Sky of Paper: An Asian Steam-Driven Fantasy Tale

by Matthew Seaver

  "I am deeply grateful to you old man." Miss Nishio stood up and ushered Kassashimei and I to do the same.

  The three of us gave a respectful bow.

  As we prepared to leave, the old man summoned our attention.

  "Oh and Miss Nishio, the price still stands."

  In my old age, I remembered paying a visit to a young friend and walking with him into the shopping district of his home city. He was barely an adult and had just recently started attending a local university. Because he was studying contemporary history, he found a certain interest in me. And because I was genuinely flattered by his praises and comments about my past I could not help but give him a small insight into the world I was once a part of.

  We were searching for a place to eat, and when I pointed to a small, rustic building, he said he was in no mood to dine in a tea house and suggested eating at a proper restaurant.

  I told him about the incredible things that once happened in such places. That, in my time, to enter a tea house was to glimpse for the briefest of moments, a secret life. That was enough to convince him to dine with me there.

  To my relief, I managed to distract him enough with other conversations, such that I never had to tell him as to the meaning of my words, for in my time, a tea house was much more than common people presumed it to be. Its origins dated back to a time when owners of air vessels would negotiate with masters and teachers for the right to borrow their chienkuu ko students. An air ship captain, his ship and his cargo were worthless without the skills of the chienkuu ko to navigate the skies.

  Because of the need for secrecy, negotiations were held in places disguised as businesses. Such places did little more than pretend to offer the comfort of a place to sit and sip tea. Soon, high-ranking dignitaries and officials came to negotiate alongside their vessel captains and ship owners.

  To the common man, all they saw were people of great power and wealth sipping tea at an otherwise humble, quiet place of business. Curious and inspired by the attention theses places were receiving, people of every kind began to gather and take part in this strange ritual of simply sitting and sipping tea in public.

  It was not long before tea houses became popular. They soon expanded to even serve meals and host parties, becoming a place of relaxation and entertainment. Because of the need to service the growing number of customers, chienkuu ko were also trained in the arts of music and dance, expanding their uses beyond that of just air travel.

  When common people started building true businesses, selling the same amenities as the tea houses, officials soon became confused as to which places were for negotiating and which were just normal establishments. The masters reached an agreement that they would name their houses after flowers, that whatever property they possessed would carry their crest. From then on, a vessel owner interested in discussing business had only to find a place marked with a flower emblem.

  As convincing as they were to the average eye, behind it all, the tea house had always retained its true, hidden form; a place where chienkuu ko trained and sold their skills to those who needed them.

  Miss Nishio was certainly no master or teacher of any sort, but she knew, as the head of the Tiger Lily House, how to settle a deal with prospective clients and how to properly sell the skills of the people she owned. Unfortunately, she was not as well off as her other counterparts. Unlike the Tiger Lilly, other houses owned three to four pairs of chienkuu ko and could make a prosperous living even without the income from their tea houses. Miss Nishio however, could not even afford to employ a full-time teacher. As for chienkuu ko, her house owned only one pair, and it was that evening, after we’d come back from the docks that they too arrived after performing their ritualistic duties and serving their clients.

  I was cleaning out the dust in my room as Miss Nishio had ordered when I noticed from my window on the second story, a rickshaw pulling up to the tea house entrance. Meng came running up to the rickshaw, earnestly helped its two passengers disembark, then lead them through the gates. They wore extravagant looking robes and their faces were hidden underneath elegant, wide-brimmed hats made of red and gold satin.

  Out of curiosity I scurried downstairs.

  I watched the front door from behind a screen, but after a moment, I felt confused, because no one came in. A cold, bony hand took my arm and I looked up to see Madame Quoli just before she jerked me away.

  "What are you doing?" she said sharply. "Hurry up and come with me."

  She pulled me along to the side door where Meng and the other two had just entered. The side entrance drew less attention, especially during busy nights when there were lots of guests.

  Meng remained submissive, respectfully keeping her eyes to the ground as she took their shoes and neatly placed them in rows at the entrance.

  "Take their hats and don't forget to bow," Madame Quoli commanded.

  I did as she told and took their hats as if I were handling a tray of fragile porcelain, all the while, copying Meng’s demeanor and keeping my eyes lowered. Then, there was a voice, one that caught me by such surprise that I had to look up.

  "Terr?"

  It was Lai and Mai, the very two people I’d taken for temple students, who’d trained me through so many dark and cold mornings.

  "I trust things went well?" Quoli interjected.

  "Yes, it went extremely well Madame," Lai replied. "Ran Du was quite pleased with our performance. He wanted me to pass along his compliments and he looks forward to contracting with us again."

  "Good. Terr, take their things upstairs. Meng, prepare their baths."

  Meng bowed in acknowledgement, but when Quoli saw me distracted by the presence of such familiar faces, she pressed her fingers sharply against my shoulder, causing me to bow instinctively.

  Lai and Mai lead me to their rooms on the third floor.

  Along the way, Kassashimei caught us in the hallway, and was just as surprised by their sudden appearance as I was. Without so much as a respectful greeting, she fell in line beside me and followed.

