The Pirate Empress (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Bamboo Forest

Against the bulkhead, Li propped the rush mop that she had been using to clear the pirate junk’s deck of seaweed and salt. She inhaled the crisp, sun-filled air. Her back ached and her knees felt like a dish of half-cooked sea cucumber. They had spent the cold season hugging the eastern coastline to keep clear of winter storms. Po wasn’t kidding when he said his mother never stepped foot on land; Madam Choi had been ousted from her rice-farming family when she married a fisherman-turned-pirate. Rice farmers and pirates didn’t mix, and rice was one of the main types of booty that pirates sought. People would pay an arm and a leg not to starve.

In a few minutes, Po had promised to take her off deck-washing duties and onto dry ground. They had anchored in a small harbour. The land was still frozen up north, but here on the central coast life was stirring. Green shoots coloured the landscape where bamboo forests flourished, and on shore there was movement, animals seeking food.

Li was now twenty years old. She had not seen Quan since the fox faerie slipped the black poppy down her throat while she slept. When she awoke, she was aboard Madam Choi’s pirate junk and instead of the steely gaze of her beloved Chi Quan she had lifted her eyelids to the curious gaze of the sea gypsy’s number one son.

“Are you ready?” Po shouted as he climbed through the hatchway.

“Is Wu still asleep?”

The stout young man nodded. “As always. He won’t miss us. We’ll be back before he has his rice gruel.”

Li stepped forward to push Po aside, and Po put a hand out to stop her. “I want him to come with us,” she said. “He’s spent too much time aboard ship. If he is to follow in his father’s footsteps and fulfil his destiny, he needs to get his land legs.”

“What father is that?” Po asked, sarcastically.

Li knew Po’s feelings for Quan. What kind of a father would abandon his son?

Po sighed. “He hasn’t come in four years. What makes you think he will
ever
come?”

“He will come when the wall is completed.”

“The wall is completed, Li. The captain stays on the northern frontier to fight. He’s a soldier. He won’t come back.”

“He’ll find me,” she said as calmly as she was able. “He will want to meet his son.”

Li marched past Po and almost fell over when her knees gave out. Wu wasn’t the only one who needed to get land legs.

She went below to fetch the boy who was sleeping soundly, buried in furs on a reed mattress. As she stared at his sweet little face, she glimpsed a trace of his father’s smile, but she thrust the thought of Quan from her mind. Four years. And not a word had come from him. Was Po right? Had he forgotten her? Had he forgotten that night in the lagoon when she conceived his son?

Chi Quan Li Wu was born under the sign of the Black Tortoise. On their journey north, in the heart of winter, baby Wu was born in the hold of the pirate junk under the watchful eye of the water god Xiang Gong. On the tiny palm of his left hand, Madam Choi had insisted on marking him with the celestial sign of the north.

“Get up little warrior,” Li said, poking her son with the tip of her finger. “We are going to see the Giant Panda.”

Wu opened his eyes, yawned and buried his nose in his furs. It was hard to believe that this little boy was the source of so much conflict. Well, he was safe as long as he stayed among the water people. He would grow up to be a pirate like his godmother, Madam Choi. Li smiled at her son’s sleepy face, hoisted him out of bed and dressed him, then led him up on deck. Po tossed Li a sabre and scabbarded his own against his hip. They never left their junk unarmed, and even though nothing untoward had happened in the years since Quan had abandoned her, Li was forever on her guard. She had a debt to pay to Jasmine who was the reason she was here, for Li demanded her freedom—and her son’s freedom—and when she had the chance, she fully intended payback, which meant leaving Wu with the pirates.

She handed Wu to Po, who hung from the hemp ladder leading to the raft, then followed and took position at the bow, her son on her lap, while Po poled them across the calm water to the shore. Ahead was the bamboo forest they had seen from the junk. It was eerily quiet and only the wind rustled the leaves. “Where is the Giant Panda?” Wu asked as they scraped ashore.

