“I brought you something to pass the time.” He bends down, picks up the book from the floor. A thin layer of dust coats its cover. He wipes this off. Hands the book to me. “Star maps.”
It’s weighty, this book. Heavy with so many things I don’t know. So many things I want to learn. I set it on my chest, flip through pages that smell like gloss and years. The writing is in a language I don’t recognize, cramped and squiggled. But there are pictures: velvet blue and white spiderweb lines. Connecting dozens of dots. If I squint close enough, I can recognize them.
“Cassiopeia’s in there,” Dai says. “If you get through that, there’s plenty more like it upstairs. Oceanography, zoology, archaeology. A whole bunch of — y words. Hiro never could decide what he wanted to be…”
His sentence wilts. Sad. Like my father’s fields after rainless days and weeks. I try to turn a chunk of pages, look for my rice scythe, but the burn under my shoulder flares. Makes my teeth grit.
Dai stands. His chair scrapes softly across the floor. “I’ll have a nurse come in. Give you something for the pain.”
I let the book of star maps slide to my good, fireless side. My eyes are shutting, surrendering to inevitable sleep. Never in my life have I been so, so tired. But there’s one question I haven’t asked. One answer I need to know. “Wait… did… did you see Chma? Is he okay?”
“Chma?” He pauses.
“Kuen cut off his tail.” I see the knife. Chma’s slick, wet stump. I’m angry all over again.
“You killed a boy for your cat?” It makes the fight seem too simple, too brutish when Dai says it like that: a boy for a cat. A heart for a tail.
Not such a fair trade this time.
Dai reaches the door, shakes his head. “I didn’t see him.”
He leaves. I stare straight at the pitch-black ceiling. All I see are Kuen’s blank eyes, staring at nothing. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe my hand just slipped.
But he’s still dead. Because of me.
Kuen is dead. And I’m alive.
So why does it feel as if I’m the one who lost?
8 days
MEI YEE
I wait for the ambassador. Sing’s cries are in my head, and the yes is on my tongue, filling my body with sparks and spit, like that firework our neighbors bought one New Year’s. I’d never seen fire that color, a cherry red so bright it burned a hole into my vision. It was so beautiful, so not of my world, that I thought it was enough. But then the fuse ran out, shot up into the clear winter sky with a pluming white tail of smoke. The night’s black filled with more colors than I could name: trails of sapphire, scarlet, and green.
The sight was so beautiful I cried.
And I feel as if I’m about to cry now when the door wheels open. There’s so much inside — fear, loss, gain, unvoiced wishes, my yes—whirring and spitting and blazing like that firework. It’s impossible to keep it all in.
But something about the way the ambassador enters the room demands silence. He looks even bigger today, hulking in the fullness of his coat. The fabric is as black as a bear’s fur. His arms are full of something I can’t completely see. Whatever it is, it’s not flowers.
There’s no hello or formal nod. He walks over to the side table and grabs my vase by the rim.
“There were no suitable bouquets,” he tells me over his shoulder. “And I wanted to bring you something special. To show you how sorry I am about what happened…”
What happened. I wish he would say it, tell me he’s sorry for my bruises instead of bringing some other lavish gift. I wish he would keep to our routine, stick with flowers.
The ambassador steps away and I see he’s replaced my browned carnations with a shallow pot. Out of its sandy gravel rises a tree. It’s not a sapling, but a full-grown thing with limbs, bark, leaves, and roots. A tree that should be taller than me is no longer than my arm.
“W-what is it?” I stare, my yes momentarily forgotten, trying to imagine how a tree could be caged and shrunk. It seems like magic, impossible.
“A cypress tree.” He leans over to inspect the leaves, brushing them with too-careful, manicured fingers.
“How — why is it so small?” I feel stupid, asking this. I’ve never seen a cypress before. Most of the trees in my province were long gone by the time I was born, cut down to make room for rice fields. Maybe all cypress trees are this size, and I just never knew.
“It’s a technique called bonsai. Gardeners use it to keep the trees from getting too big and unmanageable. This way you can keep them inside. For your enjoyment.”
I keep looking at the tiny tree. Trying to imagine what it would look like if it weren’t confined to its pot. If men’s fingers and shears weren’t constantly picking at it, cutting it back.
“No more flowers?” I ask.
“They keep dying,” the ambassador says as if I don’t know. As if my room doesn’t fill up with sweet rot stench every time the petals wither. “I thought you might appreciate something more permanent.”
I’ll have nothing to place in the window now. Nothing to warn the boy with.
This thought catches me — sharp and hard — like a slingshot stone. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t. Soon there won’t be a window. Or walls. Or plastic orchid blossoms and lopsided stars.
As soon as I say yes.
The ambassador stops picking at the tree. His jacket comes off. Along with his coat. He moves over to my bed. The jostle of his body on the mattress shoots pain through my bruise.
“Have you thought any more about my offer?”
Yes. Just say it. Say it and all of this goes away.
My client sits beside me, but I’m still staring at the tree. Its tiny pot is ceramic, glazed blue. The same soft sheen the streetlamp makes on the boy’s face. I find myself wondering if it’s the same color as waves.
My lips part, but instead of my answer comes a question. The same one as before, “Would you take me to the sea?”
The ambassador frowns. He doesn’t look handsome doing it, the way window-boy does. It only makes the wrinkles of his face deeper, more treacherous. “It wouldn’t be good for people to see us together in public. But don’t worry. You’ll never have to leave the building. Besides, if it’s the ocean you want, you can always see pieces of it from the rooftop. When you go to the garden.”
“You… you can see it from the rooftops?” It steals my breath away, the thought that the sea was so close, this whole time, and I never knew.
“Yes. Seng Ngoi is a port city. We’re right next to the water.” His words come out quick and snapping. Like the noise that long-gone firework made. “Enough of this nonsense. What’s your answer?”
The hairs on my skin bristle against the edge in his voice. I search for the yes—the one that was just on the crest of my tongue, waiting to be released — but it’s deeper now. Unsure. Even the memories of Sing’s shriek don’t call it back. Instead of the pool and rooftop gardens and luxury food, all I can think about are the guards at the apartment door. How I’ll never have to leave the building. There might be no bars there, but there’s no boy, either. No one to promise a way out.
Can I trade one cage for another?
Are pieces of the sea enough?
“Mei Yee! Answer me.” His voice is hot, too loud in my ear.
There’s only one way home. For the boy. For me.