Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny Read online

  I study the avenues of access, feeling Firescape’s breath soft on my cheek. This makes it hard to concentrate, but I see what I need to see. I clear my throat.

  “It seems to me that the Regency Palace is already the safest place for Hermajesty. I see no reason to move her.”

  “But it’s so close to the Border.”

  “And the Border is fortified and guarded.”

  Firescape is unsure. “The Tin Hau would be hardest to get to. No wilds, no down-looks, no tunnels... But, the Virgin is built like a keep. I vote for the Virgin.”

  I glance at her, chill. “May I remind you that it was a Potrero knightie in Virgin’s clothing that the Tree revealed to me this morning?”

  She is abashed and I feel guilty for pulling rank.

  “Summer Palace, then," she suggests.

  I look at the whole picture again. Part of me wants to agree with Firescape. Forge a bond. Be on the same uplink. But deep down in my soul I feel it is wrong to move Hermajesty at all, though I’m not sure why.

  “I must cast the runes,” I say and back we go to the Palace, pausing just outside the doors of the Wiz to genuflect.

  It isn’t far from the Wiz to the Palace — a bunch of blocks on Columbus is all. We are back again in notime to find the Majesties waiting for us.

  Scrawl waits too, Face-O-Doom. I wonder if the Wiz has a spell to get rid of Scrawl. Then I pinch myself for this unworthy thought.

  “Well, merlin,” says Hismajesty, “where do we relocate?”

  “I must cast the runes,” I say.

  Scrawl snorts.

  “You must cast the runes,” repeats Squire. “You always gotta do something. You consult the Wiz, you gotta to cast the runes; you cast the runes, you gotta talk to the Tree.”

  His M is nodding in agreement. “This is my queen's fate we’re chewin' on, merlin. Don’t you have any revelations?”

  “I do,” I say, wondering what they are. I realize something new has happened. Something that’s got Scrawl all smug and Squire and Hismajesty all twigged.

  “Tell me,” His M demands. “Tell me your revelations.”

  “It is revealed to me by the Wiz that the Regency Palace is the most defensible place for Hermajesty to be kept. I feel it would be unwise to relocate.”

  Hermajesty, juggling her youngest princess on her knee, is pleased. “Good. I don’t wanna move. I like it here. The beds are soft.”

  Firescape gives me a strange glance, then steps forward. “Majesty, I must disagree with the noble merlin. I believe we should move the Royal Family to the Summer Palace.”

  Hermajesty’s face screws up prettily. “But it’s not summer! There’s fog every morning and the Summer Palace is so friggin' cold. And the beds are hard and the rooms are too big and echoey.”

  I forget sometimes that for all Ampam has been Hermajesty for three years (with a prince and two princesses to show for it), she is no more than a child, herself — even at sixteen. This outburst reminds me. I think of her in the hands of the Alcaldé of Potrero-Taraval — a man with a bad rep when it comes to his ladies’ lifespans — and my hot Hispanic blood runs deepfreeze. She’d be joining his other lordettes singing with the Ohlone dolores in no appreciable time.

  My face must show fear, for Scrawl looks smugger’n ever.

  “So,” she says, cackle-voiced. “So, you think this is a safe place for Her M, huh? Let me show you the runes I been reading, Taco Face.”

  She and Squire take me and Firescape out of the Palace and along the pavement to its southeast flank, where there is a shaded overhang. There, she strikes a grand pose — wrath of God stuff, like a beard-free Moses. I expect lightning to drip from her finger.

  There’s no lightning, but might as well be. Our knightie night visitors have left a message beneath the overhang on the haunch of our Majesties’ home. It is a semi-cubist mural showing, in vivid detail, what Lord E Lordy plans for our queen. Up to and including a one way trip into China Basin if she doesn’t plop forth an heir. The artist has a bold sense of color and a flair for the dramatic.

  I can almost hear Firescape’s hair standing up on her head. “Has Hermajesty seen this?”

  “Are you kidding?” snorts Squire. “We’d have to peel her off the sidewalk. His M wanted you to see it before we paint it out. Thought it might help to clarify the situation.”

