The Apprentices

by Mailie Meloy

  There was no answer. She brushed the thistle powder into a pot at the edge of the fire, and heard a child cry. She turned. “Shun Liu?”

  The cat mewed.

  “Not you,” she said. “Listen!”

  Again there was a faint cry. She walked through the empty rooms and out the front door. She stood in the little yard where her family had faced the soldiers while she hid in the trunk, and her whole body started to tremble. She was shivering as if from cold, but she wasn’t cold. She looked up and down the street, but it was empty. Was there a child next door? She would have heard it before now, she was certain.

  “Shun Liu?” she said.

  “He’s gone,” the cat said.

  She looked down at the striped creature. “Did you speak?”

  The cat mewed at her. Then it licked its fur.

  “Let’s go inside,” Jin Lo said, her teeth chattering. She watched herself as if from a distance. If the neighbors complained, the Public Security Force might come.

  Inside the house, she opened the vial of Quintessence, and the sweet smell filled the room. The Quintessence was the fifth element, the source of all life. It smelled like the first flowers of springtime, like honey and sunlight, like new grass after rain. The cat had licked the cork. Had it really spoken to her? Or was she imagining things? She tapped a drop from the vial into the cat’s water bowl. Once she had been a serious chemist, conducting careful experiments. Now she was feeding a powerful substance to a cat for no scientific reason. She might be losing her mind. She was certainly losing control of her body, which would not stop shaking. She lay down on the dusty kitchen floor, near the fire.

  The cat lapped up the water, then stretched and curled into the hollow of Jin Lo’s body. She felt its warmth, its rumbling purr, the beating of its heart.

  “You’re right,” Jin Lo said. “They’re gone. I have no one.”

  “Not true,” the cat said.

  “I have you,” Jin Lo admitted.

  “You have friends,” the cat said.

  Jin Lo thought of the despairing apothecary, his frustrated son, the vanished Count Vili. “They’ve lost sight of our purpose,” she said. “They’ve lost sight of our plan.”

  “Then help them to see,” the cat said.

  “They won’t listen.”

  “Not if you do not speak.”

  “I’m too weak.”

  “Because you do not eat,” the cat said. “You must eat.”

  “There’s no purpose.”

  “There is a purpose,” the cat said. “You must be the willow tree that bends but does not break.”

  “No,” Jin Lo said. “That was Shun Liu. He’s gone. And I am broken.”

  “I am Shun Liu,” the cat said. “And you are strong.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Kiss

  Janie slipped away during second period at East High, when she thought Mr. Magnusson’s day at the office might be starting. She went into the dim and empty school auditorium, and stood looking at the stage where A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be performed. She was proud of Raffaello for getting up there to audition, and for getting the part.

  Then she sat in one of the worn, velvet-upholstered seats, which folded down with a squeak. She tapped a few grains of powder into a glass of water, watched them dissolve, and drank it down. She was supposed to contact Benjamin tonight, and the powder might not work then, but this was her best chance to learn something. She didn’t know how long the effects of the few grains she’d slipped into the wineglass would stay in Magnusson’s body.

  She closed her eyes and thought about her roommate’s father, the first day she’d met him, blond and red-faced from carrying Opal’s boxes up the stairs. He had pumped her hand in greeting in the bare dorm room, blue eyes shining, and said she seemed like a sensible girl. Opal needed a sensible roommate, he said.

  Then she thought of him at dinner at Bruno’s, jolly and imperious, slighting Opal out of habit and calling for more water, more wine, more bread.

  Again, she had the sensation of darkness closing in all around her, and then the room grew lighter behind her eyelids. She was in a modern office with tall windows, sitting behind a large, uncluttered desk. A hand reached out for a wooden box on the desk. The hand was pale and freckled and seemed enormous. It took a cigar from the box and cut off the end with a small knife, then dropped the end into a wastebasket. The cigar seemed to loom close to Janie’s face. The hand produced a gold lighter, and spent some time getting the cigar lit. She thought she could taste the bitter tobacco. She had come at the wrong time. All she was going to see was Mr. Magnusson smoking a disgusting, stinky cigar.

  Then a very pretty blonde in a pencil skirt and a green blouse walked into the office and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how you can stand to smoke those things, first thing in the morning,” she said.

  “And I don’t know how you can stand not to,” Mr. Magnusson said. “That’s what makes the world go round.”

  The woman sniffed.

  “Don’t pout, my love,” Mr. Magnusson said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “And cigars don’t suit you.”

  Janie thought of the princess, Opal’s mother. Did she know about this woman her husband called “my love”? Did Opal?

  “Be happy for me, Sylvia,” Mr. Magnusson’s voice said. “My plan is working.”

  “And are you going to tell me what it is?” Sylvia asked.

  “When it’s further along.”

  “Is it to do with the mine?”

  “Perhaps.” He sounded pleased with himself.

  “Will your wife approve?”

  “She won’t say so if she doesn’t,” he said. “She’s not like you, full of opinions and contrariness.”

  Sylvia raised an arched eyebrow. “That’s why you need me. Remember, it’s her island.”

