The Geomancer's Compass

by Melissa Hardy

  “Uh … what exactly are you doing?” I asked the avatar.

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m using the lo p’an to trap this evil spirit and bind it to me.”

  “There,” gasped Brian, panting with the effort. “That’s all of them. The bones, that is.”

  “Shouldn’t we count them?” I worried. “Make sure he’s got two of everything he should have two of, and all his fingers and toes?”

  “Not necessary,” replied the avatar. “He doesn’t need all his bones, just most of them. Your job here is done. Now you must get his bones to Vancouver as quickly as possible, and bury them in the spot reserved for him. Your grandmother will have prepared your mother for this. Daisy will know what to do.”

  Brian sprang to his feet and brushed himself off. He had grass stains on his knees, and his hands and arms were stained with soil. His face, where he wiped the sweat away, was streaked with dirt. He reached for the shovel.

  “Leave it,” ordered The Grandfather. “The clippers too. They’ll just slow you down.”

  “But they’re evidence!” I protested. “They’ve got Brian’s fingerprints all over them. Mine too.”

  “Your wipes!” said Brian. “Those things you haul around in your knapsack. Wouldn’t they clean off fingerprints?”

  My industrial wipes! “You’re right! They’re perfect!” I dug around in my knapsack, surfaced with the pack, and handed Brian a couple of towelettes. Then I peeled off a couple for myself and went to work on the clipper handles, while he wiped down the shovel. We set the gardening tools side by side to the right of the grave, being careful not to touch them with our fingers.

  “Go now,” said the avatar. “Quickly.”

  “But what about you?” Brian asked.

  “My work is only beginning.”

  “But what about maintaining the connection to the Web? You said that was critical.”

  “Critical to the first phase of the operation,” replied the avatar. “To trapping and binding this evil spirit to me. For that a lo p’an is required, a real one. As none was available in cyberspace, I was compelled to call upon you to bring it to me. Now its work is done, and I must restore it to its proper reality, to the human realm. Brian?”

  “What?”

  “Catch!”

  The avatar tossed the lo p’an lightly to him. The familiar arc, the contrail of tiny star shapes, then – pop – what had centuries before been an elephant’s tusk crafted into something magical flowered into three dimensions and tumbled through the air. Brian deftly caught it, backhanded, like a baseball.

  “It’s yours now,” the avatar told him.

  “Really?” Brian looked awed. “Wow! Thanks!”

  “Hey!” I objected. “A-Ma gave the compass to me!”

  “For safekeeping only,” the avatar reminded me. “You have many gifts, Miranda, and they will serve you well in life. But you aren’t the one destined to follow in my footsteps. Brian is.”

  I could scarcely believe my ears. “Brian?”

  “For centuries a Liu has been a great geomancer. It is Brian’s karma to take up that mantle.”

  “But I can’t read,” Brian protested. “How can I take it over from you if I can’t read? Are you saying that I’ll be able to read once the curse is lifted?”

  “Your dyslexia is not your curse,” the avatar said, “any more than Miranda’s germaphobia is her curse. It’s just the way you happen to be wired – for better or for worse. Your dyslexia has made you more compassionate, Brian, more understanding and a more creative problem solver than you would have otherwise been. Miranda’s germaphobia has made her more … well … clean.”

  “Thanks a million,” I grumbled.

  “Then what is my curse?” Brian demanded.

  “If you really must know, you are to be eaten by a shark.”

  “Wait a minute,” I protested. “That’s my curse!”

  “Brian is to be eaten by a shark off the coast of Bermuda while trying to rescue you,” the avatar said pointedly. “And that’s exactly what is going to happen if the two of you don’t get out of here right this minute and let me finish what we’ve started. Now, go. I mean it.”

  “But what’s the second phase?” Brian insisted. “You said the first phase was trapping and binding the ghost. What’s the second phase?”

  “If you really must know, it’s tai chi,” replied the avatar, sounding a little sheepish. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  “Tai chi?” Brian repeated. “That thing old Chinese people do in the park?”

