortals were like gods or something, all perfect.’
‘Emma can tell you how it works,’ Leo said. ‘She knows more about it than I do.’
‘They remain in the form they were in at the moment they were Raised,’ I said. ‘That’s why John’s hair’s always coming out—he was Raised straight after a big battle and his hair was a mess.’
‘Why Chinese men—particularly warriors—choose to have long hair is completely beyond me,’ my father said, shaking his head. ‘It’s always coming out—must be a damn nuisance.’
‘You can ask John about that when he returns,’ I said with humour. ‘He’d occasionally lose his temper about it and have something of a rant.’
‘I can’t imagine John losing his temper, he was the coolest man I’ve ever met,’ my mother said.
‘Is, Nanna,’ Simone corrected her. ‘He’s not a was, he’s an is. He’s out there somewhere, and he’s going to come back for us.’
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ my mother said, and patted her arm. ‘You know what I mean.’
Simone gave her a friendly squeeze. ‘Yeah, Nanna, I know.’
Everyone sat at the dining table, and I took a larger serpent form and rested my coils on the floor. My mother put a bowl of tea in front of me and I sipped it, enjoying the fine flavour of the Tiger’s best tea.
‘Can you do Immortal stuff, Leo?’ my father said.
Leo grinned, then his wheelchair rose about five centimetres above the floor, hovered and dropped with a rattle. ‘I’m getting there. I can walk if I need to, but it takes a lot of effort. It’s easier to do the black lion thing. I occasionally change into a lion at the Academy so I can get around easier. It’s fun—it freaks everybody out.’
‘A black lion,’ my father said with wonder. ‘I saw you at Rhonda’s wedding, you were huge. Congratulations, mate, it was a sight to see when you were Raised.’
‘And then poor Rhonda exploded everywhere,’ Leo said, his face falling. ‘Michael’s still getting over that. He’s refusing to believe it was his mother; he won’t give up searching for her. Kwan Yin even told him it was really her, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘I hope it works out all right for him,’ my father said.
‘Your brother was here,’ my mother said to Simone. ‘He said we have to move to the Northern Heavens. Something about Celestial Harmony.’
‘You don’t have to move there unless you want to,’ I said. ‘Martin’s just being old-fashioned.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ my father said. ‘Because we’re happy and settled here; we have a lot of friends in the Tiger’s family and we really would prefer not to move.’
My mother flipped open her mobile phone and texted someone. ‘Just telling Jen you’re here, Emma, she wants to see you.’
I shrank my serpent form slightly smaller so I could only just see over the table.
My mother glared at me. ‘Don’t be like that, Jen’s as proud of you as we all are. Look at you, some sort of general, and Regent, whatever that is. Everybody talks about you in the same sort of voice they used to talk about John.’
‘What, you mean scared?’ Leo said with amusement.
My father pointed at Leo with triumph. ‘Damn straight.’
My mother tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Brendan! It’s rude to point.’
‘And bad luck,’ he added, still amused. He leaned on the arm of his chair to speak conspiratorially to Leo. ‘Did you know that this is villa number four? It has 3A on the letterbox, but everybody knows it’s number four. Nobody would live here until we arrived.’
‘We Aussies don’t care about silly things like bad luck numbers,’ my mother said, busying herself making more tea and pulling out a packet of Australian biscuits. ‘The Tiger’s pleased he finally has someone living here.’ She waved the biscuits at Simone. ‘Tim Tam?’
Simone jiggled with delight. ‘I haven’t had one of those in ages.’
‘Oh, those evil things,’ Leo said. He raised one hand. ‘A couple over here too, ma’am, if you please.’
‘Emma?’ my mother said.
‘Oh, Emma doesn’t eat in snake form,’ Simone said dismissively.
‘Good. More for us,’ my father said with a wink.
‘Why not? That means you never eat while you’re up here in Shangri-La,’ my mother said. ‘That’s just silly, Emma.’
