Mount Emily

by Low Ying Ping

  “So where is the time crystal now?” Maggie repeated, more insistently this time.

  “Right here in my bag,” Elena said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Maggie said firmly. “If it were here, I’d be able to sense it.”

  Elena and Patsy looked at each other in alarm, then Elena scrambled to pick up her bag from the floor. Long seconds passed as Elena searched inside her bag. When she finally looked up, Patsy’s heart sank. She could see the answer from Elena’s white face.

  The time crystal was gone again.

  And this time, they really had no idea who had taken it.

  Elena burst into tears. “I’ve really ruined everything now. It’s all my fault!”

  Maggie collapsed onto the sofa in a daze. She looked like she was going to cry too. Patsy looked at Elena, then Maggie, but neither of them was in the right frame of mind to analyse the situation. Determinedly, she pushed aside her conflicted feelings about Elena and her own rising sense of panic, and said, “It’s okay. It’s nobody’s fault. Let’s work it out together. Elena, you said you went home to take the time crystal. Did you come straight here or did you go elsewhere first?”

  “I took the bus straight here,” Elena said, between great choking sobs.

  “Right,” Patsy said, frowning in concentration. “Did you leave your bag on the seat beside you or something like that? Some chance for someone to steal the—”

  “No,” Elena interjected. “I had the bag on my lap all the time. I was guarding it with my life! I don’t see how anyone could have stolen it from under my nose!”

  Patsy paused, thinking. Under normal circumstances, she would have retorted, “Why are you being so defensive? I didn’t say you weren’t taking care of it,” but she restrained herself. This wasn’t the moment for petty quarrels and, besides, she could understand how Elena must be feeling at that moment. On top of carrying the guilt of having stolen the time crystal for the past two weeks, now she had to contend with losing the crystal just when she had come clean. Elena must be feeling really horrible.

  “So it wasn’t stolen during the bus ride,” Patsy said. “And not likely that it was stolen while you were walking here from the bus stop. That means it must have been stolen while it was in this house.”

  Elena gave a start. “I did fall asleep while waiting for you to get back, but I’m very sure I locked the door!”

  “She did,” Maggie said, coming out of her reverie. “I had to unlock it when we came back.”

  “What about Miss Yoong?” Patsy asked.

  “She was leaving the house just as I arrived,” Elena said.

  Maggie nodded. “It’s her mahjong night.”

  “And the windows all have grilles,” Patsy mused, “so the thief must have had a key. He must have come in while you were sleeping and stolen the crystal.”

  “That also means someone knows about the time crystal and came here specifically to steal it! See, nothing around the house has been touched!” Elena said, the excitement of trying to solve the mystery drying up her tears.

  “How can that be? I’m the only Time Keeper left in the world. Who else knows about the time crystal?” Maggie said.

  “Even if there’s another person who knows about it,” Patsy added, “how did the person know that Elena had it in her bag? And how did that person get into the house?”

  The same thought struck Patsy and Elena simultaneously. “Could the person still be in the house?” Elena whispered.

  “Relax,” Maggie assured them. “If the time crystal were still in my house, I would have sensed it.” To be on the safe side, however, the girls searched the whole house thoroughly. They moved together, afraid to be alone. The bedrooms and toilets were clear; so was the kitchen. They moved back to the living room and Patsy bent down to check under the sofa.

  “No one hiding here,” she announced, “but I think you’ve dropped something. Haven’t vacuumed your house in ages, huh?” She reached her arm under the sofa and pulled out a cylindrical paper container. It was the standard drawing tube that they all used in school to store their artwork, so their papers could be rolled up and would not be creased, and had the Mount Emily crest printed on it.

  Maggie frowned. “That’s not mine,” she said, examining the tube. Mine has a big green stain on it.” She pulled open the tab at one end of the tube and tipped it, and out fell a scroll. Maggie gently unrolled the scroll and all three girls stared at the painting that had been unveiled. It was a landscape of springtime in the mountains, done in the Chinese style with bold black strokes and dainty dabs of red and green. A poem had been inscribed using Chinese calligraphy towards the left side of the picture.

