Fox and Phoenix (2 page)

Chen shrugged his massive shoulders and went back to squinting at my homework. I quashed the temptation to fling my chair at him. Chen would just vanish into the spirit plane, leaving me with a broken chair to explain to Mā mī. This time, she might really feed me to the watch-demons, the way she always threatened.

Still muttering, I picked through the ink-soaked papers on my desk. Ruined, all of them. Which meant no money from the students. And another lecture about responsibility.

I swept all the sheets into a pile and started mopping up the ink. Stupid papers. Stupid work. Stupid me for thinking I could make a good apprentice. Yún could fiddle formulae and spells better than I ever could, and that was even before she signed up as an apprentice to my mother. No wonder she was always running off to visit that stupid Shou-xin. He was Mā mī's best paying student—talented, rich, and charming. Even Mā mī said he would end up the king's chief wizard someday.

Twenty minutes later, I wiped the sweat from my eyes. All that scrubbing and I couldn't tell a difference in those blasted ink stains. If anything, they looked blacker than before. Suspicious now, I sniffed. A faint metallic smell in the air made me think of magic, not ink and paper.

I retrieved the bottle from the counter.

EXTRA-DARK RUB-RESISTANT BLACK INK. Then in smaller characters, ENHANCED WITH MAGIC.

Some of the students cheat,
Chen grunted.
The ink won't let them change their answers later and pretend they deserved a better grade.

So I figured.
I must have grabbed the bottle without checking the label first. Bad move in a conjuring shop.

Then I noticed my hands. Ink all over them, of course. Extra-dark ink all over my palms, my sleeves, and underneath my fingernails. I rubbed my cheek with a clean rag. It came away smudged with black. When I blinked, my eyelids felt sticky, and not just from sweat.

I hauled the bucket outside and emptied its contents into the courtyard, where Old Man Kang's chickens scolded me. The rags went into the special laundry tub. By the time I came back to the front office, Chen had discarded the spectacles and my homework. He was reading a paperback with a lurid cover, making absentminded snuffling noises to himself.

I surveyed the remaining mess. Maybe I could pull the rug over a few inches to hide the stains. No good. Mā mī noticed everything. I'd have to bribe one of her advanced students to help me clean up the mess before she came back from shopping. But not Shou-xin. Someone else.
Anyone
else.

Something poked my elbow. I glanced down.

A thin brown scroll floated in midair. It looked like one of Mā mī's older scrolls, its edges dark and crinkled. A velvety blue ribbon tied in a complicated knot kept it from unfurling.

I glared at my pig-companion. Chen feigned being absorbed in reading, but I wasn't fooled. He had probably conjured the thing from my mother's archives. We'd both be in trouble if she found out.

The scroll darted in to give me a quick poke in the stomach. I made a grab for it, but the cursed thing soared out of reach.

Chen grunted and flipped a page over with his tusk.

With a sigh, I held out my hand. The scroll settled delicately onto my palm. When I touched the ribbon, it unwound itself and curled around my wrist. The scroll unfurled, showing a single densely written paragraph in the center.

It was a laundry spell, of sorts. Reading the old-style calligraphy, I wondered if some old priest or scribe had brushed those characters, all crisp and dark, like tiny black birds hopping across the rice paper. After thirteen months studying under Mā mī, I could detect glimmerings of power in the spell's deceptively simple phrases. Whoever created this scroll must have infused the characters with more magic as they brushed them, and the sequence of syllables (long and short, to be spoken with special stresses) hid the mathematical properties required to summon the magical flux. Simple and complex. Yin and yang. Chen had chosen well—a person didn't need to understand the math or the magic behind the spell to use it.

But it still required concentration.

So. Time to make all those tedious lessons in meditation pay off. The key was to eliminate distractions. Visualize the barriers to failure, then imagine them dissolving into nothing. I closed my eyes and concentrated on calming, magic-like thoughts. It was hard, especially with Chen's audible breathing, and the
slither, slap
each time he turned a page, but eventually, I managed to empty my brain of any thoughts except the here and now.

