Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  I use the knife to cut off a hank of hair, then hand back the knife and start braiding. As I walk and braid, I start thinking about Chen’s riddle again, as we never did finish deciphering it.

  “So, he thinks he’s Huang-ti.”

  “Once upon a time,” says Firescape, following my thought as if we’ve been chewin' on this without hiatus.

  “So is it re-incarnation or something else?”

  “Re-incarnation," she says. "Gotta be. Look, it’s like this — he wants to be immortal, right? Which means he isn’t yet. And he’s sure not going to get there like a normal Immortal by becoming perfect. But he’s looking for a shortcut — the elixir of the Immortals’ wealth.”

  “But what’s that got to do with the soul of the nation? Maybe he thinks he was Confucius...or Buddha even.”

  “No, that’s not it,” says Firescape, and I can tell by the sound of her voice that her mind’s caught on something. “It’s Lao-tzu.”

  Okay, I know Lao-tzu founded Taoism — the religion, not the philosophy. But I wonder why Lao-tzu and not Confucius? Then it hits me. “Lao-tzu is supposed to have never died, but only disappeared!”

  She pokes my shoulder. “Not only that, but he was supposed to have known the secret of eternal life. And get this — for some reason the histories aren’t real clear on, Huang-ti and Lao-tzu got combined into someone called Huang-Lao. And the formula for the elixir of eternal life is called the Learning of Huang-Lao. Which the second Emperor Huang-ti sent his minister, Fu-Hsen, to search for across the sea.”

  This part of the story I remember. “I studied that. They say he took hundreds of children with him. I guess he was hoping to start a whole race of Immortals.”

  “Yeah,” says Firescape in her best ghost story voice, “and neither he nor any of the children were ever seen again.”

  “That’s his name, then — Huang-Lao.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what the riddle’s about. Chen’s challenging me to figure out his real and secret name.”

  “That must be it,” says Firescape. “I mean, that’s his quest, isn’t it? Beating death?”

  Damn. I feel pretty good all of a sudden. Not such a chickpea brain after all, I guess. Although, I have to admit, my well-studied wife did most of the actual thinking.

  So, Chen thinks combining magics is gonna be a shortcut to the realm of the Immortals. Oh, and he by-the-wayly wants to get rid of Hismajesty and become Emperor of all he surveys. From the way Pedro’s gone on about him, I gotta believe his plans include turning all of us into mindless, black hole drones like his monks and ninjas.

  I stow my new knowledge and the Name, finish tying the rattle and Doug branch together, and concentrate on the trail. This is becoming necessary, for though the Sun is rising higher in the sky, we are beset by fog again. Not just any fog, mind you, but a shabu dong the like of which I have only seen in one place.

  I duck under a tree limb and find I am gazing up a long, wide clearing bordered by a stream on one side and a jagged line of boulders on the other. The ground is lumpy with random humps of moss-covered rock. The fog creeps in and around the clearing like cats checking out the alley behind a Gee Gah butcher shop.

  I have been here before. I know this as surely as I know that I have not been here before. I raise the hand that holds the rattle and the place begins to morph.

  First, a shadow seems to sweep over the clearing and the shabu dong waxes restless. It also begins to gleam like powdered silver, and before my eyes the whole clearing starts making with this eerie light. The grass glows green, the trees brass, the rocks gold.

  I move forward, rattle held high, and that’s when I see it. It grows out of the fog where one of the mossy rock piles was. It is a muddle of tree branch and pine thatch and rock and mud, and a ghostly banner of smoke flies from its crown. And I know that the insides of this upside-down bowl are gonna be hauntingly familiar.

  Twenty-third:

  Moonlight, a Righteous Quest, and Lack of Sleep

  I exhale the breath I have been holding forever. “This is it,” I say, but then get a cold shot of the doubtfuls.

  This is nuts, that’s what it is.

  For a strange, dizzy instant, I feel that undertow again and I wonder if I haven’t gone completely and seriously napoleon. My upper lip is sweating and itching like crazy and my eyes are wonkier than they’ve ever been in my whole life.

  “Jade,” I say to my conspicuously silent wife, “what do you see?”

