DRAGONFLY DREAMS
JENNIFER J. CHOW
Booktrope Editions
Seattle, WA 2015
COPYRIGHT 2015 JENNIFER J. CHOW
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Inquiries about additional permissions
should be directed to: [email protected]
Cover Design by Greg Simanson
Edited by Toni Michelle
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
PRINT ISBN 978-1-5137-0453-1
EPUB ISBN 978-1-5137-0503-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916833
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
ALSO BY JENNIFER J. CHOW
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1 The Day I Died
CHAPTER 2 A Whole New World
CHAPTER 3 Red Egg & Ginger Party
CHAPTER 4 Shedding the Past, Rule 1
CHAPTER 5 The Birthday Grab
CHAPTER 6 The Fear of Water, Rule 2
CHAPTER 7 Bathtime Blues
CHAPTER 8 Never Say “God,” Rule 3
CHAPTER 9 Why I Died
CHAPTER 10 Bao’s Dark Choice
CHAPTER 11 The Price of Resting, Rule 4
CHAPTER 12 Planting Memories
CHAPTER 13 Going to the Witch’s House
CHAPTER 14 Honoring Your Parents, Rule 5
CHAPTER 15 The Wedding
CHAPTER 16 Murder on the Mind, Rule 6
CHAPTER 17 Unleashing My Power
CHAPTER 18 Boy Meets Girl, Rule 7
CHAPTER 19 Restricting Willow
CHAPTER 20 Jasmine and Boys
CHAPTER 21 No Stealing, Rule 8
CHAPTER 22 The Mock Marriage
CHAPTER 23 Always Tell the Truth, Rule 9
CHAPTER 24 The Stranger Revealed
CHAPTER 25 No Interest in Others, Rule 10
CHAPTER 26 Locked in Jail
CHAPTER 27 Family Confrontation
CHAPTER 28 My Dragonfly Dream
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MORE GREAT READS
ALSO BY JENNIFER J. CHOW
The 228 Legacy
Seniors Sleuth (Winston Wong Cozy Mystery, Book 1)
For all the phoenixes rising up out of Fresno
CHAPTER 1
The Day I Died
Fresno, California 1880
I DIED THE DAY I BIRTHED my daughter. My nerves screamed in agony as I pushed her out into the world with my last breath. Fire coursed through my blood, but her perfect little form slipped out like a cool stone, the only balm to my fever-clenched body.
When the midwife cut the umbilical cord, the last of my remaining strength dissolved. I shut my weary eyes. But the heat of a blinding white light burned me even under my closed eyelids. I couldn’t be bothered to investigate the source of the heat, but then I felt myself floating and opened my eyes in surprise.
I hung suspended in midair. A gossamer silver thread connected me to a young woman’s body, slumped on the floor beneath me. I could see thick, dark hair shrouding her face, but a familiar pointed chin greeted me. I glanced down at her fingernails and found the odd but telltale mixture of figs and clay trapped beneath them. I knew the sunken-in cheeks of that woman, her blip of a nose, and each bushy and ragged eyebrow. After all, I had lived in her body for eighteen years. I wanted her to look up at me, to acknowledge her own soul, but her dark coffee eyes never opened.
I surveyed the other people in the room. Of course, I looked for my baby first. I could hear its sharp, hungry cries, even while swaddled up. I couldn’t peek at the tiny face because my mother-in-law, Stella, held the child close, as was her right, being Mill’s mother. She tugged at the gray blanket and inspected the infant between the legs. Her usual composed face filled with frustration. A crease marred her heart-shaped lips, as though she’d eaten a too-sour pickled radish. She paused for a beat. “A girl to add to the Woo clan,” she said in her soft, whispery voice.
My own mother spoke using her typical thunderous voice while bending over the baby’s face. “She’s beautiful.” My mother’s hands, leveled at her hips, with her feet spread wide apart, made the sentence seem like a declaration no one should argue with. Mother always spoke that way.
Stella winced a little. “You shouldn’t say that. What if the spirits hear? They’ll take away the child.” She couldn’t help glancing out the window. She seemed to search for her husband outside, worried as if he could hear her betrayal, even through the thick walls. I had never heard her voice her old country opinions in his hearing.
My father and father-in-law had been standing outside in the miserable Fresno fog, with the taste of chill on their tongues, all morning long. Despite their disagreement about everything else, they both decided that witnessing a live birth was territory best left to the women in the household.
I heard a little gasp, and my attention swiveled to the midwife. She was just fourteen, all long legs and fumbling arms. Her expertise came in helping animals bear their offspring on the local farms, but she was cheap. My father-in-law, Fillmore, had insisted on that, although Stella had disagreed. He had dismissed her opinion with a snort. He always had his way. Besides, the girl midwife was Chinese, and he told me there was no way he would have employed that nosy, Bible-flipping, white woman to bring his expected new grandson into the world.
