by Ryan Graudin
Steal the drug lord’s ledger? Just the suggestion shoots fear through my aching spine. No wonder they’re offering Dai complete freedom. The job’s impossible. “And if you don’t?”
“Longwai and his thugs walk. And I end up in jail.” He gnaws his lip. His foot bounces against the floor, the way it did in Longwai’s brothel. “Or worse.”
“So that’s why you’re sitting during my runs? You wanted a way into the brothel because that’s where he keeps the book.…” I trail off.
He nods. “I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest with you. I thought… I thought I could do it alone. They made me swear under oath not to tell anyone. If word gets out, if Longwai finds out about the raid, then it’s pretty much over.”
I should be angry. Furious. Dai put me in even worse danger than I realized. Failing a drug run is nothing compared with this. But the wrath, the fury I expect, doesn’t come. I know, if I were Dai, I’d do the same thing. I guess, in a way, I have. I made him sit so I could try to find my sister.
“How long until New Year’s?” It should be soon; the air’s been cool long enough. This time every year City Beyond dresses in red and sets the sky on fire. Paper dragons dance through the streets. Lucky children—the not-vagrants—run around in new shoes, waving bright red envelopes of cash. Throw firecrackers on the ground to scare away the Nian: thief of children.
“Nine days.” He spits the number out like a burning coal.
“Those were the lines in your apartment.…” I realize. “But you—you’re not in the Walled City now.”
“No, I’m not.”
Those three words tell me how much he’s risked, bringing me here. His freedom. His life for mine. It’s a strange, warm thought. My whole life I’ve always been the protector—the one rescuing people. I did it alone.
“I don’t think the Branch will arrest me now,” he explains, seeing the look on my face. “They want the ledger too badly.”
“But it was still a risk.”
Dai shrugs. The movement looks funny under his dress shirt. Stiff. Uncomfortable. “I-I couldn’t let you die.…”
“Yes, you could have.” I glance back at the blood bag. It seems emptier, the top frothing with beet-red bubbles. Life pouring back into me. “Most people would’ve walked by the alley. But you didn’t. You saved me.”
The look on his face. It’s as if I just stabbed him or something.
“Thank you,” I add.
He holds my words for a minute. Tasting them. The longer they sit the less wounded his face looks.
“You’re welcome,” he says finally, before changing the subject. “Your turn. I gave you my answers. How about yours?”
Suddenly I’m exhausted, heavy in the bed. As if Dai’s whole story just landed on my chest. Pushing. Weighing.
“It’s not such a long story, really,” I begin. But then I start talking. I tell him everything. About the rice farm and how hard my father’s fists hit. About my sister and that night with the Reapers. I relive every moment through my words: leaping onto the bike and following their van. Cutting my hair, becoming a boy. Looking, looking, always looking for my sister. Fighting tooth and nail. By myself.
My story’s longer than I thought. Even Dai looks tired by the end.
“You think your sister’s in Longwai’s brothel?”
“I’ve looked everywhere else,” I tell him. “What do you think will happen to the girls there? After the New Year?”
“Depends. If I get the ledger and the Branch arrests the Brotherhood, then they should go free.”
“And if you don’t?”
“The Branch might get a hold of Longwai for a time, but he’ll find a way to wriggle free, like he has in the past. And without the ledger’s membership lists, the Branch won’t be able to net the entire Brotherhood. There will be men left to… redistribute the Brotherhood’s assets. Get the girls out and start the brothel somewhere else.” Dai’s face looks paler. As if the blood going into my veins is getting sucked from his own arm. “Your sister. What’s her name?”
“Mei Yee.” This is the first time in years I’ve said her name out loud. “Her name is Mei Yee.”
Dai’s hand moves over the bed, finds mine. Finger to finger. He’s careful not to touch the tape or the tube or the needle. There’s a strength to the way he cups my hand. His skin is startling and warm. Human.
“We don’t have to do this alone, Jin Ling. I’ll help you find your sister. If she’s there, we’ll get her out.”