I opened my eyes and scanned the spell a second time.

(Ready?)

(Not nearly.)

Slowly and carefully I began to recite.

“Thunder and water, fire and wind, from east to west and north to south, we the unworthy call upon the sunbird and dragon to bring purity to these quarters. . . .”

The air around me shimmered as the magic flux thickened. My skin itched and a strange sharp scent filled my nose. Distracted, I stumbled over a couple syllables, but soon found my rhythm again. Was that something burning? I was galloping toward the last paragraph, when suddenly a cloud of smoke and fire exploded in front of me. I yelped and fell over backward. My head smacked against the wall, and my vision went dark. I couldn't see anything but white and red sparks jiggling in front of my eyes. There was a buzzing noise inside my skull that made me think of mosquitoes. Someone talking?

That someone seized my elbow and dragged me to my feet. “You mispronounced the third and thirty-second phrases.”

I blinked. My vision cleared.

My mother, tiny, whisper-thin Mā mī, who reminded me of a ghost dragon, the way she studied me so coolly. My mouth turned dry as she continued to gaze at me, her expression unreadable, while all around the magic flux sparkled and fizzed.

Right when I thought I might faint, Mā mī recited something in a peculiar language that sounded like a kettle hissing. The radio sputtered into silence, and a metallic smell permeated the room. I still didn't dare to move. My mother's gaze flicked over my ruined clothes, the mess of worksheets, the splotches of ink over walls and floor and bookshelves. Silently, she plucked the scroll from my hands. It obediently curled into a tight coil, and the ribbon slithered back into place, tying itself into a knot.

Mā mī uttered another incomprehensible phrase. Electric fire rippled through the air. With a loud
pêng
, all the ink disappeared. My mother held out her hand. The (dead, stuffed) griffin shook itself into life and skittered down the shelves to perch on her wrist. My mother scratched it behind its feathered ears, and its flat stone eyes narrowed to slits in contentment.

Only dead things felt safe around my mother, I thought.

She still hadn't said anything. I coughed to clear my throat. “I'm sorry for the mess, Mā mÄ«. I'll finish the worksheets before dinner.”

Mā mī nodded. She gave the griffin an absentminded kiss on its beak and set it upon the closest shelf. It shook out its feathers (plus a quantity of dust) and clambered back up to the top, where it curled once around and went still.

I expected my mother to shout. Or deliver one of those scary lectures about how her worthless street-rat son was bound for a misty hell. She did neither, and that made me nervous.

“Yún should come back soon,” I said hesitantly. Mentioning Yún often made her smile.

Mā mī just nodded again and set her basket into its usual cubbyhole behind the counter. (Chen had wisely disappeared, leaving behind just a faint piggy odor.) Still not talking, she headed through the curtained doorway, into the shop's back rooms. A minute later, I heard the faint
ting
of metal from the kitchen, then water gurgling.

The curtains drifted slowly in the invisible breeze of her passage. I stared at them for a long moment, not really taking in what was going on. Deep inside my skull, an itch told me Chen had not completely left, but even he was too scared, or too surprised, to do more.

Not sure what to expect, I checked Mā mī's shopping basket. Except for a bottle of fish sauce and three packets of chewing tobacco, it was empty.

What do you think happened?
I said.

You better ask her,
Chen replied.

So much for my brave pig-companion.

I pushed the curtains aside. They swirled around me, ruffling against the back of my head, and enveloping me in soft shadows. I was in the main storeroom for our shop, where we kept all our supplies for classroom exercises, my mother's experiments, and the potions we sometimes brewed up for special customers. The air smelled strange and familiar, a mixture of strong herbs and black pepper, of soap from the morning mopping, of powdered metals and other rare ingredients. Hsin and several other cats napped here, keeping an erratic watch for mice. Ahead, another set of curtains marked the doorway into the kitchen, while a pair of winding stairs led to our upper floors.

