by Kylie Chan
Monica came in and ceremonially presented Simone with a boiled egg that had been dyed red. Mr Chen watched, delighted, as Simone ate it. Then he gave her a lai see, a red paper envelope filled with lucky money. She jumped out of her chair and climbed into his lap to give him a hug and a messy kiss. He held her close for a while, his eyes closed and a huge smile on his face. Then he pushed her away slightly so he could stroke her hair.
Monica and Leo both gave her gifts too: Monica gave her a storybook and Leo gave her a toy tea set.
‘Happy birthday, Simone. I’ll have a present for you later,’ I said. ‘You’re a big five-year-old now. Are you going to have a birthday party?’
‘Some of Simone’s favourite aunts and uncles will be coming for dinner,’ Mr Chen said. ‘They all have red packets for Simone.’
Simone clapped her hands with delight. ‘Is Aunty Kwan coming?’
‘Yes, she is,’ he said.
‘Mr Chen,’ I said, ‘can I talk to you privately later?’ ‘Come into my study when you’ve finished eating.’
I tapped on the door of his study. ‘Come in, Emma,’ he said.
I went in and sat down. I’d left the door open; this wouldn’t take long. Mr Chen turned away from the computer, leaving the spreadsheet open, and leaned on the pile of papers in front of him.
‘Thanks a lot for telling me,’ I said.
He looked sheepish.
‘Her birthday on her documents is 20 November, not 15 November,’ I said. ‘You could have at least told me you were planning to celebrate it today.’
‘Today is her birthday on the Chinese calendar,’ he said. ‘I apologise. I forgot to tell you.’
‘What else haven’t you told me that I need to know?’
He looked guilty.
‘Geez,’ I said. ‘If you think of anything else that I need to know, you’d better tell me. Right now though, that’s beside the point. Simone’s five years old and she needs to go to school.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She can start school next September. I would like you to find a suitable place for her.’
‘Would you prefer a Chinese or English curriculum?’ I said, relieved. I had expected a battle about sending Simone to school and was surprised by this easy acquiescence.
‘I’d prefer an International school,’ he said. ‘Any one will do. She will be wealthy when she grows up, I will see to that. She will be a citizen of the world. She may want to study overseas. It is important that she goes to a school that will give her that wider viewpoint.’
Leo was passing as Mr Chen said this and he stopped at the door to listen.
‘I’ll start looking for a school for her right away,’ I said. ‘Any particular preference for International schools? The English schools were originally founded for the colonial kids, but they provide a good all-round British education, and you have a lot of links there.’
Mr Chen nodded.
‘French? Korean? German/Swiss? The Japanese one is out in the New Territories, but it’s good as well—’
‘Emma,’ he said, cutting through my babble, ‘I am leaving this entirely up to you. You choose. I trust you. Leo can assist you; he is an expert on security and that will be a consideration.’
I was silenced. He was placing an enormous amount of faith in me.
‘Simone should be home-schooled,’ Leo growled from the doorway. ‘She’ll be in constant danger at school, and we won’t be there to protect her.’
‘We will arrange something,’ Mr Chen said.
‘You’ll waste your energy keeping an eye on her?’ Leo said. ‘It’s not worth the risk.’
‘Leo,’ Mr Chen said patiently, ‘you knew this time would come. We have had this discussion many times already. Simone will go to school. That is final.’
‘This is a very bad idea.’
‘Leo,’ I said, breaking in, ‘how many friends of her own age does Simone have?’
‘Being alive is more important.’
‘She needs to learn to function socially. Right now she doesn’t have a single friend her own age. She hardly knows anybody who’s even human.’
‘We’re human. Monica’s human.’
‘We’re staff, Leo. We’re servants. She needs to learn how to interact with children her age, ordinary kids that she can’t boss around. She’ll have to learn how to keep her father’s strange nature a secret—’
‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Mr Chen huffed.
‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not strange.’
He glared at me but didn’t say anything.
