‘And you can come as a snake now?’ my father said.
I nodded a reply.
‘Well, that’s wonderful news,’ my mother said, grinning broadly. ‘I can’t wait to show you my little garden, and some of the needlework I’ve done. You have to come up and visit as soon as you can!’
‘But I have to do it as a snake,’ I said. ‘I can’t take human form on the Celestial Plane. I have to travel as a snake, and stay a snake.’
‘And?’ my father said.
‘It’s really big, and black, and ugly,’ I said. ‘When I changed at the graduation, it freaked both of you out completely.’
‘It’s not that ugly, dear,’ my mother said, patting my hand.
‘But you were so scared of it!’ I said.
‘Emma.’ My mother waved her menu at me. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you sometimes. You’re our daughter. It took us a while to get used to you changing into a snake, but, darling, it’s still you.’ She glanced at Simone. ‘It’s still Emma, isn’t it? When she’s a snake?’
‘One hundred per cent bossy, annoying Emma,’ Simone said, and Leo choked on his beer.
‘Sounds about right,’ my father said.
My mother turned back to me. ‘So come and visit soon, please. I understand that you didn’t want to come before because you would die, but now you can come up as a snake and see what we’re doing.’ She patted my hand again. ‘So please come up and stop being a stranger, okay?’
‘Okay, Mum, I’ll come up sometime in the next day or so,’ I said.
‘She’s free…’ The stone hesitated a moment. ‘She’s free Sunday after two.’
‘Book us in, stone,’ my father said.
‘Done,’ the stone said.
‘That’s settled then,’ my mother said, and opened her menu. ‘I’ve heard great things about this cook-your-steak-yourself-on-the-hot-stone business and I can’t wait to try, but goodness look at these prices.’
‘Eating out is always ridiculously expensive in Hong Kong,’ I said, flipping through to find a vegetarian option.
‘It’d want to be bloody good for these prices,’ my father growled.
‘Well, let’s order and see,’ I said. Simone was smiling at something behind me. ‘What?’ I asked her.
She indicated the woman behind me with her head and dropped her voice. ‘She’s spent the whole time since they ordered surfing the net on her laptop, and she just found an outfit that she likes at one of the outlets here in the mall and she’s showing it to the older woman next to her.’
‘Better than reading the newspaper and ignoring everybody,’ I said, indicating another group with a nod of my head. ‘He’s been doing that to his wife and children since he got here.’
‘Well, none of us are going to do anything like that,’ my father said. ‘We’re all going to catch up and tell each other what we’ve been doing. And in your case, Emma, I have heard that it is a great deal. You’ve been to Hell and back, according to the stories.’
‘Three times,’ Simone said.
‘I have no intention of returning there for a very long time,’ I said. I gestured towards Leo. ‘I found what I was looking for.’
‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ my father said. The waiter came and he raised his menu. ‘And right after we order, I want to hear details.’
‘This is going to be a lot of fun,’ Leo said.
‘Damn straight,’ Simone replied.
‘You mind your language, missy.’
‘Yes, sir, Uncle Leo.’
‘I think Leo’s right, this will be a lot of fun,’ my mother said to my father.
‘Just don’t forget to eat, Barbara,’ my father said. ‘When you get stuck into some really good gossip you always forget.’
‘I can’t wait to share this with the book club,’ my mother said.
‘You could write a book, Emma,’ my father said.
‘I already am,’ I said. ‘But it’s way too fantastic to be believable. I’m doing it just to make sure that I never forget how completely wild my life has become.’
‘Don’t deny it, Emma, you love every minute of it,’ Simone said.
‘The Princess Simone is quite correct,’ the stone said.
‘I hate you all,’ I said, and pointed out the mushroom vegetarian option for the waiter.
CHAPTER 36
The next morning I had no classes until the afternoon so I went through my in-tray, trying to sort out some of the issues that had been piling up. The reports had come in from our spies in Hell: nothing had been heard about Six’s location. He’d probably gone to ground with the rest of the group. Before I had a chance to arrange a meeting to suggest some search options, Yi Hao poked her nose in my door and said, ‘There’s a couple of groups of students who made appointments to see you, ma’am.’
