Last week, Michael survived Monty’s attack with population statistics, and finally met the woman in green.
The Emerald is printing “And the Dew is Our National Treasure” in serial form, with an installment every Tuesday in the Pulse Relax section. Earlier installments can be found at www.dailyemerald.com.
The signs had been consistent: Green put me on the plane and led me to the woman. But what is Fate’s message, that Kerensa’s a high-priced whore? “No! I’m assigning motives like Sarah! If I’d only stayed in Portland and searched for Kerensa’s journal, I’d know her thoughts.”
The plane jerks to a stop, and I hold my knotted stomach. I want to curl up, but I stand with the others and shuffle forward. Monty waits at his seat.
“Remember, 14,713 per square mile.” Weird smile, raised eyebrows. I nod and smile back. He stuffs a note in my shirt pocket.
“Thanks.” The woman in green is far ahead.
My cab lurches through the crowded streets of Kowloon, where green is ubiquitous, a painful reminder to me of Kerensa. At the hotel, I call Sarah and recreate the sequence that led to the woman in green. “Michael, signs are not colors or things, but people. A 13-hour flight, and you met no one?”
“Monty…” I begin and remember his note in my pocket. It’s scribbled on letterhead from the InTERRim Institute, Portland. “Ffffff…!”
“What, Michael?”
“Monty’s note. It’s on Kerensa’s letterhead!”
After several hours on the phone, I give up trying to find Monty and go for a run. At first, the pedestrians around me have briefcases in their hands, then shopping bags, then wooden cages, then nothing and their empty hands reach toward me. People stare from dark alleys.
Firecrackers explode around the corner; flashes brighten the walls; I go to look. Paper dragons with black legs dance before a bonfire. Sparks fly into the night. A sting of sharp explosions. I see flames through black legs as through balusters. I sink…
“Kerensa?” I scream. I stand in a doorway in white pajamas printed with clowns and drums. A hot glow comes through the balusters. My eyes sting. “Kerensa!” The stairwell before me explodes in flame. I fall. Kerensa’s feet beneath the smoke run across the landing. I hear pounding. “Mom! Dad! Mom, wake up. Dad.” A lash of flame. I’m on my knees crying. Kerensa takes my hand: “Keep close and you’ll be all right.” We climb out the window — flames lick over the edge of the roof — and go over the dormer toward the back of the house. Kerensa orders me down the trellis. From the ground, I see her still on the roof moving around to the back. She pounds on a window. “Mom! Dad!” The pane breaks and flames rush through the hole. Kerensa’s forced back. She turns and jumps. I’m paralyzed with fear. She gets to her knees, then to her feet and comes over to me. She holds me tight as the sirens scream.
I hunker against a wall near ashes. Her parents were little more. Afterwards there was confusion and then questions and discussions, and then she was adopted as my sister.
The sky lightens. I stand, find a rickshaw and soon curl up in white, scented sheets.
“Sarah,” I say before boarding my return flight. “This has been a disaster.”
“The darker the night, the brighter the candle. I found her backpack.”
“The one with her journal?”
“Yes.” Sarah’s cell breaks up and dies.
Peter Wright is a printer living in Portland. He received his bachelor’s degrees from UC Berkeley, served in the U.S. Navy, worked as a stock broker and taught at Stanford University.
© Peter Wright, 2002. All rights reserved.
The whole Kerensa
Click here to view additional chapters of “Where’s Kerensa?”