Most places, you can’t drive into magic. But I swear, we did. The road went up and down hills and curves a couple of times, then through a tunnel, and when we merged on the other side, I gasped out loud. I felt like Dorothy when she first lands in Oz and everything changes from black and white to color.
Ahead of us was the Golden Gate Bridge, which isn’t actually gold. It is orange, though, not boring gray like every bridge back home. Underneath, there was blue water, with sailboats and huge ships steaming off to faraway lands. To the right was the Pacific Ocean, which goes all the way to Japan; to the left was Alcatraz Prison, on its own island, so no one could escape. Even in the bright sunshine, it appeared both dangerous and mysterious.
At the far end of the bridge was San Francisco, steep hills with streets like straight lines leading from the water right up to the sky. White buildings and towers, more like something from a fairy tale than a place you could go to in an ordinary Chevy.
It felt less magic once we were in it—gas stations and stoplights and wood houses that were taller than they were wide. A few streets were flat; others climbed and twisted. Around every turn was a different view: white-capped water; the towns across the bay, where we’d come from; hillsides with Easter-colored houses stacked on top of each other, not side by side, no lawns anywhere.
Aunt Polly took us down Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world, she said. It was brick and curled around itself like a snake, so tight that she had to drive very slowly. After that, the neighborhood changed to Italian, with signs for wine and pizza everywhere. We stopped for a light, and I stared into a shop window full of round cheeses and more kinds of noodles than I’d thought was possible. She parked the car on the third floor of a cement garage as twisty as the streets, and we rode down in a creaky metal elevator.
We stood at a crosswalk, waiting a long time for the light to change. When the sign finally said walk, Aunt Polly reached down and held my hand, which seemed a bit babyish, but Broadway was a big, busy street with lots of cars and trucks roaring by, so I let her.
On the other side, she stopped and let go. “Hang on a tick,” she said, looking at her watch. “We’ll wait here. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“A who, not a what. No one should visit San Francisco without seeing Chinatown, but most of it is for ordinary tourists.” She shook her head. “That’s certainly not you. However, my friend Franny knows her way around, and she’s agreed to give us the special, back-alley tour.” She winked at me, which made me feel grown up and important.
“Polly!”
We both turned. A very short woman waved from the far side of a bus stop down the block. She wore a long green shirt over a pair of loose black pants. Her dark hair was blunt-cut and chin-length, like it had been styled by someone from Thoroughly Modern Millie. When she got closer, I could see that her face was all wrinkles, and her hands had spots like my gramma’s.
“Franny!” Aunt Polly said. She sounded so happy. The two women hugged, a good, long hug, not the polite kind my mother did with her friends. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other in a very long time?
“This is my niece, Ellen,” she said, looping an arm around my shoulders. “She’s come all the way from Ohio. Ellen, this is Franny Travers, my oldest, dearest friend.”
I held out my hand, the way I’d been taught. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Travers.”
She snorted. “There is no Mr. Travers, and never will be. Just Franny is fine.”
“But—” I bit my lip, caught between two of my mother’s rules. It is rude to argue with a grown-up. And it is rude to call a grown-up woman by her first name. “My mom would make me call you Aunt Franny.”
“You can if you want.” Franny cocked her head. “I don’t mind, one way or the other. But let me point out two things before you decide. “One—” She held up an index finger. “Your mother is not here, and no one is going to tattle. And two,” she said with a grin, “now that I’m a crone, I don’t give a hoot for ordinary rules.”
“You never have,” said Aunt Polly. To me, “Franny has always been a woman of—exceptional abilities.” She glanced around. “Speaking of which, where’s Babs?”
“Boston. She’s presenting a paper at a mathematics conference,” Franny said, and looked back at me. We were almost the same height, eye to eye. “So, do you think you can bring yourself to call me Franny? Everyone else does.”
I smiled, then did my best curtsey. “I would be honored.”
She burst out laughing. “I like you, kid! Let’s see the sights.” She gestured around us with one arm. “This is Grant Avenue. The heart of Chinatown’s tourist industry. We’ll start here, get the lay of the land, ease our way slowly into this fascinating culture.”
We started walking up the right side of the street. The sidewalk was crowded with lots and lots of people heading in both directions. It was noisy, too, with so many conversations, most of them in what Franny said were a couple different kinds of Chinese. Only once in that first block of stores did I hear words I understood. The din around me was just—sounds—kind of a mix between talking and singing, the pitch going up and down, loud and soft. It was interesting, though. I could tell when it was a question, and knew that the woman in high heels was angry, but that was about it.
I wondered if that was what it had been like when Ged first learned Old Speech, the language of dragons, because Aunt Polly was right: dragons were everywhere. Most of them were gold and red, long and skinny, like snakes with four clawed feet. No wings. Carved statues with big sharp teeth, dragons painted on the windows of stores, golden ones twined around lanterns at the tops of street signs. Shops called Jade Dragon, Silver Dragon, Lucky Dragon.
Above and below were signs in English, or in Chinese characters that meant nothing to me, and lots that were half-and-half—words I knew, but in letters pretending to be Chinese.
“I’ve had chop suey,” I said, pointing to a tall neon sign with the half-and-half letters running from top to bottom. “The commercials say it’s cooked in dragon fire.” I shrugged. “That part’s probably not true.”
“Unlikely,” Franny said. “But we could have lunch there, if that’s a favorite food.”
“It’s not.” I stuck out my tongue. “It’s what my friend Mindy’s mom made last time I slept over. It comes in two cans, with crunchy fried noodles. Those are okay, but the vegetable half is worse than cafeteria food.”
Franny laughed. “It is rather awful, and not even real Chinese cuisine, just an American mish-mosh.” She pointed down the street. “Let’s walk a few more blocks. I know a little out-of-the-way place where we can have a true feast.”
“Ooh, I’ve never had a feast. Except for Thanksgiving,” I said.
“Then let us continue.”
The sidewalk wasn’t wide enough for all three of us to walk next to each other, so we took turns: two up front, one back, switching every time one of us stopped to look in a shop window, which was about every ten feet.
I had never seen so many things crowded into a single store in my whole life. There were neat shelves, like the supermarket back home, but also jumbles of paper lanterns and purses and san francisco souvenirs hanging from the ceiling, bamboo whistles and wooden puzzles and plastic toys stacked in trays out front, like they were fruit or candy bars. I wanted to buy something to take home with me, but there were so many piles of bright colors, my eyes didn’t know where to look. I only had sixty-three cents, and before I made up my mind, I wanted to look at everything.