by Henry Lien
At last, the islets of the academy come into view. In the fading light, the campus is profoundly beautiful. There is one central island composed of terraces, great sweeps of plazas, and roofs. It’s ringed with smaller islets, all of them connected by rails. Everywhere there are banners fluttering and snapping. Canals atop the structures send water flowing down their sides. The roofs shimmer in the twilight, their edges and spines weaving across the campus in exuberant curls like dragons nested with each other. We reach the landing and leap off the rails.
We pass under a vast arch in the form of milky sea horses meeting snout to snout, garlanded with flowers and carved with the words The Great Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness.
“That’s the first new structure that Cloud-Tamer Zwei built after the Great Leap of Shin!” cries Cricket.
“Cricket, what did I say? Don’t talk about the Great Leap!”
We skate through the gate and up to the entrance of a crystalline hall with a roof wider than I thought was possible in this world. A prefect stands at the door, clutching a scroll of what I assume are the names of new students. She lifts her arm and flaps her hand at us. “Come, come, come! The Feast of Welcoming is almost done!”
Cricket and I hand her our academy scrolls for inspection. We bow, apologize for our lateness, and beg her not to turn us away. The girl smiles with an Enlightened One’s face of kindness and says, “No troubles. You missed Supreme Sensei Master Jio’s speech. That’s a good thing. Now, in you go before all the hot food and all the cold food swap temperatures! And happy Year of the Dolphin!”
It seems that not all Pearlians are like those boys from the discount academy. I wish we could go to our dormitories first to put away our belongings, but we’re already very late, so we skate in.
The hall is a wide, open structure lined with rows of milky tables and benches, filled with laughing students. Strange, gelatinous lanterns hang everywhere. One wall is covered by a great curtain of silky white.
This is our first chance to meet some of our fellow academy students. We have to make a good impression as the first students from Shin ever to attend the academy.
Heads turn toward us. Girls whisper to one another. Are they laughing at us?
Cricket and I take a little of every dish offered at the central serving table onto our trays. I don’t recognize a single food. No pickled chicken feet or sheep intestines or any of the other comforting home-style foods we have in Shin. And there’s no one to stop us from taking too much. Is food so plentiful here that they don’t have to control portions?
We look for a place to sit, but everyone is packed together, deep in their conversations and private jokes. I feel like I’m skating straight into a cold sea.
No one sits alone except for one girl, at the end of the hall. Her hair is a long black waterfall. On a technical level, I admit she’s slightly more beautiful than I am. However, she stares at the table in front of her in a very unattractive way.
The girl lifts her face and meets my gaze. I turn away quickly.
When I glance back, she’s still looking at me! Pearlians have no manners. In Shin, we never look people in the eyes, unless they are speaking to you and they are at the same social level.
“Peasprout,” says Cricket, tugging on my robe in the way that I hate. “Everyone’s almost finished, so let’s not bother them. Let’s eat at that empty table.”
Ten thousand years of stomach gas. As if it were not hard enough to make new friends here without Cricket isolating us at every opportunity. I scan the rows and see two boys sitting at a table by themselves.
I can do this.
I was wu liu champion for all of Shui Shan Province five times before the age of ten.
I was the Peony-Level Brightstar.
I am the emissary of the Empress Dowager.
I skate toward them. I look back to Cricket and urge him to follow, but he only shakes his head.
When I reach the two students, I see they’re very handsome. I flash my famous smile, which everyone loves, even if they haven’t seen it on the posters and paper dolls. I cast each of them a flirtatious look. Then I notice that the two boys are holding hands across the table. They unclasp hands, bow their heads to me, and politely ask me to join them as my neck and face flood with embarrassment.
I catch their names as Ong Hong-Gee and Song Matsu. Beyond that, I can barely hear the polite questions they’re asking me between the sound of the blood beating in my ears, the heat on my face, and my attempts to eat more quickly than I’ve ever eaten in my life. All the strange foods are bland, as if Pearlians didn’t use any salt, and I can’t tell if some of them are sauces or dishes.
