Chapter 23 - A Silent Glimpse

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 10:54 AM

Jia Kun struggled to gain consciousness. Sleepy, eyes cracked open, a blur of light, she was curious where she was. Bruised, the back of her head, her calves, a spot on her right hip, and a sharp pain in her left thigh. Her whole body ached, and a mild throbbing in her chest.  Lifting her head was hard. She felt weak, without control. Where was she? She couldn’t remember much of anything. But what about now? She was lying on a bed, a thin mattress, no blanket, and a strange odor. She tried lifting her right arm, but without control, it flopped over her chest. Something hard was in her left hand, cold, metallic; she squeezed her hand, hard edges, small. Turning her head, blurry images of a room, olive green walls, and small windows up high. Can’t feel legs, disoriented, despairing. A myna’s whistles, clicks, and squawks…okay…in a room, somewhere in a jungle. That was better, feels good. 

“Jia?” a faint, small voice called out.  “Jia, that you?” 

Jia Kun slowly, forcefully, turned her head toward the sound. Gazing through the blur, she blinked her eyes, squeezed them shut, willed them open, then squinted. Nearby, a metal-framed bed with a thin grey mattress and a small person lying on her side. “Jia?”  The voice called out again, a little stronger.

Jia Kun tried to speak, but her mouth was dry and bitter. “Gely?” 

Gely Suy's voice was small, quiet, laced with fear. “Jia, where are we? What happened?”

Jia Kun tried to sit up, focus, and look toward the figure on the other bed. Moving caused her ankles and wrists to sear with pain, as if her skin had been scraped to the bone with a knife. Finally…sitting on the side of her bed, she opened her left hand. Inside, a small medallion. She stared at the medallion, thinking about it, when Gely stumbled across the room and flopped, sitting onto the bed next to her.

“That’s your medallion, Jia. Your Auntie gave you.”

Jia Kun's eyes were still blurry, but she could make out the medallion in her hand and Gely sitting beside her. She couldn’t remember how she got in this room, or why she felt sleepy and bruised, but she did remember Auntie Sabriya giving her the St. Michael Foundation medallion. Where was the gold chain?

“I’m scared, Jia. I don’t know what’s happening. Why are we here? Why aren’t we at school?” Gely began to weep quietly. She was afraid someone might hear her. 

“Don’t know, Gely. Let’s get out…go home.”

Jia Kun's body hurt all over; she was weak, and her vision was still blurry, although not as bad as a few minutes ago. She tightened her fist around the medallion and stood up, pulling Gely up off the bed with her. Turning and looking around the small room, there was only one door. The walls were bare, and the windows were very small, set way at the top of the room, too high to reach or see out of. The cold cement floor was cracked from one side of the room to the other. She went to the heavy wooden door and pulled on the square handle; the door would not open. She pushed, but it would not move. She could not see how the door opened or closed. There were no hinges or straps that seemed to hold it in place. She got down on her knees and looked through the crack next to the floor, centimeters wide, into the room beyond. It looked like there was furniture, a chair, and a table, but she could see nothing else, nor anyone else. She got up, and with Gely, they both pulled and pushed on the square handle. The door didn’t budge. 

Gely wept, went back to her bed, and sat down. Jia Kun joined her and opened her hand with the medallion. “My Auntie taught me a prayer if I was ever in trouble. It’s a prayer for help to the angel on the medallion. Can you see the picture of him? He holds a sword?”

“Idols aren’t real, you know,” said Gely. 

“Auntie said this isn’t an idol like some people have and worship. This is just a picture of a powerful angel from heaven, named Michael. I want to say the prayer. Do you want to say it with me?”

Gely shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. What good will it do?”

“I don’t know, but it’s something. Maybe it will help us.”

“Aren’t you scared?” asked Gely.

Jia Kun held out her hand; her whole arm shook. 

Gely was skeptical. “I just think idols are stupid.”

“It’s not an idol.” Jia Kun opened her fist so Gely could see the image of Michael. “Okay, I’m going to pray it. You don’t have to.” Jia Kun stared at the medallion in her hand and, in a shaking, soft voice, prayed. “Dear St. Michael, defend us in battle…”

After she was done praying, she wondered what to do with the medallion. “I have no pocket to put the medallion into. I might lose it. No necklace. I need a string.”

