Journey to Wubang 01 - Earth to Hell (62 page)

‘Aha,’ I said, ‘
this
is the whole point of the exercise. I should have seen this coming. He doesn’t think he’ll go off and torture people; he thinks he’ll be a
turtle
!’

‘You don’t need to say anything, stone,’ John said, the wry smile back. ‘I know. She’ll see right through me again.’ He appeared to be looking me in the eyes. ‘If I am unfaithful to you in True Form, I want you to know…’ His voice trailed off. ‘What do I say?’

‘You don’t need to say anything, Turtle,’ the stone said. ‘Because she already said she’d be happy to share you. She loves you completely, and knows that anything you do while you are a beast is outside your control.’

‘I sincerely hope you are correct, stone,’ John said. He glanced up. ‘I’m finished. She’ll probably want to tear raw bleeding strips off me when I come back. I hope she’ll have the chance. I love you, Emma. Please forgive me any transgressions while I am a beast; understand I have no control. Goodbye.’

I was back in my bedroom.

‘Well?’ the stone said.

I shrugged. ‘You were right. Of course I understand. Whatever he does while he’s like this is entirely outside his control.’

‘I knew it!’ the stone said. ‘I win!’

‘What do you win?’ I said sharply.

‘Whoops.’

‘
What do you win?
’

‘His shell.’

‘His whole shell?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you going to get it off him?’

‘The usual way.’

‘
He bet his shell that I wouldn’t understand?
’

‘I bet my silence for two weeks that you would understand,’ the stone said. ‘Stupid Turtle. Of course you’d understand. He underestimated you.’

‘I’m going to help you,’ I said.

‘Help me what?’

‘Take his shell off.’

‘He was right about you tearing strips off him,’ the stone said.

‘Oh, I’m not going to tear strips off him,’ I said. ‘I’m going to turn him upside down and leave him on a beach in the sun for three days, and then you and I are going to take his shell off. Together.’

‘Lady Emma?’

‘What?’

‘Are you
sure
you’re not a stone inside?’

‘Nope, definitely one hundred per cent snake, all the way through. Except when I’m a Mother.’

‘I think you’re a Mother all the time, dear.’

‘I know.’

Leo, Simone and I met my parents for dinner at a Western restaurant in Harbour City. It was a steak
restaurant where each diner cooked their own piece of meat on a hot stone.

After the drinks waiter had left us, my father glared at me. ‘Okay, something’s going on and I want to hear it.’

‘The word’s out that you’re a snake, Emma,’ my mother said. ‘And that you were a snake in the Northern Heavens. Is this why you never came to visit us in the Western Palace? You turn into a snake in Heaven?’

I hesitated, studying the menu.

‘Don’t try to hold back on us,’ my father growled.

I dropped my menu onto the table and sighed with exasperation. ‘You really don’t want to know. Believe me.’

‘Try us,’ my father said.

‘It’s not like you’re a demon or something, you’re just a snake,’ my mother said, smiling with encouragement. ‘Snakes are Celestials too, they’re just not very well understood. It will be fine.’

The abstract illustration on the front of the menu suddenly seemed very interesting. ‘I
am
a demon too.’

‘No, snakes
aren’t
demons, the Tiger’s said that many times,’ my mother said.

‘Simon Wong, the demon that killed John, injected me with demon essence. If I lose control, I become a Snake Mother.’

My mother jerked back with shock. ‘What, one of those really big ugly things with no skin and a snake tail?’

‘Exactly like that,’ I said.

My mother turned to Simone. ‘Is she telling the truth?’

Simone nodded silently, then looked down at the table, her head tilted to one side.

My mother turned back to me. ‘So why didn’t you come to visit us at the Palace?’

‘If I travel to the Plane as
me
, I will be destroyed
because of the demon essence,’ I said. ‘We just found out by accident that if I do it as a snake, there’s no problem. So up until a couple of days ago, I thought I couldn’t travel to the Plane at all. That’s why I never came to visit.’

‘And you can come as a snake now?’ my father said.

I nodded a reply.

‘Well, that’s wonderful news,’ my mother said, grinning broadly. ‘I can’t
wait
to show you my little garden, and some of the needlework I’ve done. You have to come up and visit as soon as you can!’

