“We should be walking,” says Fortis. I can see him glower, even in the early-morning light.
“You mean, we should be sleeping,” yawns Ro, from the back of the tuk-tuk.
“We should be more careful about drawing attention to ourselves,” Fortis says. The water buffalo in front of him—one pinkish white, one black—stumble in the empty, uneven street, as if they agree.
“The sun is only just rising. There is no attention to draw,” Bibi points out. Lucas and Tima, wedged on either side of Bibi’s enormous yellow robes, look like they would rather be walking themselves.
Fortis rolls his eyes. “I’m surprised the water buffalo can even still pull you, William. Perhaps you should lay off the coconut milk curries.”
“And perhaps you need a little sweetening up, my friend.” The tuk-tuk careens to one side, and Bibi smiles. “There it is.”
There, surrounded by an enormous wall, is a complex of the most beautiful and elaborate buildings I have ever seen. Intricately carved rooftops form into peaks, golden spires rising into the sky between them. “Those are stupas,” Bibi says, pointing to the golden, spiked towers. “Very beautiful. Which means we’re at the Grand Palace. Where we find the Wat.” Bibi nods. “Wat Phra Kaew.”
“Wat what?” Ro asks.
“The Temple of the Emerald Buddha.”
“Emerald meaning the color, not the stone,” Fortis says. “In other words, green. Green like jade, or like your jade girl. It’s a start.” He winks at me and I feel for the carved jade shapes in my chestpack.
The Temple of the Emerald Buddha. To find the jade girl.
Could she really be so close now?
The streets don’t stay empty long, not even as long as the sunrise. As soon as we near the temple, the crush of people in the streets outside the walls of the Grand Palace is amazing. Even now, all around me the morning heat presses in—the heat, the people, and every thought or feeling they have. I am overwhelmed. Desperation and longing fill the air around me, closing in. I hear the pleading minds: “My son is ill, please heal him.” “My mother is missing, please bring her back.” The crowd has come to make their offerings, to ask blessings of Buddha—and they create a whirlwind in my mind.
Then I hear a voice behind me. “Breathe, little one.” It’s Bibi. “Their pain is not your pain,” he says. “Say it. Build the wall. Their pain is not your pain. Not today.”
I breathe and concentrate.
Not today. Not me.
I remember, and I calm down. At least, a little.
In front of me, a small child holds a stack of cages packed full of tiny mice, her hand outstretched.
“What’s that?” I gesture to the child, and as I do, I hear Tima suck in her breath behind me.
“Karma.” Bibi shrugs. “Some believe it is good luck to free a caged creature. So others cage them, to sell the chance to free them.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I look up at him.
“Not for the mice.” He shrugs again.
I wonder. Is that how the Lords see us?
Ro snorts, and Lucas says nothing. Tima is heartbroken, pulling her pockets inside out, searching for anything of value.
Before Tima can say a word, Lucas is pressing a handful of digs into the little girl’s hand.
“I’ll take them all.”
With a flick of his hand, it’s done.
Mice burst out from the small wooden boxes, flooding into all corners of the temple.
I don’t know who’s happier—the mice or Tima. She takes Lucas by the hand, gratefully.
Lucas smiles at her, rubbing her head with his free hand. They’ve been together a long time, I think.
They’re something old. We’re something new. Not everything changes.
Not everything should.
A woman interrupts the scene and thrusts a handful of necklaces at me. “You buy. You buy. Good luck. Two hundred dig.” I shake my head, but when I look at the necklaces, I see a teardrop-shaped piece of clear glass, with a tiny green figure inside.
It’s him. The same. The jade Buddha. The chess piece belonging to the jade girl, the one I see on the chessboard, in my dreams. Same as the one the Bishop gave me.
Is this the Emerald Buddha?
Has it been him, all along?
If so, then I really am here. This must be the right place.
Are you here, jade girl? I look around, but all I see and hear and feel is the crush of the crowd.
If she’s here, I can’t feel her.
As the crowd carries us under the arched entrance to the palace walls, I hear distant chanting that I do not understand.
Bibi hands a few digs to a woman working at a table. In return, he grabs an armful of pale green blossoms, as round as closed bulbs, or fists. Tied to their stems are sticks of incense and bright yellow candles, one for each of us. “Lotus,” says Bibi. “We make an offering to the Lord Buddha. Come,” he says, grabbing my hand and placing it on his sleeve. “You hold on to me.”
We thread our way through the crowd until we reach urns of water, surrounded by people pressing to get near. The closer we get to the urns, the more difficult it is to stay together. The crowd pushes against us on all sides, until we float away from each other like small boats on different ocean waves.
