Hainan Dao

Book I Chapter 07

HAINAN DAO BOOK I

CHAPTER 07

After the movie I insisted, so Wei had no choice but to take me to the village well. Leading me down the paths of the labyrinth once more, he began weaving in and out of the alleys, shaking his head the whole time, and telling me what people did for fun in Canada, must be really different from he had thought previously. Though it was dark, the streets were still bustling with goings-on, with folks lined up alongside walls and doorways, doing their chores, chatting. Wei smiled and waved at them. The crowd smiled back. They seemed to like him.

As we made our way along, I felt my heart beginning to beat faster and I chided myself for it, thinking that it was silly and overly dramatic. It was probably nothing. Some final admonition perhaps. Nothing more than that.

I was just thinking this, when the last line in the maze of houses fell away before us, and I found myself face to face with the one object that my father had chosen to mention with his very last breath, that ultimate treasure at the end of a rainbow that spanned almost halfway around the world.

I stopped walking then, though it puzzled Wei a little, and I stood there for a moment, at the edge of that broken-down, water-damaged building, not caring if the other people around us were staring at me or not, and looked out into the area in front of us.

I was gazing into a clearing about two hundred feet square. The ground here was not dirt covered, but instead had been finished over with cement, though it was flaking and chipping in many places. Stray rocks and loose rubble also decorated the scene. In the far corner of this area was the well itself. It was round and was made of cement also. Perched atop a platform, it had a wall around it, about two feet high. The opening to the well was about five feet across in diameter, and was bare. No guard, no railing. It stood cool and shaded by tall coconut trees and other giant fern-like plants that reached in from where they took root, just on the periphery of that corner of the landing.

The water hole had no mechanical bucket system fixed over its mouth, like what you might find in more European versions of the same sort of device. Instead, water was brought to the surface via a metal pipe about the size of a child’s wrist, which protruded from one side of the opening, and went on for another little distance before ending in a spigot a few feet away. A second pipe, a much bigger one, paired the first, but didn’t stop at the spigot. It was much longer and led out of the clearing entirely, shooting off into the distance like a torpedo, skipping over the sandy ground, back toward the houses and the rest of the settlement.

“Furen?” Wei touched me on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”

I waved him off.

I began making my way over to the well.

“Furen?”

As I drew near, the women and children that had been lined up behind the waterspout, waiting for their turn to fill their tubs and buckets, stopped what they were doing and stepped aside for me. I smiled and nodded at them.

Turning my attention to the stone structure in front of me, I circled it once. Twice.

Nothing.

I frowned. Where was it? Where’s the writing?

Going back, I checked it again, this time, stomping around it in a circle in the other direction.

More nothing.

I reached up and scratched my head. Wasn’t this the spot? Or did I hear him wrong?

“Furen?”