The Emperor's Riddle

by Kat Zhang

  How are you? she rehearsed in her head, picturing Ying’s solemn face. We brought you something for your wife. We hope she’s doing well.

  Then what?

  The elevator lurched upward. Mia’s stomach seemed to get left behind, making her queasy. Or maybe it was just the questions swirling around in her mind: By the way, did you know Aunt Lin went missing?

  Did she come visit you last night?

  Did she tell you about the treasure map?

  Do you know where she is now?

  There were only two apartments on Ying’s floor, one directly to the left of the elevator, the other to the right. Jake and Mia tried to leave just as the elderly lady stepped forward to do the same; they bumped together in an awkward jumble. The old woman laughed and waved her hands when Jake apologized.

  “Are you looking for Ying?” she asked, gesturing to the left-side door. “I’m his neighbor.”

  The lady’s door was cheerily decorated with a diamond of red paper. On it, written upside down in gold, was the character for “good fortune.” The Chinese word for “upside down” was a homonym with the word for “arrive,” so decorations like these were common. They were supposed to bring happiness to the homes within.

  Ying’s door was bare. Perhaps he wasn’t the superstitious sort. Or perhaps, Mia thought glumly, he was too surly for something so bright and cheery.

  “Our aunt is an old friend of his,” Jake said. “We heard his wife was ill and wanted to bring something.”

  The old lady raised her eyebrows. “Didn’t he tell you he’d be away?”

  Mia’s fingers tightened around the cookie tin. The queasy feeling in her stomach churned harder. “No, he didn’t.”

  “Maybe I’m mistaken,” the woman said. “I thought I saw him in the parking lot last night, loading a suitcase into his van. But it was dark, and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. . . .”

  Jake had the presence of mind to thank her as she disappeared into her apartment. Mia could only force herself to press Ying’s doorbell.

  They stood in the tiny hallway and waited. And waited.

  And waited some more.

  Mia jabbed the doorbell again.

  “Guess he really isn’t home,” Jake said.

  Half desperate, Mia reached out to ring the doorbell a third time. Then her eyes caught something lying on the ground. It was shoved up against the bottom edge of the door, crumpled into a ball, but as soon as Mia saw it, she knew what it was: Aunt Lin’s woven bracelet.

  The very one Mia had made for her during the plane ride to China.

  There was no doubt about it. Aunt Lin had been here.

  And now both she and Ying were gone.

  7

  “IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN ANYTHING, Mia,” Jake said as they walked back home. He carried the cookie tin now, because Mia only had eyes for Aunt Lin’s bracelet. “Are you even sure it’s—”

  “It’s hers. I made it. I know what it looks like. And look, it didn’t just slip off. Someone cut it, right here.”

  Jake gamely looked where she was pointing.

  “I think it’s a signal,” Mia said. “I think it’s Aunt Lin telling us something went wrong.”

  Both she and Jake had switched to speaking in English. If any of the people walking past understood them, no one showed it. Back home, Mia and Aunt Lin often used Chinese to talk about secret things in public places. Using English in China seemed to work just as well.

  “What do you mean, ‘went wrong’?” Jake said.

  “I don’t know—what if he took her?”

  “As in kidnapped her? You’re just saying that because you didn’t like him, Mia. What would he do that for?”

  Mia’s reply burst from her like a thunderclap. “Because she told him about the map! Because he realized that if he let Aunt Lin come home, she’d tell everyone in the morning. And if everyone knew, then it wouldn’t be a secret and he couldn’t go find Zhu Yunwen’s treasure for himself. He couldn’t just keep it and sell it the way he’s always wanted to!”

  Now people did turn and stare. Jake hustled Mia into an alley behind a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. The trash bins here reeked of fish guts and rotting vegetables, but they had their privacy.

  He crossed his arms. “You can’t just say things like that, Mia. You can’t accuse people of being kidnappers—not without good reason.”

  I have a good reason, Mia thought. I have lots of good reasons.

