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She laughed softly. “And you do not have to worry about Reginald seeing it,” she said. “He would never come close to this cave again. He fears the spirits of the cave too much.”
“Mother, you are more daring than I ever knew,” Lee-Lee said, giggling as she reached a soft hand out to her mother and twined their fingers together. “Oh, Mother, had I been forced to stay another night in that . . . that . . . horrid place, I surely would have killed myself.”
Jade gently squeezed Lee-Lee’s hand. “Do not ever talk that way again,” she said. “You are free, and soon we shall find a new life where we can feel like humans again. Reginald Vineyard treated us as though we were slaves and tried to take our spirit from us, but as you see, he did not succeed.”
“Spirits,” Lee-Lee said, visibly shivering as she looked slowly around her. On the cave walls were paintings that had been drawn by the Sioux many years ago; they were fading and sometimes even crumbling from the wall, leaving images that were hardly discernible. “Are . . . we truly . . . safe from the spirits . . . of this cave?”
“Do you feel them around you?” Jade asked, following the path of her daughter’s eyes, also seeing the faint drawings.
“Nay,” Lee-Lee said, turning her eyes back to her mother.
“They are here, but they will not bother us,” Jade said firmly. “We are good people. They know it. They only torment the bad.”
“Reginald Vineyard is very, very bad,” Lee-Lee said tightly. “I am so glad they are causing him distress as he tries to sleep. Mother, I would have loved seeing him running down the corridor, screaming and afraid, as you saw him. That would have almost made my long stay in his crib worthwhile.”
“Nothing could make what you were forced to do worthwhile,” Jade said, smoothing her daughter’s long black hair back from her face. “Oh, daughter, what you had to do is too horrible to think about, yet . . . you . . . were made to do it.”
Lee-Lee humbly lowered her eyes. “Ai, Mother, it was like living in the pits of hell,” she said, swallowing hard. She looked quickly up again. “It is true, nothing would make that worthwhile. I . . . was . . . only—”
Jade placed a gentle hand on her daughter’s lips. “I know,” she said. “You do not need to explain anything to me. I am your mother. I know everything about you, even your deepest thoughts.”
Lee-Lee wiped tears from her eyes. “You are such a good mother,” she said softly. “But I loved Father, too, and, oh, Mother, I miss my brother Tak Ming so much.”
“Ai, as do I miss them both,” Jade said, then reached for another piece of the cheese she had brought from Reginald’s kitchen. Then she took a slice of bread that she had sliced only moments ago from the loaf she’d made late the night before in anticipation of her escape.
She placed the cheese on the bread and handed it to Lee-Lee. “Daughter, eat this,” she softly encouraged. “You have wasted away to almost nothing while in that puh-kao, that bad place.”
“While I was there, I did not wish to eat,” Lee-Lee said, taking the bread and cheese. She eagerly ate as her mother took an apple from the food basket and bit into it.
Jade again gazed at the drawings on the wall. “I find the drawings in this cave mystical,” she murmured. “They are not frightening at all to me.”
“Ai, they are becoming less frightening to me, too,” Lee-Lee said. “But, Mother, when can we leave? It is damp and dark in here. I feel chilled through and through.”
Jade laid the apple aside and went to pick up some of the firewood that she and Lee-Lee had gathered when they first arrived.
She took several small branches to the fire and placed them amid the flames.
She sat down again beside her daughter, then lifted a blanket and placed it around Lee-Lee’s frail shoulders. “We must stay here at least a week,” she said, her voice drawn. “We must wait for Reginald to give up on finding us. Ai, perhaps a week will do. Then we will go to the Indian village that Jessie was trying to find.”
“What if they do not like it that we stayed in their sacred cave?” Lee-Lee asked, wrapping the blanket more closely around herself.
“Did you not say that the nephew of the chief is kind and understanding?” Jade asked.
Just then something on the far wall caught her eye as the flames of the fire cast a brighter glow around her. Her eyes widened, for she thought she was seeing streaks of silver.
She knew that silver was what had made Reginald rich. Surely he had come and taken it from this cave.
That could be the reason behind the Sioux curse that caused him such horrible nightmares!
She looked quickly away, for she did not want to have the same temptation that Reginald had had. She wanted nothing to do with the silver, although she knew that it could possibly pay her and Lee-Lee’s passage back to China.
But it could also give them a lifetime of miserable nightmares.
Nay. She would not look at the silver ever again. Let it stay with the spirits!
“Lone Wing is sweet and kind, and he told me that his uncle was a very compassionate man,” Lee-Lee said.
“Then you see, Lee-Lee, that when we go and ask for help, it will be given to us,” Jade said.
