The Geomancer's Compass (3 page)

“OK,” I bargained. “Let's say that devils are gunning for The Grandfather's soul – I'm speaking hypothetically here – then why the streamers? Are devils scared of streamers?” An image of little red devils with horns and barbed tails and pitchforks, cowering before a paper streamer, popped into my mind. I laughed. “Because anything that's scared of a streamer … well, that's not something I'd lose a lot of sleep over.”

“You see the holes in the streamers?”

I squinted. Sure enough, the streamers were pierced with many tiny holes. “Yeah? So?”

“The devils must pass through each one of those holes to get to The Grandfather. Like running a gauntlet. The Chen boys are keeping them busy, distracting them …”

One of the boys stomped. “Yow,” he yodeled.

“See? He just crushed one.”

Exasperated, I closed my eyes and fell back against the seat. “That's totally crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“As in: can you show me where it is written down that a devil has to pass through holes in order to get to its victim?”

“Devils are just as bound by custom and tradition as we are.”

“Not.”

“They are.”

“Oh, come on, A-Ma. Are you saying there's some sort of rule book governing how devils and human beings interact?”

“There is an understanding …”

“The representatives of mankind and the devils' union sat down and wrote up an agreement – devils could attack people, but only after they'd passed through x number of holes …”

“Miranda, don't be disrespectful. I said there is an understanding. A cosmic understanding.”

“Oh, A-Ma, admit it. Even if there were devils, what could they do to hurt The Grandfather? He's dead. Surely he's beyond help or harm.”

She shook her head. “That is not true, granddaughter. Remember that although the many worlds of incarnation make up the foreground of existence, in order to have a foreground you must also have a background – the space between worlds, the place we call the Bardo.”

Whoa. The Bardo? What on earth was she talking about?

She tried a different tack. “Think of the night sky, Miranda. The stars are the many worlds and the Bardo is the night sky, in which the stars hang. The Grandfather's soul is now in the Bardo, the space between his death and his eventual rebirth into a different form. How a soul fares in the Bardo will greatly influence the form his rebirth takes. That's why we will hold a prayer ceremony for his soul every ten days – so that he will be reborn into this world and not one of the other worlds. If the devils turn him into an
iau-kuai
, however, all our efforts will be in vain.”

“Into a what?”

“An
iau-kuai
. A powerful monster.”

“Like they can do that.”

“Well, they can. I know you think I'm a foolish old woman, but there are many things you don't yet understand.”

“How you can believe in devils and monsters? This is the twenty-first century, not the Han dynasty.” I paused. “So, what do these
iau-kuais
look like?”

“Like a seething whirlwind of teeth, claws, dust, and rags,” she replied. “They have fierce orange eyes that glow like embers. Sometimes they make terrible booming noises like something you'd hear in space; other times they squeak like bats. They blow about the earth, gobbling up their victims.”

“And how do they kill these victims?”

“Why, they frighten them to death,” A-Ma exclaimed. “Wouldn't you be frightened if you saw such a dreadful creature?”

“Yeah,” I said. “If such a creature existed. WHICH IT DOESN'T.”

Later, at the grave site, a pair of The Grandfather's red silk embroidered shoes, his glossy black skullcap, and a pair of hand-carved wooden chopsticks were burned in the brick funeral burner, along with a big basket of yellow and white holy paper.

“Why are they doing that?” I asked.

“He will need a few things in his new life,” A-Ma said. With a straight face.

The air grew thick with the odor of incense and the smell of burning Chinese herbs and roasted meat – a white Cadillac heaped high with roast chickens and a whole roasted pig and wooden baskets of oranges and apples had followed the funeral procession to the cemetery. Women went through the motions of wailing and shrieking (it was expected that they do this, especially given The Grandfather's great wealth – the richer the deceased, the louder and longer the wailing); boys set off firecrackers and men banged on gongs and drums – to scare off demons, of course. All that shrieking and carrying on was giving me a massive headache, that and the fact that my mom had braided my hair way too tight.

A-Ma tugged at my elbow. “See that little Guan boy?” She glanced pointedly beyond the holy burner to a cluster of bushes in which six-year-old Nigel Guan stood, trying to look nonchalant, as though he were not, in fact, peeing. “A ghost will follow him home and torture him with illness. Mark my words.”

“Demons. Ghosts. I thought this was supposed to be an auspicious day,” I grumbled.

“That only means that there are no monsters about. As for evil spirits and ghosts, they are always with us.”

I snorted.

A-Ma frowned. “I can see them,” she said. “One day you will see them too. They are all around us. They are everywhere.”

I didn't believe her, of course, but it still creeped me out.
What was with her? I wondered. For some reason she was pulling out all the crazy old-school Chinese stops today – all directed toward me. And so intense. Why did I have to accompany her? I wasn't the boy. I wasn't the Chosen One.

The Taoist priest circulated among the mourners, passing out
poot jai gou
, steamed cakes made of red dates and glutinous rice flour.
Poot jai gou
falls into the same food group as moon cakes – the dense, sticky, sketchy tasting food group. When the priest got around to me, I tried to say no, but A-Ma insisted I take one. She watched me like a hawk while I ate it, and afterward made me stick out my tongue to prove I had swallowed the nasty mess. “Red wards off evil spirits,” she lectured me, waggling her finger. “Always remember that.”

