by Tiffany Tsao
“Scaredofhismum,” explained Garamond before sitting down heavily on the grass, panting. His stamina when it came to speaking had improved after spending so much time with Murgatroyd, but extended periods of talking still wore him out. Murgatroyd sat down next to him, and so did Ann. She picked up the book and opened it again. Then, lifting one of the translucent pages and extending it outwards, away from the others, she leaned back and held the whole book above her head. Away from the other pages and against the backdrop of the clear pink sky, the rust-coloured marks took on new shape and definition, and the two Questians found themselves staring at an enormous flower in full bloom, so vividly rendered, it looked as if someone had taken an actual flower and pressed it flat. No. It was even realer than that—as if it were actually still alive, still blooming, its delicate lacy petals nodding to the breeze of some other time, some other space.
“Filigree flower,” murmured Garamond.
“It’s a native plant, then?” asked Ann.
Garamond nodded.
Ann held the next page up to the sun, and once again they were awed. Seven sketches of seven pebbles, each one so expertly drawn, so skilfully shaded and textured, that even in the absence of any surrounding context or landscape, they were unmistakable in their pebbly perfection. Two of them were perfectly spherical, two of them were elliptical, and three of them had funny little tails, almost as if they’d been squeezed out of a pastry tube. And they were all composed of the same kind of stone, porous and marbled with streaks of pink and flecks of violet—a true testament to the artist’s mastery since, technically speaking, the drawings came in only one hue: reddish brown.
The remaining sketches in the book, before the pages went blank, were more difficult to decipher. They all appeared to be of the same thing—a landscape of some sort from the scale of them. Each one took up an entire page. There were whorls and waves and ridges and globs. Murgatroyd squinted. He felt as his mind were teetering on the brink of recognizing the sketches for what they were. But try as he might, he still couldn’t place them.
“Mud,” said Garamond.
He was right. It was as if they had all been staring at a closed box and someone had come along and opened it. Of course it was mud. How could they not have seen it? Just gazing at the pages made Murgatroyd feel the squelch of it between his toes, the ooze of it under his heel as he planted a foot into its yielding viscosity.
“Mud?” repeated Ann. “Impossible.” She closed the book and put it back in its pouch.
“How come?” asked Murgatroyd.
“Cambodia-Abscond doesn’t have mud. It’s a peculiarity of the Territory.” By way of demonstration, Ann passed the book to Murgatroyd and walked over to one of the artery vines hanging from the nearest tree. She took out her pocket knife and sliced it in two so that the orange-tinted water spurted out from the ends and wet the ground at her feet. Digging a hand into the soil, she pulled up a fistful of damp earth and grass. “See?”
Murgatroyd went over to have a look. The soil had pelleted into tiny black crumbs reminiscent of a very dark, moist chocolate cake. She put the earth she was holding under the spurting water again. Sure enough, the soil broke into even tinier crumbs, but refused to liquefy.
“Lake.”
Murgatroyd and Ann looked in Garamond’s direction.
“What?” asked Ann.
Garamond elaborated. “The lake has mud.”
Ann stared at him. “There is no lake.”
Garamond stared at Ann. “Yes, there is.”
“No, there isn’t,” Ann insisted.
“Where?” Murgatroyd asked Garamond, trying to get the conversation moving in another direction.
Garamond looked around to get his bearings before pointing at a faraway hill. “That way,” he said. “Two days’ walk. Maybe a day and a half.”
“Impossible,” Ann muttered. “I’ve been to this Territory numerous times, and no one’s ever said anything about a lake. The One certainly doesn’t know about it. And it’s not on record in the Compendium.”
Garamond shrugged, and tentatively Murgatroyd gave voice to what both he and the boy were thinking. “Erh, well, no one here really says much about anything.”
“No one goes,” piped Garamond, as if providing further explanation as to why the lake wasn’t the talk of the town.
“Why not?” Ann asked.
“Mosquitoes.”
Ann looked at him incredulously.
“Big ones,” he explained.
Her expression remained the same.
