by P J Tierney
At midnight, he left the room and went to the kitchen. He found Lucy there, reading newspapers.
She looked up. ‘Is he okay?’
Jamie shrugged.
Lucy pointed to a teapot on a side table. Jamie poured himself a cup, poured one for Lucy too, and sat down opposite her.
‘How’s Mr Fan going?’ he asked.
Lucy shrugged. ‘He won’t sleep or eat. He’s done nothing except meditate and call on his guide for help.’
‘It’s not working,’ Jamie said flatly. ‘Wing’s fever is really high. That’s not a good sign, is it?’
She shook her head, then looked up at Jamie, her eyes welling with tears. ‘But he can’t die, can he? He hasn’t achieved his life’s purpose.’
Jamie sipped his tea. He wanted to find comfort in that thought and he really wanted to comfort Lucy too, but he’d seen the celestial silks. ‘Sometimes that doesn’t seem to matter, Lucy. Sometimes people just die.’ He thought of the magpie silk. ‘And sometimes by dying, they fulfil someone else’s purpose.’
‘Stop it,’ Lucy said. ‘That’s not going to happen — not to Wing.’
Jamie put his tea down. ‘I’m so scared, Lucy. I can’t make him better.’
They sat in silence and stared at their tea.
Eventually Jamie gestured to the newspapers. ‘What are you reading?’
Lucy closed the top paper so he could see the front page. It showed a large colour photo of the missing girl he’d seen in the newspaper in Master Wu’s office. She was pretty, with blonde hair and blue eyes that seemed to sparkle from the newsprint. She wore the green and white checks of the very private, very expensive Peninsula School.
‘Her name’s Elizabeth,’ Lucy said.
Somehow, it made it sadder now he knew her name. ‘Please tell me they’ve found her,’ Jamie said.
Lucy shook her head. She moved the paper aside, found a more recent one and flicked through to find Elizabeth’s photo. She’d been moved to page four.
‘She’s a champion gymnast,’ Lucy said, turning the paper so Jamie could see a photo of the girl dismounting from the uneven bars in a twisting spin. ‘Looks a bit like the Wu-spin, doesn’t it?’
Jamie turned the paper so the girl wasn’t jumping down but across. He shrugged. ‘Only if you turn it, but then it’s not really the Wu-spin, is it?’
‘Look at her arms,’ Lucy said, ‘and the angle of her feet. They’re more like kung fu positions than gymnastic ones.’
‘What are you saying — she’s a secret kung fu fighter?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘She might be, but she doesn’t know it yet.’
She flicked through the pile and pulled out another newspaper, more recent still. This time Elizabeth had been relegated to page six.
Jamie raised his eyebrows. ‘At this rate she’ll be on the back page by next week.’
‘That’ll never happen,’ Lucy said, which made Jamie feel a little better till she added, ‘The back pages are only ever for sport.’
‘So then she won’t make the paper at all?’ Jamie asked.
Lucy looked at him sadly and didn’t answer. She went back to the article instead. ‘They’ve pulled back the search, although her parents have vowed to keep looking.’
Elizabeth’s bright smile, taken only days before she went missing, seemed so out of place now. Jamie thought of her and of Wing lying in a fever and was astounded by how quickly people’s lives could change forever.
Lucy slid another newspaper from the pile. ‘I saw this one today,’ she said, showing him the headline: Promising Magician ‘Disappears’ After School Excursion. ‘His name’s Hong and he did magic shows. Apparently he could slide a cup across a table without even touching it.’
Jamie’s head snapped up. He pulled the paper from her hands and read the article. He relaxed a little and gave a half-smile. ‘Yeah, but it also says he could saw a woman in half and make money appear from his little sister’s ear. So maybe you shouldn’t read too much into the teacup thing.’
Lucy shrugged. ‘There just seem to be a lot of kids going missing, that’s all. And if you look closely, it seems they all might be connected to the Way.’
Jamie considered this for a moment, his eyebrows raised. ‘Did they find those two brothers from the dinghy?’
