The Divorcee Is A Wicked Black Belly

"What"s wrong with him?" Nian Zhen asked, looking at Tsai Po with some impatience. The barge nearly escaped by the skin of its teeth when the snake twins created a near tsunami of waves. Everybody on deck was trying to shovel water back into the sea. And here was this idiot making himself look crazy by acting like a moron.

"I think his niece is missing," Kari said, wiping a table with a towel. "He"s been so worried. It seemed he hadn"t seen her since last night."

"So why look for her here?"

"I think she was the one that the snake twins impersonated," An Ning said, frowning. "They must have seen her and decided to copy her. Otherwise how would they know which to impersonate."

She stopped when she felt the gazes of the stunned people around her.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"Snake twins?" Kari was dumbfounded. "An Ning, what are you talking about? How did you know those snakes are twins?"

"I talked to them," An Ning shrugged.

"You talk to snakes now?"

"They knew my grandmother so they decided to talk to me."

This piece of shocking news seemed to add to the weirdness of the situation. And it was obviously making people look at An Ning a different way.

"Those snakes knew your grandmother?" Hank asked with a blank expression on his face.

An Ning sighed.

"I think I need to explain some things. My grandmother is Hippolya, the queen of the Amazons. My mother is her only daughter. She decided to retire and made me her successor by giving me this belt," she said, pointing to the gold belt around her slim waist, "which is a sort of a crown. So, when the snake twins saw the belt they figure that since the Amazons and them have a sort of history together, might as well introduce themselves to me. I really gave them no choice about it though. I was about to kill them."

Kari and Hank, however, were not listening to the rest of her explanation. They stared hard at An Ning after they heard the name Hippolyta.

"The Creator is your grandmother?" Kari looked totally flummoxed.

"Didn"t you see the family resemblance?" Nian Zhen asked, amused.

"Ya, but I thought she was an aunt or something. She"s not old enough to have kids," Kari protested.

"Apparently she is since she has my mother," An Ning said dryly.

"And you said she"s an Amazon?" Hank said, still trying to wrap his head around the idea. "That Amazon in the legend?"

"That Amazon in the legend," An Ning nodded.

"And this snake knew her?"

"She and her brother said they did."

"And you opened a portal." Suddenly, Hank"s eyes focused more sharply on An Ning. "That was a portal, right? You just opened a portal. Without computers, or programming or whatever. You did something like maybe chant some magic and the portal was here and it obeyed you."

"Why not? Since it now belongs to me."

Even Nian Zhen was stunned by her words.

"It belongs to you?"

"You were looking for the missing link in the magus gene, right? Turns out that missing link is me."

The silence stretched. Her listeners were too stunned to say another word. Tsai Po, who seemed to have been done chewing his crew off after they scampered away to escape, hurried to the group with an anxious look on his face.

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d He Heng seemed to have done something to Smilla," he said.

"Smilla?" An Ning asked.

"My niece. She"s been missing since last night."

"You don"t remember what happened this morning?"

"I don"t remember a thing," Tsai Po said bitterly. "I woke up and I was already here on the Whimsy. Is He Heng really dead and did he do something to the hostages?"

"According to the snake twins, He Heng was part of a cult or something whose leader summoned them using divine words from their Father. The words were so majestic they dare not disobey it.They didn"t want to come up to the surface since they seem to like sleeping a lot but when this cult leader offered blood, they had no choice but to appear. And they killed He Heng and was about to kill you for food."

"For food?" Tsai Po gawked. "As in for eating?"

"You almost became snake food Tsai Po."

"But why call them? I don"t understand any of this. He Heng was family. My mother brought him up as a child. I was away being a pirate while he was home being like a son to them," Tsai Po said bitterly. "It doesn"t make sense."

"It probably had something to do with Pirate City," Nian Zhen said.

"Pirate City?" Tsai Po said, dumbstruck. "Pirate City was already here when I came home. That was what Whitebeard and I dreamed of, to start our own city in an island we can call home since other homes were no longer opened to us. Pirate City had nothing to do with He Heng. He was just part of my crew."

"Apparently to him, he was more than that," An Ning said wryly.