“Bovquitoes are different,” he said defensively.
“And there’s mud there?” Ann asked.
Garamond nodded. “Different dirt. So I’ve heard. Never been.”
“Right,” said Ann. “We’re off.”
Murgatroyd scrambled to his feet. “Hah? Come again?”
“Pack your things!” she said over her shoulder. She was already walking away in the direction of the Bovquito Arms. Murgatroyd and Garamond raced to catch up with her.
“We can’t go now,” protested Murgatroyd. Garamond too shook his head.
“Why not?” asked Ann.
“It’s all very sudden. Shouldn’t we take some time to say goodbye?”
“To whom?” Ann asked before stopping in her tracks. She glanced at Garamond and realized he was trying very hard not to burst into tears.
“Sorry,” she said, meaning it and as usual not sounding like it.
“Can’t we leave tomorrow?” asked Murgatroyd. “We could go early in the morning.”
They both looked very hopefully at her as she mulled it over.
“All right,” she said finally. “I suppose there’s no real hurry. I don’t even know what we’ll do once we’re there.”
Murgatroyd clapped his hands in delight. “Tell your friends they can see us off before we leave,” he said to Garamond, who emitted a tingle of joy and was about to dash away when Ann grabbed his shoulder. She knelt down and looked him in the eyes.
“You can’t tell anyone why or where we’re going,” she said. “There’s someone very dangerous out there. I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.”
Garamond nodded solemnly and trotted away at a more measured pace. Murgatroyd turned to Ann. To tell the truth, he had almost forgotten how potentially hazardous their current undertaking was.
“Do you think that boy was right?”
“About what?”
“You know. The savages.”
“About them existing or about the book belonging to them or about them killing Nimali?”
Murgatroyd scratched his head. “All three?”
Ann sat back down on the grass, folded her arms, and knitted her brow in thought. A few minutes passed, and Murgatroyd, not knowing what else to do, sat down as well.
“I think it’s unlikely they’re as scary as the children say,” she murmured at last. “And I don’t know if they’re ‘they.’ But somebody drew the things in that book. And somebody dropped it by Nimali’s body. And it makes sense to find out who that somebody is.”
“But how do we know they’ll still be there, near the mud?”
“We don’t,” Ann said, sighing. “But we might as well go. I can’t think of anything more we can do here.”
“The writing on Nimali’s hand did say ‘Flee Town,’” Murgatroyd ventured. “Maybe what we’re looking for is here, but we haven’t found it.”
The suggestion was a perfectly reasonable one, but Murgatroyd had other reasons for making it as well, the most obvious one being that he was, deep down, terrified that they might actually find the person they were looking for. The second reason, if he were fully conscious of it, would have surprised even himself. He was enjoying spending time with Garamond and the other children very much. In fact, it was the first time he’d had so much fun since joining the Quest—perhaps even since he was born.
His interactions with other children when he was young had been confusing, stressful, and occasionally crue
l. And unlike many adults, Murgatroyd had never dipped these memories in the rose-tinted gilt of nostalgia. They remained unvarnished, unsanded, and ugly—a series of splintery pear-shaped experiences involving him being bullied or kicked or surreptitiously ridiculed or openly taunted. Even the good times he spent with Kay Huat seemed to sour in hindsight as Murgatroyd remembered how self-centred his best friend could be, whether he was aware of it or not.
Fun had eluded Murgatroyd in childhood. And though his exploits so far on the Quest were many things—exhilarating, exciting, awe inspiring, life giving—they were never simply just plain fun. These past few days had made Murgatroyd realize what he had been missing out on during his twenty-seven years of existence.
In short, he was reluctant to leave, but he reminded himself that Ann knew what she was doing. She always did. They continued towards the Arms.
“You were nice to that boy,” Murgatroyd remarked, trying to make himself feel less sad.
This comment seemed to irritate Ann. “What’s with you thinking I’m some sort of monster all of a sudden?”
