The Scroll of Chaos by Elsie Chapman

Author:Elsie Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

“What!” I sat up straight. “That’s so unfair. Poor god.”

“Have you guessed Hundun’s other name yet?” Mom gives me a squeeze. “It was Chaos. Shu and Hu also shared another name, and it was Order. And in forcing Chaos into being something against his nature, Order wrongfully killed Chaos. So, now that you’ve heard his story, do you still mean to help destroy the true hero?”

I stare at Mom like she’s a stranger. How can she think this Hundun rock is actually Chaos the demon? Or that Chaos is a hero and worthy of a silk-thread painting? “Chaos isn’t the good guy, Mom. He wants to destroy all of Zhen!”

She smiles again. “He’s only misunderstood. And none of it is his fault—it’s yin and yang, and because order exists, so must he. Instead of helping stop the prophecy, you and Marilla should go back home.”

A cloud slides over the sky and for an instant, everything goes dark. When the cloud clears away, Mom’s holding a plate of my family-famous fruit dumplings.

Which is … weird. And her shirt—it’s not pale gray elephants anymore but dark gray snakes.

Fear prickles across the back of my neck.

“You’re not Mom,” I whisper. “This is a dream.”

“Of course it’s me. I traveled across realms just to see you! And I even brought some of your baked dumplings for us to share.” Mom’s still smiling, but now her teeth—the way they shine in the moonlight—look a lot more like fangs.

“Did you know the inside of a dumpling is a symbol of harmony?” She holds out a dumpling. “The perfect balance of all different ingredients, swirling together. And yet this harmony is also imprisoned, stuck inside with no room to move.”

Harmony. Balance. I think of how Grandma was always so careful picking out just the right ingredients for her meat dumplings (and how she helped me make my apple ones better). “The flavors must dance together perfectly, Astrid,” she’d say, “or the taste will be uneven. Out of balance.”

Mom cracks open the baked shell of a dumpling, and sugary fruit spills out all over the plate. “Only when its cage gets broken can harmony be freed. Don’t you want harmony?”

I pinch the inside of my arm. Wake up! I want to get away from this Dream-Mom who keeps talking about dumplings. This smiley Mom who is even scarier than a Mom who looks at you without seeing you.

“You want to know something else?” Dream-Mom asks. “Harmony and chaos actually mean the same thing. Isn’t that funny?”

“No, they don’t. They’re totally different.”

“They are the same. Both mean combining things, the mixing of them. It’s just that one is a hero’s word and the other a villain’s. And now that you know the real story of Chaos, you must let him be free.”

Another cloud comes and goes; Dream-Mom and dream-dumplings are finally gone. And a monster is in their place.

No—a serpent. Just like the dark gray snakes that were on Dream-Mom’s shirt, except alive and a hundred times bigger (maybe even more).

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