The Dragon and the Stars

by Derwin Mak

  Bucket cast another glance up at the dragon, which winked a glowing red orb at him. As he vanished from her view, Grace saw Bucket’s eyes bug out with astonishment.

  The bearers set the sedan chair down, and the lady within took effortless charge. “You say she speaks properly, Lung? In this barbarous land—amazing! Who are you, woman? What do you seek here? Let her go, Lung.”

  Slowly the enormous claw pulled up and away, and the hot humid bamboo coil widened its compass. Drawing a grateful breath of cooler air, Grace no longer felt like a dumpling in a bamboo steamer. “Thank you.” She twitched her skirt free. A good Christian woman told the truth—Bucket surely knew she could not lie. “My parents are Presbyterian missionaries, and I have lived fifteen years in Nanjing. There were rumors of Chinese magic at the Exposition, and I see they are fully true!”

  “They do not believe, these English,” the Chinese wizard said to his mistress. “Their own New Prometheus was hushed up, and there are no magicians among their common folk. Either the peasantry here are lazy, or fools. It’s taking them too long. We should have concentrated our efforts in India.”

  Surely this beast was what Scotland Yard had sent Grace to find. “You need not think that Britain is going to stand by while magically animated monsters invade!”

  Lady Mei giggled, and Grace saw that under the brocade and headdress she was very young, perhaps sixteen years old. From the height her chair lent her Lady Mei reached over and patted the hot bamboo neck with a tiny pale hand. “Lung here? He’s nothing but a worm-boy, my favorite bug.”

  “More,” the dragon muttered very softly, huffing steam between each syllable. “More. Feed me, slaves!” The sweating stokers leaped to the work again.

  Grace kept in mind Bucket’s earlier musings. “Then what is it for?”

  “Why, for this.” Imperious but girlish, Lady Mei flicked her fan around. “To attract many English people.” She snapped her fingers. “More paper dragons! I want every one of the foreigners to have one. And let some tea be brought, and my maid, to mend our guest’s garment.”

  Servants hurried out with more overflowing baskets. A wooden stool was set for Grace, and traditional handleless porcelain tea cups were offered. A young maid with needle and thread knelt shyly by her seat to cobble together the hole in her flounce. It all seemed quite hospitable and innocuous; no English host could do better. Constitutionally inclined to believe the best of everybody, Grace took a careful sip of the hot tea.

  “I know what to do,” Lady Mei declared. “They have eyes but they don’t see. Tell this one the story—the one about the water.”

  The wizard stared at his mistress, pondering, and then nodded. To Grace he said, “Were you in Nanjing during the last war?”

  “The Opium War? No, I was at school here in Britain.”

  The wizard smiled at her with an unpleasant glint of teeth. “Perhaps you will be there for the next one. Or the one after that. The end of the nineteenth century in China will be full of incident.”

  “Don’t frighten her, magus,” Lady Mei said. “Scaring British people makes them angry. These big scary magics, like Lung here, do not win wars.”

  “Better to be like water, seeping through the earth, penetrating everywhere but impossible to grasp.” The wizard glared at Grace as if it were her fault. “Some small simple magic. Perhaps like the one in the children’s story—your ah-mah will have told it to you. The one about the spell that turns bullets aside.”

  “I have heard that fairy tale,” Grace said uneasily. “If it were true it would be destructive for all empires, everywhere.” Soldiers and armies kept the world in order; without the suasion of guns, how would governments stay in power, or kings on their thrones?

  “I don’t care.” Lady Mei shrugged a green silk shoulder. “Another Opium War will destroy us. In a hundred years there will be no more Chinese Empire. It would be only fair if there were no British Empire either. Look, here the fat one comes back again.” To the stokers she added, “Give over!”

  “Mrs. S.!” Bucket came pushing through the throng, a short plump figure with a couple of tall bobbies in his wake. “Mrs. S., you’re safe now!”

  In justice Grace felt she had to say, “Inspector, nothing bad has happened to me.”

