An Embittered Witch, page 11
We reached the lonely, quiet courtyard and trod the cobblestones directly to the pump. She worked the handle up and down till the water flowed in a steady stream, then scrubbed her hands and face. Drying herself on a cloth she removed from her bag, she turned back to me. Resignation was on her face.
‘Not Alt, as such,’ she said. ‘Not like you know it, with the artificial veil kept in place by the Kin in North America.’ She sighed, then sat heavily on the small wall of bricks surrounding the water station. ‘It’s very difficult to infiltrate the barrier,’ she added. ‘Which was why I was so surprised to see you.’
She remembered to be suspicious of me, and scowled. ‘How did you do it, anyway? Who brought you through?’
I shook my head. ‘I already told you, no one. I was following you.’
My hand ached, and I realized I was still tightly clutching the jade object. I opened my fist and held it out to her. The sharp outline of the circle remained in my palm. ‘A woman told me to give you this.’
Win jumped back in fear at the sight of it. ‘Who? Where did you get this?’ She was fascinated, though, for she leaned forward to inspect it more closely.
‘She was dressed really fancy, great big head dress, lots of red and gold in her robe,’ I said. ‘Out there in, what did you call it? Lijiang Alley, before I followed you through the tunnel.’
Her eyes were round as she stared at me, disbelief warring with the suspicion. ‘The Empress? The Empress approached you and gave you this?’
I shrugged. ‘She didn’t introduce herself.’
‘Oh, no.’ Win’s face dropped.
‘Win, what the hell happened back there?’ I flicked my head back towards the door. Lowering my body, I joined her on the ledge. ‘Were you were casting a spell or something? It looked like pretty powerful magic. Who was the woman on the bed?’
‘No! I wasn’t…’ She played her tongue around her teeth as she thought, then looked at the jade piece in her hand again. She closed her fingers, making the object disappear from view, then looked back up to me with a new understanding in her eyes. She shoved her hand in her pocket. ‘You. That angry witch was looking at you, wasn’t she? You know her?’
I nodded mutely.
‘Who is she?’
When I didn’t answer her, she reached out with both hands and shook me by the shoulder. ‘You know her, and she knows you! You better tell me, because this is serious shit. Do you understand?’
I wrenched myself out of her grasp and pushed her away as I stood up to face her head on. ‘No, I don’t understand! I don’t get what’s happening here, or what was going on there.’ I flicked my head at the now closed door.
‘Was it Margaret Forsythe?’ Win asked, her voice pitched so low I almost couldn’t hear her.
I hesitated, then nodded again. There was no use denying it. Whatever Margaret had been up to, well, it was her own lookout. Her renewed stream of anger at me hadn’t done anything to endear her to me or ease the hurt she’d caused.
Win stood very still for a long moment before she spoke again in a soft voice. ‘That changes everything, you realize.’
‘I really don’t understand. None of this.’
‘No, how could you?’ She tentatively held out the jade object again, lifting it to the weak winter sunlight. I saw the lights gleam deep within it. ‘Okay. I guess I need to tell you things. Looks like we’ll be working together.’
‘You don’t exactly sound thrilled at the prospect. And we already are working together, remember?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I mean really working together.’
Her mysteriousness was starting to irritate me. ‘Okay, so you said you needed to tell me things? Good, because I have a lot of questions.’
‘I’m going to tell you.’ She cut me off. ‘But only because I don’t have a choice. The demons let you through the Alley. And the Empress spoke to you.’
I nodded in agreement. Finally. But I wanted the whole story, right from the beginning. ‘So, the ghost back there.’ I nodded my head towards the now closed door into the building.
‘She was a Buddhist nun,’ Win said softly. ‘Once upon a time. The magical pockets formed around the old nunneries. These were the only refuges. Nuns still guard them. Even the dead ones.’
After another long moment, Win continued. ‘We’ll speak of this later, when we’re outside again, in private. I’ll tell you everything, but you’ll need to promise not to say a word.’
