by P J Tierney
Jamie shook his head and leaned in. ‘No, that’s really sad.’ The article was tiny, a mere paragraph squeezed into a narrow column on the side of the page under the heading Local News. There was a small photo too. They were both boys, probably the same age as Bohai’s brothers. ‘Is that it?’ Jamie asked, turning the page to see if there was more. ‘Four little sentences for two lost children? Did they have lifejackets at least?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘Doesn’t say.’
‘They could last days in the water with jackets on,’ Jamie said. ‘When did it happen? They might still be alive?’
‘A while back,’ Lucy said. ‘This paper was a week old when we got it.’
‘So maybe they’ve found them already,’ Jamie said hopefully.
‘Yeah,’ Lucy said. ‘Maybe.’ Then she looked closely at him and must have noticed how flustered he looked. ‘Hey, are you okay?’
‘Um, yeah,’ he said, returning to what had brought him into the room. He glanced around and spotted a bamboo scroll on the table in front of Wing. ‘Is that The Art of War?’ he asked. He had it unfurled before Wing could reply and ran his finger down the headings. ‘Twenty-eight X,’ he murmured.
‘Twenty-eight?’ Lucy said. ‘There are only thirteen dictums in The Art of War.’
Jamie looked up.
Wing nodded. ‘She’s right.’
Jamie thought for a second. ‘Verses then,’ and he started counting them off in the first section. He looked up when he got to the bottom. ‘There are only twenty-six.’ He moved onto the next section … twenty; and the next … eighteen. He slammed his hand down in frustration. ‘Which one has twenty-eight?’
‘Well, let’s see,’ Lucy said, still flicking through the newspaper. ‘Dictum six has thirty-four. Verse twenty-eight states: Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.’
That’s it, Jamie thought, my mother’s telling me to use different tactics.
Lucy kept reciting. ‘Dictum seven, verse twenty-eight: A soldier’s spirit is keenest in the morning; by noon it has begun to flag; and in the evening his mind is bent only on returning to camp.’ She turned another page of the newspaper and continued nonchalantly. ‘Dictum nine —’
‘You know the whole Art of War?’ Wing blurted out.
Lucy gave a coy smile.
Wing sprang up from his seat and pushed his workbook across the table to her. ‘I need four more references on how to position an army in mountainous terrain.’
She pushed his workbook back and said to Jamie, ‘Why verse twenty-eight?’
‘My mother left me a message.’
Wing’s mouth dropped open. ‘Another one? What did it say?’
Jamie paused to consider how much of it he wanted to share. The first part was clear: trust no-one. ‘She told me to be cautious of verse twenty-eight X,’ he said, writing it down in Wing’s notebook.
Wing tilted his head to read it. ‘That’s not very helpful, is it? Not like telling you that you were the Spirit Warrior. I always knew it, though, I didn’t need her silk to tell me. Remember, as soon as I saw the orb I knew it was you.’
Jamie smiled. ‘I know, Wing. Thanks.’
‘But this message?’ Wing said, his voice trailing off. ‘She didn’t … I don’t know, tell you where you could find Zheng? Or anything about …’ He stopped and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly towards Lucy and silently mouthed the word ‘girls’.
Lucy caught them out and rolled her eyes. Both Wing and Jamie looked hurriedly away.
‘So what’s the X then?’ she asked.
Jamie shrugged.
She tried again. ‘Were any of those verses what you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jamie said. ‘The tactics thing makes sense. Maybe she’s telling me to keep using the orbs to fight. They worked okay against the Xavier Elite boys.’
‘Not against Zheng though,’ Wing said, pulling at his shirt where the dried pus had made the fabric stick to his wound.
Jamie looked away. ‘What were the other verses again?’ he asked quietly.
‘I don’t think it’s a dictum,’ Lucy said. ‘The X doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a code?’ She looked at Jamie’s scrawl in the notebook. ‘Maybe the X is a roman numeral — you know, ten?’
‘You mean times it by ten? Are there two hundred and eighty verses?’ Jamie pulled the scroll close. ‘If I start at the beginning …’
‘Jamie,’ Lucy said firmly, ‘don’t you think she would have just written the number and verse if it was from The Art of War?’
