The Emperor's Riddle Read online

  Mia straightened.

  Well, not exactly in the apartment.

  Mia took a deep breath as she padded onto the apartment’s balcony. The sunbaked boards warmed her feet. The balcony wasn’t big—Mia could have leaped from one side to the other without much trouble. It was made even smaller by a family of potted plants and the string of laundry hanging overhead. But an awning blocked the worst of the summer sun, and the smallness was kind of cozy.

  Mia sat beside the balustrade and tilted her face downward, staring at the street below. Had things looked the same down there when Aunt Lin was a child? If only Aunt Lin were here and they could talk about it.

  Still, just this—sitting here where her aunt had sat once upon a time—was nice. Back home, Thea sometimes took Mia around her family’s horse barn and said things like, My grandpa built that shed over there with my dad and my uncles, a long time ago, or My great-grandma made this quilt. My mom says I’ll get to have it one day, when I’m older.

  Mia had never really had things like that. Only stories.

  She’d never thought she’d missed having things like that either. Not until this moment, with her fingers curled around the balcony railing and a thrumming, singing feeling rushing through her veins. A feeling that, like many of Mia’s feelings, couldn’t easily fit into words.

  Maybe it was something like: I came from this.

  Something like: I’m a part of this.

  Something like: I belong.

  Mia smiled. Calmer now, she turned back to the brochures and shuffled through them. Beneath the one for Fuzhou National Park lay a pamphlet with a tower on the front. Each level’s roof winged out like the fancy roofs of a pagoda, bells hanging from their eaves. Above them, little men stood with their hands clasped in front of them.

  No, not little men—little buddhas.

  Jutting above the world on nine glazed layers,

  One thousand buddha chant in unison.

  Their voices are backed by the peal of heavenly bells.

  Mia sat up ramrod straight. “Thousand Buddha Pottery Pagoda,” she read off the bottom of the pamphlet.

  She rushed through the rest of the pages, searching for a wider view of the pagoda, and found one on the very last page.

  She counted the levels of the tower: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

  “Jake!” she shouted.

  9

  JAKE WAS HUNCHED IN A corner of their mother’s room, video-chatting with a friend back home. He mouthed at Mia to leave him alone and shut the door behind her. She was too excited to be upset.

  Her stranger-uncle had the TV tuned to a news channel, but he put it on mute when he saw Mia edging up to him with the brochure in hand.

  All her words came rushing out at once: “Can Jake and I go here? To the Yongquan Temple? It’s not that far. I figured out how we could get there by bus. We have the money. We go around by ourselves all the time at home.”

  “Wait, slow down,” he said, laughing. He reached for the brochure. “Which temple?”

  “Yongquan,” Mia said. “I want to see the Thousand Buddha Pottery Pagoda.”

  “Right now? With your mother away?”

  It made sense to wait for her mom to come home. But there was no way she’d be back in time to go today. They’d have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest. The very thought made Mia’s chest tighten. She was already filled with the jittery need to leave—was already itching to be gone now, if not five minutes ago.

  “What’s the rush?” her stranger-uncle said. “So bored already?”

  Mia hesitated. “I don’t like to be cooped up.”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t either, when I was your age. My friends and I were out on the streets from the time school let out until it was time for dinner. And afterward, if there was any light left—out we’d go again.”

  His friendly chattiness reminded Mia of Aunt Lin. Mia’s mom wasn’t the sort to go on unnecessarily or to talk just to fill a silence.

  “So,” she said hopefully, “can Jake and I go?”

  He winked at her. “If you can be back before your mother gets home.”

  Mia barged back into her mother’s room, brushing aside Jake’s irritated “Go away, Mia—come on.”

  “I solved the first clue,” she hissed at him. “We have to leave now if we’re going to make it back in time.”

  “In time for what?” he said, but she’d darted out the door again, going to grab her messenger bag and the copy of Zhu Yunwen’s map. She paused, just for a few seconds, in the living room.

  It took a moment for her tongue to get around the words, but she faced her stranger-uncle and said, a little shyly, “Thanks. For the brochures.”

  She even managed a smile.

  * * *

  At the bus stop, Jake hovering over her shoulder, Mia watched carefully to see what the other people did as they boarded. Most swiped cards over a bar code reader by the driver’s seat. Others dropped coins into a slot.

  When their bus came, Mia fed in the fee for two tickets and tried to look like she’d been doing this all her life.

  There weren’t any empty seats, so she and Jake found a spot to stand toward the back. Jake was tall enough to reach the handrail, but Mia had to clutch the back of a seat as the bus lurched along.

  The streets of Fuzhou thronged with cars and ­bicycles and people on brightly colored mopeds. Everyone zoomed and shoved from one lane to another like tangled strands in a tapestry.

  “What a road hazard,” Lizbeth’s father always said when someone cut in front of his car, or slammed on their brakes, or didn’t stop properly at a pedestrian walk. He was very fond of what he called the Rules of the Road.

  Mia was pretty sure he’d think all the drivers in China were road hazards. If there were Rules of the Road here, they were a lot looser than they were back home. But they reached their destination—a shopping complex where they needed to change buses—safe and sound. By then, Mia was too occupied with thoughts of the Thousand Buddha Pottery Pagoda to think about much else.

