Blossom (The Blossom Trilogy Book 1)

by Christopher Lentz

  “You’re covered in blood.” She had only focused on his face up to that point. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

  “No, I’m fine. I was helping a man and…um…it didn’t end well for him.” Brock mounted Ebony. “I see there’s only one horse and two of us now. Give me your hand. I’ll pull you up.”

  “Yes, a man who I thought was being helpful…well, he just helped himself to my horse and bolted.”

  “Alright then, give me your hand,” he instructed.

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Of course, you can. Give me your hand!” He didn’t want her to emotionally unravel yet. There will be plenty of opportunities for that later, he thought.

  She complied and Brock pulled her up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and wove her fingers together. He put his hand over hers.

  “Don’t let me go!”

  “Not a chance,” replied Brock. Ebony walked with no speed and plenty of caution.

  “Isn’t that the street your new house is on?”

  “Was on, not is on. It’s destroyed. I got a glimpse of the broken pile while Ebony took me on a wild-ass tour of the neighborhood. Just when I thought I’d seen something bad, I’d see something worse. The new house is rubble.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t going to live there anyway, right?” he asked.

  “I suppose. I mean, right.”

  They came close to a man and woman who were walking strangely with what appeared to be great effort. On closer inspection, Brock realized they had several layers of clothes on at the same time. The couple noticed Brock studying them, and the woman called out as they passed, “We figured it was easier than packing a trunk. We put on our best clothes first and layered outfits that would take the smoke and ash better. Clever, eh?”

  “Yes, ma’am, very clever,” Brock said.

  The many distractions cleared from Brock’s mind as he refocused on their mission to find Grand Ma Maw and Blossom’s father.

  “Let’s go. Chinatown can’t be too far away, can it?”

  “No, it’s just down the street, around the corner and down the hill. We should be there soon,” Brock assured.

  They entered the edge of Chinatown and saw billowing and boiling clouds of smoke nearing. Brock heard Blossom crying. He wondered how she’d held herself together this far. The street before them was rippled and sharply ripped open, creating a jagged trench to navigate around.

  “Do you want to stop and rest?” asked Brock, trying to disguise his growing fear.

  “No, I just need to get home.” She reached up to hold her mother’s cameo brooch, which still rested just below her neck.

  Random piles of bricks clogged sections of the streets, unlike the collapsed brick walls that looked like spread-out blankets they’d seen earlier. Jagged, splintered timber was everywhere, as if wooden buildings had burst at the seams. Brock figured the wood must have flown through the air like renegade arrows. The rubble here was unlike other areas. Architectural wreckage was mixed with fresh produce and shop wares that spilled out into the streets. The carcasses of butchered animals and ruptured burlap sacks of rice added to the mess.

  As the minutes passed, noticeably more smoke reached for the sky. The unmistakable crackling of fires could be heard in all directions.

  When they arrived at The Golden Palace, they were stunned to find it missing. Or, more accurately, floors of the building were missing. It appeared to have pitched forward, collapsed and sandwiched on top of itself. All around, the earth’s gluttonous appetite was visible. It had chewed up the city, swallowing some buildings entirely and leaving chunks of others behind like gnarled gristle.

  Blossom looked at the wreckage with her mouth open, but she closed it without speaking.

  It was like the restaurant, the bakery and her home had vanished. Instead of a swarm of firefighters and rescue workers on site, only a few neighbors were searching and calling out for survivors. With everyone tending to their own problems, there were few extra people to take the lead and address other matters at hand.

  “Wait!” yelled Brock after Blossom jumped down off the horse and immediately started to climb into an open window on the building’s new first floor.

  “Let me tie up Ebony, and tie him up well. He doesn’t take kindly to fire and commotion.” Not that I do either. “I don’t want to make it easy for someone to steal him. Let’s go in together. I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Blossom hesitated momentarily but waited for Brock.

  ***

  “Grand Ma Maw! Ba Ba! Are you in here?” hollered Blossom with all the voice she could summon. “Please be alive. Please.”

