Nobody ever expects a girl barber, but I handle a cutthroat razor like a dream, and I can shave the hair off a bee’s ass mid-flight.
I’m on my way to the barbershop, and the street is loud with the clatter of iron shutters as shops close up for the evening. It rained earlier, puddles of water reflecting the heavy lead-grey sky so they look silver. They resemble enormous coins, and it reminds me of the song “Pennies from Heaven,” so I hum it to myself, enjoying the leftover dampness in the air.
I should specify, at this point, that I’m humming the Billie Holiday version, not the Frank Sinatra one. A girl’s gotta have standards, after all.
I’m in a rundown part of Panong’s Old Town, where the streets are lined with dirty tenement buildings, their long-ago white walls now streaked with black grime. A lot of the buildings are derelict, broken windowpanes gaping like missing teeth. The shops occupying the ground floor either specialise in the seedier trades—pawnshops and seriously depressing brothels—or they house specialist craftsmen who take advantage of the cheap rent found here. Which is how you can find prostitutes next door to beautiful paper lantern makers or opera headdress creators.
But the best thing about Old Town is that it’s full of just the kind of nooks and crannies the Mayak—Panong’s magical folk—need to exist. People in Panong cling to their traditions like Hong Kong fashionistas cling to their Gucci purses, which is why esoteric craftspeople can survive in this age of internet and smartphones and why the magical community thrives here.
I pass a huge banyan tree growing on the side of the road. It’s revered—rightfully so—and the buildings retreat from around it, creating a kind of plaza around its trunk. When I say trunk, what I really mean is trunks. The tree looks more like a many-legged insect, having had centuries to send aerial roots to the ground then thicken them into yet more limbs. Once-vibrant saffron ribbons, now turned to grubby rags by time and rain, have been wrapped around the trunks. Offerings of food and incense crowd its roots and branches. The tree keeps splitting the concrete with its roots, so the road here is always in disrepair. But no one would dare suggest the tree be torn down.
I wave a greeting to the little Mayak living in the banyan tree and continue on. Only a few steps further I get the sense of someone watching me. I look around, but don’t see anything or anyone. I shrug. Probably nothing, but I’ll keep an eye out just to be safe.
I stop to grab some dumplings from Chanthara’s stall, but he’s not here today. Instead there’s a kid behind the counter. Mid-twenties, the crotch of his jeans reaching for his knees (whatever happened to style?), hair that took longer to put together than the dumplings I’m about to order.
I say “kid” but he’s only a few years younger than I am. Non-Touched humans always seem so young to me, like toddlers who know nothing about the world.
“Six soup dumplings, please.”
The kid frowns at me. “You’re not from around here.”
Only an impressive amount of self-restraint stops me from rolling my eyes hard enough to give myself an injury. Mundanes always feel the need to pester me about where I’m from.
In London, it doesn’t matter that my accent could rival the queen’s, that I can navigate my way around the tube blindfolded, or that I know more about ale than most “true” Brits. My features are Asian, so there’s always some idiot asking me where I’m really from—or if they’re going for the prat-of-the-week award, what I am.
Here, in Panong, I look right, but growing up in London means my accent has a bit of a twang to it. Panongian is a tonal language, like Cantonese or Thai, and I still can’t quite master the more delicate subtleties of intonations. I’m completely bilingual—I speak, read, write, think, and dream in both languages, but in Panong, if I open my mouth, I get looks and questions because I don’t sound right.
That’s one of the things I love best about the Mayak. Don’t get me wrong, they’re as prejudiced as Mundanes—probably even more so. But they couldn’t care less about things like ethnicity or nationality. All human races are considered equally inferior, and as a Touched, I have the dubious privilege of being part of the dregs of magical society, relegated to the fringes. But at least no one cares about how I look or how I sound, and no one has the slightest bit of interest in where I’m supposed to be from.
I arch an eyebrow at the kid inside the stall and ignore his question. “My dumplings?”
He blushes. “I didn’t mean anything by it, just that your accent is different.” He fishes out the dumplings and places them in a cardboard container. He smiles shyly as he hands it to me. “I like your hair.”
My hair’s bright pink, and I’m also quite the fan of it, so I smile at the kid, deciding to forgive and forget the question about where I’m from. That’s the thing about toddlers—they often stumble or say silly things. You can’t hold it against them.
Eating dumplings the moment they’re off the steamer is a bit like taking your chances with a piece of molten lava. The sensible thing to do is to wait until they’ve cooled down so you don’t burn your mouth.
I’ve never been too fussed about sensible, and patience is a virtue I lack.
Which is why, moments after leaving the stall, I find myself wincing in pain from the scalding liquid bursting out of the dumpling.
“Owwww.” I open my mouth to inhale cool air. The dumpling feels like it’s attempting to burn a hole through my tongue. I know, I know. One day I’ll learn, but for now I’m just a sucker for those explosions of savoury, porky goodness.
In spite of the dumpling distraction, I still pick up on the observer watching me. I’ve just turned onto the street of the barbershop, and I stop walking, pretending to fuss with my cardboard container. I carefully scan to see what I can pick up. I can’t sense a magical signature, so it might be a Mundane, or it might be something able to hide itself effectively from me.
Touched humans, as a rule, aren’t particularly powerful, and I’m one of the weaker ones. There are plenty of beings out there who can keep themselves hidden from my senses, so that doesn’t really narrow things much.
Still, I’m not worried. I’m close enough to the barbershop that I’m squarely in Mr. Sangong’s territory. That in itself will be enough to deter most of the Mayak from giving me trouble, and anyone strong enough to take on Mr. Sangong wouldn’t bother with little old me any more than a black belt would feel the need to challenge a cockroach to a fight.
I know, I just compared myself to a cockroach. Before you worry about my self-esteem, that’s just how a lot of the more powerful Mayak view the Touched. You get used to it, mostly because that means they leave us alone.
I reach the barbershop. Yep, I’m definitely being watched. Could be someone who wants to talk to Mr. Sangong and is feeling shy or scared. These days I take care of all the barber work while Mr. Sangong attends to other business. Mayak business that I can’t know about because I’m Touched.
The barbershop technically isn’t so much a shop as a space between two tenement buildings across which a front has been erected. I go through the rigmarole of unlocking the iron shutter and hold it open for a moment, partly to sense my observer, partly to give them a chance to come and accost me. They’re still there, but they don’t take the bait.
I wonder what this is going to be about.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
