The Eleventh Tiger by David A McIntee Page B

brought bad luck. Then, as she got older, she was more interested in the hows and whys of things like the Armada than she was in treasure.
    Now, in a deserted house in China, she found herself standing on an imaginary deck, perhaps of a seagoing junk plying between China, India and far Araby. She tried to recall the tune of a sea shanty and hum it, but she couldn’t quite get it right. The wrong notes kept insinuating themselves into her ears, so that the humming sounded like the melody of the song they’d heard earlier.
    She realised that someone was actually humming the tune, and turned to berate Fei-Hung or Vicki for doing so.
    Her heart sprang for her throat with deadly intent, and nearly knocked her over, as she saw a woman in a silk tunic and long silk dress standing at the window, humming to herself. Her feet were hidden under the dress, but there were no wet footprints near her. Barbara’s strangled cry alerted Fei-Hung, who leapt into a fighting stance, and Vicki, who cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.
    The woman turned. She was pale and delicate, her skin the tone of a paper-thin china cup, nearly transparent in its fineness.
    ‘I like to watch the rain too,’ she said. Her voice was soft and distant, but carried quite clearly.
    ‘You startled us,’ Barbara said. ‘We didn’t hear you come in.’ How could she have, without brushing past her? Or, Barbara thought with a shiver, passing through her.
    ‘I didn’t.’
    Barbara immediately felt guilty as well as foolish. ‘I’m sorry
    - the door fell open and we called out, but there was no answer. We only wanted to shelter from the rain.’
    ‘That’s all right.’ The woman smiled pleasantly. ‘This isn’t really my home any more, anyway. It used to be.’
    Fei-Hung stepped up beside Barbara and said in a low voice, ‘I looked in both the other rooms. There was no-one there, and no place for her to have been hidden.’
    Barbara felt her insides tense again, just a little. ‘A back door...?’
    ‘None.’
    Barbara swallowed, hard. ‘We heard singing earlier, the same tune you were just humming. Was that you?’
    ‘Yes. I sing to my beloved. He’s dead now.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
     
    ‘That’s all right. He wouldn’t have gone off to the army if I’d asked him to stay with me.’
    Barbara felt an immediate sympathy. The poor girl was probably still in mourning for a man killed. If the song was a lament that would explain its melody.
    ‘It can’t be your fault,’ she said.
    ‘It was my fault for not telling him I love him, and for not luring him to marriage. He’d still be alive then, and I’d still be a lover.’ The woman looked around. ‘The house would not be so cold and empty.’
    Barbara, chilled and touched, couldn’t help looking round as well, to better empathise with this story. She regretted it immediately, because the table, chairs, ornaments and platters of food would have been so enticing if they had been there even a moment ago.
    Now the smell of a large, spicy repast filled a room bright with the light of many candles, and Vicki was knocking over a chair as she ran for the door. Fei-Hung was chanting something, and keeping his guard up, as he physically shoved Barbara outside.
     
    Fei-Hung cursed himself, and the gwailo women. He had known the house would be haunted; known it in his heart and his bones, and he should never have let them shelter there.
    ‘Run!’ he told them, pushing Barbara ahead. Neither she nor Vicki needed to be told twice, and Fei-Hung hoped the ghosts would not pursue them.
    They burst out on to the Baiyun road and headed for the old temple, pursued only by the soulful notes of the lament that had drawn them to the house in the first place.
    The rain had stopped, thankfully, and it didn’t take long to reach the temple. Fei-Hung didn’t feel entirely confident that it would be any more spiritually unpopulated than the house, but he had nowhere else to go. The gwailos had said this