Harley took a seat right at the back of the bus – as far away as possible from the large sleeping woman in the hideous dress and the grubby-looking man in the red trackies and cap.
The minibus shot out through the gates as soon as Harley took his seat and began navigating its way through the humid, hazy air, ornamental flowerbeds, sprawling construction sites and towering steel, concrete and glass skyscrapers of Shenzhen. Harley’s eyes widened as he noticed dragon gates in some of the buildings they were passing, revealing the structures behind. He’d never known about dragon gates before Hong Kong, and now he was seeing them everywhere.
There were bottles of complimentary water in the seat pocket in front of Harley, and he opened one and waved it near his left shoulder enquiringly. The fabric across his shoulders shifted minutely and he heard the tiniest of splashes as Miniature-Dragon-Qing dropped into the open bottle.
Harley placed the bottle gently down on the seat beside him, catching a glimpse of rippling pale-blue scales slipping past the gap behind the label. As he watched (without trying to be too obvious about staring), the water level in the bottle dropped rapidly.
‘Another one?’ Harley addressed the air in general, softly, so as not to wake the strangers on the bus.
In reply, the plastic bottle tipped over, bone dry, as if it hadn’t just been filled to the brim with spring water seconds before.
Harley watched, fascinated, as a tiny blue dragon – the blue darker yet brighter than it had been a moment earlier – stepped out of the mouth of the empty bottle and looked up at him enquiringly and – no, Harley wasn’t imagining it – a touch impatiently. He hastily cracked open the lid of another bottle and set it down, upright, on the seat beside him. He watched in amazement as mini-Qing made a graceful leap up the side of the vessel and shimmied down into the bottle, her blue and gold mane and sharp triangular spines cutting easily through the water inside.
Harley was so engrossed that he didn’t see the big woman with the plaits and sunhat advancing down the aisle towards him with her arms outstretched until it was too late.
‘Uuuuurnk,’ Harley exclaimed as the huge woman shoved him face-first into her strangely lumpy bosom that smelled of pickled fish.
He struggled mightily, feeling as if he were going to pass out from the combination of decaying fish fumes and all-encompassing bosom. It would be a truly terrible way to die, a tiny part of his still-functioning brain told him.
The woman pushed Harley away suddenly, squeezing his face between her ginormous, calloused hands. Harley took great gasping breaths of air, just before the woman did it again – mashed him into her ample front, rubbing his face in her abundant womanly garments and – urgh! – body parts.
‘Qing!’ Harley screamed, his voice muffled, his arms windmilling. ‘Get her off me!’ But no help was forthcoming from the tiny creature he’d left doing a sinuous backstroke in the bottled water. He was being attacked. Why wasn’t Qing already using her mystical qì powers on this lady?
Finally, the big woman pushed Harley back once more as he choked and coughed.
‘Kind!’ she said in a weird, high falsetto. ‘How I have missed your adorable dimple (just like your daddy!) and your squeezably chubby cheeks!’
‘Chubby cheeks?’ Harley repeated in outrage, more angry now than frightened. ‘How dare you call them CHUBBY!’
Someone standing behind the woman burst out in peals of laughter and Harley sat bolt upright. He knew that laugh!
He knew that laugh because he himself laughed in exactly the same way.
‘Dad!’ Harley shoved the bosomy woman to one side and launched himself at the man in the grubby red tracksuit, knocking his blue cap off his head and hugging him fiercely (even though his dad, too, smelled terribly of preserved fish with a base note of fermented river mud).
‘Und mich?’ boomed the huge woman Harley had just pushed past, beefy fists balanced on hips. ‘Where is the cuddles for your favourite Onkel?’
Onkel?
Harley froze and looked up and up – into the kindly, ice-blue eyes of … Schumacher.
In. A. Dress.
And –
Sun. Hat.
Sporting – luscious long golden … plaits.
‘Very surprising for you, ja?’ Schumacher boomed, clapping his massive hands together. ‘Very funny trick I am playing, ja, Harls?’
Schumacher extended his floral tea dress-clad arms, the frilly sleeve cuffs halfway up his muscular forearms, and made a bring it home gesture with his hands.
Harley shook his head, the backs of his legs hitting the seat as he tried to avoid more suffocating, fishy cuddles before he realised that Schumacher wasn’t talking to him, but to the snake-like azure creature that was already flowing up Schumacher’s arm. Dragon-Qing gave her silky mane a shake, treading delicately with her five-clawed feet across the garish floral fabric of Schumacher’s bodice until she found a comfortable spot.
Qing, now roughly the size of a young boa constrictor, her azure scales glossy and vibrant from the water, curled herself around the base of Schumacher’s neck once, then stayed there, looped across his shoulders like a vicious-looking, ornamental shawl. Harley gulped as Qing watched him with blue-rimmed, unblinking black eyes, the whites a vibrant warm gold, her two streamer-like whiskers testing the air.
‘I have missed you, too, Prinzessin,’ Schumacher rumbled, scratching a spot between Qing’s horns awkwardly with one hand. ‘We worried very much, Ray and I, for you junge Leute.’ Harley smiled. When Schumacher was feeling emotional, his German had a habit of bursting out all over the place.
