Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  “I am ready. Knit!” Pearl said, keeping her tones level with tremendous effort. She felt the young women’s ch’i race into her, each following its own strand. By great good fortune, the two had chosen almost identical patterns for their spells, so that Pearl could absorb the energy without any confusion.

  Brenda apparently had problems remembering the character for five, while Nissa had a perfect sequence, but other than the elimination of five in one spell and the inclusion of eight, they matched seamlessly.

  As the twinned ch’i flooded to augment her own, Pearl felt her faltering control restored. Very well, since she could not drive the Toad away, she must take a lesson from Liu Hai and lure it.

  Tiger occupies a nearly unique place among the creatures of the Chinese zodiac, for it is also assigned a role as guardian of one of the four directions—Guardian of the West. Only Dragon is also sign and guardian—in its case of East. This is why one is the greatest of warriors, the other the greatest of wizards.

  Pearl called west wind to come away from teasing the Three-Legged Toad. It lopped over to her, taking the form of a great white tiger with eyes of shining blue. It rubbed against her, and she spared a moment to scratch it behind one elegant ear.

  “We’re going to lead that Toad on a chase,” she said, and shaped in her mind an unplanned spell. “Carry me away from my house, but make sure Toad sees us. The other winds will encourage him to follow, and the red dragon will protect the house.”

  The White Tiger who was the west wind purred agreement with this plan, and Pearl threw her leg over his flank. She had forgotten she was a woman closer to eighty than seventy, and that she stood on a carpeted floor in a house in San Jose, California. Here she felt the White Tiger’s fur against her hands and brushing her feet, felt the plushness of it, even through her clothing.

  Pearl’s heart raced with exhilaration. When the Toad noticed the motion of her departure, she quickly worked another spell. This one was called White Opal, and was somewhat kin to the spell Brenda had done, although not nearly as complex. This one relied on a tiny white dragon to add flash and sparkle to an array of dots. As Pearl had hoped, the already befuddled Toad was attracted to the White Opal as it had been attracted to Liu Hai’s gold coin.

  “Pretty, pretty, pretty,” the Toad croaked, hopping after Pearl and her White Tiger. “Moon, moon, moon. Home!”

  The pursuit went on, long and harrowing. The Toad was as large as a horse, large as a mountain. Their road took them up an uneven spiral stair, each tread of shimmering stars, and although they must flee or be swallowed, they must also keep the Toad close lest he be drawn back along the trace and resume his battering of the wards that protected Pearl’s house.

  They were climbing the stars of the Sieve when the Toad gained upon them, coming so close that its long tongue lashed out and grasped the trailing length of the White Tiger’s tail, wrapping around it as it might have around a worm. The White Tiger slowed, and slashed out with a hind foot, but a tiger does not kick as effectively as a horse does. All his attempt to free himself did was cause the tiger to stumble, so that the Toad reeled more of the tiger and his passenger closer to that gaping maw.

  Pearl felt for her sword and found it in her sash, just as it should be. She had no desire to slay the immortal Toad, for she knew that the ramifications of such an act would reverberate down the generations. Even more, however, she had no desire to be swallowed. Unsheathing the blade, she kept her hand steady—not an easy task while clinging to the still striving White Tiger with only her knees—and pricked the Toad several short, sharp jabs along its extended tongue.

  Shedding drops of blood that glimmered and broke, rubies with hearts of poison, the tongue lashed back into the Toad’s mouth. The White Tiger of the West sprang forward so fast that Pearl had to beg it to slow.

  “Honored One, it would not do to lose the Toad now, not after we have come so far.”

  And the White Tiger slowed in reply, although she could feel its grumbling through her clasped knees.

  Pearl made certain that the Toad was well away from her house before she threw the White Opal in the direction of the real moon that glimmered in the sky.

  The White Opal soared, the eager trio of winds buoying it up. The Three-legged Toad hopped after the ersatz moon, using star formations as ladders. Pearl could feel when it moved safely out of range, forgetting the “pretty” that had drawn it down from the moon.

  Pearl also could sense that the White Tiger wanted to join the chase, as cats will chase a rolling ball of yarn, but she could not spare it to join the fun.

