by P J Tierney
The shaft acted like a rudder and swung him into the bend. When he was on the correct trajectory, he pulled his arm free and straightened up to run again. Adrenaline surged through him and he smiled, knowing he was going to catch Cheng.
As he faced the next stretch of path he saw two things: a steep set of stone stairs and Cheng’s waiting fist.
Jamie slammed into it chin first, flinging his head back while the rest of him kept going forward. For a second he was airborne, then he landed flat on his back, the impact knocking the air out of him. Jet scurried to his side and peered over him, tilting his head from side to side till Jamie could suck in a breath.
Cheng leaned over him. ‘Your spirit guide should have warned you about that one,’ he said. Then he turned and ran up the stairs.
Jamie scrambled to his feet and spat blood from his mouth. He charged after Cheng, clambering up the steep steps with his hands and feet. He was gaining on the older boy, who kept glancing back at him.
Jamie was only a few steps away now. He mustered his energy and lunged at Cheng, but Cheng saw him coming. While Jamie was midair, Cheng kicked backwards, collected Jamie’s knees and sent him crashing onto the stairs below. Jamie scrambled for Cheng’s legs and clung on, dragging him down too. The writhing, wrestling tangle of boys slid down the stairs, Jamie’s head and elbows bashing into every step they passed.
Jamie gathered all his strength and pushed Cheng off him, sending him toppling backwards, airborne. In the moment before Cheng hit the ground, a red mist blurred Jamie’s vision. He tried to blink it away, then shook his head, but it wouldn’t clear. He felt like he was falling into a deep, red fog. Shadows and images formed in ever deepening shades of scarlet and he saw himself grabbing Cheng by the hair, lifting his head up, then ramming it into the hard stone again and again and again.
Almost as quickly as it had come, the red mist was gone. Jamie found himself standing over Cheng, clutching a handful of his hair. Cheng cowered away from him, his eyes wide with terror.
Jamie let go of him and Cheng scurried to the furthest wall. Jamie staggered back, leaned against the other wall and gasped for breath. He was trembling all over.
Cheng edged up the stairs, slowly at first, then faster when Jamie didn’t follow.
Jamie swallowed and wrapped his arms around his chest. He took another breath and looked up to the heavens. What just happened? Could that possibly have been a vision from his guide? He shook the thought away. Lao Tzu was the Great Guide, a harbinger of peace; there was no way he’d be sending Jamie images like that.
Jamie felt the prickly weight of someone watching him. He turned slowly, ridden with guilt. He spotted a pair of dark glossy eyes peeking out from behind a battlement.
‘Jet,’ he said, reaching out to the little monkey for comfort.
Jet trembled and, like Cheng before him, backed away in terror.
Jamie finished the race in a daze and lurked in the shadows outside the dining pavilion while Bruce, Edwin then Jade passed by on their way to breakfast. The sound of voices and the clinking of bowls drifted out to where he stood alone. He was waiting for Lucy and Wing to come back from the wall; he was desperate to talk to them about the red mist.
At last, he saw Lucy coming along the path. She called out when she spotted him, ‘Hey, did you catch Cheng?’
‘You could say that,’ Jamie said when she got closer. Her expression turned to glee so he quickly added, ‘But I didn’t beat him.’
Her smile fell. ‘Why not?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘He’s fast, that’s all.’
Lucy arched her eyebrows. ‘That’s not all, Jamie Reign. What happened?’
Jamie drew his lips into a thin line and rubbed his palm where it still tingled. He took a deep breath and braced himself to tell her about the red mist. But he couldn’t form the words; it was as if describing it would make it more real. Instead, he played for time and said, ‘Is Wing okay? He looked pretty bad earlier.’
Jamie was relieved to hear the sound of approaching footsteps. Wing charged around the bend, red-faced from the run, or perhaps from fever. He had leaves caught in his hair and was cradling something in his arms.
‘I think something’s wrong with him,’ he called to Jamie. ‘He was hiding in the bushes and wouldn’t come out.’
Jet peeked out over Wing’s forearm and spotted Jamie. He cowered.
‘He’s scared,’ Lucy said. ‘What would he be frightened of here?’
