Spirits Abroad (ebook)

by Zen Cho

  Silver griffins bowled down the streets of the City, tripping up lawyers and outraging bankers, and Winged Victory on the Arch finished her yawn and dropped her arms.

  The pigeons grew human bodies, all of which wore suits from Austin Reed. They marched in their thousands into architects' firms, university admissions offices, food consultancy businesses, struggling non-profits; they stole colleagues' lunches and strewed cubicles with green-gray feathers. Despite these minor eccentricities they made excellent workers: they had a firm grasp of commercial realities, and never went on Facebook.

  For several days every Tesco in the country stocked only pomegranates and nothing else. If you ate the seeds from one of these you vanished and your soul was dispatched to Hades. There was a rash of deaths before anyone realized.

  The buses of London turned into giant cats — tigers and leopards and jaguars with hollow bodies in which passengers sat. You could still use your Oyster card on them, but bus usage dropped: the seats were soft and pink and sucked at you in a disturbingly organic way when you sat down, and the buses were given to stopping in the middle of the road to quarrel with one another.

  Meanwhile the dragon coiled itself around the tip of the Gherkin and brooded over the city.

  Where Prudence came from, spirits were an everyday thing. You knew they were there and you acknowledged them when necessary. You set out the bunga melur for Dato Gong when you were going to build a house, asked permission of the grandfathers and grandmothers before you took a shit in the jungle. You apologized to tree stumps if you kicked them accidentally, and made sure the dead were fed well in the seventh month of the year.

  In Britain people were far too sophisticated to pray to their spirits. Instead they wrote articles about them. The broadsheets did serious-minded comment pieces about how the dragon was a metaphor for the Labour party in exile from Whitehall. Thaumatologists were quoted as explaining that the mere presence of the dragon increased atmospheric magic levels and that was why clothes in Primark were now labelled things like "Made by enslaved goblins in Fairyland."

  The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon's baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconic style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins.

  Because Prudence Ong never read newspapers or watched British TV, she maintained a spotlessly pure ignorance of the dragon throughout. She encountered the dragon in a rather more traditional setting. She met him down the pub.

  Historically, it was the Sorceror Royal who performed the role of human-dragon liaison, but nobody had been appointed to that office for the past couple of centuries. So it was the mayor who had to take the dragon to the pub, even though he would have preferred to stay in his office and worry about public transport.

  He took the dragon to a pub on Lamb's Conduit Street, where the dragon would not meet anyone the mayor knew. Everyone knew what the dragon's visit was for, and while the mayor could think of several people he would like to have removed to another dimension, a dragon seemed too blunt and indiscriminate a tool to do it with.

  In his human form the dragon was a man — imperially slim, with glowing blue black skin and startlingly pale eyes. He was wearing a heather gray suit and shining leather shoes. He was exquisite, so much so that when he paused at the entrance of the pub he drew a gasp from the people in it. The men gazed hungrily at him; the women touched their hair.

  He didn't seem to notice the sensation he'd caused.

  "It's considered terribly gauche now to obtain a maiden without first asking her if she wants to be obtained," he was saying to the mayor. "I assure you, the maiden's consent is paramount."

  "That's good to hear," said the mayor. He was thinking about bicycle lanes.

  But he roused himself as they waited at the bar for their drinks. "Of course one would never wish to discard the noble old traditions for no good reason. But it does seem likely that there would be some outcry if there was any incident of — any sort of — anything that might possibly be construed as, er, snatching, if you understand me."

  "Oh no," said the dragon. He was gazing around the pub with interest, like an alien at the Grand Prix. It wasn't clear whether he meant that there would be no such incident, or whether he was saying that he didn't understand the mayor. The mayor did not get the opportunity to clarify, because just then the dragon froze like a dog that had smelled a squirrel. He was staring over the mayor's shoulder.

  The mayor followed the dragon's gaze to a group sitting at the other end of the room. The attraction was obvious: at the table sat a young woman of dazzling beauty. She was so beautiful even the mayor felt his heart wobble in his chest. But he was a married man and still recovering from his most recent extramarital scandal. He said to the dragon:

  "Shall we find a seat?"

