by K T Durham
As the clock struck six, Mabel closed the shop. By then, Lily and Elly were in the living room watching The Sound of Music. Lily had sung along on “My Favourite Things” with perfect pitch. She tried to persuade Elly to sing with her. “Come on, it can’t be that bad!” she urged when Elly steadfastly refused.
Mabel stumbled into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. “Lily’s daddy is preparing the food in the kitchen,” she said, taking a sip of cold tea and propping up her tired feet. Elly met Mr Wong for the first time when he came home from work in Chinatown over an hour ago. He was a short, soft-spoken man with greying black hair and gentle eyes.
Lily giggled. “Yeah, dad’s much better than mum when it comes to Chinese cooking. But he can’t bake to save his life!”
Mabel sat up and glanced at her watch. “The relatives will be arriving around seven. I’ll go off and freshen up. Elly dear, I’m so glad you’re with us tonight, Lily’s ecstatic to have your company.” Before rushing off, she smiled and winked. “By the way, you’ve become quite a sensation with my customers, especially old Mrs Chan. Apparently, you are the first green-eyed person they’ve ever met who speaks perfect Cantonese!”
Sure enough, at seven o’clock on the dot, Lily’s relatives started arriving. About a dozen aunts, uncles, and cousins trickled in with much noise and fanfare. Lily rushed over to greet the guests, offering up a red and gold platter laden with dried fruits, watermelon seeds, and various candies in gold wrappers. “I’ve been greeting them like this every single year since I was five!” she whispered to Elly. “Fancy still seeing me do this when I’m in college!”
The adults ambushed Lily, making various comments about her height (“Oh, you’re still quite short, aren’t you?”), her skin (“My, you’re getting more freckles! You should stay out of the sun!”), and her face (“Your glasses are getting thicker by the year!”). Lily put on a brave smile, but whenever she caught Elly’s eye she would make a long-suffering face.
After they were finished with Lily, the relatives turned to Elly curiously. Who was this girl, and what was she doing at this family gathering? But once Mabel had formally introduced Elly and explained that her parents were not in town, they became quite sympathetic and showered her with laisee. They were utterly delighted when they realized Elly could speak fluent Cantonese.
“Lily, you should take some lessons from your friend!” Aunt Helen gushed. Lily’s grandmother nodded approvingly at Elly. “You are a very good influence on my granddaughter!” she said in Cantonese. Elly smiled back politely before flashing Lily an apologetic look.
The Wongs were a large family, with some living overseas in Hong Kong and Shanghai. If the entire extended family had been gathered in London, there would have been over forty people squashed into the modest three-bedroom house. The large, round rosewood dining table was overladen with a dozen dishes. Elbows were touching when all sixteen people squeezed in at the table. Elly was sandwiched between Lily and her cousin Carrie.
With a genteel smile, Lily’s father stood up and raised his glass. “Welcome to our humble home, everyone!” he said in Cantonese. “This is a toast to a prosperous, healthy, and happy Year of the Monkey! Cheers!” Everyone stood up and cheered boisterously as glasses chimed together.
With a grin, Elly copied what they were doing, even attempting to use chopsticks (at which she proved to be a quick study). She noticed that Carrie and her parents remained seated and stony-faced.
But when Elly saw what had been plopped right at the centre of the table, she froze and went quite pale. Surrounded by plates of Chinese vegetables, tofu, a large pot of soup, a steamed fish covered in some watery brown sauce under a mound of spring onion, suspicious-looking blobs of black stuff with mushrooms, and various sliced and pickled meats, was the highly anticipated suckling pig; a crispy-skinned barbecued piglet with little red light bulbs where the eyes should be!
It looked so grotesque that Elly quickly reminded Lily that she did not eat meat. Lily noticed her friend’s stricken expression and giggled. “You know, this really isn’t that much different from the huge turkeys that the English and Americans love to eat for Christmas and Thanksgiving! The Chinese just have a different idea about food presentation.” She giggled some more as Elly’s face went even more pale. “Don’t worry! We won’t make you eat it. All the adults will make sure you get completely stuffed on rice and all those veggies alone, not to mention the desserts!” With a grin, she plopped a mound of vegetables on Elly’s plate with her chopsticks.
