The House of Life 3

by Vann Chow

  Without any magical power herself, Elise remained silent, not sure whether anything she could have said would have been useful. Then she realized that she was not completely helpless. She could perform the Sahasrara mudra again. Quickly she righted herself, sat cross-legged and put her hands together. “Michael! Michael!” She mumbled with urgency, hoping that Wuzha wouldn’t hijack the telepathic channel again.

  “Elise! Where are you? I’ve sent Black and White both out to get you, it seems that you’ve been abducted!” Michael’s voice rung in her head.

  “I am inside…inside an apartment they kept. Chamomile and Master Siu are both right next door. They are both injured, and in danger.”

  “Can you tell me where you are?” Michael asked. “Tell me what you see?”

  “There’s no window here. Only walls!” Elise shouted at Chamomile in the room next door. “Chamomile, do you know where we are?”

  “We were sent here blindfolded!” was the replied Elise got. “There is no window in the room. We are surrounded by nothing but sculptures and artworks. They have locked us in the storeroom.”

  “Wait, I’ve an idea,” Elise said, “did you hear any name said when you are here? It could be anyone’s. The soldiers or the servants. It doesn’t matter. If I know their names, I could speak to them through the Sahasrara channel. Maybe I could extort some information about our location.”

  “Nothing comes into mind except the name of the boy!” Chamomile cried. “Would it work?”

  “What’s his name?” Elise asked. “We have to try everything!”

  “Heinrich, Heinrich Gottlieb!”

  Heinrich

  She thought she could hear him sing. His voice was beautiful and from its pitch and clarity, he must have been no more than twelve-year-old. The song was sung in a foreign tongue. Behind it was the soft rustles of leaves and the thumping of feet.

  Раз, два три четыре пять...

  Were the beautiful lyrics German? Elise listened hard. Closing her eyes and leaning her body forward, as if by doing so she could amplify the voice of the young singer.

  Вышел зайчик пагулять,

  Вдруг охотник выбегает,

  Прямо в зайчика стреляет.

  Пиф Паф Ой ой ой,

  Умирает зайчик мой…

  It didn’t sound like German, Elise thought. What other languages could Heinrich Gottlieb be able to sing in? When it was not Hochdeutsch (High German), could it have been some kind of German local dialect? Where did Elise’s lover Maximilian said he was from? She scanned her memories for any scrap of information about where his hometown might be but drew a blank.

  Then suddenly, Elise realized she could understand the song. It was the most peculiar sensation, for the song was about a small tragedy. Its lyrics stirred her soul. She felt the forlorn sadness in the sound of the boy who was singing.

  One, two, three, four, five,

  A hare went out for a walk.

  Suddenly a hunter appeared

  And shot the hare.

  Bang! Bang! My oh my!

  My hare is going to die…

  A teardrop fell out of her flooded lower eyelid. Elise felt the hot sting of it on her face. A burning sensation rose from her stomach to her chest. She put her hand over her heart to find it beating erratically. It was as if the ‘old Elise’ had become her, and she became the ‘old Elise’. The sensation she felt was the undammed emotions of a mother towards her long-lost son. It was a feeling of extremely powerful love.

  “Heinrich,” she called softly, with a trembling voice, not wanting to startle the singing boy. “Is that you?”

  When he didn’t reply, Elise thought perhaps the boy didn’t hear her. She asked once again, louder, and in German this time. It was unknown to her how she knew to speak the language. It just happened.

  “Mein Süße Heinrich, ich bin mama. Erinnerst du mich?” (My sweet Heinrich, it’s mama. Do you remember me?)

  She called again when he didn’t reply, her fists clenched in anxiousness.

  “Shh…” Instead of a reply from the boy, someone hushed her.

  “Wer bist du?” (Who are you?)

  The voice didn’t answer. The sound of the boy could be heard once more…

  Прмвезли его домой,

  Оказался он живой.

  “Heinrich?” Elise called out once more.

  “Stille!” The voice had ordered her to be silent, and in German!

