CHAPTER 70: 70

Bran munched on the soft, milky bread and glared at the man sitting opposite him. The rocking of the boat had gotten worse and even the plastic canopy over the cabin could do nothing against the sea spray. Bran swallowed.

"What should I call you?" he asked, tearing apart the bread. "Malcolm? Or Morgan?"

The man opposite him sighed with a lazy smile.

His features were different from earlier at Cloud Flame Manor and different from the library or the forest, a sort of halfway point between Malcolm and Morgan. And maybe other people too, Bran thought to himself, munching on the bread.

"You can call me whatever you like," was the reply.

Bran regarded him a moment. "Morgan, then," he said.

"Finding it hard to believe I’m Malcolm too?"

"Finding it hard to believe I was stupid enough to not recognise you earlier."

Morgan (or Malcolm) sighed with a smile and spread his arms across the back of the lounge’s backrest. It was just the two of them in the boat, no driver, no other passengers. When Bran had woken, he and Morgan were already on the water, motoring towards some unknown destination. At least, it had been unknown until Bran caught a glimpse of a landmass dotted with sky high buildings.

They were headed to The Island.

"Try not to feel bad about that," said Morgan. "It’s not your fault really. It’s just what I am."

"And what are you?" asked Bran, fully expecting to get no answer.

Morgan’s eyes narrowed and his smile widened. "A myth."

It was an answer, though it honestly just raised more questions. Was the man just trying being funny, or was there some deeper meaning to using that word?

Bran swallowed more bread and looked out the back of the boat. He could see the shoreline north of The Island, further confirming where they were, though not why they were going there.

He tugged absentmindedly on the loop of metal clamped tightly around his wrist, the one that had another of those energy sapping crystals in it. "Have you always been Malcolm?" he asked after a while.

Morgan stood and went to the prow of the boat. "I have," he said as he leaned over the controls to do a bit of fine adjusting. "Does that make the betrayal sting more?"

Bran raised an eyebrow. "What do you think?"

"I think... I probably owe you an apology."

Okay. Not what Bran was expecting, though he made sure to keep that thought to himself. "Not accepted," he said instead.

Morgan laughed and stood back from the prow. "I wasn’t offering."

Bran scowled and looked past the man.

He remembered the first time he’d met Malcolm in the flesh. It had been at Cloud Flame Manor a few months after Bran had woken up after his three years of slumber. His command of Chinese had been next to non-existent so when an unexpected guest at the manor had spoken in not just perfect English, but accented English, Bran had wasted no time getting to know him.

Had that all been an act? It was certainly looking that way. If this was merely a case of Malcolm being replaced by this ’myth’ - be it via mind control or actual replacement - it could at least be argued that their earlier friendship had been genuine. But as it stood, it looked like this was just another example of someone Bran trusted betraying him.

How many more times would this happen?

"Why do you want the Baize Tu?" Bran asked, face not betraying the turmoil within.

"Ho, figured that out, have you? Let’s just say..." Morgan looked out a ocean and all the little boats bobbing atop it. "When dealing with monsters, it’s good to have a handbook."

Bran didn’t reply to that, or say anything really. From Morgan’s tone he knew that that was all he was going to get. Still, at least it was confirmation that Morgan, and Malcolm, was the one after the Baize Tu. That just left the question of ’who stole the pages from the libraries?’.

They were coming in to a jetty now at a place that looked to be... along the eastern side of the island? Despite having spent his early years in the city on The Island, Bran wasn’t all that familiar with the geography of the place. It was only after everything had fallen apart that he’d really paid the subject attention and by then, he was already across the harbour and in the mountains.

The sky was dipping into darker shades of blue, almost purple, and Bran had to wonder just how long he’d been out, but he quickly forced the thought from his mind. Chasing that train of thought would only make him more anxious as he longed to set Misha in his sights.

