I stared down at my bare chest, still seeing the bright red blood
that had covered it when I'd arrived here at the emergency room. All that
was left to remind me of it were a small horizontal scar just below my left
nipple, and another on my back in about the same spot, of the exact same
size. Just a few hours before, they had been life-threatening wounds.
Before the girl healed me.
"What happened up there, Peter?" Jody asked, looking at me with fading panic still written on her features.
I can remember the way it felt. Dying. There was pain at first, sharp and burning as the small stainless steel blade invaded my chest cavity. But that faded fast beneath the panic of knowing I was going to drown in my own blood. I spun, and there stood our witness, a young African-American male teenager, wielding a small pocket-knife. Small, but long enough to kill. I didn't even feel the second strike, but I had seen it coming. A flash of late-afternoon sunlight on metal. It arced toward me, slowly. Even though time seemed to crawl, I couldn't deflect it. But my feeble block had been sheer gut-reaction. No thought. Just survival instinct kicking in even after I knew I was lost.
I was floating, the boy forgotten. Riding a crimson wave as it crashed over my head. Then that alien presence inside my mind. Intruding deftly, completely undermining my own defenses. Pop had taught me, along with Kung Fu, how to create a simple wall around my mind. Spirit-world mumbo-jumbo, but I did the meditating exercises to appease him. I had almost forgotten it was there. After a while, it became something I didn't even think about. But damned if I didn't notice when it was gone. And it was GONE. It had simply melted in her presence.
And she was there, inside my head. She wanted me to listen to her. I don't know how I knew that. It was like she made me know it. I also knew ears would be useless for the kind of listening she wanted me to do. Heal. She was going to heal me.
Yes, please.
But it won't work, because I'm dying.
I almost felt like apologizing to her, because I wouldn't be able to oblige her request that I live.
She needed me to show her where it hurt. Goddammit, it hurt all over. Shall I start with the first time I broke my arm when I was six years old and climbing up to Buddha's head out in the Temple Garden? Then how one of the boys startled me, and I fell. Crunch. Yeah, that hurt.
Or how about when I was covered in spiders, venom running through my veins, so close to death that Ping Hai almost couldn't bring me back? That hadn't really hurt. It was just going to sleep. Kinda like this time.
Where does it hurt? You can't heal me, kid. Butt out. Quit trying.
Then she yelled at me. Well, more like I could feel the anger radiating out from her. The frustration. Her disgust at my stupidity. The panic lying beneath it all. I was afraid, because it felt almost like she was going to tear me open and pick through all my hurts until she found the one that she needed.
My wounds were mine. She couldn't have them.
* I want to understand. *
I swear I heard those words. Before she had sent merely a slew of emotions, desires, feelings. But words. . . I HEARD those words. AND the emotions underneath them. She wanted it so bad.
So I gave it to her. I gave her my memories. My hurts, my wounds, from the scrapes to the broken bones. Why don't I have a mother? Why do they taunt us like that? No, my father can't be dead! I don't want to stay here.. I'm alone.
I'm afraid.
Get the fuck out of my way.
And then she did something. She hid them away. Much better than I had ever been able to do. She took the open, festering sores and she bandaged them. She smeared a salve of forgetfulness over them; she pushed them down and away, and I remembered once again that I was dying.
Then she healed me.
It's difficult to describe. Warmth spiraling through me, settling around my heart. The flow of life that I could feel draining from me slowed.then stopped. I breathed, I choked. I coughed up at least a gallon of blood it seemed, but I could breathe when it was done.
I could breathe.
I can't remember what we talked about when she was done. In the fading light she looked incredibly tired, and much older than her years. Her body said she was a teenager, but her eyes told a much different story. And her wrists told me she was Shaolin. They were tattoos, not brands, but there was no mistaking them. A dragon. A tiger. Even if she didn't know it, she was Shaolin.
And then she disappeared. Jody's voice caught my attention, and I glanced away from her, the movement causing me a little pain. But pain meant I was still alive. I glanced back, and no little street punk with short, choppy black hair and shrewd green eyes. Mismatched clothing that made her seem like nobody important, invisible in a crowd. She disappeared from an abandoned rooftop. Where the hell did she go?
