A second figure emerged from behind the swell of the wall. A tall man with a cloud of black hair who walked, then ran toward her. Who grabbed her—frozen where she stood—and stuffed a foul-smelling rag against her nose and mouth.
Mia screamed into it. She screamed and screamed, but no sound escaped.
A thick, muddy fist closed around her mind.
Her legs gave out first.
She was unconscious before she hit the ground.
21
WAKING WAS LIKE CLAWING UP from the bottom of a deep, cold well. Even after her eyes opened, Mia’s thoughts weren’t entirely there, parts of her slower than others to get their affairs straight.
She heard a whisper: “Mia?”
Her name traveled like an electric spark down her spine, jolting everything to life. Because the voice that spoke it—that familiar, much-loved voice—belonged to someone she’d half feared she might never see again.
“Aunt Lin!” she cried hoarsely. Wherever she was, it was pitch-black. Mia could hardly see her own hands, let alone anyone else. “Where’s Jake? Is he here?”
“He’s right beside you,” Aunt Lin said. “Don’t worry. He’ll be all right.”
Mia tried to stand, and quickly discovered two things. One, her hands were bound in front of her by something harsh and plasticky. Two, her legs weren’t as stable as she’d thought. She tumbled down again, banging her shin against something in the darkness.
“Hold on, hold on,” Aunt Lin said. There was a rattling sound. Then a weak glow flickered to life in her hands, powered by a tiny, plastic flashlight, like the kind you’d find on a key chain. Her wrists were bound, too. She had to fiddle with the flashlight to get it pointed where she wanted.
She swept the light around them, revealing the cramped insides of a van. Men’s clothing hung haphazardly from the seats. Empty and half-empty food containers scattered about the floor, now and then abutting against a plastic water bottle. It all smelled too—sour and too sweet and musty.
Jake slumped against one of the lumpy seats, still unconscious. A nasty bruise marred his temple, where he must have hit the ground, but he seemed to be breathing okay. Mia fought the urge to shake him awake, to make sure.
“I found the flashlight in this mess,” Aunt Lin said, gesturing around them. “But the battery’s running out, so we shouldn’t waste it.”
“Are you okay?” Mia folded herself against Aunt Lin. “Did he hurt you?”
Aunt Lin gave a little laugh. It didn’t sound completely real, but it made Mia feel a tiny bit better anyway. “I’m fine, darling. Your aunt is pretty sturdy, don’t you think? How are your mother and uncle—were they with you? Do they know you’re missing?”
“I don’t know,” Mia said. “They’re still in Fuzhou. Jake and I came to the grave alone. They all thought you’d just left—they believed that letter. But I didn’t.”
Aunt Lin kissed the top of her head. She looked like she’d spent the past days in the same clothing, the blouse wrinkled, her hair wispy around her face in untamed curls. But her smile was steady. “I didn’t think you would. Everything is going to be okay, Mia.”
She sounded so sure that Mia found it easy to be sure as well. But that lasted only a moment. Her eyes landed on Jake again, on his bruised temple, and her chest tightened.
She climbed over to the van’s door and rattled it, trying to slide it open. It didn’t give.
“Where are we?” she said. “Where’s Ying?”
Aunt Lin shook her head. “I don’t know. He barely lets me out of this van—he’s afraid I’ll call for help. He’s been driving me all over—”
“Trying to solve the riddles, right?” Mia said. Automatically, she tried to reach for her messenger bag. “That’s what Jake and I were doing too. That’s why we were at Zhu Yunwen’s grave. We almost had it finished—”
Aunt Lin’s mouth formed a hard line. “Ying did too. He might have the whole thing now. The grave site was his last riddle.”
A squealing noise put a halt to their conversation. Aunt Lin extinguished her flashlight just in time. A second later the rusty van door wrenched open. Ying loomed in the scant opening.
At first he was little more than a dark shape haloed by sunlight. Mia blinked rapidly, willing her eyes to readjust. Then flinched as he tossed something at her—a crumpled-up sheet of blue notebook paper.