  “Back to my house,” she said, scratching it between the ears. “I must reestablish the wards.”

  The White Tiger carried Pearl, not quite obediently, but with a certain friendliness that came from family feeling between Tigers.

  As Pearl sought to keep her balance on the racing White Tiger, she realized that she was weaker than she had imagined. Nissa and Brenda continued to feed her ch’i, but ch’i was only energy—it could not substitute for concentration, and Pearl had already stretched her own tissue thin. White Opal and All Winds and Dragons were not like the little spells she had done when Foster had attacked her in her room in Virginia. Both were major summonings, and her immortal opponent had demanded all her attention.

  Pearl realized that she wasn’t going to be able to work the final spells, that if she tried, she might even leave the household in a worse situation than before. She must release her summonings properly, then, maybe, just maybe, she could direct Nissa and Brenda to finish the job.

  Pearl kept her focus as she slid off the White Tiger’s back and went through the ritual that politely and correctly terminated the summons that kept the winds and dragons in her thrall. With her last iota of control, she slid back into her body, only to feel it collapse onto the thick carpet on her study floor.

  “Pearl!” Brenda heard herself scream, and at the same moment she became aware that the ch’i she had been feeding through her Knitting was damming up.

  Only then, as if coming out of a dream, did Brenda see that Pearl Bright had collapsed. Nissa was already down on her knees, her hand at Pearl’s wrist.

  “She’s alive. Get me some water. Then run upstairs to Pearl’s medicine cabinet and see if you can figure out what medication she’s on. Look especially for any sign that she has heart trouble.”

  When Brenda came back with the water, Pearl was conscious and whispering to Nissa who cradled the older woman semi-upright in her arms. Actually, Pearl wasn’t whispering. Those rasping tones were as much as the normally resonant voice could manage.

  “ … in excellent shape for my age. I take something for my blood pressure, and something for cholesterol, but stress tests show my heart is just fine.”

  Pearl stopped to sip from the water Brenda held out to her.

  “More important to get the other spells in place than to get me to bed. My wards are a mess. They need to be strengthened, even before we work Confused Gates. Can you do Sparrow’s Sanctuary?”

  “The sequence is in my notes,” Nissa said, “but I haven’t actually worked it. Have you, Brenda?”

  “I haven’t,” Brenda said, “but I’ve looked at it. It’s pretty. All bamboo. No honors.”

  “Green bamboo,” Pearl rasped. “Important. Green growth.”

  Brenda recalled that some of the bamboo tiles were multicolored, probably originally to facilitate counting how many bamboo were depicted on the relatively small surfaces.

  “I’ll get my notes,” Brenda said, “and my tiles.”

  She ran up the stairs and into her room. Through the connecting door into the bathroom came soft sounds, one of which sounded remarkably like “Go fish!” She wondered if Lani was alone in there, and decided to be glad the little girl was so content.

  If Foster had broken the rules of his parole and gone in to sit with the little girl … well … Brenda personally thought that was the right thing for him to have done, and if she didn’t look
, she wouldn’t know, and what she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell.

  When Brenda returned to the office, Nissa had settled Pearl onto a long divan of the style that was rather appropriately, given its current use, called a “fainting couch.” Judging from the ornately carved wood, the piece was old, but the plush red velvet was rich and dark. Obviously, Pearl valued the coach enough to have it reupholstered, even at current, ruinous rates.

  “Envision the sequence,” Pearl was saying. “You’ll find the existing strands of my own spell there.”

  Brenda didn’t interrupt, but went over to a nice ebony table and set down both her notes and the Rat’s mah-jong set.

  “I should have had you get mine,” Nissa said, “but probably better we don’t wake Lani. Did she seem okay?”

  “I didn’t hear her screaming or crying or anything,” Brenda evaded.

  Nissa seemed satisfied. “Can you set out the tiles for the spell? Pearl thinks that because I’m the Rabbit, I’d better be the lead and you stand by to support.”

