“No, no, we should go help,” Lian said, staring at the flames, the smoke. She picked up her suitcase again.

“That was a gas explosion and there will be more,” the girl said, as patiently as if Lian were a child. “This street will burn to the ground before the fire trucks come. If they even come. We must get back to campus, let them know we’re safe.”

“Sparrow’s right,” Shao said. “Let’s walk back to campus.”

He reached down and took the wicker suitcase from her. “Let me take this,” he said. “We left our luggage behind when we ran from the station.”

When Lian didn’t move, he took her hand. She followed him obediently and they made their way slowly through the ruined streets. Past crumpled vehicles flung against walls, homes collapsed into small landslides of shattered building materials. Past ragged piles of bloodied clothing, some moving feebly. Lian couldn’t stop hearing the screams and desperate voices calling out for mothers, husbands, children. For help. Jiu ming ah, jiu ming! Save me, oh, save me!

“This is hopeless, Sparrow,” Shao said after several blocks. “The streets are a mess. I can barely tell where we are.”

“I know the way,” Sparrow said. “Let me lead.” There was a pure and shining quality to the young woman’s voice, Lian thought.

“Sparrow and I grew up together,” Shao said. “She was one of our house servants. She claims she got bored with Shanghai and that’s why she came to Nanking. But I’m certain my mother sent her to keep an eye on me. Right, Sparrow?”

Sparrow looked over her shoulder and smiled.

Blinking tears from her stinging eyes, Lian thought for a split second that Sparrow Chen’s silhouette glowed, shimmering with a clear light that gleamed through the murk. Lian wiped her eyes with a grubby sleeve and when she looked again, Sparrow’s figure was quite ordinary, a petite shape clambering over the wreckage of a fallen roof.

All the way back, Shao talked. About his roommate, Pao, who had gone home the week before. About his two older brothers, one running the family’s shipping business, the other working as an aide for a senior cabinet member in the government. About his home in Shanghai, a modern villa with formal European gardens in front, classical Chinese gardens at the back with two goldfish ponds and a pavilion.

Lian knew he was trying to distract her, but she barely heard his words as she stumbled along beside him, back to Minghua University. Back to the tranquil campus designed after American colleges, its green lawns edged with gravel walkways, and halls and dormitories of warm red brick. Back to a tranquility that could not possibly last.

Chapter 2