The Bird and the Wyrm-Chapter 55: Fun & Games

Misha had an oddly vivid memory of visiting the Forbidden Palace, though he’d never been able to place it properly in his memories. His parents had split when he was young, and his father had taken him to live in the UK immediately. He couldn’t remember the face of his mother, so wouldn’t it follow that anything from before the split was too early for him to remember? If so, then when had he ever visited Beijing?

This had been a small mystery that had occupied him when he’d had nothing to do - this had been before video games had entered the house - yet he’d never found a satisfying answer. He’d asked his father once, but the man had dismissed it. He’d been working on a particularly complicated arbitrage case at the time so Misha had left it at that.

As time had gone on, and video games had occupied his free time, Misha thought less and less about this strange memory until he’d almost completely forgotten about it.

That is, until this interlocking wooden fortress on the side of a misty mountain brought it all back to him.

It was a different place, of course it was a very different place, but it had many of the same architectural trappings and colours and it made Misha feel like he was walking in a dream.

But it wasn’t just that the place reminded him of that memory he thought had been long forgotten. The estate itself was complex beyond anything he could imagine with wooden stairs going up and down and long platforms connecting all the different ’island’ buildings perched all over the rocky mountain.

It was mesmerizing and beautiful, the way the fog would drift over the bridges and hide the supporting columns of the intricately interlocking buildings, making it look like they were floating in the middle of the air.

"Dragon-brother!" called out a little voice, calling Misha back to reality.

"Coming!" he shouted back and jogged along the wooden bridge and toward Gou Wun, the little snake girl leading him through the place. Despite her lower half comprising of just a single snake tail, she was incredibly fast over land and it made Misha wonder if he should try slithering on the ground as a dragon some time just to see.

Gou Wun took a sudden turn into one of the long side buildings and Misha followed. He was momentarily blinded by how dark it was by comparison to the outside, but after a moment his eyes adjusted. The walls of the room or hall were lined floor to ceiling with pots and glass jars and little wooden drawers with a large collection of strange looking instruments along the far wall where a woman sat.

She was sitting on a raised section of floor by a short table and she smiled as Gou Wun and Misha approached. "I was worried you might get lost if you didn’t have a guide," she said as Gou Wun slithered up to her and fell into her lap with a grin.

She wore a dress with a long skirt and out the end of it was a silvery blue scaled tail, as elegant as the woman herself.

She raised a hand and beckoned Misha toward her then patted the little girl’s shoulder. "Wun-Wun, mummy needs to work now. Do you want to watch or go and play?"

Gou Wun immediately jumped up and slithered away out a door to the back. Both the woman and Misha laughed.

"Please, sit," said the woman, gesturing to the cushion on the other side of the small table.

"Thank you," said Misha, taking a seat. "Are you... Gou... Ngaam, was it?"

The woman looked surprised a moment then giggled with a hand over her mouth. "Yes, sorry, Yeung-sister talks about you so much that I forgot we haven’t actually met." She held out a hand. "Nice to meet you. I am Gou Ngaam, head physician of Whale Toes."

Misha blushed and quickly shook her hand. "Misha Long," he said. "Uh, I’m a friend of Bran’s."

Gou Ngaam’s eyes smiled. "A fine friend," she said. Perhaps it was Bran’s gentle touch at lunch, or the kiss on the cheek from even earlier, but Misha’s blush deepened and he quickly looked down.

"He’s very good to me."

"I’m glad to hear that," replied Gou Ngaam. "I remember when Yeung-sister first brought him here." She shook her head. "No one should go through what that child did. I feared for a long time that he might never recover."

Misha thought of the sea of broken children and their vacant faces. Was Bran merely the latest of many? Had other parents sold their children’s souls in the same way?

"I am sorry," said Gou Ngaam. "This topic disturbs you."

"Huh? Oh, no. I just... there’s a lot I don’t know."