Then there was Jody, frightened, her face so white, you would have thought it was * her * blood all over the concrete. And she was calling paramedics up to the rooftop, screaming * 'Officer down!' * into her walkie-talkie, bending over me, trying to find the wound and stop the blood- flow. She would have been too late. I would have died before she even made it up the many flights of stairs. My eyes were continually scanning the roof, trying to find the kid with the disappearing act Houdini would have envied. This was definitely something I would have to discuss with my father.
The medics arrived, and despite my own objections, I was whisked away to the hospital. And here I sat in the ER on a bustling Saturday evening, contemplating two small scars that had almost ended my life. And the girl who helped me after I'd chased her, weapon drawn, up what had felt like a thousand steps. After I'd shoved her up against a wall, nearly wrenched her arm out of its socket.
I owed her.
Big time.
* * * * *
My father's Kung Fu studio wrapped its peace around me as I entered. I always felt like I disturbed the energies in here with my own chaotic ch'i, the one my father tried so hard to tame. I was a Picasso portrait moving through a pastoral landscape.
"Pop!" I called, moving through the empty dojo, heading upstairs. The simple surroundings reflected my father's soul. Ordered, austere, and yet at the same time warm and compassionate. The walls were a neutral off- white, a shade that invited untidy colors like a venus fly trap invited flies. Yes, they would be welcome, but quickly swallowed whole.
He sat on a small straw mat in the middle of the room, his legs folded before him, hands limply resting on his knees. His head was tilted back slightly, and his eyes were closed. An almost sub-sonic hum registered faintly on my eardrums. It came from him. Incense smoldered in a small urn on the floor in front of him. He was the solemn Buddha in the Garden of Tranquility. I hated to disturb him.
"Pop."
The hum stopped, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, he inhaled. His eyelids slid open, and he pinned me with his gaze. His eyes didn't merely search, they pierced.
"You should be resting," he said.
I ignored his first comment, ignoring as well the lingering fatigue that clung to my muscles. "Can women be Shaolin?" I rushed in, trying to distract him from his quiet assessment of my health. No doubt he got his information from my aura, or the number and position of lintballs on my over-washed T-shirt. I don't know how he knew what had happened, but somehow I knew he had the gist of it.
"Anyone with patience and determination can-"
"No, I mean. . . can someone just be Shaolin? Is it something you have to attain, or can you just be. . . born with. . .the abilities of. . . ." I didn't even know what I was trying to ask, but apparently he did.
"You have met someone with strange powers, and this has led you believe that she is inherently Shaolin."
"Well, yes and no. Yes, I met someone with strange powers, but that didn't lead me to believe she was Shaolin." I hesitated, don't know why. "The tattoos of a tiger and a dragon on her wrists led me to believe she was Shaolin."
He shrugged and began to unfold himself from his sitting position. He gracefully got to his feet, his plain clothing falling perfectly into place without a wrinkle. "Anyone can get tattoos, my son. And anyone can learn a charlatan's trick."
I shook my head. "No, no, this wasn't a trick." I jammed one hand into my pocket, the other through my hair. "I saw her heal someone. . . someone who would've died if she hadn't helped them."
He regarded me, his eyes once again seeing through me. "Whom did she heal?"
He knew. Dammit, I knew he knew.
"Me."
"I see." He folded his hands into the opposite sleeves of his tunic and began to slowly circle the room. "So this, this woman with Shaolin tattoos, she healed you. Would you like me to help you find her so you can arrest her?"
"No, I'm not going to arrest her." I was getting frustrated. "And it was more than that." I yanked open my jacket, and pulled up my shirt to show the scars: one on my chest, one on my back. "Yesterday evening, I was dying. From these." He didn't turn around. "And she saved me."
"I know. I could sense it."
For some reason, this made me angry. "What, me dying, or her saving me?"
"Both. You are lucky, Peter. I would not have been able to reach you in time." He turned then, both hands behind his back. "I, too, am indebted to her."
Well, at least the games were over, it seemed. "Then, will you help me find her?"
