by Katie Zhao
“You’re a scholar—that’s where your strength lies.”
My brother’s face fell. I patted him on the shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile, at which he rolled his eyes.
Ye Ye’s features softened. “Don’t worry about the Society’s expectations, Ah Li. There’s nothing wrong with being a scholar rather than a warrior. Your mother loved books, too.”
Tears stung my eyes, as they did every time my grandfather mentioned our deceased mom. A fierce woman who had been half-Greek, a quarter Egyptian, and a quarter Turkish, she’d swept our father off his feet when he met her on his travels.
But then she’d died giving birth to Alex. Ye Ye alone remained to look over his grandchildren.
“Sure,” Alex mumbled. “Scholar. That’s me.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small black notebook, pressing it so close to his face that it must’ve rubbed his nose. “Being book smart is cool,” he said, as if to convince us as much as himself.
“Sure,” I said, “but have you ever slain a demon?”
“Have you?” Alex countered.
Actually, yes. Also, I think I met a god last night. Also, I might have saved Chinatown. How’s your Lunar New Year so far? As if I could say all that, confessing to Ye Ye that I’d snuck out last night. Diyu hath no fury like an angry Ye Ye.
When I stayed silent, Alex smiled smugly. “Didn’t think so.”
“There’s no need to bicker. The gods have an honorable destiny in mind for you both,” Ye Ye reassured us. “You just need to believe it right here.” He pressed his hands over our hearts. “Your father had big dreams, and he came close to achieving them. He dreamed of being the first warrior to be named an immortal general since the great Guan Yu two thousand years ago. Guarding the Jade Emperor in Heaven is—”
“The highest honor possible for a mortal warrior,” Alex and I finished together.
Ye Ye smiled, the wrinkles on his face turning upward with his mouth. “Good that you remember. A man with your father’s ambition, strength, and sense of filial piety would never abandon his family. He will return.” My grandfather took each of our hands into his. “We’d better get to the temple before the sun rises. You know how long the line for prayer gets during the Lunar New Year.”
I stifled a groan. “But we go every day.”
Ye Ye raised his eyebrow, as if surprised that his twelve-year-old granddaughter wasn’t leaping for joy at the idea of spending hours kneeling on a cold stone floor. “It is good practice to pray to the gods. The day will come when you need their help.”
I was pretty sure that day had come many times already. Like when Ba had left us. Or every time Mao opened her mouth. And even though that man last night seemed like a god, well, he could’ve just been a skilled fighter in an even better costume. But I didn’t say anything.
Ye Ye set off at a surprising pace. Alex and I raced after him out of the woods to make sure he didn’t tire himself out. As dawn stretched across the sky in pink-and-orange streaks, we reentered the Jade Society’s rectangular arrangement of towering black apartment complexes. Though the Society headquarters had originally been built decades before, when the warriors had first emigrated here from China, Mao had commissioned these new buildings fifteen years ago, with funding from Mr. Yang. I guess they were accommodating enough on the inside—definitely better than our house, which had once been a shed—but they clashed with the more classically designed buildings that surrounded them.
Ye Ye headed straight for one of the surviving original structures, a three-story, square-shaped red pagoda: the temple.
Gray stone walls with images of dragons carved onto their surfaces lined both sides of the temple entrance. Evil spirits couldn’t turn corners, so the shadow walls kept demons outside the temple. Though they didn’t stop annoying little brothers from entering. A big oversight I planned to bring up with the architects.
Ye Ye heaved open the golden doors in one breathless motion and stumble backward.
“Ye Ye!” Alex and I rushed forward, each catching one of Ye Ye’s elbows before he fell. Even though he grumbled, he allowed us to help him into the worship hall. He reached into a red basket and grabbed a fistful of incense sticks right before heading inside.
The large room was empty—at least, of mortals. Our footsteps echoed in the silence. The vast interior was dark, the sole source of light coming from the gilded statues of the gods.
Ye Ye headed straight for the central altar, which housed the statues of golden warrior-type figures, the guardians of Heaven. Each had his or her own altar.