“What does it mean?” he growled.
Jake groaned and shifted, prodded awake by his voice. Ying ignored him, gesturing wildly for Mia to pick up the fallen ball of paper. He didn’t look well. His hair was an uncombed thatch, his skin pale and drawn, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He smelled of sour desperation and anger.
Mia kept her head down as she reached for the paper. It wasn’t easy. Her wrists chaffed painfully against their plastic ties. Aunt Lin went to Jake, whispering for him to stay calm as he came to.
“What does what mean?” Mia willed her voice steady as she smoothed out the paper. The lines on it were a little different from the ones she was used to—drawn by a different hand—but the overall effect was the same. It was Zhu Yunwen’s map, completed.
How strange to hold it in her hands. She noticed that three of the patterns, fitted together like this, lead the eye toward one particular spot on the map—a place where the lines congregated to form something circular.
“The map.” Even angry and frustrated, there was a dark control about Ying, like a black cloak. All his feelings seemed to turn inward. “It’s finished, isn’t it? But it doesn’t tell me where to go. It’s not a map of China. It’s not a map of Fujian Province. It’s not a map of anything!”
Jake was all the way awake now. He met eyes with Mia, the two of them exchanging a loaded look. We have to keep him calm, it said. We have to buy time.
Time for what? Not for rescue—no one knew where they were.
An escape, then.
“She doesn’t know what it means, Ying,” Aunt Lin said softly. “She’s only a little girl.”
Ying pulled a terrible scowl. “She figured everything else out, didn’t she?” He swung to face Mia. “Did someone help you? Was it your mother?”
“No,” Mia said, terrified. Would he go after her mom next? “No one helped me.”
“Well,” Ying said, “then you can figure this out too.”
He grabbed the van door and pulled it shut again.
22
MIA WASN’T SURE HOW YING expected them to work on anything in the darkness. But the man hadn’t looked like he was thinking clearly. That could be a plus. The more frazzled and sleep-deprived he was, the easier it would be to escape.
At least, Mia hoped so. Because it also made him more frightening—more uncontrolled. Like he might do anything and everything to get what he wanted.
Aunt Lin turned on the flashlight again, giving them the small comfort of its glow. Mia still felt a shot of relief every time she saw her aunt’s face. But there wasn’t time to celebrate.
“I think we’re still out in the countryside,” Jake said, shoving himself upright. He pressed his clenched fists against his head, like he was nursing a powerful headache. “I looked past him while you guys were talking. There were mountains and a lot of trees.”
“We must be near a village, though,” Aunt Lin said. “We’ve been here a night already, and he brought back food once—and it wasn’t packaged like it would be from a larger town or from the city.”
Mia bit her lip. “So if we got out of the van and ran, we could find it?”
She didn’t like to imagine what would happen if they didn’t. If they simply got lost in the wilderness, wandering about the mountainside in circles until they collapsed from exhaustion and thirst.
“We’d have to get out of the van first,” Aunt Lin said.
“We could overpower him,” Jake said. “There are three of us and onl
y one of him. He doesn’t look that steady on his feet.”
Aunt Lin lifted her hands, the plastic zip ties glinting in the flashlight’s glow. “These need to come off first.”
Mia noticed, with an uneasy churn of her stomach, that her aunt’s wrists were the same molted, bruised color as Jake’s temple. How long had she been tied up like this? Mia didn’t like to think about it.
“Wait,” she said. The idea, when it came, struck her like a train. She scrambled for her messenger bag, yanking it open. It was three times as hard as usual, with her bound hands, but she finally managed to find what she was looking for—her sewing kit. She pried the case open and finagled out a pair of tiny silver scissors. They were barely longer than her thumb and rounded at the tips—airport-security safe.
But they were also sharp as anything along the blade. Sharp enough, certainly, to cut through plastic zip ties.
“You are a marvel,” Aunt Lin said, when she saw the scissors in Mia’s hands. Despite everything, Mia smiled, just a little.
