“I know you want to find this Dragon’s Gate,” Bren continued, “whatever it is, but you don’t know how much I miss home right now. My father, and Mr. Black . . . besides, Sean and the others want to return home too. He’s going to want you to come with us. Mouse?”
“I don’t like the name Mouse,” she said. “It makes me sound like a pet.”
“Oh,” Bren stammered. “I—”
“I told you why the matron called me that. She thought I was evil.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bren. “What would you like me to call you?”
She said nothing at first, and then Bren heard her sigh. “That’s just it, don’t you see? I don’t know who I really am. And you keep talking about home, but your home isn’t my home.”
“It could be,” said Bren. “You could live with us. My father would love having you around. And you’d like Mr. Black and Beatrice—ooh, and especially Mr. Grey, this big grey cat that hangs around. ’Course you met Duke Swyers and his gang. I’d forgotten about that. They’re rotten, but I’m not scared of them anymore.”
“Stop,” she said.
She went silent again, and Bren, in the darkness, thought he heard her crying. But it might just have been the unfamiliar noises of the ship.
Barrett invited Sean, Bren, and Mouse to join her and Yaozu for lunch in her cabin. They assumed she was just being hospitable, but it turned out she had a proposition for them.
“How’d you like to earn a little extra money for the return trip, Mr. Graham?”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“We’re still on board with the plan to sail to the East Netherlands, but Yaozu and I want to go farther. Into the South China Sea, specifically. And to do that we need to sail through the Rotterdam Straits. It would help immensely to have a Dutch crew, for obvious reasons.”
“To go where exactly?” said Bren, trying to hide his disappointment that Barrett wouldn’t be staying with them.
“To China,” said Yaozu. “My home.”
“And he’s invited me to go with him,” said Barrett. “As I’ve told you, I’m an antiquary—I go digging for lost civilizations, or at least their artifacts. And there’s no civilization more lost to outsiders than ancient China. Yaozu can get me in. But our initial destination will be an island called the Pearl Cliffs, which is our reason for wanting to avail ourselves of your seamanship. According to Yaozu, we’d be approaching during the spring gap, that delicate time when winter hasn’t yet let go, but spring hasn’t arrived. A heavy fog descends upon the island. Tricky for amateurs like us.”
“When you say you can pay us, how much?” said Sean. “Negotiating our way through the straits is one thing—and I’m talking politics as well as seamanship. But the South China Sea’s a different animal . . . tricky this time of year, as you say. . . .”
“Okay, Mr. Graham, you don’t have to lay it on so thick,” said Barrett. She set out an iron chest, unlocked it, and flipped the lid to reveal rows of gold and silver coins. Sean tried to remain stoic, but his blue eyes were counting the coins.
“I think we can work something out, Lady Barrett,” he said.
“I want to go with you,” said Mouse, and everyone turned toward her. “To China. I don’t want to go back to Europe with them.”
“You can’t just decide where you want to go,” said Bren, who felt an unexpected frustration taking hold of him. “You’re a child.”
Mouse refused to look at him, and he suddenly regretted his tone. She had just told him how lost she was feeling, but he didn’t understand how she could just abandon him now, after all they’d been through together.
Sean tried to defuse the tension. “Little one, I know you came from there,” he said kindly, “but you told us you were an orphan. There’s nothing there for you now.”
Mouse glanced up at Bren, as if giving him the chance to step in and stick up for her, but he refused.
“Look, I’m not asking anyone to go to China with me,” Barrett assured them. “I just need your political connections and your sailing experience. Then you have my word, you can take the boat and head back to the East Netherlands, and home from there.”
“How will you get home?” said Bren.
“By land, I hope.”
Sean and Barrett shook on it, and they continued to sail for the Dragon Islands, toward a port called Bantam. Bren had been so excited about returning home, but now he felt conflicted because Barrett wasn’t going to be with them. He was drawn to her . . . traveling the world, fighting on elephants, digging up ancient artifacts. But there was something else, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Later that day, after he’d helped clean the deck, Bren went below to fetch his journal—what was left of it, after his freshwater-making experiment—taking it to the saloon to write. Barrett was already sitting in there, alone.
“Oh,” said Bren. “I’m sorry, I was just . . .”
“Come in, Bren. Please, sit down.”
Bren obeyed, but didn’t know what to say. He just sat there dumbly, waiting for Barrett to say something first.
“I see you’re a journal keeper,” she said.
Bren nodded, too anxious to speak.
“Perhaps it’s not my place to interfere, but I can’t help but notice that you and your little friend haven’t been on the best of terms lately. I may talk a good game,” she persisted, “but I’m an awfully good listener as well.”
Bren had learned a hard lesson in trust from Admiral Bowman. But Lady Jean Barrett was a friend of Mr. Black’s. This was different.
“We haven’t been friends all that long, really,” said Bren.
“Still, I gather you’ve been through a lot together in that short time,” said Barrett. “You really must’ve had to depend on each other on that island.”
“I guess,” said Bren. “It’s just . . . she’s good at keeping secrets.”
