Chapter 21 Island Dreams
ISLAND DREAMS
Thirty-three years ago …
You wake abruptly in the middle of the night.
The walls and roof and ceiling are the same; the bed you lie in is unchanged from when you fell asleep.
Yet something feels different, feels off.
A flicking tail catches your eye; you are startled to see the little white cat, which you’ve occasionally spotted around the island.
He (for it seems to you like a “he”) is sitting at the end of your bed, gazing with an unnerving intensity.
How did he get in here? Very strange. You reach a tentative hand forward, curious to see if he’ll let you stroke.
A voice beside you says, “Little sister? Are you up?”
You jerk abruptly and turn over.
Someone else is lying in the bed behind you; a young girl. She looks frightened. Her face is familiar; like your mother’s face, but younger, softened by childhood. She is the spitting image of the photograph that you found in the dresser, many days ago.
“Who—” You gasp, then stop, caught off guard by another shock.
The voice coming out of your throat is not your own.
It is reedy and high-pitched, the voice of a child.
Lift your hands; look at them. They are not yours, either.
Small hands, short and stubby. Look down at your clothes: fisher-girl trousers and loose top.
A braid swings from your scalp, neat and tightly pulled.
This is a dream. Of someone else’s life, someone else’s time, from years distant.
But whose dream? And why are you seeing it?
“Daiyu?” you say, cautiously, because the girl next to you looks so much like your mother, and you are sure she’s the girl in the old photo.
“I’m here,” she says, and you realize she’s trying to soothe you, though she is just a child herself. “It will be okay.”
“What will?”
The door bursts open and a frightened-looking old woman comes into the room, her gray hair drawn into a tight bun.
“Ahpo!” Daiyu exclaims. “What’s happening?”
“We must go, we must go,” your grandmother says, and takes each of you by the hand. “Hurry, they are very angry!”
There are voices, you realize suddenly; men shouting outside the house. The words are indistinct but the threat of them carries, clear and stark.
“Why are they angry?” you say, unnerved by the strangeness.
“The men think you have cursed them.” Ahpo half-drags, half-pulls the pair of you toward the back of the house. “They want us to leave. We must go, or the men may be violent!”
How strange, you think dizzily. This is just like the folktale your mother recited once, about the girl who was chased away by superstitious villagers. But how did it end again—
The front door caves, forced open by red-faced fishermen waving sticks and other implements.
Cursed child! Bad-luck demon girl! Storm bringer, ghost talker, ugly bad-luck sorceress!
You know their faces, and feel a wash of anger. These are the men who killed your cat, because they blame you for typhoons and revile you for speaking with ghosts. You know they did it, because the cat told you so. When he came back from the dead.
Where is he now? His ghost should still be around.
“Run!” Ahpo says, breaking your chain of thoughts, and the three of you do. Out the back of the house, into the mangroves. Away from the furious, violent, unreasonable villagers.
And still, still, you cannot wake, though you want desperately to do so.
Distance skips and scatters, as it often does in dreams. One moment, you are in the village, holding hands with Daiyu and Ahpo.
The next, you are on the coast: running across the headland cliff, under a lumbering silver moon. With no light pollution, the sky is a bright swathe of celestial bodies, reflecting their shimmer across the sea.
“What are we doing?” you say, to no one in particular.
“Praying at the stone temple. It is beneath our feet,” Ahpo says, sounding anxious. “The goddess will keep us safe. Tomorrow, we must leave Shek Ham Chau.”
Words come out of your mouth, words that you don’t intend to speak: “But the tide is high. We can’t cross from the beach to the cave.”
“No need to go that far. We can pray from here.” She points at the ground.
You look down.
The headland has a crevice, a crack that runs across the top.
It is wide enough for two adults to fit comfortably, were it a vertical passageway.
Directly beneath it is the Jiaoren Cavern, and within it a stone temple, carved directly into the rock.
The roof is visible through that crevice, about thirty feet below you.
“Will she hear us from this place?”
“I believe so,” Ahpo says.
“I’ve brought an offering!” Young Daiyu reaches into her pocket and pulls out a fistful of flower petals, partly wilted and slightly crushed. “Will that work, Ahpo?”
“It will have to do. Hurry, kneel here!”
The three of you kneel. Daiyu and Ahpo begin to whisper a prayer, in soft sync.