  Between the both of them, they had fully one third of the entire third floor to themselves. The scale of their living area left me at a loss as to where to place their hats. Mai showed me the way to their closet, which by itself, was easily the size of my room.

  The place they resided was, in fact, three separate rooms connected together; one bedroom for each of them and a meeting room furnished with a low wooden table and surrounded by tatami mats. Even though there were no decorations or wall scrolls to be found, the vast amount of space that was afforded them was more than enough to make the place seem luxurious.

  In anticipation of their arrival, there was already a tray of refreshments sitting on the table. Lai however did not seem to care much for them and instead fell clumsily to the floor sprawling himself out near the table. Mai, in a much more elegant manner, kneeled down onto one of the mats.

  "What are the both of you doing here?" Lai asked, bobbing his head in my direction. "Aren't you supposed to be training at the temple?"

  "Aren't you?" Kassashimei asked the prone shyo mu bluntly. "All this time, and I thought that the both of you were Imperial Students."

  "You only thought that," Mai said taking a sip of tea. "We've been in service to Miss Nishio since we were children. Someone of very high office had offered this house a great deal of money for us to go up to the mountain and train the two of you. Miss Nishio must know some very important people at the temple."

  Lai sat up, giving a loud, boisterous sigh.

  "So now that you know about us, I’d like to know why you two are here," he said in a serious tone.

  "Isn't it obvious? We've been summoned here to take your places." Kassashimei's brash sarcasm caused Mai to dart an annoyed look in her direction.

  "Kass, please keep quiet," I said, sitting down at the table.

  With great regret, I told them everything that had happened. Afterwards Lai and Mai silently turned to each other, as if sharing each others’ thoughts
.

  "Terr, this is not the place you should be," Lai said. "You’re supposed to be better than this. How can you throw it all away like that? How can you? You were a child of the sky, chosen by the Empire, and now, you‘re just a piece of property to some tea house."

  His sudden bout of passion seemed to offend Mai. She tried to calm him down.

  "Lai, please don't be like this," she uttered.

  "No, he had a choice. Don't you see Mai? He could have avoided all of this and went on to graduate from the temple. But he didn't. Now he's here with us."

  "He still has a choice, and I do too," Kassashimei interrupted. "We may have ended up here, but we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives in this place. We’re going to prove to Miss Nishio that we’re worthy of something better. You'll see. Terr and I are going to train hard and show you that we never needed to attend that stupid temple."

  "So you think you’re so high and mighty that you can insult the Imperial Temple?" It was evident that Lai was on the brink of losing his patience.

  "I can insult anyone and anything I choose."

  "Kass, stop it. Stop it right now." I placed my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it away.

  "No, I won't. He thinks we're failures. Well we're not, and you and I are going to prove it to him. Besides, he was probably too much of a coward train at the temple himself."

  "That's enough," Mai shouted. "The both of you get out."

  Mai pounded her tea cup against the table, splattering the hot liquid on her hand. She gasped from the pain and hurriedly rubbed it with her sleeve.

  "Mai, are you ok?" I took a piece of cloth from my pocket and began wiping away the spilled tea, but received a forceful nudge from Lai. He too, told me to leave; not with words, but with a piercing look.

  Ignoring Kassashimei's protests, I took her by the wrist and lead her downstairs.

  The second floor was empty. Everyone, including Miss Nishio seemed to be attending to the guests on the floor below. I pulled Kassashimei into my room where she twisted her wrist free of my grasp.

  "What’s wrong with you?" I said. "Are you trying to get us kicked out?"

  "What difference does it make? We've already been kicked out of one place. Why not another?"

  "So is that it then? I admit it, I made a terrible mistake, and it's my fault that you ended up here. I’m sorry, I‘m so sorry. Please, don‘t make things worse than they already are."

  "Make things worse? You think that’s what I am doing? Aren't you angry Terr, aren't you angry at all? They think we're failures. Miss Nishio, that stupid boy upstairs, they make it sound like we've committed the worst crime possible by getting expelled from the temple. Well we're not failures Terr, we're not."

  "Miss Nishio doesn’t think that. None of them do. If they did, they would have tossed us out on the streets right now. I don‘t know what‘s going on, but I have a feeling that there are people watching over us, people that want us to succeed. We've been singled out you and I, and so far we've been made to do incredible things. Whatever happens, I want to see this through. I want to see what waits for us at the end of all of this. I want to be a chienkuu ko and I want you to stay as my shyo mah. So please, don't do anything stupid."

  What looked like a menacing smile, slowly crept across her lips. For a moment I thought she was going to cackle like a demon, but instead she gave a long, appreciative sigh.

  "You do have pride after all. You may not realize it, but I am the sun, and it seems you fancy yourself as the moon. We’ll see if you’re brave enough to share my sky."

  Our conversation was interrupted by the looming presence of Madame Quoli, as she stood commandingly in the doorway. “Why are the two of you standing around doing nothing?”

