Wiping each piece carefully, Glynn wondered whose collection it was. Not Solen’s certainly. Perhaps the girl, Flay, whom he had taken to the Darkfall landing. It was not clear what relationship had existed between the pair.
Finally Glynn sat on the bedding to pull off her boots, deciding after all that she was too tired to bathe.
She lay back and tried to relax. She did not want to undress, but she pulled the bedding up over her and linked her hands behind her head on the pillow. The flat-bottomed lamp she had found and lit gave off an orange glow. She watched the light flicker on the stone roof, hoping it would lull her to sleep. Since the previous night, she had been half-drowned, she had travelled from one world to another, she had been rescued and had endured a storm, had hang-glided and had trekked for hours in a head wind.
She was exhausted mentally and physically and she should have fallen asleep at once, but Argon’s words about darkness falling forever for the girls who offered themselves to the misty isle kept her awake.
Did he mean it metaphorically, implying that a commitment to Darkfall was a dark choice, or was the offering made by girls like Flay some sort of sacrifice? Solen had spoken of the Darkfall process too, and she had assumed it was an initiation rite. Argon’s words suggested it was more than a mere bit of pomp and ceremony, and Solen had said women couldn’t have sons after being bound to the island. That suggested a lot more than a mere ceremony. Maybe that was why Jurass forbade Acanthan girls to go to Darkfall. Argon’s horror of the island might even have been caused by his witnessing a ceremony of initiation when he was an impressionable child.
A truly awful thought occurred to her. What if someone was killed in the rite?
Glynn was shivering despite the coverings. After all, what did she really know of this strange world, having been here little more than a night and a day? Maybe Jurass was not a villain but simply a man trying to prevent young girls dying uselessly in some barbaric ritual.
But if it was so dreadful, why would Flay go there? And why would Solen agree to escort her?
‘It is her choice …’ Solen had used those words to defend Flay’s decision to offer herself to Darkfall, but Argon white cloak had asked how a child could even understand what she was choosing. Glynn had some sympathy with Argon’s view. She believed in individual freedom, but surely there came a point where you had the right to protect someone you loved from self-destructive impulses? You did not let a person commit suicide without trying to talk them out of it.
The thought of suicide brought Wind into Glynn’s mind and this time she did not try to stop the memories. Quarry was a small town with a small-town mentality. When Wind Chun Ming applied to the local council to refurbish the old butter-factory building and open a martial-arts studio, his application was approved without delay because it did not challenge anyone’s prejudices. Orientals were supposed to open restaurants and run martial-arts centres. If Wind had wanted to start a beauty parlour or a school, he might have met stiff resistance. But everyone had seen the Bruce Lee films that spawned a thousand copies, generating a fascination with karate and other martial arts.
This and the fact that Wind was faultlessly polite, agreeably wealthy and patronised local firms when he was renovating, assured him a warm reception among locals, at least to his face.
Glynn, irritated by the latent racism and smiling narrow-mindedness his oriental appearance aroused, once asked Wind how he could bear it.
‘People label what frightens them as a way of containing it. I understand their need and I try to accommodate them,’ he had said gently.
Glynn had not understood.
‘People are not frightened of butterflies as long as they behave like butterflies. But what if a butterfly could sing? It would frighten people and they would try to catch it. Most likely they would kill it. A smart butterfly would sing in secret.’
Glynn had fallen in love with the way he talked before anything else, though he did sometimes sound like the master in Kung Fu, talking to Grasshopper. Her dentist had told her first about the studio being set up in the butter factory. She had paid little attention at the time, believing martial arts to be the province of aggressive adolescents. She did wonder fleetingly, though, why anyone would open a studio in a place like Quarry.
Wind told her later that he had come to Quarry precisely to avoid the sort of people who would ordinarily patronise such a studio. In fact, the first classes he had offered had been for women. There had been a lot of ribald jokes about Wind’s real intentions. But the offer of a free babysitter and the thought of an hour’s respite from their toddlers, not to mention the promise of weight loss, filled the classes. Soon after, there were classes for toddlers and teenagers. Then sessions for the elderly and the overweight and for the disabled. Last of all, Wind had offered classes to men. They came because they were anxious to find out what their wives and girlfriends were so fired up about, and because they had been intrigued by the endless stream of delivery trucks bringing gym equipment from the city.
About the time the first teenage classes were being advertised, Glynn had been walking past the butter factory on her way home from the library and a late study session. She saw a big new sign hanging on a special wrought-iron frame and stopped to look at it. The studio had been in operation for about six months and she had meant to go in, but a part-time job, her class work and basketball all occurred during the gym’s hours of operation. The sign replaced a rough board and finally named the place ‘The Flying Arrow’. Underneath were some Chinese characters which she guessed must say the same thing. Wind’s name was in small lettering and beneath that was a tiny perfect golden arrow.
An arrow was not something Glynn thought of as an oriental symbol and she had traced it with her forefinger.
‘It signifies the human spirit,’ said a quiet voice behind her.