Barrett nodded. “That’s not always a bad thing, you know. When you first met me, you thought I was a man. That wasn’t an accident, of course. I’ve gotten good at it, pretending. Makes things easier sometimes, navigating this world as a man. But keeping secrets like that can be hard on the keeper, too.” She leaned back in her chair and let Bren consider this.
“I guess you know Mouse used to pretend to be a boy?”
“I assumed as much,” said Barrett, “given that you seemed surprised when I was able to tell she was a girl right away. You can hardly blame her under the circumstances, living on a ship. My double life was forced on me as well. My father desperately wanted a boy, for all the usual reasons. To take his name, to inherit his estates . . . four daughters in and he’d had enough. He sent me, Lady Jean Barrett, off to boarding school as Jean—the French pronunciation. It wasn’t hard to pass in grammar school, but when I got older, things got a bit more . . . complicated.”
“Because you started to . . . ?” began Bren, who blushed a painful shade of red before he could even get the words out.
Barrett laughed. “Actually, my physical appearance was the easy part.” She looked at Bren, hesitating. “Oh never mind. My point is, Mouse probably doesn’t think about keeping secrets the same way you do.”
She had a point, Bren realized, but of course he wasn’t telling Barrett the whole story. It was all that had happened on the island that was causing the friction between Mouse and him, but there was only so much he could reveal without seeming crazy.
“What do you have there?” said Barrett.
She was talking about his necklace. Out of habit, he had nervously grasped the black stone, turning its smooth shape between his thumb and finger, as if hoping it might ward off doubt as well as danger.
“Oh. Just a necklace my mother gave me before she died. Sort of a lucky charm, I guess.”
“May I?” Barrett held out her hand, and Bren noticed how long and slender her fingers were. He slipped the leather lanyard over his head and handed it to her.
“Where did this come from?”
“According to my father, she bought it from a curiosity shop in the lake country in Britannia, where she was born. She used to take me back there when there were threats of plague in Map.”
Barrett turned the stone over and over in her hand. “Curious indeed.”
“Why?” said Bren. “It’s just a black stone. I’m not sure why she even thought to buy this one in particular.” Of course, Mouse had told him something very different about it—that it was the stone, not the paiza, that had been protecting him all along. Could his mother have even known?
“Do you know what sort of stone this is?” said Barrett.
“I just assumed it was something quarried in the lake country,” said Bren.
“I don’t think so. The glassy appearance, the hardness . . . I think this may be jade.”
Bren almost fell off the saloon bench. “Jade? Like from China?”
“Well, jade has been found in places apart from China,” said Barrett. “But not black jade, as far as I know.” She looked Bren directly in the eye. “Are you quite sure you didn’t know this was jade?”
Bren realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled now—at least he could tell her the truth. “No, I had no idea. I didn’t even know jade could be black. How can you tell it’s jade anyway?”
“My field requires a working understanding of rocks and minerals,” said Barrett, still turning the black stone over in her hands, and then perching it at the tips of her fingers, as if it were a ring and her hand were the setting. “You know, they say jade has certain . . . powers. Easterners have long thought jade blesses anything it touches. The Chinese in particular thought it had powers to heal, and to protect.”
“Protect?” said Bren. “Do you believe all that?”
Barrett laughed. “I don’t know, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?” She handed the necklace back to Bren, who held the black stone between his fingers once more, feeling how smooth and yet imperfect it was, with its warped surfaces and indentations.
“Did you know jade could also be white?” said Bren.
Barrett seemed surprised. “I’ve heard rumors, but I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing white jade myself. Why?”
Bren didn’t answer at first. Wasn’t it for Mouse to tell Barrett about the jade eye if she wanted her to know? Maybe, he thought, but he had been through the ordeal on the island just like her. This was his story, too.
“Mouse has a piece. We recovered it on the island. It’s what the admiral was looking for,” he said, measuring his words. He was still afraid of sounding crazy. “It was a stone Marco Polo supposedly left there. We found it in a grave of sorts.”
He hesitated again. Should he go on? Then he remembered that his best friend had sent Barrett to find him. If Mr. Black could trust her, so could he. “And then, there was a fire. This skeleton . . . it sounds crazy, I know, but all the bones were tattooed with Chinese writing. Not regular Chinese writing—oracle bone language, according to Mouse.” The words were tumbling out now. “Mouse read this ancient language—it was a question, she said, and then a fire cracked the bones, which gave the answer.”
“Pyromancy!” said Barrett, with a snap of her fingers. “Fortune-telling by fire.”
“I suppose,” said Bren. “Except she said the answer was a map, to someplace called the Dragon’s Gate. I know that’s why she wants to go to China with you—her white stone came from there—and she wanted me to go with her.”
“Hmm,” said Barrett, who appeared to drift off in thought before returning. “Bren, it may be true that you and Mouse haven’t known each other very long, but you two are friends. That much is obvious. And if a friend says she needs you—if she really believes she does—well, you may not agree, but you should be there for her. Imagine how it must feel to be her age, an orphan from China, passing as a boy . . . she may just need to believe that she’s not in this alone.”
Bren suddenly felt very selfish.