Carrie turned to them. “Aren’t you too young to be a vegetarian?” she asked pompously, looking at Elly with raised eyebrows. Elly noticed that she was very pretty. Were those actually diamond earrings in her earlobes?
“Well, my whole family is vegetarian. Animal meat has never been a part of our diet,” Elly explained with a smile. She tried the stir-fried broccoli and spinach. Though she much preferred raw vegetables, this wasn’t too bad at all.
Beside her, Lily groaned softly. “Watch out,” she muttered under her breath as she crunched on the crispy skin of the barbequed pork.
Before dinner, she had given Elly the low-down on her relatives, and had tried to give her ample warning about her cousin Carrie, older by six months. “Carrie’s mum is my mother’s younger sister. Aunt Brenda is a real narcissist, and her daughter takes after her. Aunt Brenda married into a really wealthy family. Her husband’s the big boss of a huge law firm in the city. Carrie’s an only child, like me, and she’s possibly even worse than Clare Andrews. She’s spoiled, arrogant, manipulative, and she feels entitled to everything. I can’t stand her.”
She lowered her voice even further. “Aunt Brenda hates us because she’s certain my mum was always Grandmother’s favourite.”
Elly had listened in rapt attention. This talk of family discord was strange to her. Though her little brother Luca drove her crazy at times, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would give his life for her, as she would for him. Her parents never played favourites with her or Luca. Elly was certain that Mama and Papa loved them equally.
“If Aunt Brenda hates your mother so much, why does she bother to come over every year for the reunion dinner?” she had asked curiously.
Lily laughed. “Families can be very strange. You hate them, you love them. For one, my grandmother lives with us, and as the eldest she gets to decide where the reunion dinner takes place. Aunt Brenda comes here not only because of my grandmother, but because she loves to gloat and put us down. To her, we’re the poor blue-collar workers. You’ll understand when you hear the things they say about us and our house. You’ll be able to smell the unmistakable scent of money reeking from them.” She rolled her eyes. “If Aunt Brenda had her way, she’d get everyone to gather at her thirteen-bedroom mansion all the way across town, near Buckingham Palace. She loves telling people she’s neighbours with the royal family.”
At the table, Elly saw that Carrie’s parents were sandwiched between Grandmother Wong and Lily’s father. Their faces looked sour as they picked at their food and tutted at every opportunity. Elly noticed how Mabel’s smile seemed to have become frozen on her face as she valiantly addressed every nasty insinuation her sister and her husband made. (“Oh, so how’s your little bakery doing? Don’t you ever tire of slaving away at the ovens? Oh, I see that your wallpaper is peeling; do you want me to recommend a renovator to come redo them for you?”)
Next to her, Carrie was examining the piece of tofu she had just picked up with her chopsticks. “I think I just found a strand of hair in my food,” she announced curtly, and dropped the tofu on the red table cloth. From across the table, her parents tutted loudly and shook their heads.
Elly was not of this realm, and she was not Chinese, but she could spot bad manners from a mile away. She glanced at Grandmother Wong, who looked strangely serene in the face of such blatant rudeness. Carrie and her parents were dressed so nicely and sp
oke English with posh accents, but all three of them had the same mean look.
After she had played around with her food some more, Carrie sighed with disgust and turned back to Elly. “As I was saying, your parents shouldn’t make you go on a vegetarian diet. Young girls like us need the proteins that meat provides. Your growth will be stunted if you live on just veggies.” Then she smiled meanly. “But then again, Lily’s practically a midget, and she eats tons of meat.”
Lily threw her cousin a dirty look. “At least I’m human, unlike some people,” she muttered.
Elly’s smile froze as she looked at Carrie. “Is that right?” she said politely. “But seeing how well my parents grew up on a vegetarian diet, I suppose I’ll get by unscathed.” Beside her, Lily snorted as she stifled a laugh.
