Hell to Heaven (14 page)

Gold nodded.

‘And you worry about her? You’ve been human way too long,’ the stone said.

‘Her great-grandmother was one of my wives at the tea plantation,’ Gold said. ‘When the Celestial found out that I’d helped steal the tea, they only gave me five minutes to put my affairs in order before I was taken to the Celestial Plane. I never really had a chance to say goodbye to them and to make sure they were cared for. The demon servants took off, then the local warlord found out I’d gone. He kept my wives as his own, but when he found that one of them was pregnant he threw her out, leaving her with nothing.’

‘She did well to survive.’

‘She was forced to do things that I’m not proud to be responsible for. Now our descendant, Ah Fua, has disappeared.’

‘This is ridiculous. I bet she doesn’t even keep a tablet for you,’ the stone said. ‘Five generations is way past any accountability.’

‘Her mother does. She has an ancestral tablet for me at home, and one for my whole generation in the temple. Ah Fua doesn’t need to do it because her mother does everything, even sweeps the graves. They’re good, diligent children.’

‘Do they know?’

‘Of course not, Dad. Now, if we’ve finished with the interrogation, I’d like to find another stone who can help locate Ah Fua.’

‘I wonder if Zara would mind helping,’ I said. ‘She’s still in hiding in the armoury, it would keep her busy.’

Gold’s face lit up. ‘She says yes.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I’ll go arrange it.’

S
imone, Leo and I had dinner together that evening, just the three of us.

‘The appointment with the Archivist is tomorrow after school,’ I said to Simone. ‘Don’t forget. I’ll need you to take me.’

She gasped, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I’ve arranged to take some of my friends out on the boat after school tomorrow!’

‘You never asked me,’ I said.

She stuck her chin out at me. ‘I don’t need to. It’s my boat.’

‘Point taken; but I’m your guardian and you’re not an adult. Therefore I am legally required to be aware of where you are at all times.’

‘I’m going on the boat after school tomorrow,’ she said, stubborn.

‘I think an adult should go along with you, just in case,’ I said.

‘You have to go see the Archivist, and Leo’s…’ Simone hesitated, obviously not wanting to hurt Leo’s feelings. She changed what she was going to say. ‘Leo’s no good on the water.’

Leo grimaced but didn’t say anything.

‘How about Michael then? All the girls will think he’s the coolest thing ever.’

‘I told them girls only; they wanted to bring some boys but I said no, just all girls is more fun,’ Simone said. ‘They’ll get really annoyed if I bring Michael. I don’t need anyone along, Emma, really. The demons will look after us.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Leo said.

Simone’s expression softened. ‘You sure?’

He nodded with a false smile. ‘Sounds like fun. I want to meet your friends.’

Simone shrugged. ‘Okay. We can have fun pretending we’re related.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Leo said, his smile becoming more genuine.

‘I still need to get to the Archivist. Can you drop me there and be back in time for your cruise?’ I said.

‘How far is it?’ Simone said.

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I thought General Ma was going to tell you where it is.’

Simone unfocused, concentrating, then snapped back, obviously happier. ‘It’s fine, it’s just next to the Celestial Palace. He said you can take the stairs in Wan Chai and then someone can summon you a cloud to take you the rest of the way. I don’t need to take you.’

‘Can Ma do it?’

She concentrated again. ‘No, he’s busy. I’m asking around…what time is it tomorrow?’

‘Three.’

She nodded, still concentrating, then snapped back. ‘Your stone is supposed to have all of this info, Emma. It’s gone to sleep again, hasn’t it?’

The stone didn’t reply.

She shrugged. ‘Michael will wait for you at the Celestial Palace at about two forty-five and take you across on a cloud. Problem solved.’

It was quicker to walk the kilometre or so from the Academy to the Celestial Gateway than to drive. I walked along Hennessy Road, the air thick with the fumes of the passing traffic and burning my throat and eyes. At Southorn Playground—a concrete soccer pitch painted green, used by locals to sit and talk, and by young people to play basketball and soccer—I took an escalator up to the pedestrian overpass. The overpass straddled the busy streets of Wan Chai—Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road and then finally Gloucester Road, five lanes each way and packed with cars and red taxis. The overpass led into the mezzanine floor of Immigration Tower, which was full of Filipina domestic helpers suffering the tedious all-day wait for their work visas. Before I’d met John I’d often spent the whole day here myself, waiting for hours in the cockroach-infested halls rich with the ripe aroma of the over-used toilet facilities, being shuffled from counter to counter and interviewed by bored or aggressively irritated immigration officers. The waiting areas had recently been upgraded, but the bored bureaucrats behind the desks remained the same.

