by P J Tierney
Bohai tried to close the door, but Jamie got his foot in first. He winced as Bohai squashed his foot between the door and the frame. They glared at each other and Jamie noticed for the first time the bags under Bohai’s eyes and the deep hollow to his cheeks.
‘Where are they, Bohai?’ he said softly.
Tears welled in Bohai’s eyes and he slowly shook his head.
A voice cried out from inside, ‘Bohai?’
‘It’s just Jamie,’ Bohai said, wiping at his eyes.
There were footsteps and Bohai stepped back to make room for his mother.
‘Jamie,’ Mrs Leung said, flinging her arms around him. She was trembling all over.
‘Where are the twins?’ Jamie asked gently.
He stepped back to look at Mrs Leung. Her hair was dishevelled and her clothes were all crumpled, as if she’d slept in them. Her eyes darted every which way and she was extremely pale.
‘Can you help us?’ she pleaded.
‘Mum,’ Bohai said in a warning tone.
Mrs Leung’s voice cracked. ‘He’s the Spirit Warrior. Surely your father didn’t mean him.’ Then she let out a great sob.
Bohai put his arm around her and gently turned her so she could cry on his shoulder. Seeing Mrs Leung in such pain made Jamie’s eyes well up too. She was the closest he’d ever come to having a mother. He stepped closer, but Bohai held his hand out to stop him.
‘Bohai, I can help,’ Jamie said. He gestured to include Wing next to him, and Lucy who’d just arrived too. ‘We can all help you.’
Bohai looked at Jamie then at Wing and Lucy. He sighed, ‘Wait.’ He took his mother inside, then returned a few minutes later and slumped down onto the doorstep. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Four days ago, while we were at school and Dad was at work, some men came into the village.’ He raised his chin slightly towards Jamie. ‘They wore the same shirts as the guys who beat me up a few weeks ago. You remember them, don’t you?’
Of course Jamie did: they were Zheng’s men.
Bohai continued in a flat voice. ‘They wanted the almanac. Mum said she didn’t have it, so they searched the house.’ Bohai clenched his jaw. ‘When they couldn’t find it, they hit her.’
Jamie bristled.
‘Nothing too bad,’ Bohai said. ‘Dad came straight home, of course, and I wasn’t far behind, but …’ He swallowed. ‘But the twins never came back from school. Their backpacks were dumped at our door later that night with a note. It said, Your sons for the almanac.’
‘Your dad took it to them?’ Jamie asked.
Bohai nodded. ‘That was three days ago. We haven’t heard from him since.’
It confirmed what Jamie had suspected: Zheng’s men had the almanac but they had something far more valuable too; they had Bohai’s family.
‘Bohai,’ he said gently, ‘you said the men arrived four days ago, but your father has only been gone three. What was he doing that first night?’
Bohai shook his head quickly. ‘I don’t know, he had to get the almanac.’ But the way he said it made it sound more like a question.
‘The almanac’s been here the whole time,’ Jamie said. ‘He didn’t have to go and get it.’
He paused to think. He knew Mr Leung loved his boys more than anything in the world, and the only thing that would stop him instantly tracking down the twins’ kidnappers was something that would guarantee their safety.
Jamie spoke quietly, although his heart pounded in his chest. ‘He was making a copy, wasn’t he?’
Bohai squeezed his lips together so hard they turned white.
Jamie crouched down beside him. ‘He did, didn’t he?’
Bohai said in a whisper so quiet only Jamie could hear, ‘Dad told me not to trust anyone.’
Jamie gave a weak smile. ‘Yeah, my mum told me the same thing.’ He waited till Bohai looked at him, his eyes red and teary, then said, ‘Can we have a look at it?’
Bohai went inside the house, and Jamie turned to Lucy and Wing. They looked as dejected as he felt. He slumped down onto the step Bohai had just vacated.
‘Why are they always ahead of us? First it was the bi disc — they got to the Seabird’s captain before we did; then the camera, and now this. It’s like they know what’s going to happen before —’ He stopped mid-sentence and looked up at his friends. ‘It’s like they’ve got their own Recollector.’
Wing’s eyes grew large. ‘You really think it could be Jade?’ he said, backing away.
