Curral Das Freiras, Madeira
Many years later a journalist would ask Major Wu Zihao how it felt to be a hero, but Zihao thought the question was based on a false premise.
“I am not a hero,” he would say, “I just did my duty.” It wasn’t humility or false modesty on his part.
A hero has to take action. Zihao had only followed orders.
Zihao only ever did exactly what he was ordered to do, nothing more and certainly nothing less.
He was ordered to fly a sortie over the eastern Atlantic, he was ordered to photograph the French fleet, he was ordered to ditch his plane in case of mechanical failure, and in the event of capture he was ordered to wait for his superiors to handle the negotiations of his release.
He didn’t have any orders for or against learning new skills while in captivity, however, and so Zihao was pleased that his English was improving even though he still had trouble understanding the new guard’s accent.
This guard talked slower, but with a sort of lisp that forced Zihao to concentrate longer on each syllable.
He explained he was “An outsider, not Malicarn,” and that English wasn’t his first language, either.
His name was Afonso, but the other guard kept calling him “Alfonso.” Even Zihao knew this was wrong.
The other guard’s name was Wallace. He had watched Zihao many times. “More and more of them like Alfonso’s going to help us,” Wallace said to Zihao when Afonso showed up, the day after Zihao’s failed escape attempt. “Kreek finds them. He knows all sorts of folk.”
Wallace was a talkative man, though Zihao couldn’t understand half of what he said.
It wasn’t because of the language barrier, but rather was because Wallace talked mostly nonsense.
He and his friend Buck had both talked lots of nonsense when Zihao was in the granary tower, but since his recapture Zihao hadn’t seen Buck at all and only Wallace was left to talk and talk and talk.
“Kreek’s pretty sure soon it will be time soon to get you out of here, don’t worry on it.
He’s quite sure of it, oh yes, what with the anger and all.
Lots of anger, they’re all saying. The Queen ran away, people are mad.
Now there’ll be magic coming back, yes, because of the dragon.
You must have lots of dragons, where you’re from.
These other fellas from outside the Malicarn don’t have dragons. ”
“No dragons,” Afonso said. “We have planes, I explained to you.” He and Wallace had stood guard over Zihao in the granary all night. They had rifles with them now, not just swords, and Wallace liked to hold his with both hands. Afonso kept his slung across his back. Outside it was raining hard.
“Yes,” Wallace said, “you have many great things.” He looked at Zihao. “Alfonso showed me his, what you call it, phone, yes? Phone. He’s no wizard, neither. See, outside the Malicarn, magic’s just all over the place. You know this, right?”
Afonso sighed. “It is not magic, Wallace.”
“You speak another language. In the Malicarn it’s magic.”
Whatever was going on, Zihao could tell there were multiple factions and agendas and it all seemed rather political.
Zihao wasn’t political, or at least tried not to be.
He had heard enough stories about politics to know it wasn’t for him.
Before he died, his grandfather used to whisper sad stories to Zihao about Tiananmen.
Stories where people suffered and his grandfather carried guilt about what he should have done instead.
Zihao didn’t want that, so he joined the air force.
He could take orders. That was easy. Orders meant you didn’t have to be political, you just had to do what you were told.
Simple enough. Stand straight, shine your shoes, salute your commanding officer.
Attend briefings, fly your route, land where you were told.
Zihao knew that Afonso wasn’t one of these brainwashed movie characters, and once Afonso began to use his phone to translate, they spoke easier to one another.
“We’re not with the Portuguese government,” Afonso said. “Fuck them. They took our homes away from us.”
“But there’s got to be someone coming for me?”
“Probably, I don’t know. I’m part of the Madeira Resistance. We’re going to help these Malicarn rebels throw down the studio shitheads in charge, and then we can have our island back.”
“Who were the other people? They helped me when I tried to escape hid me in their home.”
“There’s lots of people in the Malicarn trying to do what we’re doing. Doyle’s probably coordinating with all of them.”
“Doyle?”
“The guy Wallace calls Kreek. He’s leading the rebels.”
“What are they going to do to me?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, bud, I don’t much care.”
Afonso was young. A boy, a child really. Zihao tried to explain that he was a father, he had a wife, but no one listened.
It was a stupid thing, stalling out like he did.
He knew better. He shouldn’t have been climbing his aircraft so steeply.
But then he shouldn’t have been doing a low pass over those French cruisers in the first place.
They weren’t going to shoot him down, they were probably just messing with him, warning him.
Or maybe they thought he was a drone—that was what Zihao would have thought.
Anyway, he got out of there quick, stalled on the ascent, and didn’t bail out in time.