  She took us down to the kitchen and made us wash and clean. Though she must have been tempted, she didn’t dare make us wait on tables or do any sort of work in the main dining room, for it was considered taboo for children like us to be seen in public doing menial things. So we did those same tasks that night in the back rooms, as far out of sight from the guests as possible.

  All through the evening, I thought about what Kassashimei had said; about the sun and moon.

  She was talking about an old legend that almost every child in that day heard from their parents. It was believed that the sun goddess was the master of the world, ferocious and dominating, and that with all her untamed power and ambition the moon god was the only one who could claim himself as her equal. Often times at school, the student who was the smartest and most athletic was labeled as the sun king or queen. Anyone who claimed himself as his or her rival, we nicknamed the moon king or moon queen.

  I suppose that was her way of offering her compliments. We hardly talked to each other the rest of the night, but somehow, I felt there was no need to. She and I probably understood each other enough that we knew our ambitions were both one and the same. At least that was what I hoped.

  Chapter 11

  The roads of our lives change just as the seasons. Sometimes everything seems clear and well paved, only in the next instance, to become an unkempt trail overgrown with grass and wild roots.

  Everything at the temple seemed laid out for me.

  Each day was filled with purpose, each action I made, even serving tea to Master Lu, was like taking another step down a road that led to a certain destiny.

  Now my days at the tea house left me lost. Each day felt like taking a step without any sense of direction.

  Madame Quoli seemed to regard me as an expensive decoration that served no use other than to stand there. While Lai and Mai ventured out to make Miss Nishio money, both Kassashimei and I remained behind to do menial tasks.

  Cleaning, filling the baths, fixing and patching old, worn walls; we did all of these things, all the while waiting for whatever Miss Nishio had planned for us. When I overheard her talking to Madame Quoli in her office, she mentioned her growing impatience for the old man's promised assistance he said he would provide us. She groaned about the money they had lost to him and discussed ways to cut expenses.

  What stung most of all, was that Quoli complained that we were doing the job of house servants, but cost the business a thousand times more.

  I watched from the second floor window every evening as strangers, both common and extravagantly dressed trickled in small droves into the tea house. I often wondered what their lives were like; what sudden spark of happiness or wealth would drive them to come to this place.

  On certain days I'd watch anxiously from behind a wall on the first floor as the musicians arrived for practice. Sometimes they came with dancers and chatted and laughed with one another, idly milling about on the small stage. But after they had tuned their instruments and taken their places, an air of mysticism and determination seemed to fall upon them. It was when they played; when they danced that I began to feel myself longing. I remembered the bold pounding of the taiko drums, and the wild melodies of the flute, but the single sound that enchanted me the most was the shamisen. There was an intricate beauty to the way the young man's carefree fingers danced across the strings. He played with such effortless grace, but at the same time gave each note, each subtle twang a kind of loving attention I’d never seen or heard before. He was in a state of such confidence, that he seemed to understand and accept his place in the world as a musician. How I wanted dearly to be as determined and unwavering as him. I wanted his strength to be my own. But when I glimpsed his world and then looked at my own, I realized how far apart the both of us were. He was certain of his path, while I remained lost in mine.

  I remembered the night the dragon came for me again.

  It was raining outside and I could hear dogs barking restlessly in the distance. The water droplets pattering on the window sill and the dogs' sharp cries seemed hypnotic. I fell asleep much more deeply than I had in a long time.

  In my dream I was standing on a hill overlooking a vast expanse of farmland. Just over the horizon to the north was the capital wi
th its tall buildings silhouetted across the sky. A short distance ahead, I found the dragon gulping up stalks from a wheat field. He seemed content as he lay there, gorging. He must have sensed my approach, because he lifted his enormous head just enough to peer over the wheat, then hummed curiously.

  "Did you see how powerful I was when you last saw me," he said in an intimate, but thunderous voice. "Did you see how I breathed fire into the sky?"

  I nodded.

  "I used that fire to burn away the land, you see. I wiped away everything that was old and broken. I did it because the people asked me. In its place, they made the land green again with all the bounty that you see around you."

  He crept slowly towards me, keeping his vision level with mine, until I could feel the hot air from his nostrils against my skin.

  "Such ugly eyes," he uttered. "What future do you have with eyes like those?"

  "My eyes are fine the way they are," I replied. "And what do you care about my future? If you truly care, you would give me back my sister."

  "I do not change things that have already happened."

  "Then why are you here? Why do you keep coming back?"

  "Such ugly eyes." He repeated as he lifted his head. "I cannot stand such disgusting-looking things. The world around you is changing, but you have not changed one bit. Standing there ogling, you do nothing, but anger me."

  He growled, as he reeled back, then lunged forward, opening his massive jaws in one great, terrible roar. The sound was so loud, so frightening, that I dropped to the ground, cringing like a rabbit. In that instant, a bright light blinded me. I thought he breathed fire into me, but when I awoke, I discovered that it was something just as horrifying.

  Kassashimei grumbled as she had me by the collar and dragged me out of bed, like she did almost every morning. This time, I was thrashing about, screaming like an animal caught in a hunter's trap. She let go immediately, letting my body thud painfully onto the floor.