The three of them stared blankly as they tried to find the meaning in Mayling’s message.
Jamie noticed Wing was smiling coyly. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ Wing said.
‘Tell me,’ Jamie prompted.
‘Well, it’s just that whenever my mum leaves notes for me, she doesn’t sign them …’
‘Okay,’ Jamie said, urging him on.
‘She, um …’ Wing sighed, took a breath in and said quickly, ‘She puts an X on it, you know, as a kiss.’
It took a moment for Wing’s words to register, then Jamie smiled. ‘A kiss? You think the X is a kiss?’ He ran his fingers over the X on the notebook page and felt warm inside.
‘So,’ Lucy prompted, ‘if that’s a kiss, then it means you’re looking for …’
Jamie heard her talking, but he wasn’t listening properly. He was still thinking about how good it felt to get a kiss from his mother.
‘Jamie!’ Lucy snapped. ‘Verse twenty-eight. Any clues?’
‘Um, no,’ he said, startled.
Lucy rolled her eyes and spoke slowly, like he was an idiot. ‘You know we study two ancient texts here, right?’
Jamie leaped up and rushed to the bookcase. ‘The Tao Te Ching.’
He pulled a thick book from the shelf and flicked through it to verse twenty-eight. He laid it on the table. Lucy leaned in; Wing did too. Jamie bit his bottom lip and the first two lines of the verse jumped out at him: Know the masculine but trust in the feminine.
The three young Warriors of the Way looked at each other. Jamie’s mind raced: trust the feminine. But the first part of his mother’s message had warned him to use caution when it came to this verse.
‘Do you think she’s telling me there’s a girl I can’t trust?’ he said.
He caught Wing’s eye, and they both turned to look at Lucy. She was nodding solemnly, until she realised they weren’t just looking, they were accusing.
‘Who, me? Don’t be stupid!’ she said, and pushed the table towards them so hard it hit them both in the stomach.
‘So not you, Luce,’ Wing said, rubbing his belly.
‘Who then?’
‘Well, that only leaves Mrs Choo,’ she began. Wing slammed his hand down on the tabletop with such force Jamie thought it might break. Lucy glared at him and continued pointedly, ‘If you let me finish. Or Jade.’
‘Oh, yeah, Jade,’ Wing said, almost brightly.
‘Jade,’ Jamie repeated slowly, and he looked out the window towards the little cove beyond the southern wall.
Chapter 6
‘How much do you know about her?’ Jamie whispered to Wing as they waited outside the Grand Pagoda for classes the next day. They had just finished an entirely unsatisfactory breakfast of banana and watery congee and Wing was in a very bad mood.
‘Know about who? Jade?’
‘Yeah, Jade,’ Jamie said impatiently.
Wing shook his head. ‘I think you’ve got it wrong about her. She’s been here longer than me.’
Wing had been at Chia Wu since he was a baby, so if Jade had been here longer she couldn’t have been much older than two when she arrived.
‘Did she come with her parents?’ Jamie asked.
‘I think there was a shipwreck or something,’ Wing said. ‘Her parents both died and she ended up washed ashore here.’
She survived a shipwreck. Jamie remembered Jade sitting on the rock in the cove and weeping. Then he thought of the time he’d put her at the helm of The Swift, when they were rescuing Wing from the typhoon. It was no wonder she’d run from that wave. He remembered how vulnerable she’d been, hiding her tears, apologising over and over. It all made a bit more sense now. She’d lost both her parents to the sea. All of a sudden, Jamie’s own loss seemed a little less significant.
He turned to look at Jade. She and Cheng were walking across the training field. They walked closely together; it made Jamie’s stomach churn and got him all confused.
‘Do you think she washed up here randomly?’ he asked Wing. ‘Or is she supposed to be here — you know, one of us?’
Wing looked at Jamie like he was stupid. ‘She’s a Recollector; she’s probably more “one of us” than I am. Besides, you’ve seen her fight.’
Jamie shrugged and looked towards the southern wall. Wing had a point, but the ravens on the celestial silks had once been one of them too.