  But she stayed quiet, her jaw set, her hand fisted around Aunt Lin’s severed bracelet. If Jake didn’t believe her, then their mom probably wouldn’t either. And then what could Mia do? How could she help Aunt Lin?

  “You’re always being like this.” Jake sighed. “You hate new people. You don’t like Ying. You don’t like our uncle—”

  “Those are two completely different things. And I never said I didn’t like our uncle. I just—” Mia didn’t know how to express her feelings out loud. Didn’t know how to put the tangle in her chest into words. Especially not words someone like Jake would understand. She faltered, struggling.

  Jake didn’t wait for her to try again.

  “Besides,” he said, “even if everything else you’re saying really did happen, Ying wouldn’t have the map. It’s still at home on Aunt Lin’s bed, remember?”

  He looked at her as if that were enough to explain everything. To make everything okay.

  “She made a copy,” Mia said. “The ripped-out page—she must have drawn the map on it. She wouldn’t have wanted to take the painting out on the streets. Not once she realized how old it was. She would’ve copied down the map to show Ying.”

  Jake sighed, as if Mia were talking gibberish. She started to tell him about the imprint of Aunt Lin’s pen—how that was proof of everything. But his sigh strangled the rest of her words.

  If Mia was right, then Ying would be rushing to complete the treasure map right now. If Mia got to the treasure first, then she’d have what he wanted. And he’d have what she wanted: Aunt Lin. A trade might be made. Mia would give up any treasure in the world if it meant Aunt Lin’s safe return.

  If Mia was mistaken, then Aunt Lin was visiting friends, like her letter said, and nothing was wrong at all.

  If Mia was mistaken, then this would just end up another time when her imagination had run away with her. Another instance of her being impetuous and childish.

  Cotton-candy-headed. Weird.

  Maybe Jake was right and all the clues were just coincidences.

  But what if they weren’t?

  Mia couldn’t just go back to the apartment and forget about everything—not if there was the smallest possi­bility that Aunt Lin was in danger.

  She thought back to the riddle they’d translated. The answer had seemed obvious, but that was only because she’d grown up hearing about Zhu Yunwen’s well. Could she solve the other riddles as easily?

  Even if she did, what if the locations they described were as far away as the well? Her mother would never let her go by herself.

  Mia hesitated, her fingers twisting around Aunt Lin’s bracelet. She squeezed it in her fist. No matter what, she had to try.

  “The treasure map’s real,” she said, and waited until Jake gave a grudging nod. “That means Zhu Yunwen’s treasure is—could be real. We could still figure out the riddles together. If you wanted.”

  It was much more likely that their mom would let Mia leave the apartment if Jake was with her. Besides, a part of Mia didn’t want to do this alone. Jake could irritate her to no end, and get in the way, and half the time he barely took her seriously. But the unfamiliar streets felt less daunting when he was around. Even if Mia was the one who could read the road signs.

  She felt him hesitate. Felt him get ready to tell her that this was a wild-goose chase.

  “All right,” Jake said instead.r />
  Maybe he was only agreeing because he had nothing better to do in this faraway country—but right now that was good enough.

  Hope sparked in Mia’s chest. “You won’t tell Mom?”

  If their mom found out about the map, she’d confiscate it. She wasn’t the sort to believe in searching for lost treasure. She probably wouldn’t even believe the map was real until it got authenticated by an expert—just like she wouldn’t believe that Aunt Lin had been kidnapped until Mia had better proof of that, too.

  “I won’t tell Mom.” Jake stuck out his hand, and they shook on it.

  When they’d been younger, they’d sealed hundreds of promises this way: oaths to stick together at summer camp, or to back each other up in an argument, or to not eat the last of the ice cream while the other was away at soccer practice.

  Back then it had felt like something unbreakable. Like the heavens might open up and strike them dead if they went back on their promise. It felt less like that now. But Mia still trusted in the promises Jake made her.

