Mount Emily

by Low Ying Ping

  They got off the bus a short distance after the Newton Circus roundabout and crossed Bukit Timah Road, then started to make their way across the bridge over the wide Rochor Canal running parallel to Bukit Timah Road. In the middle of the bridge, however, Maggie suddenly stopped walking, causing Patsy to bump into her. Putting a hand on the railing separating the pedestrian walkway from the traffic, Maggie turned sheepishly to the other two girls and said, “Erm…I should probably tell you something about my guardian before we get there.”

  “Your guardian, your Auntie Yvonne?” Elena asked.

  “Yup. Her full name is Yvonne Yoong,” Maggie said, then waited for her friends’ reaction.

  Realisation slowly dawned on Patsy. “Yvonne Yoong? Miss Yoong? Our science teacher?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “Please don’t tell anyone? I don’t want other people in school to know. It’s weird having your guardian as your teacher. People will be sure to tease.”

  Especially when your guardian is the weirdest teacher in school, Patsy thought, a naughty smile on her lips.

  Patsy and Elena reassured Maggie that yet another one of her secrets was safe with them. They continued over the bridge and across Dunearn Road to make their way to the private estate where Maggie lived. A short walk into the estate brought the girls to the two-storey terrace house on Green Street where Maggie lived with her guardian.

  When Yvonne Yoong opened the door, Patsy nearly laughed out loud. Their teacher was dressed casually and her hair, which was let down, only reached slightly below her shoulders. The beehive wasn’t her real hair after all! Elena nudged Patsy and gave her a knowing look. It was all Patsy could do to keep from giggling.

  The girls found that the absent-minded Miss Yoong had very little recollection of who Mabel and Joyce were, but welcomed them warmly into the house. They quickly escaped to Maggie’s room, where they laughed hysterically for a good few minutes.

  Finally sobering up, the girls settled down to discuss what options they had regarding the time crisis. They were very few. Maggie had very little experience in time magic and the other two girls almost none, except for their one involuntary act of time travel. In the end, they concluded there wasn’t much they could do except to try again the next day, and the next, and every day until something happened.

  So every morning, Maggie would take the time crystal from her secret drawer, hoping that she would finally achieve something with it that day. In the late afternoons, they often spent hours talking over the problem while sipping cups of ice-cold bandung at the Indian coffee shop along Selegie Road. Now that Patsy/ Mabel and Elena/Joyce knew about Yvonne Yoong being Maggie’s guardian, Maggie also often invited the two girls over to her house after school to do their homework together. Maggie even gave them spare keys to her place so they could go over to wait for her if she happened to be out for her art class or was held back in school for class monitor duties.

  Meanwhile, Patsy settled down into her mother’s routine. It was easy playing along. Her mother’s brain took over when it came to all the mundane chores of doing schoolwork, bickering with Patrick and simply going with the flow of family life. It was peaceful. Patsy could almost imagine herself staying on forever.

  And indeed this might have gone on forever, but then one night, something finally happened.

  It was Saturday, 25 July, the night of Mount Em’s annual Talent Night. Everyone was at the concert, including Maggie and her Auntie Yvonne. When Patsy returned home late that night, she received a call from Maggie.

  The Crystal of Time had been stolen.

  chapter six

  ave you called the police?” Patsy asked Maggie. It was the next morning, and the three friends had gathered at Maggie’s house on the pretext of working on their homework together.

  “No,” Maggie groaned. “What would I say? That my time crystal has been stolen? They’ll think I’m nuts and Auntie Yvonne will send me to the mental hospital.”

  “What happened exactly?” Elena probed.

  “We were all at Talent Night, right?” Maggie said. “We left our house at 6pm, attended Talent Night until 10.30, and then Auntie Yvonne dropped Patsy off at her home. By the time we drove home, it was past 11. I went to my room and immediately felt that something was wrong. Time Keepers are very attuned to the presence of time power. That’s why we can sense when we are near their sources. I couldn’t sense the presence of the time crystal in the room at all. I looked in my secret drawer and it wasn’t there anymore.”

  Patsy and Elena listened in silence while they tried to process the information.

