Red Phoenix

CHAPTER THIRTY

A week before school started, John called me into his study. ‘School won’t start on time unless I do something,’ he said. ‘Typhoon.’

‘This late in the year? We’ve already had a monsoon.’ I dropped my voice. ‘Is it a natural typhoon?’

He nodded. ‘It happens sometimes. The wind changes. The circulation can happen over the sea, even after a monsoon. A very big typhoon will form east of the Philippines, and it will be a direct hit. The eye will pass right over us on the morning of the first day of school.’ His eyes turned inwards as he concentrated. He could see the weather patterns. ‘Really big one.’ He snapped back and shrugged. ‘I’ll make it miss us so that Simone can start school on time.’

I shot to my feet with fury. ‘Don’t you dare! Try anything like that and you will be in serious trouble. Leo!’ I yelled without moving.

Leo skidded down the hallway and charged in. ‘What? What?’ He saw John sitting at the desk, arms crossed and relaxed. He saw me standing on the other side of the desk, leaning on it with one hand, furious. ‘What?’

‘This…’ I hesitated, then, with emphasis on the insult, ‘Turtle…’

John made a soft sound of amusement.

‘…wants to divert a super typhoon coming this way, purely because it’ll hit us on his daughter’s first day of school.’ I threw myself back from the desk and stood rigid, glaring at John.

Leo glanced at me. Then his expression darkened. He folded his arms over his chest and glowered at John. I did the same.

‘Over our dead bodies,’ I growled. ‘You do any weather manipulation at all in the next three weeks and your shell will be in serious trouble.’

‘What she said,’ Leo rasped.

John appeared ready to argue with us for a moment. Then he grinned broadly and spread his hands, palm up, over the table.

Both Leo and I sagged with relief.

‘I think I must be the luckiest old Turtle in the whole wide world,’ John said, his hands still out.

‘You’re definitely the stupidest,’ Leo growled quietly, then stalked out, shaking his head.

I pointed at Leo’s enormous receding back. ‘What he said.’

I warned Ah Yat to buy extra food at the market. If the typhoon was a direct hit, then we could be stuck at home for at least a whole day; but it would quickly dissipate once it hit the land. The storm would be intense on the coast, and then clear as it moved inland.

School was supposed to start the first Tuesday of September. On the Friday before, the Number One standby signal was hoisted by the Hong Kong Observatory. The symbol appeared in the corner of the television screen when Simone watched her children’s shows.

On Sunday afternoon, the Number Three signal was raised. This was the strong wind warning. I watched the typhoon coming towards us on the international weather bureau websites. It was huge. It cut a swathe of destruction across the Philippines. Six people in the northern Philippines were killed in the flooding.

The sky grew very overcast. The clouds came down, thick and grey and low. They swept across the sky like a heavy roiling soup, moving unnaturally fast. The weather made John irritable. He locked his feelings down tight. Hong Kong’s spectacular electric storms made him cheerful to the point of euphoria; his eyes would go very bright and hard. But he didn’t enjoy the weather patterns around typhoons at all.

I suddenly realised that in the previous three years there had been unusually few typhoons that approached the Territory close enough to warrant the raising of a Number Eight signal. There had even been comments made on television about the low number of typhoon hits. He must have been moving them away because he didn’t like them.

The Number Eight was raised on Monday afternoon. Ah Yat and I went through the apartment and put a large cross of tape across every window. If something blew into the window and broke it, the tape would stop glass shards from flying in and hurting us. John had put safety glass in all the windows anyway, but they could still break.

When a Number Eight gale force signal was raised, everybody except vital services stayed at home. Schools, shops and offices closed. As the typhoon approached, bulletins appeared on television informing the people of Hong Kong which buses, trains and ferries were still running.

The noise woke me at about three o’clock Tuesday morning. It was like a rushing freight train directly outside the window. The building swayed gently in the wind.

I hopped out of bed and quickly checked my window. It wasn’t leaking, which was unusual. The flat I had shared with Louise in Sha Tin had leaked during typhoons and water damage was a constant part of life. During one particularly bad typhoon we’d stuffed every single towel we owned, and all of our clothes as well, around the edges of the windows to soak up the water gushing in, and had spent the afternoon wringing out the towels into buckets.

I peered out the window. The rain blew sideways. Central District below me was a horizontal blur of lights. The roar of the wind was furious outside the window. No chance of going back to sleep with that, particularly with the building swaying just enough to make me feel seasick as I lay in bed.

I pulled on some clothes and slipped through the door into Simone’s room. She could sleep through anything; her little face was angelic in the soft glow of her night light. I quietly checked her window. Not leaking either.

