by Kylie Chan
The mist of the cloud surrounded a sturdy platform, and I curled up on it. ‘Simone’s one of the most powerful creatures in creation, Michael; a group of ordinary humans can’t hurt her.’
‘They can break her heart.’
I nodded my serpent head. ‘You have a point. But Leo is there to make sure they don’t.’
‘I just wish she had the brains to realise that Celestial High is where she should be!’ Michael said, frustrated. ‘She would learn so much there, and not just about her talents. She knows nothing about demons.’
‘Go on and tell her.’
He grimaced again. ‘Yeah, I know how far that’ll get me. I never went there myself, I have no first-hand experience, I’m living as a normal human on the Earthly…My opinion isn’t worth squat.’
I chose my words carefully. ‘I think she’d probably value your advice. You’re like a big brother to her. Feel free to talk to her about this. I’m not happy about this school either but she’s determined to go to a “normal” school and we don’t have any other choice on the Earthly. If I try and force her to go to CH she’ll just ditch school altogether, same way you did.’
He was silent at that.
The cloud lifted from the ground, giving me a view of the entire Celestial Palace complex. In many ways it mirrored the Forbidden City in Beijing: rectangular buildings with gold-tiled roofs, small courtyard gardens, and a system of high red walls throughout that separated the large formal ceremonial buildings from the smaller residential and administrative areas. Hundreds of cherry trees bloomed between the buildings and walls. The Grand Audience Chamber sat on top of the hill, its white walls and gold roof shimmering against the brilliantly blue Celestial sky.
‘I’m surprised there’s no analogue for Tian Tan, the Temple of Heaven,’ I said. ‘That’s as big a tourist attraction in Beijing as the Forbidden City.’
‘Haven’t you been there?’ Michael said, amused. ‘It’s half an hour away in the other direction.’
‘It’s only the last couple of months that I’ve discovered I can come to the Celestial in serpent form,’ I said. ‘I’m still finding my way around. I’m always getting lost in the Palace of the Dark Heavens, and the demons are too terrified to put me on the right path. I spent half an hour wandering around last week, no idea where I was.’
The sky darkened from midday blue to the rich violet of evening, and a few stars shone around us.
‘What’s happening?’ I said.
‘The Archives are always in the dark. Dunno why, but it goes from evening to night as you approach.’
‘Are we time-travelling? Moving faster through the day?’
Michael chuckled. ‘You do need to spend more time on the Celestial. Nobody can time-travel, Emma, especially not me. You can’t go breaking the fundamental laws of the universe like that, it just doesn’t work. We’re only moving into an area where it’s always night.’
‘John’s time-travelled. I saw a shadow of him as he was when Simone was a little girl, just last year in a record shop. He recognised us.’
‘Wow,’ Michael said quietly. ‘That’s just…wow.’
The sky darkened to the deep blue-purple of night and the stars came out fully, blazing with the brilliance of high altitude and clear air. A cluster of lights coalesced into view some distance away, and slowly grew as we travelled closer. The temperature didn’t drop as I would have expected at night; it remained warm and pleasant, the breeze full of rich night-time fragrances.
‘I’ve never met the Archivist, but Dad says to take it slowly with him,’ Michael said.
‘Yeah, he’s completely ignored my precedence so far. I was only able to arrange this meeting with Ma’s help,’ I said.
‘You have some powerful friends, ma’am.’
‘And some powerful enemies as well.’
‘I wouldn’t call Er Lang your enemy as such…’
‘I wasn’t talking about him. There are plenty of guys on the Celestial who have issues with my gender, my serpent nature and my mortality. They might not like me, but they’re out in the open about it. Your real enemies are the ones who pretend to be your friends.’
‘Oh no!’ He clutched his heart theatrically. ‘You’ve found me out! I am your sworn enemy, your nemesis! Now I cannot let you live!’
‘You are so lame sometimes,’ I said. ‘But not nearly as lame as the real Nemesis. Did you hear what he did?’