“I thought red was a happy color,” I grumbled. Under my breath I said, “Make up your mind!”

Later, when the wailing had stopped and everyone was packing up to go home, A-Ma and I were standing at the head of the grave, looking out at the Pacific. Mom was with the rest of the family, some distance away, out of earshot. That's when it happened, when A-Ma told me what she had started to tell me that day in the living room, what Mom didn't want me to know because she thought I was too young. Taking me by the arm, she drew me near. “You don't think there are evil spirits?” she whispered. “Look at our family if you want proof of their power and their hatred toward us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean it,” she warned. “Look. Look at them, Miranda.”

I glanced around the funeral party.

There was Dad. Five years ago he had been struck by lightning on a golf course. As a result of this, he was, as Mom put it, “a shattered man.” He sat at the side of the grave, twitching occasionally and mumbling, in a lawn chair brought for the purpose. It was lucky that we were rich because the doctors couldn't tell us whether Dad would ever work again or be the way he was before the accident – strict but kind of goofy too, always telling what he called Dumb Dad Jokes and tickling you.

My five-year-old brother, Liam, was nestled on his lap. Liam was … well, Liam was pitiful. I don't know how else to say it. Limp and small for his age, he had trouble catching his breath, which meant he couldn't play or go to a normal school or anything. He always looked kind of blue, and his life was a round robin of respiratory therapy and oxygen treatments and visits to doctors who couldn't figure out what the problem was.

Beside Dad stood Sebastian, my ten-year-old brother, who for some reason nobody could explain was losing his eyesight and, beside him, looking drawn and exhausted, Mom. She had felt mysteriously tired for the last couple of years and lately had begun to experience muscle pain in many parts of her body – neck, spine, shoulder, hips, and ankles.

And of course there was Auntie Ev, my father's sister, wheelchair-bound, and her son Brian – the one who should
have accompanied A-Ma in the lead car. Powerfully built and with extreme hair, Brian had severe dyslexia – try as he might, he just couldn't learn to read. He also had ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – which meant that he couldn't sit still and had the attention span of a Mexican jumping bean. He was four months my senior. At that moment he was darting around the cemetery, staring uncomprehendingly at the writing on the headstones. He was probably trying to find his father's grave. Auntie Ev's husband, Phil, had been killed in a freak accident two years earlier. A falling icicle had pierced his jugular vein when he was walking home from the hospital where he was a surgeon. As for Auntie Ev's other children, Oliver and Aubrey, they were not at the funeral. Eighteen-year-old Oliver was being treated for agoraphobia – a fear of going out in public – at a private clinic on the Sunshine Coast, while sixteen-year-old Aubrey was being intravenously fed at an exclusive eating disorders clinic in Victoria. When she had entered the clinic two months earlier, she had stood five foot eight and weighed eighty-four pounds.

“A lot of bad things seem to have happened to us lately,” I admitted. “But things are going to get better. I know they are. They just have to.”

The old woman rolled her eyes heavenward and shook her head. “Miranda, you surprise me. As bright as you are. So it's really never occurred to you that the Lius might be cursed?”

Talk about coming from left field. “Cursed?”

“Cursed.”

“As in
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb
cursed?”

She nodded.

“Wow.”

I noticed that Mom was watching us. She did not look happy. Frowning, she bent down and said something to Dad, who blinked up at her, his face slack. Then she walked over to where we stood. “What are you two talking about?” she asked suspiciously. “Mother Liu?”

“Such a good concentration of cosmic breaths here,” replied A-Ma, a little too quickly. “The excellent
yang
of that hill behind us, the way the
chi
flows … naturally, Miranda thinks it's all bunk. Don't you?” She looked pointedly at me and I understood that I was being invited to conspire with her against my mother.

“Honestly, A-Ma,” I managed. “Cosmic breaths?”

“Well, I for one know that The Grandfather's spirit will be happy in this place,” A-Ma concluded, giving me the tiniest little smile by way of condoning my treachery. “He should give us no trouble.
Not like the other one
.”

“Mother Liu.” The warning in Mom's tone was unmistakable.

“Other one?” I asked. “What other one?”

Mom went into hyper-bustle mode. “Come, Mother Liu. Come, Miranda. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.
And it's time for Liam's physio. Chop-chop.” Taking A-Ma by one arm and me by the other, she marched us toward the white cavalcade of cars with a look on her face as grim as the Reaper's.

And that was that.

Only it wasn't.

T
hree years later, Mom called me in Calgary and told me that A-Ma was dying and I'd better get myself home fast, because she didn't have long and she'd asked for me. “There's something important she wants to tell you.”

“What? What could she want to tell me?” I begged.

The news that A-Ma was sick, never mind
dying
, had sent my brain into complete free-fall. How could my grandmother die? She had always been the strong one, the rock, our island of calm, the fixed star by which we navigated our various leaky boats. I couldn't conceive of a world without her in it. I didn't want to even try.