The Antique Read online

  The Antique

  Peter Fang

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Summary

  Prologue

  I. Blood Children and the Fly

  1. Ripples in Time

  2. Slaves

  3. Grit in Grindstone

  4. Elise

  5. Maria

  6. Fly

  7. The Dame

  II. Queen’s Servitude

  8. Dormant Claws

  9. The Antique

  10. Bedlam of the Brood

  11. Lão Chóng (Old Worm)

  III. Paths to Perdition

  12. Inheritance

  13. Interloper

  14. The Exterminator

  15. Riker, Move

  16. Gretchen

  17. The Unraveling

  18. Hunting for Manfred

  19. The Mystery Thickens

  20. Final Duet

  21. Deceit

  22. Scourge

  23. Postmortem

  24. The Coup

  25. Amnesia

  26. Temple of Ashes

  IV. Summon of the Sentient

  27. Awakening

  28. Joey’s Revenge

  29. The Monk’s Hand

  30. The Catacomb

  31. Too Close for Comfort

  32. Know Your Affairs

  33. Limb-by-Limb

  34. The Horseman - Assassin

  35. Grub Mother

  36. Alley Rumble

  V. Ripples in Time

  37. An Unfamiliar Face

  38. In the Witch’s Care

  Notes

  About the Author

  Peter Fang is a long-time Washingtonian. He lives in Redmond, WA with his wife, three kids, two dogs and a crested gecko named Bruce. The Antique is his first novel.

  Copyright © 2019 Peter Fang

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781695045088

  Created with Vellum

  Dedication

  First, this book is dedicated to the spider that crawled out of a sewing machine antique we bought from Good Will, which gave me the inspiration for this novel. I never found out where that spider went inside my house! Second, this novel is for anyone that wants to write a story because it’s part of your soul and a legacy you want to leave behind; lastly, to my wife Nancy and three kids, Camille, Ethan and Owen. You are the greatest gift this world could have given me. You are my soul, legacy, and the reason I wrote this novel.

  Summary

  Thousands of years ago, during China’s Three Kingdoms Period, a family-bound witch was wrongfully blamed and persecuted for the death of a local warlord’s son. Before she was burned to ashes, she swore to exact revenge on the descendants of all those involved. Yet, to prevent the powerful witch from reconstitution, the Dao monk that captured the witch separated her ashes into six spell-bound boxes and hid them away near the edges of the warring kingdoms.

  Eons passed. The witch had tracked down all but two boxes, but she had paid a steep price surviving through the ordeal. The emergence of two Blood Children (sisters) in witch’s remaining family bloodline could help her regain most of her human form, but her enemies’ descendants still stood in her way of reconstitution.

  Will she be able to overcome the obstacles to get closer to her rebirth, or will she run out of time?

  Prologue

  Tiger Jing1 and Birth of the Queen

  The following events occurred in ancient China approximately two thousand years ago. The conversations among the characters were in Mandarin but have been translated into English for the reader.

  It was the beginning and the end, the power of life and the nothingness. It was the last of its kind in that region—a ten-year-old male tiger that started and ended it all.

  On a late fall day in 220 CE, during the Three Kingdoms period of China and near the border of Shu Han and Wei, fall leaves were showing their brilliant autumn colors and migratory birds bid their farewell to the land and dotted across the ruby sky as they headed south for the coming winter. A large male Amoy tiger was out on an evening hunt, but it was not a usual hunt––-the hunt was out of spite for humans in his territory. There used to be more prey in his territory––-wild boars, waterbucks, and deer, but in recent years their numbers had dwindled. The dangerous humans had moved into the area. The new intruders were different than the ones he had stalked before––-like the ones that worked in the rice paddies or near the river banks––-the new kind almost never appeared alone, and they hid behind high walls. They killed off three of his mates, and one time he nearly fell into their traps. He had witnessed what those humans could do with their long swords and flying weapons that could hurt him from long distances away. One of the humans he hated, in particular, was the leader of the pack, and that man wore the skin of his mate. It was the last straw. Tonight he would prey on one of their own.

  The male tiger weighed nearly three hundred pounds, but it could stay nearly invisible behind a foot of grass. It was the last of its kind in the region. Male tigers don’t go to other territories, and at the mature age of ten, he was unlikely to challenge a younger male in its prime––-if there were any left.

  Moving, he followed the outer perimeters of the nearby farmlands to avoid detection. When he got closer to the main road, he ducked behind an abandoned woodshed and let several farmers pass him by. The farmers had finished their day’s work and were heading back to their homes. There were several young infants strapped to their mothers’ backs, sleeping soundly as the adults exchanged final pleasantries before turning in for the night. He followed closely behind the farmers, thirty yards behind, until the end of dirt road. From there, there was a trail he knew well that would lead him to the town’s fortress where the dangerous humans lived. A strong odor of burning wood mixed in with food permeated the air. The smell was almost too much for him to bear, but he pushed on.

