by A. H. Wang
Georgia thinks back to the night at the Lambert Manor. It all seemed delightfully coincidental at the time: the sumptuous meal at which every dish was what she loved, the expensive Bordeaux superbly matched to her taste in wine, the engrossing subject matters they discussed over dinner, the art collection on display, and even Lambert’s comments about her favourite artist, O’Keeffe. Everything that night was somehow perfectly aligned to her own interests and tastes. She wonders now if it was all a matter of careful planning, if Lambert had indeed set the stage so she would regard him more favourably than she did initially.
Georgia puts her head in her hands, absorbing the implications of it all.
What if Charlie is right? What if she has been manipulated?
The thought fills her with a raging indignation, which makes her all the more determined to make sure Lambert doesn’t get what he wants. She looks out the window, seeing the darkening sky. The sun has now set, and the roaring sound of cicadas in the forest has returned. Rising from the couch, she makes her way into the kitchen.
“Georgia?” Charlie asks, puzzled at her abrupt departure.
“I’m just getting some more coffee,” she calls over her shoulder. “I’m going to need a clear head to figure out where Naaya was from.”
It takes her almost a week to make sense of all the information. She makes use of the huge dining table, piecing together every clue over its expansive surface.
Naaya’s people lived close to the sea; they were confident seafarers who possessed impressive navigational skills. Although they were skilled at farming, hunting and fishing remained an important part of their food source. All of these details are consistent with the practices of the Neolithic peoples of Taiwan, who were trading with South East Asia as early as four thousand years ago, and who were also in frequent contact with other tribes in China.
According to Naaya’s writings, strong storms hit the coast every year during the hot season, destroying their crops and homes. Eventually, they moved to a plain in the mountains, sheltered by the surrounding peaks. They stayed close to the ocean, though, the shore only a morning’s hike away.
Naaya’s writings are full of regret and longing. They describe an admirable people with a kind and honourable nature who had flourished on this plateau and were developing into a strong and powerful tribe before their abrupt end. Immersed in the power of Naaya’s words, Georgia feels a growing sadness as she witnesses the catastrophic decimation of a culture.
47
450 BCE, Taiwan
The screams were echoing through the gorge.
Naaya stumbled down the hill, trying to put as much distance between her and the village as she could.
They had all gone mad. All of them.
She had been worrying over the way things had been in her village for a long time now, but she hadn’t expected it would come to this.
It had started out innocently enough: a simple contest between two brothers, Raha and Ren. They were two of the best hunters in the region, and also the most beloved young men in the village. Both of them possessed the height and build of formidable warriors, the good looks of their late father, and the charm of their endearing mother. Somehow, during one of their hunts a few months ago, they had decided it would be more fun to compete against each other over how much prey they could kill.
Naaya’s people had never hunted this way. To them, daily tasks were a matter of team effort, where each member played a valuable role in achieving the end goal. To compete in hunting, or indeed, in anything, was a completely radical thought.
It was fun for Raha and Ren at the beginning. It brought an exhilaratingly novel experience to a chore that had become dull and repetitive ever since the end of death for their people. For now that the act of hunting itself posed no more danger to the hunters, where was the thrill in it all?
But the contest became more and more heated over time, with Ren claiming that Raha had cheated, and Raha asserting that Ren had an unfair advantage because of his height. A once amicable brotherhood descended into one of rivalry and jealousy. Worse still, the toxicity of this relationship emanated and spread its influence around the village.
The villagers took sides, each with their own reasons for which brother they loved best. They would enter long arguments about who was the best hunter, and who had not played the game fairly. It was subtle, but it created a divide amongst the people.
Then, a few days ago, the bickering between the brothers had spiralled into physical violence. To this day, Naaya was still not sure how the whole thing had started, but when she arrived at the scene, she saw Raha lunge at Ren, splitting his head open with a rock. Instantly, there was blood everywhere.
And that was how it began.
The villagers stepped in to break up the fight, but all the tugging and wrestling quickly escalated into a massive brawl. Once the violence started, it was like a wildfire that could not be contained. The insane rage coursed through everyone present, and they attacked each other as if they were possessed.
This sort of eruption of fury had happened from time to time over the past few years, each incident with its own obscurely mundane and stupid reasons. But the previous occurrences had never been on this scale, and they had always died down quickly, with the parties involved all retreating to their own huts, waiting for their wounds to repair themselves. At the end of the day, it had been mostly harmless, for everyone had healed from their injuries within a matter of minutes, or hours.
On this day, however, Raha took a large knife and plunged it into Ren’s heart, stabbing him repeatedly. Raha was roaring like a wild, savage animal: it was as if he’d been taken over by a fearsome demon. He pierced Ren’s chest over and over again until it was a pulpy mess. Then, reaching his hand into the open cavity, he ripped out the heart and tossed the organ away.
The villagers stopped their brawling. They watched as Ren’s mutilated organ rolled away from his body, the flesh still warm and steaming in the cold mountain air. Ren’s body lay limp and lifeless, a half-formed scream frozen on his open lips.
