The sun was shining the day I first saw Firescape.
It was chun jie. I think this is significant if for no other reason than, at that time of year, Embarcadero gets less sun than the North Pole. I never been to the North Pole, but I got the Wiz’s word on it. Where I been, lo, these many years, is here, and I can count on one hand the Spring Festivals in which I haven’t just about chattered the teeth right out of my head.
The big event of chun jie is the parade. It’s a long parade that winds all along the Wharf and the Sang Yee Gah for hours, then ends up in the Gee Gah around sunset, where it sort of crumbles into a big block party. Then there are fireworks and bonfires and dancing and mountains of food.
Pandemonium. Chaos. That’s the chun jie. Doug likes it — the noise, the people milling, the smells. When he was just a shrub, we’d watch from this second floor flat over the Gee Gah where I sometimes overnighted when I didn’t feel up to dragging my tail back to the Farm after a day downtown. I’d sit in the window casing and Doug’d perch out on the fire escape in his little clay pot while the sun went down and the fireworks went up and the whole universe paraded by underneath.
Later on, he liked to be right down in it, which is hao with me — just fine, you know — ’cause Doug’d gotten bigger and that new brass pot Kaymart got him was nothing I’d be yearning to haul up a flight of busted stairs and out a window.
So this particular year, we’re mingling with the universe and tailing the parade through the Sang Yee Gah when I feel this sort of tugging at my immortal soul.
I look to Doug, naturally, ‘cause usually this means he has a message of import for me. But he’s just soaking up chun jie with his boughs waving and his needles all quivering in the thrill of it all. (Which, since I asked, he’s intimated to me he enjoys because it reminds him of the frisky winds that blow up the slopes of Mount Diablo. How he knows this, I don’t savvy, since I am not Tree.)
Anyway, I get, right off, that this tugging at my immortal soul is not of Doug and I glance around to see where it might originate. And that is when I see Firescape for the first time. She is standing next to a baozi wagon along the parade route waiting for a taste of the wares. I suspect her stare — which, as I glance at her, goes someplace else — was the source of the tugging at my immortal soul.
And why should she stare at me? I’m no great shakes to look at, let me tell you, unless you happen to like small, dark and stringy. But I am in company with a venerable Radio Flyer and Doug, and I am aware that any guy dragging a red wagon with a Tree in it attracts attention, even here.
She-who-is-no-longer-staring-at-me is a vision in black and red. Black silk quilted jacket with red collar and cuffs, black silk quilted leggings with red leather hi-tops. An assault weapon hangs jauntily from one shoulder.
The vendor hands her a paper-wrapped bao into which she bites delicately, then wipes her chin on the back of one dainty hand. This gives her the opportunity to glance at us again without seeming to.
She is a China-doll, her flower-face golden, her eyes like tear-drop chips of obsidian — like the Apache tears mi madre brought from her homeland. But unlike any of the hundreds of Chinese girls I’ve seen along the Sang Yee Gah, her hair is the color of October trees — a shade of red you see only once a year.
I am smitten. So smitten, Kipling pops into my head, courtesy of Archaic Literature 101, Professor Lombard Street instructing: San Francisco, Kipling said, is a mad city — inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.
My heart sighs. Mr. Kipling said a mouthful.
A breeze stirs and Doug brushes my hand with a scented bough. I am urged to cross the street and meet this vision. I look for an opportunity and see one — there, between the dragon boat and the Dog of Heaven.
I manage to get me, my wagon and my Tree through the parade and across the street. I get yelled at, and some firecrackers go off right under the wagon, but we make it.
Too late. The red-haired Chinese girl is gone, red hi-tops, assault rifle and all.
I feel like a deflated balloon. Then I have the hopeful thought that the vendor might know the girl.
“What girl?” he says.
“Ninja-girl in black and red. Red hair. You just now sold her a bao.”
The vendor shrugs. “I sell lots of baos.
“Not to red-haired Chinese girls carrying AKs, I’ll bet not.”
