Shanghai Steam

by Calvin D. Jim

  And then I heard it, the Music of the Spheres. The part of me that was Song resonated with it. But — it did not come from the Taijitu Spiral. It came from without, somewhere above the waters. I looked up into the sky, never before having thought about what might be beyond the Lake. Could it be that there was more than all this? I had focused on Grandfather and his given Law for so long, that I had never considered…

  I lifted my arms, letting my Kirlian aspects absorb Qi from all elements of the Universe. It called to me, and I answered a million souls that had escaped this muddy empire for a different kind of life. Empowered, my being lifted into the air, gently spiralling with the balance known to the Taijitu. I was, in myself, everything I needed to be.

  It only took a moment, a precise pearl of centred harmony within my being to accept myself and release the false cloak I had worn. I left the Taijitu, taking Song with me and began my journey toward the next existence. The Universe embraced me, caressing me with its varied energies, giving me the promise that I would never again be refused as part of the Whole.

  * * * * *

  Jennifer Rahn is the author of the novels Wicked Initiations and The Longevity Thesis. She has also published several short stories in various Canadian and American anthologies. Jen currently works in both academia and biotech, where she researches ways to improve the outcome of glioblastoma multiforme.

  Last Flight of the Lóng Qíshì

  Emily Mah

  The beggar arrives at sundown, his posture stooped as a shepherd’s crook, feet cracked and tough as old leather. His face is so lined with wrinkles that his eyes are nothing more than slits. A wispy gray beard sprouts from his chin and trails to one side in the wind. There is always wind in the city that time has forgotten and tonight it bears the scent of moisture and the promise of a storm.

  With its tireless gusts the wind has broken down the old, stone walls, leaving them in ruin, and has scattered gears, parts of old vehicles, machines, and even people along with bits of carapace across the roads now buried in sand. There is a glass eye that stares blankly at the heavens. Across the way is a leg worked in iron, the padded sling atop it all rotted away.

  This was a city of survivors, but now it is only a ruin. In its shadows flits a tiny figure, a little slip of a girl, who peers out between the cracked bricks with interest. Who is this old man who’s come so far across the wasteland? How did he survive temperatures that bake water right out of the skin by day and freeze one solid at night? What would he seek in a place so forsaken as this?

  He seems unaware of her as he makes his way, a catch in his step that is not quite a limp, down the dusty memory of a street towards the far edge of town. His course is straight and implies purpose. Past two turns, the girl begins to guess where he is going; when he bears right at the next, she flies across the broken stones, moving like a darting shadow through the ruins, her gaze always fixed on the old beggar.

  Her pulse quickens as he reaches the open area, once a town square, and pauses to look at the great wreckage that spans it like a fallen bridge, all rusted metal ribbing and great swathes of torn fabric, gears that are so gummed with sand that they will never turn again.

  None of this gives the beggar pause. He walks to the far end of the wreck, stops, stoops, and pushes aside a handful of sand. One great glassy eye stares back at him, and the girl sees his wrinkles deepen in a smile.

  Quick as a bird, the girl darts away to the little shanty town built up inside the old market. Gone are the cloth awnings that covered stalls of sweetmeats and trinkets, replaced by the ragtag shelters that stink of stale smoke and raw sewage. The broken roof, high above, gives some cover from the elements. “A Lóng Qíshì!” she cries out across the expanse of cookfires and junkpiles. Patched together automatons rattle in surprise at her shout. “A Lóng Qíshì!”

  No human looks up. “She is a simple minded girl,” people whisper. “A little slip of a fool, nothing more.” “The Dragon Riders are a myth!” shouts one man.

  But by the time she returns to the square with a dipper full of rainwater, the beggar has moved enough sand to reveal a lion-like face with two great glass eyes that shine without any scratches. A large mouth with white teeth and a curling tongue grin in the setting sun. A light wind dances along the length of the behemoth and vast lengths of cloth stir and billow, casting sand aside.

  On the horizon sit dark clouds, gravid with rain, trundling inevitably closer like battle tanks from the Great War. A strong wind, laden with water droplets, snakes across the square, pushing rivers of sand before it, causing the great sails of cloth to lift and furl, ripples cascading along the length of the whole tangled wreck.

