Chapter Fifty-Four
Hong Kong Island
Helen
As soon as Marigold fell asleep in the hotel, I hurried to the toilet and threw up.
I didn’t have much time left. The attacks beset me daily, at any hour, without warning.
Even in my sleep I could turn invisible, and it had long stopped mattering whether or not I was holding my breath.
By the time Marigold and I had boarded the plane for Hong Kong, my body was as buoyant as a kite without a string.
Cut me open, and there’d be air instead of blood.
I wiped the bile from my mouth and stumbled out of the bathroom, clinging to the walls for support.
What had I been thinking, agreeing to come back here—halfway across the world, thousands of miles away from home?
I hardly recognized this wired and alien city scraping the sky outside my window.
During the eight long years I’d grown up in Hong Kong, it’d been a sensation to see a building more than ten stories tall.
Now? Were there any under ten stories tall?
Neon-lit billboards plastered their walls, advertising Adidas and McDonald’s and, unthinkably, even Japanese brands like Sony and Nikon.
Yet, the energy was the same. Nearly midnight, and red taxis puttered up and down the road, vendors still selling sliced melons, and umbrellas still poking each other as they popped open against a sudden shower.
When I pressed my forehead to the windowpane, I caught the vibrations of someone bowing an erhu.
The melody was “Night over the Suzhou River,” a tune that I had once loved and since forgotten.
Listening to it, my ear rang with an old phantom ache, but I didn’t pull away.
I listened until rain washed out each plaintive note, until the threads of music tangled with the din outside.
Then, in my head, I played the song to its very end.
And as a trace of the familiar glittering cold eased my pain, I whispered out into the city where the ghosts of my past lay buried:
“Shadow. Shadow, are you still waiting for me? I’ve come to get you.”
It was why I’d ultimately decided to come. Why I hadn’t fought after Marigold had insisted on buying plane tickets. I only wished she hadn’t insisted on joining.
Let her, Mama had urged. In her dark eyes, I could guess what she’d foreseen. Maybe she can help.
I knew Marigold wanted to help. I also knew that if I failed—if I disappeared for good—she would blame herself. Bad enough she’d inherited my demons, I couldn’t bequeath her my burdens, too.
I fell into bed, wrapping myself in the cool, unfamiliar sheets. My daughter had turned on the heat, but still I shivered. Nothing could chase the wind out of my bones.
I closed my eyes, praying I’d still be here in the morning.
I woke to a shout in my ear.
It was Marigold, panicked. “Mom!” She removed a slender glass thermometer from under my tongue. “Your temperature is ninety degrees!”
“That meant nothing to me. “What time is it?”
“Who cares what time it is? You need to go to the hospital.”
I sat up. “It’s past ten o’clock! We can’t be late for lunch, Sui Chan said the yum cha parlors get crowded early—”
“Will you stop it? Stop pretending there isn’t anything wrong. I saw you on the plane—you were disappearing. And now—”
“Now what?” I snapped. “So what you saw me disappear? You’ve seen it happen before. What’s different now?”
“What’s different now? Your body’s starting to fail. Your temperature’s too low, your skin’s turning blue, and you can hardly stand without needing to lean against the wall. I didn’t say anything before, because I didn’t think . . .”
Marigold couldn’t say it, but I already knew. I didn’t think it’d kill you.
I was shaken. I desperately wanted to brush my teeth and put on some lipstick, to salvage some semblance of normalcy to the morning. But when I tried to stand, my knees buckled.
“You think any doctors can treat what I have?” I said. “I’ve done the tests, I’ve seen the specialists. They can’t find anything wrong.”
“Will you let me examine you?”
I regarded my daughter. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her glasses resting on her nose bridge. She looked so much like Lily.
“What can you do?” I whispered.
Marigold took off the white nylon gloves she’d been wearing all day. I’d always thought she had beautiful hands. A scholar’s hands, with long sensitive fingers that now hovered above the birthmark on my chest.
“I’m going to touch you,” she said, as if she were giving me an injection.
I felt a gentle hand on my skin, and Marigold’s face immediately contorted. I watched the color blanch from her skin, goosebumps bubbling up her neck to her cheeks as the air wheezed out of her nostrils. Her eyes were open yet empty.
