large hand, professionally impersonal. “Hmm. Fever. Go and ask Ah Long for an aspirin and lie down.”
Ren hasn’t finished the dinner service or the washing up, but William has given him an order. He walks to the kitchen, and the old man, examining his pale face with concern, hands him an aspirin and tells him to go to bed.
Ren walks unsteadily out of the kitchen door, down the covered walkway to the servants’ quarters in the back. His face is burning, his legs rubbery. Growing up, Yi was always the sickly one; if there was flu or food poisoning, he was bound to get it before Ren. “I’m the warning system,” Yi had said, scrunching his face up in a smile. “I’ll go before you.” And in the end, he had.
Ren, shivering now in his narrow cot, pulls the thin cotton blanket over himself. Despite the warmth of the room, he’s freezing. His bones ache. Yet there’s a sense of peace, that lightheadedness that comes with being sick. He can’t think coherently about the tiger anymore.
And then he begins to dream.
* * *
It is the old dream, the one where Ren stands on a railway platform, only this time the train is stopped at the station. And Ren isn’t there. He’s on a little island—more like a sandbar—in the middle of a river, gazing at the train from across the water. Sunlight shines through the train’s empty windows. Where is Yi?
Ren walks from one end of the sandbar to the other, shading his eyes as he squints across the water. Then he sees him, scrambling and waving wildly on the opposite bank. He jigs from one foot to the other in a familiar manner. How could Ren have forgotten that jig?
“Yi!” he yells. The small figure on the other bank puts his hands around his mouth and calls back, but there’s no sound.
Why is there no sound? And then Ren realizes something else. Yi is so small. Not only due to the distance, but because he’s still eight years old, the age he died. It’s Ren who’s changed. But Yi looks so delighted to see him that there’s a lump of happiness in Ren’s throat.
Now Yi is pantomiming, How are you?
He points at himself and gives a thumbs-up. “YOU?”
Yi also gives a thumbs-up. Don’t worry.
About what? He must mean about the tiger and Dr. MacFarlane and all the deaths before and the ones to come. Of course Yi would know. He always knew everything that troubled Ren.
Ren calls back that he’s fine, he has a job and has also found the finger and is keeping it in a safe place. It’s difficult to mime all of this, but Yi seems to understand. Perhaps the sound works only one way, but Ren doesn’t want to waste his time with Yi figuring it out.
Time is running out.
Even as he thinks this, water laps his bare feet. Jumping back, Ren realizes that the sandbank is getting smaller, or perhaps it’s the water that’s rising.
“There’s a tiger in the garden,” he shouts across the water. “But don’t worry, I know what to do.”
Yi looks concerned.
“I’m going back to Kamunting after the party.”
Yi shakes his head.
“It’s all right, I have permission. Then I’ll do what Dr. MacFarlane told me to.”
Yi’s arms explode, pantomiming something complicated. The small face is tight with worry.
“I’m not frightened,” Ren says.
Ask the girl.
What girl? Ren can’t think of any girls or women except Auntie Kwan and she’s gone down south to Kuala Lumpur.
The water is rising, rippling translucently over the muddy sand. There’s something odd about it. It’s viscous, a little too thick, but clear enough that he can see every pebble and floating leaf. There are no tiny fish in the shallows. No crystalline shrimp, no water skaters. Nothing living.
“I’ll swim over to where you are,” calls Ren. “Just wait!”
He puts one foot in the water. It’s surprisingly cold and a swirling current tugs at his ankle. But the other bank isn’t too far.
No! Yi doesn’t want him to get in the water. Now he’s urgently signing him to stop.
Ren isn’t a fast swimmer, but he’s confident he can dog-paddle far enough. He stands ankle-deep in the shallows. It’s freezing. He’s never felt cold like this. Dr. MacFarlane once borrowed a large, expensive-looking book of fairy tales when he was teaching Ren to read, and Ren had pored over the beautiful illustrations of snow and ice and the kind of gloomy weather that Dr. MacFarlane said was so common