  Brock took her by the hand and led her through the window’s opening. While the outer wall was intact, its floor was not. Everything from the floors below heaved up and through the wood flooring. It was a dangerous maze of debris.

  “Grand Ma Maw! Where are you?” Blossom’s voice was clearer and stronger now. However, tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she trembled so much that climbing through the mess was becoming impossible.

  Smoke was filling their space, and the crackling and popping of a wood fire grew closer.

  “Grand Ma Maw! Ba Ba! Please! Father, are you here?” she screamed desperately.

  “You stay here. I’ll keep going,” assured Brock.

  “No, don’t you leave me. Don’t you leave me.” Panic was rioting within her.

  Brock held her hand more firmly and continued to lead them deeper into the ruins.

  “Blossom…my Blossom,” they heard a weakened Grand Ma Maw say. Her words were like a beacon. They made their way to the rear part of the building, only to find the roof had collapsed in that section as well. A fire was moving inward from the alley.

  Blossom yelled as loudly as she could, “Grand Ma Maw, talk more so we can find you! There’s a fire and we need to get you out of here.”

  “I know…about fire. I smell it,” confirmed the entombed old woman, ending with a weak cough. “With fireworks next door, you go far from here. Now! It be the biggest New Year’s celebration ever in a few minutes.”

  “What can we do?” Blossom asked Brock in a subdued tone.

  “Try…try anything we can to get her before the—” Brock stopped himself before saying what they both knew but couldn’t say. It wasn’t necessary to say it.

  The compressed chunks of the building below their feet, combined with the collapsed roof, made a nearly impenetrable wedge of debris. The elderly woman was somewhere below.

  Blossom realized they hadn’t heard her father’s voice. “Grand Ma Maw, talk some more. Where’s Ba Ba?”

  “I do not know,” she replied. With that response, they pinpointed her location. Rafter beams, shingles and a tangled web of interlocked pieces of building separated Blossom from her grandmother. The pair pulled away smaller pieces to try to uncover the woman before the flames could reach her.

  “Can you move?”

  “Have you no sense, girl? Of course I not move. I have building on top of me,” she replied with her sharp-as-a-tack wit intact.

  “Yes, I see that, but is there room to move your arms or legs?”

  “Honey, I can move nothing.”

  Blossom looked deeply into Brock’s eyes, transmitting the desperation she felt.

  “In all my years on this earth, I never good at goodbyes—”

  “Stop right there, Grand Ma Maw. You’re not going to say it now either. Brock and I will get you out. We have to,” interrupted Blossom as she clawed away at the building remnants under her feet, like an excited child digging in the sand at the beach.

  “Your Mr. St. Clair with you, yes? That as it should be. You together. I go now and know you be fine.” Her voice got weaker and she started coughing more heavily.

  Blossom began to sob, recognizing the futility of their efforts to reach Grand Ma Maw.

  “I love you, Grand Ma Maw. I always have and I always
will.”

  The old woman weakly replied, “I love you too. And you must promise me…you must talk to your father…your mother left you that brooch, but she took something with her when she leave us…something else you must know about.”

  The woman’s voice went silent.

  “Grand Ma Maw?” asked Blossom desperately.

  “I still here,” she choked out. “You know you the most—” Her coughing was getting more strenuous. “You the most precious thing this world holds for me. Mr. St. Clair, you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes I can hear you,” he replied.

  “Shay shay. Thank you. My Blossom…she your Blossom now.”

  As Brock took in those words, the debris pile groaned and the ground roared again. The ruined building shifted and dropped out from underneath them about two feet. They fell abruptly, adding their bodies to the debris pile. The force pushed flames, sparks and smoke in all directions.

  They made their way back onto their feet, even though their footing was unsure. Brock had a look of panic on his face. He couldn’t conceal it anymore from Blossom. Fire and smoke disarmed him like nothing else on earth.

  Shaken, Blossom called out again and again. “Grand Ma Maw? Are you there?”

  There was no response. As she was about to ask again, the question died in Blossom’s throat.

  Brock took Blossom in his arms. She knew what that shift in the debris meant.