  After nearly half an hour of threading through the dense forest, the trail opened up to a vast twenty acres of an open field. The night had arrived, but you could see the outline of a massive fortress on the far side of the field. Using darkness to his advantage, the tiger sneaked past some ground guards out in the field and reached near the fortress.

  High up on the wooden wall, rows of torches lit up like candles. He could see humans moving about on the top of the high wall––-too tall for him to reach. Someone on the wall looked in the tiger’s direction, but he would not see the tiger. The tiger crouched behind a dried-up river bank and only moved forward when the man was looking the other way. Finally, he was within ten yards of the wall. He had been here before to scout out the surrounding area, so he knew there was a small entrance hole. It was too small for him to get inside the fortress, but he had seen small children emerged from there. He hoped to catch someone from that hole tonight.

  Zi-Ling was a Miao2 in her early thirties. Her hair had already turned gray, with ends bearing uneven cuts. It grew fast whenever she practiced witchcrafts, and she practiced a lot, so she had to cut it constantly. Her round face had an unusually pale skin that contrasted with her light hazel eyes. If her skin were not full of dry cracks, she would be considered beautiful. But there was a deep scar running down the left cheek that ruined everything. It was an injury she had gotten when she was only five. Her aunt never told her how she got it, but one of the village kids told her that her own father tried to kill her when the army invaded her village. Her aunt managed to wrestle her away from her dad and escaped. She never asked her aunt the truth about her past, because she believed there was a reason for everything. Life was tough, especially during wars. No one was safe, and human life was cheaper than a pail of water.

  Zi-Ling was returning to her Miao clan family in Guangdong after
a pilgrimage to visit her ancestor’s gravesites. She had done this for many years. It was how she wanted to keep in touch with her past. But this year was different. The war between the warlords in the North, East, and in the South had flared up after several years of remission. When she arrived at the previous settlement, she learned that her family had evacuated to a southern town to avoid the raging war. The northern and eastern warlords viewed her families as threats and persecuted them to no end. The southern warlords forced her family to be slave workers and army volunteers. Among her Miao clan, Zi-Ling was the most powerful spell-caster, but she refused to be involved in the war. Yet she volunteered to help the locals during their hardships; she even treated the soldiers during a truce period between the warlords. But the onslaught of new wars changed everything. Along the journey back, she got periodic updates from her family’s carrier crows: they urged Zi-Ling to avoid soldiers at all costs. The warlords had ordered martial law and asked everyone to pitch in to help the army, no exceptions. Many of her families were forced into labor. Some of them ran and hid, but many were not that lucky.

  Her journey was mostly quiet and uneventful, but occasionally, she would see scout soldiers in the distance and their traps on the ground. She freed animals whenever she could from the traps; many were badly injured, and she would heal them on the spot and set them free. She slept during the day in small caves or high up in trees, only emerging at evenfall. The rugged mountain terrain with dense foliage provided the perfect cover for her.

  One evening, the sky was bright red as the sun was setting. She was close to a nearby village, and war drums were reverberating in the distance.

  Zi-Ling listened closely at the drum’s rhythm. “War drum––-warning call. The village is under attack? Did the enemy armies come this far?”

  She stayed near ravines to cover her tracks, then she cast a spell on herself that made her looked like a fox. As she turned the corner of a river bend near a densely covered forest, she heard a boy's cry.

  A boy? Zi-Ling took several steps back and wanted to leave, but a familiar echo came from the boy’s mind, calling out to her. She broke her spell and returned to her human form.

  Shielding herself with a long staff, she waded into the tall grass. There it was, a young boy maybe ten years old lying flat on his back. His breaths were quick and shallow, showing signs of severe shock from injury. As she got closer, she saw the deep puncture wounds in his neck and laceration across his chest. The boy had lost too much blood, and the wounds were deep. It was too late for her to save him. The blood had soaked through his lavishly decorated clothes––-only a very wealthy family could afford clothes like them, and around this area, only the warlord’s family amassed the wealth.

  She thought about enslaving the boy into a Jiāngshī3 as a leverage to blackmail the warlord, but dealing with the warlord’s family was the last thing on her mind. All she could do was to ease his pain, so she closed her eyes and visualized a thought. Her right index finger’s nail extended like a needle and into the boy’s temple. With her mind connected to the boy's, she sensed no sensation below the boy’s neck––-a sign of paralysis.

  The boy stared at her and was shaking from shock; his breath was shallow and spastic.

  Zi-Ling watched the boy laboring to breathe, and then he let out a deep sigh, looking past her.

  “It’s your time to go; please grant me permission to shepherd you to heaven or the abyss.” Zi-Ling pressed her hand over the boy’s eyes and whispered a final prayer.

  “Wu Don Guei, Zo Nan, Won Xie.” She repeated the phrase thirteen times, drew a blood line in her hand with a knife, and let the blood drop into the boy's mouth.

  The boy uttered an abstruse sound.

  She leaned over and listened to the boy as he struggled to speak; then he let out a single word:

  “Maria.”