‘The ambush at Festie? That was real classy,’ he said. ‘And the girl who set that up was supposed to be Simone’s friend.’
I dropped my serpent head. ‘Talk to her about Celestial High, please.’
‘Will do.’
As the cloud took us closer to the Archives I could see that it was a floating series of walkways between large flattened rocks holding bookshelves and racks of scrolls. A particularly large rock in the centre, suspended in the night sky, held a traditional administrative building, its metre-wide veranda reaching right to the edge of the rock. Walkways spread from the central building to the other floating rocks. People became visible on the walkways and I suddenly realised that what I’d thought were small walkways of about a metre across were actually at least ten metres wide. The central building had originally appeared about three hundred metres to a side, but it could easily have been three times that.
‘I’ve seen something vaguely like this before,’ I said, confused. ‘Walkways in the night sky.’
‘The Archivist is a huge fan of Diablo II,’ Michael said. ‘He suddenly remodelled the Archives one day based on a level of the game.’
‘No way.’
‘There are even replica monsters roaming around,’ Michael said. ‘I heard that when Diablo III came out, the Archives were unavailable for three weeks.’
He guided our cloud over the walkways to the central building, and floated it up to the edge of the veranda so I could slide onto it.
‘I’ll stay with you as Retainer,’ he said, summoning his sword and clipping it onto his back. ‘I took the afternoon off work, told them I was having physical therapy for the limp.’
‘What’s the prognosis on that?’
‘I’ll get there.’
The doors opened by themselves, revealing the foyer: a rectangular room about ten metres wide and five deep, with a polished dark wood floor and red wood pillars holding up the roof with the complicated bracket structure used in traditional buildings. A few rosewood sofas, decorative chairs and coffee tables were placed around the room. Large rosewood shelving units on either side held a collection of vases from all dynasties. Doors led out to the left and right, but nobody was present.
‘And they complain about you breaching protocol,’ Michael said.
‘Any idea which way to go?’ I said.
Michael shook his head. ‘Never been here.’
I turned left. ‘I’ll go the yin direction then, just to be contrary.’
Michael opened the door on the left for me. The lower half was dark rosewood, but the top half was a random lattice of wood with paper between the slats. I slithered through the door and into a corridor running down the side of the building. To the left was a dead end, so I headed right. The air tasted of old, dry paper.
Michael unfocused, using his Inner Eye. ‘The Archivist’s office is at the end of this corridor, on the right. There’s a similar corridor on the other side so it didn’t matter which direction we went. The office takes up the back wall of this building, and the middle—where these doors are—holds what looks like the oldest and most valuable records.’
Keep your Inner Eye to yourself and both of you get your asses down here, the Archivist said into my head. From Michael’s expression he’d heard it too. Let’s get this over with so I can move on to something important.
‘Charming,’ I said, and slithered to the end of the corridor, Michael following me.
Michael opened the last door on the right for me and I went in. At first I thought we’d gone in the wrong door: several rows of bookshelves
stood in front of us, with an aisle between them. About half the documents on the shelves were scrolls bound with red ribbon; the other half were old-fashioned books. A very few ancient books made of bamboo slats, bound vertically and held together with string, were rolled up for storage on the end shelves.
‘Get a move on, I don’t have all day!’ the Archivist shouted from the centre of the room.
I glanced at Michael. The Archivist sounded like a young woman, but Michael had definitely said ‘he’. Michael missed my look and waited for me to proceed. I slithered down the aisle between the shelves and arrived in a large open area in the centre of the room. The Archivist sat behind a huge rosewood desk that was covered in books and scrolls, a brush and ink stone to one side. There were trolleys all around the desk holding more books and scrolls. The Archivist was in the form of a twelve-year-old Chinese boy wearing a traditional black silk robe. He had round glasses and wore his hair in a long pigtail. He finished the document he was annotating with brush and ink, hung the brush on the brush stand and glared at me.
He waved me impatiently towards him. ‘Hurry up, will you; you really are very slow.’
