a good sense for distances, nor does he know what’s happening in a different location. Instead, his ability has dwindled so that he can only sense imminent events, like the crack of a branch that collapses just as Ren leaps out of the way. There have been many near accidents. Too many, perhaps.
Sometimes Ren thinks that he hasn’t lost his long-range ability at all. The signal is faint simply because Yi is so very far away. But where that is, he can’t say. He’s crossed over to another country, the land of the dead. In Ren’s search for the missing finger, his invisible cat whiskers have twitched only once in this house—at the tiger-skin rug in the study. But that’s not surprising, given the old doctor’s obsession with tigers and which, as Ren feared, William seems to share to some extent. Hurrying down the hallway, it occurs to Ren that there’s one more place to search: the Batu Gajah District Hospital. The place where William has an office.
Time is running out: there are only twenty days left before Dr. MacFarlane’s forty-nine days of the soul are over. If by then he can’t find the finger, he’ll have failed. How will his old master rest? Ren remembers Dr. MacFarlane’s last days, the shivering fevers. And then the dreams, the waking nightmares in which the old man would cry for mercy, or crawl slavering on all fours. If Auntie Kwan had still been with them, she would have taken charge, but in the end there was only Ren.
A gust of wind shivers through the house, banging all the doors simultaneously. To Ren, peering out of the window at the top of the stairs, the trees are a waving green ocean surrounding the bungalow. It’s a ship in a storm, and Ren is the cabin boy peeking out of a porthole. Clutching the windowsill like a life buoy, Ren wonders what secrets lurk in the jungle surrounding them, and if his old master is in fact doomed to roam this vast green expanse forever, trapped in the form of a tiger.
14
Ipoh/Batu Gajah
Saturday, June 13th
A shrill whistle sounded. Up and down the track, doors began closing as steam billowed over the platform. It was so exciting that I glanced at Shin, laughing. He raised his eyebrows and grinned back. There was a jerk, then a bigger jolt as the train pulled slowly out of Ipoh Station. The platform slid away. People waved at departing passengers and I couldn’t resist waving back.
Shin rolled his eyes. “You don’t even know them.”
“Why not?” I said defensively. “The children like it.”
I remembered my dream of the little boy at the train station. That had seemed so real, though it had been nowhere near as grand as Ipoh’s palatial white railway station, now rapidly receding behind us.
The trip to Batu Gajah was fifteen miles or about twenty-five minutes, Shin told me. Sometimes though there were wild elephants on the track, or seladang, the huge jungle oxen said to stand six feet at the shoulder. Cool air rushed in from the open window, and I closed my eyes blissfully.
“That’s a yes, then?”
Shin’s glance burned through my lashes, making me feel self-conscious. Had he noticed the makeup I’d applied to hide my black eye? Well, it didn’t matter if my hair looked like a bird’s nest. It was only Shin.
“Yes to what?”
“To cleaning out the pathology storeroom this weekend.”
I opened my eyes. “As long as I get paid, too. But what makes you think we’ll find anything?”
“That finger definitely came from the hospital,” said Shin, “If you unscrew the bottle cap, it has the same mark as the other specimens in the hospital pathology lab. We should look through the records and see if there’s anything about amputated fingers.”
“Where’s the finger?”
In answer, he patted his pocket. The gesture reminded me of the salesman, and my spirits sank. That shadow again, staining the bright day. Why was Shin so enthusiastic about tracking down its owner, anyway? Perhaps we could just quietly replace the finger in the hospital. It occurred to me that I should also do some research for myself—tour the hospital, talk to the staff. I didn’t want to admit it to Shin, but if I couldn’t go to medical school, maybe I could become a nurse or a clerk. Anything was better than my current dismal prospects.
“You’re plotting something, aren’t you?” Shin said with a snort. “I can tell—you’re so predictable.”
“Nobody else says that,” I said crossly, thinking of the