He strode over to where I stood in the doorway and placed his hand on my shoulder. "No. I believe she will come. . . to us." Then he smiled, patted my cloth-covered shoulder, and walked past me.
Before the girl healed me.
"What happened up there, Peter?" Jody asked, looking at me with fading panic still written on her features.
I can remember the way it felt. Dying. There was pain at first, sharp and burning as the small stainless steel blade invaded my chest cavity. But that faded fast beneath the panic of knowing I was going to drown in my own blood. I spun, and there stood our witness, a young African-American male teenager, wielding a small pocket-knife. Small, but long enough to kill. I didn't even feel the second strike, but I had seen it coming. A flash of late-afternoon sunlight on metal. It arced toward me, slowly. Even though time seemed to crawl, I couldn't deflect it. But my feeble block had been sheer gut-reaction. No thought. Just survival instinct kicking in even after I knew I was lost.
I was floating, the boy forgotten. Riding a crimson wave as it crashed over my head. Then that alien presence inside my mind. Intruding deftly, completely undermining my own defenses. Pop had taught me, along with Kung Fu, how to create a simple wall around my mind. Spirit-world mumbo-jumbo, but I did the meditating exercises to appease him. I had almost forgotten it was there. After a while, it became something I didn't even think about. But damned if I didn't notice when it was gone. And it was GONE. It had simply melted in her presence.
And she was there, inside my head. She wanted me to listen to her. I don't know how I knew that. It was like she made me know it. I also knew ears would be useless for the kind of listening she wanted me to do. Heal. She was going to heal me.
Yes, please.
But it won't work, because I'm dying.
I almost felt like apologizing to her, because I wouldn't be able to oblige her request that I live.
She needed me to show her where it hurt. Goddammit, it hurt all over. Shall I start with the first time I broke my arm when I was six years old and climbing up to Buddha's head out in the Temple Garden? Then how one of the boys startled me, and I fell. Crunch. Yeah, that hurt.
Or how about when I was covered in spiders, venom running through my veins, so close to death that Ping Hai almost couldn't bring me back? That hadn't really hurt. It was just going to sleep. Kinda like this time.
Where does it hurt? You can't heal me, kid. Butt out. Quit trying.
Then she yelled at me. Well, more like I could feel the anger radiating out from her. The frustration. Her disgust at my stupidity. The panic lying beneath it all. I was afraid, because it felt almost like she was going to tear me open and pick through all my hurts until she found the one that she needed.
My wounds were mine. She couldn't have them.
* I want to understand. *
I swear I heard those words. Before she had sent merely a slew of emotions, desires, feelings. But words. . . I HEARD those words. AND the emotions underneath them. She wanted it so bad.
So I gave it to her. I gave her my memories. My hurts, my wounds, from the scrapes to the broken bones. Why don't I have a mother? Why do they taunt us like that? No, my father can't be dead! I don't want to stay here.. I'm alone.
I'm afraid.
Get the fuck out of my way.
And then she did something. She hid them away. Much better than I had ever been able to do. She took the open, festering sores and she bandaged them. She smeared a salve of forgetfulness over them; she pushed them down and away, and I remembered once again that I was dying.
Then she healed me.
It's difficult to describe. Warmth spiraling through me, settling around my heart. The flow of life that I could feel draining from me slowed.then stopped. I breathed, I choked. I coughed up at least a gallon of blood it seemed, but I could breathe when it was done.
I could breathe.
I can't remember what we talked about when she was done. In the fading light she looked incredibly tired, and much older than her years. Her body said she was a teenager, but her eyes told a much different story. And her wrists told me she was Shaolin. They were tattoos, not brands, but there was no mistaking them. A dragon. A tiger. Even if she didn't know it, she was Shaolin.
And then she disappeared. Jody's voice caught my attention, and I glanced away from her, the movement causing me a little pain. But pain meant I was still alive. I glanced back, and no little street punk with short, choppy black hair and shrewd green eyes. Mismatched clothing that made her seem like nobody important, invisible in a crowd. She disappeared from an abandoned rooftop. Where the hell did she go?