  “Grand Ma Maw!” Blossom screamed with everything she had left in her, as if the life was being drawn out of her body as well.

  He held her tight, so their connection couldn’t be broken. She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to.

  ***

  “Not Grand Ma Maw too,” said Anna Mae as she climbed through the wreckage to get to the pair, swishing away the sparks and smoke from her face.

  “Oh, Blossom,” she said as she hugged the couple. The flames were dancing across the timbers a few feet away, and the wind was picking up. Gusts scattered sparks in swirling circles and rolling waves. The sun was gone. The gyrating smoke had eaten it, just as the fires were feasting on the city.

  “We have to get out of here. People are dying all over town. First your father. Then Grand Auntie Lim Kee. I saw her in her little husband’s arms. He could hardly carry her body and walk at the same time.”

  Anna Mae told how every time he had to stop to rest, he caressed Grand Auntie Lim Kee’s face and kissed her lifeless lips. “And now Grand Ma Maw! Blossom, who could be next?” asked Anna Mae in dismay.

  “My father? You saw Ba Ba?”

  “No, but I heard that he was helping next door when the brick building fell on top of the men. No one survived.”

  “I can’t breathe, Brock. I can’t breathe.”

  “Yes, yes you can, Blossom. Slow down. Think about each breath. In and out. In and out. I’m here. Anna Mae is here. Breathe in and out.”

  “We have to leave. Between the fires and the quakes, we have to get out of Chinatown,” said Brock hoarsely.

  “Fine. I have nothing to keep me here,” she said in the most defeated voice imaginable.

  Blossom covered her mouth as if to trap something that might escape. She turned and a wave of smoke swept across her loosened hair. As she reached up to pull the hair away from her eyes, some papers skipped across the debris. She took another step and heard glass crack. It was a picture frame. She reached down. She saw her mother’s photo, the one that had been tucked behind another woman’s photo in the frame from the dresser top. She picked it up and discarded her Chinese cousin’s photo. Now I have two photos of Cameo Rose…of Iris…or whatever she calls herself now.

  “She’s out there somewhere,” Blossom said repeatedly as they walked away from the blaze as it engulfed The Golden Palace.

  “Who’s out there?” asked Brock. “Who’s the woman in the photo?”

  “She’s out there. She just has to be.” She paused, and then added, “And she has whatever it is that Grand Ma Maw wanted me to ask my father about.”

  She grabbed his arm for support and didn’t let go. He walked as carefully as he could, though a curled band of metal wrapped around his boot, making a bell ring. A long piece of crimson fabric was tangled in it. Blossom stopped moving.

  “It’s the doorbell,” she said as she looked down at Brock’s foot. “After we first met, my heart skipped every time that bell rang because I thought it might be you again.”

  “I’ll keep it then,” he said reassuringly.

  “Thank you. I hoped you’d come back to me in the bakery. Now when I hear it ring, it’ll remind me that you’ll always come back to me.”

  “Then I better take it off of my boot or I’ll be ringing like a peddler’s junk wagon!”

  Brock pulled off the red fabric and held it up. Golden Chinese characters were embroidered on it. “What’s this?”

  “It hung by the front door. Grand Ma Maw put it there so people would read it as they left.”

  “What does it say?”

  Blossom looked at him. “Do we have to talk about this now? Look around us!”

  Anna Mae reached out and unfurled the fabric. She could see Blossom was in no state to keep the conversation going, so she answered. “It says, ‘May good fortune follow you on your path through life.’”

  Brock gently took it from Anna Mae and wrapped it around the doorbell.

  Blossom held Brock’s arm even more tightly as they continued to walk. Fires were burning all around and out of control, and they were linking up like ladies at a family reunion.

  They reached Ebony.

  “Anna Mae, how is your family?

  “Battered and beaten, but alive.”

  The chaos got even more intense and physical when a strong hand grasped Blossom’s left shoulder and separated her from Brock.

  “Come with me, now!” a deep voice commanded.