  “But it’s my mine,” he said. “I like the way that sounds. My mine. All mine.” He clapped a hand on his knee. “Come sit on my lap.”

  “Tell me your plan first.”

  The picture was starting to fade. Janie concentrated harder.

  “Oh, don’t be difficult,” Mr. Magnusson said faintly. “I want it to be a surprise.” He exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke, and Janie strained to hear Sylvia’s response, but the office vanished as the smoke dissipated. Sylvia was gone, and so were the desk and the enormous windows.

  Janie was alone in the dark. She opened her eyes and saw the school stage and the empty seats. If only she’d started a minute later, she might have heard the plan and missed the cigar-trimming. It was so frustrating, not knowing when to try the connection. It was like picking up a telephone receiver and hoping the other party would happen to say something useful on the line.

  Still, she guessed she could have found Mr. Magnusson in the bathroom, on the toilet. That would have been worse. She wondered if she should tell Opal about Sylvia, then quickly rejected the thought. Poor, tiny, frightened Mrs. Magnusson. She would never be able to compete with that spirited blonde.

  Janie tried moving her head and didn’t feel too nauseated, so she stood. The theater seat folded itself up with a squeak. She felt dizzy. Was it possible to lose your hold on your own world by spending too much time looking at other people’s?

  She’d think about that later: Right now she had to get to class. She turned and saw Raffaello in the aisle of the auditorium, smiling down at her. “Oh!” she said. “How long have you been here?”

  “Just got here,” he said. “What are you doing in the dark?”

  “I needed to get away. To think.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. I don’t know.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “You’re so mysterious,” he said. “I never know what goes on in your head.”

  “Not much, really.” He was standing awfully close.

  “I know that’s not true.”

  “Um,” she said. “Should we go to class?”

  “They won’t miss us.”
<
br />   “But we might miss some valuable information.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything that important.”

  Then his hand went to the back of her neck, under her hair. Benjamin had touched her like that, and it made her very confused. Raffaello’s fingers sent a shiver down her spine. He leaned down and kissed her, tentatively. His lips were soft and warm. Then he pulled back to look at her, and there was a question in his eyes: Was this all right?

  It was, and it wasn’t. She ought to be pulling back. But there was something so tender about the kiss that she didn’t. Encouraged, he kissed her again, with more confidence and sureness. But then she found her hand on his chest, pushing him away.

  “I’m sorry!” she said.

  Raffaello looked hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t—I don’t…I have to go.”

  She ran past him toward the auditorium doors, stumbling a little, her face burning with embarrassment. What had she done? And why? She had kissed him and then she had shoved him, and she had to live in his apartment. She might have ruined everything.

  “Janie!” he called after her.

  She should stop now, and talk to him. But instead she pushed open the auditorium’s door, her cheeks hot, and stepped out into the crowded hallway. The girls’ restroom was across the hall and she dodged students to get to it. She splashed water from the cold tap on her face at the sink. She could still smell his skin. Raffaello. She looked in the mirror at her wet, miserable face.

  “Janie,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  CHAPTER 18

  Sidetracked

  Benjamin was supposed to make contact with Janie at midnight her time, which was tomorrow morning for him. It was still evening, and the last of the light filtered through the obscenely lush trees overhead. But he couldn’t wait. He needed to know what was going on.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t met other girls in the last two years. But girls were more protected in the places he had been, and he had never been anywhere long enough to get to know any of them, or to earn their parents’ trust. He’d been busy—working alongside his father, and making a code to send messages to Janie in case she needed him, and developing the powder that would let him see her. But now all the powder had shown him was that Janie hadn’t been thinking about him in the same way. She’d met other boys in America, where everything was all free and easy, apparently. She was living with another boy. It was the last thing he had expected.

  He had cooked the last of their rice and soup in another burned-out village, and his father had eaten distractedly while making notes about the medicinal plants of Vietnam. Being forced to treat the murderous general had knocked his father out of his obsessive, despairing loop. They were going to Hanoi, where a steamer might take them across to the Philippines, where his father had a colleague. So at least they had forward movement. That was a good thing.

  It would be mid-morning for Janie now. Benjamin went to the back of the hut, where his father wouldn’t see him, and draped a mosquito net over himself so he wouldn’t get eaten alive. Then he dropped a few grains of powder into the last of the water in his canteen. He drank it down, leaned cross-legged against the wall of the hut, and closed his eyes.

  He thought of Janie as he had seen her in the mirror, with her new, older face. Then of Janie at fourteen in London, tapping him on the shoulder in the Underground when he’d been spying on her. He thought of the pain in her face when he’d told her, under the influence of the boiled truth-telling leaves, that he fancied Sarah Pennington.

  Then a deep darkness descended on his closed eyes, and his vision brightened again, and he saw an office. It was a modern office, with a smooth, wide, pale desk and huge windows. A blond woman in a tight skirt and a green blouse stood in the middle of the room. Close up, a big, freckled hand held a fat cigar. It was the hand of a man. Benjamin nearly opened his eyes in confusion, but the woman was speaking.

  “Will your wife approve?” she asked.

  “She won’t say so if she doesn’t,” the man said. “She’s not like you, full of opinions and contrariness.”