I went into the unlit living room. John and Leo were there already, standing at one of the windows in the faint glow of the city lights, watching the typhoon.

I moved to stand in front of Leo. He threw his massive arm over my shoulder and I leaned back into him. He was like a black boulder behind me, solid and unmoving.

‘You are my rock,’ I said quietly. ‘I can always rely on you.’

He squeezed me gently but didn’t say anything. The building directly below us on the hill had lights on the roof, illuminating the roof garden. The rain hit the building horizontally and then flew directly up in the wind. The roar was even louder on this side of the apartment.

John stood silently on the other side of Leo, wearing his black pyjama pants with an old black T-shirt over the top. He had his arms folded in front of him; dark, sullen and dour.

I leaned around Leo to speak to John. ‘How far away is the eye?’

He shifted slightly, but didn’t uncross his arms. ‘About three hours away. Still not the worst.’

I turned back to the window. ‘Any windows leaking?’

John went still and concentrated. ‘No.’ He shifted slightly again. ‘I had the windows resealed after the last one. They did a good job.’

I leaned back into the silent Leo. ‘Is it really that unpleasant?’

John’s voice was very soft and mild. ‘Yes.’ He uncrossed his arms and put his hands on his hips. ‘Like a strong current. Pulling. All directions at once. Very unpleasant.’

‘You used to move them all away, didn’t you?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘If Michelle or me caught him at it, his shell would be in serious trouble,’ Leo said, his voice rumbling through my back.

‘I have made some very serious mistakes in my life, and employing you was one of the biggest,’ John said mildly, still looking out the window.

‘Michelle employed me. You never did,’ Leo said. ‘By the time she was gone I wasn’t an employee any more, anyway.’

John crossed his arms over his chest again. ‘Employing Emma was absolutely the biggest mistake.’

‘Coming to work for you was a huge mistake for me too,’ I said.

‘And here we are,’ Leo lisped softly.

Simone appeared in the doorway, and stopped when she saw us. The three of us turned to look at her. She hesitated. She didn’t know which of us to go to. She loved us all.

Nobody needed to say anything.

The storm went quiet as the eye went over. Michael made a fourth leg and we played mah jong in the living room. Over the period of an hour, the roaring slowed, and then stopped. The wind didn’t stop completely, but it was greatly reduced. The clouds thinned, but they were still there. The rain eased. John visibly relaxed.

‘Eye. Interesting. Double-walled eye,’ John said. He grabbed the tile I had just discarded and banged it hard on the table. ‘Seung.’

‘Damn,’ Leo said.

‘You’re silly to go for bamboo when Mr Chen is, Leo,’ I said. ‘It’s like it’s blown itself out on the coast. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that it had passed over and finished.’

John nodded as he sorted his tiles. ‘This will be interesting to watch. In about half an hour, the eye will pass over and the wind will pick up to the fierceness it was before. The change will be dramatic.’

‘You think people will be stupid enough to go out?’ Leo said.

John glanced sideways at him without smiling. ‘We have a saying on the Celestial: if there’s a stupid thing that can be done, then there’s always a human who’s stupid enough to do it. Where’s Simone?’

‘Last time I checked on her, she was in her room playing,’ I said. ‘She’s fine.’

‘When the eye passes over and the wind picks up, I will go into the training room for a while and I do not wish to be disturbed,’ John said quietly. ‘It will be very unpleasant for me when the eye passes over. It will go from calm to furious very quickly. I won’t be able to concentrate on anything.’

‘What did you do before?’ I said softly, wondering if maybe we should have let him move this typhoon after all.

‘Go to the Mountain,’ he said. Michael listened but didn’t say a word.

‘Here it comes,’ John said a short while later. ‘Give me about an hour. Now that it’s hit land it will dissipate quickly. The wind will only stay strong for two or three more hours.’ His face went strange. ‘Stay away from me. Don’t come in.’

He gracefully hoisted himself to his feet and strode out. Leo and I shared a look.

‘I agree,’ Leo said. ‘Next time we let him move it.’

‘You can communicate telepathically, Emma?’ Michael said with wonder.

I shook my head. ‘With Leo, I don’t need to.’ Leo and I shared a smile.

There was a piercing, high-pitched scream from the hallway that went on forever. Simone.

All three of us threw ourselves up and rushed towards the sound. Both Leo and I knocked our chairs over.

John was hunched inside the door of the training room. Simone curled up against the back wall of the room, clutching her little sword, screaming. She took a huge breath and screamed again.

I squeezed past John, careful not to touch him, and went into the training room. Simone’s eyes widened and she went silent. She scurried away from me.

‘It’s all right, Simone, it’s us. What are you frightened of?’ I tried to approach her, but she kept moving away. ‘Are there any demons nearby?’