‘But I have to do it as a
snake
,’ I said. ‘I can’t take human form on the Celestial Plane. I have to travel as a snake, and stay a snake.’

‘And?’ my father said.

‘It’s really big, and black, and ugly,’ I said. ‘When I changed at the graduation, it freaked both of you out completely.’

‘It’s not
that
ugly, dear,’ my mother said, patting my hand.

‘But you were so scared of it!’ I said.

‘Emma.’ My mother waved her menu at me. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you sometimes. You’re our daughter. It took us a while to get used to you changing into a snake, but, darling, it’s still
you.
’ She glanced at Simone. ‘It’s still Emma, isn’t it? When she’s a snake?’

‘One hundred per cent bossy, annoying Emma,’ Simone said, and Leo choked on his beer.

‘Sounds about right,’ my father said.

My mother turned back to me. ‘So come and visit soon, please. I understand that you didn’t want to come before because you would die, but now you can come up as a snake and see what we’re doing.’ She patted my hand again. ‘So please come up and stop being a stranger, okay?’

‘Okay, Mum, I’ll come up sometime in the next day or so,’ I said.

‘She’s free…’ The stone hesitated a moment. ‘She’s free Sunday after two.’

‘Book us in, stone,’ my father said.

‘Done,’ the stone said.

‘That’s settled then,’ my mother said, and opened her menu. ‘I’ve heard great things about this cook-your-steak-yourself-on-the-hot-stone business and I can’t wait to try, but goodness look at these prices.’

‘Eating out is always ridiculously expensive in Hong Kong,’ I said, flipping through to find a vegetarian option.

‘It’d want to be bloody good for these prices,’ my father growled.

‘Well, let’s order and see,’ I said. Simone was smiling at something behind me. ‘What?’ I asked her.

She indicated the woman behind me with her head and dropped her voice. ‘She’s spent the whole time since they ordered surfing the net on her laptop, and she just found an outfit that she likes at one of the outlets here in the mall and she’s showing it to the older woman next to her.’

‘Better than reading the newspaper and ignoring everybody,’ I said, indicating another group with a nod of my head. ‘He’s been doing that to his wife and children since he got here.’

‘Well, none of us are going to do anything like that,’ my father said. ‘We’re all going to catch up and tell each other what we’ve been doing. And in your case, Emma, I have heard that it is a great deal. You’ve been to Hell and back, according to the stories.’

‘Three times,’ Simone said.

‘I have no intention of returning there for a very long time,’ I said. I gestured towards Leo. ‘I found what I was looking for.’

‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ my father said. The waiter came and he raised his menu. ‘And right after we order, I want to hear details.’

‘This is going to be a lot of fun,’ Leo said.

‘Damn straight,’ Simone replied.

‘You mind your language, missy.’

‘Yes,
sir
, Uncle Leo.’

‘I think Leo’s right, this will be a lot of fun,’ my mother said to my father.

‘Just don’t forget to eat, Barbara,’ my father said. ‘When you get stuck into some really good gossip you always forget.’

‘I can’t wait to share this with the book club,’ my mother said.

‘You could write a book, Emma,’ my father said.

‘I already am,’ I said. ‘But it’s way too fantastic to be believable. I’m doing it just to make sure that I never forget how completely wild my life has become.’

‘Don’t deny it, Emma, you love every minute of it,’ Simone said.

‘The Princess Simone is quite correct,’ the stone said.

‘I hate you all,’ I said, and pointed out the mushroom vegetarian option for the waiter.

T
he next morning I had no classes until the afternoon so I went through my in-tray, trying to sort out some of the issues that had been piling up. The reports had come in from our spies in Hell: nothing had been heard about Six’s location. He’d probably gone to ground with the rest of the group. Before I had a chance to arrange a meeting to suggest some search options, Yi Hao poked her nose in my door and said, ‘There’s a couple of groups of students who made appointments to see you, ma’am.’

I stashed the documents back in the in-tray and gestured towards it. ‘Anything majorly urgent there?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait until after you see them,’ she said.

‘Who are they?’

She came in and placed a document on my desk with a short list of names and a quick rundown of what they were after.

‘Start with Tu Men Jiu,’ I said. ‘While she’s in here, please email me the list of students in the latest intake who are from the Twelve Villages of the Arts. She’s from Rabbit Village.’

