Читать книгу Hell to Heaven - Kylie Chan - Страница 14

Simone, Leo and I had dinner together that evening, just the three of us.

‘The appointment with the Archivist is tomorrow after school,’ I said to Simone. ‘Don’t forget. I’ll need you to take me.’

She gasped, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I’ve arranged to take some of my friends out on the boat after school tomorrow!’

‘You never asked me,’ I said.

She stuck her chin out at me. ‘I don’t need to. It’s my boat.’

‘Point taken; but I’m your guardian and you’re not an adult. Therefore I am legally required to be aware of where you are at all times.’

‘I’m going on the boat after school tomorrow,’ she said, stubborn.

‘I think an adult should go along with you, just in case,’ I said.

‘You have to go see the Archivist, and Leo’s …’ Simone hesitated, obviously not wanting to hurt Leo’s feelings. She changed what she was going to say. ‘Leo’s no good on the water.’

Leo grimaced but didn’t say anything.

‘How about Michael then? All the girls will think he’s the coolest thing ever.’

‘I told them girls only; they wanted to bring some boys but I said no, just all girls is more fun,’ Simone said. ‘They’ll get really annoyed if I bring Michael. I don’t need anyone along, Emma, really. The demons will look after us.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Leo said.

Simone’s expression softened. ‘You sure?’

He nodded with a false smile. ‘Sounds like fun. I want to meet your friends.’

Simone shrugged. ‘Okay. We can have fun pretending we’re related.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Leo said, his smile becoming more genuine.

‘I still need to get to the Archivist. Can you drop me there and be back in time for your cruise?’ I said.

‘How far is it?’ Simone said.

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I thought General Ma was going to tell you where it is.’

Simone unfocused, concentrating, then snapped back, obviously happier. ‘It’s fine, it’s just next to the Celestial Palace. He said you can take the stairs in Wan Chai and then someone can summon you a cloud to take you the rest of the way. I don’t need to take you.’

‘Can Ma do it?’

She concentrated again. ‘No, he’s busy. I’m asking around … what time is it tomorrow?’

‘Three.’

She nodded, still concentrating, then snapped back. ‘Your stone is supposed to have all of this info, Emma. It’s gone to sleep again, hasn’t it?’

The stone didn’t reply.

She shrugged. ‘Michael will wait for you at the Celestial Palace at about two forty-five and take you across on a cloud. Problem solved.’

It was quicker to walk the kilometre or so from the Academy to the Celestial Gateway than to drive. I walked along Hennessy Road, the air thick with the fumes of the passing traffic and burning my throat and eyes. At Southorn Playground — a concrete soccer pitch painted green, used by locals to sit and talk, and by young people to play basketball and soccer — I took an escalator up to the pedestrian overpass. The overpass straddled the busy streets of Wan Chai — Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road and then finally Gloucester Road, five lanes each way and packed with cars and red taxis. The overpass led into the mezzanine floor of Immigration Tower, which was full of Filipina domestic helpers suffering the tedious all-day wait for their work visas. Before I’d met John I’d often spent the whole day here myself, waiting for hours in the cockroach-infested halls rich with the ripe aroma of the over-used toilet facilities, being shuffled from counter to counter and interviewed by bored or aggressively irritated immigration officers. The waiting areas had recently been upgraded, but the bored bureaucrats behind the desks remained the same.

The walkway continued out of Immigration Tower and into Central Plaza One, an office tower that had once been Hong Kong’s tallest building. It was triangular in cross-section, and each wall had a bank of lifts to go to a different section of floors. All of the fittings were triangular to fit with the theme, including triangular gardens on the ground around the tower. I walked through Central Plaza, across another small walkway and into the office tower connected to the Convention Centre. I passed a number of international convention attendees, their large identity cards strung around their necks. They were loudly discussing some sort of plastics manufacturing in American and French accents.

I turned right out of the Convention Centre complex and walked across another road to Great Eagle Centre, which sat right on the edge of the water. It and its twin tower, Harbour Centre, had massive advertising signs spanning their first to third floors — they were visible from all over the harbour and featured in any night-time Hong Kong postcard scene. I could see the Star Ferry pulling into the Wan Chai ferry terminal below me, and a few double-decker buses waited in the bus station. I took another overpass to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, then an escalator down to the ground. I’d walked more than a kilometre without touching the ground.

The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre had a large open area on its ground floor and a rectangular fountain with dragon-head spouts. Behind the fountain stood a replica of Beijing’s Nine Dragon Wall, the gate to the Celestial Palace.

I didn’t immediately approach the wall; instead, I went to the roadside, where two large bronze statues of qilin stood facing the traffic. Known as kirin in Japan, they were Celestial creatures with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, the horns of a deer and the feet of a goat; most interestingly to me, they were also covered in scales like a reptile. Westerners often referred to them as Chinese unicorns, and although their appearance was not very unicorn-like, their nature was similar. They were divine creatures of pure light, fleeting and rare, not even composed of yang or yin but somehow transcendent of universal essence. It was regarded as a blessing to see a qilin. I never had, and knew that only very few of my Celestial acquaintances had ever seen one.

I turned away from the qilin and walked up to the Nine Dragon Wall. As I approached, the wall grew from two to four metres high and spread to twice as wide. The marble balustrade guarding the front of the wall descended into the ground and the sounds of human life around me ceased. The dragons came to life and writhed to the centre of the wall to greet me.

I reached into the large Sogo shopping bag that I’d brought with me and pulled out a range of local snacks. I waved one of the boxes. ‘Strawberry pocky is who?’

‘Me!’ said a gold dragon; it whipped its head out of the wall and took the box of pocky in its mouth. The lid opened and all of the iced biscuit sticks flew into its mouth at the same time. The box disappeared.

‘Damn, you’re greedy,’ I said.

‘Any more in there?’ the dragon said, eyeing the Sogo bag.

I raised a box of tiny hollow koala-shaped biscuits filled with icing. ‘Koalas?’

‘Chocolate?’ one of the purple dragons said.

‘Mine!’ another dragon said, and snatched the box out of my hand, then slithered to the end of the wall to enjoy the biscuits in peace.

I raised another couple of boxes. ‘I have strawberry and vanilla koalas here …’ They floated out of my hand to two more dragons. I checked inside the bag. ‘Chiu Chow iced mini biscuits …’

‘No way,’ a blue dragon said, staring wide-eyed at me. ‘Really?’

‘Give them to him, he’s from Swatow,’ said a purple dragon through a mouthful of koala.

I passed the Chiu Chow biscuits to the blue dragon and checked the bag again. ‘I feel like Santa at Christmas. I have … barbecue beef, spicy pork, Portuguese egg tarts …’