by Henry Lien
If she’s trying to intimidate me with how good everyone else’s Chi practice is during the second Motivation, it’s not going to work. I skate away from her, open the paper shoji door of my dormitory chamber, and slam it shut behind me.
I sleep a long sleep filled with uneventful dreams.
* * *
The morning of the second Motivation, we skate in a group down the path to the rails connecting to the Conservatory of Wu Liu. The path winds past the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice, where the boys will be doing Vertical Battlefield for their second Motivation while the girls do Lady Ming’s Hand-Mirror. When I near it, there is already a crowd of students and senseis gathered there, but the strange thing is that the students include as many girls as boys. Why aren’t the girls moving on to our Motivation? They’re all looking up at the pagoda.
I gasp as I see what they’re pointing at.
There are great gashes in the tiers of the pagoda. It looks like a giant took a sword and slashed it down the side of the pagoda, slicing through the roofs of the eight tiers, all the way down to the bottom one.
I know it couldn’t have been a giant sword, but look at the scale of the damage! It sickens my stomach. The sections of roofs next to the gash of each tier are buckled and skewed. Some of the pagoda’s inner parts show through. It looks like someone cut open a crab to pry its halves apart and scrape at the living meat inside.
One of the students says, “We’ve been attacked!”
Attack? Who would want to attack a pagoda? Murmurs rise. Several of the students look at me and whisper to one another.
“I told you,” says Suki, triumph cracking her voice. “Now do you believe me? She’s not a real skater. She’s just decent enough to pass for one. The ‘Stealthiest Skater in Shin’ is finally starting to do what the Empress Dowager really sent her here to do!”
I’m as shocked by this as anyone. No, it can’t be. The Empress Dowager wouldn’t order an attack on the academy. She must know what position that would leave Cricket and me in as the only Shinian students here. Some student who wasn’t happy with his or her ranking at the last Motivation must have done this. All I know is that I don’t know any more about this than anyone else.
Everyone is looking at me.
And Suki is still talking.
More and more students and senseis are arriving for the second Motivation. They’re starting to form a circle, and I’m in the center of it. I feel their stares and their whispers and, above all of it, Suki’s poisonous lies.
So I do something I have never done.
I turn and flee.
I hop on the rails to the Conservatory of Wu Liu.
* * *
When Sensei Madame Liao and the other first-year girls arrive, I don’t look up from my Chi-centering exercises.
Sensei Madame Liao says, “The first-year boys’ second Motivation shall be delayed. The first-year girls’ second Motivation shall proceed as scheduled.”
My emotions are still too uncollected for me to absorb this. I focus on the Chi energy filling from my toes. I visualize it carrying the venom of this news, rising out of me, exiting my body.
It’s not working. I can’t expel the shock. I can feel it lodged in my Chi, and every time I push against it, I only drive myself backward, deeper, down and back and down.
I open my eyes to a world moving so slowly.
The sounds of the girls around me are drawn out, even though some part of my mind tells me that they’re talking as quickly as they can, they must be talking about something significant that happened long ago this morning, but to me it’s like the sound of birds that I can mimic without understanding.
I skate as if outside my own body to take my place and face my opponent for Lady Ming’s Hand-Mirror. Now, I’m watching myself standing in front of this girl, and she is doing a move and I’m copying it and adding a move, and so it goes back and forth, and the moves are laying themselves out in a strip in my mind as a rhythm of musical beats. But the other girl acts before her Chi is centered. Even though the rounds aren’t timed, she’s quickening the pace to intimidate me, but I keep up, and it’s not long before she makes a mistake and the round is over, and I take a point for each move in the string, and my opponent takes nothing.
I watch my body skate to face my next opponent. My being is brightened because I have won the first round, but I know it would be better for my opponent and me to perform our parts slowly, until the number of moves has climbed higher. The longer and more complicated the sequence of moves we successfully complete, the more points each round will be worth when I win it.
I face girl after girl. Each time, when I finish in victory, I look down at my body and see my aura of Chi brighten briefly, but then it dims again, because I only earn average points against each girl. I try to move deliberately, hoping my opponent will follow my lead, but girl after girl panics and drives the pace too fast for herself until suddenly she is splayed on her rear end on the pearl in front of me.
I watch my body work its way through the line of opponents to the two beings who have the most significance for me in this space. Deep in this state, I can see the cords of energy binding my body to them; the one linking to Suki is orange and burning white in the center, but the one to Doi is a color I have no name for, a color that makes me feel like I am blind.
We three stand like pillars in a lake, for we are undefeated in all our rounds, but it is a shallow lake. The other girls keep losing to us before we are able to gather many points in any round.
Finally, I see my body standing before Doi. I use my Chi to try to establish a link with her and hope that she understands that we must skate as if carefully linking a string of beads; we are making a necklace between us, and we should make it slowly, bead for bead, until it is long enough to be worth winning.
We dive into a chamber of sound, air, sight, and instinct that becomes a conversation, punctuated with thoughtful pauses and courtesies and glorious style, as we chain our moves so that they’re answers to each other.