“Why you wanna know, chico?” the vendor asks, suspicious-like.
Honesty, I decide, is the best policy. “I’m smitten,” I say.
“What the hell's that — smitten?”
I blush. “I think she’s neon. Number one jade.”
He laughs. “You jingbing, chico. She’s King’s Guard. Colonel, by the pips on her uni.”
My heart beats a little faster. I have tumbled at first gander for a Colonel of the King’s elite knighties. What a ditz. I might as well have fallen for a goddess. It’s hopeless.
I ask the vendor if he saw which way the knightie Colonel went.
He jerks his head up the street toward where the parade will end in a wild melee. “After the King’s float, where else?”
I follow the parade, tugging Doug after me in the Flyer, trying to catch the head of the beast. The Sun is setting, torches are flaring, and the shadows in the street are taking on a life of their own. It is hard to see things that are black and red. I pray to find the King’s float before it reaches the end of its route, but my prayers don’t make it to the Big Ear and I find myself swept into the courtyard where the parade melts into chaos.
This is where the Sang Yee Gah and several narrow cross-alleys meet in a long, cobbled yard. Right now it is a sea of floats and dancing dragons and stilt walkers and music. People flow past me, around me. An old Chinese guy smiles at me as he shuffles by, a couple of young women look at me slyly, some kids jostle my wagon and pat at Doug’s boughs.
Then I can no longer make out individuals. I am awash in the crowd and lose all hope of finding the red-haired ninja knightie, when Doug brushes the hand that holds the wagon tongue. Simultaneously, I feel the tugs — his, which I recognize, hers, which is new. Then hers is gone.
I glance at Doug. He is waving me to the right along the wall of a brick building. I go, but even here, the crush of bodies is intense. Fireworks are beginning to go off, painting the crowd and the buildings and the far-off sky with rainbows, and I head toward the balcony where the King’s float will stop.
By tradition, Hismajesty climbs off the float onto the balcony, where he will watch from a throne as his subjects entertain him through the night and into the next morning — a lot like Cinco de Mayo in my old barrio, but a lot chillier. Beijing’s just gotta be warmer in February than Embarcadero or this festival would’ve never gotten off the ground.
I can see the balcony and the throne when the crowd gets so dense I can’t move forward. I give up and step up into a doorway and there she is.
We just stare at each other for a moment and then Doug gives me this fir-scented nudge.
“Hello,” I say intelligently, “I’ve never shared a doorway with a Colonel before. I never even met a Colonel before.”
She looks at me with these big, obsidian eyes and I can see fireworks and torch light reflected in them.
“Firescape,” she says. “Colonel Firescape. King’s knightie. Who’re you?”
“Taco,” I say, and then decide to go for the whole enchilada. “Taco Del. And this is Doug.”
Her eyes widen, then go to my Tree. “You named a tree?”
“He’s not just a tree,” I explain. “He’s a close personal friend.”
She nods, shifting her AK in her arms, which reminds me to be circumspect. Then she bends down and shakes one of Doug’s boughs.
“You got some interesting friends, Doug,” she tells him. “They say only loco people give up their real and secret names to total strangers. Is your friend loco?”
If Doug answers her, I don’t hear it, so I say, “I don’t think I’m loco. But I do hear voices sometimes. Whispers, really.”
She looks impressed. “Yeah? What do they say?”
I shrug. “Wish I knew. I get words sometimes now...at least, I think they’re words. Well, of course they’re words, I’m just not sure what language they’re in.”
Her mouth makes a little ‘o.’
“So you’re guarding Hismajesty?”
Now, her mouth twists a little. “Not right now. Right now, I’m talking to a possibly jingbing dude who names trees and hauls them around in little red wagons.”
She is gazing up over my shoulder, and I turn my head so I can see what she sees. It’s Hismajesty, King of Embarcadero, and he and his float are approaching the Royal balcony.
This is when I feel another tug at my immortal soul — third one tonight. Only this one isn’t so much a tug as it is a yank — a cold, shivering yank. This is not Doug, of that I am certain. And it’s not Colonel Firescape ‘cause she’s standing right in front of me and this is coming from somewhere else.