Carrie scowled. “Well, you should probably do some research and see for yourself,” she scoffed. Then, scrambling for something else to lord over her cousin’s unflappable friend, her eyes strayed to Elly’s dress and narrowed.
“What’s that thing on your belt?”
Elly glanced down. “Oh, that’s my Roy— . . . I mean, my journal. I keep it with me all the time.”
Carrie wrinkled her nose. “Who carries a journal around with them like that? It’s really odd, makes you look like a gypsy or something.”
Lily gasped. Elly blushed hotly.
“Hey Carrie, why don’t you just shut up?” Lily said quietly.
Carrie’s dark eyes flashed angrily. “Don’t you dare speak to me that way,” she hissed under her breath. “I am older than you, and as a rule you should speak to me respectfully.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Oh? So you and your parents’ barbaric behaviour is perfectly all right?”
The next thing Elly knew, Carrie had knocked over her glass of soda, splattering Elly’s dress and belt. Her Royan was covered in the sticky orange liquid. Elly gasped and leapt to her feet.
“Oh!” said Carrie loudly, jumping out of her chair. “I’m so sorry, Elly! Please, let me help you clean it up!”
Lily stood up, seething. “You did that on purpose!” she hissed. Carrie looked back at her, feigning innocence.
Mabel stood up and walked briskly around the table towards them. “Let’s not make a scene,” she said to Lily in a low voice. Then she plastered a smile on her face. “That’s all right, Carrie. I’ll help Elly clean up.” Without another word, she steered Elly towards the bathroom. Carrie excused herself, murmuring something about washing her hands. Lily looked at her cousin’s retreating back suspiciously, and was about to follow when Grandmother Wong spoke up sharply in Cantonese. “Lily, sit down! Let your mother handle it!”
Elly’s entire skirt was drenched. She touched her Royan; it was wet and sticky. Greymore, are you all right?
Yes, Ellanor. Such things cannot easily damage me. But do keep that wretched girl away.
The small guest bathroom was too cramped for two people. “Let’s keep the door open to let some air in,” Mabel said as she turned on the tap water. “Here, sweetie. Let’s take off that belt for a minute and let me soak off some of the soda.” Before Elly could protest, Mabel had unbuckled her belt, wiped down her Royan gently with a hot wet towel, and placed it behind Elly on the bathroom counter next to the sink. Mabel then proceeded to blow-dry her dress. The roar of the hairdryer drowned out every other sound, including Mabel’s voice.
After several minutes, Mabel unplugged the hairdryer and smiled. Elly’s ears were ringing in the sudden quiet. “See, there you go! Good as new.”
Elly breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much, Mabel.” Then she turned to retrieve her belt. It was gone.
She gasped, fear clenching her throat. “Where’s my belt?” she cried. Greymore!
She ran out, and her eyes bulged when she saw Carrie on the living room couch, about to open up her Royan.
With a cry, Elly lunged forward. “What are you doing?” she cried, grabbing Greymore out of Carrie’s clutches.
Carrie looked up innocently, but a small smirk played at her lips. “What’s the matter? I was just trying to dry it off for you.”
Elly was livid. “You’re a liar! You had no right to look through my Roy— . . . my journal! You should not take what’s not yours!”
“What’s going on?” Mabel cried as she ran into the living room.
Elly ran out into the backyard, near tears. Lily rushed over and put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice. “I’m so sorry about Carrie. I didn’t expect her to stoop this low. As I said, she feels entitled to everything.”
Then she lowered her voice further. “Her parents tried to keep this all hush-hush, especially since her dad is a hot-shot lawyer and all—but we know that Carrie was caught shoplifting a few months ago. She definitely can’t keep her hands to herself.”
They could hear Carrie protesting loudly in the dining room, her voice indignant. “Honestly, what is wrong with that weird girl? I was just trying to help!”
Mabel said something to her, and Carrie fell silent. Then there were raised voices. Carrie’s parents were now throwing insults at Mabel. “How dare you lecture our daughter!”