  I hackle. Squire is a spiky so-and-so at the best of times. Now, he’s just plain offensive.

  “The situation is clear, thank you. But I feel moving the Royal Family is...well, not a good move,” I finish, lame. “I am the King’s merlin, after all. Gut calls are what I do. They’re the tools of my trade.”

  Scrawl snorts again and pokes a crooky thumb at the mural. “When those damn smeagols got the time to paint a whole friggin' peep show on the backside of Hismajesty’s roost, your gut calls ain’t worth squiddle. Firescape’s got the idea. Move the royal family to the Presidio. And quick, before our artists strike again. Maybe paint a love note on Her M’s door while they’s dragging her to doom city.”

  Squire is nodding and Firescape is looking at me, sad-eyes. I’m going to lose this one. Firescape’s mind is made up and His M listens to Firescape more than just about anybody.

  oOo

  That night I cast the runes in my workshop. I’ve just emptied the can when Firescape shows up at my door. For once, the Magic Weapon is nowhere in sight.

  She doesn’t say anything, at first, just looks at me, and I get nervous.

  “I’m casting runes,” I say, as if that isn’t clear as bluesky, and when she hesitates, I crook my finger at her.

  She comes in, and my merlin robe is suddenly too warm. I strip down to my shirt and jeans and feel no cooler. I clear my throat.

  “I’m sorry, Del,” she says, before I can say something dumb and nervous.

  I’m surprised. “For what?”

  “For siding with Scrawl and Squire.”

  “You didn’t side with them. It was your idea to move Her M. They sided with you.”

  My intention is to make her feel better. I have the opposite effect; her pretty mouth droops further at its perfect corners.

  “I’m very sorry, Del. I...I really thought it was a better place...tactically, I mean. It’s a ways from the Border....” Her voice gives up.

  “I was just tagging a hunch,” I say. “I got nothing to back it up, really.”

  She glances over my shoulder. “What do the runes say?”

  “Not a whole lot....” I begin, looking at them — buttons and bottle caps and chips of glass. There’s even a sea shell or two and a seagull beak. Looks like a little orange pincers. The peach pit is back again. And now there are some little tacks or nails in there too.

  This makes me a little testy — I would surely like to know who keeps tossing trash into my rune can. A merlin’s rune can is sacred — no place to be depositing junk. I pick out the tacks, chuck the pit, and give my full attention to the runes.

  My eyes go suddenly wonky.

  Pincers. What the hell does that mean?

  They’re clamped around a splinter of driftwood. The Whisperers are screaming at me to get it. I shake my head. I don’t get it. Some merlin I am.

  “I gotta talk to the Tree,” I say, and start to turn, but Firescape’s hand is on my arm — on my bare arm — and lava is bubbling somewhere down below. I can feel it.

  “Do you really think it’s not good to move Her M? You feel that, deep?” Her eyes are like chocolates sprinkled with gold dust.

  I feel something deep. I nod.

  “Then I’ll back you with Hismajesty. We can defend the Regency... I trust you,” she adds.

  “How old are you, Firescape?” I ask.

  She frowns. “Old enough,” she says, and pulls herself up as tall as she can and gives me this LOOK. "I’m sixteen — according to Wiz time.”

  Sixteen. Sixteen and not married and no children. A career woman.

  “So,” I say, “you figure to quit the Service som
eday and settle down to have Flannigans?”

  Her tilted eyes slip sidewise to the windows and she toes the carpet and shrugs. “Why settle down? Sure, I’d have to take leave while I was...you know.” She puts her hands out around an invisible belly. “But I could do both...with the right dude...” She shrugs again and her eyes slide back over and kind of bump into mine.

  I have no idea, at this point, what my face is doing, so I compose my features and nod sagely.

  “Don’t you think?” she adds.

  “Sounds good to me,” I improvise. “I’d want you to be careful, though. If it was me. If the dude was me, I mean.”

  Lame, Taco. Really lame.

  She takes a step closer, the frown coming back. I can smell her shampoo — jasmine.

  “Yeah? How careful?”

  I lick my lips, which are suddenly muy dry. “Well, no hazardous duty. You gotta think of all the little Flannigans, right?”