“You two know what to do,” Ye Ye said. “Don’t pray for silly things like video games today. The gods are watching with careful eyes. It’s the Lunar New Year, after all.”
Ye Ye handed out and lit our incense sticks. We prepared to place them in the sand-filled holders in front of each god.
First, we placed one for the Jade Emperor, the ruler of Heaven and all the gods. He wore a robe embroidered with dragons—his symbol—and a hat with tassels made out of pearls. The guy was seriously impressive. As Ye Ye liked to tell the story, the Jade Emperor had once been a regular immortal—well, as regular as an immortal could be—who cultivated his Tao, his powers, in the mountains. He passed more than three thousand trials, each one lasting three million years. They should’ve let him be ruler of Heaven for that feat alone. After he beat up a baddie that all of Heaven’s other gods couldn’t defeat, the gods named the Jade Emperor their supreme ruler. I bet they were scared that if they didn’t, he’d beat them up, too.
Next, we placed a stick for the Jade Emperor’s wife, Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. The statue wore a floor-length dress with a phoenix, her symbol, sewn into the fabric. An icon proving that girls could be powerful, she ruled over the paradise Mount Kunlun.
And after that we placed sticks for Guanyin, the goddess of mercy. Her statue wore a white headdress and white robes, along with a serene smile. Guanyin carried a thin vase full of pure water, the divine nectar of life, compassion, and wisdom.
Next was Nezha, the Third Lotus Prince, third son to Li Jing, the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King and playful, protective deity, who served the Jade Emperor. He took on the appearance of a young boy with long hair who wore golden armor and blue pants.
After Nezha was Erlang Shen, a god of war and waterways. The fiercest-looking of the lot, Erlang Shen’s statue wore battle armor, and he had a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
In the old days, the gods and warriors alike teamed up to fight demons. These days, we still prayed to the gods for protection, so they could work their magic over society and keep the demons away. So far, it had been working.
My brother and I knelt on either side of our grandfather. I coughed as the incense entered my nose, then knelt on the ground, pressing my palms together against my forehead. I didn’t know what Ye Ye and Alex prayed for, but my wishes remained the same as always: for my grandfather to recover from his worsening sickness and my father to return home after years of silence.
Because it was the Lunar New Year, I added another wish.
Ye Ye’s time is limited, and he’s always wanted to see a deity. Please, this year, let the gods join our banquet once more.
Though no wind blew inside the temple walls, the incense sticks flickered and threatened to go out. My heartbeat quickened. The gods couldn’t have heard my thoughts—could they?
We finished by placing our palms and foreheads against the cold stone floor in a deep bowing motion, repeating it three times. Then Ye Ye reached into his pocket again and pulled out several wrapped slices of sticky rice cake, nián gāo—literally translated to “New Year’s cake.”
“May the deities prosper and bring us good fortune this year,” my grandfather murmured.
After we’d lit incense for them all, Ye Ye placed a nián gāo in front of each statue.
The plates looked barren and sad with only one slice of cake sitting on them, but that wouldn’t be the cas
e for long. Soon, many of the aunties and uncles would flood the temple with offerings, putting on a big show of their loyalty to the gods for the Lunar New Year. Kind of like how I’d floss my teeth the morning of a visit to the dentist’s office and act like I did it all the time.
After Ye Ye was satisfied that we’d honored every god, we left the hall. Before the golden doors shut behind us, a draft blew through the gap and extinguished one of Guanyin’s sticks. I thought I heard soft laughter behind me.
I twisted around, and my heart jolted in my chest. My eyes zeroed in on the nián gāo we’d placed on Guanyin’s altar. Maybe the shadows were playing a trick on me, but a huge chunk appeared to be missing.
“Falun, why are you lingering?”
“C-coming.”
Maybe Ye Ye had gotten hungry earlier when he was preparing the offerings. Still, I couldn’t shake off an inkling that maybe the gods had really been listening to me.
I quickly followed my grandfather and brother back into the crisp morning air.