  They sat next to the girl, of course. The dragon lost no time. He leaned over to the next table. The flowerlike face turned to him.

  "Excuse me," said the dragon. "What is the name of your charming friend?"

  "Who?" said the beautiful girl. "You mean Prudence?"

  It was only at this point that the mayor noticed the beautiful girl's friend. She was a small round-faced woman. Usually she would have been brown, but just then she was almost fluorescent pink. An empty pint glass sat in front of her.

  "Yes?" said Prudence.

  She was feeling cross. Alcohol did not suit her and she did not like pubs. She was only there because Pik Mun had asked. Prudence had ordered cider because she did not think it was worth paying £2 for orange juice transferred from a carton to a pint glass, but she was beginning to regret it. Twin tentacles of a headache were slithering along her temples and would soon meet in the middle of her forehead.

  She looked at the men who had spoken to Pik Mun. One of them was an intimidatingly beautiful model type in a suit, and the other was a podgy white man with a sort of nose.

  The nose-possessing white man blurted,

  "What, her?"

  "Prudence," murmured the model, as if he were tasting the word and finding it delicious. "It's so nice to meet you. My name is Zheng Yi."

  "Oh," said Prudence. She was puzzled. "Why are you named like that?"

  "Prudence!" hissed Pik Mun. She smiled at the dragon. "Sorry, my friend's had a little too much to drink."

  "I told you already I don't need a whole pint," grumbled Prudence.

  "Could I have your number?" said Zheng Yi.

  Prudence knew the answer to this one.

  "No," she said. "I don't even know you."

  She turned her back on him.

  On the way home Pik Mun expostulated with her. "I can't believe you just turned him down like that! And you were so rude to him!"

  "It's not like he's my friend what," said Prudence. "I don't like strangers who think it's OK to talk to you. If I wanted to talk to them we would be friends already."

  "He was just being friendly," said Pik Mun. She sighed. "And he was so cute!"

  The unfair thing about Pik Mun was that she was intelligent as well as stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks beautiful. She was creative, generous, and lively. She danced, painted, wrote poetry, sold her knit creations to raise funds for asylum seekers, and she had a fanclub of boys who followed her around and made her bad birthday cakes by committee.

  These days she went by the name Angela, but when Prudence had first met her in Standard One, at the age of seven, her name had been Pik Mun. Most of the people who knew them found it inexplicable that Angela chose to keep Prudence around, considering that the only book Prudence ever read was Cheese & Onion and she thought flamenco was a kind of bird.

  But Prudence was the only one among Angela's friends who still called her Pik Mun. Angela valued history.

  She also loved Prudence and wanted her to be happy. She said, "He seems so interesting. He had a Chines
e name leh, even though he was so dark skinned. Aren't you curious to find out why?"

  "You know I am not really curious one," said Prudence. She reached up and knocked one of the jaguar's vertebrae. The jaguar coughed and started inching towards the pavement.

  "You asked him if he was mixed in the pub, what," Angela pointed out.

  "Hah?" said Prudence.

  "You know, when you asked about his name," said Angela.

  "Oh, that," said Prudence: but it was her stop.

  "You better not regret ah," said Angela as Prudence stepped out of the bus. "If you change your mind, remember we can always try to Google him, OK!"

  So the chance to mention it to Angela passed. But Prudence wondered about it as she walked home. The reason why she had asked the model type about his name was because when she was small, she used to daydream about marrying the pirate Zheng Yi and sailing the waves as an indomitable pirate queen. Zheng Yi had remained her ideal boyfriend until she turned twelve, when she put away childish things. In Prudence's world, childish things included boyfriends.

  Angela would have found that bit of history interesting, but Prudence would probably forget to tell her the next time they saw each other. Prudence shrugged the shoulders of her mind. It was just a coincidence anyway.

  On Monday morning Prudence opened her eyes knowing something was different. Zheng Yi smiled at her.

