THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

A PATCH OF BLUE IN A SKY OF BROWN - PART I

Two alarms began ringing simultaneously at seven that morning. Only Bingbing got up, and she, feeling perky and impatient, spent nearly forty-five minutes coaxing Lady Zhao and Ander up. They had lots to do today, she kept reminding them, with only so much time on the island. She threatened weakly to go by herself, announcing at first an ambitious deadline, but, since she couldn't remember how exactly to get back to the shuttle stop by herself let alone the city, she grudgingly, frustratingly, issued extensions.

Ander was tired. However, it could have been because of the air, or the scenery, or even his involuntary detox – he felt he had emptied his stomach and bowel contents several times over in the last twenty-four hours – but his mind felt clear, spritely even. He gave his face and hair a splash with water (Bingbing had declared full showers to be imprudent), went out onto the small unattractive balcony the living room gave onto, and stretched, not only remembering his dream-cum-hallucination, but still feeling it, its strangeness, its sensation of internal warmth. He didn't know what it meant – he still disagreed with ghost-D'Misse, as he had begun referring to the apparition in his mind, that he worried too much – but the idea of contact, of an incomprehensible continuance – Ander felt suddenly, profoundly, happy.

The same calm aura had also come over Lady Zhao. When her phone buzzed in her face with the morning's schedule, she wanted to go straight back to sleep. When Bingbing poked her and grumbled about how the concerns of poor Bingbing were not being adequately dealt with, she merely wanted to sleep on – she rolled over and breathed deeply, not scowling, not jumping out of bed with an aggressive face, as she was prone to doing when woken prematurely. It was only later, while eating a vegetable bao procured by her newest special-friend, her one-night landlord, for breakfast when the remarkable nature of these facts presented themselves to Lady Zhao – she was, after all, someone who suffered from sleeplessness and was quick to irritate. For whatever reason, the night following the tortuous day had brought about a contentedness and harmony Lady Zhao had neither felt for a long time, nor expected. Was this the magic the fortuneteller had predicted already working?