‘Ma’am,’ Yi Hao said, and went out.

‘Oh, the Rabbit got in,’ the stone said.

There was a tap at the door and young Tu Men Jiu came in, this time not pretending to be anything other than herself. She wore a pink T-shirt and a pair of white jeans with sneakers. She carefully bowed to me, saluted, and waited.

‘Sit,’ I said. I glanced at the computer and the email popped up. ‘Give me a moment, Men Jiu.’

I checked the email; the list showed that there were twelve students in the current intake from Rabbit Village, and that six of them were girls. Four were girls that she had said were good enough for the Academy. Three of the girls that she’d mentioned had been assessed as close but not ready and hadn’t been brought in. Two were names I hadn’t heard before.

I turned back to Men Jiu. ‘Are you being treated well by the staff? Settling in okay?’

She smiled slightly, embarrassed. ‘I’d never used a microwave oven before, but the other students are showing me how it works. There are so many cars here! It is very different.’

‘Are you being ignored by boys from Rabbit Village, and having to ask for help from people who aren’t from your village?’ I said.

Emma
…, the stone said.

Her mouth flopped open. ‘How did you know? The boys from Rabbit Village, even though they’ve known me all my life, none of them want to help me at all.’

‘What, stone?’ I said.

Uh…nothing. That was a very good guess. You asked that out of nowhere as if you knew what the answer would be.

‘No guess. I’ve experienced that sort of thing before,’ I said. I raised my hand to show Men Jiu. ‘My stone’s being an ass, it’s talking to me privately. Very rude.’

She moved closer to see the stone. ‘I’ve heard about this stone. They say it’s really annoying and to keep away from it.’

‘My plan has succeeded then,’ the stone said.

She chuckled. ‘I don’t know, I think I like it.’

‘I quite like it too,’ I said.

‘Oh, spare me the animal emotional bull…dust,’ the stone said, and Men Jiu and I laughed.

‘Was there anything in particular you wanted to ask me, Men Jiu, or are you just here to say hello?’ I said.

‘I wanted to thank you, ma’am,’ she said, and saluted over the table. ‘Because of you, we girls are receiving attention at the Village. The elders are not happy about it, but one of the Heavenly Generals came to us and said that the unbalanced nature of Rabbit Village had come to the notice of the Celestial, and that if they didn’t change their cultural bias, a new leadership would be instated—probably one consisting of all women, similar to the leadership at the Rooster Village.’

‘That probably scared the life out of them,’ I said.

She sighed and looked down. ‘I think what they’re doing now is the minimum to keep their jobs and fulfil the requirements handed down by the Celestial. Once they feel that you’re not watching them any more, they’ll go back to favouring boys.’

‘Stone,’ I said.

‘On it,’ the stone said. ‘Men Jiu, I will be keeping track of the intakes from the Rabbit Village, and if they show signs of slipping, I will be down on them.’

‘Is Meredith busy right now?’ I said.

Meredith appeared next to me. Men Jiu shot to her feet and saluted her. ‘Lady Master Liu! I am profoundly honoured.’

‘Oh, you’re the Rabbit girl,’ Meredith said. She held
her hand out and Men Jiu shook it, wide-eyed. ‘What do you have for me, Emma?’

‘Meredith, they’re paying lip service to the “change your culture to less sexist or we’ll slap you” order,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re free from feeding energy to the Northern Heavens, would you like to go in and do just that?’

‘What, slap them?’ Meredith said with grim satisfaction.

‘Theoretically, yes. But tell them that you’re going to provide some advanced instruction on energy work. They can’t help but be flattered, and at the same time you can drum a new attitude into them, one brain cell at a time.’

‘Shouldn’t take long. I hear that the Council members of Rabbit Village only have one brain cell each,’ Meredith said.

Men Jiu’s mouth flopped open, then she grinned broadly.

‘Do you have time?’ I said. I gestured towards Men Jiu. ‘We just got another new batch of students to replace the copies we lost when the seals were put back up—you might be busy.’

‘Let me look at my diary,’ Meredith said, and her eyes unfocused for a moment. ‘If I can offload some of these advanced classes onto someone else, I can go for a couple of weeks.’

‘Sounds perfect,’ I said.

‘Want to take the classes for me?’

‘I can’t do advanced energy, you know that,’ I said in exasperation.