The Chinese midwife’s face drained of color. An almost comical “o” shaped her lips as her eyes took in my crumpled body. Her legs wobbled beneath her like a young colt’s.
I could smell Mill, his honest scent of leather and straw, heading toward my broken-down shell, even before he walked below my floating spirit. He grabbed one of my dirt-encrusted hands with his own large palm. I yearned to feel the rough lines ingrained in his hands, molded from years of holding horses’ reins. He breathed out my name, extending the two syllables into a prolonged moan: “To-paz.”
I couldn’t bear to see his pain, so I shut my eyes. As soon as they closed, I was lifted higher into the dazzling light. Hot, white brilliance surrounded me when I peeked out again. I didn’t know if I was in the room of the house anymore. I couldn’t see my family or the midwife. Only a blinding glow enveloped me.
But I forgot all about the heat when the creature appeared. It had six wings, short stubby things. The rest of its body seemed embedded with eyeballs. All across its front and back, eyes stared at me. They never closed and whenever I shifted, their gaze followed my every movement. I heard it speak even though I couldn’t see any sort of mouth.
“Topaz,” it said. The word tickled my ears, like a breeze, almost too faint to hear.
I stared at it. When I had floated above my body, my eyes could see my family and my nose could smell Mill’s reassuring scent. My senses worked before, but now I wondered if I could even use my mouth; it felt frozen.
“Topaz.” The voice was stronger now, a harsher wind.
I wanted to shrivel up and melt into a puddle before the strange creature. “Yes?” The word left me slowly, as if I was a child figuring out how to speak.
“Two paths lie before you.” The light
receded and on my left, I could see a straight road leading into darkness. On my right, a curving road shone, the source of the previous heat and light. “You must choose one.”
“Where do they go?” I asked.
“The path on the left leads to an end. The path on the right leads to a beginning.”
I glanced beneath my feet, hoping to catch a glimpse of my family once more before deciding.
“Do you miss your old existence?”
I thought about my previous hard life, where I had worked the land, even as a young child, but I smiled when I remembered Mill, my parents… “I love the people,” I said. I choked back a tear. “And I’ll miss the chance to watch my daughter grow up.”
“If you choose the path on the right, you can stay with your family temporarily.”
“For how long?”
“How much time do you wish?”
Better to be ambiguous so I wouldn’t be denied. “Years.”
“That can be arranged.” The creature shrugged. “Time is a like a Mobius strip.” It flashed a picture of a never-ending figure-eight shape.
“Ten will do,” I said. I could watch Jasper grow into a solid girl before I moved on.
“A decade it is then.”
“Will she know I’m watching her?”
“It depends on her sensitivity to such things.” The creature’s eyes drilled into me. “You can even interact with her in a way. On one condition.”
I knew there’d be payment involved, but what wouldn’t I give to see my daughter grow up? “What is it?”
“You must heed The Ten Commandments as you influence her life.”
“What are those?”
“Rules to follow God.” I didn’t even know if I believed in a god. What could it hurt, though? I would play this game if I could stay in the world longer.
“Since you chose ten years, you need to follow a new commandment every year.”
“What does that mean?”
“Every time a commandment is given, you can apply it for your daughter’s life. Place boundaries and restrictions on what she can and cannot do.”
“And how will I ever remember all these Western laws?” I asked.
“I’ll be there during the start of each segment.”
“You’ll be my guide on this journey?”
“No, just at every rule implementation and as I drop you on your path. Everything else, you’ll have to learn on your own.”
“How will I figure stuff out? I only had a middle school education.”
“Things work differently here. You’ll find that you know more in this realm. It comes to you through osmosis.”
Osmosis. What was that? But then I suddenly knew what it was.
“See, you’re getting the swing of things. You’ll find that language is no barrier in the higher realm. Good luck.”
One of the wings grabbed my finger in a tight grasp and dragged me above the sparkling path on my right.
I gulped as I looked at the gap between me and the road below. “Wait! What’s your name?”
“Sage.”
“Are you…female?”
“Gender doesn’t matter here, but if you prefer to think of me as female, that’s fine.”
In fact, I would feel better if I gave the strange creature a gender, so I did. Sage shrugged as it—or rather, she—dropped me into the abyss. Then color exploded all around me.
CHAPTER 2
A Whole New World
MY HEAD FELT DIZZY, but when I looked around, I was even more disoriented. Bright light flowed all around me, and I could make out shapes: forests of needled treetops pricked at my arms, vast desert stretches blew dust into my eyes, and oceans roiled beneath my feet. I needed to ground myself fast, instead of flying across Earth’s boundaries. The packing house.
As I thought about it, the tilting in my head disappeared. A whirlwind suddenly picked me up and deposited me in the warehouse. I would have been right next to Bao if it were a typical day. The labor pains this morning made it impossible for me to leave for work, though, so I hadn’t seen her since yesterday.
