Thirteen Orphans (40 page)
“Another reason,” Des went on, “that I suspect they’re staying closer to us, is that they would actually have more trouble blending into the Chinese community than elsewhere.”
“Because,” Nissa said, “their dialect of Chinese is strange. I bet their mannerisms are, too.”
“Their clothing certainly was,” Brenda added, “although maybe those were their working clothes, because they were doing magical stuff. They could have gone to a mall and gotten jeans or whatever.”
Riprap barred his teeth in a smile that wasn’t at all friendly. “And that raises the really interesting question of money. Can they make it magically, like fairy gold? Would their money last any better? In just about every fairy tale I remember, magical money turns back to leaves or dust.”
“There’s hell money,” Des said. “Paper money that’s burned at funerals, so the dead will not be poor. I wonder if what is burnt goes to the Lands?”
“I doubt it,” Pearl said crisply. “If it did, then the people of the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice would not only be hip-deep in paper currency, they would also have cars, computers, houses, stereo systems, cameras. I think you’re letting your imagination go wild.”
Des nodded, but didn’t look in the least apologetic.
Riprap went back to his earlier point. “Money. Unless they’re doing everything magically, the Dragon and the Snake will need some form of money. If they are doing everything magically, then isn’t there some way you two can follow the signature? The first lesson Des gave me and Brenda was to ward ourselves before we worked on making those bracelets because things would come sniffing around. If the Snake and the Dragon are using magic for shelter, food, transportation, even clothing, then they’re going to have left a magical signature—possibly a big one.”
Pearl looked both interested and dubious. “There are ways of covering one’s trail.”
Des shook his head. “Most of those leave a mark of their own. It’s like wiping out a physical trail with a pine branch. There’s still the trail the branch left. Or wiping away fingerprints. The absence of prints is a sign all its own.”
“You have always been more interested in theoretical magics than I,” Pearl admitted. “I wish we had our Dragon. Shen Kung would be very useful now.”
“Or the Monkey,” Des said, “or the Ram. Both of those love trickery, but we lost them long ago.”
Listening to them, Brenda was reminded of an earlier conversation.
“Back in Santa Fe,” she said, “we talked about the possibility that our enemy could be one of us. Remember? I suspected the Dragon.”
Everyone nodded, and Brenda went on.
“Well, we now know more about our enemies, and we also know that they can influence those whose memories they have taken. What if they’re using their money, or their credit cards?
Nissa grinned. “Brilliant! I hate to say this, Brenda, but your dad is an obvious choice. Is there any way you can get your mom to check his credit records? We might find charges for hotels or restaurants.”
Brenda felt nervous about the very idea, but Nissa was right. Dad was an obvious target. He traveled so much that charges from weird places could show on his bill and the credit card companies wouldn’t ask questions.
“I can ask about his cards,” she said, “both business and personal. I can make some sort of excuse to Mom.”
Pearl’s expression mingled both interest and concern. “I can probably manage to get a few of the others to check their past charges and withdrawals. Given all the concern about identity theft and such, I’m sure I can come up with an excuse.”
“We can split the list,” Des said. “I do business with several of the Twelve. The problem is, what if one or more of them is a willing ally of our enemies? We can’t overlook that.”
“But we can’t not check,” Riprap argued. “Making them wonder if we’re onto them might work for the good. They might get nervous, slip up, say something about something they shouldn’t know anything about.”
“I agree we need to check,” Pearl said, “but who of the Twelve would turn traitor to the rest of us? What could the Snake and the Dragon offer? It’s not like any of us think of that place as ‘home’ and want to return.”
“Pearl, I know how you feel,” Des said. “It’s easy for Brenda and Riprap to talk about traitors in our own ranks. They don’t know the people involved. However, I also agree that we can’t overlook any means of finding out where our enemies might be based. Tracking the Snake and the Dragon to their lair must be our first priority.”
Pearl cleared her throat. “When you put it that way, I must agree. However, I would like to keep all our options open and continue with efforts to lure the Snake.”
No one protested, and Brenda felt her heart start racing. When Des and Pearl had presented their plan, implicit in it was that the Snake would be much more likely to come after Foster if she thought she was in danger of losing him to another woman. Brenda—who had already thwarted the Snake—was the obvious candidate for the role of romantic rival.