They maneuvered so Mia could saw through the plastic around Aunt Lin’s wrists. Then Aunt Lin freed her and Jake. They sat for a moment, rubbing their wrists. Jake nursed his head.
Mia hesitated, then added, “Should we try to run at night? So he can’t follow us so easily?”
“We can’t see either, at night.” Jake winced as he spoke, squeezing his eyes shut.
“You need to rest before we do anything,” Aunt Lin told him. “By the time you’re ready to move, it’ll probably be near dark anyhow. Running at night might not be a bad idea. We just need to get away from the van. Then we can hide somewhere until morning, if we need to.”
A moment passed, tense and unhappy, while they pondered this plan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the only one they had.
“Here,” Aunt Lin said. She grabbed some bottles of water, then fished around until she found a half-empty box of crackers. “Eat and drink and put some in that bag of yours. When we’re ready, we’ll call for him, tell him we have an idea about the map. Then we’ll knock him unconscious and run.”
Jake picked up a metal tea canteen rolling about his feet. He nodded, his face steely.
Aunt Lin slumped again. Mia was reminded, suddenly, that Ying had once been a good friend of her aunt’s. That this search for Zhu Yunwen’s treasure had been a shared dream of theirs, pursued by lamplight after long days in the fields.
The van filled with a hot, tense silence.
“I hoped I could reason with him,” Aunt Lin said finally, quietly. “He wants the money for his wife. He just wants to make the rest of her life a little easier. I keep telling him there are other ways, that she wouldn’t want this. But he’s always been stubborn.”
She leaned her head against one of the battered seats while Mia forced herself to nibble on a cracker. It was hard to swallow, but the thought of starving out there on the mountainside made her keep at it. After a moment, Jake sidled up next to her, the metal canteen still clutched in his fist.
Mia had dreamed, for years, of Zhu Yunwen’s treasure.
She’d dreamed, for years, of adventure. Of danger and mortal peril and finding her way home again by the skin of her teeth.
She’d never realized until now how important that last bit was. How horrific an adventure could turn out if there was no grand victory at the end of it.
But she kept her fears to herself. She could tell her aunt was frightened and worried—and Jake, too, for all he tried to keep stoic. It wouldn’t help anything to cry or make a fuss.
So Mia sat there in the darkness, nibbling at crackers and taking sips of water while Jake recovered a little from his blow to the head. While they all gathered their strength.
Every once in a while, she’d press the back of her hand against the van windows. They’d been covered up from the outside, but she could still feel the heat of the sun on them—and the way they cooled as the evening wore on.
The windowpane grew cold. Jake’s gaze steadied.
“Ready?” Aunt Lin whispered.
Mia nodded.
* * *
Mia was closest to the van’s sliding door, so she was the one to kick her foot against it, yelling, “Hello? Hello? I think I’ve figured it out. Hello?”
There was no answer, and Mia feared that Ying had left them. Maybe just to get food. Maybe forever.
What if he’d tired of waiting for them to come up with an answer, or had decided that they were more trouble than they were worth? What if he’d already figured out the map himself, and was off with the treasure, leaving the three of them stuck here in the dark?
Shaking a little, she kicked harder. “Hello? Hello?”
The door popped open. Mia jerked backward just in time to keep from tumbling into Ying. He scowled down at her—but she saw the glint of hope in his eyes. Just for a second.
Then Jake swooped from his hiding place at the edge of the doorway. The canteen glinted in a shaft of moonlight—then smashed down on the side of Ying’s head. He staggered, bellowing in pain.
“Go! Go!” Aunt Lin cried.
Mia’s arms and legs felt like tangled string. She couldn’t find her balance. Jake leaped from the van. He reached back for her, waving her toward him, and she tried to put her feet in the right order—to run. Somehow, without knowing how it happened, she was on the ground—was on her feet—was darting with Jake away from the van.
But Aunt Lin was slower. She tripped on her way out. She fell.
Ying grabbed at her and caught her arm.