  “So the thief must have struck sometime between 6 and 11pm,” Elena mused.

  “And nothing else was stolen?” Patsy asked.

  Maggie shook her head. “There was no mess either.”

  “So that means it wasn’t a normal burglar,” Patsy concluded. “This thief was targeting the crystal. He knew exactly what he was looking for and where to find it.”

  “That’s the strange part,” Maggie said. “Nobody knows about the time crystal and its hiding place except for me, and the two of you.”

  Patsy thought for a moment, then she looked directly at Elena, saying slowly, “You know, I don’t remember seeing you at Talent Night.”

  “I was there!” Elena declared. “We even took a photo together at the school hall, under the Talent Night banner, remember? The photo is proof that I was there!”

  “Why are you talking about having proof and all that?” Patsy asked, surprised at Elena’s vehemence. Unless you have a guilty conscience, she thought. The photo still lay undeveloped in the roll of film in Mabel’s desk. She would have to take the roll to a photography shop to get the photo developed and printed, but she didn’t need to see the proof. Now that Elena had mentioned it, Patsy did recall Elena’s presence at Talent Night.

  “Look, I know you were there, but only at the start. I don’t remember seeing you later in the evening.”

  Elena glared back defiantly. “I didn’t stay till the end, all right? So what?”

  “I thought you said you were looking forward to the concert. So, where did you go?” Patsy asked, curious.

  Elena blushed a furious red. “What are you trying to insinuate?”

  “I’m not trying to insinuate anything. It’s just that only the three of us know about the time crystal and its hiding place. And both of us have the key to Maggie’s house. Maggie and I were at Talent Night yesterday. Where were you?” Even as Patsy said the words, she wondered why she was pressing the point so much. She could see that Elena was getting upset but somehow, she couldn’t help herself.

  “I was at home!” Elena said angrily. “I had a headache and went home early. Why? Do I need to produce an alibi?”

  “Why are you being so defensive?” Patsy retorted. Are you so perfect that you don’t think you ever have to explain yourself? Patsy thought bitterly and almost said the words, but managed to hold herself back.

  “It can’t be Elena,” Maggie intervened. “There’s no reason for her to steal the time crystal.”

  Maggie’s implicit trust in Elena further fuelled Patsy’s displeasure. Why did people always side with Elena? Was it simply because she was pretty? Or that she was fun to be with? “The fact is that no one else knows about the crystal, and she’s the only one among us who was not at Talent Night,” Patsy said stubbornly.

  “I don’t have the stupid crystal, but if you don’t trust me, I don’t care!” Elena practically shouted. She stood up and stomped out of Maggie’s room, slamming the door behind her. Maggie and Patsy looked at each other in stunned silence as they heard the front door of Maggie’s house open and bang shut.

  “I think she’s really angry,” Maggie said worriedly. “Do you really think she did it?”

  Patsy thought it unlikely, but didn’t feel in the mood to back down. “I think she needs to explain herself, that’s all,” she muttered. “Don’t you think her behaviour is very suspicious?”

  “I don’t
know,” Maggie said, resting her chubby cheeks on her palms. “It’s all my fault. It all started because I didn’t activate the crystal in time.”

  “Don’t keep blaming yourself,” Patsy said reassuringly. “It’s not easy figuring out what to do all by yourself.”

  “I know it’s not easy, but it’s still my fault,” Maggie sighed, looking utterly crestfallen.

  “Don’t worry,” Patsy said. “I’m sure we’ll solve the mystery. I’m still here. That means the future is still there. You start worrying only if I disappear, okay?”

  Maggie smiled weakly. “You’re a good friend. I’m so glad I have you with me. We’ll be friends for as long as time exists, right? And that means forever.”

  Patsy felt her eyes prickling with tears. She didn’t know if it was because she was touched that Maggie thought so highly of her, or if it was because these were the words she wished Elena had said instead. In all the years of their friendship, she felt that Elena meant more to her than she to Elena, and it made her both insecure and resentful.