‘Yeah, she goes for days at a time without eating,’ Simone said through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit. ‘She’s probably starving right now; she’s been up on the Celestial for three days and hasn’t eaten a thing.’
‘So go find me a live rat or a bird,’ I said softly.
They were all silent at that.
The doorbell rang and my mother’s face lit up. ‘There’s Jen now.’
My sister Jennifer and my friend Louise came in. Jennifer grimaced when she saw me, but Louise came right up and tapped me on the head.
‘That you?’ she said.
‘No, I’m a wild, venomous python and I’m going to eat you,’ I said.
‘Cool, it is you,’ Louise said, and sat at the table. ‘Oh my God, are those Tim Tams?’
‘Help yourself, love,’ my mother said, and Louise didn’t need to be asked twice.
Jennifer stayed on the opposite side of the room from me, her face rigid with restraint. ‘Uh, hi, Emma. Good to see you.’
‘I didn’t know you had a snake phobia,’ I said.
Jen grimaced again. ‘Sort of.’
‘Chicken,’ Louise said with a grin. ‘Emma’s not gonna hurt you, Jen. Oh,’ she turned to face me, ‘the reason we’re here is to invite you to a party in the main part of the palace tonight. Can you come? A lot of the girls would love to meet you.’
I hesitated. Simone was right: I was starving and couldn’t wait to get home to eat. But it would be fun to spend some time with the girls. ‘Sure.’
‘Cool. Oh, and by the way,’ Louise leaned closer to me and grinned, ‘pythons aren’t venomous.’
‘Just mention the Nemesis and this one becomes extremely venomous,’ Simone said, still munching on the biscuit. ‘It’s just like a Harlequin romance: she hates him but he pursues her, sure that one day she’ll see exactly how great he really is.’
‘He’d be great turning green and foaming at the mouth,’ I said quietly.
‘See?’ Simone said with triumph. ‘Venomous!’
The party was held in the Tiger’s Grand Audience Hall, which was filled with wives of about the same age as Louise—most of them wearing skin-tight miniskirts—together with many of the Elite Seraglio Guards, some in uniform and some in designer outfits, obviously off-duty. A dance floor had been set up at one end of the hall, complete with disco ball and laser lights. One of the Tiger’s sons had set up double turntables and was acting as DJ. I felt the music vibrating through the floor beneath my coils.
Louise and Jen guided me out through the French doors along the side of the hall into the garden decked with coloured fairy lights. A buffet had been set up here, and many of the wives stood around eating or sat at the tables on the lawn.
‘Isn’t this awesome?’ Louise said. ‘We have one of these every couple of weeks; we alternate with the twenty-somethings. Sometim
es the Tiger wanders in and then it gets really wild.’
A trio of giggling women approached us cautiously.
‘Excuse me, but are you, like, Emma?’ one of them said.
I bowed my head slightly. ‘Yes, I’m Emma.’
‘The Dark Lady? The real one?’
‘That’d be me.’
‘We were wondering,’ she glanced at her two friends, ‘if there was, like, anything you need? Anything we could do for you? How about some PR work or secretarial stuff?’
‘I can type,’ one of her friends said.
‘I worked in a fashion magazine before I met the Tiger,’ the other one added. ‘I can help out if you need it.’
‘Why would you want to work for me?’ I said, suspicious. Then I realised what they were after. ‘No, I’m sorry, I won’t tell the Tiger to give you more time if you do things for me. I don’t work like that.’
‘How about I share my skills as a personal shopper and you have a quick word with Tigger on my behalf?’ the first girl said.
‘I think I just said no,’ I said.
‘Louise,’ one of them said in a drawn-out whine, ‘tell her to get us more time with him. We’ll let you in on the deal.’
‘Honey,’ Louise said, ‘she won’t even talk to him on my behalf and I’m supposed to be her best friend.’
Another group of wives approached, five of them this time. ‘Is this Emma?’ one said.