I looked all around us at the barren courtyard. ‘This is pretty private.’
‘No, oh no,’ she demurred. ‘Not safe enough here. We need to get back to the ping fan, the mundane dimensions.’
‘If it’s so dangerous here, can I ask why you needed to come?’
She sighed, and her eyes narrowed as if assessing my trustworthiness. I bristled a little. ‘I have been given a very difficult task,’ she said, her voice soft in the absolute quiet of the courtyard.
‘By Cate?’
She nodded again. ‘Yeah.’ Something in her tone told me she wasn’t as enchanted with the witch as she appeared to be when in her company. I tucked that little bit of intel away to digest later.
‘I have to find Li Minh.’
‘The witch? I knew that,’ I said. ‘Remember we discussed it at The Witchery? You seemed excited by the prospect.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought there was some doubt as to her existence,’ I said slowly, trying to remember what I’d heard.
Win laughed. It was a bitter sound. ‘Oh, she exists,’ she said. ‘The Great Betrayer. Wherever she was, whatever havoc she’d been creating lately, it is my job to find her and get her on our side, without being killed in the process. Margaret didn’t tell you that.’
She looked up at me, her eyes haunted. ‘The shit’s getting real now, Dara. Li Minh exists. And I… we, just saw her. But she’s been cursed by the sleeping spell too, or she will be. And as you saw, there is no doubt that Margaret Forsythe is to blame. Now we need to find out where Li Minh is, before Auld Meg finds us.’
Twenty
‘Li Minh still exists, somewhere. And we have to find her before anyone else does, or she might not exist much longer,’ Win continued. “There’s a lot riding on her staying alive.’
I had so many questions for Win, I didn’t know where to begin. Who or what was Li Minh? What had she done to earn that terrible title of The Great Betrayer? Where were we, anyway, at that moment?
And Margaret, what role did she play in all this? But I couldn’t go there. Not yet. Because the vision had told me more than enough.
Win saw the questions in my eyes, and then turned her face toward the narrow slice of sky above our heads. As quickly as it had come out, the sun had disappeared again. The day had grown noticeably darker in the short time we’d been outside, although it should still be the middle of the day. Those were ominous clouds gathering far above us.
She shook her head. ‘Not here. We need to get out of this place. Can’t linger.’
We stood up and faced the dark tunnel, the only exit from this unnaturally quiet courtyard.
‘In order to get back out through there alive, I need you to follow me closely,’ Win said. Her voice was terse, and brooked no argument. ‘Here, take my hand, don’t let go no matter what. Only look at the ground in front of you. Even better, close your eyes and let me lead. Close your ears, too, if you can. It’ll make your passage easier.’
She paused another moment, and added, ‘Whatever you do, don’t use any form of magic to try to defend yourself. It will only make them all real. There’s no way you’ll win against them, and I’m not going to stop to save you.’
So we approached the darkened gateway of arched stone. Through the other side, I could see daylight, a brighter grayness where shadows moved. I really didn’t want to pass that way again, through the terrifying throng of bodies and noise and smoke and chaos.
‘What exactly is out there?’ I asked, holding back.
She tugged my hand impatiently. ‘It’s a pocket of supernatural, all squished together, concentrated into one space. I already told you this. The Buddhist nunneries were the only places to escape the scourges, and everything had to gather in their protection. I’ll explain in more detail later. We need to go now. There’s no time to answer all your questions.’
With that, she jumped into the tunnel at a run. I had no choice but to flail along behind her. I remembered too late to keep my eyes closed. A terrifying cat-like creature loomed outside the gate, its double row of teeth gnashing as its spiked tail twitched. It roared at the sight of us. Every instinct for survival in me wanted to keep my eyes on this awful creature and unleash something, ice bombs maybe, anything in order to scare it away and allow my escape. But I forced my head down and squeezed my eyelids together as instructed. The horrible being sure seemed real, I could feel the heat of its breath in my hair. I had to trust Win on this.