Glynn swung round to face a slight, handsome, oriental youth. She assumed he was a friend or even the son of the martial-arts instructor, for this could not be the man who had downed Big Eddy the biker when he had gone on a drunken rage the week before, smashing all the shop windows in the main street.
‘What is the arrow pointing to?’ Glynn asked, tapping the sign.
‘A good question,’ the young man answered.
Glynn flushed, thinking he was making fun of her. ‘So, what is the answer?’ she said coolly.
‘I said it was a good question. I did not say I knew the answer,’ he said mildly, but his eyes sparkled and his teeth flashed white.
‘Why don’t you ask him what it means?’ Glynn asked, nodding to the sign.
‘Because I am him and he does not know either. Wind Chun Ming at your service.’ He bowed, but his eyes never left hers. ‘I carved the arrow in the nature of a question to the universe. The arrow flies up, you see, as does the human spirit, but to what? I do not know. I wish I did.’
Glynn was stunned. No one had ever spoken in such a way to her; at once simply and profoundly.
‘Most people feel nothing for the arrow in their soul, and so for them it does not fly,’ Wind Chun Ming had gone on. ‘They are easily satisfied by some definable earthly goal. The arrow flies for those born with a yearning to know why they exist.’
‘I think we all want to know what we are here for …’ Glynn burst out earnestly, then, mortified, floundered to a stop.
But he only waited, his dark eyes interested.
‘Maybe we want too much, is what I mean,’ Glynn stumbled on at last, her cheeks burning. ‘Maybe we ought to be content with living a simple life and having definable goals. Like this place – from what I’ve heard you’re doing something special here …’ She waved her hand vaguely at the building behind them.
Wind tilted his head. ‘Perhaps it is special. I hope so. And maybe I ought to be content. Truly, it would be simpler. But for some of us, that is not an option. A goal is a fine thing, but for me this place is but a stepping stone to knowledge. A way which I hope will lead me to understand for what it is that
I hunger.’
Again his words seemed to strike deep into Glynn’s secret thoughts and nameless longings. He had chosen that moment to invite her inside.
After a tour of the magnificently equipped gym, Wind had demonstrated the kata with consummate grace and skill, and then he had offered Glynn a free martial-arts lesson. By the end of the night, she had enrolled in the beginners’ class, progressing just three months later to intermediate, and a year later to experienced classes. She had loved the training and the dedication. But most of all she loved the kata, which could be lethal but, when done slowly, was simply the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. From that first night, seeing Wind move like his namesake, she had hero-worshipped him.
It had been a very small step from adoration to love.
Often Wind had singled her out in the classes, using her as an example of fine movement or swiftness. Glynn had accused herself of being conceited for thinking he liked her, and wavered deliciously between certainty and doubt. One night they were practising a difficult section of the kata alone after the other students had gone. The flowing movements had brought them finally face to face with nothing more than a whisper of charged air between them. And she had learned that Wind was not all fine-tuned control, but also fire and sweetness.
Glynn shivered violently at the warmth roused in her by the memory and forced her mind away from that aspect of their relationship for, given what followed, it could only reawaken the beast of pain she had thought laid to rest with Wind’s memories.
Under his tutelage her physical skills had burgeoned. She had sloughed off her lifelong clumsiness and had ended up representing the studio in tournaments and exhibitions. Her father had been proud of her, though her mother had protested that martial arts only encouraged her tomboyish nature. Her mother approved of Ember’s musical ability as beautiful precisely because it was.
Wind had set stringent parameters on their relationship from the beginning, maintaining that she was too young for him. He had been quite a lot older than he looked. Glynn had accepted his rules, confident that things would change when she was older.
No one questioned the time they spent together. Glynn was, after all, the studio’s star pupil and advanced beyond anyone else. She had even represented the state in competitions, conferring a fleeting glory on her home town. It never occurred to anyone that there might be more to their relationship than student and teacher. But after practice sessions, Wind would drink his rice wine and speak to her of many things that had nothing to do with her training or the studio. Sometimes he would hold her in his arms in the dry heat of the gym sauna, sweating the aches from their muscles, and he would tell her of his childhood in a village in China. Or his early adolescence in a rich man’s mansion.
His life had been extraordinary. Adopted as a son by a sterile, wealthy man in one of the smaller provinces, he had been sold by his mother to raise enough money to keep his younger brother and sister.
‘She did well in finding a wealthy man to adopt me for it gave me opportunities she could not,’ Wind said gently. ‘She never knew how things transpired, for the man had made it a condition of the adoption that there would be no more contact between me and my family.’
Despite the fabulous wealth of his new father, Wind had been bitterly unhappy, for he had been mistreated and abused by the man’s jealous wife. His sole pleasure was the martial-arts lessons he was given by an elderly master. Finally, in an attempt to restore peace to his home, the wealthy man sent Wind to Australia to study. Later, he had been simply abandoned there when his adoptive father perished, leaving Wind’s care in the hands of his widow. The Australian government had finally given Wind residency and he had studied and worked hard. He had no desire, he told her, to return to the land of his birth. His ambition had been to open his own studio, and teach what he had been taught by the one person who had treated him decently during his years in the rich man’s home. He had been working as a dishwasher when he had received a great deal of money from a firm of solicitors. His old martial-arts teacher in China had died.