“But I don’t understand what she wants, and she won’t tell me. Not exactly, anyway.”
“Maybe she doesn’t quite know,” said Barrett. “Or she doesn’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t mean she’s lying to you, or manipulating you.”
“Are you saying you want me to go with you, Lady Barrett? Both of us?”
She didn’t answer him right away. “I was charged with getting you home safely, and I take that responsibility very seriously. But I was wondering if you could show me this map? I assume you’ve recorded it in your journal?”
Bren opened the journal to the pages where he had drawn the aftermath of the cavern fire. Barrett stared at it first one way, then another, rotating the journal until she came back around to where she’d started.
“Remarkable.”
“What is?” said Bren.
“I think . . . no, I’ll have to show you, and the others,” said Barrett. “Wait here.”
CHAPTER
12
THE ORACLE BONE MAP
Bren held open his journal to the place where he had redrawn the fractured oracle bones from memory. Yaozu and Sean leaned in for a look. Mouse was there, too.
“What are we looking at?” said Sean.
“The oracle bones Bren and Mouse found,” said Barrett. When she saw how confused Sean was, she added, “Oh, the children didn’t tell you?”
The look on Sean’s face made Bren feel sick. He knew exactly how he must feel, learning that Bren had trusted Lady Barrett, a woman he’d just met, with things he hadn’t told Sean.
“One of you has to explain what she’s talking about,” said Sean. “Might as well be you, lad.”
“I’m sorry,” said Barrett. “Of course I assumed you and Mouse would have told your friends about the map.”
“What map?” said Sean, growing more confused by the second.
Bren, flustered, looked to Mouse for help. There was no worming out of it now. So they took turns telling Sean about the cavern and the skeleton and the oracle bones that were supposedly a map to something called the Dragon’s Gate. They explained about the Marco Polo letter and Mouse showed all of them the white stone the admiral had been after. They still left parts out—the quicksilver dragon, the soul-traveling, the admiral becoming a bird, the centuries-old man guarding the centuries-old skeleton. As if they silently agreed that Sean could only take so much.
“Did you say this is a map to the Dragon’s Gate?” said Yaozu. “And that you read oracle bones to reveal it?”
Mouse nodded.
“Doesn’t look like any map I’ve ever seen,” said Sean. “And I’ve seen all manner of them.”
“Two reasons for that,” said Barrett. “First, Bren has drawn the broken bones, and that’s all you see. But look at this.”
She was unfolding the page from Ptolemy’s Atlas again when Bren suddenly stopped her.
“Wait! I see what you mean.” And he flipped to a clean page in his journal and began to draw the Hidden Sea map from memory.
“How did you do that?” said Barrett.
“My own magic trick, I guess,” said Bren. He tore the page from the journal and gave it to Barrett, then turned back to the oracle bones.
“Now look,” she said, folding the Hidden Sea map so that what was primarily visible was the northern border of the Indian Ocean—including mainland Southeast Asia and Indochina. “Compare the curves of the coastline with the shape of the bones here. And don’t these bone fractures align with the rivers that empty here?”
“The oracle bone map is a map of China!” said Bren.
“These other fractures could be more rivers, or roads,” said Barrett. “Pieces of bone are mountains or deserts, the holes could be lakes. At least, that’s my working theory. What do you think, Yaozu? You would know better than any of us.”
“I believe you are right, Lady Barrett.”
“And that’s the second reason it didn’t look like a map to you, Mr. Graham,” Barrett continued. “You’ve never seen a detailed map of China, have you?”
“I don’t reckon I have,” said Sean. “But does someone want to explain to me what a Dragon’s Gate is?”
Bren’s excitement dimmed. “We haven’t figured that part out. At least, I haven’t. Mouse?” He couldn’t help himself. There was still a part of him worried that she was hiding something from him. But she just shook her head.
“I may be able to elucidate that,” said Yaozu.
They all turned to him at once. Bren wondered what “elucidate” meant.
“There is a story they tell in China of how Paradise was lost to the Angry Mountain,” Yaozu began. “The most fertile of valleys in all the land was the one fed by a river that came from the Roof of the World, as the great mountains are known. To the east the river ran all the way to the sea. To the west, it ran through Paradise. But one mountain grew envious of this valley, and in his festering anger he began a quarrel.
“Look at my River, said the Mountain, which flows from on high and brings you fish to eat.
“See how I lay low, replied the Valley. Would you seem so tall and proud without me?
“The snow from my peaks melts to water your soil, argued the Mountain.
“You would drown if I did not take the burden of your waters, said the Valley.
“I stand tall against the wind, which would trample your grains.
“I lay naked under the sun, which would scorch you.
“I give you life, said the Mountain.
“I keep death from your feet, said the Valley.
“And on it went, almost from the beginning of time. It was for the River to settle things, so that there could be peace again. I belong to no one, it said, but flow through time.
“The River searched his waters for two stones, one of black jade and the other of white, and devised a game of pure skill for the Mountain and Valley to play. The game went on for months, but in the end, the Mountain lost, because brute force cannot win a game of skill and cunning.”
Bren felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. It was obvious Mouse was having the same reaction.
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