The walkway continued out of Immigration Tower and into Central Plaza One, an office tower that had once been Hong Kong’s tallest building. It was triangular in cross-section, and each wall had a bank of lifts to go to a different section of floors. All of the fittings were triangular to fit with the theme, including triangular gardens on the ground around the tower. I walked through Central Plaza, across another small
walkway and into the office tower connected to the Convention Centre. I passed a number of international convention attendees, their large identity cards strung around their necks. They were loudly discussing some sort of plastics manufacturing in American and French accents.

I turned right out of the Convention Centre complex and walked across another road to Great Eagle Centre, which sat right on the edge of the water. It and its twin tower, Harbour Centre, had massive advertising signs spanning their first to third floors—they were visible from all over the harbour and featured in any night-time Hong Kong postcard scene. I could see the Star Ferry pulling into the Wan Chai ferry terminal below me, and a few double-decker buses waited in the bus station. I took another overpass to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, then an escalator down to the ground. I’d walked more than a kilometre without touching the ground.

The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre had a large open area on its ground floor and a rectangular fountain with dragon-head spouts. Behind the fountain stood a replica of Beijing’s Nine Dragon Wall, the gate to the Celestial Palace.

I didn’t immediately approach the wall; instead, I went to the roadside, where two large bronze statues of qilin stood facing the traffic. Known as kirin in Japan, they were Celestial creatures with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, the horns of a deer and the feet of a goat; most interestingly to me, they were also covered in scales like a reptile. Westerners often referred to them as Chinese unicorns, and although their appearance was not very unicorn-like, their nature was similar. They were divine creatures of pure light, fleeting and rare, not even composed of yang or yin but
somehow transcendent of universal essence. It was regarded as a blessing to see a qilin. I never had, and knew that only very few of my Celestial acquaintances had ever seen one.

I turned away from the qilin and walked up to the Nine Dragon Wall. As I approached, the wall grew from two to four metres high and spread to twice as wide. The marble balustrade guarding the front of the wall descended into the ground and the sounds of human life around me ceased. The dragons came to life and writhed to the centre of the wall to greet me.

I reached into the large Sogo shopping bag that I’d brought with me and pulled out a range of local snacks. I waved one of the boxes. ‘Strawberry pocky is who?’

‘Me!’ said a gold dragon; it whipped its head out of the wall and took the box of pocky in its mouth. The lid opened and all of the iced biscuit sticks flew into its mouth at the same time. The box disappeared.

‘Damn, you’re greedy,’ I said.

‘Any more in there?’ the dragon said, eyeing the Sogo bag.

I raised a box of tiny hollow koala-shaped biscuits filled with icing. ‘Koalas?’

‘Chocolate?’ one of the purple dragons said.

‘Mine!’ another dragon said, and snatched the box out of my hand, then slithered to the end of the wall to enjoy the biscuits in peace.

I raised another couple of boxes. ‘I have strawberry and vanilla koalas here…’ They floated out of my hand to two more dragons. I checked inside the bag. ‘Chiu Chow iced mini biscuits…’

‘No
way
,‘ a blue dragon said, staring wide-eyed at me. ‘Really?’

‘Give them to him, he’s from Swatow,’ said a purple dragon through a mouthful of koala.

I passed the Chiu Chow biscuits to the blue dragon and checked the bag again. ‘I feel like Santa at Christmas. I have…barbecue beef, spicy pork, Portuguese egg tarts…’

Two of the dragons started to squabble over the barbecued meat slices before I’d even taken them out of the bag. The winner approached me triumphantly. ‘I’ll take the pork. He can have the beef.’

I passed him both bags of thinly sliced barbecue meat, then waved the cake box containing the egg tarts. ‘Anybody?’

The box floated out of my hand and down to a corner of the wall where two dragons were sitting together, their eyes wide with pleasure.