  A cook, his white apron stained with splashes of oil and sauces, pushed out of the back door into the alley. He startled at the sight of Mia and Jake, his hands pausing midway toward lighting his cigarette.

  “What’re you doing here?” he said, annoyed. “This is no place for you kids to play around.”

  Jake grabbed Mia’s hand, and they hurried back onto the main street.

  * * *

  Mia’s stranger-uncle was the first to see them when they arrived back home. As usual, he gave Mia a big smile, and as usual, she barely managed one in return.

  “You still have the cookies—wasn’t he home?” he said, and Mia stayed quiet, so Jake had to answer.

  Afterward, when they were safe in the privacy of Aunt Lin’s bedroom, Jake said, “You should talk to him, you know. Say ‘good morning’ and stuff, at least.”

  He sounded just like their mom sometimes.

  Mia grabbed the notebook with their translated ­riddles, and pushed the painting toward Jake, along with a pencil. “If we’re going to do this, we should trace out a copy of the map so we can carry it around.”

  She looked through the four unsolved riddles while he drew the map. None of them seemed to have an obvious answer. But then, maybe that was just because she didn’t know the area. If the riddles had described places around her little hometown—the water park where she and her best friends spent each summer, the horse ranch where Thea’s mother worked, the strip mall where everyone hung out after school—Mia would have been able to guess them, no problem.

  But Fuzhou was a big city, and Fujian was a huge province. And what if the clues were meant to direct them even farther? To other provinces in China?

  She took a deep breath and read the first riddle aloud. Maybe Jake would see some sense in it. “‘Jutting above the world on nine glazed layers, one thousand buddha chant in unison. Their voices are backed by the peal of heavenly bells. Below frolic a ring of roaring lions—find me in the ring above their cages.’”

  Jake looked up from his drawing. “Lions? Either these are images of lions, or it’s talking about a zoo.”

  “Did they have zoos back then?” Mia said. Even if they had, it wasn’t like they could expect the zoo to still exist. “Zhu Yunwen must have known that it might be a long time before his treasure was found. He would’ve chosen things that were more permanent than a zoo.”

  Still, there was a long time, and then there was more than half a millennium.

  For a moment, Mia felt so daunted by her task that she faltered.

  She took a deep breath. Things were just beginning—she couldn’t be scared already. Besides, Aunt Lin might be counting on her.

  Just think of it as an adventure, she told herself. Think of it as a story.

  One, she hoped, with a happy ending.

  8

  MIA PONDERED THE RIDDLE THE rest of the morning, her thoughts jumping from possibility to possibility.

  Jutting above the world on nine glazed layers

  One thousand buddha chant in unison.

  Their voices are backed by the peal of heavenly bells.

  Maybe the riddle was talking about a temple or a monastery. But what did the bit about the “nine glazed layers” mean? And what about the “ring of roaring lions”? Lion statues were common around China, but usually there was just a pair of them outside an entryway. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a whole ring of them. And they were never sculpted in cages.

  “What do you think, Mia?”

  Mia blinked and realized that everyone at the table was staring at her. Jake and their stranger-uncle were partway through a game of cards. Mia’s mother put on a pair of earrings as she readied to leave for her lunch.

  Her stranger-uncle laughed. “I said, the Fuzhou National Park is pretty this time of year. It’s a little farther away, but it might be nice to get out of the city and take a look, don’t you think?”

  Mia ducked her head. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  There was a pause, as if everyone was waiting for her to say more. Only there wasn’t more Mia wanted to say.

  An eon later, the conversation turned to something else. Mia’s mom shot her a look across the table. It was only the tiniest raise of her perfect eyebrows, the smallest quirk of her mouth, but Mia knew what it meant: Please be polite, Mia.

  Please make nice conversation, and smile, and don’t just get lost in your own world.

  But that was one kind of pretending Mia wasn’t good at. Jake was. He kept the conversation going about basket­ball, and soccer, and where was the next World Cup going to be, again?