  “I...I’m not sure,” she says, and her hushed, uncertain voice puts tears in my eyes.

  “Do you see...do you see the clearing and the shabu dong?”

  I feel her nod, ‘cause she’s pressing into my back. “Yeah.”

  “Do you see the Dream Lodge? And is the whole place glowing?”

  There’s a pause, or at least I think there is. Then she says, “Yeah. Yeah...glowing.”

  I lick my very dry lips. “This is it, isn’t it?”

  “Del, if you say this is it, then this is it. What do we do next?”

  The undertow lets up and some confidence flows back. I don’t know if she can see the Lodge or the Technicolor grass — she believes I can see it, and that’s enough.

  “The Lodge,” I say and step into the glade.

  I expect Something to happen at this auspicious moment. I mean, after all, the magics are here, right? Something really ought to happen. But nothing does; the glade is still waiting for something.

  Okay, maybe if I get closer to the Lodge; maybe if I go inside. Maybe then, the Dolores will come out. And Pedro. I want Pedro to be here. I want that so bad I can taste it. I want it so bad, I see someone standing in front of the Lodge. I move faster, Pedro’s name on my lips.

  But it’s not Pedro at all.

  “Chen!” cries Firescape, and before I can do more than croak, she brings her AK up and fires. Or at least, she tries to fire, but instead of a spray of bullets, there’s just this funny mechanical cackling.

  Chen echoes it pretty effectively. “Pathetic,” he says. “Did you honestly think you could kill me? Obviously, you still don’t know me, or you’d understand how futile your puny, mortal weapons are.”

  “Damn!” says Firescape with much gusto. She checks the magazine, hits it with the flat of her hand, then gives me this apologetic look.

  Me, I’m just glad she can see this jake. More confidence flows.

  “You’re Huang-ti,” I tell Chen. “Yellow Emperor and father of China. And Lao-tzu, father of the soul of China.”

  He nods his head. “Clever. I was once known by those names. No longer. You have two pieces of the puzzle, and you have used up one of your three guesses. But my name is not Huang-ti or Lao-tzu.”

  “Then,” I say, “it’s Huang-Lao.”

  I guess I expect him to go up in a puff of smoke or melt into the ground crying, “What a world! What a world!” But he doesn’t do this. He just smiles at me in that irritating Red Dragon way of his and says, “Was that guess number two?”

  “Sonofabitch,” says my wife and launches herself in the general direction of Chen’s throat.

  He points one of his fingernails at her and says, “Jade,” in a Voice like a little storm.

  She stops like she’s just run into an invisible wall. You ever play Red Light-Green Light? Like that. A growl rumbles in her throat. Chen just laughs and beckons with another fingernail and out of the shabu dong come these two ninjas. They grab Firescape, disarm her, and pull her to where she cannot come between me and their Dragon Master.

  I try to leap into action. I fumble with the rattle and nearly drop it.

  “Del!” Firescape cries. “Get the hell out of here!”

  But I can’t get the hell out of here without her, so I face Chen mano y Dragon.

  “Let her go,” I command, as if this will actually make something happen.

  What it does is make Chen crow like a damn rooster.

  “Your soft spot, merlin?” he cackles, then
waxes philosophical. “One who wishes to hold real power must not have such...faults. Yes, weaknesses are like that, are they not? As faults underlie this land, so they lie deep in a man’s spirit and make him weak and able to be shaken.”

  He makes a chopping motion toward Jade and spits her name like a curse. She cries out and crumples like she’s been gut-punched.

  I think of our baby and it’s all I can do not to throw myself at Chen and try to disassemble him, which, of course, is just what he wants. Tears leap to my eyes. For the first time in my life I wish I had spells that could kill. What spells I do have are suddenly locked up tight somewhere in my Scarecrow brain.

  Chen smiles. He’s got a hook in me and he knows it.

  “You only postpone the inevitable. Come here, Taco Del, and bring me the magics, or your pretty young Jade and your unborn child will die.”

  Jade cries out again on cue, and the hook in my soul gives a demon yank. I fight, but Chen is reeling me in, step by step.

  “Del.” He says it with much power, curling his fingers, and the hook digs in deeper.