This is what it must feel like to have a brother. I think of all the times I used to wish for one. When my back ached over rows and rows of uncut rice. When my father’s words all slurred into one and his knuckles split into me. When the Reapers came and there was no one strong enough to stop them.
I stopped wishing for that long ago. When the last of my mother’s pregnancies ended in blood and I realized if she brought a boy into the world, I’d have to protect him, too.
But now Dai is holding my hand and I don’t have to be the strong one. I don’t have to be alone anymore. I squeeze his fingers in mine. The needle bulges in my veins, tugs against the tape. Stinging hurt.
“And I’ll help you get the book,” I promise. “Before the New Year.”
Nine days fall over Dai’s face. His hand flinches back. “You need to rest. Dr. Kwan says you need to stay in bed for at least two weeks. And nothing strenuous for about a month after that.”
What he doesn’t say out loud—what’s written all across his expression—is that I’m going to be here for a while. I want to fight it, but right now even breathing hurts.
“I brought you something to pass the time.” He bends down, picks up the book from the floor. A thin layer of dust coats its cover. He wipes this off. Hands the book to me. “Star maps.”
It’s weighty, this book. Heavy with so many things I don’t know. So many things I want to learn. I set it on my chest, flip through pages that smell like gloss and years. The writing is in a language I don’t recognize, cramped and squiggled. But there are pictures: velvet blue and white spiderweb lines. Connecting dozens of dots. If I squint close enough, I can recognize them.
“Cassiopeia’s in there,” Dai says. “If you get through that, there’s plenty more like it upstairs. Oceanography, zoology, archaeology. A whole bunch of -y words. Hiro never could decide what he wanted to be.…”
His sentence wilts. Sad. Like my father’s fields after rainless days and weeks. I try to turn a chunk of pages, look for my rice scythe, but the burn under my shoulder flares. Makes my teeth grit.
Dai stands. His chair scrapes softly across the floor. “I’ll have a nurse come in. Give you something for the pain.”
I let the book of star maps slide to my good, fireless side. My eyes are shutting, surrendering to inevitable sleep. Never in my life have I been so, so tired. But there’s one question I haven’t asked. One answer I need to know. “Wait… did… did you see Chma? Is he okay?”
“Chma?” He pauses.
“Kuen cut off his tail.” I see the knife. Chma’s slick, wet stump. I’m angry all over again.
“You killed a boy for your cat?” It makes the fight seem too simple, too brutish when Dai says it like that: a boy for a cat. A heart for a tail.
Not such a fair trade this time.
Dai reaches the door, shakes his head. “I didn’t see him.”
He leaves. I stare straight at the pitch-black ceiling. All I see are Kuen’s blank eyes, staring at nothing. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe my hand just slipped.
But he’s still dead. Because of me.
Kuen is dead. And I’m alive.
So why does it feel as if I’m the one who lost?
8 DAYS
MEI YEE
I wait for the ambassador. Sing’s cries are in my head, and the yes is on my tongue, filling my body with sparks and spit, like that firework our neighbors bought one New Year’s. I’d never seen fire that color, a cherry red so bright it burned a hole into my vision.
It was so beautiful, so not of my world, that I thought it was enough. But then the fuse ran out, shot up into the clear winter sky with a pluming white tail of smoke. The night’s black filled with more colors than I could name: trails of sapphire, scarlet, and green.
The sight was so beautiful I cried.
And I feel as if I’m about to cry now when the door wheels open. There’s so much inside—fear, loss, gain, unvoiced wishes, my yes—whirring and spitting and blazing like that firework. It’s impossible to keep it all in.
But something about the way the ambassador enters the room demands silence. He looks even bigger today, hulking in the fullness of his coat. The fabric is as black as a bear’s fur. His arms are full of something I can’t completely see. Whatever it is, it’s not flowers.
There’s no hello or formal nod. He walks over to the side table and grabs my vase by the rim.
