Mount Emily Revisited

by Low Ying Ping

  “I’ll go with you,” Elena offered.

  “All right,” Min Ling said reluctantly. “But be very careful, and if you hear a car approaching, get ready to run!”

  Patsy and Elena walked towards the house, their hands instinctively winding together in a tight clasp. As they walked up the driveway, Patsy was conscious of the fact that she could not sense the crystal. “It’s definitely not here anymore,” she whispered to Elena. “It’s either in the car with Ye Kang or Wu Ji took it back with him.”

  “I just can’t believe he’d let the crystal fall into the hands of the Midnight Warriors,” Elena whispered back.

  “I know! But I can’t believe that he’ll leave us trapped here either, after hearing that Raine can’t come back to save us.”

  The girls reached the front door of the house. Patsy leaned forward and pressed her ear against the door, trying to listen for any noises from within, then nearly fell forward as the door swung open. Elena caught her just in time.

  The girls exchanged frightened glances, then Elena grasped Patsy’s hand and stepped cautiously inside the house. Patsy followed, her heart beating rapidly.

  With the front door wide open, there was enough light from the street for Patsy to make out the three-seater sofa and small coffee table in the living room. There was a large, built-in TV console against the wall but no TV.

  “Look!” Elena exclaimed, pointing to a spot near the stairs.

  Wu Ji’s backpack lay discarded on the floor, its contents strewn haphazardly about.

  “Oh no,” Patsy cried, rushing over. She squatted down to inspect the items. The backpack was ripped, and it looked as if Ye Kang had upended it to empty its contents onto the marble floor. A clunky mechanical device used for playing music, which Patsy knew from her past adventure was a Walkman, lay broken. A wallet, pen and book were beside it. Patsy picked up the book. It was the last volume in the sword-fighting series, Two Peerless Heroes. The book that gave him his 1988 name, Patsy thought with nostalgia.

  A wig had also fallen from the bag. Holding the beehive-shaped false hair in her hands, she recalled how Mrs Kwek had said the lost boy of 1988 had stolen her wig. So Wu Ji had remembered to do it to keep his mother’s memories accurate. He was such an honourable, noble boy. Even towards the end, he remembered his duties. What was the message he wanted to give her, locked in her uncle’s poem? She wished she knew how he felt about her—a failed Keeper of Time.

  In the middle of her reverie, she felt Elena pull her arm urgently. Patsy lay down the wig. Instantly, she saw what Elena was pointing at. It was the plain black box that had held the crystal. It was open, and it was empty.

  chapter twenty-one

  ell?” Min Ling asked anxiously when Patsy and Elena had hurried out of the house and crossed over to the park.

  Patsy shook her head and Elena said, “We searched the house. Wu Ji is gone. Ye Kang obviously went through his backpack—everything was thrown onto the floor.” She lifted up the backpack for everyone to see. Despite the huge rip at the side, they had managed to pack all of Wu Ji’s belongings back into it. “The crystal’s box is there, but it’s empty.”

  Min Ling made a noise of exasperation. “We have to hope it was taken by Wu Ji. Otherwise, we might as well have handed Ye Kang the crystal from the beginning.”

  Patsy shook her head again. “I don’t think it’s with Ye Kang. Wu Ji would have found a way to keep it out of his hands.” She felt rather stubborn, but she found it hard to believe Wu Ji would let them down. He had said to trust him, and that everything would be all right…

  “But if Ye Kang did have the crystal, what would he do?” Maggie asked. “He left the house in such a hurry he didn’t even close his door properly. Where might he be headed?”

  A hard look came over Min Ling’s face. “He would go to the centre of time power to activate the crystal. We have to get there as quickly as we can.”

  “But he has a gun,” Charlotte whimpered.

  “We have no choice,” Min Ling said, her tone grim. “If he has the crystal, we have to stop him from using it.”

  The five of them dashed out to the main road and fortunately, were able to hail two taxis almost immediately. Patsy sat with Elena and Maggie in one, while Charlotte and Min Ling got into the other.