Li held her son’s hand as they left the raft and walked into the forest. Po had traveled the waters bordering the bamboo forests before, and many times had set foot on the fertile lands. He had befriended the giant pandas and came every year to read the earth, and although his mother was a descendent of the Emperor of the Five Grains, Shennong, it was her son who had inherited the love of the forest and the earth. Po raised his hand, and Li and Wu stopped.

Po’s face was creased with worry. Something felt sour and he told them to stay put while he explored a small glade. Li watched with her son, from the periphery, one hand on her sabre. A rustle came from above Po’s head, and he looked up. “Mao Mao,” he said.

The female panda lowered herself to a nearby branch with a mouthful of bamboo leaves, and clinging to her back was a black and white cub, identical to herself. Po smiled, turned to Li and Wu. “It’s all right. You can come over, but be very quiet or you’ll frighten them.”

In the clearing a few paces from the bamboo tree, Po pointed to the munching pandas that were paying little attention to the intruders. “See the little one? You may name her.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” Li asked.

Po gave her a mischievous smile. “I just know.”

“Min Min,” Wu said. “That’s her name.”

Po grinned. “Min Min, it is.” Then, he shifted his gaze away from the foraging panda, the frown returning to his face.

“What’s wrong?” Li asked, her hand once again returning to her sabre.

“The forest is dying.”

She squinted at the green bamboo all around her; it didn’t look like it was dying.

“See the flowers,” he said, going to a mass of hanging blossoms. The white blooms hung from the bamboo stalks like horses’ tails. “When the flowers become fruit, they will make ‘bamboo rice,’ then the forest will die. There comes a time when all living things die. It is the end of their life cycle.” He glanced around, crouched and fingered the soil, brought a small bite to his lips and tasted it. “It is early for the bamboo to blossom, and strange that the humidity and nutrition of the soil should change so quickly when winter is barely over.”

“Where are the other pandas?” Li asked. “Surely Mao Mao can’t live alone. She has only one baby. Where are the others?”

“There are no others,” he said.

A scurry through the undergrowth took their attention to the ground, and a trio of rats raced across the clearing and into the other side of the forest.

“The rats wait for the bamboo rice to ripen. Their numbers will increase fourfold when that happens. I have no doubt that this forest is dying. Mao Mao has waited for my appearance to tell me that this is the last time I will see her here. She knows. She will move on and Min Min with her. They will find a new home, farther north.” Po still looked disturbed. “The only thing that troubles me is that I don’t understand why this forest is dying.”

“It’s an old forest, maybe,” Li suggested.

More noises came from the trees, and this time Li ignored them. More rats.

Po suddenly gagged, ran to the other side of the glade, dropped to his knees, and vomited. Li chased after him, leaving Wu with the pandas. “Po, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”

He coughed, tasted his breath. Something in the soil that he had sampled upset his stomach. Poison? “I’m fine,” he said as Li grabbed his arm to help him up. “But the earth is not. Something is depleting the plants of their nutrients.”

Her head shot up, and she suddenly looked frantically toward the pandas. “Where is Wu?” She stood up, screamed. “WU! Where are you?”

“I’m here, Ma-ma,” Wu said, crawling out from behind the giant panda that was now on the ground. Min Min went over to Wu and the boy hugged the baby panda with both his arms. The baby nipped at him and he screeched and let go.

Li laughed. “Come here. If you are to become a great warrior, you must learn not to fear the bite of bears.”

%%%

Sometimes the stone opened its eye to him; sometimes it did not. How did this magic work? He Zhu had no control over it. After leaving Quan at Shanhaiguan Zhu rode south to Xian and the Taoist temple to learn from the monks what he could of Eng Tong’s gemstone.

In a small lean-to at the back of the temple he stabled his horse, then sought some grass to feed the mare, but everywhere the vegetation was dried and wilted. Strange, he thought as he raised his eyes to the cloudy sky; it had rained last night and the ground was damp, so why was everything dead?