Jamie shrugged, although he didn’t really believe that Jade would be secretly feeding information to Zheng’s men while at the same time giving the Warriors clues on how to escape them.
He fell silent. They all knew what he wasn’t saying. He looked away from Lucy and Wing and stared at a spot on the courtyard stones.
‘Your mother was a Recollector,’ Lucy said gently.
‘She’s dead,’ Jamie said.
He glanced up in time to see Wing and Lucy exchange a look.
‘But you’ve never believed that, not deep down,’ Wing said.
‘My mum’s not Zheng’s Recollector, okay.’
Wing shrugged and said matter-of-factly, ‘So it has to be Jade then.’
But that didn’t seem right either.
Bohai returned carrying a thick pile of photocopied pages. He was gripping the papers so tightly they crinkled. He held the pile out to Jamie, who went to take it but Bohai didn’t let go.
‘Over the past three nights I’ve read every single page in here,’ he said, ‘and I couldn’t find a single thing worth more than my brothers’ lives.’
Jamie saw the torment in his friend’s eyes. He wanted to assure him that the twins would be okay, but then he remembered what it was like to be Zheng and he couldn’t bring himself to lie.
Jamie placed the pile of pages on the courtyard table. The others huddled around as he examined the first page. It consisted of characters that looked like the same ancient text he’d seen in Master Wu’s office.
Bohai said, ‘My dad told me it’s a quote from Lao Tzu.’
Jamie’s heart raced. Lao Tzu was his spirit guide. ‘Can you remember the quote?’ he asked Bohai.
‘If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present,’ Bohai recited.
Jamie had a sinking feeling in his stomach. ‘I thought the whole reason for an almanac was to see the future?’
Bohai nodded. ‘I think it’s asking if you really want to know what happens.’
Jamie swallowed. He didn’t know if he wanted to. What if the almanac told him that Jade was out to kill him? Or that Zheng had already murdered the twins? And what if it crushed his one secret hope that maybe, just maybe his mother was still alive? He hesitated.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Wing said with a grin, ‘but my present isn’t all that peaceful.’
Jamie smiled and turned the page. It showed a circle divided into twelve sectors, with the animals of the zodiac around the rim and strange symbols beneath them. He flicked to the next page, then the ones after — they all showed columns of numbers. This was hardly the revelation he’d been hoping for.
He kept flicking through, two and three pages at a time, and finally found the grid that showed the years the Spirit Warrior was on earth. He proudly pointed out the golden line of tiny squares that indicated the years they were living now.
He picked up the remaining pages and flicked through them with his thumb. From the blur of text and numbers an image jumped out at him. He stopped, went back, found the page and set it down on the table.
Bohai and the young Warriors of the Way leaned over the page. The raven Recollector’s symbol stared back at them: the claws poised to strike, the piercing, oversized eye with Zheng’s cruel face within its iris.
‘Whoa,’ Wing said. ‘Who’s that?’
Jamie said, ‘That’s Zheng’s Recollector.’
He looked beneath it for the sym
bol that had been removed from the silk in the Celestial Hall. It showed a raven too, with the oversized eye, but no claws and, thankfully, no Zheng either.
Lucy leaned in closer. ‘That’s Jade’s symbol,’ she breathed.
Jamie looked to Wing for confirmation, although he knew Lucy was right. He’d known it ever since he’d seen how Jade had unpicked the chop mark from her belt.
‘She’s a descendant, isn’t she?’ Wing said.
Jamie nodded.
‘Does she work for Zheng?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jamie said. ‘He’s not in the iris of her raven like he is in the big one.’
Wing looked confused. ‘Why would she be trying to kill you then?’
Jamie wiped his forehead. ‘I don’t know if she was …’ His voice trailed off as he tried to piece it all together. The timing seemed significant. Jade had returned the sewing kit to Mrs Choo just before he’d asked for it, so she’d only unpicked her symbol after Jamie came back to Chia Wu following the battle at Sai Chun.
‘Wing,’ Jamie said, ‘the night I told you I had Zheng’s spirit inside me, you didn’t sleep. You stood guard instead. Why?’