I stashed the documents back in the in-tray and gestured towards it. ‘Anything majorly urgent there?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait until after you see them,’ she said.
‘Who are they?’
She came in and placed a document on my desk with a short list of names and a quick rundown of what they were after.
‘Start with Tu Men Jiu,’ I said. ‘While she’s in here, please email me the list of students in the latest intake who are from the Twelve Villages of the Arts. She’s from Rabbit Village.’
‘Ma’am,’ Yi Hao said, and went out.
‘Oh, the Rabbit got in,’ the stone said.
There was a tap at the door and young Tu Men Jiu came in, this time not pretending to be anything other than herself. She wore a pink T-shirt and a pair of white jeans with sneakers. She carefully bowed to me, saluted, and waited.
‘Sit,’ I said. I glanced at the computer and the email popped up. ‘Give me a moment, Men Jiu.’
I checked the email; the list showed that there were twelve students in the current intake from Rabbit Village, and that six of them were girls. Four were girls that she had said were good enough for the Academy. Three of the girls that she’d mentioned had been assessed as close but not ready and hadn’t been brought in. Two were names I hadn’t heard before.
I turned back to Men Jiu. ‘Are you being treated well by the staff? Settling in okay?’
She smiled slightly, embarrassed. ‘I’d never used a microwave oven before, but the other students are showing me how it works. There are so many cars here! It is very different.’
‘Are you being ignored by boys from Rabbit Village, and having to ask for help from people who aren’t from your village?’ I said.
Emma…, the stone said.
Her mouth flopped open. ‘How did you know? The boys from Rabbit Village, even though they’ve known me all my life, none of them want to help me at all.’
‘What, stone?’ I said.
Uh…nothing. That was a very good guess. You asked that out of nowhere as if you knew what the answer would be.
‘No guess. I’ve experienced that sort of thing before,’ I said. I raised my hand to show Men Jiu. ‘My stone’s being an ass, it’s talking to me privately. Very rude.’
She moved closer to see the stone. ‘I’ve heard about this stone. They say it’s really annoying and to keep away from it.’
‘My plan has succeeded then,’ the stone said.
She chuckled. ‘I don’t know, I think I like it.’
‘I quite like it too,’ I said.
‘Oh, spare me the animal emotional bull…dust,’ the stone said, and Men Jiu and I laughed.
‘Was there anything in particular you wanted to ask me, Men Jiu, or are you just here to say hello?’ I said.
‘I wanted to thank you, ma’am,’ she said, and saluted over the table. ‘Because of you, we girls are receiving attention at the Village. The elders are not happy about it, but one of the Heavenly Generals came to us and said that the unbalanced nature of Rabbit Village had come to the notice of the Celestial, and that if they didn’t change their cultural bias, a new leadership would be in
stated—probably one consisting of all women, similar to the leadership at the Rooster Village.’
‘That probably scared the life out of them,’ I said.
She sighed and looked down. ‘I think what they’re doing now is the minimum to keep their jobs and fulfil the requirements handed down by the Celestial. Once they feel that you’re not watching them any more, they’ll go back to favouring boys.’
‘Stone,’ I said.
‘On it,’ the stone said. ‘Men Jiu, I will be keeping track of the intakes from the Rabbit Village, and if they show signs of slipping, I will be down on them.’
‘Is Meredith busy right now?’ I said.
Meredith appeared next to me. Men Jiu shot to her feet and saluted her. ‘Lady Master Liu! I am profoundly honoured.’
‘Oh, you’re the Rabbit girl,’ Meredith said. She held her hand out and Men Jiu shook it, wide-eyed. ‘What do you have for me, Emma?’
‘Meredith, they’re paying lip service to the “change your culture to less sexist or we’ll slap you” order,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re free from feeding energy to the Northern Heavens, would you like to go in and do just that?’