I drew a deep, unsatisfying breath and headed into the kitchen.

Mā mī sat at the pockmarked old wooden table. She held a measuring spoon filled with tea leaves in one hand, in mid-movement from transferring the leaves from the canister into her favorite blue teapot. The kettle sat on its grating over the coal fire; puffs of steam added to the miserable heat, but Mā mī didn't seem to notice. She had a distracted expression on her face, as though she studied something very far away.

“Market closed?” I asked.

Mā mÄ« nodded. “Everything closed early today.”

Everything?

I waited for my mother to explain, but she didn't.

“A holiday?” I said, helpfully. Royal visitors from kingdoms all throughout the mountains had crowded into Lóng City this past month—something about trade negotiations—and the king had scheduled numerous banquets and festivals to entertain them. The shops often closed early for the big celebrations.

But Mā mÄ« was shaking her head. “The king . . .” She stopped and rubbed a hand over her eyes, a gesture I had not seen since my father died years ago.

You did, you do,
Chen said softly, though no one could hear us.
Children always remember.

Even so, it had been ten years....

My mother went on. “The king fell ill this morning. They believe he will not live beyond a week. They've sent for Princess Lian.”

So many replies clattered through my brain. The king. Lian. My friend. She must be worried. Or scared. Those were not subjects I could discuss with my mother. Finally, I asked, “How?”

Mā mÄ« set the spoon down on the table and frowned in its direction. I had the feeling she wasn't seeing the spoon or the table any more than she saw me right now. She said, “If you listen to the bazaar rumors, he fell by attack from angry spirits unleashed by this wretched heat. Most likely it was simply from age and overeating. He is an old man, you know. And he misses his daughter.”

I knew that. I also knew it was my fault that Lian was far away in Phoenix City.
And now her father is dying.

“I am thinking I should suspend classes,” was my mother's next unsettling announcement.

“Close the shop?” My voice squeaked up.

She gave me a sharp look, almost like usual. “Not entirely. You and Yún shall have your lessons. But the tutoring can wait. A week or two, not more. Things should be decided by then.”

Things? Like the king dying?

The teakettle rattled. Mā mÄ« pushed herself to standing—stiffly—and fetched it from its hook. “You need not finish the worksheets,” she said quietly, as she poured the boiling water over the leaves. “Go. Find your friends. Just come back by nightfall.”

I stared at her, not believing what I heard or saw. Mā mÄ« telling me to goof off? Mā mÄ« acting quiet and bothered by what went on in that “golden egg crate they call a palace”? I waited another minute, but she never glanced in my direction. She rifled through the cabinet and extracted a honey pot, which she set beside her cup. My mother never took honey, not that I remembered. She liked her tea strong and bitter. Like her.

Unnerved by all the strangeness, I backed through the curtains into the dimly lit corridor, where Chen waited. He'd taken a smaller form, the size of a formidable cat. His bristles stood out in worry.

I'm going out,
I whispered.

He tilted his head.

She told me to,
I added.

Chen made a soft, pig-whistle noise.
Do you want company?

He nodded.
I will listen for you, then.

I turned the shop sign to CLOSED and headed down to the Golden Market. It was the oddest walk I'd ever taken through Lóng City. Sure, there were festivals where the shops closed early, but that usually meant people thronged the streets, laughing and dancing and buying grilled kebabs or bowls of rice and curry from street vendors. And in the main squares, the public radio speakers always played loud old-time music, while jugglers tossed batons and acrobats flipped around in heart-stopping handsprings.

Today, the streets were quiet and empty. In the bazaar itself, the noodle shops had closed their shutters, and their brightly colored awnings were rolled away. One scrawny mutt lounged in the shade, panting. An old man swept the steps in front of his house. He stared at me as I passed by. Two or three kids wandered around, with confused expressions. Probably their parents had told them to go play, too.