“There were no suitable bouquets,” he tells me over his shoulder. “And I wanted to bring you something special. To show you how sorry I am about what happened.…”
What happened. I wish he would say it, tell me he’s sorry for my bruises instead of bringing some other lavish gift. I wish he would keep to our routine, stick with flowers.
The ambassador steps away and I see he’s replaced my browned carnations with a shallow pot. Out of its sandy gravel rises a tree. It’s not a sapling, but a full-grown thing with limbs, bark, leaves, and roots. A tree that should be taller than me is no longer than my arm.
“W-what is it?” I stare, my yes momentarily forgotten, trying to imagine how a tree could be caged and shrunk. It seems like magic, impossible.
“A cypress tree.” He leans over to inspect the leaves, brushing them with too-careful, manicured fingers.
“How—why is it so small?” I feel stupid, asking this. I’ve never seen a cypress before. Most of the trees in my province were long gone by the time I was born, cut down to make room for rice fields. Maybe all cypress trees are this size, and I just never knew.
“It’s a technique called bonsai. Gardeners use it to keep the trees from getting too big and unmanageable. This way you can keep them inside. For your enjoyment.”
I keep looking at the tiny tree. Trying to imagine what it would look like if it weren’t confined to its pot. If men’s fingers and shears weren’t constantly picking at it, cutting it back.
“No more flowers?” I ask.
“They keep dying,” the ambassador says as if I don’t know. As if my room doesn’t fill up with sweet rot stench every time the petals wither. “I thought you might appreciate something more permanent.”
I’ll have nothing to place in the window now. Nothing to warn the boy with.
This thought catches me—sharp and hard—like a slingshot stone. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t. Soon there won’t be a window. Or walls. Or plastic orchid blossoms and lopsided stars.
As soon as I say yes.
The ambassador stops picking at the tree. His jacket comes off. Along with his coat. He moves over to my bed. The jostle of his body on the mattress shoots pain through my bruise.
“Have you thought any more about my offer?”
Yes. Just say it. Say it and all of this goes away.
My client sits beside me, but I’m still staring at the tree. Its tiny pot is ceramic, glazed blue. The same soft sheen the streetlamp makes on the boy’s face. I find myself wondering if it’s the same color as waves.
My lips part, but instead of my answer comes a question. The same one as before, “Would you take me to the sea?”
The ambassador frowns. He doesn’t look handsome doing it, the way window-boy does. It only makes the wrinkles of his face deeper, more treacherous. “It wouldn’t be good for people to see us together in public. But don’t worry. You’ll never have to leave the building. Besides, if it’s the ocean you want, you can always see pieces of it from the rooftop. When you go to the garden.”
“You… you can see it from the rooftops?” It steals my breath away, the thought that the sea was so close, this whole time, and I never knew.
“Yes. Seng Ngoi is a port city. We’re right next to the water.” His words come out quick and snapping. Like the noise that long-gone firework made. “Enough of this nonsense. What’s your answer?”
The hairs on my skin bristle against the edge in his voice. I search for the yes—the one that was just on the crest of my tongue, waiting to be released—but it’s deeper now. Unsure. Even the memories of Sing’s shriek don’t call it back. Instead of the pool and rooftop gardens and luxury food, all I can think about are the guards at the apartment door. How I’ll never have to leave the building. There might be no bars there, but there’s no boy, either. No one to promise a way out.
Can I trade one cage for another?
Are pieces of the sea enough?
“Mei Yee! Answer me.” His voice is hot, too loud in my ear.
There’s only one way home. For the boy. For me.
If I say yes now, I’ll fail the boy, destroy his wish for home. I’ll fail myself, destroy all of my hundreds of wishes.
There’s only one way, and it isn’t this.
“No.” I expect my voice to be a willow branch: wispy, bending, and supple. The way my courage feels. Instead, I’m bamboo: made of splinters and stab.
The ambassador feels it. For the briefest moment he even looks as if he’s been knifed. His jaw goes slack, his eyes glass.