Jamie swallowed.
Wing coaxed the monkey gently. ‘Come on, no-one’s going to hurt you.’
Jet’s gaze went from Wing to Jamie. Jamie encouraged him with a smile and tried to look as normal as possible. Jet burrowed under Wing’s arm again.
Lucy peered past Jamie, looking for what could be scaring him. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said, looking worried.
Wing patted and Lucy cooed and eventually Jet dared another look. Jamie held the monkey’s gaze and smiled and nodded. He bent lower so they were eye to eye.
‘It’s okay,’ he said very softly. Then closer to the monkey’s ear, he added, ‘I’m okay now.’
Jet stared long and hard at Jamie. He tilted his head from side to side, then very carefully extricated himself from Wing’s grasp. He held one tentative paw to Jamie’s cheek. Jamie didn’t dare move. And then slowly Jet began to grin. He held both arms out for Jamie to pick him up and Jamie breathed again. Jet squawked and climbed up to Jamie’s shoulder to forage in his hair.
Lucy pulled a face. ‘So what were you going to tell us?’ she asked, holding her ponytail as far away from the subject of Jet’s foraging as she could and glancing nervously at Jamie’s hair.
Jamie smiled and ran Jet’s tail through his hand. Jet was fine with him again so he must be okay.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said to Lucy. ‘It was nothing.’
The dining pavilion smelled of soy sauce, five spice and freshly boiled congee. Jamie’s stomach rumbled. Jet leaped from his shoulder and lunged for the bowl of steamed peanuts that Mrs Choo deftly pulled away from his grasp.
‘I wondered when you three would show,’ she said, her upper arm wobbling as she patted Jet on the head. ‘You must be hungry.’
She handed the monkey a few peanuts and sent him on his way, then picked up a bowl and filled it to the brim with thick rice porridge. She topped it off with shredded chicken and lettuce, dribbled a spiral of soy in the middle, sprinkled it all with steamed peanuts, plopped a spoon in the side and held the bowl out to Lucy, all without ever taking her eyes from her son’s shoulder.
‘Show me,’ she said to Wing. She reached over and gently pulled the collar of his shirt out so she could see the wound. She winced at the yellowy-green pus oozing through the dressing. Her eyes glistened and she said, ‘If Sifu Fan’s medicines don’t fix this soon, I’ll be taking you to the hospital myself.’
‘I’m okay,’ Wing said, shooting a quick glance to the rest of the Warriors at the main table.
Mrs Choo pointed her ladle at him. ‘Don’t you “I’m okay” me, young man. I’m not losing another son to that … that …’ Her hands trembled and great globs of congee fell from the spoon.
Jamie knew what Mrs Choo wasn’t saying. She’d not only lost a son to Zheng, she’d lost her husband as well. There were no words for that. Jamie looked away to give Wing and his mum a moment.
Looking for a distraction, he noticed the huge spread of food on the serving bench. Besides the poached chicken, there was whitebait and fried bread too, a huge mound of bean sprouts and some finely chopped spring onions. ‘Whoa,’ he said in surprise. ‘Did we get some supplies in?’
Wing leaned in front of Jamie and grabbed a piece of fried bread. He held his mother’s gaze as he took a great big bite. She watched suspiciously as he chewed. Once she seemed satisfied that Wing was at least well enough to eat, she turned to Jamie.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We got supplies in.’
From the corner of his eye, Jamie saw Wing ho
ld a napkin to his mouth and discreetly spit out the chewed-up bread.
Mrs Choo continued, oblivious. ‘The fish farmers over on Penglai took pity on us since we’re marooned here without a boat.’
Jamie checked Wing’s reaction to that. He knew his friend still felt dreadful about losing the sampan. The signal eight typhoon that had claimed the sampan had nearly taken Wing’s life too. Jamie bit his bottom lip and looked at the weeping wound on Wing’s shoulder. He swallowed the lump in his throat, terrified that Zheng’s Charged Summons may succeed where the sea and the typhoon had failed.
‘So what else did they bring?’ Wing said hopefully.
Mrs Choo smiled in a knowing way and nodded towards the main table. ‘Something you’ll be interested in, Jamie.’
The three of them wheeled around to look.
Lucy squealed, ‘Ooh, newspapers.’
Jamie was pretty sure there was nothing in a newspaper that would interest him, that was until Cheng thumped his hand down onto the front page of one of the papers and screwed it up in his fist. Jamie moved towards the table.
Lucy puffed out her chest, yanked the newspaper away from him and said, ‘Cheng Yu, you may not agree with what is written in a newspaper, but you must respect a free and independent press. It is the cornerstone of modern civilisation.’
She ran her palm across the crumpled page till it was smooth again. When she had glared at Cheng long enough for him to know just how serious she was, she looked at the front page and gasped. There, taking up three-quarters of the cover, was a photo of Jamie.
Jamie’s mouth dropped open. He walked the rest of the way in a daze and barely noticed Edwin scooting along to make room. ‘Thanks,’ Jamie mumbled as he sat down, unable to tear his eyes from the photo. It showed him suspended over the little fishing village of Sai Chun, wrapped in the plume of his spirit guide. The text above the image screamed The Spirit Warrior Returns.
Jamie’s heart pounded.
Wing leaned in close and whispered, ‘The secret’s out.’
Lucy reached for another newspaper. It had a different headline but the same photo. She began to read aloud. ‘Locals are convinced they saw the return of the Spirit Warrior yesterday, when a young village boy, Jamie Reign, was seen to rise up in a plume of smoke. Local woman Mrs Leung says, “I always knew there was something special about that boy.”’
Lucy read on and on and Jamie let the words wash over him. His heart raced as he imagined Bohai, his best friend from the village, reading this, and Old Mama Chow too. He envisaged the reaction of the private school boys who’d teased him mercilessly when he was nothing more than a lowly boat boy, and who had then fought on Zheng’s side against Jamie. He wished he could have seen their faces. He thought of his father too and wondered if maybe, just maybe, Hector was raising a glass to him.
Lucy finished reading and slid the paper over to Jamie. He flicked through it. There were more photos: one of Mrs Leung with the twins, Bohai’s brothers, behind her, poking out their tongues at the camera; and another of Old Mama Chow standing on the balcony of the noodle house under the sign that claimed Best Wonton in the Territory. Jamie could tell by the scowl on her face, and from seeing Feng’s prized training dummy in the background, still out in the village square exposed to the sun and rain, that her grandson was no longer in Sai Chun.
Good, Jamie thought because Feng Chow wasn’t really Feng any more. He’d finally found a way out of Sai Chun, but it meant more than siding with Zheng — it meant taking on the spirit of Zheng’s Remote Viewer. Whatever good that had once been in Feng was now long gone, squashed and pushed aside by the spirit of one of Zheng’s own.
Wing held up a different paper, which showed a close-up of Jamie in the sky next to an earlier photo of him on his tugboat, The Swift. ‘The Spirit Warrior stories are alive and well as scientists try to explain the phenomenon seen in the small village last Tuesday,’ he read aloud. ‘Then it’s just more of the same stuff — the smoke, the lifting up — before they try to explain Summoning the Way.’
Jamie asked Wing to read that part aloud. Although he could Summon the Way, he didn’t really know how he did it.
‘Summoning the Way is an ancient technique of drawing on the energy of living things around the practitioner,’ Wing said.
Right then, Master Wu walked into the pavilion and the Warriors of the Way all stood up in a cacophony of scraping chairs. Each put his or her right fist into their left palm and bowed. Master Wu smiled and returned the bow. He held his arms out wide and the sleeves of his golden robes fell into folds.
‘So tell me, young Warriors, do we have a new record for the running of the wall?’
Jamie looked down at the tabletop, and Wing mumbled something about Cheng cheating.
Then Edwin spoke up. ‘Master, the wall has collapsed at the southern end of the island. Jade and Jamie stopped to rescue me.’
Master Wu looked to Jade. ‘The wall has been compromised?’
‘The inner wall is still in place,’ she said. ‘The walkway and outer wall have gone.’
Master Wu let out a pent-up breath. ‘As long as the perimeter is not broken, the protections remain in place.’ He lowered his gaze to the table, then leaned in and frowned, recognising the face on the front page of the newspaper. He looked from the photo to Jamie.
‘I was within a few minutes of the record,’ Cheng piped up, seemingly oblivious to Master Wu’s shock. ‘Without the delays, I would have broken it.’
Master Wu nodded to let Cheng know he’d heard, but he didn’t stop staring at Jamie. He walked towards him.
‘It was more like a minute really,’ Cheng said.
Master Wu patted Cheng’s head in an absent-minded way. ‘Excellent. Good work.’
Cheng’s cheeks flushed a deep, angry scarlet.
‘Jamie,’ Master Wu said, ‘I’d like to see you in my office as soon as you’ve finished here.’
‘Ah, o-okay,’ Jamie stammered. Lucy kicked him under the table and he corrected his response. ‘Yes, Master Wu.’
Master Wu left, still looking pale and very distracted.
‘Do you think you’re in trouble?’ Wing asked.
‘What, me in trouble?’ Jamie said, copying Wing’s usual response to that question. But he couldn’t bring himself to go on, because by the look on Master Wu’s face, he suspected that this time he really was in trouble — mountains of it.
Cheng snapped the pages of the newspaper as he flicked through it. An article seemed to catch his eye and he started to read. A small but threatening smirk formed on his mouth. He stood and slammed the paper down in front of Lucy.
‘Now this is what I call a free and independent press,’ he said, then looked at Jamie. ‘Your dad likes a drink, does he?’
Jamie froze, a spoonful of congee suspended midair, halfway to his mouth. The combination of Hector, alcohol and a newspaper reporter was enough to make his heart sink. He waited till Cheng had gone outside before he dared a look at the article. He felt Wing’s and Lucy’s eyes boring into him as he took in the picture of Hector, his bloodshot eyes rolled back, a string of spit hanging from his lip and a bit of spinach stuck in his teeth. The headline shouted Could the Spirit Warrior Really Come From This?
The congee in Jamie’s belly threatened to come back up. He couldn’t see straight. He slid the paper over to Wing. ‘What does it say?’
Wing scanned the article, then turned the page. Jamie’s heart sank further.
‘Two pages?’ he asked.
Wing cleared his throat. ‘Three and a half.’
‘How bad?’
Wing grimaced. ‘Well, it’s not good.’
‘Does he use the word …’ Jamie closed his eyes, cringed and whispered, ‘Chink?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Wing said. ‘You’d be surprised how many times you can squeeze that word into a sentence.’
Jamie lowered his head till his forehead was on the table. ‘What else does he say?’
Wing patted him on the b
ack. ‘Everyone’ll know he was drunk.’
‘What does he say?’
Wing sighed. ‘Let’s just say he calls your paternity into question, which might be a good thing, considering.’ Jamie didn’t respond so Wing went on. ‘The phrase “good for nothing” comes up quite a lot, and the rest is a rant about how ludicrous the whole Spirit Warrior thing is.’
Jamie put his hands over his head. He felt Lucy lean into him as she reached over and snatched the paper away from Wing.
‘Badly edited, poorly researched drivel,’ she said.
‘Not one of your father’s papers then?’ Wing replied.
Chapter 3
Master Wu’s office was at the end of a long corridor. Jamie walked along it with a horrible gnawing feeling in his stomach. It was more than feeling humiliated by his father’s outburst; he was terrified that the man who seemed to know everything would know what had happened to him on the wall too.
Jamie paused at the carved rosewood screen that marked the entrance to the office. It depicted an ancient fable about a princess who was lured to a kung fu performance so her enemies could kill her. Jamie ran his fingers over the princess’s glossy lacquered head before taking a deep breath in preparation for facing his own fate. He reached for the door handle, then jumped as the screen opened of its own accord.
‘Come in, Jamie,’ Master Wu said from the other side of the office.
Jamie glanced around for whoever had opened the door. Apart from Master Wu, who was sitting at his desk, flicking through a small stack of newspapers, the room was empty.
‘Tea?’ Master Wu asked, welcoming Jamie with a smile.
Jamie nodded, although a whole swarm of eels seemed to be writhing around in his belly.