I nodded my head. ‘Archivist. Thank you for seeing me. I need your help.’
‘Yes, yes, you want to know what you are,’ the Archivist said, shuffling documents on his desk. He stopped and glared at me again. ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. Now piss off.’
‘I’m a snake. I don’t piss, I pass solid urine; you should know that,’ I said.
He glared at me again, then leaned back in his chair and laughed. He took his glasses off, wiped them on the sleeve of his robe, then put them back on. His laughter eventually faded to an evil chuckle.
‘Tell me where the stuff is and I’ll have a look myself,’ I said. ‘Anything about serpent Shen, anything about Rainbow Serpents, and anything you have about Australia’s first settlers. I also need to know if it’s possible to remove the demon essence from me.’
He gestured towards one of the trolleys. ‘It’s all there. I had the staff collate it for you before you arrived.’ He waved at a set of large double doors. ‘There are some reading rooms through there; they have computers with internet access, and there should be a stack of blank disks if you need them.’
‘My stone will take notes for me,’ I said. I nodded to him again. ‘I thank you, sir.’
He gazed at me appraisingly. ‘You treat me with the respect due to an adult despite my appearance.’
‘You treat me like shit even though I’m First Heavenly General,’ I said.
He banged his hand on the desk and laughed again. ‘That I do,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought a little human girl would be teaching me about respect.’
I moved closer to the desk and looked him in the eye. ‘Come down to the Earthly with a sword in your hand and I’ll give you a fine lesson in respect.’
He gasped with laughter again. ‘The Celestial didn’t tell me! If I’d known how much fun you are, Emma, I would have let you in here a long time ago. All I’d heard was that you were an uppity bitch who doesn’t know her place.’
‘That I am.’ I glanced at the trolley. ‘Is this everything? You didn’t hold anything back because you’re pissed at me?’
‘I’m not pissed at you so much as annoyed at having to do this pointless task,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows what you are: accept that. Just be what you are; that is the essence of the Tao.’
He waved one hand and a demon appeared next to the desk. ‘We do not have anything on removing demon essence from humans because that has never happened.’ He turned to the demon. ‘Do a full cross-indexed search on Lady Emma’s topics: serpent Shen, Rainbow Serpents, and settlers in Australia—we may not have anything on that last topic. When you have it, take it to reading room two.’
He rose gracefully from the chair and came around the desk. In his twelve-year-old form he reached only to chest height on Michael. ‘Let me show you to the room and you can do the rest yourselves. You might be a hell of a lot of fun, Emma, but I’m not going out of my way to help you on this pointless quest.’
CHAPTER 11
The reading room contained a mix of modern chairs and tables with computers, and rosewood couches and armchairs. A coffee table to one side held a teapot with cups, as well as a thermos jug with coffee, powdered whitener and sugar.
Michael and I sat and flipped open the documents. He looked at the books, having hands; I used my head to unroll the scrolls. They were readable regardless of their language, a benefit from being inside the Archives building. Many of the documents were very old, but some were recent articles published in academic journals; all of them were mind-numbingly tedious. After about half an hour, a demon tapped on the door and came in pushing another trolley of documents for us to study.
Emma, Leo said into my head. Emma, I need you back down here right now. It’s horrible…they brought boys along and one of them tried to drug Simone…
‘What is it, Emma?’ Michael said.
‘Tell Leo to share with you,’ I said.
Michael concentrated for a moment.
One of the boys tried to drug Simone—one of the girls helped him—oh God, Emma, it’s awful…
‘Take it easy, old man, start from the beginning—someone drugged Simone?’ Michael said, his voice fierce with urgency.
He tried to rape her. The girl slipped a roofie into Simone’s drink, Simone felt tired, she went down into the cabin at the front of the boat to sleep it off…the boy followed her…It sounded like Leo took a deep breath. She wasn’t unconscious, and when he tried to…when he tried to…she yinned him! She took half the boat with him. Fortunately it was the front end, and everybody else was at the back in the lounge or on the roof on the sundeck—but she’s killed him for sure, and the boat sank!