‘I could have gone back to China. But by then I was an Australian if I was anything at all. The one person I had loved in China was dead and I could not locate my real family,’ he told her.
Occasionally Wind would fall into deep depressions, and then he would speak again of the arrow of the soul, and of the yearning of the human spirit. He would speak of mythology and comparative religion, always searching for some nameless thing that would make sense of everything – the cruelty and the loneliness and the lack of beauty in the world. Glynn would listen to his thoughts and hold him, wondering if, underneath everything, he did not after all feel an exile.
Once, in a dark mood, he had said, ‘You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth – no goal, no person how ever beloved – will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart. Some rare few born with it are destined to tread strange and dangerous paths. For them alone, the arrow may bring understanding. I pray you are such a one. Perhaps it is why you are so strong and swift. Such people are given gifts by the gods to aid them.’
In an unfamiliar bed so far away from her world Glynn shivered, for had she not ended up treading a path stranger than any Wind could have imagined?
She had heard of Wind’s suicide on the radio on her way to school. Her mind had flown in horror to their conversation the night before. They had been practising the kata together and they had both been dripping with sweat for he had pushed them to their limit. He had spoken little, and had not praised her when she echoed his movements with such fluid grace.
‘You seem different tonight,’ she had said at last. ‘Are you angry with me?’ She had not asked what she truly feared. Are you tired of me?
He had looked at her for a long time, as if he had to see her from a long way off, and through mist. ‘You are beautiful,’ he said, so softly she had to strain to hear his words. ‘So beautiful and yet the world kills beauty with indifference.’
She had tried to hold him, but he had evaded her arms. ‘It is the yearning of my soul that pains me this night and it leaves no room for anything else. The arrow flies but what does it fly to? Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps there is truly nothing. That is what I fear.’
Glynn had not known how to answer him. She had never seen him in such a black mood. Perhaps he had heard from someone in China about his brother or sister? She knew he had been trying for some time to find them. She was attempting to frame a question when Wind caught at her arm, his fingers biting into her flesh so that she would bear the mark of his hand like a brand for days after.
‘If a gardener plants a shrub, Glynna, he may nurture it and build a garden round it, but what if he has simply planted a seed in a wild place without any intention of returning? What of the plant that waits for the gardener to return to tell it what it is for?’
‘Do you mean God?’ Glynn had stammered, frightened by the blaze of mad pain that lit his eyes. ‘Wind? You’re hurting my arm.’
Releasing her, he had laughed then, a gay hollow sound that had chilled her with its emptiness. ‘Pay no attention to me, my golden amazon. The arrow flies higher than it has flown before. Do you know what happens when you learn that what you desire above all else does not exist?’
She had shaken her head. He had laughed again and sent her away with a kiss as light as the touch of butterfly wing. Not knowing what else to do, she left, deciding she would come back early the next day and find out what was wrong. But it had been too late. The radio announcer said Wind had been seen leaving his studio at 10.45 p.m. That was only fifteen minutes after she left. He must have been thinking of killing himself when they had been practising the kata as mirror images.
The paper that evening said Wind had been seen walking along the bank of the Kendiscotia River. No one had seen him jump, and
no body had been found, but his neatly folded jacket and black cotton slippers were found by a dawn jogger on a footbridge spanning the river. They had been pinned together with an envelope containing a poem, and it was the poem that made the jogger contact the police.
The arrow flies in the black night
If there is nothing to draw me to the light
I fall to the void
I drown
A newspaper two days later rehashed the whole story, leading with the revelation that Wind had spent several years in a mental institution before shifting to the town. For a short while there had been consternation because he had instructed a lot of children, but when no child could be found to say Wind had molested or mistreated them, and no girl would say he had pressed his attentions, the whole furore had collapsed.
Nonetheless, people in town felt cheated and foolish because they had come to revere someone who they were now told had been mentally unbalanced. Glynn had felt afraid that a man so bright and wise should be judged by the world to be mentally unstable. Wind had often said they were the same, she and he, so if Wind was mad, maybe the same madness was in her, the same seeds of destruction.
Only two days after the funeral held over an empty casket, Ember had collapsed and, following a barrage of tests, her condition had been diagnosed. Glynn’s grief over Wind’s suicide had been consumed by the fact that her talented twin sister was dying.
She had buried the memories of Wind. Until now.
Staring into the darkness, Glynn knew that if she were to go back to her world and talk of what had happened to her, she would be thought insane. But she was not mad. Maybe Wind had not been mad either. Perhaps madness was nothing more than a matter of perspective – what looked insane from one angle would be perfectly reasonable from another. Wind’s suicide was madness, but maybe only from the outside. Who knew what had been eating away inside him?