Simone raised her little sword in front of her. ‘Stay away from me!’ She cast around frantically and saw Leo behind me. She dropped her sword, ran a huge detour around me, and threw herself into Leo’s arms. ‘Get them away, Leo, get them away from me.’

‘Get who away, sweetheart? What’s the matter?’ Leo lifted her and put her on his hip. ‘There’s nothing here, it’s just us.’

Simone buried her face into his chest. ‘Get me away. Out. Please, Leo, away.’

Leo carried her out of the training room. John moved further into the room to let them through. Michael stood behind John, looking as confused as I felt.

‘What was all that about?’ I said.

‘Talk about it later.’ John’s eyes turned inwards and unseeing and his voice became urgent. ‘For now, out. Everybody. Leave me.’ He pointed towards the door and I quickly went out, taking Michael and shutting the door behind me.

‘What happened?’ Michael said, baffled.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I said, just as bewildered. ‘Hopefully Lord Xuan will tell us later.’

‘I thought it would be cool to be able to control the weather,’ Michael said. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Sometimes I think us ordinary humans have it easy,’ I said. ‘You want me to include you in the “us”?’

‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no,’ Michael said good-naturedly as we went to find Simone and Leo. ‘I’ve tried doing things with metal, like he said. Nothing.’

‘Don’t try to rush it. If it comes, it comes.’ We were at the door to Simone’s room; she was clearly audible, sobbing inside. ‘Michael, could you put the tiles away for me? I think maybe I should talk to Simone alone.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Will you need me after that?’

‘You can go and play after that, if the net connection is still up.’

‘Thanks,’ he said and turned back to the living room.

I opened the door to Simone’s room and went in. Leo sat on Simone’s little pink bedcover. Simone sat in his lap facing him, her head turned to one side on his chest, her eyes wide and glittering. He wrapped his arms protectively around her.

‘Are you okay now, Simone?’ I said gently. ‘What happened? What did you see?’

Simone wriggled around to face me and smiled. She hopped out of Leo’s lap and came to me, taking both of my hands in hers. ‘Where were you, Emma? Why didn’t you come?’

‘I came straight here from the training room. Why were you frightened?’

‘You weren’t in the training room, Emma, there were monsters there.’

‘Demons?’ I said quietly. ‘You know demons can’t get in here. Your dad had the seals redone not long ago by a Grand Master.’

‘Not demons. Monsters.’

‘What’s the difference?’

Simone went quiet, eyes wide. ‘They were horrible.’

‘I don’t know either, Emma,’ Leo said softly from the bed.

I sat cross-legged on the carpet and pulled Simone onto my knee, sideways to me so that I could talk to her. ‘Okay,’ I said firmly. ‘There were horrible monsters in the training room. Is that right?’

Simone nodded, eyes still wide.

‘You didn’t see us when we came in.’

She shook her head. She gestured towards Leo. ‘I saw Leo.’

‘Your dad was at the doorway, Simone. He went in there to meditate.’

‘My daddy wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘It was a monster.’

Leo came and sat cross-legged on the carpet with us. ‘Tell us what happened, Simone, right from the start. What were you doing in there anyway?’

‘I was bored. You were playing. So I went to do a sword kata.’

‘Is your dad letting you do that by yourself already?’ I said quickly. ‘I thought you weren’t ready.’

Simone dropped her head and didn’t say anything.

‘You’re not in trouble, sweetheart, we just need to sort this out,’ I said, squeezing her around her waist. ‘So you went in there to do a sword set. Then what happened?’

‘The door opened and there was a monster there.’ I suddenly understood. ‘Was it big and black and like a huge lizard with a strange body?’ Leo glanced sharply at me.

Simone nodded, and grinned widely. ‘You saw it too!’

‘Was it a big black turtle, Simone?’ I said.

Her eyes went wide again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

I dropped my voice. ‘Do you think it’s possible that you saw your daddy the way he really is?’

‘My daddy is not a monster, Emma.’

‘He is a turtle, though, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I think that’s what you saw.’

‘But what about the other one?’ she said.

‘What other one?’ Leo said.

‘After the…turtle opened the door, I screamed. And another monster came in.’ Simone gestured towards Leo. ‘And then you came in, Leo, and I went to you.’

‘What about me?’ I said. ‘I came in before Leo did.’

She shook her little head. ‘No, Emma, you weren’t there.’ She explained patiently. ‘The door opened. There was a big black turtle monster. Then a big black snake monster pushed past it and came towards me. It stopped and said something. Then Leo came in. I went around the snake monster and ran to Leo.’

The bottom fell out of my stomach. ‘Did the snake monster say something like “Don’t worry, it’s only us”?’

