Jewel of the East Read Online Free PDF Page B

embroidered silk? The curved dagger?
    “Felix?” Lily said, holding something out to him. “Do you think this is from China? It’s jade, I think.”
    She held out her hand where a small, pale-green box sat on her palm.
    “Maybe,” he said.
    “I wonder if there’s anything inside,” she said. “Like jewels!”
    With her other hand, Lily opened the box.
    “Dirt?” she said.
    Felix nodded. The box was filled with nothing but dark soil.
    When he looked back at Lily, there was something in her eyes that made his heart jump.
    “Lily,” he said quietly. “I want you to take this box and hold really tight to it. I’m going to hold on, too. And then pull on it. Okay?”
    “Okay,” Lily said slowly.
    She put her fingers with their chipped, baby-blue nail polish around the jade box, her gaze steady on Felix. He put his hand on it, too, his fingers brushing right up against Lily’s. Lily yanked.
    The two of them stood like that for an instant, waiting.
    A voice cut through the room.
    “Felix!” Maisie exclaimed. “How could you?”
    She stomped up to them, pushed Lily hard enough for her to lose her grip on the box, and glared at her brother.
    “Maisie,” he began.
    But before he could say another word, Maisie grabbed the jade box filled with dirt and yanked, hard.
    The room filled with the smells of spices, river water, and wet soil. A wind rushed past Maisieand Felix, carrying the sounds of voices and music. Felix caught a fleeting glimpse of Lily Goldberg’s perplexed face. And then, they were gone.

Maisie and Felix landed with a thud.
    Where are we now?
Maisie wondered as she struggled to get her bearings. It was dark and smelled like the produce stand at the natural food market. She pushed her arms upward and struggled to the surface, moving the small, hard grains that surrounded her out of the way as she did. Was she in a sandpit? When her head popped out she came face-to-face with an old, wizened Chinese man. His face was weathered and deeply wrinkled, and his wispy, white hair was tied back in a pigtail.
    The old man began to shout at her in Chinese, waving his arms and jumping up and down.
    Maisie looked down. She had landed, she realized, in a giant basket of rice. That basket of rice stood next to many more baskets of rice, which stood in a row of small stalls selling vegetables. From her perch, Maisie could see green beans and radishes and green cabbages. What she didn’t see was Felix.
    Still shouting at her, the old man took her arm and pulled hard. Maisie tumbled from the basket in a shower of rice.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, getting to her feet and wiping dirt from her chocolate-brown party skirt.
    The old man practically picked her up by the nape of her neck and carried her like a kitten through the crowded marketplace, Maisie’s legs kicking the air in protest. He kept screaming at her until they reached the end of the market, where he deposited her harshly on the ground.
    Maisie sat a moment, rubbing the back of her neck where he’d held on to her. In front of her was a riverbank and a muddy river with boats moving slowly along it. Some of the boats had white sails, others were painted bright colors. She smiled. They had come all the way to China! A surge of excitement coursed through her as she looked around. Men and women in cotton tunics and pants with triangular straw hats carrying smallbaskets of food passed, staring openly at Maisie and whispering to one another in Chinese.
    China!
    Slowly, Maisie got to her feet and went back into the marketplace.
Felix has to be in here somewhere. Doesn’t he?
she wondered. Stalls lined both sides, and people haggled over prices in loud Chinese. The first stalls had piles of live crabs and high heaps of small silver fish and piles of ugly, flat fish. Next came stalls that sold glistening, brown ducks cooking on spits over coals, their long necks tucked against their wings. Maisie paused over the mountains of chilies—red, green, yellow, skinny,