The boys, kind souls that they are, ask me please not to rush, as they were just about to get second servings themselves. I protest that I’ll be finished shortly, too, but they won’t allow it. By the time they come back to me with full plates, I am finished. Then it’s my turn to sit and watch while they eat food that they don’t want to eat.
Thankfully, the torture is interrupted by Supreme Sensei Master Jio, the head of Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword. He skates to a great dais, rubbing his belly like the Enlightened One and laughing as if hearing the best jokes in his life one after another, although no one else is saying anything. “Ahihahaha, sweet little embryos! Now the second- and third-year students shall welcome you to Pearl Famous with a demonstration of Pearlian opera. For as you shall learn when you attain sagehood, the shadow they cast is the you that you shadow.”
A student skates out and unfurls a scroll that reads, FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS YOURSELVES WITHOUT THE SUPERVISION OF A SENSEI! ALWAYS SKATE RESPONSIBLY!
The great curtain of white silk covering one side of the hall is drawn aside. We gasp as we see that there is a vast white stage set behind it built in the image of the whole city of Pearl in miniature.
The older students enter into the cityscape. They sing as they skate, while strumming or pounding or drawing bows across instruments. I know the song. It is “The Pearlian New Year’s Song,” sung throughout the month of the New Year’s festivities.
“If I learned just one thing, then the year has not been wasted!” they cry.
They skate faster and faster and then begin to leap up and down from the rooftops to street level, flipping from bridge to balcony. The miniature cityscape is alive with a dazzle of figures dressed in ravishing pearlsilk brocades that swirl and flip like petal-fall in a wild wind.
“If I traded one illusion for a revelation,” they sing.
The stage riots with color and motion and the flash of blades. Skaters in scarlet and skaters in black robes spin and fly at each other in one-on-one duels like dark, metallic parasols.
The voices crescendo, and I feel a ball of emotion grow inside me as they sing, “If I kept just one friend, then the year has not been wasted!”
The hall quakes with Edaian taiko drumming over the sound of skates whisking on the pearl like bladed blossoms.
“May we meet here in the New Year!”
Skaters bear down hard toward the curling rooftops to the left and right edges of the stage. They whip into the curves and go hurtling back toward one another with their arms spread like eagle wings. They fly through the air until their skates clash and shower sparks onto the crowd. With each strike of metal on metal, we roar with joy.
“May we meet here in Pearl!”
With the last note of the song and the last strike of the drums, the skaters stamp their skates, toss their chests out, and punch their fists in the air, like statues of heroes from legend. The hall explodes in applause.
This is all I have ever wanted.
At last, at long last, I am finally where I belong.
And I do belong here. Because Little Pi Bao Gu was Shinian, and she invented this beautiful art form. So no one is going to make me feel that I belong here any less than anyone else.
* * *
After the performance, the two boys invite me to come an
d tour the campus with them sometime. I learn that they’re second-year students. They tell me that you can distinguish year by the trim on the front seam of a student’s robes: silver for first-years, gold for second-years, various colors for third-years depending on their conservatory. I burn with embarrassment, because second-year students don’t spend their time with first-years. There are kind people here in Pearl as well.
I look for Cricket, but I can’t see him. He must have skated off to hide in his dormitory chamber with no evenmeal. His hands tremble very badly when he doesn’t eat. Why did I leave him?
As I head toward the boys’ dormitory, I see two people sitting inside one of the rail-gondolas stationed at the towers at the academy entrance: Cricket and a boy I don’t recognize.
The gondola hangs from the rails, bluntly snouted like the lip of a walnut shell and swaying gently. I climb the tower steps to them.
They’re eating noodle soup with mushrooms and bright vegetables. The boy who is sitting with Cricket is handsome but smiles too much. Boys who have dimples overuse them.