  “Tea,” the Chinese wizard said in tinny English, bowing to Bucket. “The maid, to mend accidental damage.”

  “Unauthorized magic use within a Royal Park,” Bucket retorted. “A dangerous magical animal on the rampage.”

  “Would it were so,” the wizard said with another bow. “Our dragon is difficult to maintain.”

  And indeed, with the stokers at rest, the bamboo dragon sagged. Joint by steamy wooden joint it drooped down to earth, groaning and creaking. Coolies with iron rods supported its descent to prevent breakage. The vapor from the wooden nostrils thinned and died out.

  The Exposition mob all around shouted in disappointment. “Get ’im fixed!” “Pretty poor show, chinks!” Their clamor was angry. Grace remembered uncomfortably that the entire point of the Exposition was to entertain and distract a restive populace.

  “More paper dragons,” Lady Mei ordered in Chinese.

  “False alarm,” one bobby said, inspecting the brass gears. “Sadly taken in!” And the other accepted a paper dragon as he murmured in reply, “Well, old Bucket is getting on in years.”

  Grace jumped to her feet, to distract Bucket from that last hurtful remark. “I am so glad you came back, Inspector. I long to tour the rest of the Pavilion! Great lady, thank you for your kindness and hospitality.”

  Their eyes were now nearly on a level. Lady Mei eyed her thoughtfully, while the little maid took her teacup. “The British are enemies,” she said, “but I do not believe missionaries are enemies.”

  “You went to a mission school,” Grace deduced. A minor Imperial scion could do that, and Lady Mei had quoted Jeremiah. In return she admitted, “Well, I do not feel that the last war was a Christian one.”

  “Indeed!” The two women stared, silently acknowledging that in some other time and place they might have been friends. “If ever you have a daughter,” Lady Mei said at last, “name her Pearl. It will be a name of warding, in the storm to come.”

  Hermanus had already declared that their first daughter was to be named Caroline, after his mother. But there might be a second daughter, or failing that a granddaughter. “Pearl would be a beautiful name,” Grace said. “Farewell!”

  The bobbies went ahead, but Inspector Bucket tucked her arm through his. “You became mighty cozy, Mrs. S. What in thunder did they blab to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Grace confessed. “I think we were talking about children’s stories.” She repeated as best she could the gist of everything. “They can’t be trying to warn us. Why warn someone you plan to fight another war with?”

  “And if it’s a warning, then why tell you? Why not deliver the threat through official diplomatic channels?” With his other hand Bucket rubbed his chin. “Something cunning’s going on—those Chinese are always at it. The stories I could tell you! I’m sorry we can’t stay and see more of the Exhibition. I have to go over to the Yard and report. I’ll see you safe to the Presbyterian Mission on the way.” Under his guidance they made their way speedily to the cab stand at the edge of the park.

  As one of the bobbies opened the door of a hansom for her Grace said, “Inspector, I told her that Britain was wrong to fight the war in China. I hope that wasn’t treasonous.”

  A Chinese servant thrust yet another paper dragon at him, and Bucket stuffed it absently into his tweed pocket. “Right or wrong, the Opium War is over and done with, water under the bridge. Come along then, up you go.”

  Obediently she climbed up into the hansom. A bobby and Bucket followed, sitting across from her. He slammed the door shut and tapped on the roof. Immediately the vehicle lurched into motion.

  “Pardon me, ma’am.” The bobby’s voice was loud but humble. “Is this yours?”

  �
�Oh dear, I must have trodden on it.” She took the paper dragon from him and smoothed it flat. Perhaps it could be refolded into shape? Then she peered more closely at the crudely printed red and black pattern. That was not a design of scales—it was English letters, oddly drawn as if with a brush, but easily readable. “An Infallible Spell,” she read aloud slowly, “To Make Him That Work It Invulnerable to Weapons.”

  “Good lord!” Bucket’s round commonplace countenance suddenly seemed suety, slick with more than the summer heat. He took out his own dragon and flattened it. The spell was closely printed on the underside in black.

