by Henry Lien
“Who?”
“The healer at the Hall of Benevolent Healing.”
Oh, her. I don’t want her to try to remove my nose for study, like she tried with Mole Girl.
“No, thank you. I don’t feel any different. It don’t think it’s poison. When I put it in my mouth, it felt strange, so I skated under the Arch of Chi Retuning just in case. I feel fine.”
“Still. Aiyah, why did you put it in your mouth?”
“Because I wanted to find out more about it!”
“That’s a good reason to put something in your mouth?”
“Yes, a wonderful reason. Doesn’t the Arch of Chi Retuning cure everything?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you put it in your mouth and find out?”
* * *
All throughout midmeal at Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, I feel better knowing that I’ll have Hisashi to talk to about the vandal attacks and the mysteries surrounding the pearl. I know he’ll help me in any way that he can.
If only there were some way that he could help Cricket as well. He didn’t do too well in the boys’ second Motivation. Vertical Battlefield is all about jumping skill, and Cricket is a weak jumper. Our parents didn’t choose an apt name for him. He finished twenty-seventh.
I decide to check on him during White Hour, the hour after midmeal when no classes are scheduled. It’s officially intended for rest, but students with discipline and ambition and a future in wu liu take the extra hour to train so that rivals don’t pull ahead of them.
I skate to the boys’ practice court at the Conservatory of Wu Liu, but he isn’t there. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. He needs the extra training more than anyone. Where can he be?
I skate across the Principal Island looking for him. On a little islet just northeast of the Principal Island sits the round structure that is the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. A group of students is gathered at its entrance. The figure in the center looks like Cricket. But why would Cricket be surrounded by other boys? Are they making fun of him? I skate faster.
As I near, I see that, in fact, it is Cricket, but the boys aren’t taunting him. They’re listening carefully as he lectures.
“The walls inside are lined with a ramp that spirals around the figures in the center,” he says, pointing to the half-carved miniature sculpture of the temple in his hands. “The ramp makes the structure more pliant in earthquakes, but if anything damages the ramp, the whole structure will come toppling down around it.”
“Cricket, what do you think you’re doing?” I yell out. All the boys turn to look at me. Cricket shrinks like a snail that has been dusted with salt.
“Peasprout, please,” he whispers.
The other boys leave us, but I almost want them to stay and hear this.
“Why aren’t you training?” I demand.
“I was working with my friends on the competition,” he whispers.
“What competition?”
“The architecture sculpture competition.”
Fool! I clench my teeth.
“You need to be using every White Hour to improve your miserable wu liu skills! Not wasting your time making toys! And what did I tell you about not looking too interested in architecture? Do you know what they’re saying about us while you’re playing with this?”
I grab his hand clutching the ridiculous little sculpture of the temple and lift it to his face.
He whispers, “No one else is carving the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. It’s too difficult. You have to carve the statues inside with a tiny metal wire. I’m going to win the competition.”
“Cricket, do you want them to blame us for the attack on the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice?”
“But we didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter! We have to work twice as hard and do twice as well and look twice as innocent as everyone else now. Because we’re not from here!”
“I couldn’t have done that damage to the pagoda. I couldn’t even get up to the third tier. Anyone who saw me jump at Vertical Battlefield knows that.”
He makes a fair point. Maybe that’s why Suki has been focusing on accusing me. Still, I’m not going to let him neglect what he came here to do.
“Cricket, you remember what the Empress Dowager does to returning emissaries who fail to accomplish their duties?”
“Yes.”
“You want to be sent to a labor camp?”
“Don’t talk about that, Peasprout.”
I don’t want to frighten him, but we have very real dangers on many sides of us. We’re not safe here in Pearl, but we’re not safe back home in Shin, either. He must understand how important it is that we do well at Pearl Famous.
“Then why aren’t you taking your wu liu seriously?”
The only reply I get is silence, like an empty field with nothing but the sound of crickets. Except the one Cricket I’m talking to.
“She never should have sent me here,” he mumbles. “I’m just not good at wu liu.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve sacrificed more for wu liu than anyone here.”
“I’m better at architecture.”
“Only three students in each class will be invited to devote to Architecture. These rich kids have been tutored in architecture their whole lives. You’re going to neglect your wu liu training because you think you’ll be in the top three in architecture? When were you ever in the top three at anything?”
Cricket plunges his chin into his breast.
“Cricket,” I say. “You know why I do this. We can’t look too interested in architecture. Don’t be irrational.”
“Yes, Peabird,” he squeaks.
“It’s up to me to keep you safe now. Father and Mother would want that, wherever they are. I want the best for you. You have the ability to attain it. I have faith in you, Cricket.” My own eyes begin to fill. “Even when you don’t.”
He doesn’t say anything. I put my arm around him, and he throws his arms around me. And I know that he’s still my little Cricket and always will be.
I coach him on his wu liu practice during the rest of White Hour. I mime the moves, since I want to preserve my blades and my right knee now that I don’t have the dragon tail coil on that skate anymore to cushion my landings or help me leap.
After White Hour, I head toward the Conservatory of Music. There’s a scroll posted in front of the rails leading there. It says that Sensei Madame Yao suffered a gong injury and that we’re each to spend the hour in private practice by ourselves.
