The wounded man snorted in derision. “Magic has nothing to do with it! The sciences of alchemy and natural philosophy have been mastered and only the ignorant would think of magic.”
“Ah, thank you, you have made my point in a most telling manner.”
“I see what you are hinting at,” the wounded man said with a sigh. “Your mastery of natural philosophy is so far beyond mine that your actions are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from magic. Who are you, man?”
“In my youth,” the old man said gravely, “I was named Flavius Belisarius.”
“Belisarius? The Byzantine general? Impossible! That would make you—”
“More than one thousand years old? Yes, indeed it would. So, you will have no difficulty understanding how tired I am. It is long past time for me to retire, and finally to die.”
The wounded man shook his head, but looking at the fog surrounding them, he realised that he believed this strange man. “What position is it that you offer me?” he asked.
Belisarius grinned. “I need someone to look after my dog.” He patted its head affectionately. “Hey, boy, meet your new guardian. This is Gustav. Gustav, meet Tash.”
Gustav thought nothing else could surprise him, but the dog looked him in the eye, and inside his head he distinctly heard, “Hey, Gustav. Got anything to eat?”
Chapter 4
It was hot and sticky, humid and oppressive. The air was dusty and heavy with fumes from the incessant Shanghai traffic. A westerner was walking along the pavement, ignored by Shanghai’s cosmopolitan residents, but gawped at with either curiosity or hostility by visitors from the countryside. She had olive skin and jet black, frizzy hair that the humidity had rendered untameable. Her skinny frame was clad in black, baggy clothes, and she was wishing she had had the sense to wear a colour that did not absorb the light and heat quite so well. She was walking, and wishing also that she had had the sense to catch a bus. It might have been hot and armpit-fragrant, but at least she would not have been walking. She was making for the China Europe International Business School, and wondering to herself – again – why on earth she had chosen to walk the long way round from her apartment. She halted to wait for the traffic lights to change so that she could head up Hongfeng Road towards her first lecture of the day.
The lights seemed to be taking an age to turn in her favour. The pavement adjacent to the junction was becoming increasingly crowded, and motorists waiting for a green light were becoming increasingly impatient. She knew from experience that the interval granted by the idiosyncratic traffic lights for pedestrians to cross was all too short, so she wormed her way through towards the front of the crowd. She kept her head down, watching where she was putting her feet – she had concluded that Shanghai was a city of spitters – and she had headphones in her ears and a CD in her Sony Discman. So, she neither saw nor heard anything amiss. But, somehow, she felt it.
The crowd started to surge forward. The lights had not quite changed in their favour, but seasoned pedestrians knew that the ones to watch were those controlling the motor vehicles, not the flow of pedestrians. So, the surge was not quite synchronised with the lights. A taxi driver, impatient to get round the junction, raced for the corner in defiance of the changing traffic lights, and instantly had to slam on his brakes and slap his car’s horn because of the pedestrians in the roadway.
The girl in black, somehow, knew something bad was happening. She felt a lurch in the pit of her stomach and a flash of light behind her eyes, illuminating an image of a taxi hitting a small boy with a splash of blood. She blinked and the image was gone, but somehow…
She stepped quickly forward, and there, ahead of her, was a laughing boy running onto the road. And there off to the side, a taxi driver’s face twisted in anguish as his car skidded, wheels locked, straight at the boy. She acted reflexively, not consciously. She grabbed the boy round the waist and pulled him off to the side, away from the taxi, and to safety. She felt the thud of the taxi hitting her in the side. Somehow, she rolled across its hood and found herself face down on the tarmac of the road. Her headphones came off and for the first time her ears registered shouts and screams, the squeal of tyres and brakes, and the crunch of cars hitting cars.
Dazed, she rolled over and looked around in confusion, not quite sure of what had just happened. Then the image of the laughing boy surfaced once more and she looked for him. She found she could not stand and crawled to the front of the taxi. Suddenly, people were clustered around her, asking was she hurt, did she need help. A man in an expensive looking suit asked, in perfect English, “Please remain still, miss, and tell me where does it hurt?”
She blinked, found it hard to get her answer together in English, and replied in standard Mandarin. “I believe I am unhurt.”
The man switched to Mandarin too. “That may be shock. I am a doctor, and if you have no objections I can check you quickly for broken bones.”
She nodded. As the doctor ran his hands down her limbs and gently palpitated her rib cage, she asked, “The boy?”
“Unhurt.”
Another voice cut in. “Come, come, please step away, all of you, please step away. Let the medical technicians through. Are you a doctor, sir?”
The doctor answered, “Yes, I am. This young lady does not appear to have any serious injuries, but I recommend the ambulance gets her to the emergency room for x-rays and tests. There may be minor fractures and possibly a concussion.”
A man in the blue uniform of Public Security Bureau loomed over her. He glanced at the doctor, and asked if she spoke Chinese. He looked down at her, and said, “Miss, can you please tell me what happened here?”
With the doctor’s help, she managed to sit up. “The car – I think the driver drove through the traffic light as it turned red. It was going very fast and I saw the boy running ahead of everyone else on the crossing. I just reacted. I ran forward and pulled him out of the way.”
“Yes,” said the policeman. “That is what other people are saying, too. You moved very fast! You had the boy out of the car’s way before half these people realised what was happening. I think the boy owes you his life.”
The policeman gestured to one side, where she saw the boy in a bear-hug in the arms of a hysterical elderly woman – his grandmother, she guessed – who was alternately weeping and scolding over him. The elderly woman caught her eye, and pointed, babbling away in words that the young woman could not understand.
“What is she saying?” she asked the doctor. “I don’t understand her dialect.”
“She is from the countryside. I doubt if she speaks Mandarin. That is probably Huizhou dialect that she is speaking. Her accent is strange, and I am only getting a few words. She is rambling about a mother goddess.”
The old woman was jabbing a finger repeatedly in the direction of the young one, and addressing herself to the doctor.
“She is saying something about her prayers to Guanyin having brought you here. That is a goddess of mercy, in the old Taoist beliefs. And she keeps mentioning Peiyang Niangniang, who is a mother goddess according to superstitious country dwellers.” The doctor grinned. “So, it seems that you are a goddess!”
The policeman intervened. “Goddess or not, we will need a statement for our investigation. When the hospital releases you, please come to Zhangqiang Police Station in Longdong Avenue to sign a statement. Can I have your name?”