by Henry Lien
“Doi doesn’t talk much. She’s different from other people. You must know what it’s like not to fit— I mean, it’s hard for Doi to know people. Don’t let her confident Chi fool you. It’s like how so many Pearlian opera performers are really shy when they’re not onstage playing a— No, it’s not like that; it’s like sometimes a boy likes a girl—he’s afraid he’ll be made fun of by the other boys, and he’s confused by his feelings, so he pushes her into a puddle, or he talks and talks whenever she’s around about everything except…” He catches himself and slows. He looks into the sky as if the words he needed were written there and finishes: “… what he’s really thinking.”
He pauses, and the awkwardness rings in the silence.
Now it’s my turn to be confused and silent. I’ve never sought attention from any boy because I never wanted it. Now that I might have this boy’s attention, I realize I wanted it from him. Because he’s not just any boy. But now that I have his attention, I don’t know what to do with it. All I know is that I understand what it is to be confused.
“Aiyah,” he says. “I’m sorry. If you, ah, heard all these noises come out of my mouth just now, it’s just a trick of the, ah, sound here in the garden. I didn’t say anything. Not a word. Is my face red? Please say no.”
“That’s the nicest thing a boy’s ever said to me,” I say.
“Is it? Well, I practiced to get all the words just right.”
When he smiles, it’s like beams of sunlight are shooting out of his dimples.
“I’d like to show you a special place in the garden. The Arch of the Sixteenth Whisper.”
He takes my hand in his. Despite the gentleness of his figure and manner, the knuckles on one hand are all rough, as if he’d been training in fist work. The palms are rough and scratchy. I find that I like it.
“It was built by Cloud-Tamer Zwei herself, as one of her first experiments,” he says as he leads me to a slender, filigreed arch. “You whisper words into the base of the arch at this end. The sound will rebound back and forth sixteen times before it can be heard at the other end of the arch, sixteen beats later. Only eleven students in the history of Pearl Famous have been fast enough to get to the other side in time to hear their own voices. Want to try it?” Hisashi’s eyes are shining. “You can be the twelfth.”
I look at the vast arch and the span I have to cross. Does he really think I can do it? Or is he trying to make me attempt something he knows I can’t succeed at to make me question my skills? I am his sister’s rival, after all. Whatever his intention is, I don’t want to risk failing in front of this boy. So I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fail.
“Let’s do it,” I say.
“Ready yourself. San. Ni. Ichi!”
He whispers something into the base of the arch, and I explode out toward the other end. I lunge forward with each stroke of my skates, as my will reaches for the other end and the arch rises above me, then descends again. I must not miss Hisashi’s words.
I arrive at the other end of the arch, slap my hands against it to halt myself, and press my ear into the base just in time to hear Hisashi’s voice whisper, “I knew you could do it.”
Eight beats later, Hisashi himself arrives. He touches the end of the arch, his fingers brushing a bit of my shoulder, then skates on without a word.
CHAPTER
NINE
We have newspapers like Pearl Shining Sun News back in Shin. According to them, I am the Empress Dowager’s secret heir in disguise; I was murdered by palace eunuchs and replaced with a boy eunuch who looked like me; and I am actually seven twin sisters, each skilled in a different school of wu liu, pretending to be one skater. They print whatever nonsense will sell copies.
However, even nonsense can be dangerous if believed.
The birds circle in the sky above us in the open court of architecture class and begin to write dangerous nonsense.
“Empress. Dowager. Declares. Mayor’s. Sons. Hostages. Demands. Secret. Of. The. Pearl. In. Exchange. As. Mayor. Demands. Chairman. Niu’s. Arrest. Buy. Pearl. Shining. Sun. News. To. Get. Whole. Story.”
“See,” says a voice. We all look away from the birds to see Suki get up from her desk at the back of architecture class. Her spreading cloak drapes about her figure as she rises, like the folding wings of a crow. “I told you.” She skates to my desk. “Your Empress Dowager was planning this all along. She took those boys as hostages and then sent her ‘Stealthiest Skater’ to steal the secret of the pearl.”
