Page 3 of Caution to the Wind

I didn’t really know much about Henning. He’d just appeared one day after school on the back of an enormous motorcycle to pick Cleo up two years ago and never left. He worked most of the time as a resident at Rockyview Hospital, but he was also a reservist in the military, which paid for his schooling, so I rarely saw him after school at their house. But I did know he spoke at least a bit of Cantonese because sometimes, he seemed to understand me when I was talking to my parents on the phone. When I asked Cleo about it, she told me his stepmum was originally from Hong Kong just like my ma and grandfather. “Your name means elegant pearl, doesn’t it? Like the pearl seen beneath the Chinese dragon’s chin or clutched in its talon.”

I beamed at him. “That’s why Grandfather and my parents chose it. Because he wanted me to carry on his legacy and become a dragon.”

A slow smile curved that firm, serious mouth into a crescent moon. He reached up to clasp me warmly on the shoulder and pressed the dragon into my chest. “I have no doubt you will, Mei.”

“What’s that mean?” Cleo asked. “Becoming a dragon.”

“Mong zi sing lung,” I murmured to her. “Parents hope their children will become a dragon among men. That we’ll be special.”

“Exceptional,” Henning echoed, squeezing my shoulder before he stretched out of his crouch to his full, immense height.

Cleo nodded sagely. “Well, okay. Mei’s definitely a dragon, then.”

“Definitely,” Kate echoed, smoothing her hand down my head. My slippery straight hair was falling out of the ponytail, so she stepped closer to fix it gently for me.

“Can I be a dragon too?” Cleo asked, cocking her head to the side as she considered it. “Or is it only Chinese girls who can be dragons?”

“Girlsandboys,” Kate corrected even though Cleo made a face because we both hadn’t yet developed an affinity for boys.

“I think you can be a dragon,” I told my best friend, and even though I wasn’t usually demonstrative, I reached out to take her sticky hand again. “We’re best friends. Whatever I am, you are, right?”

“Right,” she agreed with that bright, pretty smile she’d inherited from her mum. “Of course.”

It was so easy back then, the ties between us all so innocent and bright.

I had no idea that only two hours later, everything would change, and nothing would ever be so simple again.

MEI

It waspitch dark around the periphery of the fairground. The multi-hued, flashing lights of the carnival seemed all the brighter against the starkness, my vision haunted by coloured streaks even when I squeezed my lids shut. We’d been at the fair for hours, and I was weary, but Cleo was still having fun. Everyone liked Cleo now that she wasn’t so sickly and too shy to speak, so when we ran into kids in our class near the roller coaster, they’d been happy to include her in the group, even with me dragging behind.

I didn’t like them, but then, I didn’t like many people.

So, when Cleo was distracted with a flirtatious Ray D’Angelo, the same idiot who had once bullied her, I drifted away from the ring toss booth and meandered through the crowd to get a lemonade from one of the food carts. I’d just paid for my sweating plastic cup when I noticed the small red tent at the edge of that sucking darkness.

My feet drew me closer without conscious direction, my mind drawn to the colour in the way of a bull. I’d always been like that, driven by instinct without the filter of my brain or the softening of a voice from my heart. If I was moved by something elementally, I let it move me.

It drove my parents crazy.

It was quieter near the tent, as if it occupied its own bubble of tranquility on the chaotic carnival grounds. A small sign was stapled to a post by the entrance.

Madame Cheung’s Palmistry & Face Reading.

I knew the Chinese practice only vaguely. Old Dragon had told me that there were people in China who could read your face as easily as a picture book. People who could discern from a single palm whether you would bear two children or none, if you’d rise to great success and fortune or die young.

It seemed like a terrifying science, a looking glass into a future that humans weren’t meant to see.

A wise soul, I figured, would turn their back on the tent and make their way back into the present.

Of course, I’d never been particularly wise.

So I followed the scent of myrrh incense between the flaps in the red canvas tent and stepped into the darkly lit interior.

It was larger inside than I would have thought, a vast emptiness surrounding the round centre table made it seem important, majestic, the high-backed chair before it like a throne.

But it was the woman seated facing me behind the table who ensnared my attention. She was old, as inold, seemingly ancient. The silken, pale skin of her face was creased into precise folds like some ornate origami. The loose drapery curtained her unsmiling red-painted mouth and cast shadows over her long, dark eyes. Her red silk garments mimicked the same textile, billowing around her slight form.

She looked magnificent.