  Elise was utterly startled by it. Someone had hijacked her spiritual connections again!

  “Geh weg!” (Go away) She could only say.

  “Elise,” the intruder said her name in an endearing voice, “Think harder. Do you really not remember who I am?” The words were spoken in heavily accented Mandarin.

  Elise was lost. Everyone seemed to know her these days, except herself.

  “I don’t care who you are and why you know my name. I’m on urgent business. Please leave us alone!”

  “Us?”

  “Yes, my son and I. The boy who’s singing the beautiful song. Such a sweet voice he has!” Elise said, her lips moved on its own. “He sounded like an angel.”

  “Him?” The voice snickered.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “I laughed because you will soon laugh, too, when you remember everything.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please leave us alone, Mister!” Elise insisted.

  “Listen! Listen to what he is singing…”

  The hare was brought home,

  and he turned out to be alive.

  Elise smiled.

  “He turned out to be alive,” she repeated the last ling she heard. “It’s a very curious nursery rhyme. I wonder who he learnt it from.”

  “No, Elise,” the voice said. “The boy’s singing in Russian. It’s the language of the men who killed me and who is now still hunting for me even when I’m dead. This boy is not our son. He was the descendent of the enemy who slashed my neck and buried us in the woods. All fifteen thousand of us. Don’t be mistaken!”

  “What?!” The news shocked her, but the thread of logic weaved itself quickly together and Elise now realized who she had been conversing with.

  “Maxi?!” She cried. “Maxi!! Oh, my dearest Maxi! I thought I would never hear from you again! Is that you?”

  “Yes, mein Schatz, who else can I be?”

  “Oh, how I have missed you!” Elise said.

  “I’ve missed you, too!” Maximilian replied with equal fervor. “But even in this incredible moment we must keep our volume down. If the boy finds out and calls for his Russki father, I’ll be dead, once again. — I’ve run away from the soul reapers and hidden myself in a treacherous wood. It was a pitiful existence and what felt like an eternal wait. But finally, we meet again, just as I have always believed we would be!”

  “You’ve waited all these years for me?” Elise asked. “What if I didn’t…I didn’t ask learn the channeling trick from Buddha? What if I never find out how to communicate with you with this telepathic magic?”

  “I have faith. I have a lot of faith in our love that you’d be searching for me, just like I have tried to seek my way out of this ensnaring, endless forest to come back to Tsingtao for you, dead or alive, like I have promised. A man always keeps his promise to his woman. It’s just…it’s just taking some time. The soul reapers here are particularly nasty, but I will dodge them, like I have always done. I have walked East for over a hundred years, and I know I’m close to the edge of this maze of a forest. Once I find my way out of Russia, we’ll see each other again.”

  Dark images of how Maximilian had lived in the past…hundred years surviving on the thin hope that she would still be waiting for him tormented Elise deeply. She didn’t wait for Maximilian. In fact, she had chosen to reincarnate. She had drunken Lady Meng’s Forgetting Soup and crossed the Nether Bridge of No Return
to leave it all behind. It was only by chance that after a few cycle of reincarnation that she was placed in Hong Kong and captured by her Manchurian father who, also like Max, never ceased looking for her.

  Elise was deep in thought when Maximilian asked her a question. “You were calling our son’s name. Is he not with you?”

  “…” Elise didn’t know where to begin. Her silent seemed to explain itself. Maximilian was alarmed by it.

  “In 1914, when Heinrich was four years old, gigantic British and Japanese warships attacked the German naval base in Jiaozhou. They sunk your countries’ ships, threw out your fellow countrymen and installed themselves there. Together with the British, they raided my father’s mansion, for they knew he had amassed a fortune working with your countrymen importing and exporting goods to and from Europe,” Elise said, speaking as if she was there. She realized that it was the old Elise’s memory she was speaking of. “I lost sight of Heinrich…He was playing in the garden. It was pure chaos in the mansion. They were searching for my father’s treasures in every room and took everything valuable, after beating our soldiers and killing our servants. When they were done, we can’t find Heinrich anymore, as if he had disappeared together with the violators. I lost Heinrich…I lost Heinrich that day.” Elise covered her mouth to stymie off a violent sobbing fit that took over her.

