Mount Emily

by Low Ying Ping

  “How do breaches happen?” Elena asked.

  “Usually through a misuse of time power,” Maggie said. “But with the Midnight Warriors defeated and my parents gone, I’m the only person left in the world with time power. I’ve been trying to learn how to be a proper Time Keeper through my parents’ notebooks, but I must have done something wrong and caused a time breach.”

  Maggie looked so rueful that Patsy thought she should quickly change the topic in case Maggie suddenly began to cry. “So what happened after your ancestors went underground?”

  “Some years after the revolution that turned China into a republic, life got really rough there. The numbers of my clan dwindled. The last remaining members of the Keepers of Time, my grandparents, made their way to Singapore with the precious crystal, which contained the power of our ancestors, and settled here, like many other Chinese immigrants at that time,” Maggie said.

  The three girls looked at the Crystal of Time, resplendent in its infinite hues of blue. Patsy tried to imagine this small piece of decorative glass having such great importance.

  “What about the Liminal Date you were talking about earlier?” Elena reminded Maggie.

  “Years ago, my ancestors used the cycles of the moon to calculate what they called the Liminal Dates. They also used astrology to identify the centres of time power. How that was done is now lost to us. All that remain of that ancient knowledge are the dates and the locations. There’s only one centre of time power in Singapore. Here. That’s why all the girls in my family from the last three generations have chosen to study at Mount Em. My skills are not as great as my parents’, but even I can sense the power radiating from this spot. I simply don’t understand why the magic didn’t work.”

  “Today is a Liminal Day?” Patsy asked. Sometime during the telling of Maggie’s story, she had found herself starting to believe it all. It was odd, but perhaps it was also due to her mother’s mind acting on her, telling her that Maggie was a good friend and entirely trustworthy.

  “Yes, the tenth of July, 1987. The next Liminal Date is in three years, if I remember correctly. I do hope I didn’t get the date wrong. If I’d missed the date, we’ll have to wait three years for the next Liminal Day. By then, it’ll be too late. The breach in the time stream would have got out of control. There’d be total chaos,” Maggie concluded glumly.

  “But we came from 28 years in the future and we haven’t noticed any chaos,” Elena pointed out, then she grinned. “Maybe that’s why we were sent back! We’re meant to come back to help you fix the time stream!”

  “That could be possible,” Maggie said. “You probably came upon the time crystal on a Liminal Day too and, when the magic diffused, you got swept up in the time stream and ended up back here.”

  “Let us help you solve this time crisis!” Elena cried with elation.

  “I don’t know how you can help,” Maggie said slowly, then brightened, her chubby cheeks glowing a healthy pink. “But I would sure love the company. Time Keepers are pretty lonely people. We’re bound by oath to tell no one about the time stream. And since my parents’ death three years ago, I’m the only person alive to know about this…until now…”

  “Both your parents…are dead?” Patsy asked tentatively, not sure how to react to such an intimate revelation. “I mean, you’ve been saying your parents were gone, but I’d assumed they were overseas or something.” Even as she said that, the memory from her mother’s brain crept into her consciousness and she realised that Mabel had known that already.

  “Ah, I remember. You have an aunt staying with you now, right?” Elena said, clearly tapping on her mother’s memory as well.

  “My guardian, Auntie Yvonne,” Maggie replied. “She’s not my real aunt. She was my mum’s neighbour when they were kids, but she lives with me in my house now. She doesn’t know anything about this time business. I think she’d die of a heart attack if she knew! She’s quite a simple person and rather absent-minded.”

  “And we promise to keep this secret forever!” Elena declared enthusiastically and nudged Patsy.

  Patsy felt like glaring at Elena and saying, “Enough of the nudging already!” Couldn’t Elena have given the matter more thought before making such promises to Maggie? But since Elena had already spoken, Patsy felt she had no choice but to make the same commitment.

  “Er…yes, I won’t tell anyone,” she mumbled, then felt bad that she might not have appeared warm enough, so she quickly added, “I suppose we can help, since we can’t go back to 2015 now. And along the way, we’ll figure out how to get back.”

