Gateway (13 page)

“Time for me to go,” Aurora said.

“Tell Kalen I’ll come see him at the aviary,” Daiyu said.

“I’ll tell him you’ll
try
,” she responded. “Be careful, Daiyu.”

She slipped out into the hallway so quietly that even Daiyu could not hear her footsteps moving away. Daiyu thought,
I’ll be careful after I’ve had a chance to see Kalen.

ELEVEN

XIANG WAS AMENABLE
to the idea of Daiyu touring one of the city’s well-known attractions, possibly because of the way Daiyu phrased her request.

“Yesterday the prime minister asked me if I had seen the aviary, and I was ashamed to say that I had not,” Daiyu said in a mournful voice over breakfast. “What if he asks me again at the Presentation Ball? What shall I tell him then?”

“You shall tell him you have visited the grounds and enjoyed them very much,” Xiang said, tapping her long red fingernails on the tabletop. “That is a most excellent idea. I myself cannot abide the place, for there are bird droppings everywhere, and it is hot, and all sorts of people may be found there. But you might enjoy it.”

“When can I go?”

Xiang considered. “Tomorrow afternoon. You have no appointments with dressmakers or dancing instructors, so you may take a few hours to go. I am expected at the council, so I will not accompany you.”

Daiyu tried not to let her excitement show on he rface. “May I go by myself?”

Xiang looked undecided, but eventually shook her head. “No. I will have one of the servants go with you. Perhaps I should ask Mei if her son would like to escort you—but no, it is too soon. Perhaps in a few days.”

That was a complication Daiyu didn’t need, but she merely nodded her head. “Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress. I will be happy to go tomorrow.”

Daiyu only wanted to visit the aviary for a chance to see Kalen, so she was surprised by her own reaction to its grandeur and gorgeousness.

The whole expedition was unexpectedly perfect. Aurora had managed to be selected as the servant who would accompany Xiang’s niece to the bird sanctuary, and she nodded almost imperceptibly when Daiyu asked her an imploring question with her eyes.
Did you tell Kalen? Will he be there?
The driver was in an expansive mood, and he actually pointed out a few city landmarks they passed on their way. As always, Daiyu tried to figure out where they might be if Shenglang was really St. Louis, but within a few turns, she was hopelessly lost. They were going east and south, she thought; other than that, she had no idea.

The aviary was huge—a latticework iron cage at least the size of a city block. From the street, all she could see through the black grillwork was plant life, giant trees brushing the top of the structure, great leafy vines twining around every individual rod so densely that it was almost impossible to see in. Daiyu stood before the entrance, mouth gaping, staring at the clustered greenery. She saw a flash of feathered red near the pointed apex.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said to Aurora in a low voice. The driver had asked when he should come back for them, and Daiyuhadsaid,“Twohoursfromnow,” butshewas wondering if she should have said, “Tomorrow.” It might take her that long to walk around the inside of this place.

“It is most impressive,” Aurora agreed with a smile. “Even more so inside.”

Indeed, once they were through the gate, Daiyu stared even harder. The aviary was full of lush vegetation that took up most of the available space from the ground right up to the top of the iron cage. At the lowest level, the soil was covered in thick grass and the occasional patch of flowering shrubbery. In the middle level, short trees spread their stubby branches, heavy with summer green leaves; and towering above the whole space, giant oaks and elms sent their reaching limbs poking through the metal restraints of the grill. Ropy vines tied all the levels together, twining around trunks, dropping down from overhanging branches, bursting into erratic blossom at the most unexpected junctures.

Birds were everywhere.

Some gathered ont he branches, chattering and calling; some swooped from that lush green ceiling toward invisible prey below. Others hopped along the ground, pecking at nuts or insects. A few clung to the tree trunks, tapping their beaks against the bark. A few, as large as peacocks, strutted across the lawn and uttered incomprehensible cries of disdain.

Every bird in the aviary was red, some a deep vermilion, some a speckled white and crimson, a few with black markings along their wings and tail feathers. Daiyu only recognized two or three species that looked vaguely similar to the birds she knew back home—those might be woodpeckers, those scarlet tanagers, and cardinals were everywhere—but most of them looked unfamiliar and exotic.

“What an amazing place,” Daiyu said, turning to Aurora with her eyes wide open.

Aurora handed her a silk parasol. “You’ll want to use this as we walk around. Otherwise you’ll come home with bird droppings in your hair and on your lovely blouse.”

Indeed, the smell of avian excrement was pretty strong, though not intense enough to be truly unpleasant, and the whole narrow walkway that wound through the interior was covered with white and gray spatters. On the other hand, the thick greenery kept the temperature inside the aviary noticeably cooler than the air outside, though the aviary was just as humid. Daiyu could already feel her carefully styled hair start to loosen and frizz.

“Why are all the birds red?” she asked, snapping the parasol into place over her head.

“The story is that red was the favorite color of the wife of the man who built this place nearly a century ago. So he collected red birds from all the corners of the world and had them installed here. Some of the species here are extinct in other parts of the world. Zoologists from all over Jia come to study them.”

“I can see why,” Daiyu said, and began strolling forward.

The stone path meandered around some of the giant trees and past a variety of fountains and shallow pools filled with birds dipping into the water and shaking off their feathers. A flock of tiny creatures skittered by at eye height, so small that Daiyu at first thought they were butterflies. Now and then she felt a small
splat
on the top of her parasol and was increasingly grateful that Aurora had brought it along.