Immediately, Gely started scratching the edge of the mattress. The corner of the mattress was ribbed. Gely got on her knees and chewed on the ribbing. The outer layer came loose, and she pulled on the threads inside the outer sheath. The threads would not come out. She crawled a meter down the mattress and began chewing on the rib again, revealing the internal threads. But she kept chewing until the threads were broken through. She pulled, and a long, strong string or piping emerged from the outer sheath.  There was a hole on one edge of the medallion where the ring clasp had once attached itself. Jai Kun threaded the piping through the hole, tied the ends together, and Gely took the loop and put it over Mi’s head. After that, Jia tucked the medallion inside her top. 

“Now what?” Jia Kun asked. “I’m getting hungry.” The backpacks they had worn to school, which contained books and their lunch, were gone…along with their memory. 

Just then, an outer door in the adjacent room opened with a metal squeak and a clang. Men’s voices mumbled as heavy footsteps approached. More murmuring, and then a crash bar was removed from the outside of the door to the room where Jia Kun and Gely were imprisoned. The door creaked open, and two men in jeans, tennis shoes, black T-shirts, and hoods entered the room. 

No words were spoken. One man grabbed Jia Kun's forearms, and a second grabbed Gely's, and the girls were marched, stumbling out of the room. An unseen observer would have heard two girls weeping as they were led off, the footsteps scuffing across cement, then gravel, another door clanging shut, several doors of a car opening along with a trunk, some more shuffling and crying, then a door slamming shut, a car driving off…and finally silence. 

Chapter 22 - Sapphire Wat Phra Temple

Note: Name change. Jai Kun's friend, who was kidnapped at the same time, was known as "Dao."  I've recently changed her name to "Gely Suy" to honor a Customer Service Representative from S.E. Asia that helped me solve a problem with software. Thanks, Gely...Gely Suy is an important character in this story, though you won't know why until the very end. 

Master Sengha

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 10:04 AM

The Pangina Mountain terrain, just west of Yung Fa Ho, was a paradox of lush, fertile valleys and ancient, weathered rock columns left by natural erosion. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago, Buddhist and Daoist monks carved a steep, sacred staircase into the rock substrate, leading from the valley’s green vegetation to the massive, moss-covered conglomerate pillar on which the Sapphire Wat Phra temple was perched. At the base of the ascent, large white aerial roots of an ancient Banyan tree channel a mammoth boat constrictor as they wrap around the walls of an antecedent shrine, commanding awe, if not adoration, of how natural and man-made structures can coalesce.

Sabriya’s SEC would not scale the 400-meter-high, steep, and narrow staircase to the monastery, and, despite her physical conditioning and sometimes fearless demeanour, heights were her foe and vertigo her ruin.  As she climbed the staircase and calmed her nerves, she was reminded of the Buddhist emphasis on suffering, the pursuit of perfection, the importance of virtue, wisdom, patience, and truthfulness, and of how actions have consequences that determine one’s future. On the surface, such values and the recognition of karma were not that different from Catholic moral teachings on Natural Law, which explained how a Buddhist monk and a Catholic nun could become friends, as Master Singha and Sister Linsim had become, while pursuing the intricacies of Wing Chun kung fu.  

Sister Linsim

Near the top of the staircase, before she entered the Temple gate and Monastery plaza surrounded by cream brick buildings and pointy canopied roofs of green tile with upturned corners, Sabriya came to a rocky outcrop that loomed hundreds of meters above the verdant valley. There on the edge, in Padmasana, or Lotus pose, sat her venerable sensei in his brown and maroon priestly robes, facing the infinite expanse of the haze-covered valley. Master Sengha was the picture of serenity, basking in a state of relaxation that Sabriya could not imagine. In her mind, she saw Jia Kun on the outcrop, but her daughter was not sitting securely on the rock; she was dangling over the edge, suspended by a frayed thread. 

Joining Singha on his rock required a literal leap of faith, over a 50-meter chasm, at the bottom of which was a mystical stream of water, the source of which was a mystery at this height on what appeared to be a barren monolith. Evidently, reaching serenity required risking one’s life. Sabriya was sure Jia Kun was not risking less. She jumped and landed with a thump—suddenly shattering her sensei’s peace.

 The monk turned in surprise. “Sabriya?!”

Sabriya bowed low in honor of her sensei.”I come on an urgent matter, Master.”

