Red Phoenix

could possibly want in the whole world,’ I said as I lowered Simone. ‘You don’t need to give me anything.’
    John gestured, and one of the demons handed him a wrapped cylinder. He presented it to me with both hands, a small bow and a huge grin.
    I wondered if I should open it immediately Western-style, or hold on to it and open it privately later, Chinese-style.
    ‘Western-style,’ John said, reading my mind. ‘Open it. They want to see.’
    I carefully pulled off the red wrapping paper. It was a scroll; it had wooden dowels at the top and thebottom, and a red silk ribbon for hanging. I held the top dowel and let the scroll carefully fall.
    It was a single character. The character si; made of a field above a heart, done in John’s elegant flowing hand.
    ‘What does it mean?’ Leo said into my ear.
    ‘Thought. Contemplation. Remembrance. I will see it and remember.’ I turned the scroll around so that they could all see, and they went quiet.
    ‘Could somebody get me a tissue, please?’ I choked.
    ‘That was a bad present, Daddy,’ Simone said. ‘You made her cry.’
    ‘These are tears of happiness, Simone,’ I said, my voice thick. ‘I’ll have this on the wall in my room for a long time.’
    ‘Good,’ John said. ‘For a moment there I thought I’d made a huge mistake.’
    ‘You don’t have any bad ideas, John,’ I said. ‘Only good ones.’
    Leo helped me put the scroll up in my room later. He banged a nail into the wall, high enough for the scroll to clear the floor.
    ‘Don’t know why he didn’t wait until next year,’ Leo growled. ‘It’s a big birthday for you, this one. This is a really depressing gift.’
    ‘No, it’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘But don’t you realise?’
    ‘What?’
    I sighed with exasperation. ‘You’ve been living in China longer than I have, Leo. You haven’t learned anything.’
    ‘What?’ Leo said impatiently.
    ‘Everything they say and do has hidden layers of meaning. Everything is symbolic.’ ‘And?’
    ‘And,’ I said, ‘Immortals are renowned for their ability to see the future.’
    ‘That would explain why they’re so goddamned serene all the time,’ Leo said. He hung the scroll on the nail. ‘They know what’s going to happen.’
    ‘It’s hard to tell how much they know; none of them will talk about it. You know there’s some things that none of them will talk about. But the symbolism of this gift is obvious.’
    We stepped back to admire the scroll.
    ‘No, it isn’t,’ Leo said. ‘Not to me, anyway.’
    ‘He thinks he won’t have the chance to give it to me for my next birthday,’ I said as calmly as I could.
    Leo was silent.
    ‘We have to get Simone up to speed.’ Leo still didn’t say anything. He turned and went out.
    I didn’t turn around when I heard the tap on the door a couple of days later, just called out, ‘Come on in.’
    Michael poked his head around the door. ‘A friend of mine’s dropped by, Emma, and wants to know if we can go to the mall together.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Michael,’ I said. ‘You know you won’t be safe by yourself and just one other. Go with a group, or take either Leo or myself to guard you.’
    Michael sighed. He obviously hadn’t wanted to tell me. ‘It’s Na Zha.’
    ‘Damn.’ I pushed myself away from my desk. ‘You know how I feel about him.’
    Michael shrugged. ‘Come on, Emma, he’s okay, he promises to behave. We just want to go and look at the new software in the shops. No trouble, promise.’
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘Outside the living room window.’
    I stormed out to the living room. Michael was right: Na Zha floated outside the living room window, poised on his fire wheels. He saw me coming and grinned.
    He moved back about three metres, then rode the fire wheels right through the window without doing any damage whatsoever to the glass. He landed lightly on the carpet without the wheels; he’d already been in major trouble once with John for singeing the carpet.
    ‘Yo,’ he said briskly. ‘How about it?’
    He looked about seventeen. He wore a pair of jeans that were more than four sizes too big for him and floated somewhere down around his hips, with his designer underwear plainly showing and the bottoms crumpled and torn. His T-shirt was black, sleeveless and much too small for him. He wore a black baseball cap back-to-front. His sunglasses and sports shoes were the most expensive on the market. An MP3 player was slung around his neck, rap