Suddenly, there was a collective gasp as Grandmother Wong rushed over to Carrie and slapped her on the head. “You ought to be ashamed! You should display better manners to your elders!” the old lady rebuked an open-mouthed Carrie.
Lily clamped a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe Grandma just did that! I wish I’d been there to see it!” she marvelled in a whisper. Elly groaned. She didn’t mean to stir up such a commotion.
After a few minutes, Mabel joined them in the backyard looking extremely harassed. Her eyes softened when she saw Elly.
“My dear, are you all right? I understand you’re upset. Carrie has no respect for other people’s things. I’ve been telling my sister to do something about that girl; she’s an absolute terror.”
She stopped and shook her head. “Lily, why don’t you stay with Elly for a bit? I’ll get back in there before all hell breaks loose.” She gave Elly’s arm a reassuring squeeze and hurried back into the dining room.
Elly closed her eyes and tried to calm her pounding heart. What if Carrie had somehow damaged her Royan? Her stomach lurched. What if the portal had been compromised? She shuddered at the thought of being stranded in Gaya indefinitely, forever parted from Alendria all because of that ghastly girl.
She drew a deep breath and smiled at Lily, who was watching her with concern. “Don’t worry. I just need some fresh air. Can I stay out here in the garden for a bit? I’ll come back inside soon, I promise.” She added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause a fuss. This journal is really, really important to me.”
Lily nodded sympathetically. She wondered if the book was some sort of family heirloom. Whatever it was, it was certainly precious to Elly.
“Hey, I totally understand. If I were you, I would’ve pulled out Carrie’s hair.” They laughed. “Come back in later and have some dessert, okay? My mum’s peach buns are to die for.”
She hugged Elly quickly, then glanced up at the sky. “Hey, look! There’s supposed to be a full moon tonight. Isn’t it beautiful? One of my favourite things about Chinese New Year!” Then she grinned and went back inside, sliding the door close behind her.
Before Elly turned away, she saw Carrie peering at her from the far end of the living room, the corners of her mouth turned up in a sly smile.
The Wongs had a lovely backyard with rose and hydrangea bushes surrounded by a white picket fence draped with stringy lights. Like the fireflies back home, thought Elly wistfully. The yard was shrouded in partial darkness as she stepped into the shadows, relieved to cope with her anguish in privacy.
The reunion dinner continued on in the house. Elly could hear Lily’s younger cousins laughing and talking now, playfully fighting over who should get the lar
gest peach buns. The tension seemed to have abated somewhat. Carrie and her parents were sitting in a corner, talking in low voices. Lily had started playing a game of chess with her Uncle Patrick. Then a Hong Kong movie starring a famous Chinese actor started playing on the TV, and everyone but Carrie and her parents clamoured around to watch it.
Being surrounded by Lily’s family made Elly miss her own family even more.
She sighed. Greymore, I’m sorry that horrid girl got her hands on you. I promise it won’t happen again.
Do not fret, Ellanor. All is well. You got her off me just in time.
It had stopped raining. Elly breathed in the cold night air, comforted by the dewy fragrance of wet earth, flowers and grass. When she was sure that nobody was looking, she leapt up onto the roof, sat down and crossed her legs, and gazed up at the canopy of stars twinkling down at her. The moon was bright and round.
Maybe Mama and Papa are looking at the moon right now, she thought sadly.
Elly heard music playing next door. She could catch bits of the song… something about flying to the moon? If only she could fly back home…
She sighed. “We better go back in before Lily starts worrying,” she muttered. Miriam would be picking her up shortly after desserts.
Then there was a low growl behind her. Elly nearly shot out of her skin as she swivelled around.
Perched at the tip of the roof was a white fox. Its fur shone like snow under the moonlight, and its blue eyes glittered as they stared at her.
It looked like any other fox, except that it had nine tails, fanned out like a peacock’s.
Elly gasped. “What—what are you?” she cried softly, one hand flying to her Royan.
To her surprise, the fox chuckled. “I’ve been sent here to make sure you are safe for the imminent journey.” It spoke in a soft caressing whisper.
