Crane (4 page)

As the sun began to rise, Hok saw a point where the creek forked. Unsure which branch to follow, she
stopped and glanced down both routes. She needed to find a place to rest. For no particular reason, she decided to take the left branch. However, after taking a step in that direction, she detected movement out of the corner of her eye. Some distance down the right branch was a large bird wading in the water. It had a snow-white body, a black neck, black wing tips, and a brilliant red crown on its head. It was a crane.

Hok turned toward the bird, and it flew off downstream. She decided to follow it. She didn't have to walk very far before the stream suddenly opened into a wide marsh—the perfect resting place. The crane was gone.

Hok unhooked two of the loops on the side of her dress and carefully slid her broken arm into the space like a crude sling. With her one good arm, she managed to collect enough marsh grass to form a small pile on the shoreline, and she finally collapsed into the makeshift nest like an exhausted bird that had lost her flock.

T
wenty-nine-year-old Tonglong pulled hard on his horse's reins, stopping the black beast at the wide-open gates of Shaolin Temple. It appeared he'd missed a history-making event. Shaolin was destroyed. That was good news for the Emperor.

It was even better news for Tonglong.

Tonglong adjusted his long ponytail braid over his shoulder and scanned the area. The attack must have occurred at least a day and a half earlier. He couldn't help but grin at the rows of neatly stacked corpses rotting in the midday warmth. Whoever was behind such a methodical operation had to be mad. Some of the buildings were still smoldering, but the victims had already been accounted for and the troops had moved
on. It could only be Tsung, the former Shaolin monk who was now a general within the Emperor's ranks. Renegade monks like Tsung and Ying seemed to be favorites of the Emperor these days. Tonglong hoped to change that soon.

Tonglong maneuvered his horse around the far side of the compound to see what else there was to see. Halfway across the grassy expanse that separated the walls of Shaolin from the tree line, a strange object caught his eye. He climbed off his horse and picked it up. It appeared to be a strip of red silk tied around a fragment of roof tile. Most of the silk had been burned.

Puzzled, Tonglong dropped it and led his horse over to the tree line. There he found signs of a scuffle. He scoured the ground and noticed something tiny and green and glimmering.

Tonglong knelt and found a small jade crane connected to a single strand of silk. He recognized it as Hok's. Women typically hung jewelry from their sash in much the same way men hung storage pouches, but he had seen Hok wearing this around her neck.

Tonglong's eyebrows raised. He tied the string around his own neck and slipped the crane into the folds of his robe. Hok had no value to him, but Fu and Malao did. They had the dragon scrolls that Ying so desired. Tonglong desired the scrolls, too, but for a different reason. Ying wanted the scrolls to learn dragon-style kung fu. Tonglong wanted them to take over the world.

In truth, Tonglong only desired one of the dragon scrolls—the one that was rumored to contain a map to a hidden treasure vault. If the rumors were true, the vault contained enough valuables to hire an army large enough to control an entire region. And if conditions were right and things were planned properly, that army might even be large enough to take over the entire country, and who knows what else.

Tonglong knew that he was going to have to take things one step at a time, as he had been doing. When he had let Hok, Fu, and Malao escape a week ago, he had overheard them discussing Shaolin. If Hok had been here, perhaps her brothers had been here, too. Or, even better, perhaps her brothers hadn't arrived yet.

H
ok had no idea what day it was when she finally woke to excruciating pain. Judging by her parched lips and the swelling in her face and broken arm, she guessed she'd been asleep more than one day. Probably closer to two. The extraordinary number of insect bites on her arms, legs, and head seemed to confirm as much.

Hok touched her broken right forearm and shivered. It hurt more than any injury she had ever had, and she knew the pain was going to get a lot worse before it got better—she was going to have to realign the bones. She had learned how to treat injuries like this as part of her training at Cangzhen, but she had never done it to herself. Hok stared up at clouds
forming over the afternoon sun and decided to take care of it right away.

She sat up, and the marsh began to spin before her. Hok turned toward the forest's edge and saw nothing but a whirl of birch bark and willow branches. She closed her eyes, counted to one hundred, and opened them again. The world slowly came back into focus.

Hok sighed. The Dream Dust was still definitely with her. This wasn't going to be easy.

Hok laid her left hand on her broken right forearm and gently applied pressure to the swollen area with her index finger and thumb. As she felt around the break, her eyes began to water and her hands trembled.

Hok knew that a person's forearm was actually two separate bones. She determined that only one of the bones had snapped, up near her elbow. The separated pieces were misaligned, but still seemed to be touching. She knew she was lucky. She had assumed a person's elbow would have been dislocated and twisted apart attempting to escape an armlock like that. Broken bones could heal. Snapped sinews in your elbow could not.

Without giving it a second thought, Hok pinched the break with her powerful fingers. Years of crane-beak fist exercises gave her a stronger grip than most grown men. She felt the broken bone segments in her forearm grind against one another briefly, and she cried out as they shifted back into their intended position.