Leo snorted with amusement, then became fierce again. ‘Yeah. She’ll tell everybody about riding the Tiger and be thrown out of school.’
‘She hasn’t done it yet, Leo,’ Mr Chen said.
Leo sounded desperate. ‘She won’t be safe!’
‘Simone will go to school. You will accept it. That is an order,’ Mr Chen said.
Leo scowled and stomped out.
I turned back to Mr Chen. ‘I’ll get onto it.’
‘Sorry I didn’t tell you about her birthday. After I’m gone, just use her Western birthday. Don’t bother trying to keep up with the Chinese calendar, it’s too complicated.’
‘I know. Some years you have a leap month.’
‘The second August is a very lucky time.’
‘How do you do it?’ I said. ‘You talk about your going, and leaving that wonderful child all alone, as if it was…’ I swallowed it.
He seemed to understand. ‘Read the Tao.’
‘I have. It’s like a set of clues for a cryptic crossword.’
He made a soft sound of amusement. ‘You have hit the nail exactly on the head.’
‘Why haven’t you been teaching me about the Tao? I thought it would be integral to the training.’
‘It is.’ He leaned back. ‘The Tao cannot be taught with words, it is wordless. The minute you try to encompass its nature with words, its nature will escape you. Those of us who are already there can assist you, but you must all find your own way.’
‘You’re already there?’
‘Of course I am,’ he said without a hint of impatience. ‘That is how I came to be. In human form though…’ He hesitated, thinking. ‘I am not pure Shen, and sometimes the human needs and feelings overcome me. It is quite exhilarating. I have not remained in human form this long since attaining the Tao. It is an experience.’ ‘Shen?’
‘Read the Tao. Go and buy Simone a birthday present—I’m sure you were planning to. I’ll mind her. Go to Causeway Bay or Tai Koo Shing.’
‘I’ll take her with me. She can spend the lai see money you gave her.’
He nodded. ‘Good idea.’
I looked at him. ‘How much money did you give her?’
‘Three thousand dollars.’
I gasped a huge sucking laugh.
‘Is that too much?’
‘Just slightly. Then again, I suppose it’s average for a child of a wealthy family. My other clients’ children would get similar amounts. More at Chinese New Year.’ I rose to go out. ‘Who’s coming to the birthday dinner?’
He ticked them off mentally, using the Cantonese and Putonghua names indiscriminately. ‘About ten of the Generals, about five of the Eight Immortals, Kwan Yin of course, Bai Hu, Sun Wu-Kwong—’
I waved my hands in front of me. ‘Oh, no. No way. I’m out of here.’
‘The White Tiger will behave, I promise, Emma. It would be nice if you could attend Simone’s birthday dinner. As a member of the family.’
‘The White Tiger is a perfect gentleman now we’ve set some ground rules. But if the Monkey King is coming, I’m not going to be there.’
‘He intensely dislikes being called the Monkey King, and you know it.’
‘Yep.’
Mr Chen sighed. ‘They will all be on their best behaviour, even the Monkey King. I have rented a room in Tsim Sha Tsui; there isn’t space here for them all. When they’re out in public they behave, Emma. It’s jus
t here at home that they tend to let their hair down.’
‘Speaking of hair, yours is all over the place,’ I shot over my shoulder as I went out.
‘Damn!’
I went back to my room and did some more research on Shen. Shen wasn’t mentioned in the translation of the Tao Teh Ching that I had. I wondered why he had asked me to read it to find out about Shen. Shen was the spirit in everybody; the soul. But it had another meaning: it meant a person who existed on the higher plane. Some of them were Raised humans, like the Eight Immortals. They had been born human and found the Tao, the Way.
Others were more like forces of nature; for example, Xuan Wu, Emperor of the Northern Heavens, Dark Lord of the Martial Arts, Right Hand of the Jade Emperor, one of the Four Winds in physical form, and my employer. The literature claimed that he was, paradoxically, both a force of nature and a Raised Immortal. He was a prehistoric totem-like creature, a black turtle, or a combination of a snake and a turtle, two animals together. But he was also a human Emperor who had lived in ancient times and been taught and then Raised to Immortality by his friend, Kwan Yin.