She led me quickly and surely down the cobbled stones of Lijiang Alley. I couldn’t close my ears off, not when I was clutching her hand with both of mine to ensure we didn’t get separated. The sounds came to us from all angles, the screaming, the firecracker blasts set off way too close to us. It was as if we were in a war zone. And worst of all was the discordancy, like a thousand untuned violins scraping inside my head.
We ran for ages, it seemed like. I didn’t take into account the various twists and turns I’d taken to reach the courtyard, those calculations were long gone from my head. I could only set my trust in Win.
Finally, she slowed to a walking pace.
‘We’re safe now,’ she said. ‘We’re out of Lijiang Alley.’
I opened my eyes again to see the normal hubbub of the hutong, the ancient neighborhood of homes all higgledy-piggledy, jostling each other, and the normal people in the street going about their daily business at a relaxed pace. No one spared me a glance, even with my blue eyes in the sea of brown. They were used to tourists wandering through these lanes.
In no time at all we’d reached the main street, and what a welcome assault on the senses it was with the automobile horns blaring, the crush of people and bikes, and the sweet smell of exhaust. It was as if we’d been transported through time and dumped back into the twenty-first century.
I was so happy to be in the familiar mundane world again, I almost hugged the newspaper vendor. I was that relieved to have made it safely through the madness.
Win didn’t stop, though. She made a beeline for our hotel across the road, dodging the slow-moving traffic. I had to follow her very carefully, for those motorbikes could appear out of nowhere and they allowed nothing to get in their way.
She only paused to let me catch up when we were safely within the glass doors.
‘We’ll go up to my room,’ she said in a whisper, and then spoke out in a more normal voice. ‘Let’s order some coffee and pastries from Room Service.’
In no time at all, the elevator had whisked us up to the room we would have shared, if it wasn’t for Hugh’s presence on the trip. It was smaller than the one he’d been granted, with two single beds and a couple of armchairs by the window, and it was situated on the fourth floor. The view overlooked the back of the hotel, the bins and rooftops and the air exhaust funnels, but the coffee was good.
We settled back in the armchairs, both of us sitting cross-legged. After gulping down her first cup, Win then placed her hands on her knees and closed her eyes as if in meditation.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, watching her over my own mug, savoring the warmth in my still chilled hands.
She flicked her eyes open impatiently. ‘What do you think?’ she hissed. ‘I’m placing a circle of white noise around us so no one will overhear what I’m going to say.’
‘There’s no one here, Win, just us two.’
‘Westerners are so soft,’ she said under her breath. I didn’t point out that with her well-heeled, cut glass British accent, she was just as Western as I was. Her eyes narrowed as they glared at me, like I was to blame. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to live in a regime. There’s always someone listening, ready to turn you in. And for sure all the rooms are bugged by the Chinese Kin, not to mention the government. Don’t you know anything?’
I let her do her thing. If it made her feel more secure, then perhaps finally she would answer the many questions running through my mind.
‘Can I help create this dome of silence?’
She shot me a final glare before closing her eyes and commencing her work. She opened her small perfect mouth and emitted soft tones, like Om chants. The sounds were barely audible, but she was putting her whole being into them.
I could sense no change in the atmosphere around us. I looked out the window and up at the sky, where the clouds were still dark and thunderous looking. If we were at home, I would expect a heavy blanket of snow, but this was Beijing, a different country. I didn’t know if they got much of the white stuff here. It had certainly turned cold enough, though. I snuggled into the oversize armchair a little deeper, the hot mug cradled in my hands.
Finally Win opened her eyes again, and sniffed the air. ‘Okay, we’re good.’ She poured another brew for herself and sat back. Yet she remained silent.
‘So? After all the dramatics, you going to tell me this big secret?’
‘You need to take this seriously.’ Her eyes narrowed and her chin jutted out.
