Quest for the King (2 page)

She sat in the front pew of Saint Andrew's Church on Nathan Road in Kowloon. Mrs. Choi sat next to her, smiling at her from time to
time. Mary did not smile back. The vicar was yelling (yelling things
you should say, not yell, at weddings). The vicar yelled because typhoon winds howled and screamed round the church and torrential
rain beat against the windows. "The worst in seventeen years," a TV
commentator had called the typhoon. All ferry services had been
discontinued. Before the typhoon everyone had said the wedding was
going to be lovely, but no one was saying that any longer. "They
should have canceled the whole thing, really they should. This is
ridiculous! No wonder there's almost no one here!" Mary heard one
man grumble.

Each time she had tried to explain to Uncle John about bachelors
and marriage, he had laughed and teased her. Sometimes he had
looked solemn and said, "But darling, I know I could wait until you're
a little older. But that wouldn't be fair to you. I mean, you wouldn't
want to many someone old enough to be your great-grandfather, now
would you? You need someone younger."

The one compensation had been that she would go to Hong Kong
with him. That, at least, had seemed exciting-in anticipation. Right
now it was misery. She had expected the others to be there-her
cousins, Wesley, Lisa and Kurt, and her Uncle and Aunt Friesen.
Wesley was two years older than Lisa. Kurt was the youngest of the
three but still a year older than Mary. She had never met their parents,
her uncle and aunt, and had only talked to them occasionally on the telephone. Wesley, Lisa and Kurt had flown to be with their parents
for a couple of weeks in Kuala Lumpur. (Their parents belonged to
the Canadian Diplomatic Service and kept being moved to "trouble
spots" around the globe.)

Even though she was a little jealous of her cousins, they did share
the bond of some very wonderful adventures in Anthropos, and they
would have been a comfort at the wedding. At least that had been the
plan-until the typhoon. Now the Friesens were stuck in Singapore,
and she had to go through this business on her own. And, to add to
it all, ever since the Eleanor person had arrived in Hong Kong, Uncle
John had been acting like a little kid half the time, and rushing round
distractedly the other half. He smiled all the time and seemed to find
quite ordinary things enchanting. The glow seemed to have to do with
the old woman who had turned up-the great Eleanor. Mary felt lost,
abandoned.

She admitted, rather grudgingly, that the Eleanor person seemed to
be all right. Not a real grandmother-no kids, no grandkids. Old of
course, though with a grandmotherly kind of oldness. She was not in
any sense with it. Neither she nor even Uncle John knew anything
about power. Or did they? What was the mysterious aura that rested
on both of them? It was very hard to tell. Power was not on them in
the way dark power was. It was, Mary decided, somehow different.
What's more, they were not the sort of people you could talk to about
things like that. They were too respectable, too square. And now it
would never be possible to tell Uncle John. Bitterness flooded her
mind. It was a long-standing bitterness that had never thoroughly
been resolved.

From the age of three she had stayed in Toronto with a mother who
was not her real mother, and who had a series of men living with
her-"uncles." One of them had done something to Mary that Mary
did not like to think about. If anyone knew about it they would hate
her, despise her-at least that's how she felt. She groped back in her
memory to vague feelings about her real mother. Everything in that
area of her memory banks seemed misty, ill-defined. There were hor rible bits of memory, which she might have dreamed, or which might
be true, though it hardly seemed possible. All she knew was that her
mother was dead. If only she could belong to real parents, her very own
parents. Couldn't Uncle John adopt her? What if she could get the
power to make him do so!

Had it not been for the typhoon, Uncle John's getting married
might have been just about bearable, but the typhoon had turned a
bad thing into a major catastrophe. All flights into Hong Kong had
been canceled. A complete stranger had to give the Eleanor person
away, someone Mary didn't know. In fact Mary didn't know anyone
except Uncle John and Mrs. Choi, whom she knew just a little bit. The
church was largely empty, and what guests there were seemed old to
Mary. "Old and wet," Mary said to herself, shivering a little and sitting
a bit closer to Mrs. Choi, wishing the wind would stop howling. Hong
Kong was supposed to be hot, wasn't it? It had been hot-even muggy-when they arrived, but gradually, as the rain shrieked horizontally across the city, the temperature had fallen.

Her mind went back to Winnipeg and to the fun she enjoyed at the
witches' club. Two of the boys told her they went to a large Bible
church there. "But they don't have power like we do," they said.
Power? Was that what had attracted her? She often wondered. She
remembered overhearing a conversation between her Uncle John
and a school social worker. Her retentive memory had registered
every word.

"In answer to your question-I really don't know. There are the
most bizarre rumors circulating in the family about her biological
mother. Indeed they are firmly convinced that her great-grandmother
put the story out that she herself was a powerful sorceress."

The conversation had continued for some time, but since Mary
should not have been listening, and had heard Uncle John beginning
to cross the floor just then, she crept around a corner quickly. What
was it that had so powerfully drawn her to the coven? Lisa had told
her she was `just being mad at Uncle John for getting married." Why
had she gone back? It made no sense. She remembered the joy with which she had been reunited with Gaal earlier that year, and the
powerful hold the witch had over her on her visit to Anthropos. Yet
she also knew she could not have resisted the school club. There was
a magnetism about it that had pulled her as though she were a puppet
on a string. Then once she had experienced in the real world the
physical sensation of power flowing into her own body, she knew
where she really belonged.

At last the ceremony in St. Andrew's Church came to an end, and
Mary and Mrs. Choi followed the bridal couple as they left. Once in
the open, wind and rain whipped and pelted them mercilessly, and
the large umbrella the chauffeur held for them turned inside out. The
rain lashed Mary and Mrs. Choi pitilessly as they struggled to get into
a second white limousine. Soon it began to follow the one with the
bridal couple, as it wound down to the exit to Nathan Road.

The air conditioning inside the limousine was turned up fully. It
made her shiver and sneeze. Mrs. Choi said, "It was a lovely wedding,
and isn't this car beautiful! There's even a bar and a television!"

Both limos nosed their way along Nathan Road, the bridal limousine leading the way, splashing through the water covering the partly
flooded roadway. They followed it toward the harbor as far as Harphong Road, where they turned right, working their way beneath the
overpass, then via Canton Road and Peking Road to the entrance of
the Ramada Renaissance Hotel. Throughout the short journey Mary
sat rehearsing in her mind what she had been told to do when they
reached the hotel.

"I have to open the limousine door quick. I mustn't wait for the
doorman to do it unless he's already there. I have to go to their
limousine and say, `It was simply wonderful! You both looked great!' "
She sighed. "Then I have to curtsey-and `not be in their way' or be
a nuisance and bother them." Her face clouded. "I wish it didn't have
to be like this."

They were pulling up to the doorway, and it was there in the gloomy
hotel entranceway that what had seemed like a bad dream turned into
a nightmare.

Mary hopped out of the limo before the doorman reached it, her
eyes on the limousine in front of them. Embarrassed and a little
nervous, she hurried to greet Uncle John and his bride, just as she
had rehearsed in her mind.

The uniformed chauffeur opened the limousine door, and then
simply stared inside the car, his mouth wide open and his eyes dark
with bewildered consternation. Mary stood beside him. Nobody was
getting out of the limo. What was the chauffeur staring at? Where were
the newlyweds? Why weren't they getting out? She pushed in front of
him to stare into the car.

Nobody was getting out because there was nobody inside to get out.
Uncle John and Mary's new Aunt Eleanor were nowhere to be seen.

"They could not, could not ... there was no way they could have
gotten out along the way," the chauffeur, who had turned to the two
hotel doormen, protested in English. "No way! No way! We didn't stop
or even slow down!" He looked round defiantly as though expecting
someone to contradict him. The doormen and a bellboy advanced
and then stopped, looking uncertain. Didn't limousines usually have
guests inside them?

Mrs. Choi and their own driver joined the little group. Excited
chatter in Cantonese began to echo amid the muted sounds of the
storm and the blaring of horns and the hollow echo of cars driving
in an enclosed space. Everyone around the hotel doorway seemed to
be talking at once. Mary tugged at Mrs. Choi's coat several times.
"What are they saying, Mrs. Choi?" she asked repeatedly. "Mrs. Choi,
please tell me. What's happened to Uncle John? Do they know?"

Mrs. Choi looked very worried. "It makes no sense." She shook her
head and turned to address Mary. "I was watching the limousine all
the way here. I know they didn't get out. They couldn't have. And their
chauffeur said the moment he got inside the car he had locked all
the doors from his control panel."

Suddenly, Mary was very frightened. "You mean, you mean ... But,
Mrs. Choi, they can't just have disappeared ... " Her voice trailed into
silence as an unhappy thought gripped her. It was a memory of the way in which she herself had been whisked into the land of Anthropos, into another place and another time, and how many strange
adventures had befallen her there over a period of two years in Anthropos time. It was then that she had learned to trust Gaal. But it was
one thing to disappear yourself, and quite another to have people
disappear on you and leave you all alone in Hong Kong.

And there was something else. She had joined "the other side."
Anthropos was the last thing she wanted just then. She remembered
now-why had she forgotten?-that Uncle John had said he had one
more trip to make to Anthropos. Her shoulders drooped and she
began to feel a little dizzy. What good was her power now? Unlessunless she could go after him by using her real power. But right then
she was too frightened to know what to do. She was not sure whether
she wanted to cry or to be sick.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she finally said.

Mrs. Choi took charge briskly. In no time she had Mary back into
her hotel room in bed, and was making her hot Chinese tea from the
loaded tray each hotel room provided. But Mary did not drink any of
the tea. Nor did she want to stay in bed. She really did not know what
she wanted to do. She stared at the television, but it had no appeal.
She no longer felt sick, and was doing her best not to cry.

Mrs. Choi had picked up the telephone and was talking in Chinese.
There were several pauses, then suddenly she switched to English.
"My name is Mrs. Choi. I am with Mary in the Ramada Renaissance
hotel in Hong Kong. Mr. Friesen? ... He is not there? ... Pleasewho is speaking? ... Wesley? ... I think Mary would like to talk to
you."

Eagerly, Mary grabbed the phone from Mrs. Choi.

Wesley held the telephone in their hotel room, a bewildered look
on his face. "It's Mary-I think-an' she won't stop crying. She's sobbing her heart out. Something's happened." He spoke into the telephone again. "Mary-what is the matter?"

Lisa whispered to Kurt, "There's a phone in the bathroom. I'll grab that-an' you get the one in your bedroom."