Murgatroyd thought of the tension that had already arisen between Mildred and Ann and thought it best not to say anything about the conversation in the hospital. “Sorry,” he said instead, lamely. “You’re not. I know you’re not.”
They walked in silence for a long time.
“You do realize,” said Ann suddenly, “that you know more about me than anyone else, except the One.”
Murgatroyd was puzzled. “But I don’t know much about you at all.”
There was another pause. “I told you how I lost my eye.”
Murgatroyd reflected on this. It was true. She had told him how she had lost her eye. The words floated back to him from two years ago, on that momentous evening back in Singapore, as he and she had walked together along the jetty, towards the setting sun and the open horizon of the sea: I grabbed the scissors from her, gouged out my own right eye, gave it to her, and left . . . in hindsight, it was a rather silly and unnecessary thing to do.
At the time, Murgatroyd had not fully appreciated Ann’s disclosure. He had known nothing then of the extent of her uncommunicativeness, her aversion to idle chatter and speaking of her past. But now, as he dredged the memory up from the depths of his mind, it seemed to shine with an unnatural lustre, a fierce and fiery glow. He felt ashamed for having let it slip out of his grasp.
Ann spoke.
“I’m not like you, Murgatroyd. You came out okay, despite everything you endured. Better than okay, even. Intact. It’s amazing, really. You have no idea. But I didn’t. And trust me, I have very good, very valid reasons for not wanting to share the real me with others.”
That was the entirety of what Ann, somewhere deep down, wanted very much to say. In reality, what she said was “I’m not like you, Murgatroyd. You came out okay,” and she stopped there.
Murgatroyd looked at her and gave her a small, sad smile. She tried to smile back. Yes, she could have said more. And maybe someday she would. But she hoped this was sufficient for now.
CHAPTER 9
It was very dark. Someone had turned out the lights—probably because they’d thought everyone had gone home. They were mostly right. The only ones left in the community centre hall were herself and Mama, and the two of them were sitting backstage, scrunched up in a corner, hidden by abandoned props and decorations from events past—reams of silvery bunting, baby-blue feather boas, and a cardboard box filled with pompoms whose colours reminded An An of Skittles candy.
Mama was hugging her so tightly she could barely breathe. Her chin was on Mama’s shoulder, and she could see the empty stage. How beautiful it had been just an hour ago—all lit up, with an enormous arch made entirely of purple and pink balloons, and a Styrofoam sign pasted to the curtain backdrop that read, in glittery gold letters, LITTLE MISS SWEETIE PIE 1982.
The arch was gone now, dismantled by the other contestants’ mothers into smaller balloon bouquets for their daughters to take home. Someone had taken the sign home too—a pretty freckled girl named Brittany with curly brown hair who’d sung “Tomorrow” from Annie. Her performance had been pretty decent—mostly on key, though there’d been a nervous warble in her voice for the first few lines. Mama had been devastated when it was Brittany’s name that the emcee had called out.
“It can’t be,” Mama had wailed in Mandarin. The other families and contestants sitting in the chairs around them turned to stare. “It can’t be! The judges are deaf and blind! You should have won talent! You should at least have won talent!”
“Mama, it’s okay,” she whispered in embarrassment, pulling frantically at her mother’s dress. But Mama only grew more hysterical.
“She didn’t even sing well, the ugly thing. Look at all the spots on her face. Disgusting. A nightingale is ugly, but at least it has a sweet voice.”
“Shhh, Mama,” she said. “It’s okay. We’ll win something next time.” She tried to cover Mama’s lips with her hands.
Mama pulled away. “Don’t shush me! I’m your mother!” There was a loud crack, like the clashing of the wooden cudgels at the gym where she took gong fu lessons. Then An An’s left cheek began to burn. And because An An didn’t want to make even more of a scene, she bit her lip and let the tears flow down her cheeks in silence.