  Benjamin looked for clues about where he was. On a cigar box on the desk was a slim dagger with a wavy blade and a carved wooden hilt. It was a keris, a ceremonial knife from the Malay peninsula. Count Vili had showed him one in a market stall once and told him they were heirlooms, presented on important occasions, and that the Malays used to put arsenic on the blade so that their victims would die a slow death, poisoned from within. This one was small and delicately carved.

  “That’s why you need me,” the woman said. “Remember, it’s her island.”

  “But it’s my mine,” the man’s voice said. “I like the way that sounds. My mine. All mine. Come sit on my lap.”

  The blonde was starting to fade. Benjamin was losing the connection. But why so soon? He’d just gotten here.

  “Tell me your plan first,” the woman said.

  “Oh, don’t be difficult. I want it to be a surprise.”

  But then the woman was gone, and Benjamin saw a dark theater. He wasn’t with the big cigar-smoking man anymore, but it also didn’t seem like the connection had ended. There was no vertigo, no nausea. He was looking at an empty stage.

  He heard the squeak of the folding seat, and there was a blur, and then Benjamin was looking up into the adoring eyes of that kid with the curly hair. Janie was talking to him, but rage and panic flooded Benjamin, distracting him from what she was saying. He tried to figure out how to get her out of the situation. If he spoke, she wouldn’t hear him, and he couldn’t control her legs. He’d barely been able to move her finger half an inch the night before, with great effort. He watched helplessly as the boy moved closer, and then disappeared.

  The boy was kissing Janie.

  “No!” Benjamin said, but they couldn’t hear him.

  Then the boy pulled back, looking—concerned? Or maybe just looking for encouragement. Janie didn’t run away. The boy leaned in, kissing her again, and she was letting him.

  Benjamin poured everything in his being—all his stubborn, formidable will—into Janie’s left hand. He urged it to rise, bringing his own hand up. Then he shoved it into the boy’s chest. It wasn’t as hard a blow as he wanted, but it was a pretty definite push. The boy stepped backward in surprise.

  “I’m sorry!” Janie said.

  “Don’t apologize!” Benjamin shouted helplessly, unheard.

  Janie seemed confused. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t—I don’t…I have to go.”

  Everything blurred as Janie ran past the boy and out into a bright hallway full of students. She forded the flow of distorted, hazy bodies and then she was in a bathroom over a sink, splashing her flushed face. She looked up at the mirror. “Janie, what are you doing?” she asked.

  It was Benjamin’s question exactly. The vision faded, and he was back in the jungle. The light was gone from the sky. Benjamin waited for the vertigo to pass, then went to find his father, who was working by the light of a small lantern.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Benjamin said. “I have to get to Hanoi now.”

  His father glanced up, confused. “Why?”

  “I need to send a telegram.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The Message

  In a newly built council house in the East End of London, the doorbell rang. The walls were thin, like those of all the houses that had gone up in a hurry to replace the city’s bombed-out buildings. But there was new furniture, paid for by Pip’s television salary. He was the lord of his household at sixteen, and had become insufferable.

  “The door!” he called, although he was sitting in a chair right next to it, practicing a card trick that involved keeping one card pinned between his fingers on the back of his hand.

  The bell rang again, and Pip’s little sister, Tildie, scampered out of her room. She revered Pip, and was the only member of his family who wasn’t mightily sick of his airs. She flung open the door t
o a boy about Pip’s age on the stoop. He presented an envelope to her with an official flourish.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s a telegram,” the boy said, as if that was obvious. Then he whispered, “From Indochina,” as if it was a secret.

  “A telegram!” Tildie said.

  “Yup.”

  “Pip, it’s for you! From Indoor China!”

  The delivery boy leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the television star. The boy was small for his age, and wide-eyed like Pip. The only difference between them was that one boy had lucked into a job on the telly, and the other was delivering messages.

  Pip stood, swiping the telegram from Tildie. “What are you staring at?” he demanded of the boy.

  “Just makin’ sure it’s delivered.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “I’ave a sister, too,” the boy said. “We don’t’ave a telly, but we watch you at the—”

  Pip didn’t learn where the boy and his sister watched Robin Hood, because he had slammed the door in the boy’s face. It was not a satisfying slam, the door being so light and flimsy. Their old place might have been a dark and filthy tenement building, but at least it had solid wooden Victorian doors that banged after a good swing. The sound took the edge off your anger. A slam here barely overcame its own wind resistance, and left Pip feeling as hollow as the door. He could hear, with perfect clarity, the boy’s vivid curse from the other side.

  Pip threw himself back in the deep chair, swung his legs up onto the arm of it, and tore open the envelope.

  “Wot’s in it?” Tildie asked.

  “What is in it,” Pip said. He had been studying the way the other actors talked, and had started lecturing his little sister on her pronunciation. Just sitting round the house, he spoke like he was reading the news on the wireless.

  Tildie stamped her foot. “That’s wot I said!”

  Pip sighed and pulled out the telegram. It had come by means of electrical dots and dashes under the sea. That was really something, when you thought about it. The telegram said: