by P J Tierney
‘A prophetic dream is not unusual, Jamie. It is your spirit guide communicating with you.’
Jamie looked at him then. What he couldn’t say, and what he suspected Master Wu already knew, was that he hadn’t just dreamed about the fire. He’d seen the Celestial Hall go up in flames, and he’d been the one who’d lit it.
As Jamie walked to the dining pavilion, he pushed away the images of the nightmare and concentrated on the sound of his feet on the stone path. He blocked out that layer of sound and focused on the calling of the birds in the trees. When he blocked that layer out too, he realised he could hear voices, carrying all the way from the Celestial Hall.
‘What do you think?’ Master Wu said.
There was a long pause before his companion answered. ‘I think we’re in trouble, Master.’
Jamie stopped dead.
The master’s companion continued. ‘I’ll sort it out for you.’
It was Jade.
Chapter 4
Jamie burst into the dining pavilion and scanned the faces till he spotted Wing. He shook his head to Mrs Choo’s offer of congee and gestured for his friend to come outside.
‘Last night,’ Jamie said urgently, as soon as the doors of the pavilion closed behind them, ‘what happened?’
Wing edged away from him. ‘What do you mean?’
Jamie gripped Wing’s arm. ‘The nightmare. Tell me what I did.’
Wing pulled his arm free.
‘Please,’ Jamie said. ‘Did I go outside?’
Wing looked Jamie in the eye. He swallowed as he seemed to weigh something in his mind, then very slowly nodded.
Jamie backed away. ‘It was me. I lit the fire.’
Wing looked stunned. ‘You tried to burn down the Celestial Hall? Why?’
‘I-I don’t know,’ Jamie stammered.
Wing shifted from foot to foot, edging further away with every movement.
Jamie took a deep breath. ‘Did I hurt you? You know, when I was sleepwalking?’
Wing stopped moving and shook his head. ‘You scared us though. Jet was trembling the whole time you were gone. He knew something was wrong.’
Jamie thought back to the red mist when he’d attacked Cheng. Jet had pulled away from him then too. ‘Jet knows when it’s happening.’
‘When what’s happening?’
Jamie swallowed and searched for the right words. ‘When I’m not myself,’ he said finally.
Wing opened his mouth and Jamie knew he was going to ask who Jamie was if he wasn’t himself. But footsteps interrupted him, the muffled pad of canvas on stone, and Jamie was glad for the excuse not to answer. He rearranged his expression, trying for an air of casualness, and turned to see who was approaching.
Jade came into view. Jamie’s stomach flip-flopped for all the wrong reasons.
‘Jamie,’ she said, jutting her chin towards the path. ‘This way.’
Jamie flinched and the words ‘I’ll sort it out’ rang in his head. He tried to convey his fear in a piercing look to Wing. Wing looked bewildered.
Jamie glared at him in a silent plea for intervention.
Wing shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What?’
Jade looked at Jamie, then Wing, and waited.
‘What?’ Wing asked innocently.
Jamie sighed. He shot Wing a final glare, then turned and followed Jade, his shoulders slumped.
‘I don’t get it,’ Wing called after him.
Jade led Jamie along the winding pathways towards Chia Wu’s northern entrance. He followed reluctantly, his eyes darting for a diversion or an escape.
‘Um, where are we going?’ he asked, his voice a little higher than usual.
‘This way,’ she said.
Jamie bit his tongue. His stomach clenched as he mentally ran through every kung fu sequence he knew. Jade was a brilliant fighter. If ‘sorting it out’ meant giving him a beating, he’d have to out-think her because he sure couldn’t outfight her. He thought of the wooden training dummies she’d shattered and imagined the damage that sort of impact would do to his limbs.
Jet trailed behind them, keeping just out of Jamie’s reach.
‘Come on, boy,’ Jamie whispered, desperate to have his talisman close to him. If Jade was going to do something to hurt him, surely Jet would warn him.
He held his hand out to coax his monkey closer, but Jet stayed stubbornly beyond his reach. He stopped when Jamie stopped, and walked when he walked. When Jamie caught him moving, Jet would stop and make a show of looking at the clouds or the plants or, in one particularly barren section of path, his own butt.
The next time Jamie turned to look at him, Jet was carrying a peony blossom in his hand. When he saw Jamie watching, he put the blossom in his mouth.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Jamie said.
Jet chewed, then gagged and spat when he tasted the flower’s bitter flavour.
‘Peonies smell a whole lot better than they taste,’ Jamie said. He picked Jet up and held him close. ‘I learned that the hard way too,’ he said quietly in the monkey’s ear.
The little monkey wiped his mouth with the back of his paw and let Jamie carry him along the covered walkway. Jamie took comfort from his closeness.
Jade led them past the zigzag bridge and the Moon Gate. Jamie caught a glimpse of Dragon Rock through the gate’s circular hole. He had dived from that rock into the pool below to find his mother’s silk and his true identity. Like the silks hanging in the Celestial Hall, Mayling’s told her life story. The embroidered silk ended with a symbol; not one that told who Mayling would become but who she would beget: the Spirit Warrior. That discovery seemed like a lifetime ago. Jamie felt that he could do with some guidance from his long-lost mother right now.
Jade led him to the main gates of Chia Wu.
‘Are we leaving?’ Jamie asked nervously.
She glanced back at him but didn’t say anything. Instead, she heaved one of the giant red lacquered doors towards her. It opened with a sweeping sigh.
‘Um, do you think it’s safe to leave?’ Jamie tried. ‘What with Zheng still around and all that?’
Jade huffed. He guessed she’d rolled her eyes too, but the shadows between the two sets of doors hid her face.
He swallowed and tried again. ‘Should I be leaving?’
He knew that if Zheng was going to attack anyone, it would be him.
‘You’re not the only hidden dragon, Jamie.’
Jamie took a deep breath and followed her out. The doors closed behind them with a solemn thud.
About halfway down the stairway that led to the bay, Jade turned into the jungle. Here the trees grew tall as they reached for the light. Their branches intertwined to form a dense canopy that blocked the light and trapped the heat and humidity. The air was thick and foul. Jamie held his monkey close.
Jade pulled on the vines as she walked deeper and deeper into the jungle. Finally she found one that seemed to satisfy her and stopped.
‘What are we doing in here?’ Jamie asked tentatively.
‘Training,’ she said flatly. ‘Didn’t Master Wu tell you?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Jamie said, glancing around the dark cavern-like clearing. ‘I just didn’t think we’d be doing it in the jungle.’
Jade stopped yanking on the vine to look at him. This time she didn’t sneer or roll her eyes like he was an idiot; instead she looked a little sad. ‘It’s not staying inside the wall that makes you a hidden dragon, Jamie. It’s the skills inside you that no-one knows about.’
‘So we train in secret?’
She nodded.
Jamie thought for a minute. ‘But who do I have to hide from at Chia Wu?’
She held his gaze long enough for him to come to the conclusion that if he had to hide from anyone, it was most probably the person he was with right now. He swallowed and checked the path behind him for an escape route. It was winding and slippery and offered little promise of safety.
Jamie put his face close to his monke
y’s soft fur and felt for a tremble, or any sign that he should be worried. Jet didn’t look at him; he was too busy eyeing the trees for food. Which boded well for Jamie. He resigned himself to training with Jade. At least he might gain some new skills worth hiding. What kind of spectacular techniques warranted such secrecy? His heart fluttered a little. Maybe the Wu-spin?
‘So what are we doing?’ he asked.
Jade swung the vine towards him. ‘Climb.’
‘We came all this way so no-one would see me climb?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe we came all this way so no-one would see you fall.’
Jamie held her gaze; he was good at climbing. When he’d salvaged vessels with Hector, he’d often had to climb the rigging to fix a mast or to attach a safety line, but mainly to get out of reach of his father’s fury. So not only was he good, he was fast.
He grinned and rubbed his hands together. He pulled on the vine to test its strength. It seemed sturdy enough; in fact, probably a little too sturdy. He looked around for another one.
Jade pointed to the vine in his hand and smiled smugly. His confidence quickly waned. The trick to climbing a rope was to hold your weight with your arms while you made a loop with your feet to stand on. You wrapped the line under one foot and jammed it between the top of that foot and the bottom of the other. You could stand there all day if you had to; you’d probably cut off the circulation in your foot, but you wouldn’t fall. The problem with this vine was it was too thick. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get it to bend around his foot. So instead of creating a perch to stand on, Jamie could only hold on with his hands. Inevitably he slipped back down to the ground.
‘Impressive,’ Jade said.
Jamie clenched his jaw. He wiped his hands on his shirt and tried again. He concentrated on his palms till they grew hot like they did when he Conjured. He clamped the vine between the soles of his feet and held on long enough to grab higher up the vine with his hands. He monkey-climbed up, first one body length then another. Jet screeched his approval.
Jamie looked down to see Jet jumping up and down on the jungle floor. Jade, on the other hand, was absorbed in flicking dirt out from beneath her fingernails. She wasn’t even watching.
‘Hey,’ he called out.
Without even a glance upwards, Jade took a long and exaggerated step away from the bottom of the vine. Jet screeched again, urgently this time.
Jamie smelled the pungent odour of burning green leaves. He brought his attention back to his palms and saw a fine tendril of smoke lifting off the vine beneath them. He yanked his hands away and his feet slipped with the extra weight. As he fell, he saw a blackened patch on the vine where his hands had just been.
He landed hard; his feet, bottom then the back of his head crashed into the carpet of decaying undergrowth. Winded but unhurt, he looked up. He was lying at Jade’s feet, exactly where she had been standing only moments before.
She leaned over him with an expression of utter distaste. ‘Don’t you have any upper body strength?’
‘The vine’s wet,’ Jamie said, more defensively than he meant to, as he felt the back of his head for a lump.
Jade exhaled sharply. She stepped over him and gripped the vine. She held her weight with just her hands and brought her legs forward till they were perpendicular to her body. Jamie could see that her fingers were white with the pressure of holding on. Then she hauled herself up the vine, hand over hand, without slipping, without grunting and, Jamie hated to admit it, without whining either. Although the long muscles in her shoulders strained and her biceps bulged, she really did make it look easy. Jamie stared up at her, impressed but humiliated at the same time.
She climbed till the canopy blocked her way, then slid back down. She landed lightly beside him, wiped her hands on her shirt and threw him a contemptuous look.
Jamie lowered his eyes.
She stepped over him again and headed back towards the path. ‘This is obviously too advanced for you,’ she said.
Jamie opened his mouth to retort, then realised she was baiting him. He closed his mouth and clenched his jaw so tightly he got dizzy. Red tinged his vision and Jet screeched in alarm.
Jamie held his head in his hands and breathed deeply till the red passed. He wanted to throw something at Jade, but instead he got to his feet and stomped along the path till he caught up with her. In his mind he was already plotting out his revenge. He was going to train till he could climb better than her, better than Jet even, then next time they trained he’d whip her at it. He stopped mid-stride. Secret practice, a secret skill and a humiliated opponent — he finally understood what it meant to be a hidden dragon.
Instead of heading back up the stairs to Chia Wu, Jade turned left towards the bay. Jamie trudged behind, feeling more like a trained puppy than a Warrior of the Way.
He had traipsed down a few steps when Jade turned to him and said, ‘Not like that.’
‘Like what then?’
She pointed to the stairs beneath his feet. ‘On your hands and toes.’
He shook his head. Surely that torture was reserved for Cheng’s mountain run. No-one else would be that cruel.
