by Henry Lien
After making a quarter circuit of the campus, I find Hisashi riding the rails between the Conservatory of Architecture and the Conservatory of Music, where they slope down so far that they must actually sink below the waterline at high tide. He’s wielding a two-handed staff, dipping it into the sea in graceful, precise pinwheels, and coming up with ribbons of a sea vegetable.
Before I skate close enough to say anything, he looks over his shoulder and smiles. As if he knew he would see me here, and as if nothing could please him more.
He takes off his smoked spectacles and hops around to face me while skating backward. Doing this on winding rails over the open sea should seem like boastful skating, but there’s nothing boastful in his manner.
“I was just thinking about you,” he continues. But when he sees the expression on my face, his smile disappears. “You have something serious to discuss. Let’s go someplace quieter so I can give you all my attention.”
I follow him along the rail leading to the Conservatory of Music. A tower rises out of the sea on the northern side. The tower is skirted with a balcony formed of sculptures of the Great Benevolent Jade Council of Divine Tortoises. He does a deft little double-heel syncopation and pops off the rail and onto the balcony with a confident one-footed skid that’s all boy. A boy’s move I’ve never seen before and that Cricket hasn’t, either.
I copy his move but misjudge my release of Chi a bit and end up colliding into him. He steadies me with a hand around my hip. I start to think that I liked that part, but then I see that there’s a pot of stew simmering over a fire.
“You left this open fire here?” I ask.
“I only had wakame left to collect.” I assume that wakame is the Edaian word for that long sea vegetable.
“Unattended?”
“What do you mean? The pearl doesn’t burn,” Hisashi says. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
I open my mouth to say that of course I knew, but I close it, feeling stupid. Of course the pearl can’t burn if it’s always near water and spray. Every structure here seems to have a waterfall flowing down its side, or else it’s planted in the middle of a pool or rising from the sea itself. Will I never figure out anything here? Here, in this place, I’m ignorant of something that every child probably knows.
Hisashi looks into my face. He says carefully, “I’ve always wanted to visit Shin. I think I’d want to see the Great Wan Hua Temple in the Codpeak Mountains first.”
I know he’s trying to make me feel less lost here. But thinking about that temple made of dried chrysanthemum petals only makes me feel how far away I am from Shin.
He continues softly, “I’d feel lonely being so far from home if I didn’t have friends in the Codpeak Mountains waiting for me.”
He’s kind. Maybe I can convince him to help Cricket after all.
Before I can speak, he says, “I really do want to hear what you have to say but if I don’t add the wakame now, the fashion soup porridge will be ruined.”
He stirs in the sea vegetable that he calls wakame. He ladles the porridge into the bowl and presents it to me. “I only brought one bowl.”
When I taste it, I almost cry. Other than the wakame, it’s like the savory morningmeal rice porridge that we have back in Shui Shan, woodsy mountain flavors of coarse-grained rice, fleshy black mushroom, fragrant wood ear, mustard tubers, sweet potato, eight-horned star anise, and sesame oil. It could use some salt, but otherwise, it’s the first food I’ve had in months that hasn’t been torture to eat.
“I’ve thought about rice every day since leaving Shin.”
“We don’t eat much rice in Pearl.”
“I noticed,” I say between exquisite bites. “Why?”
“After the Great Leap of Shin, the tsunami left most of the fields too salted to grow rice in. We planted cotton instead and traded it with Eda for millet and sweet potatoes to keep from starving. After a time, people stopped missing rice.”
“Is that why everyone here loves Edaian things so much?”
“In part.”
“But Shin and Eda are enemies. And Pearl belongs to Shin.”
“Not anymore. And Eda helped us after the Great Leap.”
Two hundred years later and they’re still blaming us for the Great Leap. Are things really so tense between Pearl and Shin? Why didn’t we hear back in Shin about how bad things are with Pearl? What situation has the Empress Dowager sent us into?
I bite into something in the porridge that I don’t recognize. Some savory vegetable or root that’s both fibrous and crisp to the bite. It’s delicious. I pick a slice up with my eating sticks.