Mama immediately pulled her close and showered her with kisses. “I’m sorry, An An. It’s not your fault. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Then Mama began to cry as well. “It’s the judges’ fault. It’s not yours. You did wonderfully. I’m angry at them, not you. I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
They remained like that for what seemed like forever—she being rocked back and forth in her mother’s arms, both of them sobbing, though An An’s tears ran dry long before Mama’s did. (Mama always had an endless supply of tears.) Then, once the winners’ photos had been taken and everyone began to go home, Mama went backstage to look for a bow that had fallen off one of An An’s outfits. She didn’t come back. An An went looking for her and found her in a corner, a sobbing heap of big hair and shoulder pads. (Even on their tight budget, Mama always looked so glamorous.) An An ran to her, and Mama squeezed her so tightly she felt as if she were going to pop. And that was where they were now: Mama still weeping, An An staring sadly at the naked stage awash in the pale natural light that streamed in from the open double doors at the back of the hall.
Mama seemed to be feeling a little better, though. Better enough to let go of An An and dab at her runny raccoon eyes with a tissue. “Well, so much for your eighty-eighth pageant being your lucky one.”
“Maybe it was everyone else’s eighty-eighth pageant too,” An An suggested. She didn’t really think this, but it seemed like the kind of remark a grown-up would find funny. And she wanted to make Mama laugh.
But Mama hadn’t gotten the joke. “Don’t be silly,” she replied with a frown. “Eight isn’t a lucky number for white people.”
“Why?”
Mama shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”
Outside, the sun must have just come out from behind a cloud. A ray of light, warm and golden, burst in through an uncovered corner of a window overhead, where the black paper taped over it had fallen away in a flap. The light formed a spotlight right next to where they were sitting, and Mama quickly scooted over to take advantage of it. She unfastened the enormous three-tiered toolbox containing An An’s makeup and hair-styling tools and took out a handheld mirror.
An An thought Mama was going to fix her own makeup. But instead, she dragged An An into the light and held the mirror to her daughter’s face.
“Look how pretty you are. Prettiest girl in the whole world.”
“I’m not, Mama.”
“You are. That’s why I married your baba, you know. He was so handsome, I knew if we had children they’d be good looking.”
It was as familiar a prelude as “Once upon a time . . .” An An settled herself into a comfortable position and gazed at her
reflection. Mama kept the mirror up to her daughter’s face as she spoke and stared intently at her daughter as well, as if trying to transform into a mirror herself, to reflect the image of her only child.
“I still remember the first time I saw your baba. He was still a university student, and he was studying for exams at the time. He’d let his hair grow so long, you know what he looked like?”
An An giggled, because she knew the answer. “A shaggy dog.”
“That’s exactly right! A shaggy dog. And his mind was still so much on his books that he’d walked into a women’s beauty salon instead of a barber’s! He said he didn’t care—he just wanted to cut his hair and get back to studying. So I cut his hair. And the shaggy dog turned into . . .”
An An studied herself. “. . . A handsome prince.”
“Very good. See? You have his sharp, delicate nose.”
Mama ran her finger along An An’s nose.
“You have his thick, beautiful hair.”
She patted An An’s hair-sprayed locks.
“And most importantly, you have his long eyelashes and big eyes. I could see everything in those eyes. Like I can see everything in yours.”
She pointed a scarlet-nailed finger at An An’s eyes. An An smiled.
“And he was a real prince too. Very gentlemanly. From a good family. He kept coming back for haircuts—twice a week, just to see me! There was no excess hair to trim anymore. We started going out, and three months later, when he graduated, we got married. And then we moved here from Taiwan so he could get his master’s degree.”
An An had never asked her mother what a master’s degree was, but from the name and the way her mother always said it, she knew it was important. Besides, she didn’t want to interrupt the story.
“And then you were born. And Baba graduated and got a good job. And we were so happy.”
An An remembered nothing of that time in her life, but she often imagined she did: her father, an important engineer, in a navy-blue suit with a briefcase; her mother, mostly the same as she was now, but not working in beauty salons, because Baba’s salary was more than enough; herself, baby An An, being wheeled around in a stroller. And a dog. She liked to imagine they’d had a dog before Baba got hit by a car.