I looked inside the bag again. ‘More pocky—man pocky, the dark chocolate stuff; ordinary chocolate, strawberry, hazelnut, pineapple…’ I glanced up. ‘I don’t know how you can eat pineapple pocky, it’s
horrible.
I have pork floss, dried squid, preserved lemon ginger…’

‘Ginger!’ a gold dragon said, and I threw the paper-wrapped pieces to him. The pork floss—cooked and shredded pork—and the dried squid were claimed by a couple of dragons who were already enjoying their biscuits. The remaining boxes of pocky floated to the ground beneath the wall, opened and all the dragons shared the sticks.

‘I have a bag of White Rabbit candy for all of you to share as well,’ I said.

‘Did you check the date?’ a green dragon said suspiciously.

‘It’s definitely from after the powdered-milk scare, there won’t be any melamine in it,’ I said.

The dragon nodded. ‘Good.’ Its head dropped slightly. ‘Is that all?’

I pulled a large glossy cardboard box, elegantly decorated with printed flowers and wound with ribbon, from the bottom of the bag. ‘Cakes!’

Three of the dragons rushed to me and held the box floating in front of them. The ribbon unwound and the handles pulled apart, revealing a variety of small individual slices of cake. I’d chosen the most expensive ones: multi-layered chocolate; elegant sponge with mock cream and topped with glazed fruit; and the inevitable whipped hazelnut creation. The dragons shared a look then all opened their mouths into wide dragon grins.

The wall split apart in the middle, revealing a set of stairs that appeared to be made of cloud but were solid underfoot. The dragons relaxed, enjoying the food I’d brought them.

I reached into the very bottom of the bag. ‘Oh, and I have some salty plums.’

Two dragons rushed me. I ducked to avoid their blows as they had a brief scrap over the plums. Another dragon sneaked up, took the plums out of my hand, winked, and slithered to the end of the wall. I went back to the fountain, put the Sogo bag into a bin, and proceeded to the bottom of the stairs. I changed to serpent form and had slithered up the stairs before the two fighting dragons noticed that the plums had already been taken.

The sounds of the dragons ceased and silence engulfed me. Cherry trees lined the wall of the Celestial Palace, nearly as high as the wall itself and adorned with pale pink blossoms. The air was filled with their pink fluffy
petals, blowing in the Celestial breeze and covering the ground with a thick, soft blanket. The air was cold; it was early spring, the time when the cherry trees blossomed to give their promise of a warmer future.

I slithered through the piles of petals to the gate of the Celestial Palace, where Michael was waiting for me.

‘I thought you’d been held up,’ he said. ‘I was ready to call you and find out what had happened. You’re gonna be late, Emma.’

‘I was busy bribing the Nine Dragon Wall,’ I said.

He was suddenly more curious. ‘What do you bribe a wall with?’

‘Pocky.’

‘Ah, the great tool of corrupters everywhere. My mom used to bribe me with pocky when we first moved to Hong Kong.’ His face fell and he looked down. ‘I’ll get you that cloud.’

‘I miss her too, Michael,’ I said as a small cloud materialised above us and floated down to land on the cherry blossoms.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘I miss you as well,’ I said. ‘Take your time, but when you’re ready, I’d love you back with us, where you belong.’

He didn’t look at me as he stepped onto the cloud and gestured for me to join him. ‘I’m just not ready yet. After all that’s happened, I need to spend some time being a normal guy on the Earthly. I have a good job in a finance company in Wan Chai, did you know that? And I have an ordinary human girlfriend. Sometimes being ordinary can be the best thing in the world.’

‘I know exactly where you’re coming from, but let me know if you’re ever ready to return to us.’

‘I will. Is Simone meeting us there?’

‘She’s not coming, she’s having a boat party with her schoolfriends.’

Michael grimaced. ‘You should go along. I know what sort of stuff happens at those parties. I went to one of those schools before I dropped out and you employed me.’

‘Leo’s there.’

He visibly relaxed. ‘It’ll be all right then.’

The mist of the cloud surrounded a sturdy platform, and I curled up on it. ‘Simone’s one of the most powerful creatures in creation, Michael; a group of ordinary humans can’t hurt her.’

‘They can break her heart.’

I nodded my serpent head. ‘You have a point. But Leo is there to make sure they don’t.’

‘I just wish she had the brains to realise that Celestial High is where she should be!’ Michael said, frustrated. ‘She would learn so much there, and not just about her talents. She knows
nothing
about demons.’