  “Ai ya! Did you children learn nothing in Chinese school?” The Grandfather sounded exasperated. “Tai chi is an ancient and profound spiritual practice. Didn’t your A-Ma tell you that I was a student of the school of tai chi developed by the revered Taoist Zhang Sanfeng, whose graceful movements were as smooth as a reflection in a mirror and whose turns were as natural as pulling silk? Who was so powerful that he was easily able to banish ghosts and other evil spirits?”

  “Uh, no,” said Brian doubtfully. “I think I would have remembered that.”

  “Enough! Now is not the time. Off-line, both of you!”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Power off, Miranda!”

  “But if we turn off our I-spex, how will we be able to see?” I cried. “They’re our only light source.”

  “Trust me,” the avatar said grimly. “There will be plenty of light. Off! Now!”

  I gulped, then turned to Brian. “Ready?”

  “Ready!”

  My finger pressed the off button at the side of the I-spex and there it was again – that intense sensation sky-divers must feel when they step out of a plane and into the ether and they’re falling, falling, falling faster than they can think. Only it’s not like falling so much as being sucked toward the earth at the same time it rushes up to meet you.

  Of course, some people like that feeling – that heart-about-to-burst, stomach-jammed-up-your throat sensation. They crave it. Do crazy things to get their fix of it. Bungee jumping off high bridges and roller-coaster rides. People like Brian. Not people like me.

  A reassuring click and there I was, back in the human realm, standing on the fourth hole of Weeping Birches Golf Course under a navy blue sky packed with stars, a suit bag stuffed with bones at my feet.

  “Wow,” Brian gasped. “That’s what I call a rush.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, peeling off my I-spex and rubbing my eyes. “I must be allergic to adrenaline. I feel sick.” I glanced around. No avatar, no ghost. And it was bloody dark all of a sudden. I squinted at the space they had occupied moments before, trying to conjure them. Not a trace. Yet I knew they were there. In some other reality, on some other plane of existence, but there, and the outcome of their struggle would determine my fate and Brian’s and that of my entire family. It was nerve-racking to think about. So don’t think about it, I told myself. You have a job to do. Focus.

  As for the tipped porta-potty, it was indisputably of this world, as were the foul contents of its tank, no longer a gleaming green pool but a mucky, stinking brown ooze. My stomach flopped over and my nose crinkled. “Let’s get out of here before I barf!” I tested the suit bag’s heft. Twenty pounds of shifting bones, jutting this way and that through the thin fabric.

  “Gimme that,” Brian offered. “It looks like it’s getting away from you.” He replaced the lo p’an carefully in its case, crammed it into a vest pocket, and reached for the bag. “Man, it’s dark. Wonder what The Grandfather meant when he said we’d have plenty of light.”

  I pointed toward the horizon, which glowed a faint red. “Maybe he meant that.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Brian. “It’s way too early for sunrise. Is that east?”

  I shook my head. “North. Hey!”

  Immense curtains of color – blues and greens and red and pink and violet and orange – began to ripple across the night sky in an east-west direction, one graceful arc blending into the next.
>
  “What the …?”

  I put my hand on his arm. “The aurora borealis. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Me neither. You don’t think …?”

  “Think what?”

  “That this is … well, you know.”

  I gazed at the sky, filled with wonder. It was profoundly beautiful, the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. “Technically speaking, the aurora borealis is nothing more than the interaction between the earth’s magnetic field and solar wind.”

  “Technically speaking.”

  “Untechnically speaking, however …”

  We looked at one another.

  “Untechnically speaking, I’d say The Grandfather is practicing tai chi.”

  We had not gone three miles down the deserted highway from the golf club when we spotted a solitary light wobbling toward us from the direction of Moose Jaw. “What the …? Is that a bike? On the highway? You’re kidding me!” Brian switched to low beam and shifted forward in his seat to scan the road unfolding in front of the Helio. Overhead, the aurora still performed its diaphanous dance of many veils; curtains of color rippled across the sky as far as the eye could see. “It is a bike!” he concluded.