“What’s this?”
“Bamboo shoot.”
“Real bamboo?” It feels like eating something out of legend. “I never saw bamboo in Shin.”
“Of course not. That’s why your country invaded Pearl. Shin used up all its own bamboo and wanted ours.”
“Do you mind if we don’t talk about the Bamboo Invasion? Or anything about politics?” I’ve lost my appetite. “I just came here to study wu liu.”
“You’re right. That’s what my father was hoping for. Cultural exchange. He’s under so much pressure. No wonder he didn’t stop to see us. He’s really busy. I’m not upset at all.” He smiles.
I came here to ask him to help Cricket, but there are so many other things I want to ask him, too. About Doi in that bird costume and her reaction after their father left without seeing her and whether it’s true that their father hasn’t visited them in years and Suki’s ridiculous claim about their father causing the death of their mother.
I don’t ask any of them, because I don’t want to upset him. I need him to be open to my request for help.
I quietly finish the porridge and thank him. He fills the bowl with the remainder in the pot for himself.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” I say. “Did you know that in Shui Shan Province, wu liu is a sport for girls? It’s not like Pearl, where there are separate forms for girls and boys. Any boy who wants to learn it learns girls’ moves. Which require a girl’s body.
“Do you know what ivory yin salts are? They suppress the development of yang in the body. Once you begin using the salts, they keep your body lithe and your voice high. But you stop growing, and everything stays the exact same size as when you first started taking the salts.
“Everyone in my village knows the story of one boy who started taking the salts when he was just six years old. No one had ever allowed a child to begin taking them so young because it interferes with the development of the heart and lungs.
“He did it because his parents had to disappear to escape a harsh law passed by the Empress Dowager and left him to be raised at a wu liu school. He thought that if he worked hard, he would be able to attend a great academy of wu liu, join an opera company, become a legendary performer, and get rich and famous enough to find his parents.
“However, over the years, he got older, but he barely grew. The boys around him began to turn into young men. He also learned that he would never be as good at wu liu as he had hoped. So he finally started to understand the price he had paid to follow a hope that turned out to be just a tendril of a shadow of a dream.”
I watch this story settle into his heart. Hisashi says, with shining eyes, “That boy should have been here.”
“That boy is here!” I give him time for the shock to sink in. “And Cricket needs all the help he can get to do well at the third Motivation. So much depends on it now, with all these accusations in the air about us not really being wu liu skaters. Cricket sees some rich, handsome boy who never goes to class take fifth ranking with no effort, when he himself needs so desperately to do well, when he has sacrificed more for this than any of us will sacrifice for anything in this life. I beg you to help him do well; I beg you to teach him the boys’ moves that he needs to learn!”
We stare at each other in silence.
“You think I’m handsome?”
I gape at his breathtaking arroga
nce. He smiles.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have tried to make a joke. Believe me. Your words have pierced me as they should. If I don’t show it, it’s just because my heart is more raw right now than I’m used to showing. I promise I’ll help Cricket in his wu liu in any way that I can. Now, I need to leave you because my heart is breaking and I don’t know you well enough yet to let you see that, but thank you. May we meet here in the New Year.”
“May we meet here in Pearl,” I say, a bit stunned.
Hisashi bows, climbs onto the rail, and skates back toward the Principal Island. When he’s out of view, I take to the rail as well and skate in the opposite direction, to the sound of waves kneading below my skates and of blood beating within my ears.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
As soon as I see Supreme Sensei Master Jio rush into our wu liu class on the morning of the last day before the third Motivation, I know something is wrong because it’s the first time that I’ve seen him without a smile on his face.
He summons Sensei Madame Liao from our training and reaches into his sleeve. When she sees what he produces, she dismisses the class.
As he turns away, I see in his hand a letter orb.
That afternoon, we arrive at the Conservatory of Literature to find a scroll that says class has been canceled.
In the sky, the drifts of mist seem to be caught in an unusual air current. Then we hear the squawking.