Fortunately, or so he thought, there was land ahead.
An island. Pretty rocky, but he found a patch, hard-landed the plane, and made it out before the flames consumed him.
It took Zihao another couple of days before he realized his rescuers were, in fact, his captors and that they seemed to have no idea who he was.
It was a few more days after that when he remembered a series of films he once watched on bootlegged DVDs, the films themselves never released in China.
Bad American fantasy films, the kind he’d been watching in various formats for a long time.
And then he remembered the reason they were banned, because the Americans had created the fantasy world in real life.
The Party said they were “dangerous propaganda, about Americans twisting people’s minds.
” Zihao had a good laugh at this, but when he realized he was in the fantasy world, he began to get nervous.
Why was no one coming to save him? After so many months, maybe nobody could.
“Where is your friend?” Zihao asked Wallace.
“Wow, you’re learnin’ to speak real good.”
“Yes. And your friend?”
“Oh, you mean Buck? I dunno. Kreek’s pretty mad at him. He’s the one let you get away, you know. The Guild’s kicking him out. Too bad. He’s a nice guy. Want an apple?”
When the rain stopped, the other men outside who had been watching the granary, friends of Wallace and outsiders like Afonso, were practicing shooting.
Zihao could hear them, training on their new guns in the predawn hours.
The outsiders were teaching the Malicarn men, who had never seen guns before.
Zihao was already thinking about his next escape.
Afonso’s phone was the obvious solution.
He could make contact with someone. Send an email, a text, something.
Afonso wasn’t very careful with where he kept his phone, always leaving it about.
Surely, Zihao could distract him, steal the phone.
He didn’t need it for long. Just to get word out, to get—
“Time to go.” Kreek, or Doyle, or whoever he was, stood at the top of the stairs. Zihao hadn’t seen him since the escape attempt. “The hour is upon us.”
Wallace bound Zihao’s hands behind him in a rope. “Just for now, just for now,” he whispered. Afonso made a phone call, speaking excitedly to someone in Portuguese.
“What now?” Zihao asked Kreek. He wanted to ask what he was planning on doing with him, but Zihao didn’t have the words.
“Now you help us become free.”
They carried him outside, where a carriage was waiting for them. Kreek and Zihao climbed aboard, and they began to roll away. It was still dark out, but the dawn was creeping over the treetops. Zihao smelled smoke in the distance.
They rode all morning. Men and women emerged from huts and cottages, cheering them on, joining in a march beside and behind.
They wept when they saw Zihao, reaching hands toward him, shouting, “Magic! The rider! Magic!” They handed Zihao bread they had baked, fruits and vegetables, pints of beer.
They threw flowers onto the cart and in front of the horses’ tread.
They sang and danced as the carriage rolled forward.
By early afternoon they arrived at a walled city.
Stretching around in front of the wall on all sides were hundreds of people living in tents on the ground.
Within the city Zihao could see many tall buildings and, in the center, a castle.
The gates of the city were opened wide, and the carriage rode inside, flanked by adoring, desperate crowds on all sides.
Every street was thronged with people weeping for joy.
In front of the castle gates, still shut, the carriage stopped. Kreek stood up and stretched his arms out toward the square in front of him.
“People of the Malicarn! You have asked, and I have answered! Behold, the harbinger of your deliverance! A man of great magic: the dragon rider!” He gestured to Zihao, who clumsily stood up and looked out at the sea of faces before him.
He did not know what to do, so he bowed slightly. The crowd quaked with jubilant fury.
“Now,” continued Kreek, “we will enter the castle and take back what is ours! Bring forth the Goblin Queen!”
“Kreek, stop this madness!” A man stood on top of the castle walls, flanked by several knights. “You have sworn fealty to the Crown!”
“Oh, Bariol,” Kreek said, turning to the man, “how far you have fallen. You were once a mighty hero.”
“And you were a great man, but no longer.”
“Where is the queen?”
“Far from you. Kreek, do you remember what you told the Council of Heroes, once? To never turn your fear to hatred?”
“Yes, and I do wish you had remembered that lesson.” Kreek nodded at Wallace, who raised his rifle and shot Bariol in the chest. The old knight collapsed. The mob’s anger boiled over and they rushed the castle gates. Kreek smiled.
Zihao was not a political man, but he thought again of his grandfather and another whispered story, about the Cultural Revolution. His grandfather was a small child then, but he remembered standing in the crowds, yelling at the traitors paraded in front of them. Cheering when they were executed.
“Why were they killed?” Zihao asked him once. “What did they do?”
“I do not remember,” his grandfather said. “But we all imagined it was for something bad.”