‘I am taking it seriously,’ I bit back. ‘What happened back there, down that alley? It was scary shit. I didn’t want to end up in Chinese Alt, believe me. And what exactly was that place, anyway? You didn’t really explain.’
‘I told you, it’s not Alt, not like the Kin’s Alt, but a little cell of magick. The government calls it a cyst. All the magical beings and the supernaturals got squished into these pockets.’
‘So there’s more than one around the city? How did they form?’
She thought for a little while. ‘How much do you know of Chinese history?’
‘Ah,’ I said, casting my mind back to dim recollections of World History and various movies I’d watched many years ago. ‘Not a lot. There used to be dynasties of Emperors, but then the Europeans tried to infiltrate China, colonialism happened, and the people got sick of all of the excesses and overthrew the ruling class. A few times, if I’m not mistaken.’
She shook her head in disgust. ‘Jesus. I’m really going to have to start at the beginning.’
Win hadn’t turned on the lights in the room, despite the fact that the day was growing darker. She stared out the window into the grayness outside, collecting her thoughts. ‘Before you understand any of what I’m going to tell you, or why I’m here in China, I have to give you the background of what really happened in history, not the bits and pieces of Mundane stories that you picked up from Hollywood.’
I sat back and uncrossed my legs, swinging them over the side of the chair. ‘Okay. I’m listening.’
‘Li Minh started the unrest, or at least, she played into it.’
‘And she was…?’
‘Is,’ Win reminded me. She went on to give me a very short expurgated and concise history of modern China. ‘It all began when Western civilization tried to make inroads into China. It weakened the political structure. And as China threw off the mantle of the Emperors and Dynasties, the ones who were the ruling class and all of them were magical practitioners, much like the aristocracy in Britain. What began as a political counter-revolution from some upstart magicians eventually turned into full scale revolt from non-magicals. What you call Normals.’
‘What did your Li Minh have to do with all this? Did she start all that?’
‘She was a powerful practitioner of magick. Of course, she came from the ruling classes. She was the force behind the original revolution, what is known as the Boxer Rebellion. She didn’t like westernization, or the influx of Christianity, and she also didn’t like the excesses in the Emperor’s Court. She said, rightly enough, that the whole system was rotten to its core.’
‘So Li Minh is a revolutionary hero. Why is she known as the Great Betrayer?’
‘No!’ Win shook her head vehemently. ‘Not a hero, not at all, at least to the Chinese Magickals. She was able to become such a powerful witch because, you know the old story, she was greedy and drank from the ley lines.’
I nodded. An old story indeed, and perhaps not so old. Look at Cate, but of course I couldn’t say a word about her, even under Win’s dome of silence.
‘She abused her power to lead the Mundanes into rebellion, and in doing so, upset the balance of power and ever since the country has struggled, always a tug of war between the Magicks trying to regain what they’d lost, and the Mundanes who will not let that happen. She realized what she’d done, so she ran away and had never been seen since. At least, not officially. There were rumors, and that’s what Cate needed me to research.
‘So, to get back to your question about Lijiang Alley. Communism is a Mundane construct, and it absolutely abhors the idea of a magical elite, doesn’t trust anything out of the normal run of things, even religion. All of the magic world was pushed away from the mainstream, squeezed into the interstitial parts of life, places like Lijiang.’
‘And the nun ghost?’
She nodded impatiently. ‘The Buddhist nuns refused to be subservient to the new governments and regimes or give up their spirituality, so the magick cells cluster around their temples.’
‘And these nuns weren’t imprisoned or, or killed for their disobedience?’
‘How could they be? They refused to acknowledge the existence of the State as a higher power. The Communists, the Red Army, all these don’t exist for the nuns. So they can’t harm them.’
‘But the nun was a ghost…’
She shrugged. ‘They had sworn to protect the magick. I guess it was a very strong vow, lasting even through death.’
I found all that a little difficult to get my head around. However, I’d just passed through an alley of demons twice in one day and survived, so I let it go. ‘And what were you doing in the temple? Were you casting a spell?’