He was wrong. Jade glared at him, and he saw by the way she raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms that he wasn’t going to get out of it. He gave a short, sharp huff, cursed the stupid promise he’d made Master Wu, and got down on his hands and knees. He held his body on his hands and toes like he was doing a push-up, then gradually, painfully and with a wobble born from a lack of upper body strength, he writhed from one step to the next.
His skin grew taut as the blood rushed to his face and he felt dizzy. If only I was level, he thought, I just might be able to make it.
An idea dawned on him and he thought he saw a way out.
He concentrated on his palms until a heat haze emanated from them. The shimmering light grew stronger, cushioning his palms and gradually lifting him up. He concentrated till the shafts of light were so dense they held his body level. Now it was easy: the rocks didn’t dig into his hands, and he wasn’t struggling to hold his sloping body weight with only his arms. He glided down the steps, quite proud of himself, really.
Jade must have noticed the absence of Jamie’s grunts and mutters because she turned and, in a flash, swept a side kick through the shimmering shafts of light, sending the particles into swirling eddies. For a second Jamie was suspended in midair, then he dropped to the steps, jarring both wrists with the impact.
He was beginning to wonder what he’d ever seen in that girl.
The stairs finally ended and Jamie was allowed to stand up. He saw the empty pier where The Swift had once been moored, and beyond it the bay and the rapid white waters of the Penglai Straits. He felt irresistibly drawn to the northwest, as if a magnet was pulling him. He started down the pier in that direction, but was pulled up short by Jade tugging on his shirt.
‘This way,’ she said.
Jamie felt like he was coming out of a trance. He shook his head to clear it and Jade eyed him suspiciously. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to the northwest and wondering why the sudden appeal of that particular direction.
He followed Jade around the shoreline. The water gently lapped the sand and was so clear he could see the bottom without Remote Viewing. Schools of tiny translucent fish dashed and darted through the current, and scattered when a shadow shot across the surface.
A black raven swooped to grab a small whiting fish in its talons. The fish flapped about as the raven soared again. Jamie saw Jade tense. She bent down, picked up a flat shell, took aim and flung it at the bird. A squawk and a shower of black feathers indicated the shell had found its mark. The bird released its prey and the silver fish dropped back into the water. The bird flew off.
Jade stared after it, her lips curled in a snarl.
Jamie edged away from her and Jet sought sanctuary under Jamie’s arm. ‘That was a nice shot,’ he said somewhat formally.
Jamie thought she was acting more strangely than usual. ‘Um, you don’t like ravens?’ he asked tentatively.
‘I don’t like what they represent,’ she said, then turned on her heel and said so quietly that Jamie almost missed it, ‘and I don’t like who they represent either.’
By the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, Jamie knew it would be suicide to ask her to elaborate.
They climbed up the rocky headland at the far end of the bay. The southern side of the island was unprotected and bore the brunt of the South China Sea. Jamie heard the ferocity of the ocean on the other side of the rocks before he saw it. There was a low roar as the wave built, a poised moment before it slammed down onto itself, then a thunderous smash as it hit the rocks. A white spray shot up then showered down.
‘This way!’ Jade yelled over the crescendo. She charged along a narrow ledge between the cliff and the ocean.
Jamie counted the sets and waited for the lull before running the gauntlet himself.
They followed the base of the granite wall as it turned towards the east. The waves roared louder and the spray flew higher. Nothing grew here; it was just rock and wall and the smell of rotting shellfish that had been stranded in the stagnant pools above the tide line. Jamie and Jade sidled along the wall, clinging tightly when large waves sent the spray up their backs.
They rounded another bend, to where a jutting headland created a small, sandy cove. This was where the wall had been washed away in the typhoon. There was a long muddy gouge and a trail of loose stones leading from the wall down to the cove. Jamie looked at the stones, then up to the wall. He had a suspicion this was all adding up to something very unpleasant.
‘You’re supposed to be teaching me kung fu,’ he said.
‘No,’ Jade said, ‘I’m supposed to be training you. There’s a difference.’
‘Training me for what? A future as a wall builder? I hear they’re in high demand these days.’
