Page 66 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
And still, still, you cannot wake, though you want desperately to do so.
Distance skips and scatters, as it often does in dreams. One moment, you are in the village, holding hands with Daiyu and Ahpo.
The next, you are on the coast: running across the headland cliff, under a lumbering silver moon. With no light pollution, the sky is a bright swathe of celestial bodies, reflecting their shimmer across the sea.
“What are we doing?” you say, to no one in particular.
“Praying at the stone temple. It is beneath our feet,” Ahpo says, sounding anxious. “The goddess will keep us safe. Tomorrow, we must leave Shek Ham Chau.”
Words come out of your mouth, words that you don’t intend to speak: “But the tide is high. We can’t cross from the beach to the cave.”
“No need to go that far. We can pray from here.” She points at the ground.
You look down.
The headland has a crevice, a crack that runs across the top. It is wide enough for two adults to fit comfortably, were it a vertical passageway. Directly beneathit is the Jiaoren Cavern, and within it a stone temple, carved directly into the rock. The roof is visible through that crevice, about thirty feet below you.
“Will she hear us from this place?”
“I believe so,” Ahpo says.
“I’ve brought an offering!” Young Daiyu reaches into her pocket and pulls out a fistful of flower petals, partly wilted and slightly crushed. “Will that work, Ahpo?”
“It will have to do. Hurry, kneel here!”
The three of you kneel. Daiyu and Ahpo begin to whisper a prayer, in soft sync.
Goddess of Mercy, Bodhisattva of Compassion
She who hears the cries of the world.
Hear my cries, see the heaviness of my heart.
The waves of sadness that threaten to drown the spark of my spirit.
Help me find the light of hope in this darkness
And follow it back to wholeness—
If there is anyone who will listen to the sadness of a grandmother and two lonely children on a remote island, it is surely the goddess of mercy.
When the prayer is finished, Ahpo says warily, “I can’t hear a ruckus anymore. We can go to my cousin’s house, and spend the night there. In the morning, I will find us a way to the mainland.”
She stands, giving you a hand up. You take it, and stand with her.
But the ground near the crevice is weaker than any of you realize. It gives way abruptly as Ahpo walks, earth crumbling like the crust of a sweet tart. The ground collapses beneath the three of you, earth and grass shattering like a dropped vase.
Young Daiyu is the farthest away. She leaps to safe ground, panting.
But Ahpo falls through the widening hole in the cavern roof with a frail cry. And you, still holding her hand, fall with her.
“Siu Yin?”
The drop takes seconds. The drop takes thousands of years. Ahpo’s bony arms snake around your body as you both plummet, holding you close. There is earth and dirt raining on all sides, hard dark rock rushing up to meet you both—
“Siu Yin!”
—and you wake.