  Mia slipped from the table, stopping by her mother’s bedroom to turn on the wireless router before retreating to Aunt Lin’s room. Her uncle wasn’t very computer savvy, so he only paid for a limited number of hours of Internet access a day—something Mia had never heard about before. Her mom had warned Jake that he couldn’t spend all day playing games online the way he sometimes did at home. Not only was the wireless too slow for that, but they didn’t want to make their uncle pay overage fees.

  Mia figured if anything was worth using the Internet for, it was researching to solve Zhu Yunwen’s riddles.

  She started by searching temples in the area. The first result that came up was someplace called Xichan Temple. One tourist review site called it “beautiful and peaceful.” Another blogger showed pictures of green ponds and ­little turtles sunbathing on logs.

  Hualin Temple, the next one she clicked on, was apparently the oldest wooden structure in all of South China and now served as a museum. Interesting, but the riddle hadn’t mentioned wood.

  Ten minutes later, Mia realized there were a whole lot of temples within Fuzhou’s city limits alone. There were even more beyond them. And none of the links she explored said anything about chanting buddhas, or heavenly bells, or lions frolicking in cages.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Mia?” her mom said.

  “Come in,” she replied distractedly, and only looked up when a small pile of brochures landed beside her on the bed.

  “Oh, good,” her mom said, sounding pleased. “You’re looking up places to visit. I didn’t know you were interested in temples.”

  She’d changed into a sleek black skirt and light blue blouse, her hair falling in a perfectly straight sheet around her shoulders. The diamonds in her ears ­twinkled. Beside her, lounging in a pair of scruffy jeans and a tank top, Mia felt like the two of them lived in different dimensions. Their worlds touched, but just barely.

  Her mother patted her on the shoulder. “Let me know where you want to go, okay? Here are some tourist pamphlets your uncle gathered before we arrived. They’re in English, so show them to Jake, too.”

  “Mmm,” Mia said, throwing the brochures a cursory glance. She hoped her mom wouldn’t probe more about her sudden inte
rest in Buddhist temples.

  Luckily, she didn’t. Unluckily, she said instead, “Your uncle is really excited to get to know you guys, you know. And he’s done a lot to make you feel at home.”

  Mia kept her eyes on the computer screen. Her mom’s words made her uncomfortably guilty. And if anything, that guilt just made her want to avoid her uncle even more. He didn’t need to be that nice to her. She’d be perfectly happy to have them both pretend the other didn’t exist.

  Her mom sighed when Mia didn’t reply. “Maybe just start with thanking him for the brochures?”

  Mia’s shoulders hunched. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” her mom said, and bent to kiss Mia on the temple. She smelled faintly like roses. “I’m off. Don’t spend too long on the computer.”

  * * *

  It was another fifteen minutes before Mia turned from the laptop, frustrated and no closer to a breakthrough. She threw herself against the pillows and stared at the ceiling, her arms splayed out on either side of her.

  “Where are you?” she whispered to Aunt Lin, or the ceiling, or maybe both.

  Neither gave her a reply.

  She rolled onto her side, her gaze falling on the glossy brochures. The one on top was for the Fuzhou National Park. There were strange, stringy-looking trees in the background, surrounded by blue skies and puffy white clouds.

  It was nice of her stranger-uncle to collect these for them. Sighing, she grabbed the bundle and sat up again. Her hands fisted in the blanket. Maybe time away from the riddle would help. Wasn’t Aunt Lin always saying that?

  Just take a break, she’d tell Mia. Think about something else for a while. You’ll be surprised what your brain does when you don’t think it’s paying attention.

  Of course, Aunt Lin was the only person in Mia’s life who ever encouraged her to pay less attention to things. With everyone else, it was always, Focus, Mia. Stop getting distracted, Mia. Why can’t you just concentrate harder?

  But Aunt Lin was a daydreamer too.

  As a child, her favorite place to dream or to ponder her problems had been here, in this apartment.