Scattered in strategic places along the path were stone and wooden benches, many of them occupied by bird-watchers with viewing glasses or students with sketchpads. Not far away, a young man with a bucket was scrubbing the bird droppings off a black wrought-iron bench. Daiyu imagined that he faced an unending task in this place. At their approach, the worker looked up and grinned. It was Kalen.

Daiyu had to choke down her squeal of delight, but she absolutely could not contain her smile. She was so glad to see him that she wanted to run down the path and throw her arms around his neck, but of course she couldn’t, not in front of witnesses. None of the people nearby looked affluent enough to be friends of Xiang’s, but too much was at stake for Daiyu to be stupid.

“Aurora,” she said in as stately a voice as she could manage. “Let us sit for a time on that bench that has just been cleaned.”

“Yes, young mistress,” Aurora replied.

Kalen, too, was exercising self-control. After that first grin, he schooled himself to look solemn and deferential. He bowed when he saw them approach and extended his arms as if to present the bench to them. “Would you like to sit for a while?” he asked. “I could hold the young lady’s parasol to protect her head.”

“She will sit,” Aurora said. “I will continue my walk.”

And so, seconds later, Daiyu and Kalen were alone. Well, if you discounted the young girl sitting ten feet away, apparently engrossed in her easel and paints, and the couples ambling past, and the mothers with their young children spilling off the pathway into the untamed bushes. Kalen stood respectfully behind the bench, holding the parasol at a deliberately low angle. It would be hard for anyone walking by to see Daiyu’s face. Of course, she couldn’t see Kalen’s face either, and she wanted to—she wanted to hang over the back of the bench and gaze up at him while she told him everything she’d seen and everything she’d done since she left for Xiang’s. But she had to sit here and appear elegant and bored and proper.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said, her voice warm even as she tried to keep her expression cool. “Tell me everything.”

“My life is the same as it always is,” he said. “Quieter now, with you gone.”

“Did you pick stones the other day? I heard the bell ring.”

“Yes, I was at the river all morning. But I only came home with one
qiji
.”

“Well, that’s better than none!”

She heard the smile in his voice. “That’s what I thought.”

“Aurora told me you took the job here. Does that mean you’ll stop being a stonepicker?”

“No, I can do both. Gabe’s been working here for the last couple of months and he helped me get hired.”

“Were you worried about money?” Daiyu asked softly. She thought about all the food that went to waste in one day at Xiang’s. Enough to feed Kalen for a week.

There was a slight sound, as if he’d shrugged. He transferred the parasol to his other hand, never lifting it away from her face. “Everyone worries about money.”

“Maybe you could sell your earrings,” she suggested, “if you ever get too desperate.”

He laughed softly. “They’re just made of cheap metal, so they wouldn’t even fetch the price of a meal. But I like having a second job. When Ombri and Aurora leave—”

She twisted around to look at him. “When are they leaving?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. She thought his face looked thinner than before. “Once you send Chenglei away, they won’t have any reason to stay in Jia.”

For some reason, that had never occurred to her. “But then what will happen to you? Will you have to give up the house?”

He made a circular motion with his free hand, indicating she should face forward again. Unwilling, she obeyed. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “We haven’t talked about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, of course it does! I hate to think of you sleeping outside in a tent once cold weather comes—”

“You won’t be thinking of me at all when cold weather comes,” he said lightly. “Not if you’re back in your own iteration by then.”

The words made them both fall silent again. Daiyu’s rush of pleasure in the meeting instantly dissipated; she actually felt sick to her stomach. She clasped her hands together hard.

“I’m sorry,” Kalen said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I think about it a lot.”

“It’s so unfair,” she said in a subdued voice. “Ombri and Aurora descend on you and draw you into this escapade and change everything in your life. And then they disappear and everything they brought with them disappears, and you’re left with a story you can’t tell anyone and memories that no oneelseshares. I am in despair just knowing that all of this will evaporate the minute I’m back home. I can’t
stand
it, thinking I won’t remembe ryou. But it might be just as bad to remember all of it and know you can never have any of it back again.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I mean—I
do
mind, knowing that I’ll never see any of you again—but I’d rather have had the adventure than not. I’d rather know the people and lose them than never have them in my life at all.”

“It’s so hard,” she said, her voice very low.

He changed the subject, his voice determinedly cheerful. “So what’s it like at Xiang’s house? As frightening as you expected?”

She managed a light laugh. “Just about! Xiang is a bitter little spider in this golden web, and I always have the idea that she’s plotting things all the time, some of them not very nice. She seems to like me, though. At any rate, she doesn’t scream at me or call me names. And once or twice she’s said things that make it sound like she’s considering keeping me here past the ball. As if I really
were
her niece and she was thinking of adopting me.”

Kalen laughed. “There’s a thought! You could stay in Shenglang. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me being lonely after all.”

Daiyu laughed. “I like the idea of staying in Shenglang with
you,
but I don’t think I could stand to keep living with Xiang,” she said. Belatedly, she added, “Besides, I couldn’t leave my parents like that! They’d be so worried about me and I’d miss them too much.”

As she said the words, it occurred to her with a sort of buried horror that she hadn’t missed her parents at all in the last couple of days. In fact, today she hadn’t even thought of them until that very moment. What was wrong with her? Was Shenglang putting such a spell on her that she was slowly but surely forgetting her former life, her
true
life? Or was the mere act of passing through iterations too difficult for the brain to absorb? She had been warned that her mind would not be able to retain memories of Shenglang once she returned to her own time and place. Maybe she could not retain memories of St. Louis if she was in Shenglang too long. The thought was terrifying.