  She wondered if she should confide these thoughts to Maggie, but felt ashamed of her feelings. Besides, what if she ran into “Auntie Maggie” 28 years later? She would die of embarrassment if an adult knew what kind of messed up friendship troubles she had. Instead, she said with all sincerity, “You’re a wonderful friend too. Thanks for trusting me with this great secret. I’ll do everything I can to help.”

  The next day, Patsy went to school resolving to tell Elena that she didn’t really think she was the thief. It was such a silly thing to quarrel about that she wondered how it had even happened. But when she arrived at her classroom, she discovered that Elena had swopped seats with Charlotte. Patsy once again felt the warm prickle of tears behind her eyelids and angrily willed them away. If she wants to be so petty, then fine! she thought, sitting down next to Charlotte. I don’t need her. Especially not in 1987. I have other friends now.

  During recess time, Patsy pointedly left the classroom holding hands with Maggie. “What about Elena?” Maggie whispered.

  “She’s still throwing her tantrum,” Patsy said carelessly. She wanted very much to turn to see if Elena was looking at them, but didn’t want to appear weak, so she didn’t.

  During recess and lunch that week, Patsy either ate with Charlotte, or she and Maggie would go back to the slope without Elena. They could think of no good way to recover the time crystal and there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go.

  Once, after a thoughtful silence as they sat at the slope, Patsy asked, “Maggie, what will happen to our mums if Elena and I really manage to go back to our own time? Will they still remember that Elena and I were here?”

  “No,” Maggie said with certainty. “It’s incompatible with time. If the magic from the time crystal diffuses successfully, all the time elements will go back to their own places, so people in the past cannot know what happens in the future. Your mums will only retain the memories relevant to their own time.”

  “You mean, my mum won’t remember anything of this period when I’m in her head?” Patsy asked, puzzled. “Like she has a gap in her memories?”

  “No, not like that,” Maggie said. She thought for a while, then said, “For example, we’re sitting here on this slope, talking about the Crystal of Time. But the only reason I’m able to talk about time magic to you is because you’re from the future. In other words, I’m talking to Patsy now, not Mabel. So when you’ve gone back to 2015, all Mabel will remember is that she and her good friend Maggie liked to come to this slope to play and chat. She won’t remember what we talked about. But when I tell you that I, hmm…say, I like to eat durian, that’s not incompatible with time. It’s like I’m talking to both you and Mabel, so she’ll remember that detail. Only Time Keepers, because we have some power over time, retain all their memories. Only I will remember you.”

  Patsy mused on that for a moment. “What about us? Will Elena and I still remember what we did here?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” Maggie replied. “You belong in the future, so knowing about something that happened in the past is not incompatible with time.”

  “Oh,” Patsy said, disappointed. She had hoped that somehow, if they managed to get back to their own time, everything in their memories about their adventure would be erased, so that she and Elena could go back to being friends. She didn’t know how their small quarrel had escalated to this point where they were no longer talking to each other.

  Patsy managed to sneak a peek at Elena as she entered the classroom after recess, but Elena’s head was bent over her homework so Patsy couldn’t tell at all what Elena was thinking.

  By the end of the week, Patsy was exhausted from struggling with her pride and her longing for Elena’s friendship. She felt more dejected than she had ever felt in her life and, for the first time since getting to know Maggie and learning about time magic, she wanted desperately to put an end to this adventure and go home.

  That Sunday evening, Patrick unexpectedly called her over to his room.

  “What?” she asked irritably. “Make it fast. I’m not in the mood for your nonsense.”

  Undeterred, Patrick said, “I want to show you something. I don’t know why you’ve been looking so gloomy the whole week, but maybe it’ll cheer you up if I shared a secret with you?”

  Patsy perked up despite herself. Mabel and Patrick often squabbled when they were young, so Patsy (as well as the part of her brain that was Mabel) was curious to know what secret Patrick was going to divulge.

  “Look,” Patrick said, pulling out a sheet of foolscap from his cluttered desk. “I want to show you this poem I wrote.”

  Patsy read the first line and her heart skipped a beat. “Like Spring but not Spring, the leaves fell once again…” This was her uncle’s Chinese poem she had learnt in school. A couple of weeks ago, she had in a careless moment revealed that she knew the poem before it had been published. Why was he showing it to her now? Had he discovered her secret of time travel?

