Lair of Dreams

Ling spied Lucky moving in the shadows. He was making a run for the opera house through the chaos on the streets. Uncle Eddie spirited him inside, and he and Ling waited for the Tea House waiter to catch his breath.

“The mayor has issued a full quarantine,” Lucky managed to tell them. “They’re taking us to a detainment camp.”

“Where are my parents?” Ling pleaded.

“Your father told me to go quickly out the back and come to you. I barely escaped.”

“Is Baba all right?” Ling begged.

Lucky hung his head. “I am sorry, Ling. They took your father. He couldn’t find his papers.”

“I will go to the Association and see what I can find out from the lawyers,” Uncle Eddie said, racing for his coat and hat.

“They’ll take you, too, Uncle,” Lucky said.

“So be it. I won’t wait like a dog.”

Lucky nodded at Ling. “Mr. Chan wanted to make sure they didn’t get Ling.”

Ling was torn. She wanted to go with Uncle Eddie, to be with her mother and father. But she also needed to get to Henry and tell him what she’d come to realize about the dream world.

“Uncle?” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“You must wait here,” Uncle Eddie said, opening the costume wardrobe. “I’ll come back for you once I’ve spoken to the Association.” He helped Ling climb inside. She sat on the floor of the closet, cradling her crutches, hidden under a mound of heavy costumes. “You’ll be safe in here,” her uncle said and shut the door.

But Ling knew she wasn’t safe anywhere. Not when people could hate the very idea of you. Not when there were ghosts in your dreams. Ling shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of her neighbors being taken away in the night. She held her breath as the police broke into the darkened opera house and searched it. They opened the wardrobe but, seeing nothing but a rack of costumes, closed it again and left. For what seemed like an eternity, Ling lay on the floor of the wardrobe, feeling the cramps in her legs. When it was quiet, she let herself out. For a moment she stood, not knowing what to do or where to go. Then, quite decisively, she yanked a pearl and a pheasant feather from the headpiece of the Dao Ma Dan, hoping her uncle would forgive her for it, and shoved both objects deep into her pocket. She peeked through a crack in the opera-house doors and, seeing no one, let herself out, watching for police as she walked the eerily empty streets of Chinatown, which reminded her once more of her dream. Stifling a sob, Ling sneaked into the Tea House, stepping over broken dishes on her way to the telephone directory, where she found the address for the Bennington. She grabbed Henry’s hat, placing it on her head.

Then, keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the El for the long ride uptown.

The wind had picked up in advance of the predicted nor’easter. It whipped at the hand-painted banner Mabel and Jericho had hung above the museum’s front doors so that it appeared to spell out TIGHT! DIVERS BIT! Inside, Jericho and Mabel put the finishing touches on the Diviners exhibit. Mabel arranged the small triangles of watercress sandwiches she’d made on silver trays she’d borrowed from the Bennington’s dining room while Jericho put the last of the exhibit’s cards in place.

“Looks nice,” Mabel said, coming to stand beside him.

“It does at that,” Jericho agreed. “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Mabel. Thank you.”

You’re right, she thought. “You’re welcome,” she said.

Sam arrived, shaking the damp from his coat. “Getting ugly out there.”

“I hope it doesn’t keep people away,” Mabel fretted. “You look swell, Sam.”

“Thanks, Mabel. So do you. Where’s Evie?”

“I thought she was coming with you!” Mabel said.

Sam was half out of his coat. With a sigh, he shrugged it back on and buttoned up. He swiped a sandwich triangle from a tray and stuffed it into his mouth. “Keep the exhibit on ice. I’ll be back with the guest of honor.”

“You know where she is?” Mabel asked, rearranging the hole left by Sam’s sandwich grab.

“I got a pretty good idea.”

A short while later, Sam burst into the speakeasy beneath the Winthrop, threading quickly through the crowd. A knot of soused revelers bent over a fountain where someone had dropped a small hammerhead shark into the water. It lurked in the shallows, lost, as the partiers pointed and laughed. Evie held court at a table full of fashionable swells, men and women of facile smiles and fickle allegiances who seemed to be eating up every elocution-perfected word out of her mouth. The man sitting too close to her interrupted, spinning out a story that Sam was certain was a bore. He marched over and tapped Evie on the shoulder.