  “The Exhibition opened in May—”

  “And now it’s August,” Grace said.

  They stared all three at each other in dawning horror. Thousands upon thousands of these paper dragons must have been distributed, water trickling unstoppably throughout England. No wonder there were rumors of magic at Regent’s Park!

  “The wizard said we were slow,” Grace remembered. “They poured out the secret, and nobody noticed.”

  “For a little while.” On his plump fingers Bucket tallied up the enemies of the Empire. “Ireland, Wales, India, Burma. And do you know how many anarchists and revolutionaries the Crown has already arrested? Every one of’em will know about this soon, if they don’t already.”

  “And what about that Marx chappie?” the bobbie said. “The Yard is keeping an eye on him. Russian bloke, but lives right here in Chelsea—spends his time writing about how the common Englishman should rise up and throw over the government.”

  “If the common man learns how to make bullets bounce, the Empire is in the soup,” Bucket said flatly. “And that’s what they’ve been doing, those Chinese—giving the secret to the common man, here and in India and Lord knows where else.”

  “The Yard,” the bobby said feverishly. “We’ve got to get to Scotland Yard.” He put his head out, to shout at the driver.

  “I can help,” Grace said to Bucket. She was not sure if she was doing an un-Christian thing, but she was certain it had to be done. The only hope for civilization now was if all nations had this terrifying knowledge at once, together. Then one and all could face rebellion and chaos. “I will translate it back into Mandarin. We can empower the Chinese peasantry. They hate their masters as much as—”

  As much as the British poor hate their rulers, she would have said, but one could not say such things aloud.

  “Yes.” Bucket nodded slowly. “Let’s all go down into the abyss together.”

  The Right to Eat Decent Food

  Urania Fung

  WHILE my fellow American teachers and I taught English at a private boarding school in China, we were fascinated by what we saw as exotic superstitions. On the streets of Changping and Beijing, pictures of warriors posted on doors guarded against intruders. During the Year of the Ring, girls would wear rings on their fingers to ward off bad luck. Restaurants often had altars offering food to gods in return for good business. A TV program showed farmers smoking out foxes because of the belief that some foxes were shape-shifting demons. Despite their officially secular government, the Chinese still had a healthy regard for both gods and demons.

  Naturally, we had complaints, too, and our biggest one concerned the cafeteria food at our school: dry, tasteless buns; stir-fried meats and vegetables flavored with an obnoxious-tasting radish; greasy metal trays; rats nesting in a corner; hair in the noodles. At first, we easily avoided the cafeteria by eating out. Less than two US dollars could get us Peking duck. One US dollar could buy us an order of ten little steamed buns that exploded with soup when we bit into them. A few cents could get us a wide assortment of snacks. But in April 2003, these cheap and delicious luxuries were snatched from us because of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic.

  Though public schools had closed, the administrators at our private institution chose to quarantine teachers, students, and workers in hopes of keeping the campus SARS-free and able to continue with lessons. With the foreign teachers seated around a conference table, the principal, whose body shape resembled that of an upright walrus, informed us that the SARS outbreak should be over soon and that there was no SARS on campus: “Anyone with so much as a cough has been sent home until either they are well or they have a doctor’s note saying their illness isn’t SARS. Please rest assured that the cafeteria is a clean and safe place to eat.”

  My eyes slid toward my tall, blond roommate, Mike, who had a cough, yet was obviously still on campus. The next day, I was walking to the cafeteria with him when dread slowed our steps to a stop.

  Mike wrung his hands. “They don’t get it! Even if I don’t come down with SARS, I’ll die of something else unless those rats are out of the cafeteria and the hair is out of the food. What do you say, Steven?”

  Back in the United States, I had been known for being so straitlaced I didn’t even jaywalk, but I couldn’t handle the cafeteria either. “We need decent food.”