“Brenda?” Pearl said, turning to her.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever taken Foster walking in the Rosicrucian Museum’s gardens?”
Pearl could feel that the mood within her household had changed. Even though similar tasks were being done, the sense of waiting, of preparing, had vanished.
In the upstairs “schoolroom,” Riprap, Nissa, and Brenda still crafted their amulet bracelets and listened to Des’s lectures, but this was no longer a theoretical exercise.
Brenda was crafting replacements for the Dragon’s Tails and other spells that had kept her alive. Riprap was making not only pieces tailored to his personal needs, but more generic items that might be used by Foster. Nissa insisted that Lani needed amulets of her own. Since the mah-jong tiles the adults wore were too long to stay around Lani’s tiny arms—even if pushed up over the elbow—Nissa had made much smaller molds and was carefully etching child-sized bracelets.
Pearl had practiced with Treaty just about every day of her life, but her fencing practice now held a new intensity. Brenda and Riprap demanded lessons, but Pearl forestalled them.
“Right now, you are better off with what Des is teaching you. Swordplay takes years to learn. You would be more of a danger to yourself than to anyone else. Do you have skill with another weapon?”
Riprap shrugged. “Sure. When I was in the army I learned to use firearms and fight hand-to-hand, but sword was not in the curriculum.”
Brenda shook her head. “Nothing, unless a volleyball or soccer ball counts. But, Pearl, I didn’t want to learn to use the sword to hurt anyone. I wanted to be able to defend myself if the Snake came at me with that knife of hers.”
“Stick to spells,” Pearl said. “They’ll do a better job. It’s only in the movies that a panicked novice pulls off brilliant parries against an expert.”
“Pearl’s right,” Riprap said. “At this point, we might get mentally tangled in too many options.”
Brenda didn’t argue, but later, as Pearl was walking through the hallway from her office toward the kitchen, Brenda’s voice came drifting from the upstairs classroom, asking Des if he could teach her a defensive spell stronger than the Dragon’s Tail.
“The Snake’s going to be ready for that one,” Brenda said, “and probably will have something in hand to counter it. As she kept reminding me, her father’s the Dragon.”
“Then you’re going to need spells that aren’t based on dragons,” came Des’s reply. Although Pearl couldn’t see him, she could imagine his long fingers tugging at his beard. “Perhaps we should avoid winds as well, since dragons can be winds, but that may limit our options too severely.”
Pearl heard pages turning, Brenda’s voice. “Winds and dragons are the two honors suits. Are there any powerful spells that don’t use them?”
“Plenty,” Des assured her. “Well, at least a few. I think you have made a good suggestion, but some of the ones I am considering cannot be worked by a beginner. I’ll need to do them myself, or put Pearl to work.”
“Seems like our ancestors could have arrived at a system with a little more variety,” Brenda said. She sounded miffed, and Pearl didn’t blame her.
“There is plenty of variety,” Des said. “A skilled adept can work completely outside of the system represented by the mah-jong tiles.”
“Like those sheets of paper that keep getting thrown at us?” Brenda asked.
“Precisely, but I don’t think you’re ready for those until your calligraphy is much better.”
Pearl could hear the beginning of a lecture on the refinements of Chinese ideograms, and continued on toward the kitchen. In her imagination, Des’s voice turned into her father’s, lecturing her as she sat practicing her own calligraphy lessons.
“A stray line may change the meaning, girl! You write English so prettily. Your teachers always tell your mother this when she goes to the school. In English, a line can change an O into a Q, and F into an E. Why are you so stupid that you cannot see the same would be true in Chinese—the same and more so, because an ideogram is not just a sound, but an entire word.”
Why?
Pearl answered in thought as she never would never have dared in person.
Because I was already suspecting that you had little use for me, that you were training me because you had no choice.
Pearl answered in thought as she never would never have dared in person.
Because I was already suspecting that you had little use for me, that you were training me because you had no choice.