  The air around us shimmers and darkens. The colors of the glade drain away and I see dark, huddled shapes that don’t belong here. They come with the smell of incense and the sound of chanting, which is not a sound made by your average forest.

  Suddenly, I understand what Chen is trying to do; he is trying to magic us off the Mountain and back to his shrine over the Tin Hau where he will be in complete control and where, no doubt, the headband waits for the other artifacts. The chanting I hear is the voices of monks, dark and smoky, heavy and sweet.

  Showered in cold fear, I sweat. I feel my immortal soul being sucked away, pulled off the Mountain. That’s when I remember again how big the magic is. It’s as big as the Mountain, and the Mountain is under my feet. I inhale evergreen and think Tree. I root my thoughts in the rocky soil of the Mountain and I dig down.

  “Come, Del,” says Chen again, pulling up on me, trying to shake me loose. He sounds a little ticked, like this is taking longer than he’d like. “Del!” he commands again and the glade loses some more of its color.

  No! I think. I gotta be better than this! I gotta have more than this!

  I dig deeper; my thoughts are roots; my roots are firm. They go down forever into the soil and rock. The wind sways me, but I barely bend and I don’t break. I am the Mother of All Trees and my roots go down to the heart of the Mountain.

  For a moment — just a moment, ni dong — I think I hear it. The Voice of the Mountain. Calling me down. My thoughts are roots.

  And then I hear this other voice, this sweet, angel voice that says, “Del” in a way that has always turned my insides warm and runny, and I remember that I also got Jade. She speaks to me again.

  “Del!” she says sweetly. “Del! Snap out of it!”

  Something smacks me upside the head. Hard. It’s Chen, and now he’s got both hands wrapped around the rattle. I try to hold on, but my head is a mish-mosh of incense and evergreen and pain. There are shouts and the sound of footfalls coming hard behind me. Someone grabs me from behind, yanks me half backward, then reaches into my coat and drags the pipe out of my belt.

  I fall, and when I fall, I let go of the rattle and Chen lets go of my soul. My roots come up out of the Mountain and what’s left of the Tin Hau rips away from around me like wet silk and disappears into the shabu dong of the mountainside.

  Chen stands over me, holding the rattle high, but he is not gloating, as I expect. He is glaring at it, as if it has just called him a very bad name, and he is swearing loudly in Chinese.

  Someone grabs my shoulders and drags me up.

  “Up!” Hoot shouts into my face. “Go!”

  But where can I go without the rattle? I give the glade a frantic glance and see Creepy Lou, of all people, standing in front of the Dream Lodge grinning at me. He waves the pipe over his head. Then he turns and disappears into the Lodge. Just like that.

  I boggle, ‘cause in the back of my mind all this time was the idea that the Lodge wasn’t, you know, real.

  Chen is boggled, too. “How has he disappeared?” he demands. “Where has he gone?”

  He has the rattle tight in his claws and is shaking it like nobody’s business.

  I gotta guess he wants to get that magic going right this minute. I also gotta guess he can’t get it going — not without the vest, which I am still wearing, and the pipe, which has just disappeared into a place he can’t see. I do the thing that makes the most sense under these circumstances. I dash for the Lodge and dive in.

  This Dream Lodge is different in some way I don’t get right away. I am wrapped in mist and dark. So far so good. I smell the Ohlone incense of smoke, pine, and sweat. A fire crackles and paints the mist with its colors. But this is no itty-bitty upside-down bowl I’m in here. This place is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside — really big, like I got the whole Mountain wrapped around me.

  I move toward the fire, a warm, bright, hazy spot in the big dark. There is someone waiting for me there. No surprises this time; it’s Lou.

  “Yowza!” he says, his face all crawly with firelight. “This is pretty cool, huh? Is this where the Whithpers come from?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I wonder where the Whisperers are now. “You got the pipe?”

  He hands it to me and it tingles my hand to touch it. The vest answers with a tingle of its own. A ghost-thread reaches out to join the two magics together. The mist around us eddies and the Mountain sighs, or the Lodge does, or Something in the Lodge does.

  Okay, I think, something’s doing here, after all.