The snake woman looked at him kindly. "The longer I live, the more true I think that statement is for myself. Come. Rest your hand here." She gestured to a small, silk cushion on the table.

Misha obeyed and lay his hand there with the wrist up.

"Oh? Have you been to a Chinese Medicine doctor before?"

"Huh?" Misha looked at his hand, then quickly turned it over to the other side.

"No, no, you were right the first time. I was just curious. I believe I heard you grew up in the West."

"Oh..." Misha, feeling even more awkward, turned his wrist upwards again. "I was, but, sometimes Bran feels my pulse like this so...""

"Ah ha," said the woman with a tinkling laugh. "He still remembers my lessons. I am glad. And I should find some time to steal him away to test his knowledge. I would be curious to know how much he has retained..."

As she spoke she used her index, middle, and ring fingers to lightly touch the inner edge of Misha’s wrist. Then after a moment, she adjusted her fingers and pressed down with some force. Then after a few more moments, she finally pressed down hard.

Misha jumped at the sudden increase in strength. She looked like such a lithe, delicate woman that the sudden show of strength surprised him.

Seemingly unaware of his thoughts, the snake woman released his wrist and sat with her hands crossed in her lap.

"Everything is healing fine," she said. "Your body has a real gift for it, I must say."

"Huh? You, you don’t need to...?" Misha pointed at his side where, under his shirt, the arrow wound from a few days prior lay under multiple layers of bandages.

"Not to assess its condition, but I will help you change the dressing. Come." She gestured with her hand which Misha took to mean ’remove your shirt’ which he quickly did.

Gou Ngaam picked up the table between them and deftly moved it behind her, again displaying her inhuman strength, then quickly undid the white wrapping around Misha’s middle.

"You said you taught Bran, right?" Misha asked as Gou Ngaam carefully applied a yellow-green ointment to the wound.

"I did," she replied. "He was not a smart student, but he was dedicated and I think that, in a student, dedication is the best thing you can ask for."

Misha nodded in agreement but said nothing as he began thinking down a new train of thought.

"Could... could you teach me?" he asked when she had finished with the ointment.

"Teach you medicine?"

Misha nodded. Perhaps if he could learn a bit, then he could maybe, just maybe, help Bran.

The snake woman smiled. "It would be my pleasure."

--

The little snake girl Gou Wan and her friends Siu Yun (the little boy with white bird wings) and Fong Jai (a slow moving girl with a turtle-like shell on her back) ambushed me as soon as I left Gou Ngaam’s quarters.

"Will you play with us?"

"Play with us!"

"I want to play tag!"

And so, with no option of escape, I began a game of hide-and-seek with the three younglings. At first, of course, the idea had been to play tag, but, seeing how little Fong Jai’s rabbit-like ears drooped at the sound of it, I suggested hide-and-seek instead.

Luckily for Fong Jai and me, this was readily accepted by the other two. In all honesty, I was planning to slip away under the guise of playing along.

"Dragon-brother! You be the Yin Yang Master!"

"Yeah! You be the Yin Yang Master!"

"Yin Yang Master? What’s that?"

It was Fong Jai who answered me. "They’re the one who has to find the gwai sau," she pointed at herself and her two friends. "We’re the gwai sau."

How unfortunate.

"Alright," I said with a smile. "How long does the Yin Yang Master count for?"

"Fifty!"

"Eighty!"

"No, one hundred!"

"Yeah, one hundred!"

Which was how I ended up wandering around the mountain top buildings without an escort or a guide.

Till that point I’d never actually gotten lost, but for a while there, I had a feeling I knew what it might be like to be. Turning around and round, unsure of what direction you came from - it’s really quite disconcerting. I get why people don’t like it.

But I’m meandering. I’ll stop, but I hope you believe me when I say that I really didn’t meant to eavesdrop. I just happened to walk past a random building (now I know it was Aunt Yeung’s sanctuary) when I heard your voice.

"Say I go ahead with the treatment. How long will it take to redo the seal? Three years like last time? More than three years?"

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