She flings a paper doll onto my desk. The sunlight flashes off the gold logograms celebrating Peony-Level Brightstar Chen Peasprout, the Stealthiest Skater in Shin! Make me drink sand to death. I thought I got rid of all of them.
“Everyone, mark my words!” she announces. “She’s not really a skater; she’s just a spy who is decent enough to pass for one. Don’t turn your back to her. She’s probably going to try to kill one of us during Lady Ming’s Hand-Mirror!”
At that, Supreme Sensei Master Jio arrives. He doesn’t say anything about the newspaper headline. I don’t pay attention to his lecture. I’ve got more important things to worry about than architecture. It’s even more important now that I do well at the second Motivation in three days. If I don’t, it’ll confirm Suki’s accusation.
I don’t believe for a moment that the Empress Dowager actually declared Zan Kenji and Zan Aki hostages, but doesn’t she know how holding on to them might look for her two emissaries here in Pearl? She puts us in an urn filled with scorpions. And then shakes the urn.
If she wants to build a city of the pearl in Shin, why can’t she just buy the material from here?
It must have something to do with the nature of the pearl.
I suddenly realize my mistake.
I haven’t been paying attention to architecture class. If I want to understand why the Empress Dowager’s putting Cricket and me in this position, I need to understand more about the pearl.
And architecture is all about the pearl.
At the same time, Cricket and I can’t look too interested in the pearl. That’ll seem to confirm Suki’s accusation that we’re Shinian spies.
The problem is that Supreme Sensei Master Jio never teaches us anything about what the pearl really is in architecture class.
“Sweet embryos, you are little. But how little? Are you excellently little? Please each take one of these.” He presents a lacquered tray filled with little cones with a sharp pick at the end. “Place one on the smallest finger of your hand. You will use it to unravel a silkworm cocoon to see who can extract the longest unbroken thread. Twelve years ago, a student produced one that was so long, it would take half an hour to skate its length, ahihahaha!”
When I make the first incision into my cocoon with the pick, I push too deep and it pierces into the flesh of the silkworm inside. Thick fluid leaks all over my cocoon, ruining it. Make me drink sand to death.
After that, Supreme Sensei makes us stretch up an arm, hold by its top tip a brush that’s as long as our arms, and write our name on the nail of the long finger of the other hand. I’m holding the brush as still as I can, but the bristles are lurching back and forth with the trembling of my fingers, like they’re trying to smear ink all over half my hand. Which is exactly what they do as soon as I try to touch the brush to the nail. Why are we doing these ludicrous exercises?
Finally, we’re each made to place a small ring on the back of our hand and count the pores in the skin within the ring. I count twelve pores. I recount them to make sure my eyes are seeing correctly. The second time, I count five. Ten thousand years of stomach gas.
This is useless. It isn’t teaching me anything about the secret of the pearl. I wish I could just openly ask Supreme Sensei or a fellow student, but I can’t do anything that appears to confirm Suki’s accusation that I’m after the secret of the pearl.
My hopes rise when Supreme Sensei announces that there will be two additions to the first-years’ architecture course of study. Howev
er, they both turn out to be useless.
First, he announces that there will be an optional sculpture competition. The entrants choose a structure on the campus of Pearl Famous to carve in miniature out of a block of ivory wood, which comes from the dried trunks of the giant kelp trees in the sea around Pearl. The students who carve the three best sculptures will help the third-year students create the set for the Drift Season Pageant at the end of the year. I, of course, am not going to participate. Useless.
Second, there’s a new thing that happens in architecture class. A horrid new thing. Sessions with Chingu, the oracular monkey.