  Maggie and Elena looked puzzled, but Patsy felt a stir of growing excitement in her stomach. She had seen this painting before. It was one in a series of four depicting the four seasons. In more than 20 years, all four pictures would hang proudly in her Uncle Pat’s living room.

  She quickly explained the significance of the painting to the other two girls.

  “But even if we know that your uncle owns this painting years later, what does it mean? And how did the painting get here in the first place?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know,” Patsy said. “But if Maggie has never seen this before, then it means the thief must have dropped it when he bent down to take the crystal from your bag. And the thief must be someone connected to Mount Em, since he has our school’s paper container.”

  “Can you read the painter’s or the poet’s name?” Maggie asked. “Maybe that will give us a clue.”

  The girls squinted at the two names stamped in red on the scroll. But in the tradition of Chinese seals, all the characters of each name were specially patterned to be encased in one small square, and the girls were unable to even make out where each character ended and where the next one began.

  “It’s no use,” Patsy declared at last. “We can’t read it. I’ll take it back to Uncle Pat and see if he can tell me anything. He’s only 16 now though, so he might not even know about this painting yet.”

  “Okay, but please be quick,” Maggie said. “This time, we know that the thief knows about time magic. I don’t know what he intends to do with it. And we’ve only two days left. One day,” she corrected herself. “Today’s already almost over. There’s only Saturday left. There’s a lot more at stake than before.”

  chapter nine

  atrick studied the scroll for a long time.

  “Come on,” Patsy said impatiently. “So do you know anything about this painting or not?”

  “Very interesting,” Patrick said slowly. “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s a friend’s,” Patsy replied. “So? Recognise it?”

  “It’s by Pang Jee Kian, a famous calligrapher and painter who died over 10 years ago in a car accident. The poem was written by his wife, Lee Min Ling. There should be four paintings—one each for spring, summer, autumn and winter. I would love to have this scroll. Can I buy it from your friend?”

  “I’ll ask her,” Patsy replied dubiously, “but she probably won’t want to sell it.” She knew that Patrick would eventually own the painting and the other three as well, but somehow she did not think he would have acquired them through his sister.

  “Well, I doubt I’ll be able to afford it anyway,” Patrick said ruefully, looking longingly at the painting.

  As the three friends had agreed, Patsy begged her grandparents to allow her to go to Maggie’s house for a sleepover. Fortunately, it was Friday night, so they had no objections. Her grandfather even obligingly drove her over to Maggie’s house after she had packed a light bag.

  After Elena had arrived as well, Patsy explained what she had discovered about the painting.

  Maggie gasped in surprise. “Lee Min Ling? You sure?”

  “Yup. Why? Does the name ring a bell?” Patsy asked.

  “She’s my aunt! My xiao-yi!”

  “Your aunt!” Patsy exclaimed. “You never told me you had an aunt! Does she have tim
e magic? Is she a Time Keeper too? She must have stolen the time crystal!”

  “But…she’s dead!” Maggie said in bewilderment. “She died years ago, some months before I was born!”

  “How did she die?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know. Of sadness, that’s what my parents said. She was devastated when her husband died in a car crash.”

  “So…did she have time magic or not?” Patsy asked impatiently.

  “Of course she did. Everyone in our bloodline does. Except that I thought she was dead and that I was the only Time Keeper left.”

  “Well, evidently she’s not dead,” Patsy declared. “You must have been too young to know what really happened. And now she’s stolen the time crystal.”

  “That’s possible,” Maggie said animatedly. “We’re living in the same house that Mum and Xiao-yi lived in when they were young. The locks were never changed. She could still have the key!”

  An idea gradually formed in Patsy’s mind. “Do you think this scroll is important to her?”