The reek of blood and terror and ripe faeces filled the air.
Ren’s wife howled in a fit of passion that shook the earth, and ran to attack Raha, who struck her in the head with such force it sent her flying backwards. Then it was a mad blur of everyone either seeking retribution or defending their loved ones, all furiously battling against each other.
That was two days ago, and the fighting had not stopped. The mass brawl turned into open war between the divided groups; now, as numbers dwindled and the dead accumulated, it was survival of the strongest.
Naaya, sprinted through the woods, searching frantically for somewhere to hide. That had been the only way she had survived the last few days: hiding. She did not even know who was fighting on which side anymore. It seemed as if an acrid fog of pure evil had settled over the village and permeated the hearts of her people, turning them into barbaric savages that she did not recognise.
She spotted a crack between two large boulders to her right, and slipped into the small, dark space, hoping desperately that it would be wide enough to take her in, praying that it would conceal her. It was shallow and narrow, with not even space enough for her to sit. But she wedged herself in the deepest part of the crack, and there she waited.
Her head was spinning. She was panting from exertion.
Her heart almost jumped out of her chest when a shadow flashed past the opening. She clasped her hand over her mouth to stop a cry from giving her away. Then, moments later, another figure flew by in pursuit of the first, uttering a blood curdling scream.
Naaya kept her hand tight over her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears streamed down her face.
This was all her fault.
48
Naaya’s graphic account of her people’s descent into madness affects Georgia deeply, and she finds herself torn between the promise of alleviating the world’s physical suffering, and the dangerous consequences that could arise f
rom finding the elixir. Doubt seeps into her heart as she continues her search, and she does her best to push it aside; yet it lingers, lodged in the back of her mind.
Through the descriptions in the notebook, she decides that Naaya’s people must have lived somewhere on the east coast of Taiwan: they fit the weather patterns, the landscape, and the proximity of the mountain range to the ocean. What’s more, the tribe’s customs and their ways of life have a strong resemblance to those of the Chi-lin Culture. Georgia studied the Chi-lins when she worked as a consultant in Taiwan a few years ago, as part of her extensive research into the prehistoric peoples of the island.
“The Chi-lins were a Neolithic race that lived along the east coast of Taiwan,” she explains to Charlie. They are sitting in the kitchen, looking over the information that Georgia has carefully mapped across the dining table over the past week. “Recently, evidence of their existence has been found in one of the Bashian Caves, an important archaeological site in Hualien County. Even though these seaside caves are better known for the relics found concerning the earlier Paleolithic culture of Changping, with the discovery of Chi-lin remains, it’s now clear that more than one group of people have inhabited the caves over the millennia.”
“Bashian?” Charlie repeats the word in Chinese. “As in the Eight Immortals?”
“Yeah. The Eight Immortals Caves.” She looks at Charlie pointedly.
“The Eight Immortals of Penglai Mountain, which Emperor Qin was so desperately looking for,” Charlie muses.
She nods. “Here’s another interesting fact for you. Taiwan lies along the boundary between two tectonic plates, and four million years ago, these two plates collided, causing what’s called the Penglai Orogeny. The Penglai Orogeny was responsible for forming not only the mountain ranges of the east coast region, but also the whole of Taiwan itself. Northward, it also formed the Ryukyu chain of volcanic islands, and southward, the Luzon Volcanic Arc to the Philippines.”
“Penglai Orogeny. Penglai Mountain,” Charlie mutters.
“Exactly. Now, these may just be coincidental names, but in my experience, sites are rarely named at random. Their names are usually chosen for historical reasons, because of stories and legends that have been passed down over time.” Georgia pauses, then continues, “I’ve been to Bashian Caves once, a few years ago. At the time, I’d thought the caves were named because of the constant, thick ocean mist drifting around the area. The scenery resembles the stories and legends of what the deities saw when they crossed the ocean to come to Penglai Mountain.”
Charlie furrows his brow. “But they are not underground caves in a forest,” he points out.
“No,” she replies. “Look, I’m not saying Bashian Caves is the place we’re looking for. All I’m saying is that the region seems to fit everything Naaya described: the people who existed in the area, the climate, and the landscape.” Georgia stretches out her back; she has been leaning over the dining table for hours now.
“In Naaya’s writings,” she continues, “It’s clear her people moved around many times, splitting into different groups as they went, until they settled on a mountain plateau that was sheltered from the vicious typhoons that hit the east coast every year.”
She points to a particular drawing in the notebook. “This particular plateau was surrounded by mountain peaks. It was two-tiered, and perfectly suited to their needs: they grew different crops on each tier, creating unique microcosms for rudimentary agricultural experimentation.” She flips to a page bookmarked with a piece of paper. “In this section, Naaya talks about how her father was starting to attempt growing his own herbs instead of gathering them in the forest all the time.”
Charlie nods as he absorbs the information, quietly urging her to go on.