  “This is even better than investigating a ghost story!” Elena hugged Patsy in utter happiness.

  “What ghost?” Maggie asked.

  “The ghost that we were looking for when we began digging in the first place, back in our time?” Elena prompted. “By the way, have you heard of this ghost? The legend was supposed to have been around for ages.”

  Maggie laughed. “It must have started after my time. I haven’t heard of any such legend. Anyway, there’s no such thing as ghosts. Trust me, I’m a Time Keeper. I would know.”

  “All right,” Elena laughed. Patsy felt relieved and, to her surprise, even a bit excited. She had never enjoyed going on any of Elena’s so-called adventures, many of which had seemed so risky at first but inevitably led nowhere. Yet here she was, caught up in a real one, with a real quest.

  “So what do we do now?” Patsy asked.

  Maggie thought for a moment. “Look, the sun is setting. There’s no point in leaving the time crystal here any longer. I’m a Keeper of Time, not a Midnight Warrior. My magic is stronger during the day.”

  “Oh, is that the difference between the two sects?” Elena asked.

  Maggie nodded. “Both sects can work magic at any time but, maybe due to genetics or something, our power is stronger in the day, whereas theirs is stronger at night. I’ll go home and check my parents’ notebooks. Surely there must be something else I can do to repair the time breach. You two had better go home too. Your parents will be worried.” She laughed. “I mean, your grandparents.”

  The three girls giggled and picked their way down the slope. Elena was visibly excited to see her grandfather in the prime of his life. Back in the future, her parents worked long hours so she had practically been brought up by her grandfather and she had been very close to him until his death two years ago. Patsy herself felt a little giddy with the excitement of continuing on her adventure alone for two days. It was a Friday, which meant that she had to rely on herself to get through the next two days without Elena constantly at her side.

  The girls walked down Mount Emily Road and made their way to the bus stop along Selegie Road, where they said goodbye to each other, then boarded separate buses and headed for their own homes.

  Patsy was not unfamiliar with where her mother, Mabel Seng, lived as a child. Back in 2015, her grandparents still lived in the same HDB flat in Ang Mo Kio. As Patsy neared the estate, Patsy wondered if her grandparents would discover anything unusual about her. She thought also of her Uncle Pat, her mother’s brother. She was Patrick’s favourite niece back in her time—his only niece, in fact. What would he be like at the age of 16? She smiled to herself. Maybe Elena was right. It might actually be fun to go on adventures.

  chapter five

  hen Patsy reached the three-bedroom flat where her mum lived with her parents and brother, she unlocked the door with her mother’s key and let herself in. Her youthful grandmother was preparing dinner in the kitchen. “Hi, Ma!” she called, surprised at how natural she felt. It was as if Patsy’s mother’s brain just took over automatically and she herself became an observer.

  “Hi, Mabel. How was gym?” her grandmother asked.

  “Oh…gym,” Patsy said. She/Mabel had forgotten she was supposed to have gym practice that afternoon. Well, at least she didn’t have to invent an excuse for coming home so late. “Um…talk to you later! Going to shower!” she called out as she headed for
her room. She stopped short at her room door. Her Uncle Pat, a lanky, bespectacled 16-year-old, was sprawled out asleep on her bed.

  “Hey! Get your smelly feet off my pillow!” she yelled.

  “Huh?” Patrick asked, jolting awake from his nap.

  “Your feet! Your smelly feet!” Patsy insisted crossly. “I told you many times before, don’t ever lie on my bed!”

  “You weren’t home. And mine is full of stuff,” Patrick grumbled, but he pushed himself up and ambled off to his own room. Patsy sat down on her chair and fumed. Patrick was an aspiring poet and was always doing his writing on his bed, surrounded by an assortment of papers and dictionaries and his favourite Chinese sword-fighting novels. When he got tired, he would escape the mess by coming over to sleep in Mabel’s room. It was most annoying.