  “I would think so!” Maggie said. “She and her husband created the scroll together.”

  “Great! I’ve a plan.”

  The plan was simple enough. They didn’t know where Maggie’s aunt lived, but Maggie’s aunt certainly knew where she had likely lost her precious scroll. When her aunt saw that all the lights in the house were off, she would probably return and let herself quietly into the house to retrieve the scroll.

  Yvonne Yoong went off to bed at her usual early hour of 10pm and soon the girls could hear her snores emanating from behind her closed bedroom door. They huddled in Maggie’s room while waiting for the time to tick by.

  “Are you sure she’ll come?” Elena asked.

  “Of course she will,” Patsy said. “Wouldn’t you, if you were her?”

  Elena shrugged. “Why would she want to steal the time crystal anyway?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Maggie said. “I remember my parents saying Xiao-yi was devastated when her husband died. Then she disappeared. My parents said she died of sadness, but now we know that’s probably not true. She probably just went off to nurse her grief in some lonely place. And now that there’s a time breach, of course she would be able to sense it. I’m thinking, just maybe, she thought she could use the time crystal to travel back in time and change the past so her husband wouldn’t have to die!”

  “Wow,” Patsy said. “You’ve got quite an imagination. Sounds just like some TV drama.”

  “But how did she know I had the time crystal? And even if she did, why did she wait till today to steal it?” Elena pursued.

  “Maybe she didn’t,” Maggie said. “Keepers of Time have the power to time travel so long as they have the crystal. They don’t need to wait for a Liminal Date. But their power will be much stronger if they use the time crystal on a Liminal Date, so that’s the best moment to attempt any magic. She probably knows when the Liminal Date will be and, since the time barriers are already breaking down, the timing will be just right. Maybe she just intended to steal the crystal from my room. After all, she knows that’s where it’s been kept all these years. And when she came into the house, she sensed it was in your bag and just took it.”

  “What should we do when she turns up?” Elena asked. “Pounce on her?”

  “Of course not!” Maggie said, puffing out her cheeks indignantly. “She’s my aunt! I’m sure she doesn’t mean to do evil. We’ll just talk to her nicely. She’ll understand. Right, Patsy?”

  “Uh…let’s hope so,” Patsy said without conviction. She was thinking she had not yet met an adult whom she could easily persuade just by talking to him or her nicely. She suddenly thought of her mum. Not the mum whose body she was inhabiting and whose thoughts she was sharing, but the mum who was one generation older than her. She remembered their last quarrel, when her mother had refused to allow her to sleep over at Elena’s house. It had seemed so important to her at that time, yet she had managed to forget it for almost a whole month now. And here she was, having a sleepover after all, under such different circumstances. It occurred to her that she had not tried talking nicely to her mum about the sleepover. Somehow, when her mum had said “no”, her emotions had simply boiled over and she’d ended up quarrelling with her. Suddenly, more than ever, she longed to be home, her real home.

  At around 10.30pm, the girls switched off the lights. Patsy and Elena hid themselves at the middle landing of the staircase, where they had a direct view of the front door and the sofa, yet in the darkness they would be inconspicuous enough to any intruders. Maggie sat behind the window curtains in the living room, ready to jump up and lock the door once the thief entered.

  After a tense half hour of quiet anticipation, the girls started getting restless.

  “Um, Patsy?” Elena whispered. “Are you still angry with me?”

  “What? Oh, no,” Patsy replied. She hadn’t quite decided whether or not to forgive Elena, but when Elena asked, and in such a sorrowful manner, she couldn’t bring herself to say “yes” or even “don’t know”. To avoid having to discuss the issue further, she quickly changed the topic, saying the first thing that came to her mind, “I wish I were back in our own time.”

  “I don’t,” Elena said. “I wish I never had to go back.”