The door to the Grand Pagoda swept open and the Warriors of the Way traipsed in. Mr Fan greeted them from beneath the carved dragon lantern that was suspended in the central void of the towering pagoda. A fragrant oil burned within the dragon’s belly, and if you squinted it looked as if the dragon was breathing fire.
Mr Fan gestured for the students to take their seats in the arc of small desks in front of him. Jamie sat between Lucy and Wing.
‘The skills of the Warriors of the Way are immortalised in legend,’ Mr Fan started. ‘Some of them deservingly so.’
He Conjured a ball of brilliant white light from the palm of his hand. The students gasped. No matter how many times they saw this, it still impressed them.
‘We Warriors are connected with the Way, the energy within all things. We can Summon this energy, we can Conjure it, and in extreme circumstances we can Ride the Way too.’ Mr Fan smiled at Jamie, who tingled from the acknowledgment.
‘We can View Remotely,’ Mr Fan continued, ‘and we are masters of kung fu.’
Now he acknowledged Cheng with a nod. Cheng cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair. Jamie glanced at Wing, hoping for an eye roll or a gesture of a finger down his throat. Wing didn’t respond.
‘But there is one skill we supposedly possess that inspires more awe and, dare I say, fear than all the others put together. It is this skill that makes us legends.’
Mr Fan paused and every one of the young Warriors of the Way edged forward in their seat. The room was deathly silent.
‘And I am here today,’ Mr Fan said, ‘to dispel that myth entirely.’
There was an audible exhalation as the students sank back.
Mr Fan looked from one Warrior to the next and added with a sly grin, ‘And replace it with a truth far more powerful than even the legends imply.’
Bohai, Jamie’s best friend in Sai Chun, had shared with him the legends of the Warriors of the Way, even though the fantastical stories were only for Chinese children. When Bohai whispered about the special type of warriors who could fight with lightning and white-hot fire, who could control the minds of their opponents, who could appear and disappear at will, Jamie had thought them exaggerations. But the fighting with lightning and fire had turned out to be true, and so was Riding the Way. Jamie’s stomach fluttered. Was Mr Fan saying they could learn to control another person’s mind?
‘Telepathy,’ Mr Fan said, ‘is both an art and a craft. One is more effective than the other and neither is what you think.’
Jamie’s eyes and smile grew wide. This may be the answer, he thought, the way to control whatever is going on in my head.
‘Can we really do mind control?’ Bruce asked.
‘No,’ Mr Fan said, ‘but we can communicate on a different level and that makes people think we can.’
He smiled mischievously as he walked to a small table at the side of the room.
Every eye followed him, Jamie’s included — but Jamie was also aware of what was going on in his peripheral vision. It’s not the wave that’s already passed that’s going to get you, his father had always said to him, it’s the one that swamps you from behind. Twelve years at sea had given Jamie the habit of looking once ahead and twice behind. This time, he was rewarded, but he kept his mouth shut.
Mr Fan was pouring tea from a small pot on the side table into one of two cups. He drained his cup, refilled it, then sipped slowly as he crossed back to the writing table. The Warriors shifted impatiently in their seats, desperate to know more. Mr Fan looked like he was enjoying dragging this out.
‘The Art of War teaches us that the only sure way to avoid losing a fight is not to go into it in the first place,’ Mr Fan said. He put his empty cup down on the table and cleared his throat. ‘This is vital for you to remember, for you are not only Warriors of the Way, you are also the hope for a new age. The subtle art of negotiation …’ Mr Fan paused, coughed, then thumped at his chest. He tried again. ‘Negotiation is nothing more than …’ He coughed some more and his face turned red. He reached for his teacup. It was empty.
Jamie went to stand, but was stopped by a firm hand on his shoulder. Lucy rushed over to the side table, filled the spare cup and crossed back to Mr Fan.
He took the cup with a smile, sipped, then said without the slightest trace of a scratchy throat, ‘The art of successful negotiation is in anticipating another’s needs.’
Lucy stared at him. ‘You mean you didn’t really need a drink?’
Cheng scoffed. ‘You mean our so-called telepathy is just getting idiots to do what we want them to do.’
Mr Fan grabbed Lucy by the back of the shirt as she lunged at Cheng.
