The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 35: UNDER WILLOW LAKE

They waited for the dark.

Mei Lan drove the truck off the road and hid it under a group of thick willow trees, far from the water, where nobody on the lake could see it. Then they lay on their stomachs in the long grass at the top of the hill and watched the white boat.

The sun went down behind the mountains. The gold on the water turned to purple, and then to gray, and then to black. One by one, the stars came out. And on the lake, the white boat sat very still, with its lights burning, like a small floating house.

For two hours, the divers kept going down and coming up. Down and up. Their heads appeared in the black water, shining wet in the boat's lights, then disappeared again.

Then, a little after eight o'clock, Adrian felt something.

Not heard it. Felt it. A deep, heavy shake that came up through the ground under his stomach. A dull boom, far away, like a giant door slamming deep under the earth. The water around the white boat jumped. A great white bubble rose up out of the middle of the lake and burst on the surface.

A minute later, more white shapes began floating up around the boat. Small ones. Silver ones.

Fish.

"They are blasting," Mei Lan said. Her voice was flat and cold. "Small charges. Explosives. They are trying to blow a way into the temple."

Adrian stared at the water.

He thought about the bell tower. About lying under the bell in the dark, looking up at a thousand years of writing that nobody had seen. He thought about his grandfather standing outside that tower for two hours, not touching it. Just looking. Because some things are too old and too beautiful to touch.

And Victor was down there in the dark with bombs.

Something hot rose up in Adrian's chest. "They will break it," he said. "Everything. All of it. They do not care."

"No," Mei Lan said. "They have never cared. That is what being a Han means."

Around ten o'clock, the divers stopped. The last one climbed up the ladder onto the white boat. The boat's engine did not start. It stayed out there in the middle of the lake, anchored, with its lights on. Adrian could see men walking around on the deck. Someone was laughing. Someone was cooking something. The smell of food drifted across the water.

"They are staying the night," Mei Lan said. "They will start again in the morning."

"Then we go now."

She looked at him in the dark. "Have you ever been underwater before? Really underwater? With a tank?"

"No."

"Never?"

"I grew up in the city, Mei Lan. I swam in the public pool twice when I was ten. Both times, I almost drowned."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "Wonderful."

She taught him on the shore.

In the black shadow of the willow trees, far down the lake from the boat, she helped him pull on the black rubber suit. It was too tight and too cold, and it smelled of old rubber and lake water. She strapped the heavy metal tank onto his back. It almost pulled him over. She showed him the mouthpiece, a rubber thing on the end of a black tube that came over his shoulder from the tank.

"This is your air line," she said, tapping the tube. "Everything you breathe comes through here. You bite down on the mouthpiece and you breathe through your mouth. Slowly. Slowly. Not like a dog after running. Like an old man sleeping."

He put it in his mouth and breathed. The air tasted dry and strange, like metal. It made a loud hissing sound in his ears.

"Slower," Mei Lan said.

He breathed slower.

"Good." She held up her hand and made signs with her fingers. "This means I am okay. This means go up. This means stop. This means danger." She made a cutting sign across her throat. "And this means my air is gone. Remember that one."

"Why that one?"

"Because if you make it, you have about thirty seconds before you die." She smiled without any warmth. "Do not make it."

She gave him a small, flat flashlight on a strap and tied it to his wrist. She gave him a mask and showed him how to press it on his face. Then she pulled on her own suit, quick and easy, like someone who had done it a hundred times.

"Stay right beside me," she said. "Always. If you lose me down there in the dark, you will never find me again. And nobody will ever find you."

Adrian looked out at the black lake. It was so still. So quiet. You could not see anything under the surface. It was like looking into the eye of something very big that was asleep.

He thought about Helen. About her hand on his face at the bus stop, cold and gentle. About her palm pressed flat against the dirty window. When you come back, I will tell you then.

He had to come back.

He bit down on the mouthpiece and walked into the water.

The cold hit him like a slap. Even through the rubber suit, it went straight into his bones. He gasped, and the air hissed loudly in his mouth, and for a moment he panicked. Then he felt Mei Lan's hand on his arm, and he remembered. Slowly. Like an old man sleeping.

He breathed. He went under.

The world disappeared.

There was nothing. Nothing at all. Only black. Black above, black below, black on every side. The only sounds were his own breathing, loud and hissing in his ears, and the soft bubbling of the air as it left his mouth and rose up toward the surface he could no longer see.

Mei Lan's light came on beside him. A thin white beam, cutting through the dark water like a knife. He turned on his own light.

And then he saw it.

The drowned village.