She nodded. ‘But I wasn’t listening very well, Emma. I was really scared.’

My voice sounded dead. ‘That was me.’

Leo studied me appraisingly. Then he smiled gently. ‘All beyond me, Emma. Wait till Mr Chen comes out; he’ll probably have some perfectly normal supernatural explanation for it.’

‘For a moment I thought you were about to say “scientific explanation”,’ I said.

‘I’ve given up hoping that things will make sense around this place,’ Leo said. ‘You survive from day to day in this crazy house.’ He pulled himself to his feet. ‘Listen,’ he said from somewhere near the ceiling. ‘Wind’s started again.’

‘Daddy hates it,’ Simone said. ‘He won’t say, but it really hurts him.’

‘Leo, could you mind Simone for me for a moment?’ I popped Simone off my knee and guided her towards Leo. ‘There’s something I need to do.’

‘Sure,’ Leo said.

‘Okay now, Simone?’ I said kindly.

‘I’m okay, Emma,’ Simone said. ‘You’re probably right. The turtle was probably just Daddy, and the snake was probably just you.’

Leo stiffened and glanced down at me.

My stomach fell out again. I rose. ‘Mind her, Leo,’ I said, my voice strained. Leo nodded, but he watched me, his face expressionless.

I quietly went through the door to my room. I sat on my bed. I ran my hands through my hair. ‘So I’m a snake, am I,’ I said. There was no reply.

I banged the ring on the end of the bed and the stone squawked. ‘I was asleep!’

‘Yeah, sure you were,’ I said, not believing it for a minute. ‘Am I a snake? And if you tell me I’m a perfectly normal human being, you’ll do the grand tour of Hong Kong’s shiny new sewerage system.’

‘Lord Xuan has been waiting for this to happen. The child opened her Inner Eye. She has done it a good year before it was expected. She is extraordinarily talented, even for a half Shen. She brought it about by doing the sword kata alone.’

‘And?’

‘She saw those around her with a heightened vision. She saw her father’s true essence.’

‘She saw me as a snake, stone.’

‘Perhaps she saw your true essence as well,’ it said.

‘So I’m a snake? I asked you that a moment ago, and you still haven’t answered me.’

‘That’s because you don’t want to hear the answer. And I don’t want the grand tour, thank you.’

‘Okay, let’s try this from a different direction. Would it be possible to look at a perfectly normal human being, see their essence, and see it as a snake?’

‘Yes, of course,’ the stone said. ‘Quite possible. Many people have a very strong animal nature. Like a totem. I’m surprised she didn’t see Leo as a black lion, and Michael as a gold tiger.’

‘About time you made some sense. So I have a very strong snake essence. Like a snake totem. Funny, I don’t feel very…’ I searched for the word, ‘…snaky.’

‘You are very cold-blooded,’ the stone said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed reluctantly.

‘You love a turtle. A reptile,’ the stone continued. ‘You are a perfect match for each other.’

‘Yes.’ I could see where this was going.

‘You are strong and fast and can be completely merciless when your loved ones are threatened.’

‘I yield,’ I said softly. ‘I see your point.’

‘What was your pet in Australia?’

‘Now you’re just rubbing it in.’

‘Have I escaped the Hong Kong tour?’ the stone said.

‘Tell me when Lord Xuan will emerge and I may think about it,’ I said.

‘Give him some time. He is in great pain,’ the stone said. ‘Do not let the storms hit him directly in future, please, my Lady. He is too proud to tell you, but he is suffering greatly. It built up gradually before the eye hit and he could deal with it. But after the eye, it all hit him at the same time and it was excruciating for him. It will take him more energy to withdraw from the tumult than it would have taken for him to move the typhoon in the first place. But he was too proud to admit that he was suffering so horribly.’

‘Thank you, stone, you can be really valuable when you want to be. He was just looking for an excuse when he said he’d move it for school, and I should have seen that.’

‘You are very wise, Lady Emma, and that is another aspect of your serpent nature,’ the stone said. ‘Ask Lord Xuan about it. The nature of serpents. There is a great deal of depth to them. Many very positive aspects. Wisdom, healing, great strength and power. Dragons are serpents too, my Lady. To be a serpent is not necessarily a bad thing. Remember that your own true love is half Serpent himself.’

‘Now you are being extremely wise. Thanks. I feel a million times better.’

The stone shot the question quickly at me. ‘Even if you were a serpent, could you ever hurt Simone, or Leo, or John?’

‘Never,’ I said firmly. ‘And that’s all that matters.’

‘See? Wise. Ah Yat has made some breakfast. Go and eat, and then I suggest you take a nap while you wait for the other reptile to return. You were up awfully early this morning, and you are very tired.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I said with a smile.