Idols (30 page)
Has it been him, all along?
If so, then I really am here. This must be the right place.
Are you here, jade girl?
I look around, but all I see and hear and feel is the crush of the crowd.
If she’s here, I can’t feel her.
As the crowd carries us under the arched entrance to the palace walls, I hear distant chanting that I do not understand.
Bibi hands a few digs to a woman working at a table. In return, he grabs an armful of pale green blossoms, as round as closed bulbs, or fists. Tied to their stems are sticks of incense and bright yellow candles, one for each of us. “Lotus,” says Bibi. “We make an offering to the Lord Buddha. Come,” he says, grabbing my hand and placing it on his sleeve. “You hold on to me.”
We thread our way through the crowd until we reach urns of water, surrounded by people pressing to get near. The closer we get to the urns, the more difficult it is to stay together. The crowd pushes against us on all sides, until we float away from each other like small boats on different ocean waves.
Hands outstretched in every direction press the blossoms toward the water, into the water. The woman next to me presses the flower against her forehead. An older woman fills an empty bottle with water.
I see Bibi gesture to me across the crowd between us. “Holy water. Considered very lucky. Try it.”
I do as I am told, dipping the flowers into the water, then pressing the dripping petals against my warm forehead.
I close my eyes, trying to sort out what I feel—but the crush of the crowd and everything they carry with them in their heads is just too much for me, still.
I follow Bibi’s lead, though, moving to a nearby shrine, lighting my incense and sticking it into an urn filled with sand.
Still no girl.
Are you here, jade girl?
I can’t feel you, if you are.
Then the crowd pushes me onward, carrying me up the steps and into a small, rectangular building carved entirely of gold.
We meet up with each other at a mountain of shoes near the entrance. Out of respect, we follow Bibi’s lead and add our ragged shoes to the pile.
“Kneel. Your feet cannot point to the Buddha. Do as I do.” I watch Bibi. He folds his hands, pressing them together. Bows his head. I do the same.
Then I look up.
High above me, on an altar made of gold, the face of my Buddha stares back at me.
I wait.
She’ll show herself. She’s coming. She’s here somewhere. She has to be.
I know she is.
But it’s a lie. I wait for hours, and the jade girl never comes. Even so, I refuse to leave the temple.
We stay until the sun lowers itself along the horizon and our knees begin to hurt.
The wave of worshippers continues to sweep around the four of us, an odd island of stillness, as we kneel, and wait.
Bibi and Fortis wait by the door. I am running out of time. They are impatient to go. I see it in their faces.
Helplessness wells up inside me, and I can feel myself losing control.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She’s not here.
What was I expecting?
Frustrated, I fumble in my chestpack. I grab the pouch, and fling its contents onto the shrine in front of me.
There.
The jade animals go clattering to the stone floor in front of the altar.
The Buddha rolls until it reaches the sandal of the nearest and most ancient monk.
Take it
, I think. My offering.
Take it all.
Then I bow to Lord Buddha, one last time, pressing my hands together into a final salute.
Which is when the nearest and most ancient monk—the one with the shaved head and the slender bones—picks up my Buddha and appears in front of me, lifting me from my kneeling position, with a torrent of dialect I cannot understand.
“Slowly,” I say. I turn to Bibi, and he moves to my side.
He listens to the ancient monk, then whispers to me. “He’s been waiting for you.”
“Tell him that makes two of us. Only I’m the one who has been sitting here for the whole day.”
“Patience, little one. My brothers are as slow to speak as they are to judge.”
I brush him off. “Does he know where she is? The jade girl?”
Bibi says something else to the monk, the fast clicking of his tongue punctuating the low, reverential tones of his words.
Then he turns to me. “It seems they’ve known you were coming for quite some time. They say you must hurry. They say you are very late.”
“Is she here? At the temple?”
Bibi asks, and the monk utters a garbled response, without altering his expression in any way whatsoever.
“Not at this temple. North of here.”
I look at the monk. “How north?” I ask.
The monk nods as if he understands. Then he utters three words. “Wat Doi Suthep.”
“What?”
Bibi nods. “It’s a temple. Up the Ping River. He says the place you want to go is in the mountains north of Chiang Ping Mai. It’s called Wat Doi Suthep. The Temple of the White Elephant.”
“And that’s it? She’ll be there?”
Bibi is looking behind us, eyes suddenly wide. “Enough talk. I think we’d better go.”
Something has changed—more than just his tone.
A ripple moves through the crowded temple now, as if a cold wind were spiraling through the close, dense building.
It isn’t—but something else is.
Indeed, the monk in front of us is gathering up the figurines as we speak, dumping them back inside the pouch and shoving them at me.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Change of plans. It seems we aren’t the only ones who have come to worship today. There are others here, and not just to feed the monks.”
And there, in the back of the temple behind me, I see them. More than a dozen black-uniformed Sympas, just beginning to make their way through the press of the crowds. They stretch like long, dark fingers through the crowded gold sunlight of the holy chamber.
“They usually stay out of the temples. It’s considered sacrilege. Something important must be happening.”
“Or someone important must be here,” says Fortis, grabbing me by the arm. “Someone like you or me. Let’s go.”
He scans the room and then motions to a side door in the intricate gold paneling. We are out the door before I can even draw another breath.
By the time we are home, it is determined.
We will head north, up the Ping, until we find this Doi Suthep.
This must happen. This is my move.
This is my path, the one that leads to the fifth Icon Child, the one I have come to think of as my little sister.
Of that I am certain.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
NULL ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 04.22.2068
NULL::FORTIS
//comlog begin;
comlink initiated by PERSES;
sendline:
FORTIS, my review of the biological makeup and historical data of your people is… troubling.;
return:
Please explain.;
sendline:
Upon review of all the data available regarding your planet, I am finding my instructions to be somewhat unspecific.;
return:
Unspecific?;
sendline:
I cannot explain further at this time.;
return:
Please don’t keep me in suspense.;
sendline:
I would like your guidance.;
return:
I will need more information about your mission and methods.;
sendline:
Agreed. Ask and I will do my best to provide comprehensible answers.;
comlink terminated;
//comlog end;
It takes us nearly three days to make the preparations we need to go north. Travel, as in the Americas, is not so simple as it once was, and there are no Choppers for hire outside Old Bangkok. The Tracks, what’s left of them, are controlled by the GAP, and crawling with Sympas. Still, a Merk can find a way around any system, and Bibi and Fortis spend day and night doing exactly that. They duck in and out of the Educated Pig, filing the occasional report, while the rest of us wait.
My little sister is making us wait too.
It has been weeks now. I’m starting to wonder if she is real, or if I imagined her.
I can’t even imagine how I will face the others if that is the case.
If this whole pilgrimage has been founded on some insane delusion from my unconscious mind.
All the same, I fall asleep at night waiting to see her, to talk to her. I wake up in the morning frustrated that she once again has eluded me.
Not everyone else eludes me, though.
The voice, the nameless, faceless voice, speaks to me in my dream. In my dream, in my kitchen, in my old home in the Hole.
Sometimes it has spoken to me as if it were the little bird, but now the bird is nowhere to be seen, not in any of these fast, fleeting dreams. Like even it is hiding.
I do not know if it is hiding from me, or from the voice.
North
, it asks, in my dreams.
Why north?
For the girl
, I say, no matter how many times it asks.
Why this girl?
Why do you care?
I ask.
I do not know
, it says, somewhat unexpectedly.
I do not understand many things. I do not have your words.
That’s when I wake up, feeling like I want to scream, but not knowing why.
Over and over again.
