Holy Teleportation, Rory. You’ve Taken Us to China!

We were in a street, but there were no cars. There were lots of people standing around talking and smiling and waving to each other. The street was mostly cafes with red paper lanterns hanging over their doorways. Some of them had little stalls with boxes of fruit and vegetables outside. There was a big statue of a dragon with a long, sloping back. Some kids were using it as a kind of slide. Everyone looked Chinese. The writing on the street signs looked Chinese. The posters on the wall, the signs above the shops – all Chinese. Even the phone box behind the stone dragon had a pointy, curly roof like a pagoda’s, with four little stone dragons, one guarding each corner.

‘Excellent work, my trusty minion,’ said Grim, patting me on the shoulder. He really was good at this Supervillain thing. It’s a shame it was Evil really.

I tried to make it look as though I was used to teleporting to China. I should have been worrying about how to get back to the hospital, but I hadn’t eaten all day and the air was spiced with all kinds of cooking smells. The cafes’ windows were decorated with roasted ducks and chickens, sparkling with crisp skin. Outside one shop were piled the brightest, weirdest fruits I’d ever seen – tiny round ones coloured like Smarties, something that looked like a purple hand grenade, things a bit like apples but shaped like rugby balls, a box of papery lantern things with berries inside. ‘Moonlight Delight’ it said in silvery writing across the shop window. ‘I’ll say one thing for China,’ said Grim. ‘It smells good. I bet it tastes good too.’

He reached for a papery fruit. I said, ‘Hey. They’re not ours.’

‘I’m evil. I take what I want, remember. I’ve just robbed a bank. I’m not going to worry about stealing a weird tomatoey thing.’ He did his evil laugh. But stopped when someone else joined in. It was a little girl with bunches in her hair, standing in the doorway of the shop. She said, in English, ‘Are you two goblins?’

‘Oh. No. Not goblins, no. Definitely not. Nothing like that.’ I didn’t want to say we were Superbeings because it sounded a bit showy-offy. At the same time I wanted to make sure she didn’t mention leprechauns.

She shouted something in Chinese. From somewhere inside the shop an old lady appeared and put her hand on the little girl’s shoulder, chatting to her for a bit in Chinese.

‘She’s not going to laugh, is she?’ asked Grim.

‘They won’t laugh at you.’

‘Or mention leprechauns?’

‘Or mention those small people.’

The old lady went back inside and came back with little bamboo boxes with wisps of steam coming out of their lids and big, pale, hot meat dumplings inside. They were soft and melty. Grim went to take one but I grabbed his hand just in time. ‘Traces of nuts,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘yeah.’

I sat down on the step to eat.

‘Tell me what they taste like.’

‘Won’t that make it worse?’

‘No. I like it when people describe. My mum always eats whatever she likes and then describes the taste of big bowls of steaming pastas swimming in thick creamy tomato sauces to me. She says – Let’s share. You have the smell and I’ll have the taste.’

So I tried describing the dumplings for him – how the meat was a bit chewy and how you could feel the steam on the roof of your mouth. I was going on to tell him about the honey aftertaste when the old lady came back with two old-lady mates and all three of them started patting us on the head.

‘Whoa!? What’s going on?!’ whined Tommy-Lee.

‘They think you look like lucky goblins,’ said the little girl. ‘They’re patting you for luck.’

Apparently the harder they patted us, the more luck we would bring them. Tommy-Lee was getting twitchy.

‘They want to know where you’re from,’ said the girl.

I told her we were from Birmingham.

The girl said something in Chinese and then explained, ‘I told them you were from Greenland.’

Now the ladies were laughing.

‘Are you real?’ asked the little girl. ‘Or are you an advert? Like for frozen peas or something.’

‘We’re real. Of course we’re real.’

She said something else to the old ladies. They laughed even louder. Grim jumped up.

‘Rory Rooney,’ growled Grim, ‘old ladies are laughing at me.’

‘They like us!’

These people were giving me food instead of grabbing it off me. They were patting me on the head instead of throwing me off the bus. I was having the best time ever.

‘They love us.’

‘Old ladies are laughing at me, Rory.’

‘You said that before.’

‘It was happening before. And it’s still happening now. Make it stop. My anger-management issues are coming back.’

‘What anger-management issues?’

‘Kicking people. I have an issue that makes me kick people when I get angry.’

‘I know. I was one of those people.’

‘I had to go and see a special doctor about it.’

‘And?’

‘He gave me special anger-management techniques.’

‘Great. Why don’t you use them?’

‘I always forget.’

‘But you could use them now.’

‘Great idea.’

He put his head down and walked off up the road. It turned out his number-one anger-management technique was walking away.