Much of what was said about him was contradictory. I wondered which twenty-five per cent was true.
It was the strangest feeling in the world to read the literature about these people on an intellectual level and then match them up to the visitors who wandered in through the front door. It was weird to see statues of Kwan Yin all over the place and then remember that she was the same delightful woman who had cared for us all so well in Paris.
There were some stories about Bai Hu in which he appeared almost demonic. That fitted.
There were some insinuations that the Jade Girl was half Dragon. The Golden Boy was also called the Clever Boy. They seemed to serve every major deity in the Taoist pantheon. I began to wonder exactly how old Jade and Gold really were; both of them looked in their mid-twenties.
I looked up some of Mr Chen’s many names in the dictionary. I knew the characters for them and I had an excellent Chinese-English dictionary, so I flipped through to find them.
‘Xuan’ meant ‘dark’. Not ‘black’, which was a completely different word. Definitely ‘dark’, as in lack of light. When they called him the Dark Lord, they really meant it.
‘Wu’ didn’t really seem to have a proper translation, but generally came out as ‘martial arts’. It was the same ‘Wu’ as in Wu shu.
‘Xuan Wu’ meant ‘Dark Martial Arts’.
At some time during his history, his name ‘Xuan’ had been too close to the dynastic name of the presiding royal family and he’d somehow been changed from ‘Xuan Wu’ to ‘Zhen Wu’. ‘Zhen’ meant ‘truly’ or ‘absolutely’. No messing around: he was really the God of Martial Arts.
In some places in Southern China he was known as ‘Chen Wu’, the ‘Chen’ being another form of ‘zhen’. He wasn’t even using an alias.
But why John? Why such a dead-common English name? Was he trying to avoid too much attention?
No, he wasn’t. ‘John’ sounded like ‘Xuan’.
Leo took us down to Causeway Bay in the Mercedes to buy Simone’s birthday presents. We parked in one of the older, smaller car parks. Mr Chen owned the parking spot outright; it had probably cost him upwards of a million Hong Kong dollars.
We took Simone around the shops, and let her take her time. She didn’t want to spend all of her money. Sometimes she seemed much more mature than her five years. I wondered if it had something to do with her mixed parentage—and not just the Chinese/European mix; possibly something to do with the martial arts training and the discipline involved too. She would grow up with wisdom and strength that would give her an edge over anybody her age. All she needed were the social skills she would gain from going to school.
We stomped up the car park stairs carrying all of Simone’s shopping bags and laughing together. Leo leaned against the door to open it for us. Simone went through the door and stopped dead. I nearly crashed into her.
Leo dropped all the shopping bags and pushed us both behind him. ‘Stay here.’
A group of six young men with dyed hair, blond and red, lounged against the car waiting for us. They were all covered in elaborate tattoos and looked like gangsters.
‘Are they demons?’ I whispered.
‘Yes,’ Simone said. ‘Not very big, about level twenty.’
‘Can Leo handle them?’ I said. ‘Should I call your dad on my mobile phone?’
‘Leo should be okay.’ Simone moved forward and I stopped her. ‘I wanna help Leo.’
I pulled her next to me. ‘You stay here with me where you’re safe.’
Leo walked casually to the demons and stopped about two metres away from them.
‘Get off the car,’ he said, perfectly calm.
One of the demons grinned and levered himself off the car. As soon as he was upright he threw himself at Leo. The other demons didn’t move.
Leo ducked under the demon’s outstretched arms, grabbed it around the middle, turned and effortlessly threw it into the wall of the car park.
It exploded into feathery black ribbons that dissipated quickly.
I pulled Simone closer to me. I thought about running, but decided it would be better for us to stay where we were, with Leo protecting us. There were probably demons waiting to grab us at the bottom of the stairs.
‘We’ll be okay, Emma,’ Simone whispered.