“And the other reason why I really like this Chi-lin theory,” Georgia explains, “is that the Chi-lin people were an initially hunter-gatherer culture that eventually became knowledgeable in sedentism and farming. They reached a considerable degree of cultural complexity, and evidence suggests that they had a short-lived population explosion, before disappearing altogether around four hundred BCE. Scientists have been speculating that the cause was climate change or destruction by a competing tribe, but there is still no conclusive evidence for either of those theories. To this day, the disappearance of the Chi-lin people remains a mystery.”
“Four hundred BCE…” murmurs Charlie. “That was around the time Naaya’s people destroyed themselves.”
“Yeah.” She nods.
“And the population explosion just before their disappearance could have been caused by the elixir,” he speculates.
“Precisely.”
Charlie smiles, nodding as pieces of the puzzle fall into place. “I am impressed, Georgia.”
She blushes at the compliment. Her stomach growls loudly in response.
Charlie laughs, pushing his chair back to stand up. “Let me fix you something to eat, it seems like you are making plenty of progress without my help anyway.”
She smiles, watching him walk over to the fridge. Turning her attention back to the notebook, she flips to an entry where Naaya recounts the day she left her village. Naaya had made a detailed drawing of her home before she left. There were at least twenty huts dotted across the wide plains, with majestic mountains looming in the background. It would have been a beautiful place to live.
Georgia examines the drawing closely, furrowing her brow. As she said to Charlie, she is pretty sure that they lived on the east coast.
But where, exactly?
49
When Sarah finally regains consciousness, her body feels like a rubbery mess that doesn’t belong to her. Her mind is foggy and confused, her vision blurred. She groans at the stabbing pain in her head.
As her mind slowly clears, Sarah realises she’s sitting in a chair with both wrists and ankles bound to its frame. Suddenly, memories of her last waking moments resurface: the abandoned car park after a long day at work, someone grabbing her from behind, and the sharp jab in the neck before she lost consciousness.
She blinks a few times and looks around as her eyes regain focus, seeing that she’s in a basement. It’s dimly lit, windowless, and mostly empty, and every sound she makes echoes off the bare concrete floor and walls. Two bare bulbs scarcely illuminate the large space, and there’s a set of stairs to her rear. Underneath the stairs, there’s a sink and a toilet without a lid or a seat, its ceramic surface glistening white in the shadows.
Creepy.
There’s a desk and chair in the far corner in front of her, and above the desk, photographs and words fill the entire concrete wall. Whoever stuck them on there seems to be mapping something out, neatly and meticulously. Sarah squints as she looks harder at the photos and words from this distance. She inhales sharply when she spots something familiar.
What the—
The sound of the door being unlocked startles her, and she turns to see a man walking down the stairs. Somewhere in his late twenties, he is short and stocky, his head cleanly shaven, his chin covered by a goatee. Pigeon-chested and built like a bull, the man is dressed in black, tactical gear that makes her think of the Special Forces.
He smiles at her on approach, but the expression does not reach his eyes.
“Who the fuck are you? What the fuck is this?” she demands, tugging at her restraints.
The man chuckles at her outburst. She glares at him with all the hate in her body.
“This,” the stranger replies in a surprisingly soft voice, “is just a little chat we’re going to have.”
He saunters over to the desk, opens a drawer, takes out a few items, and fiddles with them for a while, his back turned to her. Then, he drags the chair across the room, the scrape of its metal legs wreaking havoc on her skull, before sitting down in front of her. Sarah eyes the syringe in his hand and the clear liquid inside it, and fear creeps over her.
“What the hell is that?” She jerks as he rolls up her sleeve.
He
chuckles again like it’s all a big joke. “This is sodium pentothal,” he says, placing his big paw on her shoulder to hold her still.
She flinches at the sharp jab on her arm.
“Easy, Sarah, it’s just something to relax you a little. Like I said, we’re only going to have a chat. And don’t worry: you probably won’t remember a thing.”
“Sodium pentothal,” she repeats, feeling dread as she watches him push the liquid into her arm. “Truth serum?”
“Someone knows her chemistry.” He looks impressed.
“I thought it doesn’t work,” she says, thinking of the many crime novels she has read.
“Ah, it works alright.” He smiles with pride. “This version is a special little cocktail I came up with myself, perfected over the years. It takes a skilled interrogator, knowing the exact dosage to administer. You need to word the questions in the right way, of course, and in the correct sequence. I’ve had plenty of experience in that, trust me.” He gives a casual shrug. “Sometimes it may take a few goes for the more resilient ones, but I always get my answers.”
“I’m not telling you shit,” Sarah spits out, despite the sudden dryness in her mouth. At this close distance, she can see a long scar running down the side of his face, partially concealed by his goatee. She wonders how he got such an ugly wound. She’d like to give him one herself.
The stranger just sits before her, smiling like he’s enjoying himself. He scratches his goatee playfully, then gestures to the wall of photographs behind him. “You know, Sarah, I know everything about Georgia. I’ve been keeping an eye on her for a while. In fact, I probably know her better than you.”
“What do you want with her?” She stares at him suspiciously, already starting to feel disoriented. Her brain feels like it’s swimming in a pool of grog.