by Heidi Heilig
I threw down the rest of the bun and hurried away, and the beagle, mollified, declined to follow.
The watery sunlight crept along the tops of the buildings as I nibbled the second bun. It was delicious . . . but no more or less than any other. What had I been expecting to find, or to feel? As I walked the streets of my birth, there was no sense of terroir, of groundedness. I didn’t belong here more than I belonged anywhere else.
Was that a relief or a disappointment? Perhaps it was still too early to tell.
Sweat began to prickle on the back of my neck; I lifted the shawl to get some air. Thank all the gods I hadn’t worn the wool.
“Excuse me?”
The voice came along with a soft touch on my shoulder; I whirled around, wrapping the shawl tight.
It was the young man I’d seen scribbling away yesterday, blond hair and straw hat with the black ribbon around the side band. His wide blue eyes gave him a startled appearance, or perhaps he really was startled; he stepped back abruptly, nearly treading on the hooves of the chocolate-brown mare he held by the reins. I’d never seen such fair skin in a tropical climate; it was pale as cream.
“Beg pardon,” he said. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, but you dropped this. Back by Billie. The dog.” He held out his hand; in it was the heavy purse of coins Kashmir had given me.
I slipped the half-eaten bun into my pocket and swallowed hard, the dough like glue in my mouth. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“A pleasure, miss.” He gave me a little bow, looking modestly down at his very shiny boots. “She’s a good dog, though she’s quite a beggar.”
“More of an extortionist.” My voice sounded odd in my ears as I tried to duplicate the rhythm of his speech; there was a hint of an unfamiliar accent, something musical in the cadence. “Is she yours?”
“Oh, no. Best I can tell, she spends most of her time near the harbor, watching the ships.”
“You two have that in common.”
“Well!” One corner of his mouth quirked up shyly. “I couldn’t very well miss the arrival of a pirate ship in Hawaii.”
I laughed. “We aren’t pirates.”
“Thank goodness,” he said with mock relief. “Though I suppose that’s why you’re lost in Chinatown rather than looting the palace.”
“I’m not lost.”
“Then you’re braver than most tourists. They find Chinatown too unsavory, so they hide in more salubrious environs.”
I couldn’t help but grin. The language of the Victorian era was quite charming. Or maybe it had just been a long time since I’d had a conversation with anyone but the crew. “If you think Chinatown is unsavory, you should try a port. Besides, I was born here.”
“Were you? But . . .” He tapped a finger against his chin. “Where have you been since then?”
I hesitated, then gave the simplest answer. “At sea.”
“Ah! That explains it.”
“Why we’ve never met?”
“Why you seem out of place.”
I pursed my lips as he stood there with his shiny shoes and his pressed linen suit in the middle of the ramshackle block between the bars of Fid Street and the open sewer of Nu’uanu Stream. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
He laughed and followed my eyes down to his boots. “Very fair. Though I might claim to be braver than most haoles—whites,” he explained at my quizzical look. “Chinatown can be as picturesque as the rest of the island, if you know how to look at it. Don’t laugh. There’s always at least one good sketch to be done here.” He put his hand over his heart—no, over the book in his breast pocket; the outline of it was visible under his linen jacket. His fingers were dark, smudged with ink.
“You’re an artist, then?”
“Only when my father isn’t watching.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “The best artists had family who disapproved.”
“That’s true. Then again, very likely so did the worst.”
I snorted, then covered my mouth; he grinned back at me. “Well, now of course I’m curious.”
It took a moment, but he reached into his jacket and pulled out the booklet. It was clearly homemade, a sheaf of paper folded in half and bound with ribbon. I opened it to the beginning. On one page, moonlight pooling on a secret bay, seen from under the feathery fronds of palm leaves; on the next, a village of grass houses huddled close in a clearing, and here—
“A map?”