  “At this time of night?” I leaned forward and squinted at the road ahead. “Omigod. Brian! I think it’s Elijah!”

  “Elijah who?”

  “Elijah what’s-his-name. The homeless guy.”

  “Elijah Otter?” Abruptly Brian turned the wheel and pulled over to the shoulder. He stopped the car and rolled down his window. The rider wove uncertainly into view – an ungainly man, tall, stooped, and skeletal. He was wearing a windbreaker, baggy khakis, and a toque.

  “Hey, Elijah!”

  The rider braked about ten feet from the car. He shielded his eyes and peered in our direction. “Who wants to know?”

  “It’s Brian. Brian and Miranda. From the hotel.”

  Elijah’s face exploded into a big, gap-toothed grin that made the corners of his heavy-lidded eyes crinkle up; he looked like one of those goofy jack-o’-lanterns. “Oh, yeah,” he said, stepping carefully off the bike and walking it alongside the car. “Hi there.”

  “You’re riding a bike!”

  “I am,” replied Elijah. He shook his head. “They say you never forget how. I’m not so sure about that.”

  “When did you get a bike?”

  Elijah looked a little sheepish. He scratched his cheek with jagged, dirty fingernails. “That money you gave me. I was going to use it for booze, but then …” He shrugged. “Then I thought, that’s what they think I’ll use it for, and I’m tired of people being right about me. I bought this bike instead.”

  His words made my heart hurt. I closed my eyes and shrank back into the bucket seat. Why do I always think the worst of people? Why do I do that? The truth is, I’m not a very nice person. I’m going to try to be better, I promised myself, to not be so quick to judge.

  “Good for you,” Brian congratulated him.

  “I thought about what you said, man. That I should go back to where I come from, leave the city behind. There’s been nothing but bad for me in Moose Jaw. So, you know, that’s what I’m doing. I’m going home to Old Wives Lake.”

  “On a bike?” Brian asked. “Isn’t that, like, twenty miles?”

  Elijah grinned again. “Hey, man, you only gave me three hundred dollars. If you’d given me more, I’d a bought a car.”

  Brian laughed. “But where’s Lois?”

  Elijah pointed to a fluorescent orange child trailer attached to the back of the bike. A plaintive yelp leaked out of it. “She’s pretty freaked out,” he said, “but I keep telling her things are going to be just fine.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a ride?”

  “Brian!” I tugged at his elbow. I was going to be a better person, I was, but not until we got Qianfu’s bones laid safely to rest and I wasn’t going to be eaten by a shark off Bermuda. “We’re in kind of a hurry. Remember?”

  “But it’s only –”

  “Nah.” Elijah shook his head and indicated the sky with a sweep of his hand. “Don’t you see what a beautiful night it is? You see the Northern Lights a lot in these parts, but I’ve never seen them like this. Nope, not like this. It’s just…majestic is what it is. You know what my people call the northern lights?”

  “No,” said Brian. “What?”

  “Dancing Spirits. They are the spirits of our ancestors. They don’t want us to forget them, so they dance in the sky to remind us that they once lived and loved like us, and that one day we too will dance in the sky for all our descendants to see.”

  “My people have a similar theory,” said Brian. “We think the aurora is our ancestors using tai chi to subdue evil spirits.”

  Elijah considered this. “I can see that.” For a moment we all sat in silence, observing the heavens. Then Lois ventured another yelp from inside the child trailer, followed by a sharp bark.

  “Hold your horses there, Lois,” Elijah called to her. He turned back to Brian. “I’d best be going. As you said, it’s a long ways. Where are you two bound for?”

  “Home,” replied Brian.

  “All right, then,” said Elijah. “Safe journey.”

  “Safe journey to you, Elijah, and best of luck.”

  Elijah nodded, then remounted his bicycle and pedaled uncertainly off into the night.

  “Hope he makes it all right,” said Brian, starting up the car. “He looks pretty wobbly.”

  “Oh, he’ll be fine. I guess I’d better start checking for flights out of Regina.” I reached for my Zypad.