Doug’s branches are waving like crazy all of a sudden, and I know something bad is shakin'. Then, I hear the whisper, “Wiwe,” it says, which is something I don’t know, then, “bu hao,” which I do know.
“Bu hao,” I repeat.
“What?” says Colonel Firescape. “What’s no good?”
Across the courtyard in a window is a shadow. It’s Someone. I don’t know who, but then I look at the window and Doug’s boughs are brushing my hand and I see fire leaping up the wall and taking hold of the balcony where, in two minutes, Hismajesty will be roosting.
“Don’t let him get on the balcony,” I tell the Colonel. “Don’t let him get anywhere near the balcony. Get him off the float!” I say this very low and earnest, so she won’t think I’m loco.
“Esta loco?” she says, and her hands tighten on her AK.
“Fire,” I say, “I see fire. If he gets to the balcony — ”
“How d’you know? You a merlin or something?”
“Yeah. Or something.” I’ll say anything, I’m so sure about this.
She gives me this look, then jumps down off the doorstep, using her AK like a battering ram.
“Make a hole!” she yells, and I can hear her voice clear as a seagull’s cry over the crowd noise.
But the place is jam-packed and Hismajesty’s float is moving faster than she is. I get down there with her, hoping Doug and I can help.
We’re maybe two yards from the float, from which His M is waving and grinning at his subjects, when Firescape gets wild and fires her AK into the air. This makes us a hole.
We reach the float just as it draws up to the balcony. It’s all adrenaline, I s’pose, but I don’t think I’ve ever leapt as far in a single bound as I did to get up on that float. She made it look easy, like she could fly — sub-machine gun and all. We land amid the flowers (from Kaymart’s glass gardens, I suspect) and grab Hismajesty and drag him off the float.
When we hit the cobbles, we have to drag him a few feet on this backside so he is not a happy monarch. He fights himself upright, sees that his float has docked without him and roars, “What the hell was that?” and “Who’s this scum?” (Meaning me.)
We all blink at each other, then Firescape says, “He said — he said there’d be a fire.”
”You think so? Maybe he meant someone’d get fired!” snarls the surly sovereign.
And then his float explodes.
Well, it doesn’t so much explode as the front of it, which is docked under the balcony, just goes whoosh in this pillar of fire. The fire takes the balcony, the fire escape that leads to it and the throne that sits on it.
About 10,000 things happen all at once. Fireworks continue to go off and everybody stops whatever they’re doing and finds themselves doing something else they hadn’t even thought of doing two seconds ago: screaming, maybe — mostly the ones with singed eyebrows — oooh-ing and ahhhh-ing, running for cover.
Hismajesty is struck speechless, which is a condition, I come to know, so unusual as to cause great consternation among those who know him.
Faster than I can breathe again, we are surrounded by Knighties in red and black and whisked away into a dark corner of the square. Whisking is almost impossible with a 30 pound tree in a wagon, but they do it. And while they are whisking, I get that yanked at feeling in my soul again and look away across the courtyard. And what I see, as though he was the only one out there, is this old Chinese guy — the one who smiled at me. He is like something out of a history video — which is to say, he looks like a lot of old Chinese guys I know. But he’s staring at me across all that dark and fire and all those bobbing heads and, for a second, we are connected and I am sure this is the coldest chun jie I have ever known.
I am not given any time to contemplate this, however. The Knighties continue to whisk most efficiently, and my view of the OCG is cut off. And a good thing — I was on the verge of mental frost bite. Next thing I know, we are in a dark, close place and the shouting of the crowd is smothered.
“Palace,” says Hismajesty and before I can steady my heart, Doug and I are standing in the very Throneroom of the very Lord of Embarcadero, gazing up at the ensconced monarch and his very pregnant Lady Queen — Hermajesty to all and sundry — with knocking knees.