"He Heng was not a pirate," Tsai Po scoffed. "If he had taken over from me or deposed my authority the pirates who knew me and followed me would have had his head on a platter. We may be pirates but we do believe in that saying, honor among thieves."

"What are you thinking, Ning Ning?" Nian Zhen asked when he saw a frown cross An Ning"s face.

"Why would someone like He Heng thought he could kill Tsai Po and take his place as the pirate king? Who gave him such an idea?"

The question surprised Tsai Po who frowned then suddenly looked uncertain.

"What is it?" An Ning asked, catching his expression.

"There was a shaman who visited the island about a month ago," Tsai Po said, trying to recall and gather his thoughts together. "He was spouting nonsense about Pirate City being a den of thieves and murderers and things like that which I didn"t like. I wanted to get him off the island but He Heng told me not yet because there was a flu epidemic that time and the shaman was the only doctor we had."

"He was also a doctor?" Kari was surprised.

"Yes, and a very good one, too. It"s just his politics that he and I didn"t agree about."

"So, what happened to this guy?" Hank said.

"When the epidemic was contained, I told him to go. He Heng said that he would personally see him off the island. That was about five days ago and then we had a little excitement when we captured your men and we sailed for Chengdi not long after," Tsai Po said.

"So, you weren"t sure if he left or not," Kari said.

Tsai Po hesitated.

"I trusted He Heng to do what he said. Why would I suspect him?"

"Didn"t you say that his parents were murdered by another pirate?" An Ning asked.

"By the vilest piece of sc.u.m this world had ever seen, yes."

"That could be the reason why he didn"t like pirates," Nian Zhen pointed out.

Tsai Po frowned in thought.

"He never said it directly to me but I"ve always felt that he thought of himself as bigger than piracy. My mother encouraged him to become a scholar. My father didn"t care what he did since he wasn"t blood related. He wanted to do other things but what? The options for him were rather limited."

"Is that the reason why he went sailing with you?"

Tsai Po nodded.

"I got the feeling from what my mother was not telling me that my father wanted him out of the house. It was okay for my brother not to become a pirate since he became a successful merchant but He Heng was kind of lost so he had no choice really but to come with me. But I didn"t know his hatred ran this deep. To hurt Smilla...," Tsai Po stopped.

"She"s staying with your parents, right?" An Ning asked. "Why is she here then?"

"She said she wanted to see Pirate City. She"s only thirteen years old and a bit of a tomboy. I told her she can stay for a short time then I will take her back on sh.o.r.e. That was three months ago."

"Did she like it here?" Kari asked.

Tsai Po shrugged.

"I guess. When my brother and his wife pa.s.sed away, I was very surprised to find out that he left her in my care. I"ve only seen him off and on for two years since I came home. He was a good man and was the only non-pirate guy I knew who became really successful."

"What did he do?" Nian Zhen asked.

"Buy stuff and sell them. He mostly buys from pirates who became really familiar with him. It was them who told me I had a brother even before I came home," Tsai Po smiled.

"That must have been a shock," said Hank.

"It was since my parents allowed him to think he was an only child."

Everyone gaped at him awkwardly.

"My parents were kind of flaky," Tsai Po said with a shrug. "I guess my father was ashamed to admit to his younger son that he kicked his eldest son out of the house because he wanted him to become a pirate. My mother on the other hand thought I was dead and felt pity for my father

because of his bad parenting so she didn"t say anything."

"So, how did he find out?" An Ning asked.

"My father got drunk one night and became too emotional and just blurted out the whole truth. When my brother realized the injustice they did me, he started looking for me. He didn"t want to become a pirate himself but he found a better way of finding me in his own way. He bought exclusively from pirates and they accepted him because he was my father"s son. And when he told them he was looking for me, they became quite intrigued and promised to help. It took him nearly six years. Whitebeard refused to go on sh.o.r.e except to fuel up and buy stuff so it was quite a while since everybody heard anything from him."

"Your brother sounded like a very nice man," An Ning said.

"He was," Tsai Po agreed, smiling. "The only reason I came home was because of him. He had already married by this time and had Smilla. I never thought he"d go before me though. The way I lived I thought it was going to be me who"d go first."

