Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society (21 page)

I breathed again. But what was he thinking? That he would have no trouble overpowering a bunch of frightened children? That kids didn’t deserve to be shot? That it would look foolish to be brandishing a gun when no one was challenging him? Then I noticed how young he was. His cheeks were smooth and he looked as if he hadn’t begun to shave yet. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old!

I felt my mouth go dry and my heart race as he stood hesitantly in front of us. Would he arrest us and take us to Bridge House, like Marat’s brother, Ivanov? If it came to a fight, would we be able to beat him with our kung fu skills? Would he kill us?

Suddenly, in the tense silence, a most unexpected sound erupted. Everyone heard it. We looked at each other in astonishment. Who had produced it? It seemed to have come from one of the boys. Could Marat really have farted? Marat the fastidious, who insisted on bathing daily
in cold water even while on the road? There now came a stench so potent that all of us moved slightly away, while Marat looked at the ground, extremely embarrassed.

At that moment, David began to laugh uncontrollably. His mirth was that of a mischievous child: spontaneous, devoid of malice and contagious. Great peals of laughter rippled out and one by one, we all joined in, including the Japanese officer and Marat himself. We couldn’t help ourselves.

In some mysterious way, our crazy outburst seemed to clear the air and unite us. Outwardly nothing had changed and yet everything was different. We didn’t see how someone who had just laughed with us would now try to harm us.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Marat mumbled in Japanese, stepping forwards and holding out his hand. ‘My stomach has been bothering me. I’m Marat Yoshida, and these are my friends, CC, David and Sam.’

‘You speak Japanese!’ the Japanese officer sounded relieved and delighted as he shook Marat’s hand. ‘I don’t speak much Chinese. I’m Kenshio Yamada. Are you Japanese?’

‘Yes,’ said Marat. ‘Me and my friends are here on vacation. How can we help you?’

Just then we heard a loud rustling, and the
splintering of twigs. Who could be lurking nearby?

‘Hello! Who’s there?’ Sam called out loudly in a shaky voice.

Kenshio Yamada put his ringer to his lips. ‘Tell your friend to keep quiet!’ he whispered to Marat in Japanese. He took out his revolver. Then he said in broken Chinese, ‘Listen! Someone heavy is moving behind the bamboo. Maybe it’s an American!’

It was true! We could hear heavy footsteps trudging through the forest. Surely Thatcher wouldn’t have come back! Or would he? Did he forget something? Was he crazy?

‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ Sam moaned. I couldn’t tell whether Sam was groaning for the American or for our new-found Japanese friend.

‘Quiet!’ Kenshio whispered furiously. ‘Don’t be such a baby! He’ll hear you!’

‘Maybe it’s not a man but an animal…’ Sam began tremulously. Then he let out a shriek that made the hairs rise on the back of my head. ‘Ah!!!!! Yaa… a… a… a!!!!!’

‘What?’ I asked, frantically looking around. ‘What did you see?’

‘Over there! Something enormous!’ Sam pointed to a thick cluster of bamboo. ‘I saw it move! It’s not a man. It’s a monster!’

16

The Monster

‘A monster?’ Kenshio sounded bewildered.

‘Look!’ David pointed to the ground.

There, between the fallen bamboo leaves on the far left, was a clear imprint in the mud. Marat ran forwards, knelt by the mud and examined it carefully. We heard him counting softly: ‘One, two, three, four, five, six!’

‘Six toes!’ Marat reported shakily. ‘Nobody has a foot with six toes! It’s not the footprint of a human being! This was made by the paw of something spooky. An alien or a weird brute of some sort! I thought I saw it just now, too. Sam’s right! It
is
a monster.’

‘Monster!’ Sam whispered, trembling like a leaf. ‘Mother told me a story once about Samnaja, the Abominable Monster of Tibet. It’s a fantastic beast that’s really a demon. It has pointed ears
that go straight up, like horns. And four short tusks protruding from a mouth that can spew out smoke and fire when it gets angry. Its wrinkled brown body is covered with black hairs and coloured spots. Each enormous forepaw has five fingers plus a thumb, just like this pawprint. It sits high up on the branch of a tree and lies in wait for small animals and children. Then it swoops down like a dragon and pounces –’

‘Stop it!’ Kenshio commanded. ‘You’re scaring yourself to death with your imagination!’

‘This pawprint didn’t come from Sam’s imagination,’ David pointed out logically. ‘It has six toes, just like Sam’s Abominable Monster of Tibet!’

‘What shall we do?’ I asked.

‘Let’s see if we can find more pawprints and follow them,’ Kenshio said. ‘I don’t believe in monsters. This could be a trick to scare us away. If we come across your Abominable Monster, Sam, I promise to pump it full of bullets before it can do you harm.’

We found a trail of six-toed pawprints leading deep into the forest. Some prints were sharply etched into the mud, but others were faint. The rest were lost among tree roots, pine needles, bamboo leaves, ferns, moss and fallen branches. As we trudged along, I felt confused. Weren’t the
Japanese supposed to be our enemy? If so, why were we following a Japanese paratrooper? Maybe this was a plan to distract Kenshio from finding the Americans. But Sam had seemed genuinely scared when he saw the creature lurking behind the bamboo. Was it all an act?

For half an hour we followed the pawprints into the heart of the forest, until the foliage overhead was so thick that I could hardly see the sky. Bamboos twice as high as a man were interspersed with hemlock, beech, fir and thickets of rhododendron. All I could see were rhododendron blossoms – a dazzle of crimson, yellow, white, purple and silvery-pink.