‘Where are you now? Where’s Simone?’ Michael said.
Water police, Leo said with misery. I herded them all onto the life raft, and the water police picked us up—the boat’s on the bottom of the harbour, with the front end blown completely off, and Simone’s taken off and won’t reply when I call her, and this boy is…he’s…she killed him, Emma. What do we do?
‘I need to get back down there right now,’ I said to Michael. ‘But nobody except Simone is big enough to carry me. You need to take me back to the Celestial Palace, and then meet me at the Nine Dragon Wall in the car.’
‘One of the Academy drivers will meet both of us there,’ Michael said. He concentrated for a moment.
Water Police Headquarters in Central, Leo said. Across the road from The Centre.
‘That’s not too far from Wan Chai, only about a fifteen-minute drive,’ Michael said. ‘Let’s go.’ ‘Contact Gold, ask him about the legal implications on the Earthly of the boat exploding in Hong Kong and the children being put in danger, and of this boy disappearing while in our care,’ I said to Michael as we rode his cloud back to the Celestial Palace. ‘Ask him to also check the Celestial implications of the fact that Simone’s killed this kid—the Celestial will know she’s done it and they’ll want to pursue her for breaking Celestial law.’
‘Done. Gold says he’ll meet you at the water police station. All the kids are there, and their parents are on the way. There’s a lot of hysteria from the parents already there, Emma, and Leo’s bearing most of it. They’re blaming him.’
Michael stopped at the top of the stairs leading back down to the Earthly. ‘It would be a shame to lose all that information the Archivist put together for you, Emma. Let me go back and put it on some disks for you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll pass them along to you later,’ he said.
The dragons were silent as I slithered down the stairs. I changed back to human form and walked to the kerb to meet the car.
‘Good luck, Emma!’ a voice called behind me—one of the dragons. I turned to thank it but the wall had returned to its normal form, the dragons unmoving. I nodded to them and got into the back of the car. Marcus was driving; Moni
ca, who’d obviously been crying, was sitting in the front.
‘I heard what happened, ma’am, and I’m sorry we didn’t go along to watch over the Princess,’ Marcus said as he pulled away from the kerb.
‘No need to apologise, Marcus, Leo was there,’ I said. ‘We could never have predicted that this would happen.’
‘Have we heard from little Simone?’ Monica said.
‘Nobody’s heard from her, Monica, but she’s just run away. She’s fine.’
Monica dropped her head and blew her nose with a soggy tissue. ‘She’s not fine, ma’am, a horrible boy tried to have his way with her and she killed him. No little girl should have to face things like that.’
Marcus thumped the steering wheel. ‘Trying to hurt our little Simone! She is so innocent, and he tried to take that innocence! He deserved it, the little…’ He dissolved into Tagalog, roundly cursing the boy involved.
It was mayhem at the water police headquarters. Parents hugged hysterical teens, shouting over their heads at the policeman behind the counter. When they saw me enter, the parents mobbed me. I pushed my way to the counter, the parents shouting abuse and threats at me. Gold was already there and he looked relieved when he saw us.
I yelled to the police officer, ‘Where is Leo Alexander?’
‘Why you ask about that dark-lei?’ one woman shouted. ‘Why you not ask about my daughter? You nearly killed my daughter!’
‘You are killer, just like that neeg-la in the wheelchair!’ a man shouted. ‘He kill that boy and that girl with rubbish boat and now he hides!’
‘Who are you?’ the policeman said, straining to be heard over the noise.
‘This is Emma Donahoe, the majority owner of the boat,’ Gold shouted over the counter. ‘I’m her lawyer, Gold Gam.’
‘That’s right, gweipoh, bring a lawyer, because we are going to sue you for everything you own. Go back to your own country!’ a woman yelled behind us.
The policeman nodded, and went through a door behind the counter. He opened a door in the wall and gestured for us to enter. He stopped Monica and Marcus. ‘Family only.’