She distracted herself by pouring cold tea over ice. Her father had found that disgusting. Tea was meant to be drunk hot, not cold, certainly not diluted. As Pearl stood, listening to the ice cubes crack and settle, the door from outside opened. Foster came in, Lani clinging to his hand and chattering something about grapes, penguins, and very small rocks.
Foster gave Pearl a nod that was almost a short bow, his lips curving in a smile that was more friendly than it had been. Pearl smiled in reply, knowing the expression was stiff, but unable to relax. Except for that smile, Foster looked very much like pictures she had seen of her father when he was young.
A thought that had haunted the fringes of Pearl’s mind since she had first seen Foster returned in that instant.
He looks like my father … . Are we kin then, perhaps close kin? My father was very young when he became the Tiger and was exiled soon thereafter, but he was not so young that he couldn’t have fathered children. Foster could be his grandson or great-grandson, perhaps only a great-nephew or cousin. Even so, that would make him my nephew, great-nephew, cousin?
She shivered slightly, feeling the touch of a Tiger’s paw passing over her grave.
Beneath the quiet yet increasingly intense activity of Pearl’s household, Brenda was aware of another rumbling—this one within her own soul. She was beginning to suspect that she had fallen in love with Foster.
Oh, she’d been attracted to him from the first time she’d seen him—a figure in ornate green robes, incongruous against the dull grey metal and concrete of that LoDo parking garage. This was something else, a very fragile flower growing out of a soil made from little things Foster had done, not all—not even most—having to do with how he treated her.
This was Foster, sipping his first cup of black coffee, his face twisting in lines of dismay that started Lani hooting with laughter. This was Foster, features serene as he read one of the Chinese-language books from Pearl’s library. This was Foster, washing dishes with a soapy rag, something in his motions saying that although he’d had to be shown how the liquid soap dispenser worked, these were far from the first dishes he had washed.
This was Foster, stretched out on his stomach on the bricks of the back patio, watching the ants carry off crumbs from his sandwich. This was Foster, playing Yahtzee with Riprap, pounding the table in triumph as he rolled the double sixes he needed to complete five of a kind.
This was Foster, walking with her through the Rosicrucian gardens, enchanted equally by the statues of pharaohs and hybrid tea roses. This was Foster, taking her hand to help her jump a puddle after a sudden rain shower. This was Foster, walking away politely, unquestioningly every time Pearl or Des made clear that something must be discussed that he should not hear. There was honor in every line of that straight back, honor and loneliness, loneliness that shadowed his dark eyes, even when they filled with laughter.
Foster loved hearing stories of Brenda’s life before this insane summer. The way he prompted her for anecdotes about her mother and brothers, Brenda knew that Foster was looking for some echo in his own soul that there was someone, somewhere to whom he belonged. In the Rosicrucian Museum they had looked at some terra-cotta statuettes, apparently solid, but one or two broken ones showing that they were actually hollow. Foster stared at one for a long time, and Brenda had heard him mutter in Chinese—a language he still occasionally forgot she understood—“I am like them, the shape of a man without, empty within.”
So Brenda treasured Foster’s smiles, the times she could make him laugh, the patience that echoed in his every motion as he learned new tasks. She hoped that the smiles, the shared laughter, the little triumphs might serve to fill his hollowness with new memories.
Their outings two, three, more times a day, alone or accompanied, were the rain that nourished the flower of Brenda’s love for Foster. Mostly those outings were aimless walks where they looked at things, or practiced his English, or her Chinese. Brenda had found she could separate her brain from the spell, and commit words and phrases to her true memory. Foster enjoyed teaching her—or Nissa or Riprap. His command of the language was one of the few things that had not been taken from him by the spell that had robbed him of his memory.
I wonder how young Foster was when he became the Tiger
—
or began the training that would make him the Tiger. He must have been a child.
—
or began the training that would make him the Tiger. He must have been a child.
They went other places together. Sometimes Brenda borrowed a car and drove them to the grocery store or to one of the shopping malls. Contrary to common depictions of the amnesiac or the transported yokel, Foster did not gape at the strangeness of modern American life. To him everything was equally strange, and television had prepared him to accept the world outside the walls of Pearl’s house as brightly colored, noisy, and always a little artificial.