Supreme Sensei Master Jio takes us to the edge of the great square on the north side of the Principal Island, Divinity’s Lap. We line up facing the water, next to a sculpture of the Enlightened One. An old man is waiting for us there. He’s holding a monkey holding a cleaver. Supreme Sensei Master Jio laughs, calls us sweet embryos, recites words that add up to a string of gibberish, and leaves us with the old man and the monkey and the cleaver.
Mole Girl is nearby, and I ask her who the old man is.
“That’s Sagacious Monk Goom, who serves as spiritual guide for Pearl Famous.”
“Why does he have a monkey?”
“That’s his legendarily ill-tempered monkey, Chingu!”
Honking Girl hears us and says, “I heard that Sagacious Monk Goom achieved enough spiritual advancement to receive enlightenment from the gods and become a great sorcerer. He went up to the mountaintop with his beloved yet hideously spoiled pet monkey, Chingu. The bolt of enlightenment missed the monk and hit the monkey instead. The heavenly ether went into her and she was made into a great sorcerer with awesome powers but none of the self-restraint of a human.”
I turn away from this silly girl. Does she really think I’m stupid enough ever to believe anything she says again? However, Mole Girl sees my sneer and says, “No, it’s true! She’s an oracular monkey. If you manage to grab one of her hands, she’ll fall into a trance and select three tiles from a set of sixty-lucky, each with a different logogram. The three logograms together hold your fortune.”
“That sounds useful,” I say.
“Yes,” says Mole Girl. “But the problem is the cleaver. Chingu got hold of a cleaver twenty years ago, and no one has been able to get it away from her since. And if you think that there’s anything more terrifying under heaven than an irritable monkey with a cleaver, you haven’t met Chingu.”
“Is that why everyone says ‘failed to keep the monkey pleased’ when they mean ‘made a horrible, horrible mistake’?”
“Yes! If you irritate her, Chingu will try to chop something off of you and give you a bad oracle, which always proves to be true.”
I suppose no one has been able to bathe her in twenty years, either. She looks as tangled and smeared as something you’d mop the toilet-room floor with. I watch her grab the ornate pearlsilk cap covered with stars and moons from her head, scrub it between her legs, and smell it.
Sagacious Monk Goom makes us form a line leading up to a lip of the pearl overhanging the sea. He skates, as rickety as a house built of ropes and branches, to the second student in line.
“Count the number of drops that splash up from the water,” says Sagacious Monk Goom.
“What drops?” the second girl in line asks.
Sagacious Monk Goom pushes the first girl in line into the water.
Chingu immediately begins to chop the pearl beneath her feet with the cleaver. She brings the blade down in both of her little hands with such force that her hind legs splay out in front of her and she lifts entirely off the pearl for an instant, balancing on the cleaver. All the time, she’s shrieking as if she’s being pulled apart into pieces.
“How many?” says Sagacious Monk Goom.
“How many what?” asks the girl.
“How many drops of water splashed up?”
“I don’t know! Seventy?”
Sagacious Monk Goom turns to Chingu. She finishes chopping out the count. Sagacious Monk Goom says, “Chingu says seventy-two! Mmm, very nice, very nice.” He smiles at the girl, and she smiles back and then he pushes her into the water. Chingu starts chopping and shrieking again.
“How many?” he says to the next girl.
So it goes all morning, with splashing and chopping and shrieking and Sagacious Monk Goom saying, “Mmm, very nice, very nice.” When my turn comes, I focus my Chi and stare at the ring of droplets that splashed up before my eyes as Mole Girl plopped into the sea. I close my eyes and try to picture their image burned in reverse on my retina. I can actually see some of them in the flashes of green and red behind my eyelids, but there is no way that I can accurately count them before they fade. I guess, “Seventy-eight?”
Chingu finishes chopping out the count.
Sagacious Monk Goom cries, “Chingu says seventy-eight!”
I smile in relief. Then Sagacious Monk Goom shoves me into the water.
By the end of the day, we’re as unnerved and disoriented as if we had been strapped to the wheels of a chariot and driven seven thousand li from Jinfeng Mountain down to the Purple River.