I sincerely hoped so. I had faced some demons in the training room, but I wasn’t capable of taking out anything bigger than level two or three with my bare hands. These ones were much too big for me.
I vowed to try valiantly anyway, if I had to. I straightened and held Simone behind me. I would protect her at any cost.
The remaining demons slowly pulled themselves upright, still grinning. There were five left.
Leo readied himself, moving into a standard defensive position. Four of the demons threw themselves at him at the same time.
He moved so fast he was a blur.
His left fist crunched into the face of the demon in the centre as his right hand came out and blocked the blow of the one next to it, pushing it so that it blocked the one on the far right. He let the one on the far left strike him as he dealt with the other three, and didn’t even seem to notice the blow to his face.
As the first one he had struck dissipated, he grabbed the one to the right and slammed it into the one on the end, destroying both together, at the same time pivoting and lashing out with his foot to take out the one on the far left.
I didn’t see any more because the remaining demon had sneaked around Leo and was approaching Simone and me. He grinned viciously as he came closer.
Simone moved next to me and took up a long defensive stance, her little face set with determination.
I grabbed her and pulled her behind me.
‘I wanna fight,’ Simone said, but I pushed her back and she didn’t resist. I moved into a defensive stance and readied myself to defend Simone, with my life if necessary.
Leo’s dark forearm appeared around the demon’s throat and yanked. The demon’s face filled with astonishment, then horror, then it dissipated as well.
Simone ran around me to Leo and he knelt to check her.
I knelt with them. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ll have a shocking headache later, but otherwise I’m not injured,’ Leo said. ‘Are you all right? Simone?’
‘I’m fine. Leo, you were great,’ Simone said, and moved to hug him.
He pushed her away, keeping her at arm’s length. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, there’s demon stuff on me. I need to go home and wash it off. Don’t touch me until then.’
Simone nodded, understanding. ‘Okay.’
Leo rose and I did as well. I took Simone’s hand.
‘Are you okay, Emma?’ Leo said.
I shrugged. ‘Sure. You were tremendous.’
‘All part of the job.’ He collected the shopping bags from the ground and checked the contents. ‘Nothing broken.’
He turned back to the car. ‘Let’s go.’
I guided Simone to sit in the back. Leo threw the bags into the boot, pulled out a towel and wiped his arms and face. ‘Better get home and wash this stuff off.’
He got into the car and started the engine.
‘How many of them could you take bare-handed, Leo?’ I said.
‘What level were they, Simone?’ Leo said. ‘Fifteen? Twenty?’
‘Twenty,’ Simone said.
‘I could probably take about ten of them with my bare hands,’ Leo said. ‘More than that, they’d get through me and do some damage. I could take down twenty or thirty of them before going down myself.’ He shrugged. ‘Used to happen all the time, but they eased up a couple of years ago.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They stopped coming after they took Michelle. Obviously they’ve found out about Simone and they’re coming after her now. We need to go home and tell Mr Chen.’
‘You should let me help,’ Simone said. ‘I can kill level ten demons. I wanna fight too.’
‘You are a remarkable little girl,’ I said, giving her a squeeze. ‘But you should let Leo do the demon killing for you right now, because you’re too small.’
Simone crossed her arms in front of her chest and made a face.
Leo eased the car gingerly into the car park lift. ‘I hope your dad’s home to guard you, Simone, ‘cause I’m gonna have to clean the interior of the car now. There’s black demon stuff all over the front seat here.’
‘Does that stuff have a proper name?’ I said.
Leo shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know. There may be a word for it in Chinese, but I’ve never heard anybody use one. Everybody just calls it demon stuff, demon essence.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Simone said loudly. ‘I wanna go home and have some ramen.’
‘You’re always hungry,’ Leo said.
A group of young men were lounging around the exit of the stairwell. They grinned menacingly at us as we passed them, but made no move to attack.
‘Are those demons, Simone?’ Leo said.
‘Yes.’
I recognised one of them. ‘Oh my God.’
‘What?’ Leo said.
‘One of them was Simon Wong.’