forget about the garden.” Jasmine tucked her long black braid inside her hood and headed for her bike. The morning drizzle had turned into a regular West Coast downpour, making the roads more slippery than ever. Ignoring the puddles, she sped off to her tai chi class.
“Keep your self-control,” the teacher was saying. “Don’t give in to anger. Remember, tai chi must never be used against another person unless you’re in danger. Then, look for a weak spot, maybe the way the person is standing. Take advantage of that weakness. Catch the person off balance.”
Jasmine hung onto every word. “Inner strength is being aware of your own power and energy and having control over it. To have inner strength you must concentrate on your lower stomach, because that’s where your power is centred. And remember that tai chi is yin and yang working in harmony. The spiritual side is in balance with the physical side.”
As she went through the patterned motions, Jasmine thought about her inner strength. She was sure she had it. She could feel it, flowing through her body with every breath.
“Let your arms open as if you’re holding the whole world in front of you. Curve your arms downwards and scoop up all this space. Keep your back straight, knees bent. Lift the energy up to your chest.”
Jasmine dropped her elbows and rotated her wrists, directing the energy into her lower stomach. She was concentrating so hard she didn’t hear the door open or see her teacher walk towards it. She jumped when he tapped her shoulder. “Your dad’s here. He wants to talk to you.”
She skipped towards the door, eager to show her father the new moves. But the look on his face stopped her abruptly. “Dad? What’s—”
“Your mom,” he said in a choked voice. He put his arms around her, drawing her close. “There’s been an accident.”
Somehow, Jasmine left her class, walked down the stairs and got into the car. “She was driving home,” her father was saying. “The roads were so slippery, she skidded on a curve, crashed into a tree...”He paused, fighting to control his ragged breathing. “When they got her out she was unconscious but still alive. But...she didn’t make it to the hospital.”
Jasmine stared fixedly through the rain-streaked wind-shield, barely hearing her father’s words. They fluttered through some distant part of her consciousness like fragments of paper, ripped apart, swept away. What was he talking about? Her mother, dead? No! It was a mistake! She wanted to scream, shout, smash—pound everything back into place, the way it was.
“It can’t be,” she repeated numbly. Her body throbbed with an overwhelming hurt. She was out of her depth, sinking slowly, with nothing to hold onto, no hope of touching bottom, not even a shred of inner strength to keep her afloat.
And that night, the dreams began.
Chapter 2
Bright Jade sat alone by the pool, staring at the moon’s reflection. She tried to capture the image of the Moon Lady, but the wind kept stirring the water, breaking the reflection into ripples.
She looked up at the sky, where the moon hung like a silver coin. Although she still couldn’t see the Moon Lady, she could see the hare, pounding out the elixir of immortality at the foot of a cassia tree.
Bright Jade sighed. Everlasting life! How could one attain it? The moon was so far away, yet here it was at her feet—a clear reflection now, not distorted by the wind. If she could just reach over, fall into the pool and land on the moon....
She knew the time was coming. Even though the Emperor believed his reign would last ten thousand years.
The mighty Emperor, she thought bitterly. Qin Shi Huangdi, the Son of Heaven, so obsessed with eternal life he sent six thousand boys and girls to the Eastern Sea to search for the Islands of the Immortals. Did they find the magical islands? Or the elixir that was said to grow there? No one knew, for the children were never seen or heard from again.
Then there were the thousands buried beneath the stones of the Great Wall. Young men and old, brothers, husbands, fathers and sons whose sweat was mixed with the mortar that held the stones together; dead men denied a proper burial, whose souls were doomed to an eternity without rest; dead men whose bones were part of the Great Wall itself, the longest graveyard in the world.
Bright Jade shivered. She was the Emperor’s favourite. All the more reason he would insist she accompany him to the Celestial Kingdom, where he would continue to reign long after his body was dead.
The thought of that kingdom made her shudder. Hundreds of thousands of peasants had laboured a lifetime, creating a universe deep within the earth, a universe complete with rivers and ocean, moon and stars. Inside this world lay the burial chamber where the Emperor would rule, surrounded by his treasures: jewels, gold, jade, and the beautiful women who entertained him.
To protect this Celestial Kingdom, the Emperor had created an army of life-size terra-cotta warriors. Thousands of archers, charioteers, infantry, generals, all clothed in armour, all heavily armed, keeping watch in the huge underground vaults that surrounded the Emperor’s tomb.
Bright Jade knew that traps had been placed inside the tomb, intricately set and cunningly concealed. Crossbows were set to shoot anyone who entered. And once the tomb was closed, all the artisans who knew its secrets would be walled up inside, their lips sealed forever. She knew the time was coming.
The moon floated on the black water of the pool, undis turbed by ripples. Bright Jade leaned over. But no sooner had she touched the surface of the water than the moon dissolved into fractures of silvery light, scattering over the pool like broken dreams.
It was then she felt the eyes watching her. Turning slowly, she saw the figure framed by the moon gate. The Old One.
Jasmine woke with a start. Who was this person in her dream? She knew her—her thoughts and feelings and memories. But how? And where had this dream come from? The Great Wall was in China, but what connection did she have with China, apart from tai chi?
Suddenly she saw her mother, waving good-bye. “Be careful, it’s slippery....”
Struggling to shut out the pain, she willed herself back to the dream. It was the only way of forgetting. The only sanctuary, in spite of the shadowy figure who lurked there.
Startled, Bright Jade began to rise.
“Do not be frightened,” the Old One whispered as he glided towards her. His long frayed robe hung loosely from his shoulders, and the amulets swinging from his neck and waist clattered and tinkled. Skulls of small animals, stones and bones; pieces of jade and tiny bronze bells; the shell of a tortoise, the claws of a tiger. “You know me as the gardener,” he said. “And I know you, Bright Jade.”
She nodded. She had seen him feeding the carp, tending the peach trees. In all weathers he had drifted in and out of the garden, his amulets clattering softly. A mysterious man, the Old One. Some feared him as a sorcerer. Others sought him as a gifted fortune-teller. Some had heard him weaving magic spells and chanting incantations. It was said the Emperor himself had consulted him on the question of immortality. But Bright Jade knew him simply as the gardener, an old man with a warm smile and penetrating eyes.
She searched those eyes now, wondering what had brought him out so late at night. And how long