“A long way you have come. Are you well?”

“Well enough, but not in mind.”

“Anguish is temporary, my dear, made smooth by the many waters of a flowing, ever-changing stream.”

“Miwu Cun. Do you know this village?”

Singha thought for only a moment. “Yes, the lost mist village. It is nearby, not nearly lost as it would seem.”

“My niece and my daughter, who is 12 years old, live there with my sister. Only recently, after many years, have I been reunited with them.”

“They are one and the same, this niece and daughter? ”

“Yes, a long-held secret for her safety.” Sabriya paused to collect her thoughts and a semblance of serenity. “Yesterday, two men kidnapped her and a friend on their way to school. We believe they are being trafficked, perhaps out of the country. They were taken from the village in an old, green, rusted cargo van and driven here into the Yung Fa Ho district. To find the van, rescue my daughter and her friend, and bring justice to the traffickers is my objective. The boy who escaped from the captors described the van as resembling a frog. Do you know of such a van, possibly green and old?”

The Sensei closed his eyes, relaxed, and thought deeply. After a minute, “My daughter, this may not bring you the peace you seek.”

“What do you mean? To seek justice is to seek peace. To avoid justice is to avoid peace.”

“Do you really seek justice or revenge?”

“When a child is violated, justice and revenge are one and the same, are they not?”

“It may seem so, but to bring harm to another is not peace. To aggravate belligerence will only increase hostility.”

“Hostility will not increase or even continue if the justice is swift, sure, and secure. Wing Chun does not seek increasing attacks, but complete surrender.”

“With honor.”

“Is punishment for wrongdoing honorable?”

“It is desirable.”

“Is wrongdoing honorable?”

“It is not, but surrender can be.”

“Is evil honorable?”

“It is not, but to recant from evil can be.”

“If there is no recanting, is there honor?”

At this, Sensei recanted. “There can be honor in retreating, but only when retreating from evil.”

“And returning to good.”

“Yes.”

“So, if evil has taken my children and refuses to recant, how can justice without revenge bring peace?”

Sensei sat upright, straight-backed, and respectful, staring coldly at his student for a long time. Finally, “I am sorry. I am not familiar with such a vehicle. Perhaps those who are younger and visit the villages are more observant than I. We shall ask them. Come.”

Sengha effortlessly rose to his bare feet, skipped over the chasm to the path, and led Sabriya up another flight of steps through the temple gate and into the monastery proper. He stopped at a double door, bowed, and spoke quietly to the doorman, who, after listening to the older monk, scuffled off. Sengha gestured for Sabriya to follow him, and they turned down a hallway and followed a stone path. Several moss-covered steps led to a quiet garden, where they waited patiently in silence.

After a few minutes, a half-dozen young men in traditional sabongs (wraparound orange-and-brown robes) with shaved heads and eyebrows entered the garden on bare feet and stood before Venerable Sengha and bowed respectfully to Sengha and Sabriya. Sengha explained Sabriya’s situation and request.  The young monks chatted quietly among themselves, excitedly nodding, and then the oldest spoke with an enthusiasm that Sabriya considered unnatural for the otherwise patient and calm personalities. 

“Master, a few of us are familiar with a vehicle such as you describe, but it is associated with men who are not peaceful, and are known to be associated with activities that bring unrest, theft, and danger to villagers.” He bowed his head for a moment before continuing, embarrassed to reveal what came next. “One morning, our brothers here were making alms rounds, and some of these men appeared, took our bowls, looking for money, but only finding rice and mangos, threw them to the street, and destroyed the gifts with their feet. To Sabriya, he said, “If you search for this van, you must take an army.”

“Where might this particular van be?” asked Sabriya. “It was used to kidnap two girls from a village.”

The young men chattered among themselves for a moment. Then came the answer Sabriya sought: “On the road, from here, just before Yung Fa Ho, there is a village of corrugated dwellings and one cinderblock building, surrounded by a field of old conveyances, motor vehicles, and farm implements. There is a water tank on a building north of the road, just a few kilometers from the city. You might find the van there among the others. But you will not be safe, they are very dangerous men. ”

Sabriya thanked the young monks and her sensei, then hurried to the staircase. She didn’t want to disrespect the young monks and Venerable Sengha, but the danger that lay ahead was not for her, but for the men who took Jai Kun and Gely Suy; she cared not in the least about their peace.