Brenda felt safer when they were shopping than when they were on one of their walks. No one expected the Snake to make her play for Foster when there were other people around. Brenda had accepted this, without question, but Riprap, who was always asking questions, asked Des during one of their lessons if they weren’t putting what Riprap had termed “civilians” at risk by letting Foster go out in public.
Des laughed, not mockingly, just as one does who realizes he’s forgotten to pass on some basic piece of information.
“I think I’ve mentioned that the Thirteen Orphans are not the only people in the world who can do magic?”
Riprap shrugged. “You have, but I haven’t much thought about it. Until I met you folks, I didn’t know that anyone really could work magic.”
Des turned serious. “Almost every culture has its traditions, but some are stronger than others. These days there is one constant in each tradition, however. You might call it a rule. ‘Don’t get caught.’”
“Why?” Brenda and Nissa asked simultaneously, then giggled.
“Think about it,” Des said. “Think about the response most people would give to magic. It’s not that long ago that people burned witches in this country. There’s a veneer of tolerance now, but the fact is the only reason that psychics and fortune tellers and New Age witches are permitted to live and let live is no one really believes they can do anything. That dam of disbelief is all of our best protection. If someone starts acting wild, enforcers, I guess you’d call them, start by warning and finish by, well, finishing.”
Nissa and Riprap asked a lot of questions, but other than gathering that practitioners of any functional magical tradition were pretty rare, Brenda didn’t dwell on too many of the details. It was enough to know that as long as they didn’t do anything too outrageous, they’d be left to go about their business.
It also gave yet another reason why the Snake and the Dragon had been as subtle as they had been. Des figured they knew about the “Don’t get caught” rule.
But none of this, fascinating as it was, intellectually, changed how Brenda felt, was starting to feel, no,
felt
about Foster. She loved him, and she thought he might be coming to care about her, too.
felt
about Foster. She loved him, and she thought he might be coming to care about her, too.
And so she was very vulnerable when near the end of June the Snake made her move.
Brenda and Foster had driven to a park that was nowhere in particular, one of those urban open spaces with paths enough for walking. They’d discovered this one completely by accident when running an errand for Des. The car’s front tire had gone flat, and they’d pulled into the park’s small lot to fix it.
It had seemed a pleasant place, with oversized flowerpots spilling multicolored petunias down their sides, and winding paths that went nowhere in particular. There was a children’s play area, and a neatly mowed field just perfect for throwing something for a dog to chase. On weekends the park was pretty busy, but midday in the middle of the week, even in summer, it was usually fairly empty.
Brenda and Foster were sitting on a couple of swings, resting after a fierce competition as to who could get higher—a competition that had been decided as a draw when the chains from which the seats were suspended had started bucking in protest at the demands being put on them.
Brenda was about to suggest that they go across the street to a little strip mall where there was an ice cream shop that made—so she’d discovered on an earlier visit—really good milkshakes. She was trying to figure out whether she had enough pocket money to cover them both, or if she should hit an ATM first, when she saw the Snake sauntering across the mowed field in their direction.
The Snake wasn’t dressed at all like the last time Brenda had seen her. Her long, midnight-black hair was loose, spilling in a silken cascade over her shoulders, down past the middle of her back. Gone were the ornate robes, gone the embroidery. Instead, the Snake wore a pair of very low-waisted, very short shorts, and a middie top that displayed the up-thrusting curves of her breasts and the indented curve of her waist to equal advantage. The only emblems of her identity were a snake tattooed around her belly button, and another one tattooed around her right ankle. Neither ornament was large, but the sinuous outline was so exquisitely worked that Brenda had no doubt what the lines depicted, even from a distance.
Brenda had dressed with some care for her outing with Foster, figuring that even if he did sometimes glimpse her frumping around Pearl’s house in her bathrobe or in the less than elegant T-shirt and jeans she wore to spare her better clothes from ink stains when practicing calligraphy, it didn’t hurt to remind him she was a girl. The tank top she’d picked out was in a ribbed knit that showed off what breasts she had to good advantage. Her shorts were a practical khaki, but the tank top was a shade of lavender that made the golden-brown of her skin glow. Brenda had put on lavender jade teardrop earrings, and even a touch of perfume—in addition to, of course, a selection of amulet bracelets.