  The beggar places his hand on one great glass eye and holds still as stone, save for a smile that folds his heavily creased skin again and again. With a sudden laugh, he claps his hands. The girl cups the dipper of water against her chest and braves the wind to go to him. She keeps her head bowed as she presents the water, and the beggar touches it first to his forehead, then his lips, drinking it dry in one draught.

  With a grinding creak, gears begin to move in the wreckage beside them. Old gears so gritted with sand that they have been locked for decades now begin to turn, grinding like old bones. Two great wings, ripped and tattered, extend towards the stars. The grinning mouth snaps open then shut and the great glass eyes close with a click and open with a clack.

  The girl tears herself away and flies to the marketplace again. “He has awakened the dragon!” she cries. “He has brought it back!”

  But not even the automatons look at her now. She is clearly raving. What wild stories she has, first of a Lóng Qíshì and now a dragon coming to life in the ruins of the city.

  Someone throws a rock and it pelts her in the arm. She startles and moves away. Quickly, before more stones rain down, she runs out into the deepening night and the encroaching storm.

  “You see what a fool she is?” the junk dwellers say. “She is touched in the head.”

  Out in the encroaching darkness, she picks her way back to the square. When the sun goes down, wild dogs begin to stir, hunting across the dunes in their packs.

  The girl reaches the beggar just as the whole wreck spins to life. Gears turn flywheels that pivot the great wings to catch the wind, only to have it pour on through the holes and tatters in the cloth. Try as they might to cup the air, they jerk and rattle to no avail. More gears begin to turn and the eyes blaze with light. The jumble of rags and scrap shudders and begins to rise. Out of the grit rises a metal seat, like a throne, and the sand pours off it like water.

  The beggar claps again and shouts for joy, only to have his voice drowned out by a crash of thunder. With halting steps he draws near enough to catch the side of the great lion face, and as the wind screams past, the sinuous neck lifts him up to the chair. He grabs one armrest, spry as a young man for a moment caught in the eyeblink of blinding white lighting that strikes out in the desert and imprints his image on the girl’s retinas.

  As the thunder rolls towards the ruins, coming ever louder, she races back to the old market. “He is leaving!” she cries. “The Lóng Qíshì is leaving! He and the dragon will fly!”

  She dodges one stone, and then another, but is not quick enough for the woman who grabs her by the arm. “There are no Lóng Qíshì,” the woman spits, her broken teeth causing her to whistle as she speaks. “They were a myth. They never were. The Great War, the Pulse that killed the automatons, they’re stories, girl. Be sensible.”

  “You’ll miss it,” the girl says, chin up with grim determination. She ducks under the woman’s slap and wriggles free from her grasp. The next flash of lightning shows the girl leaping through the doorway, back out into the night.

  “You’ll die!” the woman shouts after her, only to have the wind tear her words from her mouth.

  The wind is so strong that it almost lifts the girl off her feet, but she runs ever onward towards the square. The dragon’s lights flicker and its gears splutter. One
wing has been torn to ribbons by sand borne on the gale.

  In the lee of a large stone, the girl cowers and peers into the rain drenched darkness. The dragon lights, then stills, then lights again. The beggar sits calmly in his throne, serene, at peace.

  The wind screams through the empty walls and broken stones of the city and funnels of sand and rain spin up in the distance. The girl presses herself more firmly in place and strains to see the dragon, now dark, now dim, bright for a heartbeat, then dim again. A broad section of fabric has torn away from the metal frame, but still the beast stirs, still it lifts its snakelike neck with the rider atop.

  A gust strong enough to slide stones across the sand heaves the great beast over, then up. The broken wings flap and the long, lean body tumbles up into the air, now flashing bright, now dim, now gone, only to flash black against the white clouds in the next blink of lightning.

  Burned into the girl’s retinas is the image of the dragon aloft, the rider with his arms outstretched, guiding the beast masterfully through the air, the wings unfurled, and the five-clawed talons poised to strike.