Aunt Lin stared straight at Mia. “Go!” she shouted.
But Mia couldn’t leave her.
She skidded to a stop and ran back, ignoring Jake’s cry of protest. Ying dragged Aunt Lin back toward the van door. He bled from his temple where Jake had struck him, and there was a horrific expression on his face—fear and anger and desperation all rolled into one.
Mia slammed into him, pushing and kicking. She’d never fought anyone before—not for real, not with deadly intent, like she did now.
Let her go! she screamed in her head. She was too breathless, her lungs too tight, to do so aloud. Let her go—let her go—
With a grunt of pain, Ying did. Mia had managed a powerful kick to his knee, toppling him sideways—and bringing her down with him. They tumbled to the ground, tangled together like a lion and its fallen prey. Who was lion and who was prey, Mia wasn’t sure.
All she knew was that she needed to get up again, because Aunt Lin was free and they needed to run.
She limped to her feet—and fell again when Ying’s fingers closed around her ankle. She twisted, jabbing at him with her other foot, wishing she were wearing steel-toed boots instead of her soft running shoes. But it was enough. He released her.
She grabbed Aunt Lin’s hand. Yanked her toward Jake, who’d come back to try to help.
They ran, blindly, into the darkness.
23
THEY HAD BOTH THE BLESSING and the curse of a full moon. A blessing because it lit the rocky terrain around them—pale, white light slipping through the shifting canopy of trees. A curse because it meant Ying could see his way, too. Mia heard him blasting through the woods behind them.
It was impossible to move quietly through the underbrush. Every step betrayed them. But they couldn’t stop moving, either. So they ran and ran. Mia thought they might be headed downhill, but it was hard to tell. The land sloped every which way.
Then it fell away altogether.
Jake nearly fell off the edge. He windmilled backward.
They’d come upon a cliff.
Jake approached the edge again, more carefully this time, and peered over the side. He shook his head, whispering, “It’s too steep. We’ll have to go another way.”
Aunt Lin was already turning to go. For the moment the woods were quiet. Ying was probably waiting, listen
ing to hear their direction. Mia flushed with adrenaline, but her legs were starting to go numb and her chest hurt. Aunt Lin seemed even worse off, her breaths coming in little gasps.
How much longer could they run?
“Come on, Mia.” Aunt Lin pulled at Mia’s hand.
But Mia hesitated. She’d been staring at the landscape beyond the edge of the cliff as she pondered things, and now, just as she thought about leaving, she realized she didn’t want to. Something about that land called to her. Was familiar to her.
She disentangled herself from Aunt Lin’s hand and walked to the edge of the cliff, staring hard at the swoop of the mountains, the way a small, lithe river reflected moonlight as it slithered down the slopes.
All at once, two things came to her:
The first was that this was the land in the painting.
There loomed the mountains behind the two dancing cranes. They rose black beneath the moonlight—their rough shapes drawn out as if by the strokes of an inky paintbrush.
The second hit her like a stroke of fire, burning up her insides—
The lines of the landscape matched the lines of Zhu Yunwen’s map.
“It’s here,” she breathed.
“What?” Aunt Lin took Mia’s hand again. “Darling, we have to go. Now.”
“It’s here.” Mia’s discovery was so big, so all-encompassing, that it was hard to speak. “The map. Zhu Yunwen’s map—it’s here. The lines—see? The river over there and these rows of rocks. And the mountains in the background. They fit with the lines in the map!”
Jake hurried up beside her, and Aunt Lin squeezed between them, all three of them taking in the moon-drenched mountainside.
“I think she’s right,” Jake whispered.
Mia chose not to be offended by the surprise in his voice. There wasn’t time. A crack came from the darkness—the crunch of someone moving toward them.
They had only a few moments before Ying caught up. Mia searched the landscape one last time, looking for that spot she remembered—the one toward the center of the map, where three patterns came together to form a circle. She thought she saw it in a swirl of stone boulders by the side of the mountain wall below. There wasn’t time to make sure.