It was right below them. A street. A real street, with flat stones under a thick blanket of brown mud. Houses on both sides, with their roofs still on, their wooden doors hanging open, their small windows dark and empty. A stone wall with plants growing out of it, long green weeds that moved slowly back and forth in the water like hair.

They swam down the street. Slowly. Silently. Their lights moved over everything.

A wooden cart lying on its side, half buried in the mud. A big clay pot by a doorway, the kind people used to keep rice in. A stone well in the middle of a small square, with a broken bucket still hanging from its rope. A dead willow tree, its branches white and bare, reaching up toward the surface like the arms of a drowning man.

Adrian felt something tight in his throat.

People had lived here. Fifty years ago, children had run down this street. Women had pulled water from that well. Old men had sat on that wall in the sun, talking about the weather. And then a big company came and built a wall across the valley and filled it with water. And all of it, all their lives, went under. Into the dark. Forgotten.

His light moved over a doorway. Something small was lying on the step. He swam closer.

It was a shoe. A child's shoe. Made of cloth, with a little flower stitched on the front. Brown with mud. Lying there on the step of a drowned house, fifty years under the water, waiting for a little foot that would never come back.

Adrian stopped swimming. He just floated there, looking at it.

Mei Lan touched his arm. When he turned, she pointed ahead with her light. Then she held up her fingers in a sign. Go.

They swam on.

The street went uphill. Adrian took the folded drawing of the river out of the plastic bag tied to his belt and held it up in his light. Two bends. Like a snake. And there, in front of them, the old riverbed came out of the mud. A dip in the ground, curving left. Then right. The Dragon's Neck.

And above the second bend, on a small hill rising out of the dark, something big and gray was waiting.

The temple.

They swam toward it. Their lights grew wider as they came closer, and slowly, the shape came out of the dark. Stone walls covered with weeds. A curved roof with broken tiles, its corners turned up like the wings of a bird. Stone lions on each side of a wide staircase, their faces worn smooth by the water. Fish swimming in and out of the cracks.

And at the top of the stairs, two great doors.

They were made of stone, not wood. Tall and dark and very heavy. And carved into them, from the top to the bottom, covering every inch, were cranes. Hundreds of them. Big ones and small ones. Flying, standing, sleeping. Cranes with their wings open. Cranes with their heads under their wings. Cranes looking up at the sky.

And right in the middle, where the two doors met, one crane bigger than all the others. Standing on one leg. With one wing raised high.

Adrian's heart was beating so hard he could hear it over his own breathing.

Then he saw the side of the temple. To the left of the doors, the stone wall was broken. A great hole had been blasted into it, with sharp edges and cracked stone lying all over the ground. Thick clouds of mud were still hanging in the water around it, slowly settling, like smoke after a fire.

The Han divers had tried to blow their way in.

But behind the hole, there was only more stone. Another wall. Thick and solid and untouched. They had not gotten through.

Adrian almost laughed into his mouthpiece. The old builders had been smarter than that. Of course they had. You could not blow your way into this temple. You had to be invited.

He swam up to the great doors and put his gloved hand flat against the big crane in the middle.

The crane flies home to the setting sun.

There was a small round hole under the crane's raised wing. About the size of a coin. Just like the hole under the bell in the tower.

He looked at Mei Lan. She was floating beside him, looking at the doors with wide eyes behind her mask.

Then she looked down at the small gauge hanging from her tank. The needle that showed how much air was left. Adrian saw her face change behind the glass.

She held up her hand and showed him five fingers. Then pointed up.

Five minutes. They had five minutes of air left.

Five minutes. They had come so far. The door was right here. Right in front of him. He could feel it waiting under his hand, the way the bell had waited. If he could just look at the carvings for one more minute. Two minutes. If he could just understand...

Mei Lan grabbed his arm hard and pointed up again. Her eyes were angry now.

He nodded. He knew she was right. They could come back tomorrow night. They would bring more air. He would have time.

He took one last look at the crane. Then he turned to follow her up.

He breathed in.

And there was no air.

He breathed in again. Something cold and wet rushed into his mouth. Water. Lake water, thick and bitter, filling his mouth, going down his throat. He choked. He coughed. More water came in.

He grabbed the mouthpiece and pulled it out of his mouth. The black tube came with it. And the end of the tube, where it should have been connected to the tank, was floating loose in the water.

Cut. Cleanly cut. Like with a knife.

Adrian's eyes went wide. His chest was already burning. His heart was pounding.

He looked up.

Above him, in the dark water, at the very edge of his light, a shape was moving. A big black shape, like a shadow, with long legs kicking slowly.

And in its hand, catching the thin white beam from Adrian's wrist light, something long and silver was shining.

A knife.