Each of them thought of what he said. That honorable young man who lived a mostly pleasant life then to find out that he had a brother who had been missing for over ten years and that it was his father"s fault he had been missing in the first place. Then to spend six years to try and find him. They looked at Tsai Po. No wonder he had been deathly worried about his niece. She was the only daughter of the loyal brother who still anch.o.r.ed him to sh.o.r.e. And to lose her just like that was a betrayal of his brother"s trust in him.

"When we find this shaman, we"ll surely find your niece," An Ning said.

"But you said something about the twin snakes imitating her, which meant that they"ve seen her. Shouldn"t they be the more suspicious suspect?" Hank said.

They stopped and their eyes immediately strayed to that wall of plain gauze that still hid the feasting snake from curious eyes. The waters around the wall still roiled and boiled, indicating that the feast was still ongoing behind the walls. Now that the snake was contained, everyone, especially An Ning, was reluctant to go near it. The sight of the twin snakes feasting and devouring their food was just too much.

"We can"t just stand here and wait for them though," An Ning said. "They might or might not have something to do with Tsai Po"s niece"s disappearance but it doesn"t mean we have to stand here and do nothing. There"s just too many unanswered questions. Where is the shaman? Why wake the snake from the thousand years sleep? What"s the motive behind all this and unless we get some answers we won"t really accomplish anything other than suspect the snake twins of killing Smilla. That could be true but what about the rest? Who"s behind this whole plot and why?"

"What do you intend to do then?" Nian Zhen asked.

"If I have to shake the entire island up and down, I"m going to find them. Isn"t that what you want?" An Ning asked, turning to Tsai Po.

"I want Smilla found," Tsai Po said. "I don"t care how you do it, I want my niece found."

He was still talking when the Whimsy suddenly shuddered and nearly keeled. An Ning and Nian Zhen instinctively grabbed the twins, holding them tightly as the barge danced up and down on the waves. Everyone else was screaming in panic, holding on to whatever solid thing their hands can grab on. An Ning"s dependable strips of gauze again zoomed out of nowhere and grabbed them to safety as the barge gave a last shudder then stopped.

The sudden lack of movement was so abrupt that everybody looked at each other wondering what the heck was going on. Then a movement from the upper deck caught their eyes. The ma.s.sive snake was there, slithering down, its body glowing under the sun. As they watched horrified, the snake"s body suddenly shrank and split in half. When the split bodies reach the lower deck where its human audience were watching, the separated bodies again transformed and slowly acquired a human form.

The blue head became a young boy and the head with the red crown became a young girl. The two of them walked towards the gaping humans and stopped. The young girl looked at An Ning.

"I think I can help you find these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. We want them found for daring to wake us from our sleep," she said.

"And for daring to use the divine words of our Father to force us to commit crimes we have long ago stopped doing," the young boy added. "We are going to help you but we want one thing in return."

"And what is that?" An Ning asked curiously.

"We want you to take us with you," the young girl said. "We have nowhere else to go. Now that we"ve woken up, we stay awake for the next ten thousand years. That"s how these things work. After ten thousand years, then we go back to sleep. But in the meantime, we don"t have a home, a family, or n.o.body to take care of us."

"This is a new world for us so we need your help and a.s.sistance. I a.s.sure you, once we"ve sorted things out then we"ll leave and go on our own separate ways. In the meantime, we need a place to stay and since you are the granddaughter of our former ally, then the duty falls on you," the young boy said in a rush.

An Ning looked at them, stunned then amused. She couldn"t helped it. She laughed out loud. The snake twins were not as confident as they sounded. They were staring at An Ning with similar panicked faces, their eyes bottomless pools of dread. Ten thousand years asleep at the bottom of the ocean and now they"ve awakened against their wills. People may still fear them but they were not as invincible as they first thought they were. Humans can kill them and nearly did as An Ning demonstrated. This world was not the same world they knew from a long time ago and they were scared.

What to do when the enemy didn"t fear you as you first thought they should? Ingratiate yourselves to them, of course. Show yourselves in your most vulnerable state by copying what humans usually care and were most protective of. Children. The innocent guile of children that can fool even the most reviled person in the world.

An Ning chuckled and thought to herself, they really think they had me, did they?