‘Yeah,’ replied one of the women from the first group. ‘The real one.’
‘Hey,’ said one of the newcomers, ‘I just wanted to say thank you. You helped us all out and we appreciate it.’
There was a chorus of assent from the other wives.
‘What did I do?’ I said.
One of them turned to address the rest of the women in the garden. ‘Hey, guys, this is Emma! The Dark Lady! The snake one!’
More wives gathered, smiling with encouragement. Some of them burst into spontaneous applause, a few of them cheering.
‘What did I do?’ I repeated. ‘Is this because I defeated Demon Prince Six?’
‘No, silly,’ one of the wives said. ‘We want to show our appreciation because you got that uppity bitch Rhonda out of our faces and now we’re all equal again.’
‘Yeah!’ some of the others shouted. ‘Way to go, Emma!’
I slithered away and back into the hall as fast as my coils could take me. Louise and Jennifer had to run to keep up.
‘Emma, wait!’ Louise shouted after me.
Suddenly the music stopped and all the lights in the hall came on. I stopped, dazzled by the brightness.
‘Emperor present. All show respect!’ a Horseman shouted from the main entrance. In a single smooth movement all of the women and guards present fell to their knees, their heads bowed.
The Tiger walked in, came to me, fell to one knee, saluted, then rose again. ‘Hope my girls are showing you a good time, ma’am.’
I pulled out the oldest excuse in the book. ‘I need some air.’ I turned to Louise and Jennifer. ‘I need to talk to the Tiger alone, if you don’t mind.’
‘Whoa, listen to the boss lady,’ Louise said. ‘Top-secret, superhero god stuff, eh?’
I slithered out of the hall, the Tiger following me. When we were some distance from the crowd I stopped. ‘They just gave me three cheers for killing Rhonda,’ I said, my voice hissing with frustration. ‘Bitches.’
‘That they are,’ the Tiger said, glancing back at the hall. ‘Not many women aren’t. Particularly when things get tough.’
I glared at him. ‘That goes for me too, I suppose.’
He put his hands on his hips and smiled slightly. ‘You more than any of them.’
I turned away. ‘Make it quite clear to them that I had nothing to do with Rhonda.’
‘I have. They need someone to hero-worship, and you’re it. Some of them have started learning the arts from the Masters here. You’ve even inspired some of them to talk back to me.’
‘I think Rhonda would have had something to do with that as well,’ I said, turning back to look at him. ‘Now I see why she said you had to be dragged tailfirst into the twenty-first century.’
‘I love the twenty-first century; health care is at an amazing level. Used to be if my wives went down to the Earthly for a trip, they’d come back with all sorts of nasty shit and die in no time. Now, just about everything’s curable.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you—you living so long, and them ageing and dying?’
He concentrated on me. ‘You worried about Ah Wu ditching you because you’re getting old?’
‘Actually, no. But it must be hard to lose so many that you love.’
‘Meh. They live a good, long, healthy and luxurious life here, and they die and I move on.’
‘Damn, you’re a callous bastard. Don’t you mourn them?’
‘I prefer practical. I lose a few a year—I’m not spending all my time mourning them, that’d be a waste. They live a good life. That’s worth celebrating.’
The sweet scent of fresh, young blood wafted over the lawn and I raised my head. ‘What’s that?’
The Tiger sniffed the air. ‘Just some birds.’
A woman walked past with a couple of small children, both about five years old. She wore a traditional long silk tunic with matching leggings, and the children wore pantsuits in black cotton with toggles and loops, their hair shaved except for a topknot each. When the woman saw the Tiger she dropped to one knee, bowed gracefully, then rose and continued.
The scent was coming from them; the children in particular exuded the wonderfully sweet, rich scent of fresh blood. It drew me closer. The woman saw me approaching, grabbed the children’s hands and ran. I didn’t think; I just pursued them. One of those children would keep me satisfied for weeks, and the feeling of swallowing it whole would be precious indeed. If I grabbed it and squeezed hard enough, it might even take bird form and be even more delicious to eat.