  We feigned interest in the students playing on the grassy field in the middle of the campus, all the while searching for a place where we could hop the fence. We scouted around the teacher apartments, student dorms, workers’ dorms, the administration building, financial office, primary school building, middle school building, and clinic. No good. Security guards in black uniforms and red berets paced in front of every possible escape route. We passed the basketball courts and found that tall boards in mismatching shades of gray had been placed against the otherwise climbable wire fence. The administration must have already suspected people would try sneaking out.

  As we dragged ourselves back to our fifth-story teacher apartment, I sensed something following us. A bush rustled. Probably a squirrel.

  Stomachs rumbling, we settled down in our two-bedroom apartment to discuss alternatives. Perhaps Mike could call up his girlfriend and have her throw food over the fence to us while we tossed her the money.

  A loud knocking jolted us.

  I answered the door to find a slender, teenage Chinese girl in a black student uniform, the name of the school in yellow block letters across her chest. She had a long, elegant nose, and her eyes were as bright and clear as an infant’s.

  I caught myself staring and turned to Mike. “Not my student.”

  Mike looked blank. “Not mine either.”

  The girl smiled. “My name is Rabbit. May I come in?” Neither Mike nor I laughed. I already had students who had chosen Beaver, Tigger, and Harry Potter for their English names. Mike nodded, so she stepped in, and I closed the door behind her.

  She wouldn’t sit, and her Chinese accent thickened when she spoke again. “Teachers, I heard you want, ah, decent food.”

  I don’t know why I squirmed as though I had been caught with porn magazines. “It’s no big deal.”

  “But, of course, you have, ah, the right to eat decent food,” Rabbit said, her voice full of sympathy.

  Mike’s eyes widened. “You mean, you can do something about this?”

  Rabbit’s smile broadened. “Trust me?”

  Our growling stomachs decided for us. We gave her some money with the understanding that she would keep the change for her services.

  She brought back burgers and fries. Curious to know how she managed it, we made plans to watch her. One of us would wait in the apartment for the food while the other would stand outside somewhere along the path we thought she took. We could always see her enter and leave the apartment complex, but somehow, we would lose her after she turned at the financial office building.

  A few nights later Mike and I decided to watch a DVD we had bought off the street before the quarantine. In the middle of the movie, Mike suddenly stood and walked around in front of the screen.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said.

  He kept pacing. I asked again. No answer. What should I do? After a while, he sat back down and stared at the screen with ridiculous intensity. Toward the end of the show, he shuddered, then relaxed, then frowned. “What’s going on?”

&n
bsp; “What do you last remember?” I asked.

  He only remembered the first half. I filled him in. Instead of wondering what might have come over him, he raised an eyebrow at me before going to bed. I don’t like it when people change personalities after a few drinks, and I like it far less when they change for no reason.

  For the first time since arriving in China, I slept with my bedroom door locked.

  I was anal about keeping my room tidy, but two days later, I awoke to see my closet open, my desk overturned, and clothes, hangers, and books all over the floor. The door was still locked. The window was fine. Could I have trashed my room? I thought carefully. We had been quarantined for a week. Had cabin fever ever done this to anyone? Could Mike and I have caught the newest in scary diseases? Maybe I should have tied myself down at night.

  Four days passed normally before the next episode. This time, I was watching CNN when I heard clangs and thuds from the kitchen. I leaned forward to peer in. Mike was swinging a butcher knife at the refrigerator.

  I crept out of the apartment and found a security guard. My Chinese was too poor for me to explain, so I gestured for him to follow me upstairs. When I opened the door, the apartment was quiet except for the TV. The guard looked around.

  Mike sat on the couch with a soft drink. “Something wrong?”

  Annoyed, the guard walked out.

  I checked the fridge. It was scarred enough to belong in a horror flick.

  Immediately, I sought out a local English teacher named Judy. She was Mongolian and had a round, flat face. While I taught ninth graders listening and pronunciation, she taught them grammar and vocabulary. With a cup of tea in my hands, I sat down across from her at her plastic table and looked out the window at a dirt yard fenced in by a brick wall. Beyond the wall, brown patches of dead trees in a sloping forest looked clearer than ever as my mind grasped at the world as though for dear life.