Then there was Jody, frightened, her face so white, you would have thought it was * her * blood all over the concrete. And she was calling paramedics up to the rooftop, screaming * 'Officer down!' * into her walkie-talkie, bending over me, trying to find the wound and stop the blood- flow. She would have been too late. I would have died before she even made it up the many flights of stairs. My eyes were continually scanning the roof, trying to find the kid with the disappearing act Houdini would have envied. This was definitely something I would have to discuss with my father.
The medics arrived, and despite my own objections, I was whisked away to the hospital. And here I sat in the ER on a bustling Saturday evening, contemplating two small scars that had almost ended my life. And the girl who helped me after I'd chased her, weapon drawn, up what had felt like a thousand steps. After I'd shoved her up against a wall, nearly wrenched her arm out of its socket.
I owed her.
Big time.
* * * * *
My father's Kung Fu studio wrapped its peace around me as I entered. I always felt like I disturbed the energies in here with my own chaotic ch'i, the one my father tried so hard to tame. I was a Picasso portrait moving through a pastoral landscape.
"Pop!" I called, moving through the empty dojo, heading upstairs. The simple surroundings reflected my father's soul. Ordered, austere, and yet at the same time warm and compassionate. The walls were a neutral off- white, a shade that invited untidy colors like a venus fly trap invited flies. Yes, they would be welcome, but quickly swallowed whole.
He sat on a small straw mat in the middle of the room, his legs folded before him, hands limply resting on his knees. His head was tilted back slightly, and his eyes were closed. An almost sub-sonic hum registered faintly on my eardrums. It came from him. Incense smoldered in a small urn on the floor in front of him. He was the solemn Buddha in the Garden of Tranquility. I hated to disturb him.
"Pop."
The hum stopped, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, he inhaled. His eyelids slid open, and he pinned me with his gaze. His eyes didn't merely search, they pierced.
"You should be resting," he said.
I ignored his first comment, ignoring as well the lingering fatigue that clung to my muscles. "Can women be Shaolin?" I rushed in, trying to distract him from his quiet assessment of my health. No doubt he got his information from my aura, or the number and position of lintballs on my over-washed T-shirt. I don't know how he knew what had happened, but somehow I knew he had the gist of it.
"Anyone with patience and determination can-"
"No, I mean. . . can someone just be Shaolin? Is it something you have to attain, or can you just be. . . born with. . .the abilities of. . . ." I didn't even know what I was trying to ask, but apparently he did.
"You have met someone with strange powers, and this has led you believe that she is inherently Shaolin."
"Well, yes and no. Yes, I met someone with strange powers, but that didn't lead me to believe she was Shaolin." I hesitated, don't know why. "The tattoos of a tiger and a dragon on her wrists led me to believe she was Shaolin."
He shrugged and began to unfold himself from his sitting position. He gracefully got to his feet, his plain clothing falling perfectly into place without a wrinkle. "Anyone can get tattoos, my son. And anyone can learn a charlatan's trick."
I shook my head. "No, no, this wasn't a trick." I jammed one hand into my pocket, the other through my hair. "I saw her heal someone. . . someone who would've died if she hadn't helped them."
He regarded me, his eyes once again seeing through me. "Whom did she heal?"
He knew. Dammit, I knew he knew.
"Me."
"I see." He folded his hands into the opposite sleeves of his tunic and began to slowly circle the room. "So this, this woman with Shaolin tattoos, she healed you. Would you like me to help you find her so you can arrest her?"
"No, I'm not going to arrest her." I was getting frustrated. "And it was more than that." I yanked open my jacket, and pulled up my shirt to show the scars: one on my chest, one on my back. "Yesterday evening, I was dying. From these." He didn't turn around. "And she saved me."
"I know. I could sense it."
For some reason, this made me angry. "What, me dying, or her saving me?"
"Both. You are lucky, Peter. I would not have been able to reach you in time." He turned then, both hands behind his back. "I, too, am indebted to her."
Well, at least the games were over, it seemed. "Then, will you help me find her?"
He strode over to where I stood in the doorway and placed his hand on my shoulder. "No. I believe she will come. . . to us." Then he smiled, patted my cloth-covered shoulder, and walked past me.