Free The Blue Mountain (The Forbidden List Book 2) by G R Matthews

mean?”
    “Da, Da, Da.” His son squirmed in his arms, trying to climb down out of his arms.
    “Take him to get a toy, Haung. Don’t mind me. It is just nice to be out of the walls for a bit.” Jiao reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
    Haung smiled in return and turned towards the shops that lined the edge of the square. The signs swung above their open doorways and he choose the one that seemed to the most likely to sell children’s toys.
    Inside was a selection of small hand-crafted goods. There were painted kuàizi , chopsticks, and smooth chopping boards. Along one wall, a selection of wooden serving platters and delicate clay and porcelain bowls. Haung picked one up to examine it, careful to keep the ever grasping hands of his son well out of reach. The bowl was thin, almost translucent, and holding it up to the light from the window it was possible to see the glow of the sun through it. The inside of the bowl was plain but the outside was decorated with delicate strokes and clean lines depicting a scene from the Jade Heaven, the gods and immortals enjoying a meal beneath the tree of life. On the shelf, next to the bowls, were similarly exquisite lids.
    “They are good, no?” said a voice from behind.
    “Da,” the boy shouted.
    Haung turned and saw the shop proprietor, a man of medium height and receding hairline, was smiling at him and his son.
    “Yes, they are,” Haung said.
    “Some of the finest work you’ll see today, no?” the owner said.
    “Likely to be,” Haung agreed.
    “How many do you want?”
    “Sorry?”
    “How many bowls do you want to buy?”
    “Oh, I was just looking really,” Haung said and went to return the bowl to the shelf.
    “Don’t you like them?”
    “What? Sorry. I think they are lovely.” Haung stopped speaking and the owner responded by smiling up at him, waiting. The pause stretched a little too long, into an uncomfortable silence which Haung felt compelled to fill. “How much are they?”
    The little man looked the bowls and then more closely Haung before quoting a price. Haung felt his eyebrows rise at the number.
    “Da,” his son said.
    “Is that for four?” Haung choked.
    “Each,” the owner smiled.
    “I’ll have to think about that. What I really wanted is a toy for this little fella here,” Haung said, attempting to divert the conversation away.
    “Mmmm... we do have some Dàn zhū and I think there are some zhuQingting that haven’t been sold yet. You can find them at the back of the shop. Let me know if I can help you further.” The small man nodded and moved away to speak to another customer.
    “Well, little man,” Haung spoke to his son, “I don’t think marbles are a good idea. Your mother would tell me off if I bought them and, no doubt, you would just swallow them anyway. How about a Bamboo Dragonfly?”
    “Da.”
    “I agree. We can play with the Dragonfly in the park later.” Haung smiled at his son and was rewarded with an innocent giggle. “Come on, let’s go and look what they have. We’ll pick a good one.”
    Bamboo Dragonfly in hand, and coin purse lighter, Haung and his son left the shop in search of Jiao. The crowd was still swirling around the market stalls and he stood on the steps of the shop to look over the people’s heads. She was no longer at the textile stall. He moved down and into the crowd, going first to the stall he had left her at then followed their previous path around the stalls.
    She was not at the first three stalls and at the fourth he stopped to ask the owner if she had seen Jiao. The owner indicated that Jiao, or at least someone who looked like her, had stopped briefly but bought nothing. Haung shifted his son to his other arm, taking care not to break or bend the dragonfly, and moved on. Two stalls later, he spotted her. She was in the middle of the thoroughfare, between the shops and the stalls, and she was not alone. She stood quite close, in Haung’s mind, to a richly dressed young man.