Doi leaps and kicks the air in a third-gate grasshopper backflip, to which I spread my arms to gather the air under them to add a luckieth-gate nightingale loop, since the nightingale eats the grasshopper, to which she retorts by leaping and spinning into a jump, then diving down headfirst in a fifth-gate falcon spiral, since the falcon eats the nightingale, all of which I perform and then surpass by springing off the coils under the heels of my faithful skates in a fifth-gate tiger leap. She conquers this by flinging herself into a furious spin on one skate with the other skate pulled behind her in a luckieth-gate triple phoenix spin, since the phoenix eats only bamboo seeds and harms nothing, and it tames all beasts with its grace.
It’s exquisite to dance against an opponent of such skill.
Around us, all the other girls gather, as they have long since ended their rounds, and when Doi and I have strung together thirty moves, we give in to the urge to push the rounds faster and faster. When I add in a single-footed orchid flip, Doi slips at this simple child’s move and lands with both feet.
I am hauled out of my state as if by a rope from the bottom of the sea. The scale of time in my mind collapses in and comes crashing into the scale of time around me.
I’m here at the Conservatory of Wu Liu. At the second Motivation. I’ve won the round against Doi. There’s no applause. Just murmuring as the other girls glare at me. Because someone or something attacked the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice just an hour ago. And everyone thinks I’m involved. The shock of the vandal attack and the accusations against me pushed me into a meditative state that helped me copy the moves of my opponents. A skating meditative state, just like Doi told me about.
There’s just one more opponent left to beat: Suki. We’re given only a moment to rest before the next round. I quickly center my Chi to get back into that state before I take on Suki.
“Don’t try to beat Suki.” It’s Doi.
“Please don’t interrupt me, I’m getting back into my meditative�
�”
“She’s better than you. You need to lose to her.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do.” She’s sore that she lost to me.
“Count,” she says and skates away.
Count? What does she mean?
Then it’s my turn to go against Suki. There’s no time to get back into the meditative state.
“What did you use to attack the pagoda?” Suki says. “Did you fire thousand-year-old preserved bladder stones at it?”
Insipid laughter rises from the House of Flowering Blossoms girls who have gathered to watch the final round.
I shouldn’t have fled. I shouldn’t have panicked.
I say, “Even a thousand-year-old bladder stone wouldn’t be as old as that joke is by now. Are you going to do a move, or are you going to just stand there reusing jokes?”
“You’ll be reusing your clothes for toilet paper when they throw you in prison.”
“Maybe when I get to prison, they’ll give me a nice haircut like the nuns gave you.”
Suki seethes and begins the round by doing a kingfisher sporting in the Purple River quintuple jump. Everyone gasps, because this is a seventh-gate east-directional move, requiring her to jump and twist her body like a hunting bird to reverse direction lucky times while in the air. However, kingfisher sporting in the Purple River quintuple jump is one of the few moves in all of wu liu originating in the region of, obviously, the Purple River in Shui Shan Province. Where I’m from. It’s one of the moves that I mastered to become wu liu champion of all of Shui Shan Province, which qualified me to compete for the title of Peony-Level Brightstar. I’ve been doing it since I was six years old.
I execute the move flawlessly.
We launch into a furious round, whipping faster and faster. She’s using fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-gate moves to intimidate me. I’m not afraid, because they’re all centered on difficult jumps, and I’m the best jumper in the class. The dragon tail coil under the heel of each of my skates is absorbing the jumps beautifully, so I feel nothing on the knees, while giving me lift for the next jump.
When we’ve strung together thirty-one unbroken points, my focus wanders and I start thinking that I need to win this Motivation to prove that I’m not a spy. It’ll prove that I was sent here because I truly am the most talented skater in all of Shin. I begin tallying up my score. I’ve gained thirty-one points from the round against Doi, so Suki has to win thirty-two points herself.…
Suki leaps in the air and pivots with one knee lifted before her in a north-directional metal monkey spin, but I was too busy counting my points and can’t remember if she did three rotations before landing or lucky, but I don’t want them to see me hesitate. I know that Suki is reckless, so I complete the move with lucky rotations.
As soon as I do so, the House of Flowering Blossoms girls erupt in sneering laughter and cheers.
It should’ve been three rotations. Suki has won thirty-two points, enough to take first ranking.
Too late, I realize my mistake.
Count! That’s what Doi meant!
I’ve given Suki the thirty-two points she needed to win. If I had deliberately failed immediately, rather than matching her move for move and building up the value of the round, Suki would’ve only gotten one point from me and I would’ve finished with the top points. I should have intentionally lost the round against Suki to deny her enough points to win. Now, I’ve thrown away first place.
Doi wasn’t trying to intimidate me. She was trying to help me.
I’ve taken second place in this Motivation. Because of the weight given to this Motivation, that combines with my performance at the first Motivation to drop me to second place overall.
I quickly gather my things and skate away from the other girls who are now crowding around Suki to congratulate her. After all the work I did to make up for the deficiencies in my training. Am I just going to rank lower and lower in every Motivation? Was I just lucky in the first Motivation?