  “Why?” Patsy asked, then kicked herself mentally for being so insensitive as she called to mind what Elena had shared previously. She quickly added, “I know you miss your grandpa, but you’ve a great life back home. You’re pretty, popular, fun… Everyone likes you.”

  “I don’t like me,” Elena said quietly.

  “Huh?” Patsy said. “What’s not to like? You’re practically…perfect.”

  “Everything. I don’t like everything. Every day, I spend a lot of time adjusting my hair, checking my clothes, making sure I look my best, so that nobody will laugh at me. I worry about what clothes to wear, what bag to carry, so I won’t look silly. I wish I could be more like you, confident and comfortable to be just who you are.”

  Patsy laughed, then remembered they were supposed to be quiet and cupped her mouth, still giggling softly. “Me? Confident? I’m just lazy! I like looking nice too, but I’m not hardworking enough to put in the effort!”

  Elena smiled. “That’s confidence. You just don’t know it.”

  “Really?” Patsy said, trying to reconcile what Elena had said with her own diffidence. “But don’t you have the same problem here, in 1987?”

  “It’s different. I’m in my mother’s body. Nobody’s judging me, Elena Tan. I can look as sloppy as I want.”

  “But don’t you want to go back to see your parents? Don’t you miss them?” Patsy asked, thinking of her mother again.

  “What’s to miss? I hardly see them anyway. They always work such long hours. That’s why I couldn’t ask my mum to talk to yours about the sleepover. I was asleep by the time she came home, and when I left for school the next morning, she was still sleeping. After Grandpa died, there was never really any reason to go home anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know things were so bad for you. I wish you’d told me earlier,” Patsy said, her mind trying to absorb all the new information she was learning about her best friend. A part of her felt guilty that she hadn’t had any inkling as to what her friend had been going through, but another part of her was also resentful that Elena had been so guarded with her feelings, depriving Patsy of the chance to be the supportive friend she knew she could be.

  “I know. I’m not used to opening up, but I’m trying,” Elena smiled. “After all, you’re the only real friend I’ve got, someone who knows me, understands me, and is willing to accept me the way I am.”

  Patsy’s annoyance melted. She thought guiltily of all the times she had resented Elena for leading her on adventures against her will, but thought she would leave that confession for some other time. Something occurred to her then. “No wonder you kept on wanting to play and look for adventures in school! You just want
ed to delay going back to an empty home!”

  Elena laughed. “Maybe. But I really do love excitement, you know!”

  A loud “shh” shot up at them from behind the living room curtains and Elena and Patsy quickly subsided into a companionable silence. For that moment, all their differences and petty jealousies faded away.

  They didn’t have much longer to wait. Just before midnight, they saw a figure outside the main door and the lock gave a gentle click. Then, the door slowly swung open and a person slipped inside, closing the door behind her.

  Even before they switched on the lights, Patsy and her friends could see that they had been wrong. The person standing in the shadowy living room could not be Maggie’s xiao-yi. She was far too young.

  chapter ten

  he girl was bending down to peer under the coffee table when Maggie emerged from behind the curtains. She froze, her fair face going even whiter as she stared at the two girls descending the staircase. She glanced back at the main door just as Maggie was giving the lock a decisive turn. Realising the game was up, she sank down onto the sofa, burying her face in her hands.

  Maggie switched on the living room lights and the three friends stood in a row in front of the girl. She was petite and neat looking, with shoulder-length hair that now fell over her fingers covering her face. She seemed about their age. Patsy thought she looked vaguely familiar, though it was hard to tell with her face hidden.

  Maggie knelt down beside the girl and gently pulled at one of her wrists. “Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the girl whispered.

  At the sound of her voice, Maggie cried out, “Charlotte! You’re Charlotte Pang!”

  Patsy gave a start. Charlotte Pang? Their classmate? Their geography project partner?

  Maggie slowly drew the girl’s hands away and the frightened face of Charlotte looked tearfully at them. “You’ve got something of mine, haven’t you?” Maggie asked.