Despite floating above everyone now, I could almost feel the usual sweat soaking my shirt, rising from the heat of dozens of workers crammed into a tiny room. The men walked around with their sharp strides, their hats perched neatly and their suspenders strapped tight, inspecting the fruit. The women, their hair tied back into buns, all bent over their boxes labeled, “Fresno’s Finest Figs.” I looked for Bao over the hunched figures and spotted her sleek black hair twisted up into a half chignon.
As I approached her from the back, I noticed a strange shadowy outline around her body. I blinked and looked again. The hazy shadow remained. Then I looked at everyone else in the packing house and noticed a film surrounding them as well, as fine as a bubble, framing each person. I shook my head twice to clear it, and the motion seemed to have worked. My eyesight must be going bad in this nether world. I took a deep breath in, and as I inhaled, my body sunk a little lower. I gulped in more air and I soon stood beside Bao.
I could see that her fingers were lined with the fibers of the figs, the deep brown juices coloring her palms. I watched her deftly twist the fig open and insert one shiny walnut inside. Customers loved stuffed figs, that delicate balance between crisp and sweet on their tongue. It made me hungry just thinking about it. Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t eaten all morning, and a huge stomach pain washed over me. I bent closer to the crate of figs. Perhaps I could snatch one, but my fingers passed through their solid texture. I crept even closer to them until I could smell the richness of their flavor. As the scent filled my nostrils, the hunger pains disappeared. The mere fragrance of food filled my insubstantial body. Finally, I was understanding how this world worked. I could live up here in the air for years, surviving only on edible fumes, reveling in seeing my baby grow.
Jasper! I needed to go see her now, instead of wasting my time at work. The thought of my lovely child swept me up in a tornado. It transported me, in a moment’s time, before her beautiful face.
She lay asleep in the trough, the fringes of her eyelashes resting on delicate, unmarked baby skin. They looked soft, like feathers, and I wanted to blow on each one and make a wish. But when I tried to gather air in, all I did was sink closer to her sleeping form. Her sweetness burst forth from her, and I almost saw and felt a warm white halo all around her. I watched her little egg head, captivated by the rise and fall of the soft spot on it. Fontanelle. How did I know that foreign term? Then I remembered Sage’s comment about “knowing more in this realm.” I laughed, a silent chuckle. While dead, I could master the English language like I never had when I’d been alive. Middle school didn’t offer too much in vocabulary, but even those years beyond elementary were a luxury that few females were offered. My parents had worked hard to pay for my education, hoping for a way out of our cycle of poverty.
A slight snore caught my attention from the corner of the room. Mill lay half-slumped in a chair, apparently exhausted from the day’s events. I watched him sleep, and he seemed like a baby to me as well. An innocence took over his features, and his constant battles with his parents seemed to wash away. Where were the older folks anyway?
I moved beyond the curtain, the coarse fabric stretched across a steel rod, to the larger portion of the room. I couldn’t see my father out there. In all likelihood, he had probably headed back to the new sprouting railroad lines. There was a tiny train station established in the county already, and he hoped for further expansion. My father wanted to assist in any way. At least the roads were straight to lay down the tracks, so they would be easier to handle. He needed any advantage he could get when potential bosses saw his missing limb. Even with his right arm gone, though, he could still carry more than his own body’s worth in weight.
It would be great if he could find steady work soon, but there was only so much a “cripple” could do. The part-time railroad duty was how he’d finally gotten over the coal mining explosion, which had taken
his limb and caused us to move away from the Coast Range Mountains in western Fresno County. I suspected that it would help him deal with the loss of me, too.
I suddenly smelled something comforting and traveled over to the kitchen, where the women were busy. My mother-in-law, Stella, measured out the tea with a pinch of her fingers. The curled-up leaves would unfurl in the hot water and infuse it with a strong biting flavor. My mother, Mung, stood over the hot wok, stirring the rice and vegetables with a spiraling motion of her wrists. I breathed in and devoured the heady scent of fried rice. My mother cooked the best home-spun meals.
The hiss of the sizzling rice hid my father-in-law’s steps as he entered the room, from the outdoors, with his giant stomps. The cold wind that blew in through the doorframe wasn’t the only thing that made me shiver. I could feel the women tense up when they realized Fillmore stood on the threshold. Stella bustled over to him and offered up her palms, for him to pass over his boots. They stank of manure. The cloying odor filled up the tiny place, and Stella bustled over to the trash bin to scrape the crap off with a boar bristle brush.
Fillmore pulled aside the curtain and moved into the interior room where my baby lay, and I traveled in with him. He tossed his overcoat across his modern sleigh bed, but missed, and it landed onto the trough where Jasper lay. She woke up with a hearty cry of indignation. Fillmore covered his ears. “Baby’s crying, Mung!” he shouted. “All from your infernal cooking. Come and fix it.”
Dragonfly Dreams Page 1