Hok collapsed into her marsh grass resting place. Beads of cold sweat coursed through the dirty brown stubble on her head. The sweat ran down her bruised face and mixed with her tears. Her chest began to heave. The marsh started spinning again, and Hok closed her eyes for a long time. When she finally opened them again, she knew what she needed to do next. She needed to make a plan.

When Hok thought about everything she had experienced recently, her arm suddenly seemed to be the least of her worries. She began to wonder about her brothers, Fu, Malao, Seh, and Long. Where were they? Should she go look for them? Maybe they needed her help? She also thought about all the death and destruction at Cangzhen and Shaolin, and what it might mean to the region. And then, finally, for the first time, she began to think about herself.

Growing up pretending to be something she was not—a boy—meant Hok had spent most of her time worrying about other people. How they saw her. What they thought about her. Focusing all her attention on everyone else was normal for her, but the only person she could help right now was herself. So, what was she going to do about it?

Hok felt the presence of another creature nearby, and she stared along the edge of the marsh. It was the red-crowned crane. She watched it wade slowly in her direction in search of its next meal. Hok tried to remember the last time she'd eaten. She thought she recalled having a dream in which Tsung fed her some
conjee
—rice porridge—but she wasn't sure.

The crane continued to wade in her direction, and Hok reached for the tiny jade replica around her neck. Her fingers brushed against the tall, open collar of the red silk dress, but failed to connect with the silk thread that held the crane. It was gone.

Hok ran her fingers along the five razor-thin scabs on the side of her neck, now covered with insect bites. She remembered Tsung had swiped her with his fingernails. That must have been when she lost the crane.

Fresh tears formed in Hok's eyes. Until that moment, she had never realized how important that little piece of jewelry was to her. She knew it was from her mother, but her mother was only a distant memory.

Hok decided she needed to do something to occupy her mind. Something to help herself. She stood, and the crane squawked. It stared straight at her, bobbed its head three times, and flew off.

Hok teetered in the soft soil next to her grass pile, watching the crane fly up a narrow stream not too far away. It was not the same stream she had followed to the marsh. With no other plans, Hok decided to follow the crane again. She regained her balance, took a long drink of water, and began to walk, cradling her broken arm.

Hok headed back into the forest, following the crane's path up the stream. The crane was nowhere to be seen, but Hok pressed forward. The more she walked, the more cloudy her head became. She
assumed it would have gotten clearer, but she was wrong. Between the Dream Dust and stress of her arm break and everything else, she knew exhaustion was setting in. Walking was probably one of the worst things she could be doing to her body right now, especially since she hadn't eaten in a while. However, she didn't know what else to do. She didn't see any point in sitting still, waiting for help that would never arrive.

Hok continued to follow the stream, hoping it would lead to a house or a trail or something. She knew that if you followed a river or stream long enough in that region, chances were good you would eventually find civilization.

Overhead, the clouds continued to thicken and it began to rain. She was soaked and chilled to the bone in no time, but at least the rain kept the insects away and washed much of the mud off her body and out of her stubbly hair.

The evening shadows came early thanks to the rain, and Hok knew that she would have to stop soon. The dizziness was returning, too, and her mind was beginning to play tricks on her. She even thought she heard voices.

Hok rounded a bend and her thin eyebrows raised. She saw two women, one old and one a few years older than herself.

“Would you get off that bridge already?” the old woman grumbled from the stream bank. “We are going to be late.”

“But I want to make a wish, Mother,” the young woman replied from beneath a delicate umbrella. “Give me a coin so I can throw it into the water and—”

The young woman stopped in mid-sentence as Hok stumbled up the center of the stream, heading for the bridge.

“What on earth is that girl doing?” the old woman said in a disgusted tone. “She is far too old to be playing in the water, or in the rain for that matter.”

“I don't think she's playing,” the young woman said. “Look at her face and the way she's holding that one arm. She looks like she needs help.”

“She needs to learn how to carry herself like a lady,” the old woman snapped.
“That's
what she needs. She's a mess! There is no excuse for a girl to look like that. I bet she's homeless. Let's go before she starts begging for money.”

“I don't know …,” the young woman said. She stepped off the bridge, and Hok tried to call out to her. All Hok could manage was a high-pitched squeak. Hok reached the bridge and collapsed onto the stream bank.

The young woman stepped forward and examined Hok, and her eyes widened. “Look, Mother! Her eyes are almost round, and the little bit of hair she has is brown!”

The old woman scoffed. “Don't touch her. She's a half-breed. No better than a mongrel dog. Come, let's be on our way.” The old woman turned away from the bridge and walked up the narrow road.

The young woman looked at Hok, then at her mother. She laid her wishing coin in Hok's hand and followed her mother.

The next morning, Hok found herself still fading in and out of consciousness beside the bridge. The rain had stopped, and numerous groups of travelers had passed over the bridge since daybreak. Many had stopped to stare at her and debate how she had come to rest there, but none had offered any assistance. The only person to come near her did so just long enough to snatch the coin from her hand. She heard the word
mongrel
many times.

With her weary eyes closed to the morning light and the indifferent passersby, Hok eventually heard the strangest sound. It was a soft, garbled mumbling, like she imagined a spirit might sound.

“Xy you zwqd vmxp?”