  Zi-Ling repeated, “Maria?” When she looked at the boy again, there was only a blank stare on his face. She sensed his spirit passing her, and it left a sweet, peaceful taste in her mouth.

  Run along, kid. Visit your loved ones in your dreams.

  A powerful presence entered her mind; she knew there was only one thing in this forest with that much fierce energy—a male tiger. Following the source, Zi-Ling held her staff out in front of her, then cautiously moved past an old cypress tree. There, about fifteen yards in front of her, was a large Amoy tiger. It was panting hard. It growled, shifted its hind leg, and revealed an arrow shaft jotting out from the side.

  The tiger roared and charged.

  Zi-Ling dug into her heels and reached into a leather pouch, anticipating the tiger’s next move.

  Running at full speed, the tiger leaped into the air ten feet away, baring its dagger-like teeth and inch-long claws.

  Zi-Ling shielded herself with the staff, but the tiger swiped away the staff; Zi-Ling ducked sideways, just in time to avoid the blow.

  The tiger spun around and set his legs for a second attack.

  Zi-Ling drew a spell and showed her palm to the tiger.

  The tiger doubled back, as if being hit by a powerful blow to the face.

  Zi-Ling moved her palm up into the sky, slowly turned her palm facing the ground, and gently lowered her arm.

  The tiger snarled at her and feigned a charge, but moments later, it lay down on the ground.

  Zi-Ling approached slowly and synched her breathing with the tiger. She put her hand over the tiger’s massive head and smoothed her hand over the rough fur, gently whispering into its ear, “I need to get this arrow out. After, you must leave this place, far away from humankind. Head north, deep into the jungle where no putrid human soul can hurt you again.” She snapped the arrow in half, found a flat rock, and aimed carefully at the arrow’s shaft. With a perfect swing, she hammered it through the tiger’s leg. The tiger growled but did not move. In one swift move, she pulled the arrow out from the other side. With one hand pressing against the wound to staunch the bleeding, she took out a medicine ball with her other hand, chewed it down into a paste inside her mouth, and then applied it onto the wound. Gingerly, she cupped her hand over the wound and closed her eyes. Seconds later, she backed away, and the puncture wound sealed into a wicked-looking scar. She slowly raised her palm, and the tiger raised slowly on her command.

  She waved at the tiger and said in her mind: Go!

  The tiger bared its teeth and slicked back its ears.

  Hunters! A web of tingling sensations ran down her neck. In the corner of her eyes, she detected slight movements twenty yards away. She shrilled to alert the tiger.

  The tiger’s muscles spasmed, and it leaped up just in time. Arrows whizzed past the beast as it escaped into the dense forest.

  Several men dressed in animal skins walked out of a row of thick bush cover, their arms holding longbows and arrows aimed at Zi-Ling. One man released his arrow, and a hair later, the other man released his.

  Zi-Ling turned her palm at the approaching arrows, and all the arrow’s shafts splintered in midair.

  The two men looked at each other, and the taller of the two pointed his arrow at her, shouting orders at Zi-Ling. The other man released another arrow, but the shaft shattered inches in front of his face. He dropped to the ground, screaming in agony.

  “This is a mistake. I did not harm the boy!” Zi-Ling tried to reason, but the men showed no interest in communicating with her. They stood half ready in a sickle formation and charged her with their long swords. She leaped back and vanished into the forest.

  The two men met in the middle of the road and stared at one another in shock. One man wanted to pursue Zi-Ling, but the taller one held him back.

  “This thing can’t be dispatched with swords and arrows. We need to get help.” He took out an antler horn and blew a long call into the air. The horn blared and echoed into the forest. Drawn by the horn, a dozen people came running back from the forest.

  “Did the tiger double back?” a tall, husky man with a dark face shouted. His name was Qu
o Xin Zuan. He was the head master of the hunters clan.

  The two men shook their heads in silence, avoiding eye contact.

  “Then why did you blow the horn? We will never catch it now!” The husky man shook his fists in the air, and his face started to sweat.

  “Master Quo, it was a tiger jing! We ran into a tiger jing!” One man looked up briefly and offered an explanation. “The jing interrupted our pursuit to heal the tiger. I saw it with my own eyes. Who would be able to tame a tiger except one of their own?”

  The other man also looked up. “Sir, our arrows were useless against her. She let the tiger go and vanished into the forest.”

  “A tiger jing?” The leader went over to one of the men and grabbed him by the throat. “You called the party back because you saw a jing? Who would believe us? What do you think the lord is going to do to us without the tiger’s skin? You idiot!”

  The two men knelt and hung their heads. “We are sorry, Master Quo, but it was indeed a jing. We believe the tiger was her child, and she must be a hired assassin from the North. That’s why it came to the town last night. When she couldn’t get to the lord, she took his son instead. Now that we’ve seen that the tiger belonged to her, we must report back to the lord, or the forest is going to summon demons to our fortress.”