As I skate back to the dormitory chambers, wet and shivering and trying to center my Chi, the revelation comes to me. I thought all these exercises were useless. However, I learned two strange but critical things about the pearl today:
1. Building with the pearl requires outstanding eyesight.
2. Building with the pearl involves something very, very small.
CHAPTER
TEN
Two days. That’s all I have left to prepare until the second Motivation. Learning about the pearl and why the Empress Dowager has put us in this position are important but so is performing well so that I don’t look like a mediocre skater sent as a spy.
I haven’t made anywhere near the progress that I needed to in my meditation memory practice. I’ve been training by myself every day before morningmeal in the memory palace exercises at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness. During wu liu class, my ability to remember these strings of moves with many quick steps has been improving as a result. However, I know it’s still far from what I need in order to take first ranking at the second Motivation. I need to do more in these last two days. I need to make Doi teach me her meditation technique.
That evening, half an hour before evenmeal, I go to the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness and find Doi there just as she is finishing her meditation practice. It’s clear that she’s not happy about my being here.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her alone since the meeting with Hisashi in the Garden of Whispering Arches. I have to try to win Doi over so I can ask her about her meditation technique. Perhaps I can use what Hisashi told me about the history between Suki and Doi at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony.
I bow to Doi. She bows back, but there’s no expression on her face. Then again, there never seems to be anything on this girl’s face except two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
“What do you think the nuns at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters did with Suki’s hair after they cut it off?” I ask, trying for a smile. “Should one of us come in wearing it as a belt during the second Motivation?”
Doi’s face doesn’t change. “You don’t need to come here when I do. It’s not going to help you with the second Motivation.”
Her words feel like a slap.
“I’ve seen you meditating, but it won’t help you win,” she continues. “The second Motivation doesn’t really have anything to do with memorization.”
She’s so rude. How can Doi and Hisashi share the same mother and father?
“So,” I say, “if it’s nothing to do with the second Motivation, you shouldn’t mind me joining you here.”
“I’m done here.”
“What about tomorrow night?”
“I’d prefer if you’d not come when I’m using the squares.”
“There are sixty-fo—sixty-lucky of them. I only need one.” I cross my arms. “Why can’t I
be here? What is it you’re doing?”
“It’s just a game that my brother and I came up with when we were young.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?” This girl is impossible. “I’m only talking to you because Hisashi—”
“Hisashi’s a fool!” She gets up and skates out of the square.
So I’m on my own for the second Motivation. Nothing new to me.
* * *
I skip my architecture, music, and literature classes the last morning before the second Motivation. I spend the extra time studying the Treatise on Chi Practice and the Visual Music of the Memory Palace and meditating. During wu liu class that afternoon, Sensei Madame Liao has us form a line and face her. We are to copy her moves, and any girl who makes a mistake is eliminated from the line.
I focus my Chi. I must be relaxed so I can absorb. I must loosen every muscle in my body, even the muscles that I didn’t know were clenched, muscles I didn’t know existed, muscles in my ears, muscles in my eyes, muscles in—
Suddenly, Sensei Madame Liao has already done two moves and all the girls beside me have done them in imitation.
I have no idea what they did and stand there stupidly.
“Chen Peasprout, you are eliminated!”
I skate to the sideline. I was trying too hard to relax. That only made it impossible to relax. How am I ever going to survive the second Motivation?
After our evening baths, as I am readying for sleep, Doi crosses my path.
“They never taught you back in Shin how to do walking meditation,” she says.
“Of course they did,” I say as I try to skate past her. What does she want? I need to get a good night’s sleep before the second Motivation tomorrow. The last thing I need is to be distracted by another argument with this girl.
“So then you must know that some people are able to stay in a meditative state while skating?”
“That’s impossible. You’d come out of the meditative state as soon as you moved.”
“Not if you are deep enough in it. You just need something strong enough to send you that deep.”