Wing frowned at him as if the answer was obvious. ‘So Zheng wouldn’t kill you. I’m surprised he didn’t make you throw yourself off the wall or hold yourself underwater. What if he’d made you break into the weapons store? He could have killed you, then us … or maybe the other way round,’ he corrected himself.
Jamie slammed his hand on the page. ‘Exactly, but he didn’t.’
‘Well, no,’ Lucy said. ‘If he killed you, then he’d be dead too.’
‘No,’ Jamie said, barely containing his excitement, ‘when you die, your spirit’s released. That’s how we got rid of him, remember? He didn’t have to keep me alive.’ Jamie paused before adding, ‘He needed me to be alive.’
Lucy frowned. ‘You mean he was using you when you went sleepwalking?’
Jamie nodded. ‘What did I do when I wasn’t me?’
‘You tried to burn down the Celestial Hall,’ Wing said.
‘No, I didn’t. I only burned down the doors.’
Wing shrugged. ‘Okay, so we got lucky and you only got as far as the doors.’
‘I don’t think it was luck,’ Jamie said. ‘Zheng didn’t want to burn the hall down, he just wanted to get inside it.’ He spoke quickly now. ‘What else did I do?’
Wing said, ‘You went down to the cove where the wall had washed away.’
Jamie nodded. ‘And that’s where Jade washed up, and where her parents died in the shipwreck.’
‘Okaaay,’ Lucy said. ‘And this is important because …?’
‘Because those were the exact same things I did when I was finding out about Jade.’
Lucy squealed and clasped her hand to her mouth.
‘What?’ Wing said. ‘What does it mean?’
Lucy said, ‘Zheng is looking for Jade.’
Jamie nodded. ‘The celestial silk told Zheng that the raven Recollector has a descendant. And the symbol on the shipwrecked boat told him that person made it to Chia Wu.’ He looked at his friends. ‘Zheng knew the Recollector was at Chia Wu; he just didn’t know which one of us it was.’
‘Do you think he wants to take Jade, make her work for him?’ Lucy asked.
Jamie shook his head. ‘He’s already got a Recollector. What he doesn’t want is one working against him.’
Wing pushed back from the table. ‘You mean he wants to kill her?’
Jamie couldn’t bring himself to answer. He went to the courtyard door and stared out across the bay. I’m not the hidden dragon, he said to himself. Jade is.
Wing came up behind him. ‘But what about Master Wu’s office? Zheng broke in there as well.’
‘The personnel files,’ Lucy said. ‘Master Wu has files on all of us.’ Then she gave a startled gasp. ‘If Zheng read the files, he knows Jade is the Recollector.’
Wing made a sound a bit like a yelp. Then he said quickly, ‘But Zheng’s gone, isn’t he, Jamie? You got rid of him, so it should be okay now. Shouldn’t it?’
Jamie felt as if a cold fist had closed around his heart. He went back to the courtyard table as if in a trance, dreading what the almanac might show. Wing’s words rang in his ears. He had got rid of Zheng, all right, but had he rid Chia Wu of him too? He turned the page and saw another raven symbol. This one was Jade’s, and it was buried beneath the grounds of Chia Wu. No! Jamie thought. First he had exposed Jade to Zheng, then he’d left her at his mercy.
He tapped the page as he tried to make words form. ‘When …’ he said, ‘when does this happen?’
Bohai leaned in to read the moon chart at the top of the page, then he flicked back to the columns of numbers. He ran his finger down one page, then another, did some calculations and cross-referenced them with the elements chart and the sixty-year cycle. He looked up at Jamie. ‘What phase of the moon are we in?’
Jamie squeezed his eyes shut and counted the days and the tides. ‘The third quarter of the first new moon.’
Bohai ran his hand across his brow and down his face. ‘That would be tonight then.’
Jamie sprinted from the courtyard, Lucy and Wing right behind him. He heard Bohai scream, ‘What about my brothers?’
Chapter 14
Jamie leaped aboard the Lin Yao, startling Mr Fan who had been sunning himself on deck.
He jumped to his feet and caught Jamie by the shoulder, spinning him around to face him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We have to get back to Chia Wu,’ Jamie said, pushing him away and running for the mooring lines.
As he disconnected the front line, Wing was sprinting towards the back one.