He smiles. “Ah, Disciple Cricket, we have a guest!” He smiles again. “You must be Disciple Peasprout.” Another smile.
I press my hands in a bow and sit on the gondola bench beside Cricket.
“Joyful fortune to make your acquaintance. I am called familial name Niu, personal name Hisashi.”
What kind of name is Hisashi? Not Pearlian. Certainly not Shinian. Another Edaian name? Why are the Pearlians so obsessed with Eda?
“Thank you for feeding Cricket,” I say.
“You didn’t actually eat that stuff they serve in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, did you?” he asks. He laughs. He has a nice laugh, as if he’s remembering something amusing while trying to clear bean jam from the roof of his mouth.
“Why didn’t you eat in the dining hall?” I ask.
“I don’t like crowds. And everything they serve has meat or other things taken from animals in it. The architecture is magnificent, though.”
“Disciple Hisashi said that he thinks I have the hands of an architect!” says Cricket.
What does that matter to him? Cricket has as much focus as a puppy.
“You’re too kind,” I say. “But Cricket is here to study wu liu. We are the skaters sent in the goodwill exchange with Chairman Niu Kazuhiro of New Deitsu Pearlworks Company.”
He tenses when I mention the Chairman of New Deitsu. Why is he acting like— Wait, the familial name. Niu. He must be the Chairman’s son. This boy is the son of the man who controls the company that manufactures and sells most of the pearl in existence. So why is this rich boy from a powerful family out here alone with Cricket?
“Tell me, friends”—Hisashi smiles, breaking the silence—“what has your impression of Pearl been so far?”
This boy’s big eyes have a way of turning into merry little crescent moons when he smiles.
I take time to think. When someone asks a question like that, it’s stupid to answer with something that anyone could say, like “It’s very nice here.” I want to make a startling observation about the culture here and the experience of a five-time wu liu champion skating on a city made of the pearl. I want to say something he’ll never forget.
“It’s very nice here,” answers Cricket. “Everyone is very friendly.”
Ten thousand years of stomach gas. “Cricket—” I struggle to control my irritation. “That’s not what he’s asking. And not everyone has been so well-mannered in Pearl as Disciple Hisashi.”
“Just Hisashi. Did you meet any trouble?” His concern sounds sincere.
“No trouble I couldn’t handle. But not everyone’s been as polite as you. There was a girl eating alone in the dining hall. With hair like a waterfall. She stared straight at me without turning away.”
Hisashi stiffens.
“Have I said something?” I ask.
“That girl is my twin sister. Doi.”
“My apologies, Hisashi. I didn’t know.”
Heavenly August Personage of Jade. I’ve just met this boy and he was kind to Cricket and me, and I’ve already made him uncomfortable twice by talking about his family.
I steal a glance at him in the awkward silence. I can’t see any resemblance between him and his sister. Before I can stop myself, the words are out of my mouth. “If she’s your sister, why was she eating alone?”
Sometimes I think I should just bite off my own tongue and swallow it.
“She and I … avoid each other.”
I’ve upset him. That’s three times now. There’s clearly some secret sadness in their family. I want to let him know that Cricket and I know all about sad family histories. I want to tell him about why our parents disappeared, but I don’t trust my mouth.
After Cricket finishes his noodle soup, we descend from the rail-gondola. Hisashi says, “I hope to see you again soon, and you can tell me all about life in Shin.” He bows and says, “May we meet here in the New Year.”
“May we meet here in Pearl,” I reply, bowing back.
He begins to skate away, but he stops and turns back. He smiles again, but this time the smile is deep and sad and wise and happy, all at once. This time, he looks a thousand years older and a thousand times gentler than any boy I have met.
“Yes, my sister, Doi, was sitting alone,” he says. “But most people who do great things in this life know what it is to be alone.”
He turns and skates softly away.
