The bells from the cathedral’s clock tower rang the noon hour when the driver stopped the carriage at a small alley adjacent to Tupet Road. The alley was more like an alcove in the northwest section of the city—halfway between the weaver’s district and the industrial district. The large factories loomed not too far away, glittering like fat spiders with a hundred windows for eyes.
The alleyway beside Tupet Road was more modest. Smaller store fronts sat on the curbside. Shoemakers, hat makers, glove makers. Cafes, bakeries, pastry shops. The carriage had stopped in front of a low dark building with stone stairs leading downward to a basement shop of indeterminate origin. On the ground floor was a tea shop, shutters closed from the rain.
Caradon got out of the carriage first and he waited, with a hand outstretched to help Zan disembark. Groggily, she poked her head out of the carriage door and grimaced as the rain fell heavily on her face. She ignored Caradon’s hand, stepped forward, and tripped.
He caught her before she fell face first into a puddle. “Stubborn little baggage, aren’t you?”
In response, a fit of coughing seized her.
He told the driver to come back in four hours and then proceeded to drag her towards the steps leading to the shop below the tea house.
In between coughs, she asked, “What place is this? I suppose you’ve taken the opportunity to take advantage of me. Is this out in the middle of nowhere? Some place in the stews where you’ll murder me and dispose of my body?”
“I didn’t know you had such a morbid sense of humor, Miss Hu,” he said as they stood in front of the lower shop’s door. There was a plaque in front of the door but the letters were rubbed off. “However, since you are so curious as to our destination, I was hoping this place would cure you.”
“Cure me?”
Caradon pounded a fist on the door. After two moments, it opened revealing a wizened old man with a steel gray goatee and wearing a traditional Far Eastern tunic and trousers made of dark blue brocade and a black cap of the same material.
“What an unexpected visit,” said the old man with a clipped accent from the Far East. “Come in from the dreadful weather. You are fortunate I have a fire going today.”
Caradon helped Zan with her coat and hat before putting his own on the coat rack near the door. Then he steered her toward a great hearth at the end of the room where the old man placed a steaming tea cup in her hands.
“Drink,” the old man commanded.
So Zan drank. The tea was bitter and hot, but almost immediately, a warmth spread throughout her lungs and throat and belly and the violent urge to cough disappeared. Finally, she took an easy breath.
“What brings you this way, Mr. Caradon?” asked the old man, eyes fixed on Zan’s patron. “It is far too soon for your, ah, monthly doses. Surely you do not seek something stronger to clear the mind.”
“No. This was an emergency.”
“I had guessed as much. You never bring any companions here.”
The woolly sensation in Zan’s head had cleared enough that she was finally able to appreciate her surroundings. The shop was that of an apothecary who dabbled strongly on folk remedies. The room was a subterranean lair with shelves filled with glass vials of powders and roots and leaves. She sat on a wooden chair padded with red and gold satin and a table covered in a table cloth with matching colors. The tea set was made of blue and white porcelain painted with dragons and the Far East symbol for good luck.
At one corner was an iron stand where an owl perched, watching the room with round yellow eyes. On the mantle, there was a jade statue of a serpentine eastern dragon, a fist sized black pearl sitting on its own yellow silk pillow, three incense sticks smoldering in a green-tinged copper pot and a small soapstone carving of the Enlightened One with a palm held up in greeting.
“I suppose I must ask what sort of tricks you’ve played this time,” the old man sighed. He poured her more tea. “I assume it is bad since you have coerced this poor girl to come along with you.”
Caradon took a seat at the table to look at her. She kept her own eyes on the teacup. “She is no ordinary girl.”
“Ha!” the old man snorted.
She finally looked up. “Thank you for the tea, sir.”
“It’s Long.”
“Mr. Long,” she added. “I’m Zan Hu.”
“No, Miss Hu, it’s just Long,” the old man said. He squinted at her and then took out a pair of spectacles from a pocket and perched it on his nose. He glanced at her hands which seemed ordinary enough at the moment and then back at Caradon. “She’s just like you, isn’t she?”
“I’m not like him,” said Zan.
“Yes you are,” Long nodded and Caradon grinned. “One of your parents didn’t come from here. It’s the eyes. Our sort must stick together.”
“Like self-segregation?” she retorted. “If I had that sort of attitude about things, I’d actually listen to those religious fanatics calling me a slit-eyed devil, ordering me back east. I’m a person, not some obedient pack dog.”
“Miss Hu, what I meant is that we must help each other. And if others call us slit-eyed devils, then we must stick together and take the high road. Violence will not solve anything. It might even hurt you.” Long glanced meaningfully at the tea. “But enough of that. You’ve both arrived just in time for the noon day meal.”
Caradon ended up helping Long bring out bowls of steamed rice, a platter of roast duck, and bok choy drizzled in soy sauce to the table. Long continued to pour the special bitter tea for Zan while her patron and the apothecary drank a separate pot of oolong tea. Finally, curiosity overtook her and she asked Long what was different about her tea.
“It’s an herbal tea,” the apothecary replied. “It’s an herbal tonic for respiratory problems and the lung’s general health. It’s particularly good for colds. It’s basically an infusion of gui zhi or cinnamon, shao yao or white dahlia root, gan cao or licorice root, jiang or ginger, and da zao or jujube. All of this is boiled in water. If you like, I can give you a powder mix for you to make your own tea. Take it at least once a day and you will have healthy lungs.”
“That’s very kind of you but….”
“No buts,” Caradon interrupted. “Long will make the tonic for you.”
“Protecting your investment?” she grumbled under her breath.
Long’s eyes glittered in amusement. “Ah, to be young again. When I was a young man and still lived in the East, I courted a beautiful lady with a fiercesome temper. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. We really were too different. The Tiger Lady needed a softer man. I could not oblige her—my temperament is that of a Dragon.”
Surreptitiously, Zan glanced at the dragon statue on the mantle and then back at the old man. She cleared her throat nervously. “It sounds like a bittersweet love affair, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.” Long cut off a duck leg and held it out to his pet owl. The bird snatched at the meat and in one gulp, devoured it.
“Do you earn most of your living selling herbal teas and tonics?” asked Zan. “There are so few apothecaries still around. Most people turn to modern medicine nowadays. The body is a machine that can be repaired with surgery or vaccines.”
“I specialize in medicines from the East, Miss Hu. The herbs that I prescribe help balance the energies in the body and promote health.”
“It sounds similar to what the Ancients called the four body humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile.”
“The Western Ancients had a different way of looking at it, but it’s not quite the same. The body’s energy is called chi in Eastern medicine. It’s present in every organ, in every cell, in every breath. Some can draw upon their own bodies’ chi reserves for a push externally. And this energy is not limited to the living. Chi is everywhere in our surroundings. Some call the force a more mystical name.”
Zan frowned as she pondered her empty rice bowl. Was that what it was called—the strange pressing energy that she felt whenever she was verging on the state of change?
“What’s wrong?” asked Long.
“I was simply thinking,” she replied. “If everyone has this energy, this chi, as you say and everything must be balanced, how do you control it? By simply taking one of your herbal concoctions?”
“Part of the control may be herbal. Part of it is physical and mental exercise.” The apothecary gave her a canny look. “But sometimes your energy can only come back to balance if you stop trying so hard. Stress can be a great energy blocker. Relax. Be yourself. That in itself can bring on great results.”