“Ah, yes. On one of our rides through Ka’a’awa Valley, we discovered a trail leading to an ancient temple, back behind the abandoned sugar mill. I’ve sketched it on the next page. They say human sacrifices were made there. At the temple, not the sugar mill.”
It was gorgeous work, if gruesome—both art and cartography. The lines were thick and dramatic, with drips and drabs of ink like the spatter of blood. “You have other maps here,” I said, turning the pages eagerly; the next one was bordered with delicate seashells.
“That one is a path to a hidden beach, and”—he reached over and flipped a few more pages—“that is a partial map of the tunnels in Kaneana Cave. No one has ever fully explored them. Yet.” He gave me that shy smile again, and for some reason I found myself blushing.
I dropped my eyes and turned another page; the image gave me pause. Black ink slashed the paper like the stroke of a cutlass: a ship as sleek as a shark, bound tightly to the pier. I could almost hear the creak of the rope as she strained at her bonds. At the prow, the mere suggestion of a solitary figure, as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke. It must have been me. “This is beautiful,” I said, but the word fell short. “It is . . . true.”
“You’re too kind,” he said, looking up at me through his lashes; they were long enough they nearly brushed his cheeks when he blinked. “She makes a lovely subject.”
I glanced up from the page, suspicious, but his expression was earnest. The next page was blank. I handed back the book with a sigh. “I can see why you’d call me a tourist.”
He laughed. “Should you need recommendations, there are few requests I cannot fill.” He tucked the book back in his pocket and made a shallow bow, removing his hat to do so. “Blake Hart, at your service.”
“Perhaps another time,” I said with regret. Then a thought occurred to me. “Although . . . do you know an A. Sutfin, by any chance?”
“Sutfin? Sutfin . . .”
“He’s a cartographer. No? Then . . . how about a public library?”
“Not many people visit Hawaii to go to a library. Probably partly because there is no library, but I’m guessing that’s not the main reason.”
“You aren’t making good on your claim.”
“Well!” he said, but he grinned back at me. “I do apologize. You are posing hitherto unfamiliar challenges.”
“Don’t trouble yourself over it,” I said. “There are always other tourists.”
“But none I’d so like to impress.”
My God. He was flirting. “I . . . uh . . .” My face burned as my fickle words scattered like a school of fish in the deep water of his blue eyes. The moment stretched like a rack and I writhed upon it. Where was the banter I found so effortless with Kashmir?
“I apologize,” he said again, finally saving me from the silence. He spun his hat in his hands. “I am . . . not usually so bold. If you hadn’t dropped your purse, I likely never would have spoken to you. Isn’t it funny, what can happen by merest chance?”
“Indeed it is. Thank you—” I cleared my throat; something was sticking in it. “Thank you again, Mr. Hart.”
He stepped back slightly and made another little bow, suddenly formal again. “A pleasure, miss. Good day.” He put his hat on his head and tipped it. “I hope to see you again. Perhaps by merest chance.” Then he continued down the road. I watched him go, but he didn’t look back.
Of course, then it came to me, the reply I should have made. “None I’d so like to impress,” he’d said, and then I should have said “You certainly left your mark.” h. And I
would have patted the coins he’d returned to me. Clever, you see, because an impression is a mark, and a mark is another word for coin. At least, it is in Germany . . . no, not till 1920; before that it was the Thaler. Hmm. Maybe it was best I’d said nothing.
He disappeared into a shop, one of a number of people coming and going through Chinatown, just as I was, though he knew every step of the way, and I was a stranger in paradise. I strolled down the street, wistful, looking at everything and everyone without knowing what I was looking for. Here, the Lotus Leaf restaurant, accepting a delivery of eggs, there, Wing’s Laundry, filled with steam, across the street, Joss Happy House Apothecary, a fenghuang painted on the sign. Farther down the block, a man in stained canvas trousers took a barrow full of plaster through an open doorway. There was a cat curled in the shade of a barrel, and a girl selling ugly Kona oranges out of her apron.