‘I wouldn’t laugh so loudly, Mr Yu,’ a voice boomed from behind them, startling everyone except Jamie. ‘Subtle manipulation works on many levels and on many subjects.’
Cheng’s cheeks flared red.
Master Wu, still with his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. He walked between Wing’s desk and Jamie’s. ‘I’m pleased not all of you are on that level.’ He looked at Lucy’s cross expression. ‘And extremely pleased that one of you, at least, was brave enough to act. There are some moments in life that are gone before you realise they were here. They are the moments you spend a lifetime wishing you could get back.’
Jamie looked at Jade; she had said something similar when they were on the south side of the island. She had said the only thing worse than missing a shot was not taking it in the first place. Jade returned Jamie’s gaze in a way that felt like a challenge, then she looked away.
Lucy, still glaring at Cheng, slipped back into her chair.
‘We all communicate telepathically every day,’ Master Wu said, ‘although most of us are unaware we’re doing it. This type of telepathy involves reading the subtle cues of body language. There is no mystery to it, and in this case not much subtlety either.’
Master Wu raised his eyebrows at Mr Fan, who lowered his head and stepped graciously away from the writing desk.
‘That is the craft of telepathy,’ Master Wu said, taking Mr Fan’s place. ‘The art of telepathy is far more complex. Too complex, in fact, for this realm.’ Master Wu smiled at his Warriors and waited with a look of expectation on his face. ‘Too complex for this realm,’ he repeated as they stared at him blankly.
He sighed and said slowly, ‘If we are not doing the communicating in this realm, then it must be our …’
‘Our spirit guides,’ Jamie blurted.
‘Exactly,’ Master Wu said. ‘It is not magic and there is no mystery to it. We are not skilful enough to communicate through telepathy, but our guides can.’ He looked along the arc of eager faces. ‘Our guides do the talking for us; they act as our intermediaries. This can feel like telepathy, particularly if the recipient of your communication is not initiated into the Way. To such a person it will feel as if the messages are coming directly from you; it will feel like telepathy.’
Jamie gla
nced along the line of faces. Edwin looked worried, as if he was imagining someone else inside his head. Cheng was smirking. Jamie was sure that whatever messages he planned on sending, they’d surely be designed to make Cheng look good and the others look bad. Bruce’s eyes were glazed over, and Wing looked half-asleep. Lucy was still glaring at Cheng and no doubt plotting revenge. When Jamie got to Jade, he jumped, startled. She was staring straight back at him.
‘There is, however, a catch to telepathy,’ Master Wu said. ‘It is dependent on how well you are connected to your guide and how strongly the recipient is connected to theirs. It is almost essential for both parties to be in a meditative state for the communication to work. The good news is, we currently have in our presence the Great Guide’s own Warrior.’
Master Wu smiled at Jamie, who was suddenly paralysed by fear. Master Wu called him to the front of the class and placed a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.
‘With a guide as strong as Jamie’s,’ he said, ‘we can be sure that the messages will be received.’ He looked down at Jamie. ‘Shall we try?’
No! Jamie screamed in his head. His secret was about to be exposed. He hadn’t heard a word from the Great Guide since he’d chuckled at Jamie’s lame attempts to impress Jade. But the problem was bigger than simply not being able to connect to his spirit guide. It was what Jamie had been hearing instead that made him feel ill. His fellow Warriors weren’t just about to find out that he couldn’t connect to the Great Guide and was probably the worst Spirit Warrior ever. They were also about to discover that he was connected to something far worse.
‘Listen consciously, Jamie,’ Master Wu said. ‘Block out everything but your guide.’
He squeezed Jamie’s shoulder in a way that was supposed to reassure, but to Jamie it felt like a vice. His mind raced. Maybe he could fake it, try to guess the message Master Wu was sending. But knowing Master Wu, it would be something cryptic; or worse, something profound. Jamie’s stomach churned.
Jade leaned forward in her chair, watching him closely, suspiciously even.
Master Wu took a deep breath, closed his eyes and looked as if he’d gone into a trance. Jamie copied him. He closed his eyes, blocked out the noises around him and concentrated. Maybe he’d be lucky.