  “Was he…never found?”

  An incredible sense of guilt overwhelmed Elise and she cried. “I lost him. I can’t believe I lost him! My father had searched up and down the entire Tsingtao. We didn’t find so much as a tiny corpse that fit his description!” Elise howled.

  It was apparent now why the old Elise, or Wang Mei, wanted to leave everything behind and move on to the next life willingly. Perhaps she couldn’t bear the thought of having done such a horrible crime of neglect, and the horrible guilt that Elise was now having a taste of. Elise suddenly remember that her great-grandmother wanted to kill herself. She had experienced a free-falling sensation earlier, a fragment of Wang Mei’s memory, of when she jumped to her death. The guilt of losing her child had consumed her. Everything made sense now…and not in a pleasant way.

  At the height of the guilty feeling, however, Elise came to her senses. She was Elise Chow of Hong Kong born in the 20th century, not the old Elise of the Wuzha Clan born in 19th century. She is herself, not her great-grandmother.

  “Maxi, I’m sorry, but I must go now,” she said. “There are lives I must save.”

  “Why? Tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t have time to explain, but we’ll speak again, I promise!”

  Wounded

  Ken clutched at his wounded arm when the army physician wanted to examine it as he was being carried into the Command Center by White and the others. “Later,” he shook his head and said. “I need to speak to my brother.”

  “Ken!” Michael hurried over to meet him.

  “Brother, I have failed you, I have failed everyone.”

  “No, please don’t say that.” Michael assured him. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have left the Chamber.”

  “But were you able to seek what you sought?” He asked.

  “No, we didn’t manage to see King Yama,” Michael shook his head regrettably. “But our trip did bear fruit, we have busted a most perverse crime against the dead and recaptured lost property of our subject!”

  “What?” Ken was dumbfounded for his brother’s cheery mood. “Are you talking about the crates of gold that the bastard Wuzha had squeezed out of every merchant he worked with by buying Chinese goods at extremely low cost and selling them to the foreigners at exorbitant prices? The gold which White had returned to him without any condition now sitting outside the South Gate?! His man did not so much as look at them! That was a big underserving gift you have brought back to our enemy!” He hissed. “Brother, I don’t know what were you thinking! Wuzha’s men will kill a hostage for every minute we delay in handing the Book of Life and Dead. You must give him the Book of Life and Dead now!”

  “I don’t know where it is, Ken,” Michael answered, putting the handheld telescope once more to his eye and searched for the hostages Ken was talking about.

  “You must know. Grand-dad only trust you. He must have told you where he hid it!” Ken grabbed his brother by his collar and shook him. “Look!”

  Noon has arrived, a soul cried out with his final breath as his head rolled to the ground after a Manchurian soldier brought down his sword and cut through his neck. As his body fell forward to the ground, accompanied by chorus of frightful screams and pleads by the other unfortunate souls next to him, it disintegrated into tiny dust particles and dispersed in the wind into nothing.

  A collective gasped could be heard by those around them at the command center.

  “Let me go and slaughter as many of them as possible!” Noqai pulled at the handle of his great sword.

  “We must be patient…”

  “Patient?!” Noqai wanted to argue with his new master, but his brother put a hand on his chest and stopped him. “What?” He hissed at Noqai.

  “Look at the Psychic! I think he’s having a vision.”

  “They’re coming…they’re coming.” Everyone looked in the direction of the Psychic who was looking frantically for a place to hide. He caught sight of the kitchen counter and scrambled over to it, his arms and legs shaking, his lips trembling. “Find shelter! NOW!”

  BOOM!!!

  The wall shook and the balcony had cracked off the outer wall of the building. The guards standing on it yelped as the floor fell from their feet and the mini-cannons on them tumbled down twenty floors.