I was almost to the river when I realized what I’d read.
Joss Happy House.
I spun on my heel and practically ran back to the apothecary.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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I peered in through the dirty window. It was dim inside, most of the light coming in through the open doors in the front and rear of the narrow shop. There were no customers. I hesitated outside in the street, but only for a moment.
The air in the shop was cool and sharp, scented with turmeric and dried leaves, and another smell, distantly familiar, that tickled my nose. The rear of the shop was a mess of barrels and boxes in haphazard stacks, nearly obscuring a cramped spiral stairwell leading down to a basement below. A scarred wooden counter stood to my right, and behind it, a plump woman with iron-gray hair and eyes cloudy with cataracts. She squinted when I came in, her tanned skin creasing like crepe.
“Zao an,” she said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“Ah. How can I help you?”
The walls were lined with rough wooden shelves, and those shelves with containers of all shapes and sizes—glass jars and bamboo baskets, lacquered boxes and paper envelopes holding all manner of ingredients: powders and seeds and roots and fungus, clear liquids and oils and organic shapes suspended in spirits, even a giant jar, displayed prominently on the front counter, containing a glittering golden serpent coiled in amber liquid. It did indeed seem to be an apothecary. Was this Auntie Joss, the woman who’d introduced my parents in an opium den? I had no idea how to ask.
“What is your ailment?” She reached out and took my hand in hers, running her fingers over my wrist bones, my thumb, my knuckles; she must have been nearly blind. “You’re thin. You have lost appetite? Low spirits? I have something for you.”
“Are you Auntie Joss?”
Her fingers paused in their exploration of my palm, and then she released my hand. “Everyone from Hawaii knows Auntie Joss.”
“I’m not from here.”
“Oh?”
“Are you . . . Did you . . .” I couldn’t figure out the words. “I do need a cure,” I said at last.
She reached under the counter and drew out a lava-rock mortar and pestle, setting it on the counter with a heavy thud. “What’s the illness?” she said, running her hands over the jars.
“Addiction.”
She dropped her chin and smiled like she had a secret, showing the tips of teeth the color of old ivory. “You do know Auntie Joss.”
“Only from a story.”
“An old story. Didn’t you know that selling opium is illegal these days?” She rubbed her thumb, almost absently, along the lip of the stone bowl. “The king has passed many new laws since your father left.”
My throat tightened. How had she guessed? Or had I said something obvious? But it wasn’t important—that wasn’t why I was here. I pressed myself against the rickety counter. The liquid in the glass jar sloshed gently, the snake’s coils rocking in the fluid. “You knew my mother.” My mouth had gone so dry, it was barely a whisper.
“Don’t ask me what she was like,” she said, bending to put the mortar back on its shelf. “The last time I saw her was years ago.”
What to ask, then? My palms were slick against the rough wood. “Do you have any stories about her?”
“Her stories are not mine to tell.”
I tugged at the pearl pendant on my necklace. “Then . . . do you happen to have anything belonging to her? A trinket or an heirloom? Something to remember her by? Of course I would pay you its face value—”
“I do, in fact,” she said, and I regretted mentioning money as she gestured to the large glass vessel on the counter.
“I’m sorry,” I said dubiously. “She kept a dead snake in a jar?”
“You mean Swag?” She tapped her thick fingernail hard on the glass. “He’s not dead!”
I didn’t know if she was eccentric or making a cruel joke. Or addled from the opium she used to sell. I changed the topic. “Is there anyone else who knew her? Friends or family?”
“No. Other than me, she was all alone. Your father promised he’d take her away from all of it,” she said with a hoarse chuckle. “And he did, after all. Not as he expected to, but for any problem there are many treatments and few cures. Why don’t you ask him what she was like?”
I didn’t bother answering that, and I don’t think she expected me to try.
“I wish I could say you resemble her,” she continued. “But even if I could see your face, I cannot quite remember hers. Tell me again your name.”
