Who Speaks for the Damned by C. S. Harris EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: C. S. Harris
- Language: English
- Genre: Amateur Sleuth Mysteries
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Somer’s Town, London
Thursday, 9 June 1814
Alone and trying desperately not to be afraid, the child
wandered the narrow, winding paths of the tea gardens.
Ji could hear laughter and the voices of other garden visitors in
the distance. The day had been hot—unusually so for June, the child
heard people say. But the sun was beginning to sink in the clear
lavender blue sky, lengthening the shadows beneath the arbors and
hinting at the chill of coming evening. The scent of roses and peonies
drifted sweetly on the moist air, stirring unbidden memories of the
shady walkways and placid canals of the Hong merchant’s private
gardens. A wave of homesickness washed over the child, bringing a
painful lump to Ji’s throat, and the sting of threatening tears.
Ji swallowed and pushed the dangerous thoughts away.
Ji had grown up hearing tales of the faraway misty islands of
Britain, and somehow in the child’s mind the British Isles had
blurred with the Garden Islands of the Eight Immortals. Ancient
Chinese legends told of island palaces made of gold and silver, where
there was no pain or winter, where the rice bowls were always full,
and those who ate the fruit of the enchanted trees would live forever.
“Britain’s not like that, child,” the man called Hayes, his face
taking on a pinched look, had warned Ji. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Then what is it like?” Ji had asked. “Is it like Canton?”
“No. It’s not like Canton either.”
A gust of wind rustled the leafy branches of the lime trees
overhead, jerking the child back to the present. Ji fumbled in the
pocket of the strange clothes Hayes had insisted the child wear ever
since that wretched day when they’d rowed out to the ship in
Canton’s harbor and sailed away from everything Ji loved.
Everything familiar and beloved except for Hayes.
“Give me until seven,” he’d said after they’d eaten a dinner of
thinly sliced roast beef and hot bread and butter in one of the tea
gardens’ boxes.
“How will I find you? Or know what time it is?”
“Stay close to the pond,” he said, handing the child his watch with
a smile. “I’ll find you.”
The child hadn’t been worried. Not then. But now Ji flipped open
Hayes’s watch and saw it was nearly half past seven.
Where was he?
Something dangerously close to panic bubbled up within the
child. Ji began to walk in ever-widening circles around the tea
gardens’ ornamental pond. Past the bowling green, past the river,
where late patrons lingered at the tables and chairs set out beneath
the row of willows. Then a high brick wall loomed ahead, forcing Ji to
curve back around.
It was there, in a small clearing not far from the wall, that the
child found him. He lay facedown in the grass, one arm curled up at
his side, his blue eyes open but staring blankly.
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