  Outside the bus window, the city streets changed to winding, tree-lined roads. Yongquan Temple was halfway up a mountain, and soon, said mountain rose before them, softly green against the blue sky. The bus carried them beneath a looming gate with Chinese-style roofs and a pair of lions guarding either side.

  Then, finally, it pulled up to the sidewalk. Mia and Jake tumbled out along with a sizable group of fellow tourists. Most were Chinese, but there was a couple that seemed to be visiting from Japan, and a young Englishwoman who continued chatting on her phone as the bus rumbled off again in a cloud of exhaust.

  Schools let out later in China for summer vacation, so there weren’t other kids around who were Mia’s and Jake’s ages. But little kids ran about playing tag or held on to their caretaker’s hands. Mia watched as an old lady handed a little girl—her granddaughter, maybe?—an ice-cream bar from the nearby snack stands. The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar, like a well-loved picture cast in different colors.

  “Come on,” Jake said, pulling Mia deeper into the park. “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  According to the pamphlet Mia still carried in her bag, there were three different routes they could take up to the Yongquan Temple. Vans loitered around the parking lot, their drivers calling out to passersby, offering to drive up them up the mountain for a fee.

  “There’s a cable car, too,” said the snack vender when Mia asked for directions. She grinned at them. “But walking is better. You can see sights on the way up.”

  Of course, Mia couldn’t leave without buying something from her ice-cream cart—just to be polite. She bit into the ice pop as they started up the path, taking the first flight of what seemed to be a great number of stone-cut stairs. A breeze rustled the leaves, making their shadows d
ance.

  The main road split often, each meandering path marked by a wooden sign. They advertised beautiful waterfalls, scenic rock formations, or vantage points for ancient inscriptions carved into stone. Mia and Jake wandered past a few of the etched characters, their heads craned back to see the ones higher up.

  Some were huge and bright red against the gray rocks. Others were smaller, more subtle. Snippets of a tour guide’s practiced patter floated by as he led a large group of tourists, hoisting a bright yellow flag to show the way. Apparently, some of these inscriptions dated from the Song dynasty—one thousand years ago.

  I’m so jealous, Thea had said when Mia first told her she was going to be spending a month in China. I wish I could go. I’ve never left the country before.

  At the time, Mia had grumbled that the trip wasn’t all Thea was making it out to be. But now, perched here on these stone steps, staring up the steep mountain slope, Mia felt a stirring of the wonder Thea had expressed all those weeks ago.

  Here was something she’d never seen. Something she never would have seen in her little town back home.

  Here was adventure—even if it wasn’t exactly the sort of adventure she’d dreamed about.

  Her ice pop was long gone by the time they reached Yongquan Temple. It seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if Mia had blinked and opened her eyes to find the temple dropped right out of the sky.

  Mia and Jake grinned at each other in the muggy summer heat.

  In that moment, things between them were the way they used to be—back when Jake used to build forts with her in the woods behind their house. When he’d been more than happy to go on adventures or play at being pirates—even if he always insisted on being captain, so Mia had to be first mate.

  And there, standing tall and proud like sentinels on either side of a broad walkway, were the two Pottery Pagodas.

  10

  THE PAGODAS LOOKED A LITTLE dull compared to the bright red temple building behind them. They reminded Mia of the trunk she and Aunt Lin had pulled from the closet. They were even worn in the same way, some of their color chipped off to reveal a pale white base. The paint that did remain was an earthy brown-red.

  Still, there was something regal and magnificent about them. Each was five times as tall as Mia. Standing beneath one, squinting upward against the sunlight to see the intricate designs on the pagodas’ gourd-shaped crown, Mia felt very small and very young.

  But that, according to Aunt Lin, was how history was supposed to make you feel. Small and young and part of something much bigger than yourself.

  Jake shielded his eyes from the sun too. “What was the clue again?”

  Mia had it memorized. “ ‘Jutting above the world on nine glazed layers, one thousand buddha chant in unison. Their voices are backed by the peal of heavenly bells. Listen to the ring of roaring lions—and find me above their cages.’ ”

  The buddhas were certainly there. Bigger ones perched on the peaks of the pagodas’ many eaves, some wearing little hats, others bald-headed. Tinier buddhas decorated the walls of each octagonal story. The “heavenly bells” were there too, hanging from each eave. But where were the lions?

  Tourists and pilgrims swarmed the plaza in front of the pagodas, each trying to get a look, or snap a photograph, or just plunge deeper into the Yongquan Temple. There were at least two tour groups, and Mia tried to eavesdrop, half hoping she might hear something useful.

  “These were built during the Song dynasty,” one guide said, beckoning her group past Mia. “They’re called the Thousand Buddha Pottery Pagoda, but there are actually one thousand and seventy-eight buddha, if you want to be exact. If you come closer, you can get a good look at the base of this pagoda. Etched into the pedestal are names of the pagoda’s crafters. . . .”