Goddess of Mercy, Bodhisattva of Compassion
She who hears the cries of the world.
Hear my cries, see the heaviness of my heart.
The waves of sadness that threaten to drown the spark of my spirit.
Help me find the light of hope in this darkness
And follow it back to wholeness—
If there is anyone who will listen to the sadness of a grandmother and two lonely children on a remote island, it is surely the goddess of mercy.
When the prayer is finished, Ahpo says warily, “I can’t hear a ruckus anymore. We can go to my cousin’s house, and spend the night there. In the morning, I will find us a way to the mainland.”
She stands, giving you a hand up. You take it, and stand with her.
But the ground near the crevice is weaker than any of you realize. It gives way abruptly as Ahpo walks, earth crumbling like the crust of a sweet tart. The ground collapses beneath the three of you, earth and grass shattering like a dropped vase.
Young Daiyu is the farthest away. She leaps to safe ground, panting.
But Ahpo falls through the widening hole in the cavern roof with a frail cry. And you, still holding her hand, fall with her.
“Siu Yin?”
The drop takes seconds. The drop takes thousands of years. Ahpo’s bony arms snake around your body as you both plummet, holding you close. There is earth and dirt raining on all sides, hard dark rock rushing up to meet you both—
“Siu Yin!”
—and you wake.
Nighttime, Shek Ham Chau.
You are in your own bed, soaked in so much sweat that the sheets are damp. Immediately, your skin itches with irritation.
Mami is standing over you, and for one awful, confused moment, she is both old Daiyu the middle-aged mother, and young Daiyu, who is an elder sister.
“Siu Yin!” she says again, looking worried but sounding angry. “Wake up! It’s only a dream.”
“I’m awake,” you protest. “My eyes are open!”
“They were open when you were shouting, too,” she says, which shocks you.
“How … how long was I…”
“A little while. I heard you making noise, and came in when you couldn’t seem to wake.” Mami looks up and down, adding, “Best if you change out of those clothes.”
Nod slowly. It won’t do to sleep in clammy, sweat-soaked fabric. Carefully, feeling weirdly embarrassed, you climb out of bed.
“What were you dreaming of?” She hands you a fresh shirt as you peel off the soiled one.
“A nightmare.”
“That’s obvious,” she says, sounding annoyed. “What kind of nightmare?” She’s so cold and stiff, not like the younger version you saw moments before.
“I dreamed about your sister.”
Mami is still for a long moment. “What do you mean?”
“It was like that folktale you used to tell me, years ago. About the little girl who was driven to her death by superstitious men, because they thought she was a necromancer? Only in this dream, the unlucky girl was your sister.” For some reason, it feels weird to admit that you were her sister, in the dream—so, you don’t.
Some inner sense warns you that this will upset her deeply.
Mami grimaces, and says nothing.
“Mami?”
“A ghost dream.” She pulls the damp sheets off your bed, piling them on the floor. “It happens, on places which are haunted. Sometimes they can bring on a fever, but you seem to be healthy enough.”
“A ghost dream?” You’ve heard of such things, but never experienced one before. “Was it real, then? What I dreamed about?”
“I’m not a mind reader, I don’t know exactly what you saw,” she snaps, spreading a clean sheet atop the hard, wooden bed. “But the folk story I told you is mostly true. My sister was that girl.”
You stare at her, aghast. “That’s awful. I didn’t know they treated your sister so badly.”
“Most people didn’t. A few of the men didn’t like her, that’s true, but many of the villagers were kind and good,” she says. “Can you get back to sleep?”
“I think so, but I want to write some more wards for my room, first.”
“If you must,” she says, already walking to the door. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Alright,” you say, but she is already out in the hallway, retreating back to her own room.
Sigh, reach for some paper and ink, and start drawing your fu talisman.
Swiftly, the shape of your days begins to change.
The dream doesn’t return, probably because of your fu talisman, and its details fade with time.
It helps that you’re relatively busy in the day.
The garden still needs weeding and watering.
There are still everyday chores like drawing water, or cleaning the house.
Apparently, the ghosts no longer feel the need to do it, now that you’ve moved in.
Between you and Mami, those tasks get done, more or less. If there’s the odd day that someone forgets to tend the garden, or a few extra plates are left lying around, neither of you comments. Truthfully, you’re rushing through those activities, mind elsewhere, and she is doing the same.