“Marigold!” I said sharply. Her hand had dropped away, and when I patted her cheeks her skin was ice cold, like mine. I shook her. “Marigold!”
I nearly fell off the bed in relief when the blood rushed up to her face.
Depth returned to her eyes and she caught her breath. She sat back against the headboard next to me and, as if nothing had happened, she asked: “Do you remember where you lost your shadow?”
The question was a slap to my face. “What does my shadow have to do with anything?”
“You left it in 12 Harbourage the night you took these.” Marigold was prepared. From her pocket, she took out a pair of silk gloves she’d brought from home. Gloves slightly yellowed by time and that she seldom wore these days, yet I’d still recognize them anywhere.
“They were Lily’s,” my daughter said.
“How did you—” I halted mid-sentence and stared. The scar beside Marigold’s eye shone, pale like the mark on my chest. Was this her curse, the ability to see into my secrets?
I wanted to ask her, I wanted to know how the curse had hurt her, but I couldn’t. Not now. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, raising my voice a pitch. It was a warning that my daughter knew well. “Lunch is in an hour. We need to leave.”
I managed to open my suitcase, and rummaged through my clothes for something suitable to wear.
“What are you so scared of?” Marigold asked. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your help.” I picked up the phone to call for Edison.
“Don’t you care what’s happening to you?”
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Then came a familiar voice, “Wei?”
“Hello, Edison, it’s Aunty Helen.” I was calm, unlike Marigold, who simmered beside me. “Will you come pick us up? We’re ready.”
“My pleasure, Aunty. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I returned the phone to its cradle with a clatter.
The cold was getting sharper. I reached for my jacket, but my fingers tingled; I couldn’t feel them anymore. I thrust my hands into my pants pockets so Marigold wouldn’t see them shimmering.
Of course she saw. She draped my jacket over my shoulders.
“We’re going to 12 Harbourage. We’re going to find your shadow.”
“Listen to me, don’t you go anywhere near that house,” I spat. All these decades later, I could still taste the herbal bitterness of Sai Ma’s poison on my tongue. I could still see the pointed tip of her hairpin stabbing down at my face. “I’ll go on my own.”
“You mean you’ll ring the doorbell and barge inside?” Marigold challenged. “Or will you sneak in—as nothing?”
“I’m done arguing.”
“You might die if you disappear again. You need me to come with you.”
I hardly heard her. A puff of cold air shot into my left ear, bringing a hollow pain that made me stiffen.
My skin was tingling, all of me freezing over.
I could barely feel my feet as I forced myself toward the door.
Yum cha with Sui Chan was no longer a possibility. I needed to get to 12 Harbourage.
I wrapped my fingers around the deadbolt and slid the lock free. That was as far as I got before I stumbled and fell.
“Mom!” Marigold exclaimed. “Your leg—”
My legs.
They were flickering, the outline of my blue pants blurred. Marigold grabbed my arm with both hands as if to tether me to this world.
It was the opposite. “Let go,” I said roughly. I sounded harsh, but really it was fear that churned my voice thick. “Don’t touch me—or you . . .”
You might disappear too.
My hand flickered next, and Marigold clung tighter.
I twisted away just before my entire arm fragmented into nothing, and Marigold let out a cry.
My gold bracelet—the one I never took off if I could help it—glittered in her grasp.
Seeing it was a cruel comfort. At least it wouldn’t disappear with the rest of me.
“Marigold,” I whispered. There was something I needed to tell her, and so much I regretted now that I no longer had the time. Tears burned in my eyes, but their heat wouldn’t be enough to save me.
A plummeting feeling sharpened in my gut, like an unwanted somersault. It was happening. Cold swept over my eyes, so I couldn’t see. It fell over my ears, so I couldn’t hear. Before it stole over my lips, I choked, drowning on air, “My shadow . . . find Lily.”
Marigold touched my cheek, for there was little else of me left. If she was crying, I could not see her. If she was calling my name, I could not hear her. But her hands were warm and moist, like high summer in Tunglam.
That was my last thought before the dark claimed me and I vanished.