‘It’s my necklace,’ said Ling-Fei, pushing a strand of her dark hair out of her face. ‘I can go on my own.’
‘No way,’ said Charlotte emphatically. ‘We’ll find it faster if all of us look.’
‘She’s right,’ said Billy. ‘We should stick together.’ He still had the feeling he’d had immediately after the earthquake – that they had survived because they’d been together.
Dylan sighed and put his head in his hands. ‘Fine,’ he said. He looked out of the window. ‘But it’s already getting dark. You aren’t going to make me go fumbling around in the forest in the dark, are you?’
‘No, we should wait till morning,’ said Charlotte. ‘Let’s go first thing. Right after sunrise. That way nobody will miss us. We have free time tomorrow morning, remember? We’ll just make sure we’re back for class in the afternoon.’
‘That’s really nice of you all,’ said Ling-Fei in a quiet voice. ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble again.’
‘You heard Charlotte,’ said Billy. ‘We’ll go so early nobody will even notice we’ve gone.’
Dylan groaned and put his head in his hands. ‘This sounds like a terrible idea.’
‘Well, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,’ said Charlotte with a huff.
Dylan looked up with a small grin. ‘Like I’d let you lot go off on an adventure without me.’
Disappearances
‘Do you have any idea where you dropped your necklace?’ asked Charlotte as they stepped into the cool shade of the forest the next morning. She sounded like a detective. Billy was surprised she didn’t whip out a magnifying glass. But in this kind of situation he appreciated her confident can-do attitude.
Ling-Fei nodded. ‘I still had it when we got to the pavilion, because I remember rubbing it when we first saw the tiger.’ She paused. ‘I think I had it at the base of the mountain too. Before the earthquake.’
‘The earthquake that apparently only we felt,’ said Billy, furrowing his brow.
‘Right,’ said Charlotte brusquely. ‘We’ve got a clue, a lead, and now all we need is a plan of action. I think we should go back to the pavilion and retrace our steps to the mountain.’
‘What if an earthquake hits again? Or the tiger comes back?’ asked Dylan.
Charlotte seemed to steel herself a little. ‘Then we’ll deal with it.’
This time, there were monkeys in the pavilion. Billy counted at least twelve, or he thought he did – they were moving around so fast he couldn’t be sure.
‘Ohhh, I hope a monkey didn’t find my necklace,’ Ling-Fei moaned. ‘Then we’ll never get it back.’ She looked up at one of the creatures. ‘Dear Mr Monkey, do you have my necklace?’
‘If he does, I bet he won’t tell you,’ said Dylan.
‘Let’s stick to the plan and retrace our steps,’ Charlotte said, sounding simultaneously bossy and soothing. ‘There’s no need to jump to any conclusions.’
‘I’m just glad we’re dealing with monkeys and not tigers,’ added Dylan.
The monkeys mostly ignored them, seeming content to groom each other and hop along the roof of the pavilion to the trees overhead.
The group went round the pavilion and into the bamboo forest towards the mountain.
‘What is the best way to look for the necklace?’ asked Billy, rubbing the back of his neck.
‘With your eyes,’ retorted Charlotte. ‘Look on the ground – it’s shiny, remember? It’ll stand out.’
They carried on through the bamboo, keeping their eyes down. There was no sign of the necklace, but nobody stated the obvious – that they might not find it. They all knew how important it was to Ling-Fei. They kept scanning the ground and looking under bushes, until they were back at the base of the mountain.
‘Whoa,’ said Billy. Up until now, the forest had looked untouched by the earthquake. But the area around the mountain was ravaged. There were rocks and boulders everywhere, huge craters in the ground and a long, jagged crack down the mountain face itself. At the bottom of the crack was a small triangular opening. Billy shuddered, grateful that the mountain hadn’t collapsed on them.
‘Hey,’ he said, pointing at the crack in the rock. ‘Do you guys see that?’
There was a thin stream of water coming out of the opening. Billy went closer. The water seemed flecked with gold.
‘It’s a river of gold, not a river of blood,’ he said, almost to himself, remembering the legend Old Gold had told them. The story swirled round his brain, mixing with the memory of what had happened yesterday. Had Old Gold said anything about a tiger?
‘Unless dragon blood is actually gold,’ said Ling-Fei, who clearly was following the same train of thought as Billy.
‘You are both off your rockers,’ Dylan said with a sigh. ‘It’s clearly a normal mountain stream that must have burst from inside the mountain after the earthquake. Basic science.’
‘I guess this is the proof we were looking for that the earthquake actually happened,’ said Charlotte, looking up the mountain.
‘Should we retrace our steps?’ asked Dylan, scratching his head. ‘Or do we think the necklace is somewhere around here?’ He tentatively kicked a rock near his foot. The rock rolled over and a beetle scuttled out from underneath it. Dylan jumped.
Billy had the peculiar feeling that someone, or something, was watching him. He looked over his shoulder at the forest, expecting to see the tiger staring at him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
‘You guys,’ he said, eyes darting around, ‘I think maybe we should leave.’
‘Billy’s right,’ said Ling-Fei sadly. ‘A monkey probably found my necklace and now it’s gone for ever.’
‘We can’t give up yet,’ said Charlotte. ‘Maybe it got buried under one of these rocks.’ She walked to the pile of boulders next to them.
‘Let me