  "Good morning, Prudence," said Zheng Yi.

  Prudence screamed and leapt out of bed.

  "Aaaaah!" She picked up the nearest thing to hand and threw the bottle of moisturiser at him. "Aaaaah!" She threw the alarm clock.

  Zheng Yi put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the pillows. He was in a black suit with a plum-colored shirt and silver cufflinks, but at least he'd had the manners to take his shoes off.

  "Come live with me and be my love," he said.

  "Aaaah!" A hardcover cookery book winged its way through the air. "Get out or I'll call the police!"

  "You can't," said Zheng Yi. Sure enough, Prudence's mobile phone was nowhere to be found, though she was certain she'd left it on the bedside table before going to sleep the night before. She looked around for the telephone but that had vanished as well. It had turned into a ferret and escaped out of the window during the night, but Prudence didn't learn about this until much later.

  Nothing magical had happened to the mobile phone. It was sitting in Zheng Yi's left pocket.

  "You have no reason to fear me," said Zheng Yi. "I won't do anything to you against your will. I'm just making you an offer."

  Prudence stopped throwing things. She glared at him suspiciously.

  "What?" said Zheng Yi.

  "What's wrong with your teeth?"

  Had his teeth really looked like opals? The next time Zheng Yi smiled they were normal teeth, very white against his dark skin.

  "Come away with me," said Zheng Yi. "I will show you sorcerous wonders, the likes of which you have never imagined. You will learn how to put your hand into fire and grasp its beating heart. You will speak to fairies, and they will speak back if they know what's good for them. I will teach you the secrets of the moon and the language of the stars."

  Prudence threw the hairdryer at him.

  "I'm not interested in astronomy!" she snapped.

  The alarm clock had dropped behind the bed, but now it started ringing.

  "Oh crap," said Prudence. She rushed out of the room.

  When she came back in she was brushing her teeth. She tugged at Zheng Yi's shoulder with one hand.

  "Get up," she said. "You can go to the living room, whatever, I don't care. I need to change. Late for school already!"

  The living room and kitchen were open plan because there was not enough space for them to be separate rooms. There were four pieces of toast in the toaster. Prudence was conscious of her duties as a host even when her guest was an importunate model with the name of a pirate.

  When Prudence came back in, Zheng Yi was inspecting the stethoscope on the dining table.

  "What is this?" he said.

  "Don't play with my stethoscope!" said Prudence. She picked up a sheaf of notes on the colon. "You can have toast and kaya. After that must go already. I got to go for lecture, and you can't get out of the building without the keys. How'd you get in anyway?"

  Zheng Yi gave her a long look.

  "I'm a dragon," he said. His eyes contained galaxies.

  Unfortunately the comets and nebulae were wasted on Prudence. She was taking the kaya and butter out of the fridge.

  "Where got such thing?" she scoffed. "In my country we call this stalking."

  "You are amusing," said Zheng Yi. "Has it not occurred to you to be frightened of me at all?"

  "You said I don't need to be scared of you what," said Prudence. "No?"

  "Usually people don't believe me when I say that," said Zheng Yi pensively. "Humans are so narrow-minded. A little fire breathing, a few maidens here and there, and suddenly you're not to be trusted."

  Prudence was only listening to about 40% of what Zheng Yi was saying, which was good because Zheng Yi only meant 40% of anything he said. She lobbed the jar of kaya at him and he caught it.

  "No need to talk so much," she said. "Spread your own kaya."

  Angela had saved a seat in the lecture theater for Prudence. It was next to the aisle, but by the time Prudence had opened her folder and uncapped her pen, this was no longer the case. She looked up to find Zheng Yi sitting next to her.

  "Oh my gosh," whispered Angela. "He's a medic too? He's a bit old to be a student, right?"

  Prudence had parted from Zheng Yi on her doorstep. She narrowed her eyes at him. If Zheng Yi had not been far too elegant to grin, she would have sworn that that was what he was doing.

  "No," said Zheng Yi. "We came from her flat."

  Angela's eyes went round.