Compared with the elegant sensuality coming across the lawn, Brenda felt gawky. It didn’t help that Foster’s attention immediately shifted to the newcomer, or that he kept staring. Brenda glanced over at him. Puzzlement had drawn a line between his brows, as if some memory had been touched. Somehow, the thought that memories of the Snake could penetrate where nothing else had managed to do so hurt Brenda even more.
The only good thing Brenda could see was that the Snake’s outfit was so skimpy there was no way she could even hide a slip of paper in it. Then the Snake moved her right hand, and Brenda saw what looked like an envelope concealed in the curve of her palm.
Quick as thought, Brenda slipped one of the amulet bracelets off her wrist and held it ready in her hand. It contained an expanded version of the Dragon’s Tail spell, worked so that it would shield both her and Foster—as long as he stayed within a few paces of her, something Brenda was not at all certain he was going to do.
Foster had risen to his feet, and was studying the Snake with such intensity that he didn’t seem to notice the swing seat gently tapping the back of his legs. Brenda also rose, wondering if anyone at Pearl’s was alert to the changed situation. She hoped so—or did she? Might it be better to know what the Snake wanted before the cavalry arrived?
The Snake practically caressed Foster with her gaze. “Hello, Fei Chao. Do you remember me?”
Brenda’s ears heard the Chinese, but her magically augmented vocabulary provided an automatic translation: Flying Claw. Was that Foster’s real name?
Foster looked confused. “I … I almost think I do. Are you a movie star? Did I perhaps see you on the television?”
Brenda saw a mixture of pleasure and disappointment flicker across the Snake’s face. No wonder. Even if Foster hadn’t known her right off, he’d still thought she was a movie star.
“Foster,” the Snake said softly. “That’s what they call you, right? Foster. I want to talk to Brenda for a moment. Girl talk. Can you step back?”
Foster glanced at Brenda. Brenda shifted the bracelet in her hand. If Foster moved too far, she couldn’t protect him, but hearing what the Snake didn’t want him to hear might endanger them both.
Brenda nodded. “Go ahead. We won’t be long.”
Foster moved a few paces away, where he would be out of earshot, but not, Brenda noticed, so far that he had to abandon his intense scrutiny of the Snake.
The Snake’s gaze took a moment to shift back to Brenda, then the Snake said, “You’re right. We won’t be long. I know you probably sent some sort of alarm to your allies when you realized who I was. Despite this, I have made certain that we should have time enough for me to tell you something—to make you an offer. An offer between you and me, me and you.”
“An offer I can’t refuse?” Brenda said caustically. “Go on.”
“The Chinese are great bargainers,” the Snake said, “as you would know, if you were something other than a mongrel. Here is my offer, very plain and simple. An offer from me, to you. I want Foster and I want the crystal that holds his memory. I could take his body here and now, but without his memory, he might be of some use …”
Her smile was slow and lascivious. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips while Brenda burned with a mixture of anger and embarrassment.
“But,” the Snake went on, meeting Brenda’s gaze and holding it so that nothing in the universe seemed to exist but the two of them, “Flying Claw would not be himself, and I want him all—mind and body. If you bring both Foster and his memory to me, then in return I will give you the crystal holding your father’s memory. I will also give you an amulet holding the spell that would permit you to free Gaheris’s memory and return it to him.”
Brenda felt her jaw drop. She’d expected a fight. She’d expected threats. She’d never expected this. Her head felt light, and clear thought was difficult, but she managed to ask a coherent question.
“Your father refused to trade the crystals to Pearl to gain your safety. Why should he let you do this now?”
“This is not a bargain between your Tiger and my Dragon. You are not talking to my father. You are talking to the Snake.” There was bitterness in Honey Dream’s voice. “This is between me and you, you and me, remember? Perhaps I want Flying Claw more than my father wanted me.”
Brenda remembered the Dragon’s cool voice saying, “There can be other Snakes,” and understood that bitterness. She also noticed something interesting. The Snake was assuming that Brenda would not talk to the others about this. Perhaps her anger at her father blinded her to Brenda’s different position. Considering this, Brenda pressed for details, wondering if her allies would show up, despite the Snake’s precautions.
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