Chapter 13
LI FAI AGREED to come with her to check out the trees and put wards on them if possible. They left the cabin and its wonderful nutty scent for the fresh morning air.
On the deck, one of Li Han’s domestic staff, a middle-aged woman dressed in a dark tunic, stood with a bowl casting handfuls of grain into the duck pen. The birds went head-down in a frenzy, gobbling up as much of the grain as quickly as they could. The woman shouted and waved the bucket when the ducks became too eager. Then she noticed Li Fai and bowed to him, and also to Johanna.
Li Fai helped Johanna down the steep gangplank, where the coach still waited, with Anton and the driver watching without the slightest expressions of puzzlement on their faces.
Johanna told Anton that she wanted to go to the tree in t