  What would they find when they reached Mount Em? “Hurry, uncle,” Patsy urged the taxi driver. As she watched the scenery sweeping by outside, she recalled the last time she had raced down to Mount Emily in a car. That trip had ended with Min Ling meeting Ye Kang, starting the chain of events that led to their predicament today. Patsy, Elena and Charlotte had made it in time—though barely—to the slope to stop the Midnight Warrior from passing through the time barriers. What would happen now?

  The taxis arrived at the school and the five of them hurried in, past the concourse area, through the canteen, past the science laboratories and finally down the flight of stairs that led to the slope.

  No one was there.

  “The crystal has not been used,” Min Ling sighed in relief. “I would have felt the residual power if it had.”

  Maggie clapped her hands in delight. “That means Ye Kang probably doesn’t have the crystal! Wu Ji’s plan must have worked after all!”

  “Or he took it back with him to 2017,” Elena reminded her.

  Maggie’s face fell. “Oh, right. What should we do now?”

  Patsy noticed that Min Ling was looking very pale. She seemed to collapse rather than sit against a pillar.

  “Are you all right?” Charlotte asked, sounding anxious.

  Min Ling nodded weakly. “I just need to rest.”

  The girls stood around, feeling awkward, not knowing what to do or say.

  Like Spring but not Spring, the leaves fall again…

  Almost unbidden, the first line of her Uncle Pat’s poem came to Patsy’s mind. That was the poem she had helped him write. She had memorised that poem in school in 2015, and had quoted that line unthinkingly when she travelled back to 1987 a year ago. Uncle Pat had then used that line in the poem that had shot him to fame. She had achieved all that unknowingly the last time. Could she achieve the same feat now? “That Pair of Eyes.” She only had the title this time. Would it be enough?

  “We have to make Uncle Pat write the poem,” Patsy said suddenly. She was aware that everyone was staring at her and reddened. “Wu Ji’s message is hidden in the poem. We have to find out what it is.”

  “How do we make him write a poem?” Charlotte asked, sounding doubtful.

  “It won’t be easy,” Patsy said, “but we have to try.” I must do this right to make up for my lie, she thought. “Maggie, can you tell my mum you want to work on the geography project this afternoon and get yourself invited to her flat? I’ll teach you what to say to Uncle Pat.”

  Maggie looked at each face in turn, as if waiting for better ideas. When there appeared to be none, she shrugged. “All right, I’ll try.”

  After Maggie had left, the other four settled down at the bottom of the slope to wait for her news. Charlotte bought them some sandwiches from the canteen and they ate while chatting quietly. Patsy discovered she was ravenous and wolfed down the food. Charlotte and Min Ling too ate eagerly while Elena told them some of her grandfather’s jokes to pass the time, her face lit with the pleasure of having an appreciative audience.

  Patsy noted that among the five of them still on this adventure, only Elena was not a Keeper of Time. How does she still carry herself with such confidence? Patsy wondered. If she had been the odd one out, she would have been constantly conscious of her inferiority. But then again, she was a Keeper of Time, and possessed time power, yet was too afraid to use it. What use was that power to her then? With or without the power, she still felt inadequate. Perhaps that was why she was attracted to Wu Ji. No matter how badly she behaved, he did not seem to judge her for it. If Maggie succeeded in getting Patrick to write the poem, would they discover that it really was just a love message to her, and not ab
out the crystal at all? Patsy looked at Elena munching happily on her sandwich, and her heart tightened inside her. I must give up all thoughts of Wu Ji, for Elena’s sake. He’s just a boy I met two days ago, while Elena and I go back a long way.

  After a couple of hours, Maggie returned, a bounce in her step. In her hand was a folded piece of yellow paper.

  “You did it!” Patsy cried, running over and giving Maggie a hug.

  Elena and Charlotte crowded round, trying to get a glimpse of what was written on the paper.

  “Slowly!” Maggie cried. “This contains one of the earliest poems handwritten by the famous poet Patrick Seng, all right? Years later, I can probably sell it for thousands of dollars.”

  “Is that Maggie or Joyce talking?” Patsy asked.

  Maggie giggled. “Both, I guess.”

  “How did you get him to do it?” Elena asked.