One of the children tripped and sprawled on the grass. The mother saw how close I was and changed to phoenix form. She spread her wings protectively over her children and burst into flames.
Something grabbed me by the throat from behind and hurled me to the ground, holding me there. ‘Go,’ a voice said, a throaty rumble, and the phoenix changed back to human form and hurried her chicks away.
The pressure holding me down didn’t give way. ‘Now listen to me,’ the voice said, and I recognised it as the Tiger. My senses began to return and I shrank with horror at what I’d nearly done.
‘You can let me up,’ I said.
‘Not quite yet, she’s still too close,’ the Tiger said. ‘Listen up. You’d better fucking start eating when you’re on the Celestial Plane or I’ll make a complaint to the Jade Emperor. That was a mighty close call there; she’s one of my oldest and most respected wives.’
I didn’t reply, still stiff with shock.
‘Did you fucking hear me!’ the Tiger rasped.
‘I hear you, I’m just…’ My voice trailed off. ‘I can’t believe I just did that.’
‘Start eating on the Celestial Plane,’ the Tiger repeated with force.
‘Can you help me?’ I said, my voice small.
‘The people in the Northern Heavens are the ones to ask,’ the Tiger said. ‘Go talk to them. They’ve had experience with Ah Wu’s Serpent. My staff just bring me big, bleeding chunks of African wildlife.’
He released my head and I raised it, then turned to him. ‘I am so sorry, Lord Bai Hu, please accept this small serpent’s apology.’
‘Apology accepted,’ he said gruffly. ‘Go home to the Earthly and have something to eat. Then, when you have time, come back and talk to your Retainers here about food in the Heavens. If this happens again I’ll make your life complete hell.’
Simone transported Leo and me back to our Hong Kong apartment later that evening. She was flushed and excited from spending time with the family.
‘I’d better head to bed,’ she said. �
�I have a test first thing tomorrow.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you okay to take human form, Emma?’
I changed and shook myself out. ‘No problem at all.’
‘You could at least conjure some clothes with no holes in them,’ she said, and slipped out of the living room before I could think of a suitable retort.
I went into the kitchen. Monica opened the door between the kitchen and her room; she was already in her pyjamas. ‘Can I get you anything, ma’am?’
‘It’s okay, go back to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some noodles for myself.’
She came into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. ‘I’ll do that for you, ma’am.’
I went to her, opened the door and pushed her back into her room. ‘No, you won’t. It’s late, and I can look after myself. I know where everything is. Go back to bed.’
She grimaced. ‘At least leave the dishes for me to clean up, ma’am.’
‘Whatever you say,’ I said, not meaning it.
She went back into her room and closed the door, and I proceeded to raid the fridge for some ho fan, baby bok choy and vegetable stock to make myself some soup noodles. I checked the use-by date on the cans of cat food in the bottom of the cupboard; they were still good. Maybe this time they would get eaten before they needed to be replaced.
Leo wheeled himself into the kitchen and I waved the cooking chopsticks at him. ‘Want some?’
‘Nah, I ate in the West while you were at the party,’ he said.
He went over to the drip coffee machine set up on a low benchtop on the other side of the kitchen and poured himself some strong black coffee. He inhaled deeply as he brought the mug to his mouth. ‘Need to get one of these sent up to the Northern Heavens—they don’t have a single decent coffee machine there. The only coffee I could get was some sort of awful coffee-coconut mix that they make on Hainan Island.’
‘Oh, I tried that, it was foul,’ I said. ‘When do you think you’ll be able to carry yourself up there?’
He took another sip of coffee and made the wheelchair spin around by itself so he was facing me. He grinned with pride. ‘Getting there, won’t be long.’
‘You moved the chair too fast—you’ve spilt coffee in your lap,’ I said, and turned back to the noodles.