‘What, slap them?’ Meredith said with grim satisfaction.
‘Theoretically, yes. But tell them that you’re going to provide some advanced instruction on energy work. They can’t help but be flattered, and at the same time you can drum a new attitude into them, one brain cell at a time.’
‘Shouldn’t take long. I hear that the Council members of Rabbit Village only have one brain cell each,’ Meredith said.
Men Jiu’s mouth flopped open, then she grinned broadly.
‘Do you have time?’ I said. I gestured towards Men Jiu. ‘We just got another new batch of students to replace the copies we lost when the seals were put back up—you might be busy.’
‘Let me look at my diary,’ Meredith said, and her eyes unfocused for a moment. ‘If I can offload some of these advanced classes onto someone else, I can go for a couple of weeks.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ I said.
‘Want to take the classes for me?’
‘I can’t do advanced energy, you know that,’ I said in exasperation.
She leaned on the table. ‘You can try.’
‘Maybe when you’re back.’ I nodded to her. ‘Thank you, Master Liu.’
‘No problem at all,’ Meredith said, and disappeared.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, ma’am,’ Men Jiu said, her voice weak with wonder. ‘You kick ass.’
‘Not as much as Meredith does,’ I said. ‘Your Council won’t know what hit them by the time she finishes with them.’
She saluted me. ‘I thank you.’
‘Better run, Rabbit,’ the stone said. ‘You have a class in five minutes.’
‘Oh!’ She jumped up and quickly saluted me again. ‘I do! Thank you, Lady Emma!’ She saluted me again, bobbed her head, and ran out.
‘Ask Yi Hao who’s next,’ I said.
The intercom popped and Yi Hao said, ‘They need you in training room seven right now, ma’am. There’s been an injury.’
‘What about Edwin? I’m not a doctor!’ I said.
‘Dammit, Jim!’ the stone said, and I rapped it on the desk. ‘Ow!’
‘Edwin’s there,’ Yi Hao said. ‘Please, ma’am, they say they need you.’
We need you, ma’am, Master Park said into my head.
I went out to the stairwell and floated down from the twenty-sixth to the seventh floor. I stopped at the fire door. ‘That was easier.’
‘I do believe that being a snake has cleared some of the demon essence from you,’ the stone said.
‘I must have Meredith check me out,’ I said. ‘That is good news!’
In training room seven, Master Park had been holding a weapons lesson with blades, and one of the students had been injured. He lay on the floor, bleeding. I went to him and knelt. Edwin was there, examining the wound, with Master Park beside him. Meredith appeared on the other side of the student, and shooed the rest of the class back out of the way.
The student had made a common mistake, guarding too close to the body, and the blade had rebounded off a fellow student’s dagger and sliced him in the thigh. The wound was deep and long, the length of his thigh, and bleeding profusely.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, and quickly changed to a snake. The kid had hit his femoral artery, one of the biggest blood vessels in his body. He would bleed to death within minutes if it wasn’t contained. Edwin was holding the wound closed with both hands, but blood continued to pump out of it.
When they saw the snake, a number of the students reeled back with shock. I touched my nose to the wound: he’d already lost so much blood. I quickly healed the artery, making sure that there was no leakage. I concentrated, making sure that the artery was strong enough to contain the pressure of the blood.
‘She did it,’ Edwin said in wonder.
‘He needs a transfusion,’ I said. ‘Edwin, I suggest you set one up, and get a stretcher while I fix the rest.’
‘You can fix this?’ Edwin said.
I knitted the muscles of the thigh, working carefully and thoroughly from bottom to top and ensuring that the long fibres of the muscle tissue lined up exactly. It was delicate, finicky work and I had to concentrate. This wound was at least thirty-five centimetres long; any longer than that and I wouldn’t be able to heal it all.