  Blossom turned to look and break the grip on her shoulder. She turned, but the grip didn’t break. She was confronted with Butch’s angry face.

  “You are mine. You belong to me. Your father said so,” he yelled. She saw he had fire in his bulging eyes and a vein in his forehead looked like it was going to burst.

  “I’m not yours,” Blossom coughed the words out of her tightening throat. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t belong to you. I belong with him.”

  Brock looked at Blossom and then at Butch and then back at Blossom. “Is there something I should know?”

  Butch cold cocked Brock in the left temple. The flesh-on-flesh impact sounded like a melon hitting the pavement.

  “Stop that! What are you…some kind of animal?” Blossom hollered at the butcher. Brock held his hand to the side of his head.

  Brock swung his fist and made a direct hit on Butch’s stomach, causing him to exhale the wind in his lungs. Butch crouched down to recover.

  “Damn, that hurt,” Brock announced as he rubbed his knuckles.

  An opaque wall of smoke closed around them like a blindfold. The smoke burned their nostrils, throats and lungs as involuntary coughing robbed them of being in control of their own bodies.

  “Blossom, give me your hand!” Brock reached out in the direction of her coughing. They connected and Brock pulled her toward him. Ebony whinnied, giving them an audio target to aim for. When they reached the horse, Brock lifted Blossom on its back.

  “Anna Mae, come with us,” begged Blossom.

  “Yes, come with us. You two can ride. I’ll walk,” Brock said.

  Blossom turned to see who was making the staggering, erratic sounds of footsteps behind them.

  “No you don’t,” said a voice new to the conversation. It was Austin’s. He was behind the butcher.

  As the air cleared, Austin reached down and grabbed a timber from the rubble at his feet. He stood up and in one unbroken movement swung the timber and made full-force impact with Butch’s head.

  Butch screamed in agony and collapsed lifelessly.

  Austin bent down and put his hand close to
his victim’s nose. “Yeah, he’s still breathing. Let’s get the hell out of here before he wakes up with a killer headache…or the headache of a killer!”

  Austin stood up. “I thought I might find you here, big brother. Monique and I—and sweet little Peaches—are heading up to the house to check on Mom. Come with us,” he said easily, as if the catastrophe around them was only a minor inconvenience and the catastrophe’s twin sister—calamity—wasn’t already present.

  “Blossom, welcome to the family,” Austin added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Brock’s here with you. I take that to mean you won. It’s the way it should be. Clarissa just wanted to collect you, my brother…like miniature statues, hat pins and caged birds. Say, if you two had the wits of a snail, you’d hightail it out of here and start a new life together somewhere far away.” He stopped for a moment and then continued. “No one will know, except us. You’ve just been handed the ultimate ticket to escape your lives here.”

  Brock looked at Austin and didn’t know if he should pound the life out of him or hug him. Brock realized what Austin recklessly suggested could actually work. The disaster lent them a helping hand. Brock and Blossom could simply disappear.

  He hugged Austin. “This could be the last time I ever see you.”

  “Geez, lay off, would ya!”

  Brock pulled away. “Tell Mom and then Clarissa that you…uh…that you saw me get crushed by a collapsing building that was on fire. There was nothing you or anyone else could do to save me.” Brock stopped and looked around at the chaos. His shoulders drooped as he looked at the ground. “No, I can’t ask you to do that. This is all wrong…so wrong. God, it’s wrong and I can’t—”

  Austin forced his words into Brock’s, “No, you’re wrong. This is right. It’s what’s meant to be. Now take Blossom’s hand and go. Go now!”

  Brock reached for Blossom’s hand. “Let’s go. We need to—”

  The shriek of a little girl stopped the conversation.

  “Blossom. Stop!” yelled Ting Ting from down the street.

  Blossom turned to see two girls running toward her, dodging debris of all sorts along the way. Ting Ting stumbled as she neared Blossom, having kicked the white-and-blue porcelain rice bowl that Grand Ma Maw had regularly tended in the entrance of the restaurant. Brock thought that the rice bowl looked like it had been spit out of the collapsed building.