  She cleared her throat. “Um…I can explain everything…” she began nervously.

  “You can?” Patrick’s face fell.

  “Yes,” Patsy replied. “It’s complicated, but…”

  “If it’s so complicated, then are you sure you can explain the whole poem?” Patrick interjected eagerly.

  “Huh?” Patsy raised her eyebrows. What was Patrick talking about? Maybe he didn’t know about her time travel after all.

  “Because,” Patrick continued, “if even you who are so lousy at Chinese can understand everything in this poem, then the metaphors in there are not as intricate as I’d thought.”

  “Oh,” Patsy said with relief. “Of course I don’t understand the whole poem.”

  Patrick rushed on enthusiastically, “I never show my poems to anyone, but since you gave me the inspiration for this poem, I thought you might want to see it. What do you think? Do you think it’s any good?”

  “I gave you the inspiration?” Patsy asked, stalling for time while she tried to figure out how much her uncle knew.

  “All right, all right…you gave me the first line, if you want to be so calculative,” Patrick said.

  Patsy suddenly realised what had happened. When she had quoted the poem at dinner a few weeks ago, Patrick had not yet written the poem. In fact, he might not even have written the poem if she hadn’t given him the opening line! She was so relieved and amazed that she laughed out loud.

  “What? Is it that bad?” Patrick asked anxiously.

  “Oh no, it’s good, it’s good. You should enter it in a competition,” Patsy teased, returning the paper to her uncle. She knew Patrick had shot to instant fame when he was 17 with a set of poems that included this one. Since she had already been credited with the opening line of one of the poems, she thought there was no harm in claiming the credit for the idea of entering it in a competition as well.

  “Yes, yes…” Patrick said. “I intend to. There’s this big competition that will be held early n
ext year. I plan to submit a whole cycle of poems for it, one for every month of the year.”

  “Oh, that means there’ll be 12 poems?” Patsy said, trying to think back to her Chinese lessons in 2015.

  “No, that’s the special thing,” Patrick said smugly. “My cycle will be unique because there’ll be 13 poems!”

  “I thought you said one poem for each month? Wouldn’t that be 12?”

  “Not this year! This is a leap year in the Chinese calendar, so there’re 13 months.”

  “What do you mean?” Patsy asked.

  “Every two or three years, there’s a leap year in the Chinese calendar, which follows the lunar cycle,” Patrick explained. “There’s a similar concept in the Western calendar that we use. For that, there’s a leap year every four years, when February has 29 instead of 28 days, right? In the lunar calendar, when there’s a leap year, one of the months will be doubled. That extra month is what we call the leap month, or run-yue.”

  “And this year…which month is the leap month?” Patsy asked, beginning to understand the implications of what Patrick had said but not quite daring to hope just yet.

  “This month—the sixth. We’re in the leap month.”

  “What do you mean ‘the sixth’? It’s August now. Isn’t that the eighth month?”

  “You ignoramus,” Patrick said impatiently. “The lunar and Western calendars don’t align exactly. Have you never wondered why Chinese New Year doesn’t fall on the first of January?”

  “Oh,” Patsy said, understanding dawning on her.

  “Today is the second of August, according to the Western calendar, which equates to the eighth day of the leap sixth month in the lunar calendar.”

  “And if we’re in the leap month, then today’s lunar date is the same as…exactly how many days ago?” Patsy asked, her heart racing.

  “Thirty days ago, of course.”

  Patsy calculated quickly. Maggie had said that the most recent Liminal Date, which was based on the lunar cycle, was 10 July. Patrick had explained that the dates in the lunar sixth month were repeated after 30 days, which meant that the same lunar date would occur on 9 August! Maggie had failed to activate the time magic on 10 July and thought she would have to wait three years for the next Liminal Date. She had assumed that she could not work her magic because she had arrived at the slope too late in the day, when her power had already been waning. But perhaps she was wrong! Perhaps it was simply that Maggie’s ancestors had made a mistake in converting the lunar dates into the Western calendar, using the first occurrence of the date instead of the date of the leap month!