‘I can stop him from dying right now, but he’s lost a good half of his total blood supply and he needs topping up now with fluids and then with blood to make sure that his organs aren’t deprived of oxygen by the loss in pressure,’ I said. I stopped and raised my nose. ‘How did I know that?’
‘Understood, ma’am. We have his blood type in the infirmary, we just need to get him down there quickly and infuse him,’ Edwin said.
Some students arrived with a stretcher, eased the injured student onto it and took him out to the lifts.
‘Stay here and do as Lady Emma says,’ Master Park called back from the lift as the door closed.
The students gathered around me, studying me with curiosity. One of them touched me and I jerked back, and so did she. I moved forward again, my head at the height of the students’ eyes.
‘This is Lady Emma?’ one of them said.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said.
‘She just saved Sean’s life,’ Meredith said. ‘I can heal, but I can’t stop blood loss as quickly and effectively as that.’
‘Serpents are healers, we learned that,’ another student said. She came closer to me. ‘Can you cure my pimples?’
‘Let me touch your face with my nose,’ I said.
She closed her eyes and pressed her face towards me. I put my nose to her skin; the pores were filling with excess oil, and the oil provided a home for bacteria, which caused infection in the pores, leading to the acne. I killed the bacteria and reduced some of the redness and swelling, but I couldn’t provide a permanent cure.
‘I’ve eased it a little,’ I said. ‘But the secret for you is to keep it very clean with a mild cleanser that won’t irritate your skin, and to avoid food that makes it worse.’
She opened her eyes and pulled back slightly. ‘That’s exactly what the doctor said.’
‘Lady Emma did make it better,’ one of the other students said. She gestured with her head towards the lobby. ‘Go and look in the mirror in the toilet. It’s gone down a lot.’
The student with the acne smiled broadly, bobbed her head to me, and rushed out.
‘I have some appointments still lined up outside my office,’ I said. I looked around. ‘Is everybody okay?’
‘Thank you so much for saving Sean,’ one of the students said. ‘We thought he was going to die.’ She pointed at the floor. ‘Look at how much blood he lost!’
The mats were soaked in blood. I desperately wanted to taste it, but I didn’t have the grinding need that usually filled me when I was faced with blood. The serpent form was helping me to contro
l every aspect of the demon infusion.
‘He did lose a lot,’ I said. ‘When Master Park comes back from the infirmary, he can arrange for it to be cleaned. In the meantime, head to the cafeteria and take a break for a short while.’
The students nodded, some of them obviously still shocked by what had happened, and filed out.
‘I’ll keep an eye on them,’ Meredith said. ‘You go back to what you were doing.’ She turned to me. ‘Now that you have this skill, you are going to save us a great deal of trouble.’
‘Maybe I should move my office to the infirmary,’ I said. I started to slither out the door.
‘Aren’t you going to change back to human?’ Meredith said.
‘Not so close to all that blood. I’ll change further away from it.’
‘Good idea,’ Meredith said as I went out.
Scott and Tymen and Tymen’s mother were waiting for me outside my office when I returned. They rose when they saw me.
I went to Tymen’s mother and took her hands. ‘How are you feeling?’
My senses were still heightened from being a snake and I could sense her status without being told. Although she was still desperately weak, she was clean. The cancer was gone. All she needed now was rest.
‘I will not be sure until I have returned to the Netherlands and my doctors have checked me over,’ she said in her charming Dutch accent. ‘But I somehow feel more well. I think that the big snake cured me.’
‘Did the boys explain to you what happened?’ I said.
She nodded, her eyes bright. ‘I could not believe it was true. I was touched by a God? Of course not the good Christian God, so some smaller healing spirit, or angel…’
‘That is exactly correct,’ I said. ‘A spirit of healing.’
She nodded. ‘I am blessed.’
She turned to look at Scott and Tymen. ‘And my son is blessed to have such a good friend.’ She touched Scott’s arm. ‘One day I hope my son finds a man as good as you.’
Both Scott and Tymen rolled their eyes.
‘Stop trying to set me up!’ Tymen said.