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Chenguang leaned forward in the passenger’s seat of the small blue Ford Focus and hooked fingers like claws onto the dashboard. Then howled.
The brake was under Ling’s foot, and she slammed down on it, hands tugging on the steering wheel, wrenching the car off the road, the gravel beside the road sending the car slewing. For a long, screeching second, Ling was sure she was going to lose control, and the car would go spinning, first around in circles across the road, then over and over down the bank until it slammed into a tree, wheels in the air, spinning, broken glass scattered like some new sort of weed, the grinding of metal suspended in the late afternoon sun.
Swallowing her heart back down, she rested her head on the steering wheel of the stalled car and let out a shuddering breath. Her mother whimpered.
Ling felt as though she’d fallen through the surface of the world and underneath it was nothing but a deep, dark lake, and the water threatened to draw her down into a fathomless void.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked, voice too weak to be heard.
Her mother heard it anyway, and answered, drawing Ling back from the lake.
‘Jordan!’ she said, half cry, half scream.
Ling straightened, looked around, as if she was going to see her oldest daughter walking down the road towards them
‘Where is she?’
Her mother was shaking her head. Leaning forward over the dash, shaking her head. Ling clamped a hand on the old woman’s shoulder, not caring that the bones ground together under the grip of her fingers.
‘Tell me! Tell me what’s happening!’
Chenguang lifted her head, looked at her daughter. ‘I thought she would fight longer,’ she said.
The words made Ling’s fingers go numb and they slid from the nubby wool of her mother’s cardigan. She shuddered, and when she spoke her voice came from a long way away.
‘Is she dead?’
Chenguang convulsed in her seat, but shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
Ling fumbled with the keys in the ignition, turned them; the car started. ‘Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get moving!’
Another shake of the head, but slower this time. ‘We would not be in time. It is out of our hands.’ The old woman’s hands slid back into her lap, lay there like broken birds.
Ling wasn’t going to accept it. She pulled the car back onto the road. ‘How far away are we?’ she asked.
Her mother shrugged, shoulders rounded, hunched forward.
‘Damn you, Mother!’ Ling screamed. ‘This is Jordan! Your granddaughter! You can’t give up!’ She thumped her hand against the steering wheel.
‘She is in the river. Out of our hands.’
‘No.’ Ling’s voice lowered. ‘No. I will not accept it. Out of our hands, maybe, but what about your gods? How long have you been honouring them? Your whole life! They owe you!’
Chenguang sat straighter. ‘The gods owe no one.’
But Ling was shaking her head. ‘You get their help. This one thing – you ask for it!’
Her mother sat stiff-lipped and rigid in the seat beside her, but at least she wasn’t saying no. They drove in silence a minute longer, Ling desperate to argue, plead, beg.
‘There is the road,’ Chenguang said, pointing, and Ling slowed with only enough time to make the turn, and then they were on a gravel road, a cloud of dust following them.
‘Are we too late?’ Ling asked through clenched teeth as the road went from gravel to dirt.
Her mother shook her head. ‘I do not know,’ she said.
The road seemed to go forever, and trees crowded forward to look in the car windows. Ling shivered despite herself. She did not like trees, or forests. She did not trust them.
But somewhere in there, were her babies. Karel, Bree. Jordan.
‘Mother!’ she said. ‘Are we too late?’
Hands, mottled with liver spots, clenched in the old woman’s lap. ‘It is in the hands of the gods,’ she said.
Ling wanted to stop the car, get out, run. Run blindly, find her children. Instead, she let go one hand from the steering wheel and tore at her hair. Her fingers came away knotted in black strands.
‘I thought you couldn’t ask them!’
Those eyes on her, flat, black. ‘I asked before we left. Now is just time for the sincere heart.’
Ling could not bear that. ‘But there must be something we can do!’
Her mother was sitting straight again. ‘We can be strong.’
A strangled cry from Ling.