Dragon-Qing stretched her head towards the ceiling suddenly, shaking her mane in delight before closing her eyes and dropping straight off to sleep.
Ray, awed, sank down into an aisle seat on the left, while Schumacher lowered himself down gently into the seat across the aisle, careful not to wake the sleeping creature draped around him. They turned to face Harley as the bus continued to drive in a roughly westerly direction out of Shenzhen. The scenery along the expressway they were travelling on grew more rural by the minute as they left behind factories and businesses and half-finished bridges and buildings covered in dense bamboo scaffolding, driving past clusters of concrete low-rise apartment buildings built around rice paddies, fish farms, small fields of hand-sown crops and one-storey, rusty-roofed brick or wooden shacks with small children playing on the verandas. Huge electricity transmission towers, massive billboards covered in Chinese characters, blue and white steel silos on stilts, abandoned concrete pylons and large bodies of water punctuated the passing view at regular intervals. What foliage and grass Harley could see was a dusty dark green colour so unlike the countryside of home that he could only stare at the unfamiliar trees and bright wildflowers going by. It was a strange mix of urban and rural, the finished and the unfinished, brand-new things and desperately falling-apart things, all jumbled together.
‘When did she start feeling comfortable enough with any of us to do this?!’ Ray whispered excitedly. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? Qing? I saw her climb out of that bottle, all teeny tiny, and then she was doing that—’ Ray flapped his hands at where Qing lay curled around Schumacher’s neck and shoulders. ‘This is incredible!’
‘Wait till you hear about everything that happened after we got separated …’ Harley eagerly filled in his dad and Schumacher on the events following the ambush on Taipa Island.
Ray’s mouth formed an O of wonder as Harley described the actions of Pearl-Qing in their desperate flight away from Chiu Chiu Pang’s massed forces in the mist. His face went dark at the news of the second ambush in the laneway behind Mr Hong Kong’s shop. And his eyebrows threatened to hit his hairline as Harley told them about the bronze-coloured fúcánglóng that had almost caused an earthquake on Tai Mo Shan, the five golden temple dragons that had somehow come to life at a single word from Qing, and the news that there was another vase with a red dragon on it.
‘Does anyone else know?’ Ray said hoarsely. ‘About the vase? It could be our ticket out of this mess. It’s definitely something we can bargain with.’
‘Then pull a double cross as we smash it anyway?’ Harley said doubtfully. ‘Releasing the girl inside?’
‘Exactly!’ Ray crowed. ‘Now you’re thinking like a Spark.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ muttered Harley, and Ray shot him a hurt look.
‘But this is not the new news,’ Schumacher added, troubled. ‘It is over two thousand years since this Magier – this wizard, ja – was last seen. How do we even know we are going to the right place, Freunde? And if this vase is even still there?’
‘Qing told Mr Hong Kong – who’s an old lady by the way,’ Harley saw his dad’s eyes widen at that titbit, ‘where the magician was last seen. If I know anything about dragons,’ and Harley’s tone indicated his extreme uncertainty on that subject, ‘there will be some kind of mountain or river involved.’
Harley felt the distinct sensation that he was being watched, and he looked up the middle of the minibus to catch the dark eyes of their driver staring back at them in the mirror. When the driver realised he’d been caught staring, the man averted his eyes quickly. He began, rather unconvincingly, to whistle tunelessly as he stared ahead at the road, executing a rather dangerous overtake of an overloaded motorbike carrying two adults, a small child and a live chicken, to show that he was, indeed, just driving.
Ray had also caught the man’s interest in the goings-on at the back of the vehicle.
‘As soon as we get off this “JollyBus”, we vanish,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve been seen by more people than I’m comfortable with during this entire escapade.’
‘And me in a dress!’ Schumacher declared, shaking his head. ‘That is not in my colours, to boot.’
Schumacher shook Dragon-Qing gently, to wake her. She raised her ridged, horned head immediately, mane, whiskers and spines flaring like the hood of an enraged cobra, the whites of her eyes shining a bright, warning gold, the black of her pupils almost swallowing the rim of azure around them. Her head swivelled to study Ray’s face as if she were reading it like a book, and the temperature at the back of the bus dropped so alarmingly fast that Ray sucked in a shaky breath of surprise. It came out as a puff of white when he exhaled.
Schumacher exclaimed through gritted teeth, in a high and funny voice, ‘Qing, my dear. Claws!’
Qing hung on grimly, hissing softly through bared teeth, sensing Ray’s worry.
Schumacher quickly rummaged around in his overstuffed bosom and retrieved a small jar with the word Rollmöpse on the label. He unscrewed it and tossed a curl of pickled herring into the dragon’s open jaws, which displayed frightening, dagger-like teeth. Startled, Qing chewed and swallowed the fishy morsel and her head swivelled closer to Schumacher’s with an expression indicating both hope and more. The claws and the cold immediately loosened their hold on the atmosphere in the minibus.