“New. Deitsu. Dancers. Send. Letter. Orb. Claiming. That. Empress. Dowager. Threatens. To. Bind. Their. Feet. If. She. Does. Not. Receive. The. Secret. Of. The. Pearl. Chiologists. Agree. That. There. Is. No. Blockage. In. Tone. And. Dancers. Were. Not. Speaking. Against. Their. Will. Buy. Pearl. Shining. Sun. News. To. Get. Whole. Story.”
This has to be a lie. The Empress Dowager would never bind the boys’ feet. She’d have to break the bones in their feet and fold them in half to bind them. They’d never skate again. They’d barely be able to walk. And Zan Kenji and Zan Aki are boys. Only girls ever have their feet bound in Shin because they consider it a sign of feminine delicacy. This is all just a slur against Shin by Pearl Shining Sun. The Empress Dowager’s never done anything that unreasonable.
Except for the Bamboo Invasion. And the Tianshang Birthday Party Incident. And the Baby Catbear Bonfire. But those were different because now Cricket and I are here, and she would never do something that would endanger us.
All the girls are looking at me. Suki begins stamping her skate on the pearl. The other girls take up the beat. They stamp in time, all of them staring at me, not caring if they’re cutting up the pearl, harder and harder, until the sound feels like blows. I hop on the rails leading away from the Conservatory of Literature.
I have to find out what the Empress Dowager is actually doing to the New Deitsu skaters because it’s putting Cricket and me in a terrible position. Doi must know something. Why else would she be receiving Chi pulses from someone about a “hostage”? She must know Kenji and Aki through New Deitsu. As soon as the third Motivation is over, I need to focus on this.
However, right now, it’s most important that Cricket and I do well at the third Motivation to prove that we really were sent here because of our wu liu abilities.
I skate to find Cricket so we can do one more Chi healing session before the third Motivation tomorrow. To my surprise, the Chi healing sessions with Cricket have been helping my knee. However, I can’t get the balance of Chi flow back and forth between us right. Cricket sends me Chi energy for me to direct to my knee, but it drains him terribly. Then I have to spend twice as much time sending him Chi healing, drawing energy from every part of my body other than my injured knee, and that leaves me exhausted.
He needs all the Chi energy he can get. Hisashi spends every White Hour teaching Cricket essential boys’ moves, and another two hours after evenmeal. As much as I am grateful for this, my heart throbs with soreness when I see how utterly depleted Cricket is at the end of every day.
* * *
The morning of the third Motivation, my knee is still throbbing with excess heat, but the swelling has gone down to the point where I can’t see it anymore. Sensei Madame Liao states that Doi and Suki have been instructed to stay in their rooms during the Motivation as part of their punishment for fighting. At least I don’t have to worry about Suki trying to distract me. Thank you, Sensei Madame Liao.
When the Motivation starts, we swarm up the eight tiers of the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice like a cloud of black locusts. Most of the girls try to claim a space on the highest tiers they can, but that is a strategic mistake. To eliminate an opponent, we have to knock her down to the ground level. It’s better to get a girl down on the first tier and force her off from there than from the top level.
I stay on the first tier and hope to avoid combat. When a girl comes down to my tier, I fight her, but I am free to use long glides on my left skate along the circular rim of the roof of the tier, conserving my right knee and my skate blades.
Most of the girls get swept up in the excitement of the Motivation and start unnecessarily using third- through sixth-gate level jumps just to intimidate each other. The moves are flashy and risky, and before long, there are only two other girls left in the round beside me: Chiriko and Etsuko.
They each start to hop down from their tiers toward me. If I stay here, they’re going to trap me from the left and the right. I hop up onto the second tier. To my surprise, the roof of the tier flexes as I land on it! Of course! The thin tiers are just ornamental, and they don’t bear any weight. Perhaps I should have paid more attention in architecture class.