As I watch Suki skate into the practice room, I have an idea. I skate back to my dormitory chamber and get the Chairman’s little trinket. He must be trying to send me a message. Suki taunted me during the second Motivation about lobbing bombs at the pagoda. Maybe the oddly heavy trinket is some sort of tiny bomb. Maybe the Chairman gave it to me because he thought that if I were the vandal and used one of these trinkets to attack the pagoda, giving one to me would scare a guilty reaction out of me. Maybe I can do the same thing to Suki. If Suki really did attack the pagoda with a trinket like this, nothing would be sweeter than baiting the trap with it.
I’m going to put it outside the practice room that Suki goes into. If she’s guilty, she’ll want to hide it as soon as she sees it. I’ll conceal myself in the sound-insulating hedges of the pearl sculpted to look like loropetalum bushes. When I see Suki open the shoji and pocket the trinket, I’ll summon a sensei to search her.
However, I’m slowed down by the weight of the trinket hanging around my neck and my damaged skate blade. When I get to the Conservatory of Music, everyone has already chosen a practice room. How am I going to find which one she’s in? The shoji doors are solid pearl without windows. I skate down the rows of rooms arrayed in rings around the central performing stage.
I go past all the rooms lucky times, but there’s no way to tell. I’ve already wasted half the practice hour. I don’t care about ranking highly in music, since it has no impact on my wu liu ranking, but Sensei Madame Y
ao is sadistic and I don’t want to give her any reason to humiliate me in front of Suki. I decide that I’ll put the trinket outside her dormitory chamber tonight instead.
There’s only one practice room available, with a ten-stringed zither, which is an instrument I need more work on. As I close the shoji behind me and prepare to kneel down on the pillow to the instrument, I notice that there’s a little cradle on the floor, and in the cradle is a real pearlflute! They are so prized in Shin, not even the Empress Dowager has one.
The guidebooks said that the pearlflute has the sweetest sound of any wind instrument, like silver and rain made into music. It must never be played while contemplating worldly matters, because the pearlflute is said to make music that’s not of this world, and doing so will cause the Chi in one’s body to be confused. It must never be played out of doors for fear of calling all birds within hearing to descend on you, since all birds want to sing with the pearlflute, like all people want to live in Pearl.
I can’t resist picking it up. This can’t be a communal practice instrument. It’s too valuable. The pearlflute is marbled with swirls of cream on cream. The colors tease at flashing lavender and rose as I turn it. I press it to my lips and blow.
The sound is so much lovelier than the books said. It’s powerful but precise. Not like the volcano drum, which flattens everything in a radius around it. It’s as if this sound seeks out every person within a half li and trills a private concert just behind each person’s ear. As the note dies down, I realize too late that everyone in every practice room must have just heard me blow the pearlflute.
I quickly set it down right as the shoji door slides open with such force that it bounces back in its frame.
“Who blew my pearlflute!” Aiyah, it’s Suki! Stupid me. She stands in the doorway, twirling a little pearlsilk parasol over one shoulder and wearing ludicrous high-heeled skates. Her face swarms with vicious satisfaction.
“Excuse me, this room is taken,” I say with more calm than I feel.
“You blew my pearlflute! I heard you.”
“It must have been someone else playing their pearlflute.”
“Only three students at Pearl Famous have a pearlflute, and the only other first-year is a boy!”
“You must be mistaken.”
“You can’t blow someone else’s wind instrument without consent! Especially a pearlflute! Now you’ve really done it, Shinian snake.”
I push past her and skate out. To my surprise, she doesn’t follow. The clouds in the Season of Spirits help cover me as I speed down the row of practice rooms.
A great noise arises within the walls. It’s the sound of little metal balls clattering down mazes. I turn back and see Suki with the emergency cord in her hand, surrounded by her court of girls from the House of Flowering Blossoms, all of them clutching parasols and wearing high-heeled skates.
I look at them standing there, shoulder to shoulder, almost humming with power. Power over me. Power that I gave to them.
At the sound of the alarm, everyone comes out of their practice rooms to see what the matter is. The gaping students crowd the path.
“Let me through!” I say, pressing past, but I’m slowed down by the trinket hanging around my neck. Suddenly, Suki’s hand is yanking my hair.
“She blew my pearlflute! You all heard it?”
Students murmur that they did as they gather closer around us.
“Disgusting! Don’t put it to your lips again, Your Grace!” cries Etsuko.
“She eats bleached bladder stones!” screeches Noriko.
Suki twists her fist in my hair so that I’m forced to face her.
“Now you’ve truly failed to keep the monkey pleased. Everyone, you’re all witnesses! She defiled my pearlflute!” Suki says. “Further evidence that she is a spy sent to steal or destroy everything!”
“Leave her!” says a deep voice. Everyone turns. Doi stands there, fingers pointed and arm pulled back in the ibis spring-bow position.
“Wah! So protective!” sneers Suki. “Is she your girlfriend?”
Doi flings herself toward Suki, but I cross my arms and block her.
“Fighting outside of wu liu class will get you in trouble!” I cry out.