  “Not much point in that.” Brian checked for traffic – none, we and Elijah seemed to be the only living souls abroad that night – and pulled back onto the highway.

  “But we’ve got to get Qianfu’s bones to Vancouver as quickly as possible!”

  “Let me paint you a picture, cuz. We arrive at airport security. The pre-board screening officer asks you to put your personal items through the scanner. ‘Hold on, miss. What’s that on the screen? I’ve never seen anything quite like that. I’m going to have to open that suit bag.’ ”

  “But we could check it.”

  “They screen checked baggage too,” he said. “They just don’t do it in front of you.”

  He was right, of course. There was no way we could get a bag of bones on an airplane. “Well, then I guess we drive. I better tell Mom to call the rental agency in the morning, change the drop-off to Vancouver.” Extracting my cell from my knapsack, I gave the voice command “Home” and enabled the speaker-phone function so that Brian could listen in. A second later, I heard the phone in the Pender Street house ring. It sounded so very far away, as though it lay at the bottom of a deep, deep well. It rang once, twice, three times…

  “What time is it, anyway?” I asked Brian.

  “Eleven.”

  “Maybe she’s –”

  A man answered. “Hello?”

  At first I didn’t recognize the voice. Maybe I had dialed a wrong number. But I’d given the right prompt.… Then I put two and two together.

  “Dad? Dad, is that you?” I was beyond shocked. Dad hadn’t answered a phone since his accident.

  “David? What are you doing? Give me that,” I heard a voice on the other end say, then my mother’s voice on the line. “Hello. Who is this?”

  “Miranda. It’s me, Mom. Us. Brian and me.”

  “Who is it?” I heard my father say to my mother. He sounded confused, but he was talking. Talking! How long had it been since he’d uttered a coherent sentence? Months. Years.

  “It’s Miranda, David,” my mother told him.

  “Miranda? Who is Miranda?” He sounded agitated.

  “Never mind, darling. Go sit down,” she said to him. Then, “Where are you?” she asked me. “Have you been able to find out anything?”

  Where to begin? I took a deep breath. “We’re in Saskatchewan and, well, the long and the short of it is that we’ve got Qianfu’s
bones.”

  She gasped. “You’re kidding! You actually did it? You actually found him?”

  “Yup,” I replied. “It took some sleuthing and some digging but, yeah, we found him and we’re headed for home – by car, so we don’t have to explain a bag of bones to airport security.”

  “Miranda? My daughter Miranda?” I heard in the background.

  “Calm down, David! What’s gotten into you?” I heard my mother say before my father wrestled the phone away from her. “It’s ten o’clock, young lady. Why aren’t you home?” he demanded, sounding almost like his old self.

  “Oh, Daddy!” I burst into tears.

  “Liam!” I heard my mother cry out. “What are you doing up? And what have you done with your nebulizer mask?” I heard insistent beeping. Mom snatched the phone from my father again. “The screen is showing call waiting from Sebastian at camp. At this hour? What is going on?”

  The Grandfather is practicing tai chi, I thought. What I said was, “The beginning of the end, Mom. Only this time it’s going to be a happy ending. You’ll have to call the car rental place … let them know we’ll be returning the car in Vancouver. We should be home” – I consulted the GPS’s readout on the instrument panel – “in about eighteen hours, around five p.m. tomorrow if rush hour isn’t too bad. The Grandfather said you would know what to do –”

  “I do,” she cut me off. “We’ve been ready for this for years, darling. Your grandmother and me. I know just what to do.” There was a pause. “I am so proud of you … so proud of both of you.” Her voice broke. “And so very grateful.”

  “Please, Mom,” I begged. “Don’t cry.”

  “You tell your cousin to drive safely,” she said.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” I replied. “Speed lock.”

  “Thank goodness for that. Well, good night then. I love you.”

  Dad chimed in, “I love you too, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to be punished for staying out late!”

  “Right, Dad. I love you. Bye.” I hung up, blinking back tears. “Did you hear that?” I asked Brian. “And Liam needs the nebulizer mask to breathe. He has for years. What’s going on?”