‘We have no power over this part, my love,’ her mother said.
It was impossible to understand when her mother talked in riddles, so Ling gritted her teeth, imagined she was hugging her children, and concentrated on driving.
The road ran well after she was ready for it to stop. Trailed off into the forest like it had never meant to go anywhere after all. How had Gage even known about it? How had he remembered the whereabouts of the gold claim in the first place? Ling had no copy of the map.
She had told him the story, thinking it would amuse him, maybe even impress him. It was late, they were staying with her mother the night – just the one night – so she could introduce her new fiancé. So far, it had been an awkward visit, Chenguang looking over her prospective son-in-law with her dark eyes, before turning to gaze at her daughter.
‘A word please, Ling,’ she’d said in Chinese, and Ling’s cheeks had burnt at her mother’s rudeness. She’d tried to send Gage a look of embarrassed apology but he’d already turned away, pretending to be interested in reading the label on the bottle of wine they’d brought with them to celebrate. She’d stepped reluctantly after her mother who had seemed old to Ling even when she was a child, and when they were behind a closed door, hissed at her.
‘You didn’t need to be so rude, Mother. Gage will think you don’t like him.’
He mother had regarded her with impassive eyes. ‘Then he will be right, Ling,’ she said in Chinese. ‘I do not like him.’
‘Speak English!’ Ling burst out. ‘You were born here, for god’s sakes. You can speak the language!’
But her mother just shook her head. ‘It would not matter what language I spoke to tell you he is not the man for you.’
Ling did not want to hear it. She rolled her eyes and looked at the door, wanting escape. ‘I didn’t bring him here for your approval,’ she said. ‘Just so he could meet you. I wish I hadn’t.’
A hand landed on her arm, and her mother was right next to her, looking at her with sadness. ‘You have turned your back on so much already,’ the older woman said. ‘Now you are giving the rest away.’
A pause before she replied, to get her temper under control. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mother,’ Ling said. ‘If you are talking about your superstitions, yes, I turn my back on those – we don’t have to live by those anymore! I can do what I want! I can drive a car, get a job, I don’t have to stay on a decrepit farm shelling peas and trying to grow ginger so I can brew tea!’
Her mother’s eyes turned sad, and she shook her head. For a moment, Ling wondered if she’d missed something, but she threw her shoulders back, and sniffed. ‘I'm not Chinese, Mother,’ she said. ‘I'm a New Zealander. And this is the twenty-first century. A brand-new century! And Gage treats me like a movie star.’
Her mother was still shaking her head. ‘Why are you so afraid?’ she asked, voice low as though not expecting an answer. ‘So dreadfully blind?’
Ling laughed at that. ‘I'm not the one who is blind, Mother,’ she said, pulling her arm away and turning to open the door. ‘We’ll be leaving in the morning. You can come to the wedding if you want to, but I don’t want any scenes.’
Ling touched her face, feeling the heat in her cheeks the memory had put there. She climbed out of the car, not wanting to look at her mother.
Chenguang had of course, turned out to be right about Gage. He’d not been a good man. He’d not been faithful, or kind, and he’d taken advantage of Ling’s early naivety and amused himself at her expense.
But she was older and wiser now, and there were still the children. They made the years worthwhile. Looking around at the trees, Ling shuddered. How could Gage have brought them here? Even the dog. Taffy was old; she shouldn’t have been out tramping around in the bush. She hugged herself and cursed her ex-husband. Then cursed herself for leading him into the dusty old study in her mother’s house in the middle of the night and telling him the story of Dorado, dragging down the old file of letters and letting him trace the yellowed map with one inquisitive finger. She’d forgotten about that night but Gage obviously hadn’t.
‘Where do we go?’ she asked her mother. Every direction looked the same to her already, and they hadn’t moved. ‘Where are the children?’
Her mother looked as lost as she did. Or, at least, she was peering into the shadows between the trees like she was trying to read some foreign language.