The boat’s engine spluttered then changed in rhythm as the vessel curved and came along side an inobtrusive jetty. There were people up there and Morgan threw up a rope and they lashed the boat to a concrete column. Then he turned to Bran.

"Ready to go?"

"Can I say no?" Bran asked.

Something flashed behind Morgan’s eyes. "See if you can keep that spirit," he said quietly. "If you can then perhaps..." Then he shook his head and sighed. "No, there is no perhaps. C’mon. Ling’s waiting for you."

--

I don’t know how I ended up at the door of your old room at the mansion. After hearing you’d gone missing, then going with Aunt Yeung to confirm it, my mind entered a sort of haze and my feet refused to stay still.

I hadn’t known that was your room at the time, not while I was standing outside, but as soon as I went in, I immediately felt a sense of familiarity.

The room was large and rectangular, like the one I’d woken up in, except yours had a bed, desk, and wardrobe all made of dark wood, and a large bookshelf stuffed with books. I wandered in and went to the shelf, running my fingers over the spines of the books. Unlike the books in the flat, most of the titles here were in English but I found myself still unable to process them.

Bran is missing.

That one thought rolled over and over in my head, but was quickly followed up by. But his aunt’s looking for him. Everyone is looking for him.

Which was all true. As soon as she’d heard Cheungyi say those fateful words, she’d summoned up the book to control the Memory Inscription Spell to see where you last were then went right there.

Nothing. As soon as you’d stepped foot in the door, the spell failed. She’d then nearly tore the room apart in anger as she saw the telltale signs of Malcolm’s signature spell tampering on the inner walls.

I came to the end of the bookshelf then turned my attention to the shorter cupboard placed next to it.

There was a strangely shaped rock on top that looked almost like a tree with twisting branches but that I confirmed really was a rock by touching it and feeling its scratchy texture. Had you found it somewhere and put it here? Did it mean something? Would I ever get the chance to know?

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I forced myself to look away from the rock and instead opened the first drawer. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a framed photograph.

It wasn’t of you, or your family, or anyone I knew. Instead, it was of a misty lake and a small boat sitting on the calm water. I picked up the photo frame and turned it over. On the back was a short inscription written in permanent marker:

You are on a boat in the middle of a lake.

There’s mist all around you. The water is still.

Above there are ravens circling. Can you hear them?

It felt like an age since I first heard them but I immediately recalled where they were from. They were the first words you ever said to me when you helped me... What? What had you helped me escape?

Colin had me in chains and Artemis had been using the crystal on me. I’d known instinctively that if he got what he wanted, then I’d have died, but I still didn’t really have an answer for what it was he was trying to do.

And yet, you’d been able to save me from it.

I bent out the little leg at the back from the photo frame and set it next to the rock.

In the drawer, and under the frame, was a metal box with the name Heaven’s Blessing Moon Cakes proudly emblazoned on it. I slid it out of the drawer and cracked open the lid.

If you were anything like your avian name sake, then I knew there should be something interesting inside.

There were lots of different bits and bobs in the box, but the thing that immediately stole my attention was the smartphone sitting in the corner.

With trembling hands, I sat on the floor, put the box down, then carefully picked up the phone.

It was large, about the length of my hand with thick white bezels and three physical buttons along the bottom. Just the bezels or the buttons would have suggested that it wasn’t at the most cutting edge of smartphone technology, but the fact that it had both meant this thing had to be ancient - at least a decade old!

I nearly dropped the phone. A decade old. That was it. This had to be your phone from before everything had happened to you, back when you’d just been a normal teenager and able to do normal teenager things like message your friends and use map apps.

I pressed the power button.

Nothing happened.

Of course, the battery had to be dead, who was I kidding anyway? I checked the bottom of the phone and saw that it used a non-standard plug, so I shifted my attention to the box.

Some minutes later I finally located a slightly mouldy charging cable in the bottom most drawer of the cupboard and had just plugged it and the phone into a discrete outlet on the wall when I heard the door swing open.

"I thought you might be here," said Aunt Yeung.