“I want to stay here, with my friends.…” The strength that was in my throat fades, wilts against the look that rises up behind my client’s face. The storm cloud, the demon.
“You’re cheating on me, aren’t you? There’s someone else! I know there is!” His shout is thunder and fire. It spews over the room, flecks into my face with the heat of his saliva.
“No!” I start to protest, but it doesn’t matter.
Those arms, those fingers break their routine and pin me down, gripping with a power I never knew they had. The sharpness of my hairpins digs into my scalp as I’m shoved into the pillow.
So much sweat and skin. Everywhere. Wrapping tighter and tighter around me. And pain. I’m being pried, shredded, ripped. Opened and closed. Exposed and smothered.
No. No. No. Maybe I’m saying this out loud. Maybe not. I can’t hear anything anymore. I can’t see, either. My vision is covered in spots—like electric-blue lichen—the way it did when I stared out the window and waited for the boy.
It’s only when the ambassador lets go and falls back that I realize he’d had a hand over my throat. The air that floods my lungs is thick with smoke. Breath by breath the world comes back. The dust-filmed plastic of the orchid petals. A dozen unseen bruises on my arm, my neck. The hot stick of scarlet trickling down my legs, staining the sheets.
He’s out of the bed, piecing himself together with zippers and buttons. He doesn’t look at me or the bonsai tree. The door opens and he’s halfway out before he glances back over his shoulder.
I don’t know how to read his face. His emotions might as well be inked characters—squiggles and dots. Whatever the feeling inside him is, it’s intense. Like fear, anger, and love all thrown into a pot. Like the colors of my neighbors’ firework.
“It doesn’t really matter if you’re here or there. You’re mine. Remember that.”
He shuts the door. The vase full of dead flowers leaves with him.
The ambassador meant to break me. This is what I decide when I hobble over to the mirror, see fingerprints smudged like ink around the base of my throat. I spend extra minutes with my makeup brush, piling layer after layer of powder against my collarbone. But no matter how much I put on, I can still see his marks. A shadow gone wrong.
He meant to break me. But I’m stronger than he knows. I’m stronger than I knew. The only thing the ambassador broke was himself—the image of him I built up over the months, the idea that he might be able to save me from this place.
There’s only one way out. And it was never by his side.
The other girls notice the bruises, but they don’t ask questions. It’s a mercy, because I know I would never be able to answer. I could never tell them about the ambassador’s offer—how I turned down heaven on a silver platter and he punished me for it.
Instead, they gather in my room and talk about the one girl who has a worse portion than we do.
“They’re still making Sing take clients,” Nuo tells us as she struggles to thread her needle. The cross-stitch is coming together—a carp with scales of fire and white, swimming against some sapphire current.
“The master wouldn’t keep her here unless she was making him money.” Yin Yu says this with her tongue concentrating on the edge of her lips. She’s holding my hand in hers, wielding a wand of scarlet nail polish. She’s made it to the final nail without a slip.
Nuo frowns. Her needle stabs hard into the cloth; she pulls the mandarin-tinged thread through.
“I think…” Yin Yu goes on. The brush slicks cool paint down to the edge of my pinkie nail. Drops off. “It’s better than the alternative. She wouldn’t last long on the streets. None of us would.”
She finishes—both my nails and her words—and screws the polish shut.
“I should go,” Yin Yu says suddenly. It’s only when she’s standing straight that I realize how thin she’s become. “There’s washing to be done in the west hall. Mama-san will be angry if I don’t finish it soon.”
I stand, too, trying to ignore the pain in my thighs. “You’re cleaning too much. Let me take some of the rooms.”
“You’ve helped enough. Besides, you shouldn’t ruin your nails.” Yin Yu waves me back down, vanishes through the dark of the door.
There are only the three of us now, sitting in silence. Wen Kei eyes the door as if it’s the jaws of some sea beast, threatening to swallow her frail body. Nuo stabs the needle into the cloth. It slips, digs deep into her skin. A soft swear leaves her lips as she places the wounded finger between them.