Jewel of the East by Ann Hood Read Free Book Online Page B

kitchen, too, and Pearl made the introductions all over again.
    “Nice to meet you,” Felix said.
    Precious Cloud stared at him blankly, but Wang Amah grinned her toothless grin at him and handed him a white porcelain bowl rimmed in red. Felix could smell something vinegary wafting up from it, and his stomach did a small flip. Last night, he had choked down the slimy cabbage. He had to be polite, and he was hungry.All the while, though, he’d thought of the dan dan noodles from Szechuan Gourmet in New York and all the other Chinese food they used to get delivered to Bethune Street. This tasted nothing like that.
    Maisie was happily scooping the rice and vegetables in her bowl into her mouth, just like she’d done with that dreadful cabbage last night.
    Felix took a deep breath, then picked up the chopsticks in front of him and ate a small bit of rice. Not bad, he decided. He poked around at the vegetables, trying to determine what they were.
    “Onion,” Pearl said, pointing one of her own chopsticks at something in his bowl. “String bean. Bok choy. Lotus root.”
    He smiled at her gratefully.
    As he ate the rice and vegetables, Felix tried not to stare too hard at Precious Cloud. She was beautiful, he thought. And familiar looking as if he’d met her before. He took a longer peek at Precious Cloud and smiled. She looked very much like Lily Goldberg, he realized. For an instant, he remembered Lily standing there in The Treasure Chest. Was she still standing there? He knew that when they time traveled, it was as if no time passed at home. But was it really no timeat all? Would they return right where they’d left off to find Lily waiting?
    “Pearl,” Maisie was saying, “why do you wear your hair up in your hat like that? We thought you were a boy!”
    Pearl laughed. “I never thought about that,” she said. “Blond hair is considered worse than an animal’s hair here. So Wang Amah always makes me hide it when I go out. You should, too, Maisie.”
    Maisie loved the idea. It felt mysterious and special to take her long hair and tuck it inside a cap like Pearl’s, like a disguise.
    “Okay,” Maisie agreed. “I will.”
    Pearl stood. “Let’s go sit on the veranda,” she said. “We can see the river from there, and it’s lovely to watch the boats in the morning.”
    “Like at home,” Felix said. “In Newport where we live, I like to go to the wharf and look at all the sailboats.”
    “I like to imagine I can escape on one of them,” Maisie said.
    “Escape?” Pearl repeated.
    “I don’t like Newport. Not one bit.”
    Pearl nodded sympathetically. “My mother doesn’t like China very much,” she said. “But honestly, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
    Wang Amah followed them out to the porch. Maisie saw that it wasn’t a front porch as it had seemed last night, but instead wrapped around the little house. From it, they could indeed see the Yangtze River with its junks and sampans moving along it. A fine mist hung over the river and the hills. Everyone settled into rattan chairs that faced the river.
    “What are those sticks coming out of the river?” Felix asked.
    “That’s bamboo,” Pearl said.
    On a hill in the distance they could just make out the outline of a slender building with a gently sloping, pointed roof.
    “What’s that building?” Maisie said, pointing to it.
    “That’s a pagoda,” Pearl said.
    Maisie nodded happily. A pagoda. She’d heard the word before, of course. But now here she was, sitting in China and looking at a real one on a hill above the Yangtze River. A shiver of excitement ran through her.
    Wang Amah began to speak in Chinese.
    “She says that there’s a dragon in that pagoda,” Pearl translated. “He’s kept underneath it. If he gets free, he’ll flood the river and drown us all.”
    “A dragon?” Felix said.
    “There aren’t any dragons,” Maisie said dismissively.
    “Wang Amah believes these stories,” Pearl said.
    With her long,