Kenshio suddenly stopped and crouched down. We all searched, but could find no more pawprints. Sam’s Tibetan monster had vanished in mid-stride.

Although Kenshio and the boys were with me, I felt a wave of fear. The air carried a rank, wild odour, reminding me of elephants at the zoo. Could I actually smell the monster or was this just my imagination? I sensed that the creature was not only close by, but was watching me. Then a fierce wind sprang up, making the trees creak and groan. The first drops of rain wet my face. A flash of lightning threw the branches into stark relief. In the sudden glare I glimpsed a hulking
shape sitting on top of a tree immediately in front of me.

‘David!’ I screamed. ‘There’s something up there. It’s huge and black –’

Thunder cracked and the forest seemed to open up as rain came pouring down. The eye of the storm was directly above us.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Kenshio said as lightning flashed again. ‘I saw the thing in the treetop just now. I’m glad I didn’t shoot it with my pistol! That’s no monster!’

‘What
is
it?’ I asked fearfully.

‘I should have known!’ Kenshio answered, patting me on the head. ‘After all, I was studying zoology at Tokyo University when I got drafted. The creature sitting up there is the national treasure of China. It’s a
giant panda
!’

17

Master Wu’s Pet

What a relief! As soon as Kenshio told us that Sam’s ‘Abominable Monster’ was really a panda, I felt so much better. I screwed up my eyes and looked again. Sure enough! Perched on a forked branch of the tree immediately facing us was the distinct white-and-black face of a giant panda. With her chin resting on her hands and her head cocked to one side, she was observing us quietly from among the leaves. Despite her size, she looked so cuddly and cute that I wanted to talk to her.

‘Hello, panda! How did
you
get up there so high?’

‘She’s not going to answer you,’ Kenshio said. ‘Pandas are very shy. But I’ve got something left over from lunch that might tempt her to come down. Pandas love sweet potatoes.’

He waved the potato back and forth but the panda ignored him. Instead, she grabbed a nearby stalk of bamboo with her front paw, bit off a piece with her teeth and began stripping off the tough outer covering to get to the pith. We all craned our necks for a closer look as she delicately ate the bamboo. Meanwhile, the rain eased as the storm passed over us.

‘She doesn’t seem quite real,’ I said. ‘She’s like something out of a dream.’

‘She has the face of a teddy bear but sits upright like a person,’ Marat said. ‘I love her big black eyes and black ears on top of her white baby-face and black body.’

‘Big, gentle and round, sitting there not making a sound!’ David said, picking up Kenshio’s potato from the ground and waving it at the panda again.

‘She lives by herself in the forest like a hermit,’ Kenshio said. ‘She doesn’t harm anyone, but hunters kill her for her skin. There aren’t many pandas left. We need to protect her so she doesn’t get hurt.’

The panda began to climb down. She embraced the trunk and lowered herself tail first, carrying out a series of looping movements with her soles against the bark. When she reached the ground, she backed up to the same tree and raised her tail. Balancing her weight on her two front paws, she
did a handstand. Then she rubbed her bottom up and down against the tree trunk.

‘She is marking that tree with her scent to tell other pandas that she was here first. That’s how she claims her territory,’ said Kenshio.

The panda now sat down on her haunches against the tree, stretched out her right front paw and accepted the sweet potato from David’s hand. David grinned with satisfaction and raised both his fists in triumph. Keeping her eyes on David the whole time, the panda began to eat. Her white belly was fully exposed and her black legs were splayed out in front. Her black ears twitched back and forth as she chewed, obviously relishing every bite. A piece of potato dropped on to her belly as she ate. She used her thumb and five fingers to pick it up and pop it back into her mouth.

Our interval of peace was broken by the wail of a siren, followed by the drone of an aeroplane. Startled, Kenshio looked at his watch and hit his forehead with his palm.

‘Have I been here for two hours already? It feels as if I’ve just arrived.’ He took out a map and compass from his pocket. ‘The gunboat
Isamuru
is picking me up. If I don’t appear soon, they’ll send a patrol to look for me. Goodbye, all of you. What a surprising day this has been! Not only did
I see a live panda in the wild, I also made some unexpected friends.’

‘We’ve never met a Japanese paratrooper before,’ said David. ‘Are they all like you?’

‘Japan is a big place with millions of people,’ Kenshio answered. ‘Everyone is different. There are many honourable people in my country. Personally, I hate this war, but I was drafted, so I had no choice. I’m really glad I didn’t have to kill or arrest any Americans today. I have to go now, but hope we’ll meet again after this war is over.’ He clicked his heels and bowed to us before hurrying away.

The encounter with the panda and Kenshio had exhausted us. We sat on the ground in silence for a long time, too tired to talk. I stared at my compass button and was planning to walk in a south-westerly direction when we heard someone playing a flute in the distance. Music filled the forest and seemed to pull all the rustling bamboos, rhododendron flowers and fir-tree branches towards it.

‘Perhaps it’s Master Wu!’ David said. ‘Not many people can play the flute like that.’

‘Look at the panda,’ I said.

The panda had gathered a bunch of bamboo around her, but now she stopped munching
and began walking slowly towards the music on all fours, then rolling and tumbling and making happy noises. I was so involved with the panda’s antics that it took me a while to notice a flute-playing man, followed by someone else, emerging through the mist. I took a proper look and saw that it was
indeed
Master Wu and –

‘Big Aunt!’ I shouted as I ran towards her. She met me halfway and caught me in her arms. Both of us were crying with happiness. I felt giddy with joy as she hugged me. A lifetime seemed to have gone by since I had last seen her.