Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

they would need help if they were going to confront the Ascendants. Compressing her lips, she sent a text with their location and a quick explanation. Then, with Cal idling nervously beside her, sometimes looking over her shoulder and sometimes pacing the empty room, Andie began researching the history of Vietnam and Hanoi, searching for a connection.

Two hours later, Cal went downstairs to use the restroom. Andie leaned back in her chair and chewed on a nail, contemplative. After reworking the clues time and time again, searching for dragons and lotus petals and old maps of the subcontinent found in museums around the world, she had found no mention of five prominent doors in the history of Vietnam, or anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Perhaps she had made a grave mistake, and Vietnam wasn’t the next stop after all. Perhaps they were in the wrong part of the world entirely.

No. Trust the evidence, and your instincts.

She thought back on the conversation in the Durham restaurant, the gist of which tracked with what she had just learned. Vietnam was not a nation of overwhelming historical achievements, like China or India. The Vietnamese had made contributions, sure, especially in the arts. An ancient form of musical storytelling had originated in Vietnam, as well as a beautiful tradition of water puppetry. Calligraphy styles, painting techniques, theater, martial arts: the Vietnamese had perfected quiet expressions of humanity, and developed an aesthetic evident even in the small part of Hanoi that Andie had seen.

It struck her that Vietnam’s principal achievements were internal, rather than external. The mindfulness needed to create great art. The quiet, fierce determination that helped the country survive centuries of Chinese occupation, French colonialism, and a horrific modern war.

Was there something to this line of thought, in connection with the Star Phone clue?

Maybe, maybe not.

Cal came upstairs with two cups of coffee to go. “It’s time to cruise on out of here. The staff is starting to look at me funny.”

Andie rubbed her eyes from screen fatigue. “I suppose we need to find a place to stay.”

“No luck with the research?”

She rose and slowly shook her head.

According to the map, Hanoi’s Old Town was a short walk west of their location, and they would have their pick of hotels. As they delved into the heart of the city, the crowds grew denser, leaving Andie feeling unmoored, lost in yet another foreign place, wanting nothing more than to help her mother and Dr. Corwin but forced to solve a puzzle that had her guessing at every turn, lurching from country to country, clue to clue. She knew there was a greater purpose to it all, and the Star Phone was teaching as much as testing, but she hadn’t signed up to play the game, and the hoops they had to jump through infuriated her.

Their route led to a promenade that ran alongside a pea-green lake. A three-tiered stone pagoda seemed to be floating on the lotus petals strewn in the middle of the water, and on the far side, an arched footbridge connected the shore to a red-lacquered temple with sinuous curves. Along the promenade, groups of adults performed tai chi as children licked ice cream cones and ran to the water’s edge to watch the ducks. A succession of gnarled trees covered with red blossoms dipped their feathery branches into the lake. Andie stopped to inhale the loamy scent of the vegetation, letting some of her stress melt away. The scenery was quite enchanting. Cal joined her, quiet for once, staring at the water with a distant expression.

“You look like something’s on your mind,” she said.

“My mother loved the serenity of Asian art. This place is a woodblock come to life, yet there’s all this urban chaos around it, which somehow makes it even more poignant.”

“She passed?”

“My mother? Yeah. Lung cancer. Smoked like a chimney.”

“What was she like?”

He folded his arms, as if withdrawing into himself. “She was patient, kind, and artistic. A painter and an actress. You know. One of the good ones.” He turned and started walking toward a crosswalk that led to the Old Town. Andie watched him go, contemplative, sensing he had loved his mother very much.

They quickly realized that a crosswalk in Hanoi was the equivalent of the human appendix: an utterly useless organ. Eventually they got up the nerve to dart across the broad avenue, narrowly avoiding a microbus and a family of four on a scooter. They bypassed the fancy hotels overlooking the lake and walked deeper into the Old Town, soaked with sweat from the walk, swatting at mosquitoes that had come out at dusk to feast. This section of Hanoi was a romantic ruin of a city, its winding, narrow streets bursting with life, wrapped in history and the sheltering limbs of banyans. There were countless restaurants and street stalls, homeless families squatting in unfinished buildings next to five-star hotels, makeshift cafés with plastic chairs built around the trunks of jacarandas.

By the time they chose a hotel, the crush of activity had become overwhelming. Andie breathed a sigh of relief at the manufactured calm of the lobby. A plate glass window showcased the street outside the entrance, exposing vendors selling raw fish out of buckets, a barefoot couple huddled around a cooking pot on a rooftop, and a dozen other urban vignettes. The chaotic scene just steps away made Andie feel as if she had entered a hermetically sealed chamber for the privileged.

And she supposed she had.

Though cheap by Western standards, the Maison d’Orient was clean, bright, and classy, a medley of dark wood and brass finishings. While Cal paid for the room, Andie wandered over to browse the sightseeing brochures displayed on a stand. The tours to Sapa and Ha Long Bay made her wish she was in the country on vacation, and she browsed the list of attractions of Hanoi, trying to familiarize herself with the city.

Quan Thanh Temple. The opera house. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Saint Joseph’s Cathedral. The