Now, I have to finish first, not just for myself or Shin or the Empress Dowager. I have to finish first because my safety depends on it. I must prove that I deserve to be here, that I’m not just a barely decent skater sent here to spy on Pearl.
As I skate toward the rails leading back to the Principal Island of the academy, something catches in the dragon tail coiled under my right heel. I turn and see that Suki has lodged the front tip of her skate in the coil of my skate. I stop so that her skate doesn’t damage my blade.
Before I can say anything, Chiriko and Etsuko race up and shove me forward just as Suki twists the toe of her skate.
The tip of her blade breaks as the dragon tail of my blade snaps off.
“You broke my skate blade!” says Suki. “You’re so clumsy.”
I test the weight on my skate. Three of the supports connecting the blade to the boot are intact, but the luckieth support connecting the coil at the heel is now connected to nothing but a pocket of empty air that sickens me. It feels like Suki cut off half my foot. My life is in my feet. How am I going to compete at the Motivations? How am I going to prove that I truly was sent here because of my skill as a skater if I don’t even have two complete blades?
I look for Sensei Madame Liao. She is at the far end of the training court, with her back to us. She saw nothing. It’s my word against all the other girls’.
Chiriko opens a pack of blades and gives one to Suki. Suki replaces her broken blade with a fresh one. She finishes screwing it in. She and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls hop onto the rails and skate away.
Suki makes a half turn on the rail and skates backward while looking at me. As she recedes, she holds the coil of my dragon tail to the side of her head, like a peony tucked behind her ear.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
“Where were you last night?”
“Asleep in my dormitory chamber.”
“What do you know about the attack on the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice?”
“Nothing!”
I thought Sensei Madame Liao was sympathetic, but she interrogates me here in this personal audience chamber as if I were a criminal. The senseis say they’re questioning all the students, but, of course, I’m the one they’re most interested in.
“Have you had any communications with the Empress Dowager since coming to Pearl?”
“No.”
“Have you made any enemies here?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. She looks at me for a long time without speaking.
“Sensei, there’s no proof that I had anything to do with this.”
“They found this embedded in one of the roofs of the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice,” she says as she unfolds a square of silk.
My dragon tail coil lies there on the cloth, glinting like some assassin’s curved throwing blade.
“She put that there,” I say.
“Who?”
I open my mouth and stop. I need to be careful here. I’m in no position right now to make any allegations without proof.
“I had nothing to do with any of this, Sensei. I’m innocent.”
“Being innocent is not enough,” Sensei says quietly. “Do you understand that?”
Yes. Because Cricket and I aren’t from here.
When I exit the audience chamber, I almost trip on the ramp leading down from its entrance. I’m not used to having the dragon tail coil gone from under my heel. Not only is my knee going to have to bear all the weight of every jump on that leg, but my balance is thrown off and the jagged remnant of the blade catches on the pearl.
My skate blade is broken. I lost the second Motivation to Suki. Everyone thinks that the Empress Dowager is holding the New Deitsu skaters hostage. And people are starting to believe that I was involved in this strange attack on the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice.
Suki did this. She found some way to vandalize the pagoda. That’s how she was able to “predict” that something was going to happen and set me up.
Outside the audience
chamber, the clouds are parted and the sky is clear. On the ground I see the shadow of the logograms forming in the sky.
“Vicious. Attack. Investigated. As. Part. Of. Empress. Dowager. Hostage. Plot. As. Attention. Turns. To. First. Students. From. Shin. Buy. Pearl. Shining. Sun. News. To. Get. Whole. Story.”
Make me drink sand to death.
* * *
That afternoon, the New Deitsu Pearlworks Company team arrives to repair the pagoda. I had thought that they would come with a great crew of workmen and perhaps animals and equipment and tools and enough materials to repair a great pagoda. Instead, it’s a small team of eight. They’re dressed more like artists than workmen. They come bearing a palanquin.
What’s strange about the palanquin is that it’s so small, the size of a box for stage makeup. It couldn’t possibly seat a person, not even a child. Yet it’s so heavy it requires eight people to bear it on long staffs.
Supreme Sensei Master Jio announces during the morning assembly, “It is the sweet honor of Pearl Famous to welcome Chairman Niu Kazuhiro of the New Deitsu Pearlworks Company.”
I look for Hisashi to see his reaction to the arrival of his father, but I don’t see him or Doi.
“Please bow to him ten thousand obeisances of gratitude, little embryos!”
I hear a rustling behind me and turn. Doi is skating toward us. Heavenly August Personage of Jade, what is she wearing?
She’s changed from her black academy robe into some white costume covered in rows of pearl-like beads, with a skirt that’s open in the front but ends in great spreads in the back, like a half circle of wings. It’s majestic but much too small for her. It looks as if Doi outgrew it long ago. On her head is a crown of false pearlsilk feathers. She stands at the far edge of the gathering of girls and looks at her skates. What under heaven is she trying to do?
Chairman Niu skates to the dais. He’s tall and handsome, like his son. The gold mandalas embroidered on his robe make him look less like a businessman and more like a statesman.
