Sam & The Jade Dragon's Eye

Dust leaped from the bookshelf when Sam pulled out a cracked clay horse. It landed on the floor with a soft clunk.

“Careful,” said Professor Liu Wei. “That horse is older than your great-grandmother.”

Sam froze. He had arrived in Beijing from Johannesburg that morning, and already he was holding history in one hand. Outside the study window, bicycle bells rang along the hutong, a narrow old neighborhood of lanes and courtyard homes. Red lanterns swung in the breeze.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “But look at this!”

Behind the clay horse sat a leather journal. Its cover was dark and dry, like an old boot. A faded jade-green mark shone on the front: a dragon with one empty eye.

Professor Liu crossed the room quickly. His tea trembled in its cup.

“Put it down, Sam.”

That made Sam want to open it even more.

“Why?”

“Because some things are hidden for a reason.”

Sam wanted one clear answer. He wanted to know why the journal was in the study, why it had a dragon on it, and why Professor Liu looked worried. He carefully lifted the cover.

A map slid out and spread across the desk. It showed Beijing in thin brown lines. At the center was a tiny drawing of a palace with golden roofs.

Under the map, someone had written:

Where the dragon faces the sun,

Where nine walls guard the throne,

Find the eye that is not yet whole.

Sam knew the palace. He had seen its red walls from the car.

“The Forbidden City,” he said.

Professor Liu snatched up the map. “Keep your voice down.”

A scrape sounded outside the door.

Sam turned. The study door stood open a finger’s width. No one was there. A dark shape moved past the courtyard wall. Then it vanished.

“Was that Madame Vex?” Sam whispered.

Professor Liu’s face went pale. “She collects stolen treasures. If she knows about this journal, we must move fast.”

He pressed a finger to the dragon mark. A tiny click came from inside the cover. Sam found a thin brass pin among the journal’s loose pages and pushed it into the mark.

The seal sprang open.

Inside was a map of the Forbidden City - but one page had been torn away. A jagged strip remained, showing half a red gate and three black dots.

Sam gripped the journal.

He had found the first lead. He had also found a missing piece.

“Professor,” he said, “should we draw the gate before we go?”

Professor Liu looked toward the open door.

“Yes,” he said. “And circle those three dots. They may be the only safe way in.”

Dust had barely settled on the clay horse when Sam heard the first bicycle bell again, closer now and shriller, as if someone rode with purpose. The hutong outside Professor Liu’s study smelled faintly of frying scallion pancakes and coal smoke. A cool evening leaned into the room through the open window, lifting the edges of the map like a curious hand. Sam flattened his palm over the paper and felt the ridges of old ink under his fingertips.

“Circle the three dots,” Professor Liu said, and his voice had that careful steadiness adults used when they were trying not to frighten kids. He kept glancing at the doorway as if expecting it to cough up a person. A narrow shadow had passed the courtyard wall; now the courtyard itself was ordinary again. But the map’s missing page made the Forbidden City suddenly feel like a place with teeth.

Sam could taste the copper tang of worry at the back of his throat. He wanted the map circled, yes, but more than that he wanted the truth: why was a journal with a dragon missing an eye in Professor Liu’s study? Why had someone torn a page out of a map? Most of all, he wanted to touch the thing the riddle named - the Jade Dragon’s Eye - and find out if a boy from Johannesburg could help put it back together.

“Do you think Madame Vex sent someone to look?” Sam asked. He tried to make his voice small. He tried, too, to keep his fingers from tracing the tiny palace drawing at the center of the map.

Professor Liu set his tea down with more force than necessary. The cup made a fluted clink against its saucer and steam swirled up like a question mark. “She has people everywhere,” he said. “Old networks. Young thieves who learn quickly. If she knows even a scrap of this - ” He stopped, rubbed his temple as if the motion could press worry flat.

Sam’s stomach did a small flip. In Johannesburg he’d read stories of distant collectors who might pay for fragments of history. In Beijing, those stories suddenly had names and faces. Madame Vex: an image of a sharp woman in silk, a smile that cut like a razor. He said the name quietly, like a spell that might summon her. The syllables felt foreign and heavy in his mouth. He had practiced Mandarin with Professor Liu, but the word still stuck like a pebble.

“Do we go now?” Sam asked. The map of the Forbidden City lay between them: careful ink streets, a sketch of the Gate of Supreme Harmony, and the jagged edge where someone had ripped the page out. The three black dots on the remaining strip of paper sat like a small constellation....