  She’s right in my face now — her head tilted back so her chin almost meets mine. The frown sort of melts, but she looks sort of...puzzled. “All the little Flannigans,” she repeats, and I think those are the sexiest words I’ve ever heard in my life.

  Our lips are nearly touching and I’m counting Flannigans when someone pounds on the door. We part company. Someone turns out to be Cinderblock, looking for her General, Firescape’s magic AK in hand. Duty calls, and all I end up with is a sad chocolate-gold glance as Firescape slips out of my room.

  I return to the runes. Bird beaks and driftwood. What the hell does that mean?

  I talk to the Tree. I try being all formal, at first, but soon, Doug gets to me, and I’m caressing his boughs and pouring out my feelings for Firescape.

  Doug understands. He gives me the idea that I need to make a love potion for Firescape. Like most of my ideas, this one comes to me in his perfume. By morning, with his blessing, I have made an attar of fir for Firescape, which I hope will do more than just smell good on her.

  Fourth: Firescape

  The sun was shining the day I first saw Firescape.

  It was chun jie. I think this is significant if for no other reason than, at that time of year, Embarcadero gets less sun than the North Pole. I never been to the North Pole, but I got the Wiz’s word on it. Where I been, lo, these many years, is here, and I can count on one hand the Spring Festivals in which I haven’t just about chattered the teeth right out of my head.

  The big event of chun jie is the parade. It’s a long parade that winds all along the Wharf and the Sang Yee Gah for hours, then ends up in the Gee Gah around sunset, where it sort of crumbles into a big block party. Then there are fireworks and bonfires and dancing and mountains of food.

  Pandemonium. Chaos. That’s the chun jie. Doug likes it — the noise, the people milling, the smells. When he was just a shrub, we’d watch from this second floor flat over the Gee Gah where I sometimes overnighted when I didn’t feel up to dragging my tail back to the Farm after a day downtown. I’d sit in the window casing and Doug’d perch out on the fire escape in his little clay pot while the sun went down and the fireworks went up and the whole universe paraded by underneath.

  Later on, he liked to be right down in it, which is hao with me — just fine, you know — ’cause Doug’d gotten bigger and that new brass pot Kaymart got him was nothing I’d be yearning to haul up a flight of busted stairs and out a window.

  So this particular year, we’re mingling with the universe and tailing the parade through the Sang Yee Gah when I feel this sort of tugging at my immortal soul.

  I look to Doug, naturally, ‘cause usually this means he has a message of import for me. But he’s just soaking up chun jie with his boughs waving and his needles all quivering in the thrill of it all. (Which, since I asked, he’s intimated to me he enjoys because it reminds him of the frisky winds that blow up the slopes of Mount Diablo. How he knows this, I don’t savvy, since I am not Tree.)

  Anyway, I get, right off, that this tugging at my immortal soul is not of Doug and I glance around to see where it might originate. And that is when I see Firescape for the first time. She is standing next to a baozi wagon along the parade route waiting for a taste of the wares. I suspect her stare — which, as I glance at her, goes someplace else — was the source of the tugging at my immortal soul.

  And why should she stare at me? I’m no great shakes to look at, let me tell you, unless you happen to like small, dark and stringy. But I am in company with a venerable Radio Flyer and Doug, and I am aware that any guy dragging a red wagon with a Tree in it attracts attention, even here.

  She-who-is-no-longer-staring-at-me is a vision in black and red. Black silk quilted jacket with red collar and cuffs, black silk quilted leggings with red leather hi-tops. An assault weapon hangs jauntily from one shoulder.

  The vendor hands her a paper-wrapped bao into which she bites delicately, then wipes her chin on the back of one dainty hand. This gives her the opportunity to glance at us again without seeming to.

  She is a China-doll, her flower-face golden, her eyes like tear-drop chips of obsidian — like the Apache tears mi madre brought from her homeland. But unlike any of the hundreds of Chinese girls I’ve seen along the Sang Yee Gah, her hair is the color of October trees — a shade of red you see only once a year.