CHAPTER
4
When we got home, Alex and I threw ourselves into working on our big, ongoing project: studying Ba’s notebook for clues of where he might be. My brother eagerly spread his hands across the huge map of Ba’s journey mounted on the wall, raising our father’s black leather-bound notebook in one hand, and ran his finger along the bottom coastline of North America with the other. Muttering to himself, Alex pulled a thumbtack out of Australia and stuck it off the coast of Massachusetts.
Alex had always believed our father was still out there. His optimism made me dare to hope, too. I helped him by sorting some of Ba’s maps into neat piles.
As he shined a pair of shoes in the corner, Ye Ye asked, “Have you two made progress?”
“We’re getting there. Ba’s writing makes chicken scratch look like calligraphy,” my brother grumbled.
Colorful thumbtacks marked Ba’s travels on his search for Peng Lai Island, the mythical realm of the eight immortals. Each tack, trailing from the West Coast to the East of the United States, represented a hotspot for the gods’ and demons’ magic alike; most of them were Chinatowns. These markers connected sacred temples, to demon-infested areas, to the Chinatown where Ba had met our mother: Washington, D.C. We’d used the one tiny picture we had of her to mark it. She had lush, light-brown hair and kind green eyes, and looking at her conjured a familiar loneliness inside me—the loneliness of never knowing a mother.
Alex flipped through the notebook feverishly, and I stepped up behind him to stare at the faded, illegible characters my father had scrawled over ten years ago. He turned the page. “Wait. Go back.”
“How about you read faster?”
Alex flipped the page back anyway. I squinted. Studying the crossed-out, hastily scrawled Chinese characters gave me a throbbing headache. “On second thought, I’ll let you handle this.”
My brother rolled his eyes. “I’m the scholar, Faryn, remember? It’s about the best I can do.”
We both jolted at the sound of a bang on the door.
“Are you up? You’d better be!” I recognized the high-pitched, simpering voice—Mao, the mistress of the Jade Society. She hammered on the door again, and dust from the ceiling trickled over the maps and onto the ground. “It’s the first day of the Lunar New Year, and you know what that means—I’ve got gifts!”
“Hóng bāo?” Alex called hopefully.
“Even better. Extra chores. I’ll be at the main house in ten minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.”
With a final, unnecessary bang, Mao left. Miserable old hag.
Ye Ye placed the now-shiny black boots—Ba’s old boots, I realized—beside his statue of Buddha. He pressed his long, frail fingers to the boots. “Your shoes are waiting whenever you’re ready to come home, ér zi.”
Alex looked away. My own throat suddenly felt a lot tighter.
After I helped my grandfather swaddle himself in layers of clothing, the three of us left the house. We crossed the courtyard to reach the main house, where Mao lived.
Dusty white steps led up to a huge brass door with a knocker shaped like a dragon. To our left and right stood two jade-colored stone lions with snarls sealed onto their expressions. There were four Chinese characters written above the door that outlined the mission of the demon-slaying Jade Society, reading: GIVE LIFE AND DESTROY EVIL.
Well, if we were talking about the mistress of the Jade Society, more like give life to evil.
Evil took the form of a small, rail-thin woman with an obnoxiously large nose that put Rudolph’s to shame. Mao’s hair was so long that it graced the ground with its soft black tips.
When her husband had passed away, not too long after Ba’s disappearance, Mao’s reign of terror had descended upon the Jade Society. She made it clear that, even though the warriors should train to keep up appearances for the gods and scare the demons away, we should all stop seeking out danger on purpose and mind our own business. She declared that anyone who did go hunting, like Ba, was a fool, and would be treated as an outcast. Ye Ye, Alex, and I, of course, became the prime victims of Mao’s rule.
“Here.” Mao greeted us by thrusting someone at me: a skinny girl around my age with a waist-length braid. “This is my niece.” She paused and scratched her head. “My niece, er …”
“Ying Er,” the girl provided.
“Right. Ying Er. She’s staying for the Lunar New Year.” The mistress placed a firm hand on Ying Er’s shoulder. “Tell them why your mother sent you here.”