  “Like Patsy advised, I appealed to his big ego,” Maggie said. “That really worked.”

  “I knew it,” Patsy said, pleased. When she’d spent one month in her mother’s mind, she’d got to know more about how her uncle was like in his teenage years. She knew that before he became famous, he was insecure about his writing and would be susceptible to any form of praise.

  “I said that I heard from Mabel he was writing Chinese poetry, and I really wanted to read it,” Maggie continued. “He showed me one and I piled on the praise, then asked if he could show me another. He said he had just finished writing one, but wasn’t sure what to name it. He seemed almost shy when he passed it to me. I read it. There were a number of words I didn’t recognise, but ‘eyes’ were mentioned quite a lot. Just to check if it’s the right poem, I suggested he name it ‘That Pair of Eyes’. His eyes practically lit up when I said that and he agreed, so I guess it’s the right poem.”

  “Wu Ji said it hadn’t been written yet,” Elena objected.

  “He won’t have known exactly when it was written,” Min Ling said. “The poem will probably only get published some time later.”

  “Let’s see it,” Patsy said eagerly, and Maggie unfolded the paper. The girls huddled around it in silence for half a minute.

  “You’re right, Maggie,” Elena said at last. “It’s too complex for me to understand too.”

  “We don’t need to understand the whole poem,” Charlotte reminded them.

  Patsy nodded and read aloud in Mandarin the last two lines of the poem:

  “‘These truths I swear shall not prove false

  Even when snow dots my brows and hair.’

  The last word of the last two lines…‘false’ and ‘hair’,” Elena said.

  “False hair,” Patsy repeated in Mandarin. Then she translated it into English: “That’s ‘wig’! Wu Ji meant a wig!” So it wasn’t a love message after all, she thought with disappointment, then forced herself to put her emotions aside as she started going through Wu Ji’s torn backpack urgently. Her hands trembled so much with excitement that she fumbled several times before finally drawing out Yvonne Yoong’s beehive wig. Everyone stared at it in amazement.

  “Why would he point to the wig?” Maggie asked.

  Min Ling took the wig and turned it over in her hands. It was a good quality wig, heavy with the countless strands of real human hair packed closely together. The black locks crisscrossed at the base and twirled round in tight circles to form the hive-like shape at the top.

  Min Ling pressed the wig all over, then pried it open in the middle. Patsy, Maggie and Charlotte gave a collective gasp. Patsy knew that her fellow Keepers of Time must have felt that instantaneous pull at their hearts that she herself felt. For gleaming within the folds of hair, was the Crystal of Time.

  chapter twenty-two

  in Ling dug out the crystal from the wig and everyone crowded round to look at it. “Why couldn’t we feel it before?” Charlotte asked wonderingly.

  “It was hidden in human hair—a part of the human body,” Min Ling explained.

  Patsy remembered the story Maggie had told them about a Keeper from ages past who’d swallowed the crystal to hide it from the Midnight Warriors. She shuddered. Thankfully Wu Ji had not been so desperate.

  “Clever Wu Ji,” Elena marvelled. “He must have shoved the crystal into the wig just before he disappeared.”

  “If that’s so,” Min Ling said, “Ye Kang would have stopped being able to sense the crystal. He must have thought that Wu Ji was a Keeper of Time too, and had taken the crystal with him when he disappeared.”

  “What would he do then?” Charlotte asked.

  Min Ling thought for a bit. “He would have dashed off to my flat to look for me, to demand that I find Wu Ji and retrieve the crystal. Finding the flat empty, he might even go to Yvonne’s place to look for me there.”

  “Thankfully Auntie Yvonne doesn’t spend much of the day at home during the school holidays,” Maggie said. “She usually goes shopping with her friends or plays mahjong.”

  “Where would he go next?” Patsy asked.

  A deep, resonant voice replied, “Where else, but here?”

  Patsy turned and gasped. It was him—Ye Kang. He had climbed over the railing unnoticed while the group had been engrossed with the crystal. Now he stood pointing his gun at them. Slouching a little behind him with a sulky expression was his son Kelvin.

