So. Time to make all those tedious lessons in meditation pay off. The key was to eliminate distractions. Visualize the barriers to failure, then imagine them dissolving into nothing. I closed my eyes and concentrated on calming, magic-like thoughts. It was hard, especially with Chen’s audible breathing, and the slither, slap each time he turned a page, but eventually, I managed to empty my brain of any thoughts except the here and now.
I opened my eyes and scanned the spell a second time.
(Ready?)
(Not nearly.)
Slowly and carefully I began to recite.
“Thunder and water, fire and wind, from east to west and north to south, we the unworthy call upon the sunbird and dragon to bring purity to these quarters. . . .”
The air around me shimmered as the magic flux thickened. My skin itched and a strange sharp sce
nt filled my nose. Distracted, I stumbled over a couple syllables, but soon found my rhythm again. Was that something burning? I was galloping toward the last paragraph, when suddenly a cloud of smoke and fire exploded in front of me. I yelped and fell over backward. My head smacked against the wall, and my vision went dark. I couldn’t see anything but white and red sparks jiggling in front of my eyes. There was a buzzing noise inside my skull that made me think of mosquitoes. Someone talking?
That someone seized my elbow and dragged me to my feet. “You mispronounced the third and thirty-second phrases.”
I blinked. My vision cleared.
Ma mi. Oh, no.
My mother, tiny, whisper-thin Ma mi, who reminded me of a ghost dragon, the way she studied me so coolly. My mouth turned dry as she continued to gaze at me, her expression unreadable, while all around the magic flux sparkled and fizzed.
Right when I thought I might faint, Ma mi recited something in a peculiar language that sounded like a kettle hissing. The radio sputtered into silence, and a metallic smell permeated the room. I still didn’t dare to move. My mother’s gaze flicked over my ruined clothes, the mess of worksheets, the splotches of ink over walls and floor and bookshelves. Silently, she plucked the scroll from my hands. It obediently curled into a tight coil, and the ribbon slithered back into place, tying itself into a knot.
Ma mi uttered another incomprehensible phrase. Electric fire rippled through the air. With a loud pêng, all the ink disappeared. My mother held out her hand. The (dead, stuffed) griffin shook itself into life and skittered down the shelves to perch on her wrist. My mother scratched it behind its feathered ears, and its flat stone eyes narrowed to slits in contentment.
Only dead things felt safe around my mother, I thought.
She still hadn’t said anything. I coughed to clear my throat. “I’m sorry for the mess, Ma mi. I’ll finish the worksheets before dinner.”
Ma mi nodded. She gave the griffin an absentminded kiss on its beak and set it upon the closest shelf. It shook out its feathers (plus a quantity of dust) and clambered back up to the top, where it curled once around and went still.
I expected my mother to shout. Or deliver one of those scary lectures about how her worthless street-rat son was bound for a misty hell. She did neither, and that made me nervous.
“Yún should come back soon,” I said hesitantly. Mentioning Yún often made her smile.
Ma mi just nodded again and set her basket into its usual cubbyhole behind the counter. (Chen had wisely disappeared, leaving behind just a faint piggy odor.) Still not talking, she headed through the curtained doorway, into the shop’s back rooms. A minute later, I heard the faint ting of metal from the kitchen, then water gurgling.
The curtains drifted slowly in the invisible breeze of her passage. I stared at them for a long moment, not really taking in what was going on. Deep inside my skull, an itch told me Chen had not completely left, but even he was too scared, or too surprised, to do more.
Not sure what to expect, I checked Ma mi’s shopping basket. Except for a bottle of fish sauce and three packets of chewing tobacco, it was empty.
What do you think happened? I said.
You better ask her, Chen replied.
So much for my brave pig-companion.
I pushed the curtains aside. They swirled around me, ruffling against the back of my head, and enveloping me in soft shadows. I was in the main storeroom for our shop, where we kept all our supplies for classroom exercises, my mother’s experiments, and the potions we sometimes brewed up for special customers. The air smelled strange and familiar, a mixture of strong herbs and black pepper, of soap from the morning mopping, of powdered metals and other rare ingredients. Hsin and several other cats napped here, keeping an erratic watch for mice. Ahead, another set of curtains marked the doorway into the kitchen, while a pair of winding stairs led to our upper floors.
I drew a deep, unsatisfying breath and headed into the kitchen.
Ma mi sat at the pockmarked old wooden table. She held a measuring spoon filled with tea leaves in one hand, in mid-movement from transferring the leaves from the canister into her favorite blue teapot. The kettle sat on its grating over the coal fire; puffs of steam added to the miserable heat, but Ma mi didn’t seem to notice. She had a distracted expression on her face, as though she studied something very far away.
“Market closed?” I asked.
Ma mi nodded. “Everything closed early today.”