“I’m visiting some medical schools,” Ying Er said with a dutiful smile. She could model for a prep school brochure. “I’m going to make my parents proud by becoming the first doctor in the family.”
“A doctor. Wonderful,” Mao said.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Under Mao’s guidance, we girls of Jade Society had our life paths sketched out in precise detail: get the perfect grades and test scores, graduate from Harvard medical school, and make our parents proud by becoming doctors. We weren’t supposed to be brave or strong or courageous like the boys. That seemed pretty unfair to me, especially since I was always the one who’d kill spiders when Alex was too scared.
“My annual Lunar New Year banquet is tonight. It’s sure to be a smashing hit, as always,” Mao said.
The mistress liked to hold lavish outdoor banquets several times a year to remind everyone how rich she was. The Lunar New Year feast was the biggest, and the only one she allowed my family to attend. Even evil had to rest at least one night of the year, I guessed.
“That’s why I need you four to set up the decorations,” she continued.
Or maybe not.
The mistress picked up a large black garbage bag from behind her and shoved it into my arms. “You girls can put up the paper lanterns and streamers.”
She turned her cold gaze to Alex and Ye Ye. “And you two. The courtyard needs cleaning, and the tables need to be set up.”
Why don’t you decorate the courtyard yourself, then? I wanted to snap.
Alex groaned. Ye Ye closed his eyes and nodded, resigned.
“But the courtyard is huge,” I protested. “They’ll never finish in time. Besides, Ye Ye is ill.”
“Falun,” my grandfather said sharply, “hold your tongue.”
Anger simmered beneath my skin, but I pushed it back. Everyone in the Society was supposed to treat the elderly, retired warriors with utmost respect. But Mao always made a point to treat Ye Ye rudely, as if to make him atone for Ba spreading his “false, loathsome” ideas about the demons’ existence.
Mao turned her sneer onto me. “Did I ask for your opinion? Don’t forget—the Society’s generosity is the reason you three still have a place to stay. Otherwise, we’d have sent you packing long ago.”
I balled my hands into fists.
“I suppose it is the Lunar New Year, after all. Liu Jian,” she addressed my grandfather, “you’re off the hook—as long as you cook up something good for the ba
nquet tonight.”
Alex and I both sighed in relief as Ye Ye bowed his head. My brother placed a hand on the small of my grandfather’s back, slowly helping him to the apartment.
I grabbed the bag and stormed down the steps, with Ying Er scurrying after me. I reached into its depths, pulled out a handful of red and gold streamers, and handed them to her. “Hang these up on the trees, as high as you can reach.”
Ying Er obeyed, stringing the streamers over the lowest branches of the four oak trees in the yard. Mao must’ve told her not to talk to me too much. Like aunt, like niece.
After hanging one paper lantern from a branch, I could already feel my muscles growing sore. My earlier training session with Ye Ye had really done a number on me. This was going to be a long afternoon.
The courtyard of the Jade Society—the sì hé yuàn—was a grassy, rectangular space that contained worn stone benches and four towering oak trees. I could see Alex raking fallen leaves and branches out of the open area.
When we finished in the courtyard, we strung up decorations in the rarely used training hall. And finally, we approached the stable, where the horses whinnied in greeting. I held my nose to block out the stench of horse manure.
When Moli had been younger, we’d taken turns riding her white stallion, Longma. The ghost of Moli’s once-kind laughter echoed in my mind.
While Ying Er watched, I made my way down the line, first grabbing a bag of sugar cubes from next to the stable door and then feeding one cube to each horse.
“You’re looking plump there, aren’t ya, Longma?” Moli’s prized white stallion bit at my pinkie. I swept it out of the way just in time. “Yow! It was just a joke …”
The horses tugged on their ropes. Though we kept them for traditional reasons, they were always restless from lack of exercise. Demon hunts were in the past now, and at least half the families owned cars, which were faster and didn’t require bathroom breaks.
Longma bared his teeth at me and snorted, tossing his hair back and forth. His eyes went wild as they fixed on Ying Er.
“Whoa.” I pulled on his ropes and patted his mane, to no avail. “What’s the matter with you, boy?”