‘Their name’s Kwok,’ she said, sounding worked up, ‘and no, they didn’t. The search has been called off. They’ve been declared dead even though they haven’t found their bodies. How’s that possible? They could still be alive, couldn’t they?’
‘There are lots of reasons why bodies are never found at sea,’ Jamie said quietly.
He thought of the salvage trips with Hector that had turned into recovery missions, and how the bodies had been so bloated with water that they’d sunk to the bottom of the ocean. He thought of other bodies he’d seen floating on the surface, and how he’d had to use a sonic beeper to scare off the circling sharks so there would be something left for the Marine Police to retrieve. He thought of wild currents that could sweep wreckage from one side of the Pacific Ocean to the other, and of two bleached white skeletons pinned beneath a broken hull.
Lucy looked at Jamie with desperation in her eyes. ‘But they could still be alive, couldn’t they?’
Jamie realised that for all Lucy’s worldly experience, she’d only ever seen one side of life: with marinas full of boats and satchels full of money, and where there was always a happy ending. Things were slightly different in the world Jamie lived in.
Lucy’s eyes lost their glimmer of hope the longer Jamie stayed silent. She bit her bottom lip. ‘Oh,’ she said, then added sadly, ‘And these are just the ones that made the paper.’
‘You mean there could be more?’
She shrugged. ‘Not everything is news, Jamie.’
‘A missing child isn’t news?’ he said in a disbelieving tone.
‘It sort of depends on the child.’ She pulled out the photo of Elizabeth with her perfect teeth and flawless skin. ‘It helps if you’re pretty, and rich.’
There was a shuffling noise in the doorway. Startled, they both whipped around to find Wing leaning against the doorjamb.
‘Pretty and rich?’ he said. ‘You should be all right then, Lucy.’
‘Wing!’ they cried in unison, rushing to his side and helping him to the table.
He didn’t have a shirt on and Jamie was relieved to see the dressing over the wound was still clean. He felt Wing’s forehead. ‘You feeling okay?’
Wing shook his head. ‘I feel terrible.’
‘Well, you look great compared to a couple of hours ago,’ Lucy said. She went to hug him but pulled herself up short and awkwardly half-hugged, half-patted the side of Wing that wasn’t hurt. ‘I’m so sorry, Wing, I had no idea you were so sick.’
Wing nodded. ‘I knew I was getting worse, but in those last few hours the infection just overtook me.’
His face was still grey and his brow was beaded with sweat. Jamie was no expert, but he didn’t think the infection had finished with Wing just yet.
‘You hungry?’ Lucy asked.
A little smile played at the edges of Wing’s mouth.
‘Am I what?’
Lucy rushed to the cooking area of the enormous kitchen, then put her hands on her hips. She looked a little bewildered. She opened a cupboard, then closed it again, opened a drawer and took out a knife. She placed it on the bench. ‘Right,’ she said.
As she looked around for what was next, she noticed the boys watching her, both with bemused expressions. She put her fingers to her mouth and bit on her fingernails. Then she said, ‘I know, I’ll wake the cook.’
Wing laughed. ‘Just a sandwich will do.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Okay.’ And she picked up the phone.
‘You’re waking the cook for a sandwich?’ Jamie leaned over the wide stainless-steel bench and took the receiver from her hand. ‘I can make a sandwich.’
He went around to the other side of the bench and was f
aced with a broad expanse of sleek stainless steel without a door handle in sight.
‘Well, I could if we were in a galley,’ he said.
Lucy gave a cocky sort of huff and pushed on the upper corner of one of the stainless-steel panels. It popped open. ‘See,’ she said, ‘I’m not entirely useless.’
The kitchen was like those Jamie had seen in the restaurants he delivered razorfish to: all stainless steel and glass, with a double oven, an industrial-sized glass-fronted fridge, a huge wok burner and a few normal-sized ones too. He opened the fridge to figure out where to start. At the front was Mr Fan’s cooler bag with vials of antibiotics for Wing. He moved that aside. There were crisper drawers filled with green vegetables, a sealed-off section just for seafood, and a pull-out shelf for jars and condiments.
Jamie noticed a large clay pot right up the back and his heart fluttered. He was about to ask Lucy if that was what he thought it was, but stopped himself. How would she know? She couldn’t even make a sandwich.