I sighed. “My name is Nix. It’s the name of a water sprite from legend.”
“Nix? N-I-X? But another meaning is nothing.”
“So I’ve heard. Many times.”
“But did you know, if you spell it backward, X-I-N, it is ‘happy’ in Chinese?”
I paused. “No, I didn’t know.”
“Quite an interesting name. Both lucky and unlucky all at once. Five must be your number.”
“Five?”
“Wu. Meaning is ‘me’ and also ‘not.’ Me and not me. Nix and Xin. Happiness and nothingness. Would you like me to draw your charts?” She gestured vaguely to a numerology table decorated with phoenixes cavorting up the sides. “I can tell your future for half a dollar,” she offered, her blind eyes staring into the space above my head. “Who you will marry. How you will die.”
“I’d rather not know.”
“Your mother didn’t want to know either,” she said, shaking her head. “Her number was four.”
“Four?” I said, my voice eager. “What does that mean?”
She held out her hand and waited patiently; it took me half a minute to decide to place a half dollar on her wrinkled palm. She rubbed the coin between her thumb and forefinger before tucking it into her thick cotton belt. Her hands found a stack of thin rice paper on one of the shelves; she peeled up one sheet and laid it on the counter. Then she picked up a bamboo brush and a pot of watery ink with a flourish.
“I will write it down for you, so you will not forget.” I rolled my eyes, but at least I was getting a show for my money. “This is five. Your number.” She stroked the brush across the page, slow and deliberate. Her eyes were half closed; she must have been working by feel. “Wu. And this is for your mother. Four—si,” she whispered as she drew the Chinese character, leaning in closer. “Death.”
“Death?” I waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. I gritted my teeth, then, feeling tricked. “That’s nothing I didn’t already know.”
“Ah?” She lay down the brush and threw sand on the ink. “Well, it is not difficult to tell the future of a woman who only has a past. I told your father’s future once. He is seven, that’s the number for togetherness. And for ghosts. Have you changed your mind about learning your own? Perhaps it shall be a tall stranger and a long journey.”
“No, thank you.” I didn’t bother to keep the disgust out of my voice.
A smile cr
ossed her lips and died in her eyes. “You don’t believe?” She slid the paper over to me. Her writing was choppy and ungraceful. “Odd, considering your father’s profession.”
I gasped. Never before had I met a stranger who’d known about Navigation; my father had always insisted on secrecy. “I suppose I’m considering your profession.”
“Apothecary?”
“Charlatan. Although I suspect it’s better than opium dealer.”
“Auntie Joss is a dealer of many things,” she said. “Exotic wares. Special cures. Rare spices. Information. Is there nothing else you seek?”
“No.” I slapped my hand down on the paper and slid it off the counter. “Not from you.” I rolled it up and started for the door, and then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the serpent was still moving, and not from the natural rocking of the liquid in the jar.
Out of the center of the ring of golden coils, a scaly head lifted above the waterline, blinking its emerald eyes. The creature had tiny backswept horns and short whiskers on its chin; it wasn’t a snake at all. I’d only seen a sea dragon twice before—once at the edge of a mythic map of Thailand, and once frolicking in a fjord in the eighteenth-century Baltic Sea. I leaned in close, my breath fogging the jar.
A forked pink tongue tasted the air, once, twice, and then the animal moved urgently toward me, sliding up and down inside the container as if trying to find a weak spot. Tiny pearlescent claws scrabbled against the glass.
“I told you he wasn’t dead,” Auntie Joss said. She lifted the lid, and the dragon rocketed upward to clutch the rim of the jar, the water dripping off his scales. He cocked his head and peered at me.
I forgot my anger. “He was my mother’s?”
“For a time.”
Wonderingly, I reached out my hand; he leaped onto my wrist and scrambled up my arm, tiny claws pricking my skin through the fabric of my dress. Before I could stop him, the creature went straight for my neck and closed his jaws around the pearl at my throat.