  I am smitten. So smitten, Kipling pops into my head, courtesy of Archaic Literature 101, Professor Lombard Street instructing: San Francisco, Kipling said, is a mad city — inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.

  My heart sighs. Mr. Kipling said a mouthful.

  A breeze stirs and Doug brushes my hand with a scented bough. I am urged to cross the street and meet this vision. I look for an opportunity and see one — there, between the dragon boat and the Dog of Heaven.

  I manage to get me, my wagon and my Tree through the parade and across the street. I get yelled at, and some firecrackers go off right under the wagon, but we make it.

  Too late. The red-haired Chinese girl is gone, red hi-tops, assault rifle and all.

  I feel like a deflated balloon. Then I have the hopeful thought that the vendor might know the girl.

  “What girl?” he says.

  “Ninja-girl in black and red. Red hair. You just now sold her a bao.”

  The vendor shrugs. “I sell lots of baos.

  “Not to red-haired Chinese girls carrying AKs, I’ll bet not.”

  “Why you wanna know, chico?” the vendor asks, suspicious-like.

  Honesty, I decide, is the best policy. “I’m smitten,” I say.

  “What the hell's that — smitten?”

  I blush. “I think she’s neon. Number one jade.”

  He laughs. “You jingbing, chico. She’s King’s Guard. Colonel, by the pips on her uni.”

  My heart beats a little faster. I have tumbled at first gander for a Colonel of the King’s elite knighties. What a ditz. I might as well have fallen for a goddess. It’s hopeless.

  I ask the vendor if he saw which way the knightie Colonel went.

  He jerks his head up the street toward where the parade will end in a wild melee. “After the King’s float, where else?”

  I follow the parade, tugging Doug after me in the Flyer, trying to catch the head of the beast. The Sun is setting, torches are flaring, and the shadows in the street are taking on a life of their own. It is hard to see things that are black and red. I pray to find the King’s float before it reaches the end of its route, but my prayers don’t make it to the Big Ear and I find myself swept into the courtyard where the parade melts into chaos.

  This is where the Sang Yee Gah and several narrow cross-alleys meet in a long, cobbled yard. Right now it is a sea of floats and dancing dragons and stilt walkers and music. People flow past me, around me. An old Chinese guy smiles at me as he shuffles by, a couple of young women look at me slyly, some kids jostle my wagon and pat at Doug’s boughs.

  Then I can no longer make out individuals. I am awash in the crowd and los
e all hope of finding the red-haired ninja knightie, when Doug brushes the hand that holds the wagon tongue. Simultaneously, I feel the tugs — his, which I recognize, hers, which is new. Then hers is gone.

  I glance at Doug. He is waving me to the right along the wall of a brick building. I go, but even here, the crush of bodies is intense. Fireworks are beginning to go off, painting the crowd and the buildings and the far-off sky with rainbows, and I head toward the balcony where the King’s float will stop.

  By tradition, Hismajesty climbs off the float onto the balcony, where he will watch from a throne as his subjects entertain him through the night and into the next morning — a lot like Cinco de Mayo in my old barrio, but a lot chillier. Beijing’s just gotta be warmer in February than Embarcadero or this festival would’ve never gotten off the ground.

  I can see the balcony and the throne when the crowd gets so dense I can’t move forward. I give up and step up into a doorway and there she is.

  We just stare at each other for a moment and then Doug gives me this fir-scented nudge.

  “Hello,” I say intelligently, “I’ve never shared a doorway with a Colonel before. I never even met a Colonel before.”

  She looks at me with these big, obsidian eyes and I can see fireworks and torch light reflected in them.

  “Firescape,” she says. “Colonel Firescape. King’s knightie. Who’re you?”

  “Taco,” I say, and then decide to go for the whole enchilada. “Taco Del. And this is Doug.”

  Her eyes widen, then go to my Tree. “You named a tree?”

  “He’s not just a tree,” I explain. “He’s a close personal friend.”

  She nods, shifting her AK in her arms, which reminds me to be circumspect. Then she bends down and shakes one of Doug’s boughs.

  “You got some interesting friends, Doug,” she tells him. “They say only loco people give up their real and secret names to total strangers. Is your friend loco?”