  The small red fence running around the pagodas meant no one could get too close, but Mia edged her way around the tour group to see the pedestal the guide was talking about. It wasn’t easy, with so many other people struggling to do the same thing. Finally, Mia squeezed between two women and got to the front of the pack.

  She pressed her stomach against the fence’s upper railing as her eyes traced down the base of the pagoda. It was thicker around than the other levels, looking like an octagonal cauldron held up by little kneeling figures at each point. And on either side of each figure—lions! A ring of them encircled the pedestal, each with a unique, snarling face.

  “Listen to the ring of roaring lions,” Mia whispered to herself, “and find me above their cages.”

  The curved, geometric shapes containing each beast did look like cages. She reached for her messenger bag and rummaged for the copy of Zhu Yunwen’s map—noting with some relief that the tour group was moving on. It left her and Jake with more privacy as she beckoned him toward her.

  Together they scrutinized the map, then the ped­estal, and then the map again. The lines leading up to the blank space beside each clue meant that only specific shapes would complete each section of the map.

  “Look,” Jake said, pointing. “See that curly, ace-of-spades-looking design stamped at the brim of the pedestal? Try that.”

  Mia obliged. It took a little fiddling before suddenly, and with such ease it might as well have been magic—or possibly destiny, or maybe just the click of something becoming right in the world—Mia got the shape on the pedestal to fit perfectly into the map.

  She couldn’t have stopped her shout of triumph if she’d wanted to.

  One down.

  Three more to go.

  * * *

  Mia figured they’d need to head back to the apartment immediately, to make it before their mom returned from her reunion. But when Jake caught her eyeing the other parts of the temple, a yearning tilt to her face, he took her by the shoulders and steered her up the ramp between the pagodas.

  “Come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We’re not in that big of a hurry. Mom will be gone for hours.”

  Yongquan Temple spread out as pretty as a painting. Buildings rose around them, their red walls contrasted with white-rimmed windows. The edges of their dark roofs swooped down and then up again like four-pointed hats. Many had intricately decorated eaves, each adorned with swirling designs and colorful patterns.

  Mia watched as an elderly gentleman clasped a stick of incense in his hands and bowed to a huge, golden ­Buddha statue sitting inside one of the temple buildings. A woman joined him, their knees resting against pillows to protect them from the hard temple floors.

  Elsewhere, she and Jake ran into another statue, this one carved from glossy white marble. A tableau of ­flowers, fruits, and incense sat before it on a high table. Below it, lined up on a lower shelf, stood a procession of golden candles in wide-mouthed glass jars.

  They reminded Mia of the row of candles she’d seen when she’d visited Lizbeth’s church. They’re prayers, Lizbeth had told her when she’d asked about them. Mia wondered if these candles were prayers too.

  A vender sold candles of different sizes nearby, and Mia toyed with the idea of buying one to light for Aunt Lin. But the thought of saying this aloud to Jake made her cringe with embarrassment, so she just walked on without saying a word.

  The temple grounds opened onto a small pond. A white statue of a tall, slim figure rose from the center of it, surrounded by tree-reflecting waters and the tiny, round black shells of sunbathing turtles.

  “Who’s that supposed to be?” Jake asked, and seemed surprised when Mia answered, “Guanyin Pusa.”

  “And who’s that?”

  Mia narrowed her eyes at him, making sure he wasn’t teasing her.

  “She’s like a goddess,” she said. “She protects women and kids, and people pray to her when they want to have a baby.”

  Jake peered up at the swishing folds of her robes, at the crown and veil atop her hair. Her eyes were closed, peaceful, her mouth just barely curved
in a smile.

  “How do you know all that?” he said.

  “You’d know it too, if you listened to Aunt Lin’s stories more.”

  “Well, I don’t hang out with her as much as you do,” Jake said. To Mia’s surprise, he didn’t sound dismissive. In fact, he sounded almost wistful. When she looked up at him, though, he just laughed and poked his finger against her forehead, right between her eyes. “I’ve got better things to do.”

  Still, Mia knew what she’d heard. She mulled it over as they headed out of the temple and down the mountain toward the bus stop.

  For most of her life, she’d wanted all the things Jake had that she didn’t—a swarm of friends at school, a head for classes, an unshakable confidence that no one and nothing seemed able to dent.

  It had never occurred to her that she might have things Jake envied too. It had especially never occurred to her that one of those things might be the time she spent with Aunt Lin.

  “You know,” she said, as they stood waiting for the bus to come. “You could hang out with me and Aunt Lin sometimes. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Jake said, and mussed up her hair.

  * * *

  They’d lingered longer than they’d meant to at ­Yongquan, and then it took more time than they’d expected for the bus to come, so by the time Mia and Jake reached the gate outside their apartment complex, they were a little concerned. They careened up the stairs—all five flights of them—and arrived, gasping and huffing, at their landing. Mia jabbed the doorbell.

  “Is she back?” she whispered when her uncle opened the door, and slumped with relief when he shook his head.

  They tumbled inside—had just barely slipped off their shoes when the doorbell rang again. Their mother blinked at them in surprise when they pulled the door open a second later.

  “Were you two waiting by the door for me?” she said, laughing.

  “They were eager for you to get home,” Mia’s uncle said. “How was your reunion?”