  After a while, Patsy cooled off. She was a little surprised at the way she flew off the handle when she saw Patrick, especially since she had been looking forward so much to seeing her uncle, but the part of her brain that was her mother’s wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, Patsy realised, Patrick and Mabel didn’t get along very well when they were teenagers. It still felt a little odd to Patsy, her mother’s brain taking over like that, but she was starting to get used to it. Then she smiled. There was one thing she knew about Patrick that her mother did not yet know: he might seem like an annoying, ne’er-do-well poet wannabe right now, but he would find success early in his writing career and, in time to come, become one of the most influential poets writing in Chinese in Singapore.

  Later that evening, she sat down for dinner with her mother’s parents and brother. She quietly spooned the food into her mouth while studying her grandparents. Back in her time, her grandmother was a chatty, amiable woman while her grandfather was a taciturn, slightly grumpy old man. Here they were, in their early forties, and though her grandmother still looked youthful, Patsy suspected her hair achieved that shiny blackness from hair dye. Her grandfather already bore traces of that grumpy old man she remembered. In fact, she thought she could see gravity starting to pull the corners of his mouth down and giggled softly at the thought.

  Patrick looked at her and said somewhat irritably, “What’s so funny?”

  “Just thinking of some stuff, um, about people ageing,” she said truthfully. “You know, like it’s spring but not quite spring.” She said the last part in Mandarin.

  Then she noticed Patrick looking at her quizzically, and she averted her gaze awkwardly. She had been quoting a Chinese poem that was mandatory reading in the Secondary One Chinese curriculum in her time, but she only just remembered this poem was an early one written by her Uncle Pat! In fact, if she remembered her Chinese lessons correctly, this was one of the poems that had brought him his first taste of success and fame when he was 17, about one year from now. He was probably wondering how she knew about a poem he had secretly written and had not yet published! I must really be more careful about revealing information from the future, she chided herself.

  That night, she lay in bed, thinking over the events of the day. She could hardly believe she had started it playing at investigating a ghost story, and ended with a time crisis she had to help to solve. For the first time in her life, she felt she was part of something really important.

  She was also beginning to feel really at ease in her mother’s era. Because she had assimilated her mother’s identity and brain, she didn’t feel uncomfortable at all living in the 1980s. Everything came naturally to her, coming home in a public bus with no air-conditioning, watching old-fashioned shows on a small yet bulky television set, doing her mother’s homework without the benefit of the Internet…

  The only thing she really missed was her mobile phone. She wished she could text Elena to find out how her friend was doing. She even wished she could text Maggie. Had she found out any more information from her parents’ notebooks about how they could solve the time crisis?

  The next morning, Patsy decided to telephone Elena to ask how she was doing. Mabel called Joyce frequently, so the telephone number was readily available in Mabel’s memory. There were just several small inconveniences. First, there was only one telephone in Mabel’s flat, and it was in the living room. There was always someone in the living room, one of Mabel’s parents or her brother. Secondly, the telephone was wired, not cordless, as was the norm in those days, so Patsy could not even take it into her room for privacy.

  Patsy found a moment when only Patrick was in the living room, then called Elena. “Hi! How’re things?” she asked neutrally.

  “Great! They couldn’t be better!” came the enthusiastic reply.

  “Did um…anyone um…guess?” Patsy found herself asking vaguely.

  “Of course not! This is great. I could be Joyce forever!”

  “That’s good to hear,” Patsy replied and rang off. The phone call didn’t feel very satisfying.

  “What was that about?” Patrick asked. “Guess what?”

  “Um…guess the answer to the riddle that um…Charlotte asked us.”

  “What riddle? Try me? Maybe I can guess the answer,” Patrick said.

  “Oh, you won’t know. It’s just some silly thing anyway,” Patsy mumbled, then quickly slipped off to her room. No more speaking in code on the phone, she scolded herself, and gave up on the idea of calling Maggie to ask about the time crisis.