  Patsy stared at Ye Kang standing in the semi-gloom, silhouetted against the dimming light of sundown from beyond the slope. She gave an involuntary gasp when she took in his tall, muscular frame, the square shoulders, the deep-set yet startlingly bright eyes… especially the eyes. It was as if Patsy were seeing him for the first time. For a moment, her vision blurred and she thought she saw a black, flowing cloak enveloping him, a loose black hood covering his head. Then her eyes cleared and she saw him as he was—dressed in a plain black shirt and black pants. But her mind had already made the connection.

  “You’re the Midnight Warrior who killed Maggie!” she screamed. “It’s you! I remember your eyes!”

  Maggie made a small whimper, and Min Ling stood up, her face swept clean of colour. “Is this true? Was it you?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Ye Kang said, grinding his teeth. “It was my grandfather. Years ago my grandfather was foiled in his plans to enter the future in 1987. Ever since, it has been my destiny to intercept you at that road junction leading to Mount Emily.”

  “So these lies,” Min Ling said softly. “Courting me, telling me you loved me… they had all been planned as far back as two generations ago…just so you could get the crystal and rebuild your sect…”

  “Not just to rebuild it,” Ye Kang cried. “For revenge! When my grandfather failed in his mission, he was tortured for many days by our leaders. And when he finally died, it was in shame and disgrace. My father swore he would avenge this disgrace, and sent me and Kelvin into the future to complete this duty. Although our sect is now no more, I will have my vengeance! I will destroy every single one of you who carries the blood of the Keepers of Time!”

  Patsy saw Min Ling’s hand creep over her belly protectively, and in that instant, she knew that Min Ling had been right—Raine must be sent away. Not only that; she must never return while this madman Ye Kang was still alive.

  “Enough talking,” Ye Kang growled. “Give me the crystal.”

  “Never,” Min Ling said quietly.

  “Why do I even bother to ask?” he said, his lips curling into a sneer. Then he raised his palm. The crystal was sucked out of Min Ling’s hand and shot into Ye Kang’s. Patsy remembered Min Ling doing the same trick of pulling the crystal to her a year ago, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Ye Kang’s grandfather. Why had Min Ling allowed Ye Kang to take it from her so easily now?

  She looked at Min Ling’s ashen face, then she knew. Her pregnancy had weakened her! She glanced at Maggie, who was cowering behind Min Ling. She was obviously still traumatised by the event of her “murder” by a very similar-looking Midnight Warrior, which to her had happened only a few days ago. C
harlotte had her arm around Min Ling, a look of determination on her face, but she was clearly focused on protecting her mother. She did not look like she planned on taking on Ye Kang. Elena stood absolutely straight, as elegant and composed as ever, but she had no time power.

  It was all up to Patsy then, the last remaining Keeper of Time. But perhaps Ye Kang didn’t know that. She might just be able to take him by surprise.

  The man still had his right hand outstretched, his gun pointing at them. His left hand cradled the crystal close to his chest as he studied with glee the treasure his family had coveted for generations.

  “Father!” Kelvin shouted out in warning, but it was too late. The crystal had been pulled out of his hand. As the crystal flew towards Patsy, the force of the trajectory knocked the gun out of Ye Kang’s right hand. He stumbled and reached for the fallen gun, but Elena had sprung into action. Something flew towards Ye Kang and cracked against his head. The object fell onto the ground and burst open. Batteries and other small parts rolled out. It was Wu Ji’s broken Walkman.

  Ye Kang fell heavily on the ground, but instead of lying there clutching his head, as Patsy expected, he managed to roll and close the distance between himself and Patsy. He stretched out his hand and Patsy felt the crystal almost slip from her grasp. She was a Keeper of Time—her power was fuelled by the sun; he was a Midnight Warrior—an agent of the dark. But it was dusk, so neither of them had an advantage. She was powerful, she realised that now, but he was older and stronger. Just when she felt she could hold on to it no longer, she felt a warm source of power flowing gently through her arms and the crystal settled back into the nest of her palms. Maggie and Charlotte had placed a hand each on Patsy’s shoulders, adding their power to hers.

  “Kelvin!” Ye Kang snarled, and his son came forward with a start, to place his hand on his father’s shoulder.