  Brenda felt a competitive flare. After all, Brenda had been in formal training before Nissa. Still, Brenda decided that this was a stupid time to argue their relative merits as lead. She hadn’t exactly seen what was out beyond Pearl’s wards, but she’d sensed enough to be sure that whatever was out there had been very big and very … “nasty” really wasn’t the right word. Persistent. What she had sensed had reminded Brenda of Lani when Lani wanted to hear the same book read to her “‘Gan!” even though the child had it so well memorized that she would detect the smallest deviation from the text.

  “You settle Pearl,” Brenda said. “I’ll get the tiles out.” The tiles were set on individual trays within the box, and Brenda had stacked them in order by suit. Glancing over to her notes, she pulled out the tiles they would need: all four one bamboo, then a pair each of two, three, four, six, and eight bamboo. Other than the ones, which showed a strutting peacock, these tiles were all green. The resulting sequence was rather pretty.

  Nissa came over as Brenda set the last pair in the line.

  “Want me to prepare a Knitting?” Brenda said.

  “Please,” Nissa said. She looked drawn but determined. “I’m going to need your help for this. I want to make sure those wards are strong enough that everything is kept out.”

  Away from my baby went unspoken, but Brenda didn’t miss the way Nissa glanced up in the direction of Lani’s room. She wondered if real rabbits were such fierce mothers.

  They prepared as before, and then Nissa said, “Okay. I’m starting. Feed me a trickle right off. That way I’ll know where to find it when I need it.”

  Brenda obeyed. She no longer wanted to be in charge. She just wanted this done right. Concentrating hard on the Knitting pattern, she created the desired trickle.

  Probably because Nissa was so much less experienced than Pearl, Brenda found that the channel gave her a clear conduit into how Nissa was working the spell.

  First, Nissa released the four peacocks. These promptly flew into a tangle of bamboo and became four tattered, brown sparrows. At first glance, the grove that surrounded these sparrows was so dense that anything larger than a sparrow should have had trouble getting through.

  At second inspection, the tangle showed signs that something very large had been stomping on portions of it. Some bamboo canes were bent over. Others had completely snapped, their fibrous ends poking up like fine hairs. Leaves had been stripped off and littered the ground.

  “This wouldn’t protect a sparrow,” Nissa thought. A plump brown cottontail rabbit with anomalous turquoise eyes hopped forward to inspect the damage. “Let’s make it grow.”

  Brenda felt Nissa begin to draw on her ch’i. Immediately the grove sharpened and became brighter. Bent bamboo canes straightened, and broken ones sprouted strong new tops. Where the broken ends lay upon the ground, they became the basis for even more bamboo. Long leaves, pointed at end and base, unfolded from the tips of twigs, creating a green veil that sealed every hole, every perforation. Even the sparrows rounded out. Their tattered feathers became sleek. They began to fuss and chatter, as contented birds will do.

  Denser and denser, greener and greener the bamboo forest grew until Brenda knew with certainty that it was becoming not a sanctuary but a prison. She was also aware that Nissa was draining too much ch’i, that if she continued there would be none left for the next spell, perhaps nothing left at all.

  With a flash of insight, Brenda realized how dangerous Knitting could be if the partners did not keep faith with each other—or if the one taking the energy grew too absorbed in her casting.

  Brenda tried to break the Knitting from her end, but she had envisioned the conduit as a thick knitted band, rather like a nice winter scarf. It would neither pull free, nor break. She tried to scream or shout, but her throat wouldn’t work. She could read Nissa’s thoughts as the turquoise-eyed rabbit glimpsed a tiny bare spot here, a broken branchlet there and hastened to mend it. For her part, Nissa was completely lost in the spell and could not hear.

  Panic surged in Brenda’s breast, making her heart beat fast and hard. She realized she was growing weaker. New bamboo leaves sprouted, new canes grew. If she didn’t break the bond, she would soon be in as bad shape as Pearl. Worse, maybe. Pearl had known when to stop.

  The rabbit didn’t seem to realize that it had trapped itself inside the bamboo grove. Seeing Nissa as the rabbit, Brenda impulsively shaped the image of her own inner Rat. It was a very small rat, hardly larger than a mouse, but it was sleek and grey, with nice rounded ears and a very active pink nose surrounded by long, silky whiskers.

