Holiday Magick (31 page)

“Did he actually talk to her?” I said.

“That's what I said to him,” said Joe. “When a woman comes home after a grueling day battling bandits, she doesn't want a sonnet—she wants a plate of freshly steamed buns. We started doing things my way. If Winter Gale caught a cold after rescuing a calf from the dam, Humble would show up with a hot bowl of ginger and shallots. If she tore her coat in a skirmish, he'd be waiting with a needle and thread. I taught him to cook dishes fit for a king, and to listen with love to the troubles of her heart.
That's
how you win someone over.”

There was a tinge of bitterness as he said this.

“You were spying on her?” I said.

“Watching over her,” said Joe. “Laws were different back then. But it worked. Her affection for Humble grew, as did his eminence as a gifted poet. The day of the imperial examinations drew nearer—”

“Tess?” A deep voice slid through the crowd. “Fancy running into you here.”

A slick man in a dark suit strode over with a pert brunette on his arm—she seemed to be playing an engrossing game on her phone.

“Remy,” I said, getting to my feet in a reluctant show of social grace.

Remy was the kind of man who wore designer cufflinks and owned an espresso machine with more functions than a shuttle cockpit. We had shared a few visual communications subjects at university, but his idea of visual communications involved ‘cheeky' billboards rather than investigative pieces about women's health in Uganda.

“Still working at the copy shop?” said Remy with a grin you could slice lemons with.

“Still working on my portfolio,” I said.

“Still living at the dorm with fifteen exchange students?”

“Still living in Ultimo,” I said smiling through gritted teeth.

It was actually a lunchbox-sized apartment, and there were only three students, a high-maintenance physics teacher, and a middle-aged puppeteer who just couldn't get it together.

“And what do you do?” Remy addressed Joe, undoubtedly noting his lack of wallet, phone, and keys.

“You'll see,” said my companion, smiling pleasantly.

“Well, Tess, always a pleasure,” said Remy, sailing triumphantly toward the invitation-only seafood restaurant across the road.

My appetite gone, we left the restaurant and started walking back up Sussex Street, toward the patter of fountains along Darling Harbour.

“Why aren't you with your family tonight?” said Joe.

I could have gotten on a plane the size of a minibus and rattled my way home to Nimbor, a crusty outback town where the grass was always yellow stubble and the red dust caked everything. My parents always kept a room for me behind the hardware store, just in case.

“I'll go back when I have something to show for it,” I said. “So where are you staying?”

“Oh, I never stay,” said Joe. “But thanks for dinner.”

“Are you going to finish the sto—”

The neon sign above us flickered, and he was gone.

Later that week, on his way to a strategic meeting on consumer data collection, Remy would find his Jeep engine inexplicably full of steamed mung beans. But that's a different story.

The following year, I'd moved out of the lunchbox and into a cozy old terrace in Surry Hills with two guys named Steve. In my head, I nicknamed them Boring Steve and Crazy Steve.

On the fifteenth of the eighth, I went to the Harbour Bridge again, and under a perfect moon tossed a
zongzi
into the waters. I waited until after midnight, but Joe didn't show. Then again, gods were probably busy, and the
zongzi
weren't particularly good that year.

The year after that, I went home for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I'd finished up a contract temping at Gruthers Art Supplies, and was about to start a new marketing and design position for a bargain cosmetics company. I'd begun to realize that the problem with my portfolio was the fact that all the good intentions in the world were no substitute for genuine talent.

It was a crisp night, and my parents made oolong tea in the kitchen while I hung lanterns in the backyard. The lopsided Hills Hoist languished dramatically, cheery lanterns hanging from each spoke.

“Nothing for me this year?”

I turned to see Joe sitting on the dried grass, leaning back to gaze at the constellations. His jeans were darker than last time, and more fashionably snug at the hips. A pair of black and orange sneakers with vaguely hydraulic soles had replaced his flip-flops.

“You didn't show last year,” I said.

“I had a thing in Bangkalan,” said Joe. “Is that the same outfit you were wearing two years ago?”

“It's my celebration shirt.”

I hung a yellow, fish-shaped lantern on the back porch, then joined Joe on the grass.

“I think we had reached the part about the imperial exam,” I said.

“We don't have to keep going with that story,” said Joe. “I know a good one about the household god of small fortunes, and a hilarious misunderstanding.”

His tone was light, but something in his eyes seemed old and tired.