“Listen to your little girlfriend, Doi,” says Suki.
Doi shoves me out of the way. She leaps and splits her legs out in a double flying halberd butterfly at Suki’s head but I quickly chop her feet down with my palms like cleavers so that they miss their mark.
“Stop!” I shout. I can’t let Doi get punished for my sake again.
I hear the sound of metal slicing toward us and kick my skate back by instinct. I block Suki’s skate right before it slices into Doi’s bare shin.
“Stop! Both of you!”
Suki and Doi hurl toward each other, trapping me in the middle. I use the blades of my skates to block Suki’s blades flying at Doi’s head and limbs and use my fist and elbows to knock the trajectory of Doi’s punches away from Suki.
Doi punching from the left; Suki spinning from the right. Doi lunging from the front; Suki leaping from the back. I’m fighting both of them and it’s like writing the same words with both hands at once. My reasons for fighting the two of them are so different but also the same. I’m fighting Suki to protect Doi. I’m fighting Doi to protect Doi. And I’m using only defensive moves to protect myself.
Suki pushes away from Doi and me. She leaps into a triple mantis spin and flies at me with her skate blade pointed straight at my chest. I try to come out of the backward double-elbow block that I’m using to hold Doi back with but I’m too late to block Suki. The steel of her blade strikes me straight in the chest.
I gasp for breath and look down, expecting to see red.
There is no wound. With shaking hands, I pull out the cord around my neck from the front of my robe. She hit the trinket. It saved me.
Doi tries to lunge around me at Suki, but I turn and check her body with mine. Doi and I are face-to-face as she huffs at me, “Do you understand the situation you’re in, you fool? You can’t afford to be caught fighting!” She kicks her skate under my right skate, where the dragon tail coil used to be, and the impact unbalances me and sends me sliding outside their reach.
There’s a burst of motion and the sound of skate blades slicing against each other and a cry and then Doi and Suki are standing apart, panting. Suki’s sleeve is slashed, and where the fabric has split, a long scratch starts to seep with blood. Everyone gasps.
Then Suki is on Doi, and there’s the metal clash of blade blocking blade as they charge each other and retreat and parry in open, vicious combat. I clamber to my feet, but I can’t enter the battle without getting injured myself. I’ve never seen people aiming flying lotus spins at each other’s throats with unpadded blades. It’s thrilling and sickening to think that these moves can kill. Their equal skill is the only thing keeping blades from contacting skin further.
Suki uses her parasol to parry and double her reach and springs it open to serve as a shield. She lunges forward and thrusts its point toward Doi’s eye. Doi grabs a lucky-stringed erhu from the rack next to them to block. The point of the parasol pierces into the instrument with a thrum. Suki throws them aside, grabs a spoon fiddle, and raises it to smash on Doi’s head.
Suddenly, the air rings with a deafening bwong!
Everyone freezes and turns to look toward the sound. At the far end of the hall, Sensei Madame Yao is rising from the wreckage of a gong, which she managed to actually crack this time.
“What is going on here?”
Sensei Madame Yao skates toward Doi and Suki with one arm in a sling. Her eyes smolder with fury. “So this is what the legendary Sensei Madame Liao teaches you, to fight in music class like vicious cannibals? Come with me! You are both disqualified from the third Motivation!”
CHAPTER
LUCKYTEEN
There is a feeling when you land on your skate incorrectly and you already know before the flare of pain that you’ve made a
terrible mistake. That’s what going to classes is like in the weeks after the other senseis confirmed Sensei Madame Yao’s punishment.
There are only fo—I mean lucky Motivations left this year. Doi and Suki are both going to forfeit a sixth of their grades. Because of me.
Why didn’t Doi just ignore Suki’s taunts? I appreciate her protecting me but not at this price. And now, because Doi protected me—her rival—she’s given me the chance to overtake her in rankings. I know I should be glad that my path to gaining first ranking is clear, but instead I want to vomit.
Doi and Suki have been coming to wu liu class less and less. Why should they risk injury training when they’ll receive zero points at the next Motivation no matter what?
At least the fight seems to have postponed Suki’s plan to punish me for blowing her pearlflute. She hasn’t said anything about it to the senseis. However, I know that she can’t have forgotten. She’s just waiting for the moment when I expose a weak spot so she can shove the spear in as deeply as possible.
That’s why I have to find a way to prove that she was responsible for the attack on the pagoda—to take her down.
* * *
Whenever I think of what Doi must be feeling toward me, I know I need to thank her for what she did for me. Every time I try to approach her in the weeks after the fight, she skates away. But I have to thank her. Even if she doesn’t want to hear it, I need to say it.
Finally, one morning before wu liu class, I knock on her shoji door, as everyone is already headed to the Conservatory of Wu Liu.
“Go away,” she says from within. Her voice is so low and so strained, I can barely hear her through the shoji.
“Doi, I just—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“May I enter?”
“No.”
“I want you to know that I am so, so grateful—”
“Save it.”
“I’m trying to—”
“I said I don’t want to hear it.”
How do you embrace a wall?
“Oooh, you two have so much to talk about!” says Honking Girl as she skates past me.