  “What’s happening?!” The arsonist asked helplessly as he looked at the chaos around him. The front wall of their apartment unit had been torn off, the crumbling concrete exposed bent steel bars and sparkling electrical cables. A great gust of wind swept up everything in the living room. For a second, he thought he was in space. Everyone was floating in mid-air in awkward poses, trying to find their balance. In the middle of it, unperturbed, stood the younger Master Michael. He walked out of the local storm with a bubble of blue electric cloud around him. Behind him, his brother Ken had shapeshifted back into the appearance of a dog but with an unmistakable expression of disbelief.

  “Supreme Commander Diptera!” Michael said, staring straight ahead at the person he was addressing. The arsonist saw that it was a man with an unusually ugly face in a cape of black and red stripes, the color of the Celestial Hell Army. Sprouted from his back were a pair of wings flapping tirelessly at high frequency, keeping him suspended in the air. Similar fly-like soldiers floated behind him in battle formation. “I know you would come. I have been waiting for you. You’re here just in time.”

  “Michael, please don’t use our friendship against me and talk to me in such condescending fashion. Our friendship cannot save you, I am afraid. You know what you have done out by the Chongqing smelt. King Yama has received twenty-two complaints about you and your men, the British Celestial Government, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the International Merchants Union and there was even one from the Leshan Buddha Maintenance Group included! If you’re smart, don’t resist arrest and follow me back to Earth Mansion right now.”

  “No, Diptera,” Michael said calmly, “I could explain everything. I chanced upon your subordinate Zhizhu and the British Admiral Henry’s plot to swindle the court under the command of the Prince. There was no way I could stand by and let it continue to happen.”

  “You’ve always been clever with your words, but no words can pull you out of this diplomatic train wreck. You cannot cover a misdeed with a false accusation of the Prince. The truth will be decided when we put you in King Yama’s tribunal. All evidence will be presented and witnesses will be brought forth. You know how it goes as a magistrate yourself. Now be professional and come with me. Don’t force me to use violence.” He squeezed the end of a dark whip that was in his hand.

  “I can’t, and I won’t come with you, I’m afraid,�
� Michael said and he leaped out of the broken off building towards the Commander and managed to wrap the end of his whip around the man’s back, restraining his wings. The wings were unable to beat and in just a second, they started to lose altitude and dropped to the ground in breakneck speed. In the sharp whistle of the wind that swooshed passed them, Michael whispered to his friend. “My grandfather is trapped in the Walled City. I must save him, and you’ll help me. Yes, you will, my dear friend, my brother.” He smiled, and thrusted his legs away from Diptera, releasing the end of the man’s whip from this hand.

  Michael dropped to the ground in front of the South Gate just in time to catch the blade of the downward sword swinging at the neck of a woman knelt on the ground. Blood oozed from the cuts on his hand and he snapped it in half.

  “Tell Wuzha I’m here, with the Book he wants!” The wielder of the sword was so frightened of the man appearing from out of the sky that he dropped the broken sword all together on the ground and ran off into the Walled City with the news. Soon after, a group of Qing soldiers rushed out of the gate to capture him and brought him to see their General.

  Regaining his balance, Commander Diptera looked on curiously at what his childhood friend was planning to do as his cortege swarmed around him.

  “Should we follow?”

  Diptera squinted at the sun without speaking as his wings flapped ceaselessly behind him.

  The Governor

  “We must not go in, no matter what, Commander Diptera!” The Chinese Celestial Court Foreign Minister pled. “It’s important to capture Magistrate Michael Siu, but we cannot disregard international relations! Walking into that place is going to explode into a diplomatic crisis!”

  “As if we aren’t in one already?” Commander Diptera said distastefully.

  “As you can see, the remnants of a Qing blue banner army had taken over the Walled City and they are executing its occupants, who are predominantly vestiges of the Nationalist party when they escaped from the Communists in the middle of last century. The Communists have ceded the land over to the British in 1898. We can’t go in just like that.”