Hands outstretched in every direction press the blossoms toward the water, into the water. The woman next to me presses the flower against her forehead. An older woman fills an empty bottle with water.
I see Bibi gesture to me across the crowd between us. “Holy water. Considered very lucky. Try it.”
I do as I am told, dipping the flowers into the water, then pressing the dripping petals against my warm forehead.
I close my eyes, trying to sort out what I feel—but the crush of the crowd and everything they carry with them in their heads is just too much for me, still.
I follow Bibi’s lead, though, moving to a nearby shrine, lighting my incense and sticking it into an urn filled with sand.
Still no girl.
Are you here, jade girl?
I can’t feel you, if you are.
Then the crowd pushes me onward, carrying me up the steps and into a small, rectangular building carved entirely of gold.
We meet up with each other at a mountain of shoes near the entrance. Out of respect, we follow Bibi’s lead and add our ragged shoes to the pile.
“Kneel. Your feet cannot point to the Buddha. Do as I do.” I watch Bibi. He folds his hands, pressing them together. Bows his head. I do the same.
Then I look up.
High above me, on an altar made of gold, the face of my Buddha stares back at me.
I wait.
She’ll show herself. She’s coming. She’s here somewhere. She has to be.
I know she is.
But it’s a lie. I wait for hours, and the jade girl never comes. Even so, I refuse to leave the temple.
We stay until the sun lowers itself along the horizon and our knees begin to hurt.
The wave of worshippers continues to sweep around the four of us, an odd island of stillness, as we kneel, and wait.
Bibi and Fortis wait by the door. I am running out of time. They are impatient to go. I see it in their faces.
Helplessness wells up inside me, and I can feel myself losing control.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She’s not here.
What was I expecting?
Frustrated, I fumble in my chestpack. I grab the pouch, and fling its contents onto the shrine in front of me.
There.
The jade animals go clattering to the stone floor in front of the altar.
The Buddha rolls until it reaches the sandal of the nearest and most ancient monk.
Take it, I think. My offering. Take it all.
Then I bow to Lord Buddha, one last time, pressing my hands together into a final salute.
Which is when the nearest and most ancient monk—the one with the shaved head and the slender bones—picks up my Buddha and appears in front of me, lifting me from my kneeling position, with a torrent of dialect I cannot understand.
“Slowly,” I say. I turn to Bibi, and he moves to my side.
He listens to the ancient monk, then whispers to me. “He’s been waiting for you.”
“Tell him that makes two of us. Only I’m the one who has been sitting here for the whole day.”
“Patience, little one. My brothers are as slow to speak as they are to judge.”
I brush him off. “Does he know where she is? The jade girl?”
Bibi says something else to the monk, the fast clicking of his tongue punctuating the low, reverential tones of his words.
Then he turns to me. “It seems they’ve known you were coming for quite some time. They say you must hurry. They say you are very late.”
“Is she here? At the temple?”
Bibi asks, and the monk utters a garbled response, without altering his expression in any way whatsoever.
“Not at this temple. North of here.”
I look at the monk. “How north?” I ask.
The monk nods as if he understands. Then he utters three words. “Wat Doi Suthep.”
“What?”
Bibi nods. “It’s a temple. Up the Ping River. He says the place you want to go is in the mountains north of Chiang Ping Mai. It’s called Wat Doi Suthep. The Temple of the White Elephant.”
“And that’s it? She’ll be there?”
Bibi is looking behind us, eyes suddenly wide. “Enough talk. I think we’d better go.”
Something has changed—more than just his tone.
A ripple moves through the crowded temple now, as if a cold wind were spiraling through the close, dense building.
It isn’t—but something else is.
Indeed, the monk in front of us is gathering up the figurines as we speak, dumping them back inside the pouch and shoving them at me.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Change of plans. It seems we aren’t the only ones who have come to worship today. There are others here, and not just to feed the monks.”
And there, in the back of the temple behind me, I see them. More than a dozen black-uniformed Sympas, just beginning to make their way through the press of the crowds. They stretch like long, dark fingers through the crowded gold sunlight of the holy chamber.
“They usually stay out of the temples. It’s considered sacrilege. Something important must be happening.”
“Or someone important must be here,” says Fortis, grabbing me by the arm. “Someone like you or me. Let’s go.”
He scans the room and then motions to a side door in the intricate gold paneling. We are out the door before I can even draw another breath.
By the time we are home, it is determined.
We will head north, up the Ping, until we find this Doi Suthep.
This must happen. This is my move.
This is my path, the one that leads to the fifth Icon Child, the one I have come to think of as my little sister.
Of that I am certain.