I hop to the eighth tier and race to the center of the circular space atop the roof and begin to spin. As Chiriko and Etsuko jump up to the top tier, I unleash a sweeping leap in a circle across the roof. The impact blows Chiriko clear off the roof so that she lands on the ground near the entrance of the pagoda near Sensei Madame Liao and the other girls. Etsuko goes flying off the back side, but she manages to grab the first tier and haul herself up. I leap down there, alternating between left and right skates.
As soon as I land, Etsuko spins and takes an illegal swipe with her blade straight at my throat. I flip back and catch her skate with the jagged broken end of my right blade. I use the force of my flip to whip her down onto the ground. She hits so hard that she bounces just as Sensei Madame Liao and the other girls come racing around.
However, I was so surprised by Etsuko’s illegal attack that I can’t stop my own fall, and I tumble through the air. It doesn’t matter if I touch the ground now, since I am the last one, but the force is too strong in too small a space. I don’t want to crush my knee or make my left blade take all the impact, and I don’t have time to right myself, so I land on my two hands.
Pain screams through my left wrist, but I hold my position because everyone is looking. I push off my fingertips, land on my feet, and string two seventh-gate spins together into a beautiful ending flourish in the shape of a calligraphic figure. I bow to Sensei Madame Liao.
Afterward, as the other girls begin to disperse, Sensei Madame Liao asks me quietly, “Your knee?”
“It holds.”
“Give me your wrist.”
I wince as she holds it.
“Not broken. But you won’t be able to do any combat with that arm until it heals.”
She pauses and says, “Not bad.”
I don’t know why, but these little words fill my heart with warmth.
She continues, “But enough with those ending flourishes. You look like my mother.”
Ten thousand years of stomach gas. Doi was right. Again. But still, I took first. That puts me back in first place in overall rankings. I know that would never have happened if Doi hadn’t gotten herself and Suki disqualified from this Motivation.
I need to go thank her. I begin to skate back toward the dormitory. Then I think of Cricket alone among all those boys at their Motivation. Was Hisashi’s extra coaching enough to help Cricket from failing terrib
ly? Whom did Cricket convince to partner with him?
A great cheer rises from the direction of the Radial of Mighty Tranquility. The boys must still be doing their third Motivation. The girls never cheer for each other like that. I skate toward the noise, but I stop. I really need to go thank Doi now. Another cheer comes roaring from the boys’ Motivation. I can’t resist.
I arrive at the great, circular arena on stilts over the water. The crowd chants, “Twelve! Thirteen!” Hisashi is in the center of the court. He and his pairs partner are working as a team to fend off two powerful attackers.
The two boys they’re fighting must be older boys brought in to administer the Motivation because they seem like giants next to Hisashi and his partner. I can’t tell if they’re second- or third-years from the trim on the front seam and cuffs of the robes because they’ve stripped down to the waist. Waves of corded muscle flutter and dance under their skin at every movement. I recognize them! They’re the two kind boys who ate with me my first day at Pearl Famous, Hong-Gee and Matsu.
Hisashi holds his partner’s hand, swings him at the older boys, and shouts out a move. Hisashi’s partner performs it, landing another toe kick on their opponents! The older boys move with so much flowing power, it’s like watching a pair of lunging tigers. However, Hisashi and his little partner flutter aside with moves that are boys’ moves but executed with as much nuance and efficiency as girls’ moves. The older boys are no more able to catch them than tigers can catch moths. The crowd counts out each contact they make in their unbroken string of landed strikes on the older boys.
After they’ve strung together sixteen strikes, one of the older boys finally manages to land a backhanded chop on Hisashi and his partner. Their hands separate and they go flying into the audience, taking down half the circle in twin tsunamis. They stop just before sliding off the edge of the arena into the sea below.
The crowd applauds as Hisashi and his partner stand and clap and bow at their opponents. The two older boys, still clutching hands, bow their powerful frames low to Hisashi and Cricket, and then each extends a free arm out to them. They clasp forearm to forearm in that gallant and glamorous grip that pilots of battle-kites do with their comrades. Everyone is smiling and applauding, and— Heavenly August Personage of Jade, it’s Cricket! Cricket with Hisashi! Cricket scoring against those boys! My little Cricket.