‘They’re not here, Mother. Where do we go?’ Her fingers dug like claws into the flesh above her elbows.
Chenguang walked to the nearest tree and touched it briefly, then lowered herself to her knees in front of it.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Ling asked. ‘We don’t have time for this!’ She flung a glance around, looking for a track to follow. There must be a track, and it would lead her to the children, and she would find them, and they would be just fine.
‘Taffy!’ she screamed. Dogs had excellent hearing, even old fat ones. Everyone knew that. The children would have Taffy with them, and she’d hear them calling. ‘Taffy!’
‘She will not hear,’ her mother said.
‘You don’t know that.’ Ling huffed out a breath. ‘You brought us here. Why did you bring us here if you don’t know where they are?’
‘Because it is easier to find them if I am somewhere they have been!’ Her mother’s voice had risen, and Ling took a step back. ‘Be quiet, Ling, and listen for your children.’
‘How am I supposed to hear them?’
‘By being quiet.’
She stayed silent, but not because she’d been told to like she was a naughty little girl again, but because there was nothing to say anyway.
Her mother drew something from the pocket of her cardigan and unfolded it. A piece of paper, she smoothed it open and laid it on the ground in front of her. Gnawing on her lip, Ling sidled closer to see what it was.
It was the map, the one showing where Dorado lay, far down a river. The map she’d shown Gage fifteen years ago, and the one inked in the hand of her great-great-great-grandfather.
‘How will that tell you anything?’ she asked.
‘Hush.’
Ling bit down on the next words and hushed. Watched her mother fumble with the paper instead. When she had it uncreased on the ground to her satisfaction, her mother mumbled something under her breath, looked around at the trees, then picked up a handful of dirt. Ling opened her mouth to ask again, but kept silent, bouncing on her toes, feeling sick stress through her body, and wanting to go charging off to look for her babies.
What voodoo rubbish was her mother doing now? The dirt sprinkled over the parchment, and Chenguang leaned forward, nose almost to the paper, peering at it.
‘This is the river here, you see?’ her mother said after a moment, and Ling sidled closer again.
There was a line snaking across the page, the ink faded. Her mother’s finger followed it, then stabbed at two small clumps of earth beside it.
‘The twins, look.’
It looked like dirt. ‘I don’t understand.’
The finger nudged the soil. ‘They are here, on the other side of the river.’ Chenguang looked up at her. ‘They are alone.’
Still not quite understanding, the words made Ling shudder anyway. She swallowed and her throat clicked, dry. ‘Jordan?’ she whispered.
The finger moved, back to the lines of the river, followed it for a brief space, hovered shaking over another twist of dirt, one that looked like a miniature body sprawled on the page. Ling wanted to turn away.
‘That’s her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she alive?’ Ling was cold. She couldn’t feel her feet. Or hands.
Her mother’s voice caught. ‘I do not know.’
It was hard to breathe. Ling looked down at the map again. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, and the finger moved again, pulled back from a dark smear of earth that blemished the page.
‘It is the demon.’
‘Demon?’
Her mother climbed to her feet, pulling the map with her, brushing the dirt from it.
‘Mother? Demon? You said demon.’
Chenguang was folding the page again and putting it back in her pocket. She didn’t look at her daughter.
Ling reached out and touched her. ‘Mother?’
Chenguang blinked at her. ‘It is what is following Jordan.’
‘Following her?’ It had been a far bigger clump of dirt than the small figure that had been Jordan. ‘What does it want with her?’
‘It does not have her yet.’
‘Tell me! What does it want with her?’
Chenguang walked back to the car. ‘It wants to eat her.’ She turned around to look at her daughter, her hand on the door handle. ‘And it will unless we stop it. Even if Jordan is dead, we must get to her first.’
Head reeling, Ling followed her mother back to the car. For the first time in a long time, she thought she just might believe in spirits.
It terrified her.