Schumacher patted Dragon-Qing between her antler-like horns and tossed another rollmop into her open jaws. She loosened her hold on his padded shoulders a fraction further.
Sighing in relief, Schumacher gazed out the window as small mountain ranges came into view, then vanished again behind them. The bus charged through a mountain underpass, then veered off the expressway into a concrete parking area bigger than two football fields. The vehicle came to a stop in front of a long row of brightly signed shops selling everything from handheld fans and tinned premixed iced coffee, to inflatable cartoon neck pillows and instant meals in bowls.
‘Toilet stop!’ Ray muttered, eyeing a nearby restaurant with glistening roast ducks and braised chickens hanging in the window. There were cars and people everywhere and, instinctively, Ray, Schumacher and even Harley sank down in their seats, just to be a little less visible from the outside. The three of them watched as the driver opened the minibus door and got out, hitching up his pants as he walked past fresh fruit and cold drink vendors on his way to the toilets.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Ray muttered. ‘He’s not one of Mr, uh, Mrs Hong Kong’s usual guys.’
‘We had to improvise,’ Harley replied as Qing started eating the last of the rollmops, startling Ray, Harley and Schumacher with a fishy-breathed, wide-jawed yawn. Harley explained quickly about ‘joining’ the blind old woman’s extended family in the middle of a mountain village on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. ‘He must be one of her connections—’ he added, only to halt in surprise as Qing shook her bright mane and flowed back down Schumacher’s arm and onto the seat beside Harley.
Her outline seemed to go hazy – making each of them feel like there was something very wrong with their eyes – before she materialised as the Girl-Qing they knew. She was still chewing the last rollmop from the jar.
‘Nice black pantsuit,’ Schumacher said admiringly, striving for as normal a tone as possible, like these kinds of things happened all the time. ‘So much more practical for the running.’ He scooped the hot and itchy golden wig off his head and laid it on the seat beside him, releasing his own lank hair onto his shoulders.
Qing smiled enigmatically. ‘Nice plaits,’ she replied. ‘Suit you.’ And Schumacher grinned.
‘What sense do you get about this guy?’ Harley asked Qing, jerking his head at the front window through which they could see the driver returning. Ray frowned as he watched the man slip a phone back inside his back trouser pocket. Who had he been talking to?
Qing shrugged to indicate general unconcern and Harley turned to Ray and Schumacher. ‘That means that the driver is okay. Qing’s good at reading people.’
‘Like the vibe of them?’ Ray mused, thinking about how Qing had dug her blade-like claws into Schumacher’s shoulders.
‘Like the vibe of them,’ Harley confirmed. ‘She would tell us if something smelled as fishy as you three do.’ He wrinkled his nose at the pervasive odour of pickled herring.
‘We were hungry,’ Schumacher said apologetically. ‘And I pulled some strings with this Bavarian guy I know who ships, uh,’ he stumbled as Harley frowned and crossed his arms at the mention of possible illicit activities, ‘um, cheap souvenirs of no intrinsic worth or value, you understand – mere trifles – out of Taipa Island. Hansie is a cousin of a cousin. He pilots his own race-proven, high-performance speedboat,’ Schumacher added admiringly, ‘like the muscle car of the high seas!’
‘For the transporting of “souvenirs”?’ Harley was incredulous.
Schumacher’s response was jolly, but evasive. ‘So, he gave us the jars of Rollmöpse to pass the journey. This was the last one. Very tasty.’
Ray picked up the story without quite meeting Harley’s eye. ‘And he gave us these disguises. You can’t imagine how hard it is to find a dress in Schumacher’s size, Harls! As soon as we set foot on the Hong Kong side – and this was more than a day after you did, Harley, because Hansie (the cousin of the cousin) likes to talk (and, boy, can he talk) – this huge man shaped like a cube of granite in a black chauffeur’s uniform meets us with two pushbikes and tells us to peddle immediately towards the Chinese border.’
‘And I am asking, But you are the chauffeur, where is your car? Why can’t we drive there?’ Schumacher interrupted, ‘And the cube, you know, he is babbling, No, no! No drive! and saying something about the monsters, the monsters and then we are pedalling, Ray and I, and then we are walking out of the customs and seeing the JollyBus and here we are! Together again! Super toll, nein?’
The minibus driver got back on board with a double thumbs up at his passengers, not batting an eyelid at the presence of a new, fourth passenger in traditional Chinese clothes. It was for all the world as if someone had already worded him up on the possibility that a new person would simply materialise inside the bus two hours into the road trip.
The driver addressed a stream of urgent-sounding Mandarin Chinese straight at Qing and she gave a double thumbs up back to show that she’d understood. The minibus lurched into motion with a roar.
‘We’re about to enter Taishan,’ she told her companions gravely. ‘Look alive. And that’s not me saying that – it’s him, the driver. He’s getting word from his big boss, who is being told by Mrs Hong Kong directly, that there might be a welcoming party camped out in Taishan city.’
She looked into the driver’s mirror and met the driver’s worried gaze.