I'd waited two years to hear the end of his story, but for the first time I understood that it wasn't just a story for him. I touched his shoulder gently. “We don't have to continue with that story.”

Joe was silent for a while, and then I noticed my dad standing on the back porch with a plate of lotus-seed paste mooncakes.

“Dad,” I said, startled. “Uh, this is Joe. A friend from Sydney.”

If my dad was puzzled by the abrupt arrival of this “friend,” he didn't show it.

“I'll make some more tea,” said my dad. He returned shortly with the good china, and then withdrew tactfully to the kitchen.

Joe breathed gently on the fragrant tea, cupping the warm porcelain in his hands. We sat in silence, drinking in the swathe of stars overhead.

“Humble asked Winter Gale to marry him,” said Joe softly. “And he asked me for one last gift. A wedding ring. A ring of protection, to shield Winter Gale from the bandits' blades and from the ravages of pestilence. I told him such a thing was beyond me—I dwelt in the rivers and the lowlands, accepting offerings of pigeons and pears.

“But he begged me, day and night, bringing me sweet potatoes and rice, fresh melons and dried mushrooms. Finally, he told me to do it not for him, but for Winter Gale. Create this ring for her.”

“What was she like?” I said quietly.

Joe closed his eyes, holding the teacup close to his lips.

“I forged a ring of blood-red gold. Seamless so as not to scratch her, warm so as not to chill her. Inscribed with words of power, words of love, it would protect her from the elements, from winging arrows, and the breath of plague. From the shadow of the mountains and the tears of the river, I forged this ring for Winter Gale.

“The day of the imperial exam arrived, the first hurdle for any potential courtier, and Humble rode to the capital in his finest robes.”

“I'm guessing he passed,” I said.

“He never took the exam,” said Joe darkly. “With his winning words, he became a senior courtier to the empress. With his attentive ways and skillful banquets, he ingratiated himself into her affections. And with his blood-gold ring, crafted from the shadow of the mountains and the tears of the river, he wed the empress.”

The teacup was cold in my hands. With a lump in my throat, I imagined Winter Gale back at the village, waiting patiently for Humble and his promise, her red bridal dress gathering dust.

“Gods and fools,” said Joe. “He found himself a gullible god and played me magnificently.”

“Only because you have a good heart.”

“Do I?” said Joe bitterly. “You haven't heard the rest of the story.” A chill crept up my back, and the glow of the kitchen window seemed distant and surreal.

When Joe continued, his voice was icy.

“When I learned of Humble's treachery, his betrayal of my trust, and Winter Gale's love, I brought down the mountains and parted the rivers. I silenced the dust storms of the steppes and let the borders fall. Oh how they shook when they saw the approaching hordes, the scimitars and spears pouring across the plains. He and the empress, in their palace of marble and zhennan wood—what good were their silk robes and jade lions in the face of a god betrayed?”

Joe's voice was low now, barely a whisper.

“Humble ordered every village, every house, to raise offerings to appease me. They filled the rivers with roast pork and shrimp dumplings, white peaches and rice wine. They poured everything they had into the rivers and prayed for me to save them, but it only fueled my wrath.”

His next line was little more than the shape of words on his lips.

“I demanded a life.”

A red and yellow lantern caught alight, collapsing slowly onto the lawn in a sheet of flame. I grabbed a bucket from beneath the stunted kumquat tree, and stomped the last resisting embers.

And of course, he was gone.

I visited the Harbour Bridge the following year, but I'd outgrown my penchant for dramatic gestures. I'd quit my marketing and design job, having decided that a vaguely artistic job in a company selling crap was somehow worse than doing time in a copy shop. Crazy Steve had eloped, and been replaced by Jackal, a former guerrilla tattooist who now worked at a domestic violence shelter, and was actually pretty cool when you got past her avant-garde piercings.

The year after that, I spent the week with my parents again. I felt oddly happy, despite my career fishtailing between cubicle jobs and street corners. I'd just moved into an apartment of my own—it was small, but comfortable, and for some reason it had a decorative fireplace in the living room, which I found inexplicably charming.

I hadn't forgotten about the man in the faded jeans. I'd spent countless hours retracing his story in my mind, and had grown to realize that gifts, used unwisely, were objects of destruction. But a good heart would find its way to a satisfying ending, somehow.

And I dusted off my portfolio.

It had been three years since that night at my parents' house, beneath the lanterns, and I didn't even realize it was the fifteenth of the eighth until I noticed all the elaborately embossed tins of mooncakes in the shopfronts.