The Night Tiger(84)

I didn’t want to think of Shin—of that pleased look on his face when he’d discussed my stepfather’s promise about my marriage. Isn’t it a good thing?

“All right,” I said to Hui. “I’ll go with you.”



* * *



In Hui’s rented room, I washed up and borrowed some pajamas. While I was cleaning my face off with cold cream, Hui came and sat on the dressing table.

“You all right?”

I nodded numbly.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

Hui’s bed was a narrow single, and as soon as my head hit the pillow next to her, I felt a heavy current dragging me away. A chilly paralysis seeped into my arms and legs. I tried to keep my eyes open, but I was falling. Dimly, I heard Hui saying something, but I couldn’t understand her. The current was far too strong. And so I fell down, down, deeper than the deepest lake, until I reached that place I was beginning to know so well.



* * *



This time, I stood by the sunny shore, my bare feet ankle-deep in the clear water. It wasn’t cold at all, just the same, dreamy afternoon heat that made the trees in the distance shimmer. And like before, I was lulled by the calm, though I was quick to step out of the water. That limpid, deceptively clear water that harbored a rising black shadow.

There was no one around, not even the little boy. Since I was here anyway, I set out to look for him through the waving grass, but when I got to the deserted railway station, there was no one to be seen. Nor was there a train, as there had been each time before.

Time stretched on—I’d no way of knowing how long. Anxiety gnawed at me as the sunlight remained fixed at an angle. I didn’t want to be stuck here. What had the little boy said? If I discovered his name, I could summon him.

“Yi!” I called softly.

The silence was unnerving me. I turned towards the other side of the platform, and there he was, standing right behind me. So close that he could have stretched out a small hand to touch my back. I gave a little shriek.

“You called.” He was looking very serious. No smile, no cheerful wave. Now that I examined him carefully, there were differences between them. Ren was taller, his face longer and more grown-up looking. A distance of perhaps two or three years separated them.

“I met your brother.”

He nodded warily.

“He got shot tonight.” Remembering the darkness and the swinging lantern light, blood blossoming over that broken body, my eyes filled with tears.

“I know. That’s why the train’s gone.”

The train that traveled on a single line, only in one direction.

The little boy climbed onto a wooden bench, and I sat down beside him. It was easier to talk this way. “You’re dead, aren’t you?” I said. “They said that Ren was an orphan—that his whole family had died.”

He turned his head away, that small round head that was now so familiar. Although he and Ren were disconcertingly similar, they were also different. Their mannerisms, their voices. I remembered the delighted look that Ren had given me just a few hours ago. How happy he’d been to see me, as though he’d been waiting for me all his life, and I felt like weeping again. “That’s right. I’m dead.” Yi’s face swung back to mine. It looked smooth and guileless, but I had the feeling that he was concentrating very hard. It unsettled me, how much younger he seemed than Ren, yet older. Perhaps it was the way he talked sometimes, like an adult.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He swung a small sandaled foot, frowning. “Nobody else has ever shown up the way you do. They all come by train. But you just … appear. That’s good, I think.”

“Why?”

“Because if you came by the train, you’d be like all the others. Like me.”

I was bursting with questions, but he glanced at me, shaking his head slightly.

“Is Ren going to die?”

“I don’t know.” That pensive look on his face. “The train’s gone. That means another one will be coming soon, but I don’t know who’ll be on it.”

“Is that what you did? You got off at this station by yourself?”

“Yes. A long time ago. We were twins, Ren and I.”

Twins. “Like Shin and me. We’re not really twins but we were born on the same day.”

“I don’t know Shin,” he said frowning. “He doesn’t dream like you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said slowly, remembering the paper amulet Shin’s mother had given him. A charm against nightmares to call the mo, that black and white beast of a dream-eater, to gobble them up. Though if you called the mo too often, it would also devour your hopes and desires.

Yi said, “So that makes four of us. Did you find the fifth one?”

“I think so.” I thought back to William Acton, and how Ren had said the Li in his name stood for ritual. Order. Something bothered me about it. Perhaps it was because he was a foreigner, and I couldn’t understand how he had a Chinese name.

“I told you, there’s something wrong with each of us. Things won’t go the right way.”

“What am I supposed to do? And what about the finger that Ren gave me?” I’d hidden it, rolled up in my bloodstained dancing frock when Hui was in the bathroom.