CHAPTER
THREE
I don’t want to cry during the first day of classes, but the ache in my chest is so great that I might. I watch Cricket being led away from me, over to the boys’ side at the assembly at Divinity’s Lap, the largest square on the Principal Island of the academy. Cricket, with his small build and his bewildered face, thrust among these noisy, confident boys, disappears in the sweeping expanse of this square, under a towering sculpture of the Enlightened One, into a sea of black robes, all jostling sharp shoulders, narrow torsos, long sleeves, scholars’ collars, and trim pants. They look as hard as an army of crows. Cricket turns back to look at me as he departs, every stroke of his blades cutting sore little slices on my heart. Fifty first-year boys. Fifty second-year boys. Twenty-five third-year boys. And Cricket is the youngest and smallest one among them.
How is Cricket going to hold up against these huge, rough boys? He only learned girls’ wu liu styles with me. No one taught boys’ styles in Shin. I had to teach him what I could read about in books. I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed him. He’s so unprepared.
I straighten my robe and pretend to rub at something in my eye under my smoked spectacles. I’m glad that our uniforms are black so that no one can see where I dry my fingers in the pleats of my skirt.
During the assembly, the first-years watch the older students to see when to stand up or kneel down. A couple of evil second-year boys keep pretending to stand up at the wrong point to trick us into standing when we should be kneeling. One student is left standing by himself twice as the whole school giggles. It’s Cricket. I’m going to remember those evil older boys’ faces in case I ever have an excuse to fight them.
The second- and third-year students separate to go to their classes. We’re told that the first-year girls will be taught wu liu by Sensei Madame Liao and the boys by Sensei Master Bao. I’ll have to get used to calling my teachers by the Edaian title sensei instead of shifu like we did in Shin.
In the gathering of first-year girls, I see the girl with the waterfall hair. Hisashi’s sister, Doi. I skate over to introduce myself properly and make a fresh start, but before I can speak, another girl cuts me off.
This second girl is not without beauty. But her hair is bobbed short and tucked behind the ear on one side, swinging loose on the other. This must be the fashion here, since she’s followed by an entourage of other girls with identical haircuts. Why doesn’t anyone besides me wear braids? This bobbed-hair girl says to Doi, “Nice hair. It looks like pearlsilk.”
Her followers giggle behind their hands. One of them says, “Ask her how much she paid for it, Suki!”
“Don’t think that we owe each other anything,” Suki continues. “What happened at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters meant nothing.”
Pearl Rehabilitative what?
The girls go silent as Sensei Madame Liao skates to the front of our gathering. She has the sharp cheekbones that indicate a hunger for power. I can tell she’s a cold woman. “Worthless, ungrateful daughters of Pearl—” She notices me and quickly adds, “And worthless, ungrateful daughter of Shin.
“The wu liu regimen here at Pearl Famous incorporates rigorous daily training; grueling Motivations; deprivation of food, shelter, and sleep; and whatever else it takes to achieve excellence. The effectiveness of our institution’s curriculum is directly proportional to the misery of the student. That is why Pearl Famous is number one in helping each student attain the greatest joy possible in life, which is to bring honor to her esteemed parents.”
She’s just trying to frighten us. She doesn’t know me. I don’t know what sort of training these rich students in Pearl got, but I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m not afraid of disappointing my parents. I don’t even know where they are. The only thing I’m afraid of is not winning. Let’s get on with this.
“We will test just how completely without qualities you are. You will be examined in wu liu this year through six Motivations. Today will be the first, Veneration of the Three Aunties. Three beacons have been lit on three different islets. It’s not easy to see the beacons. It’s even less easy to get to them. Touch the beacon on the Conservatory of Wu Liu, then the Conservatory of Literature, then the Conservatory of Music. You must not, for any reason, attempt to enter the Conservatory of Architecture.
“You will encounter water on this route, so you will need to step in the pit of tuber root starch powder to keep your socks from slipping.