  But as the thunder rolls in, shaking the very ground with its wrath, the now bright, now dim, lights tumble away into the darkness, carried up to the heights of the clouds, perhaps, or dashed against the desert below.

  The girl strains to see in the pouring rain and howling wind, but each flash of lightning shows only empty sky.

  The storm rages on, the night darkening to pitch, like a cavern. More funnels weave across the desert, tossing sand and rocks high into the air.

  The wind screams on, until morning, when the first fingers of the dawn reveal a sky scrubbed clean of clouds and devoid of dragons. The girl sits, shivering but alive. She looks down at her hands, marveling that they are still there, still move when she bids them. Her dress is torn up one side, but covers her well enough. The ground beneath her feet is chill and still wet, even as the thirsty earth drinks down the puddles so fast that they appear to boil, and a piece of bright gold cloth is caught on a rough stone nearby.

  She gets to her feet and limps to the market again, the image of the last Lóng Qíshì branded in her heart, the scrap of brightly colored cloth in one hand.

  Let them laugh, she thinks. When the first of the inhabitants calls out to her, “What of your dragon?” she gives no reply. Instead she thinks of the great square, now being combed smooth again by the wind and time until it too remembers no more.

  * * * * *

  Emily Mah Tippetts writes science fiction and fantasy as Emily Mah and YA romance as E. M. Tippetts. Her father’s side of the family immigrated to the United States from China in the 1940’s. A former attorney with degrees in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University and business law from UCLA, she now lives in London with her family. It’s a long way from New Mexico, where she grew up.

  Protection from Assassins

  Frances Pauli

  Leilani only stole a pinch. One tiny press of powder from each packet and the old apothecary would never know.

  She crouched in the alley behind the crates and fishermen’s nets, her nose scrunched against the smell of Kona’s main port, with six perfect, square packets spread on the cobbles like Mahjong tiles.

  Her fingers slipped a glass vial from a secret compartment in her lacquer belt. Just a few more trips to market on the apothecary’s business and she’d have enough of a stash.

  Zing! A thick, bronze bolt smashed into the wall above her head.

  Leilani rolled to the right, scattering herbs and cringing as the vial broke. A brass arm reached over the nearest crate. Gears clicked as a mechanical guard’s face appeared above the boxes. Spinning eyes caught and recorded her crime. Another bolt whizzed past and she pressed against the wall to avoid being skewered.

  A second automaton stood in the alley’s mouth. This one’s arm pointed in her direction. The hand hung from its hinge revealing a barrel that contained more wicked darts.

  “Halt!” A mechanical order barked from the thing’s belly. Xiang didn’t bother fitting his hounds with proper mouths.

  She counted her options. If Xiang was in a good mood, she’d only lose her hand. The roofline hung over enough to grab, but she didn’t fancy taking a dart mid-leap. She stood. The first guard scrambled onto the top crate and jumped, landing on the cobbles in a clatter of brass widgets. Now he blocked the other’s weapon, but Leilani still stood within his reach.

  “Halt! Surrender!”

  She shuffled backward. The automaton mirrored her movements, its joints squeaking. When she reached the end of the alley her options disappeared. If Xiang was in a foul mood … Leilani sprang straight up. Her hands snagged the lip of the overhang. Heaving and kicking, she pulled her chest up onto the tiles. Her legs still dangled over, however, and cool fingers tightened around her ankle.

  She pulled, but the metal fingers clenched and pain lanced up into her calf. She heard a bang below. A hiss rose up from the alley and she felt the heat of steam against her legs. The grip released. She flung her legs up and rolled onto the rooftop.

  “Halt! Surrender!”

  Another crash followed and then a clatter of metal. Leilani paused. She should take her good fortune and run. She would find enough trouble waiting at home.

  “Hahttttttttttt trenderrrrg.”

  She scooted back to the edge and peeked over. A dart whizzed below but she couldn’t see its target. She could see the remains of one attacker. Its torso sprawled, wrenched open, spilling springs and gears across the cobbles. It still had one leg attached that kicked pitifully.