Jamie hauled himself up the steps to the bridge. He went to the wheel, but before he turned the engines on, he went back to the door, leaned out over the gantry and yelled, ‘Have you got Jet?’
The little monkey screeched and poked his head out of one of the shopping bags bouncing against Lucy’s legs.
Wing tossed the rear mooring line onboard and gave Jamie a thumbs-up. Jamie fired up the engines and pushed the throttle — too quickly. The Lin Yao lurched forward and he stumbled. He pulled the throttle back, then eased the lever forward and the tug moved smoothly away from the mooring.
Jamie took his bearing from the temple on the southern headland and the second set of rocks on the opposite side of the bay. He lined the boat up for the Gate, closed his eyes and Viewed his way through the maze of submerged rocks.
As they passed the temple of Lao Tzu, Jamie implored his spirit guide for help. He gripped the wheel and said, ‘Please, let me get to her in time.’
The others came up to the bridge. Jamie said to Wing, ‘You take the controls. I’m going to Ride the Way.’
He clamped his eyes shut, clenched his jaw and tensed every muscle in his body. He opened one eye and discovered he hadn’t left the bridge. He tried again and felt his face grow hot with the effort. But there was no roaring sound, no sweeping sensation in the pit of his stomach. He turned to Mr Fan, dejected and desperate.
Mr Fan said gently, ‘You have no energy left, Jamie. Saving Wing was a colossal effort and you’ve barely had a wink of sleep since then.’
Mr Fan didn’t even know about Eugene and the cloud that had saved them. No wonder Jamie was exhausted.
‘Riding the Way is extremely complex,’ Mr Fan continued. ‘You can’t expect to do it when you’ve used up every iota of your energy.’
Tears of frustration spilled down Jamie’s cheeks. ‘But I have to,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to save Jade.’
Mr Fan cocked his head. ‘Save Jade?’
‘The almanac says she’s going to die tonight. I have to get there!’ Then he thought. ‘You can do it, Sifu. You can Ride the Way to Chia Wu and warn her that Zheng is going to attack tonight.’
Mr Fan looked at him sadly. ‘Jamie, warning her will not help. If Jade is to face her fate tonight, then I’m afraid she already knows.’
Mr Fan put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder and took a deep breath. ‘If she knows, then it means she can’t.’
Jamie tried to swallow the sob that was building deep within him. ‘But she’s a fighter. She won’t give up. If she knows —’
‘It is a Recollector’s burden,’ Mr Fan said, putting his arm around Jamie’s shoulder and holding him close. ‘Many cannot face it.’
Jamie pulled away. ‘My mother wasn’t a coward,’ he said. ‘She changed what was meant to be, and I will too.’
Jamie went to the Lin Yao’s controls and Wing made way for him.
As he moved aside, he said, ‘I’m with you, Jamie, you know that.’
Lucy stepped up and said, ‘I am too.’
Lucy and Wing looked at Mr Fan. ‘Jamie, I have loved you since before the Ki-Lin announced your birth,’ he said. ‘I am beside you always.’
Jamie directed the Lin Yao to the nor’-nor’-east and willed the little tug to go as fast as she could.
After staring at the same expanse of ocean for what seemed like an eternity, Jamie said to Mr Fan, ‘Could you at least communicate with Master Wu and tell him we’re on the way?’
Mr Fan closed his eyes as if to brace himself for what he had to say. ‘I’m afraid that won’t help us. You see, I was communicating with Master Wu when you three came running onboard. They are very busy on Chia Wu; he will be too distracted to pick up my signal.’
‘What are they doing?’ Lucy asked.
Mr Fan took a deep breath. ‘They are preparing for a Passing of the Gate ceremony.’
‘A Passing of the Gate?’ Wing said, sounding incredulous. ‘Who’s graduating?’
‘Cheng,’ Mr Fan said.
Jamie clenched his jaw. His face must have changed colour, because all of a sudden three Warriors of the Way were staring at him. He gripped the wheel.
‘The bit of Zheng that we got out of me,’ he said to Lucy and Wing, ‘I think it may have gone straight into Cheng.’
Mr Fan looked shocked. ‘You eradicated Zheng’s spirit?’
Jamie, Lucy and Wing looked at each other.
Lucy said, ‘Yes,’ very hesitantly.