Well, that is, my knees are knocking. Doug, being Tree, doesn’t have knees to knock.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” says His M in a voice-o-majesty. “For this eve — according to Firescape — you have saved my life and years of senseless grief and anarchy among your fellow Embarcaderans. What have you to say for yourself, merlin?”
Merlin. My mind has completely slipped over the fact that I made such a claim. I wonder if I can retract it. I bow. Doug bows a little too, although without aid of a breeze this is hard for him.
“I’m glad to have been of service,” I say and leave the merlin thing unaddressed. Then I’m tongue-tied.
There is an awkward silence — or a weighty one, depending on your POV — then Hismajesty asks, “By what strange and wonderful magic did you accomplish this?”
“It was Doug,” I say and nod toward the Tree.
All eyes turn to Doug, who waves congenially.
“The tree? My life has been saved by a magic shrubbery?” asks Hismajesty, and eyeballs me real good. “Who are you?”
I open my mouth to say I’m just Taco from the Farm and the weirdest stuff comes out. “I am Taco Del — merlin — and this is the Fabled Tree of Destiny, the rustling of whose boughs did save your royal posterior.”
Now there is an even weightier silence and Hismajesty is looking at me muy strangely and says, “So you talk to the Tree and it...”
“Talks to me. Not in so many words, ni dong, but the Tree of Destiny makes itself understood to me alone, and what it had me to understand this eve was that your majesty’s float was significantly doomed.”
“You foresaw the fireball?”
“Poof,” I say with a flourish, and the next thing I know I am entering the realm of merlinhood and Firescape has been promoted to General for not assuming me to be loco.
Hismajesty confides in me that he’s been having merlin trouble. His previous merlin has gone AWOL and hasn’t been heard from for weeks. As it turns out, he is at the bottom of the Bay. Had I known this, merlinry would’ve lost much of its appeal.
“You aren’t really a merlin,” says General Firescape later.
I am struck almost speechless. “I’m not?” I plan to bluster a little with indignation, but she doesn’t give me a chance.
“I know what you said, but you didn’t mean it. You just wanted me not to think you were loco. In the Throneroom tonight, you meant it.”
I am amazed by this, let me tell you. It’s like she reads me.
“Actually,” I say, before my brain can stop me, “I didn’t know I was a merlin.”
“I kind of thought so. But you’re a merlin now.” She gives me this LOOK and I melt. And she asks, “So what happened? I mean, was it just fireworks?”
Yeah, it was fireworks, all right.
Oh, the poof, she means. “I don’t know,” I say, then, hopping on a memory, “No. It wasn’t just fireworks. There was gasoline in the grate under the balcony. I smelled it.”
She nods. “Lord E.”
“Huh?” I say.
“Who planned the poof. It was Lord E...wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I s’pose it could’ve been.”
For some reason I resist telling her about the creepy old Chinese guy. He might’ve had nothing to do with this. Then again, I got this feeling he had everything to do with this. I wonder if he connects to Lord E somehow.
“Does Lord E do stuff like this often?” I ask.
“No. He’d sure like to get rid of Hismajesty, though. That’s solid.” She looks a little suspicious at me. “Can’t you tell? If it was Lord E, I mean.”
“Merlinry,” I tell her, as serioso as I can, “is not an exact science.”
I do not tell her that, despite her conviction, I am not exactly a merlin, but just a dude lucky enough to dig up a very talented Tree.
When I tell Bags and Kaymart what has happened to me and Doug, they are awfully proud. I tell them it was Doug, not me, but Bags winks and says it’s both Doug and me.
“It takes two,” he says. “A merlin and his channel. You got it made, Del. You been called.”
They help me move my stuff into the Regency Palace where I would now live. Then they take me to a fanguan to celebrate with some hot and fishy noodles.
Called. I think about it that night while I lay in my new bed, holding Doug’s bough for comfort against the strangeness of sleeping twenty stories high in a building that shivers when the wind hits it.
“Doug,” I ask him, “why’d you make me say all that stuff about being a merlin?”
He doesn’t answer me, but I think I hear him laugh.