  A whirl of fabric flipped into view. Another thunk answered along with a series of echoing, metallic blows. Leilani lay down and poked her head over the rim.

  The second guard still stood on its feet but it wobbled and leaked steam at the joints. One of its arms hung from a single spring while its good arm waved violently. A strange man twirled in a swath of oversized garments and leapt half-way up the alley wall. He stepped effortlessly against the planks, flew toward the guard, and tore off its head with one kick.

  Leilani dropped into the alley. Now that the stranger had stopped spinning, she could see enough to know he hadn’t come from the island — not anywhere near the islands. He looked old country.

  The garments he wore wrapped his body like a shroud, tucked into bindings at the wrists and ankles. His skin and eyes told her even more than his clothing — he’d come from overseas. He looked like Xiang had when he’d first stepped off the boat, before he’d grown fat on poi and the islanders’ taxes.

  She reached for the automaton’s head and watched the stranger’s eyes widen. “Their memories.” She stabbed a shaking finger at the head. “There’s a cylinder in the back.” When he didn’t respond, she moved again, tensed to spring away should he attack. She rolled the head over and probed the base of the skull with her fingers. The memory tube rested under the plates which she pried apart enough to pop the thing out. She laid it on the ground and stood. The stranger might have been a statue.

  Leilani crushed the cylinder with her heel and eyed the second guard’s remains. She looked at the head, already partly cracked open, then at the stranger beside it, then back to the head. If she could crush both cylinders, she might avoid a beating.

  She sidled toward the wreckage, keeping her eyes on the man. His head tilted. Leilani squatted, tore out the memory tube, and ground it into the cobblestones. Only one witness and she had a feeling he wouldn’t run to tell Xiang.

  “Why do you steal?”

  Leilani stood taller and stuck out her chin. “I only take a pinch each time.”

  “A pinch of dishonesty can start a landslide of sorrow.”

  “Right. Well, thanks for the warning and,” she waved toward the metal bodies, “that, but I really should get back.”

  He moved fast. One minute he leaned against the wall and the next he stood right beside her. He brushed the hair off her face. Leilani turned away but not before he saw the brui
ses.

  “He beats you.”

  “It could be worse.”

  His eyes narrowed. ”A man who dishonors women is no man at all.”

  “Sure.” Leilani backed out of his reach and then turned to face the alley mouth. One step and a rustle of silk and he landed in front of her.

  “Yi!” She clutched at her chest and shook her head. “How do you move like that?”

  “I’m looking for someone.” This time the twitch turned into a sly smile. “A man named Xiang.”

  She looked over his shoulder, beyond the alley entrance to Kamehameha Bay sparkling under the Hawaiian sun. Three ships moored there and she guessed he’d come on the newest. Leilani didn’t know what might make a man cross an ocean to find Xiang but she knew enough about Xiang to guess it wasn’t pleasant.

  “Just go up the hill.” She turned to the rise above the town and pointed toward the apex. “The highest spot. You can’t miss it.”

  He dipped into a bow so crisp that she flinched.

  “Well, thanks again, and good luck with, whatever.”

  “Vengeance.”

  “Nice.”

  Leilani left the alley at a trot. She scuttled across the street and down along the curving shoreline. If her eyes darted to the ship a time or two, who could blame her? The new arrival had multiple square sails and a hull like dragon’s scale. Curved beams poked out like spines along its bow, and the crew all wore the manner and the garments of the old country.

  Not her country. Leilani’s coloring and hair gave her away as a native though she wore the short pants and shirt of any shop study. Her thick, black hair and skin brown like a coconut shell marked her.

  Mene’s apothecary operated from the cheaper side of the street, without beach access. Leilani crossed the street where black lava stretched out into the sea. She hurried up the path between rickety buildings as the air fogged with the steam venting around laundry windows. She ducked the plumeria bushes and scurried to Master’s front door.

  The knob triggered a lever that sent a whistle screeching through the dark shop. She cringed when it howled but pressed on. The rafters hung with bundles of herbs and animal parts. The shelves along each wall overflowed with pouches, glass vials, boxes and leather bags, and the whole shop smelled of armpit.