He entered the temple to the most horrific smell of death and putrefaction, and turned his head. He gasped in a breath of fresh air from behind before venturing to the shrine. On the cold stone floor, in front of a fearsome Taoist god, were the ruins of its former guardian. Zhu knelt beside the dead monk, who had no voice with which to speak.

“Who did this?” he demanded, releasing his breath in a sudden gasp, gawping in stunned horror at the dried blood and carnage. An animal, some sort of sharp-toothed beast, had attacked the young monk. Zhu glanced up at the clawed, bat-winged thunder god carved on the rear wall of the temple. The blue-faced beaked deity haunted him while, outside, thunder rumbled and Zhu could swear he saw the carving of the god bang his mallet to his drum.

He Zhu covered his nose with the hem of his mantle, and turning his back on the stinking carnage bowed low, and then went to explore the inner chambers of the shrine. He stumbled upon a brick crypt attached to the temple. The door was wide open.

On a stone slab, dressed in a cloud-satin coatdress and foot-wide sleeves hiding hands crossed atop his chest, lay Li’s tutor Tao. The skill of embalming with which the monks were extraordinarily adept made the eunuch appear lifelike. There was no shrivelling, no rot, even though his expression was twisted, and his mouth open in a scream.

The sweetness of lotus blossoms hung strong in the room, and Zhu located its source, a bowl of scented water on a nearby bench. The dead guardian of the temple must have left it there before the attack and now the flowery scent mingled with the odour of rotting flesh. An inky ring showed near the bottom of the bowl where the water level had dropped from evaporation, and floating in the remaining water were the torn petals of ivory-coloured lilies. A flurry of ice chilled his spine like frozen arrows.
Jasmine has been here!

His mind darkened. Fear screamed through him like fire.

“She is gone,” a voice said. “Your secret is safe.”

Zhu stared at the man speaking to him in stark terror. Four years had passed since that lurid day. “Tao! You’re alive? But how is that possible? I saw the arrow pierce your heart atop First Emperor’s mound!”

Tao rose from his stone bed to a seated position. “I would like to think I’m alive. But I’m afraid things are not quite the way they were. You see...” He paused. He laboured to get off the stone slab, but every time he attempted to stand, he fell to the floor. “It seems I cannot leave this crypt by day. Heaven knows I have tried. It’s up to you Zhu. You must find Lotus Lily and protect her and her son.”

“You know about the child?”

Tao nodded. “Where the fox faerie is near, the Mongols are nearer. Esen has been here, too. But he was too cowardly to enter the crypt.”

“He killed the young monk?”

“No, that was Jasmine. Esen came weeks ago, and has not left the vicinity. I can sense when he walks past the temple, too terrified to enter.”

“Good,” Zhu said, “then you are safe.”

“I’m in no danger,” Tao said. “Esen cannot kill me again.”

Zhu’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I cannot leave this crypt in the daylight. But come night, I will walk again.”

What was the eunuch telling him? That he was a hopping corpse? Zhu stepped back, terror overwhelming his joy at discovering Lotus Lily’s tutor alive. Tao raised his hand as Zhu unsheathed his sabre.

“Rest easy, young soldier. You are not food for an undead teacher.” Tao pointed to the sword. “Even if you were, you could not kill me with that.”

Zhu swallowed, staring suspiciously at Tao’s perfect features and re-sheathed his sabre. Beneath the eunuch’s burial robes, was there a black hole where the Mongol arrow had entered his chest? “I thought the hopping corpse was a myth, and yet your flesh is not rotting and green, nor are you stiff with the rigor mortis. And how have you managed to remain in this state all this time if you do not feast on the blood of the living?”

Tao laughed. “Myths indeed. More like wholesale inventions.” He swung his legs to the side of the stone slab, but did not rise. “I was raised with the Taoist monks. Even before this—” He glanced down at his half-living body. “Even before this life change, I fed exclusively on vegetables and grains. When Esen thought fit to end my life, I became what you see now and I learned to live off the life essence of plants. I would never harm a living creature, but neither do I wish to remain in this state. At nightfall, I must feed. When I take their life force, the plants wither and die.”