The pot was heavier than he expected and he placed it very gently on the shiny benchtop. When he broke the seal on the lid, a rich aroma filled the air. It tickled his nose and his memory: it was the type of smell that drew you into restaurants and made the sides of your tongue tingle.
Wing closed his eyes as he caught the scent. ‘Mmm,’ he murmured. No doubt his mind was on food slightly more exotic than a sandwich.
‘A master stock,’ Jamie said, wondering how old it was. He’d heard that some temple monks had master stocks that were more than a hundred years old. The pot was never allowed to run dry, and the flavours became deeper and richer with every year.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Lucy said dismissively. ‘Cook uses that for soup and stuff.’
Jamie smiled as he remembered Old Mama Chow’s wonton soup. It was generally acknowledged to be the best wonton soup in the territory — albeit by the residents of Sai Chun, who didn’t get out much. That aside, it really was a good soup. Jamie was pretty sure he could work out how to replicate it.
He took a ladleful of the precious stock and put it in a saucepan, topped it up with water and turned it on to simmer. Next, he chopped up a spring onion and put that in too. From the fridge he removed a plate of green prawns.
‘Is it okay to use these, Lucy?’
She didn’t look up. ‘Sure.’
He peeled the prawns and then cut them into tiny pieces, grated a knob of ginger over them, added a bunch of finely chopped coriander, drizzled in some oyster sauce and sprinkled a pinch of sugar over the top.
Wing and Lucy came to the counter, drawn by the cooking noises and smells. They sat on the high stools on the other side of the bench and watched as Jamie put small spoonfuls of the prawn mixture onto wonton wrappers.
Wing helped fold and twist the wontons, but grimaced as the movement of his injured shoulder brought on more pain. He stopped helping and just watched instead.
‘What were you talking about when I came in?’ Wing asked as they leaned over their steaming bowls of dumplings.
Lucy told him her theory about the missing children and how she thought they might be connected to the Way. Jamie made a face to let Wing know he wasn’t so sure.
Wing said, ‘It’d be good to know either way, though, wouldn’t it? We need our own Recollector.’
Jamie suddenly felt empty inside. He did have his own Recollector once, even if only for a few hours before his mother abandoned him. She had left Jamie to his father when he was just a few hours old. That was the last anyone had heard of her. Now he was on his own and had no idea what might happen in the future. He couldn’t even connect to his spirit guide when he wasn’t in a coma. Then a thought popped into his head.
‘We could use an almanac,’ he said. ‘I saw one in Sai Chun. It predicted everything from the first Spirit Warrior through till … well, till I don’t know.’
Wing chuckled. ‘Yeah, my mum’s got one. It’s called Finding Future Love. Didn’t work though — I found it tossed in the bin. Don’t tell her I told you.’
‘No, a real almanac,’ Jamie said breathlessly. ‘Bohai told me his father’s has never been wrong.’
The almanac wouldn’t just help them find out about the missing children; it would also be useful to Jamie in any possible confrontation with Jade. Maybe Lucy was right: his life and Jade’s might intertwine in a bad way rather than a good one. He remembered the magpie silk in the Celestial Hall — how the life it portrayed had been cut short.
He told the others what he was thinking, and added, ‘I don’t know if I can beat Jade on my own.’
He, Lucy and Wing all looked at each other and said in unison, ‘We need that almanac.’
By the morning, Wing was looking more like his old self. Mr Fan had administered another antibiotic shot at dawn, and although Wing was weak, the colour had returned to his cheeks.
After breakfast, they all went down to the marina to wait for Jamie’s tugboat to arrive.
‘It was a little more difficult to find than I’d thought,’ Mr Wang said. ‘We didn’t have many options.’
From beyond the breakwall came a low, rumbling drone that announced the boat’s arrival. Jamie thought it sounded promising. The drone grew louder, and finally a snubbed-nose bow poked through the opening. They all craned to see.