  The weekend passed in a flurry of activity. Patsy was impressed at how diligent her mother was. Saturday morning was spent on her homework and revision; the afternoon on piano and dance classes, leaving only Sunday free for her to do as she wished. And even then, Mabel’s mind forced Patsy to spend almost the entire Sunday reading up for the geography project! To Patsy’s surprise, she found herself enjoying it immensely, thanks to her mother’s brain taking over for that activity.

  On Monday, as soon as they had a spare moment between lessons, Patsy, Elena and Maggie huddled in a corner of their classroom. “So, did you find anything useful in your parents’ notebooks?” Elena asked eagerly.

  Maggie looked despondent. “Not really, but my guess is that I probably went too late. My time power must have already been waning, because it was close to evening. I was planning to go during lunchtime, but I had a class monitors’ meeting. I knew I had to keep this a secret and didn’t want to make anyone suspicious by excusing myself.” She heaved a great sigh and fought back her tears. “It looks like I’ve totally messed it up. I really don’t deserve to be a Time Keeper. My parents sacrificed their lives to heal the last time breach three years ago, but me? The first time I’m given something important to do, I mess it all up.”

  Patsy felt terribly sorry for Maggie. All her life, Patsy had felt like a failure. She was disorganised and untidy, had never won a competition, or even been chosen by her peers to be part of any team. Worse still, she felt like a shadow beside her more outspoken and charismatic friend. The one inexplicable success she’d had was that the glamorous Elena had chosen her to be her best friend. But now she saw how petty her unhappiness was. Now she saw how it felt to have truly failed at something, something that really mattered.

  “What do you mean your parents sacrificed their lives? What did they do?” Patsy asked in awe.

  “I don’t really know,” Maggie said. “It happened three years ago, when I was only 10. That day, they left me a note, saying they had to go and heal a time breach, and if it went badly, I should go to a certain hiding place in the house to retrieve the time crystal and their notebooks. The next I heard of them was when the police came. By then, my parents were in comas at the hospital. They died without ever waking up.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Patsy said, feeling awkward and wondering what she should say next. Elena patted Maggie’s hand reassuringly.

  “It’s okay. It happened long ago. But it’s really tough learning how to be a proper Time Keeper just by reading notebooks,” Maggie said glumly.

  “What will happen if we can’t activate the time crystal?” Patsy asked warily.

  “The ti
me chaos will get worse and worse,” Maggie replied. “More and more things and people will start passing through the time barriers. Eventually somebody’s going to get the hang of it and start exploiting these loopholes to manipulate the time stream. Nobody quite knows what will happen after that, but life will never be the same on earth again.”

  “Will…will the future still be there?” Patsy asked in a quivering voice.

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. So far, the Time Keepers have always done their job well.”

  Patsy could hear the self-recrimination in Maggie’s voice, so she didn’t want to rub it in by voicing her own fear: If the future might no longer be there, then she might not even be born. Her very existence was at stake here!

  Elena patted Maggie’s hand again. “Surely there’s something else we can do?”

  “I’ve double-checked the dates in the notebooks. The next Liminal Date really is three years away. We can’t risk waiting so long. I think we should try going back to the slope every day to see if the time crystal activates. Maybe my ancestors were off by a day or two in their calculations.”

  “Have they ever been off before?” Patsy asked.

  “Not in the last 300 years!” Maggie wailed.

  Patsy didn’t know what to do or say. Based on past records, it seemed so unlikely that the calculations could have been wrong. Three years seemed like a very long time to hope the time chaos would not get worse. And three years was definitely a very long time to be stuck in the wrong era. Patsy was starting to regret the adventure again.

  “Well,” Elena said comfortingly, “if there’s nothing else we can do, then let’s just go back to the slope every day. It can’t hurt to try anyway.”

  “Meanwhile, we can try to think of other solutions?” Patsy added, trying to squash her own pessimism and be of some help instead.

  The girls agreed to meet during lunch break to bury the time crystal, then melted off to their respective desks as lessons started.

  That afternoon, back at the slope, nobody really expected the time crystal to work, and it didn’t. They decided to take a bus back to Maggie’s house to discuss their next move.