  "We had a business breakfast," said Prudence, glaring at him. "Zheng Yi is going to be my — my—"

  "Everything," said Zheng Yi.

  Angela laid a hand on Prudence's arm. She looked a little faint. "Don't you think this is moving too fast? You only met day before yesterday!"

  "Pik Mun, he's right there. Whisper also he can hear," said Prudence. "Zheng Yi is just saying that he is going to be doing everything for me. He is my personal assistant."

  "Huh?" said Angela.

  "Is that a yes?" said Zheng Yi.

  "He's a management consultant," said Prudence, inventing wildly. "But he's thinking of changing career to become doctor. We bump into each other on the street yesterday and he ask me if he can shadow me, so I said OK lor, provided he help me with stuff."

  "Like what kind of stuff?" said Angela.

  "Like taking notes," said Prudence. "You know I find it hard to concentrate on what the lecturer's speaking when I'm writing." She shoved a notebook and pen at Zheng Yi. "Nah. You take notes."

  She waited till the lecture had started and Angela had turned her attention elsewhere. Then she hissed,

  "And no, that is not a yes!"

  Zheng Yi was taking notes of the lecture with surprising diligence. He paused in the middle of a sentence to turn limpid sad eyes on her.

  "I ask for your sake as much as mine," he said. "To refuse would be to miss the opportunity of a lifetime. Any magician would give his left eye for what I'm offering you. Really, you'll regret it tremendously if you say no."

  "I don't even know what's the question you're asking!"

  "Perhaps over time you will figure it out," said Zheng Yi. He turned back to his notes.

  "What's that mean?" said Prudence, but Zheng Yi raised his finger to his lips.

  "Shh, she's listing the various drugs for treatment," he said. "This is important stuff."

  He was right, which was a pity, as Prudence was not going to have any record of it. This became apparent when Zheng Yi handed her his notes.

  "What's this?" said Prudence.

  "It's the notes of the lecture you asked me to take," said
Zheng Yi.

  "I can't read this," said Prudence. She could not even look at the symbols for long without feeling uncomfortable. The symbols seemed to writhe on the page.

  "It's written in Draconic Runes," said Zheng Yi. "Much more interesting than any human language. Each ideogram is itself a poem on the qualities of each drug your teacher discussed, echoing the structure of each sentence, which discusses the same subject but reveals new layers of meaning and context underpinning your teacher's every utterance, and every sentence joins together into a giant ideogram, an uber-ideogram if you will, the significance of which is, 'I love Pru—'"

  "Can't you write in English?" said Prudence.

  "No," said Zheng Yi.

  Another thing Zheng Yi could not do was take hints. He stopped sleeping on the bed after Prudence explained that this could only lead to grievous bodily harm, but he did not go away.

  Fortunately he was good at cooking. And he would have watered the tomato plants every day, except that this had two results: first, the tomatoes thrived; second, they grew faces and began to talk. Prudence asked him to stop because she didn't like the way their eyes followed her around the flat, but after that the tomatoes stopped meeting her eyes and started weeping and begging for mercy whenever Zheng Yi came by their pot.

  He was a difficult person to manage.

  Also Prudence suspected that Angela was beginning to see through her ruse.

  "Does he live here?" said Angela. She had come over for a cookout on Friday night, as was their tradition.

  "No," said Prudence. "Why you ask?"

  Angela looked at the sofa she was sitting on. "Then why got blanket and pillow here one?"

  "I like to lie down when I watch TV," said Prudence.

  "He's not actually doing work experience, right?"

  "Yes," said Prudence. "I mean, no. I mean, he is! Why are you asking?"

  Angela cast a glance towards the kitchen area, where Zheng Yi was bending over a bubbling pot of something or other. She leaned closer. "Your tomato got face! And I found this on your bathroom floor!"

  She held up what looked like a chip of black marble, cut marvelously thin and translucent, with veins of gold running through it. Colors shifted on its smooth surface, as they do on an opal when you turn it this way and that in the light. Prudence was reminded of teeth.