The boat was shorter than The Swift and slightly older too. She had an ugly grey hull, made worse by the fenders fashioned from tattered tyres and frayed ropes. Paint peeled from her sides in great sheets and there was a huge dent in the port side gunwale, as if something heavy had dropped on it. The contrast between the tug and the gleaming white boats she passed couldn’t have been sharper.
Just from the sound, Jamie could tell she had dual engines. She trimmed perfectly in the water, the bow not too high and not too low either. He smiled.
‘All these vessels to choose from and you go for a dirty old tug,’ Wing said with a laugh. ‘Are you insane?’
‘Yes, he is,’ Lucy said, folding her arms across her chest.
‘Why a tug?’ Wing asked. ‘You could’ve had a brand-new cruiser.’
Jamie watched the little tug approach, then he turned to his friend and said, ‘Because it was a tugboat that saved you, Wing.’
Wing stopped laughing. He blinked a few times, then looked back at the boat. He swallowed and said, ‘You know, now I look at her, she’s not that ugly after all.’
Wing was just being polite. She was a really ugly tug. But to Jamie, it was surface ugly. Her proportions were right, and the wave pattern on the hull told him that she would be fast when she needed to be and solid when she didn’t. As to what she looked like, he could fix that with some paint, a new fender and a bit of welding here and there.
As the tug swung around to moor, the young Warriors of the Way got their first glimpse of the name painted on the hull. They looked at each other and grinned.
‘Jade’s going to love this,’ Wing said.
The name was Lin Yao: beautiful jade treasure.
Chapter 10
The Warriors of the Way all thanked Mr Wang. As he shook Jamie’s hand, Mr Wang bent down and said quietly but firmly in his ear, ‘You take good care of her,’ and they both knew he wasn’t talking about the boat.
Jet was first aboard, swinging over the rail, running across the deck and up the ladder to the bridge.
The captain gave Jamie a very quick tour. He pointed out the controls, and the levers that operated the winch and the capstan. He showed Jamie how he’d have to shove a chopstick into the perished seal of the windshield to stop the glass from rattling, and warned him against going on the forward gantry, as it was a bit rusty.
Jamie stood on tiptoe to see. The gantry was more than a bit rusty; it had a huge, gaping hole in it. Nor was it doing his confidence any good that the captain kept laughing and rubbing his hands together, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune in offloading the Lin Yao.
Jamie cut the tour short, letting the captain and his greedy giggle disembark earl
y. Jamie continued on his own, checking the fuel and that the gauges worked. He counted the lifejackets and made a quick note of the buoys and flags onboard. He ran the mooring lines out to make sure they weren’t frayed through, and lowered the anchor to check the chain. Finally, he’d determined the Lin Yao was seaworthy. He took the bridge, strained to peer over the bow just like he did on The Swift, then leaned out the door and called for the lines to be removed.
He started the engines. There was a shudder, then the familiar vibration through the deck and the smell of diesel exhaust in the air. He instantly felt at home. It wasn’t The Swift, but it was close. He heard the mooring lines thump onto the deck. The Lin Yao was ready to make way.
Jamie was tentative with the controls; he eased the levers down and listened for the engines to change pitch. He felt the bow tilt upwards slightly, then the forward motion as the propellers found resistance. He put the throttle forward and the Lin Yao eased away from the dock. Jamie smiled; it was a perfect start. Mr Wang and the old captain would have to be impressed by that.
He directed the boat to the gap in the breakwall, and once through he checked the compass. He looked at Wing, who in turn peeked over his shoulder to where Mr Fan was standing on the side of the rusty gantry.
‘Do you have a plan to get us to Sai Chun?’ Wing whispered.
Jamie shook his head and stared out the windscreen while he thought. What might persuade Mr Fan to let them make a detour so they could get the almanac from Bohai’s father? It was especially tricky as Jamie didn’t want to tell Mr Fan why they needed to go there.
‘Maybe Master Wu hasn’t found the threat on Chia Wu yet,’ Wing suggested. ‘That could buy us some time. They won’t want us back there until it’s safe again.’
‘But Wing, he won’t find anything,’ Jamie said.
Wing didn’t look so sure.
‘He won’t find anything because I’m the one who did all the damage,’ Jamie reminded him.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Wing said.