  I pray I have blundered fortuitously. I’ve got two pieces of the magic in here and Chen has the third piece out there. In order for him to get what he wants, he’s gotta come in here, and in order for me to get what I want — which is for the magics to be united in the right spot — he’s gotta come in here and I gotta get the rattle away from him.

  For once, I seem to have a pretty clear agenda. I say all this to Lou.

  “Problem is,” I add, “I don’t think he can even see this place. You should’ve seen the look on his face when you popped in here."

  “But you thaw it and I thaw it,” Lou observes.

  “Maybe ‘cause the Dolores wanted us to.”

  Lou shrugs. “Then maybe they can make him thee it too.”

  Sounds good to me. I address the Whisperers accordingly. “Pedro and company, I’m not sure, but I think it might be a good thing if the appropriate persons can see the Lodge so that the rattle might somehow make its way inside. My preference would be for Hoot and Firescape to get the rattle away from Chen and bring it in here, but if having Chen bring it in is most do-able, that’d be fine, too.”

  The mist is eddying again, looking most Spielbergian. I pray, bite my lip, and tuck the pipe back into my belt. I have barely finished this little task when Chen appears like one of those little, winky fake candles. Flash-pop!

  He doesn’t waste any time, but comes right at us, his lips doing mumbo-jumbo at light speed and his fingernails making julienne out of the mist. I tuck in shoulder-to-shoulder with Lou, which puts the spirit-fire between us and Chen, and spread Chouyan incantations all over the place. The mist thickens toward shabu status.

  I am Chouyaning, hoping to confuse Chen, when the Dragon speaks my name. I feel the hook sink into my soul and send shivers down my spine. He says it again, and again. My bones go cold to the marrow and my feet shuffle underneath me.

  Before I can think Tree, Lou’s arms are all of a sudden wrapped around my shoulders.

  “Del!” he says. “Del!”

  I am boggled anew, ‘cause my good buddy Lou does not just say my Name of names, he says it with power. This is not the same as just speaking a name, you know. You gotta know how to speak it, and Lou apparently knows how, ‘cause Chen’s hook slips a little.

  The next thing I know, I’m in the middle of a tug-o-war. They pull my name back and forth, while I bob around l
ike a channel buoy, trying to think tree-like thoughts. The shabu gets thicker and I see, clearer and clearer every moment, the little ghost threads of magic that bind the three relics together.

  I see something else, too. I see that Chen, for all he is big and terrifying in his Dragon robes and priestly hat and with magic dripping off his fingertips, is having a problem with the rattle. It keeps shaking in his hand, which is going every-which-way — up, down, around. At first, I think Chen is doing the shaking, but when he keeps throwing it these weird looks, I realize something else is going on and Chen is being distracted by it.

  Finally, with this wheezy roar of rage, he stops waving his fingernails at me and grabs hold of an amulet he’s wearing around his neck. It’s one of those Egyptian things — an ankh — and it glows jade green through his fingers. He spouts a long stream of Chinese mixed with some language I don’t get and next, I’m looking out at the world from inside a dense, dark, velvety fog.

  I can’t see Lou anymore; I can’t hear him chanting my name. Instead, I hear the voices of the Tin Hau monks and smell their sweet incense. The air shimmers and the ground under me feels suddenly not so grounded. In the freezy marrow of my bones, I know that if I lose the Mountain, I lose everything.

  I try to send down roots again. It takes all the will power I got, but I manage to tear my eyes from Chen’s glowing amulet put them on the threads of magic between the artifacts — on how they seem to get brighter and fatter the closer Chen gets to me.

  But Chen is strong. He makes me want to look at him; at the glowing amulet.

  I gotta not do that. My eyes on the threads, I reach for my own amulet bag. But there’s no Doug sprig in it any more and my hand closes on a flat, hard lump of stone.

  The Mountain moves under my feet.

  I raise my head and look the Dragon straight in the eye.

  “Shen!” I cry. “Your Name of names is Shen!”

  His face is red with fire and surprise. He gasps, staggers, roars my name aloud.

  I roar back; so does Lou, and so do two other voices from somewhere in the dark around us. A moment later there are two solid figures — Hoot and Firescape — moving toward us through the mist. They are chanting Shen’s name.