  Brenda sent the little rat out onto the length of knitting and began gnawing away at the thick knitted scarf. Rats’ teeth are very sharp. They can even gnaw through metal. Mere yarn was nothing to them.

  As the last strands frayed, Brenda saw Nissa looking out through the plump brown cottontail’s eyes, for the first time recognizing that she was trapped within a cage of tightly grown bamboo. Brenda felt a momentary mean impulse, a desire to leave Nissa there, not forever, just until Des got back. Then Pearl would think twice before saying that simply being the Rabbit was enough to make Nissa superior.

  But Nissa had been nothing but kindness and gentle support to Brenda. She hadn’t even teased Brenda for thinking she could play at mah-jong two-handed with Foster. She hadn’t said a single unkind thing when Brenda inadvertently brought all this trouble down on them. Brenda might be a Rat, but she wasn’t going to act like one.

  She stopped the little rat from chewing through the last strand of yarn, and instead tugged at it.

  “Grab hold,” she squeaked. “I can pull you out. Bamboo is gracious. Bamboo will bend.”

  Nissa grabbed hold, and Brenda pulled. She concentrated on touching the tightly grown bamboo with a reminder that her ch’i flowed in their sap. The bamboo canes parted, maybe a little reluctantly, but with something of the thought that they were to keep things out, not in.

  There was no transitional moment. One second Brenda was a tiny rat pulling on a strand of yarn to rescue a cottontail bunny, the next minute she was sitting on the carpet in Pearl’s study, a soreness in her butt telling her that she had landed suddenly and hard. Nissa sat in front of her, one hand raised to her forehead.

  “You okay?” Brenda said. Squeaked, almost. Her throat felt very tight.

  “I bumped my head on the table when I fell back into my body,” Nissa said, “but no great harm done. Thanks, Breni.”

  No one had called Brenda that nickname since her dad went away. Brenda reached out and hugged Nissa tightly. Pearl watched them, her gaze warm and compassionate, rather than critical as Brenda had expected.

  “I should have warned you,” the Tiger said, “of the danger of getting carried away. I can sense the wards and they are—remarkable. Good job. Are you willing to try Confused Gates? That’s what’s going to keep away any snoopers who might have been attracted by all this sorcery.”

  Ni
ssa gave Brenda’s arm a squeeze, then released her and pulled herself upward. She leafed through Brenda’s study book until she came upon the pattern for the spell.

  “Three different suits,” she murmured, “and a really long sequence. I don’t think I could keep it straight in my mind. Are you sure that Brenda couldn’t …”

  She let the question trail off, not really wanting to challenge the Tiger.

  “We have a very interesting Ratling there,” Pearl said, her tone both affectionate and puzzled. “I had enough energy to watch what you were doing …”

  “Pearl!” Nissa protested. “You shouldn’t.”

  “I had to,” Pearl said. “Don’t fuss. The ward you were repairing was originally mine. I used one of the sparrow’s eyes to see through. I saw what Brenda did. It’s very strange. Heirs apparent usually cannot manifest their other self, but she did. I wonder if that explains why she could see Foster there in the …”

  Pearl halted her speculation, and looked at Brenda. “Do you want to try taking lead, Brenda? It’s a hard spell, and you’ve already given of your ch’i repeatedly tonight. Des shouldn’t be too late, and he and Riprap should be able to manage.”

  “But what if something comes before they do?” Brenda said.

  “The Sparrow’s Sanctuary you two wove would keep even a dragon out,” Pearl said with a dry chuckle. “If you’d kept going, the problem would have been our getting out.”

  Brenda rose and studied the sequence for Confused Gates. Nissa was right. It was a hard one. Still, she’d gotten them into this. She’d like to do more to fix the damage than act as a sort of human battery.

  “I can try,” she said. “What could go wrong?”

  “Other than your expending ch’i to no use,” Pearl said sternly, “the reverse of Confused Gates would be open ones. You don’t want to do that, especially since this is not a kind, gentle opening, but rather like using a battering ram to open a glass jar.”