by Henry Lien
“Thus, Little Pi Bao Gu created a new and deadly martial art, but Cloud-Tamer Zwei created the city that it could be performed on. So it was that a failed courtesan and an old maid together created an undefeatable army of women and girls who defended Pearl against invasion from the greatest empire under heaven. Working together, as partners. So shall you work in pairs for the fifth Motivation.”
At the word pairs, a storm of titters arises. I assume that all the girls are plotting and considering and weighing and gossiping about whom they should each partner with so they can start training as soon as possible.
“In aerial combat, the partner above shall fight in the air using moves that are descended directly from the combat strategies of eagles and are therefore tens of tens of tens of thousands of years old. The partner below shall catch her and kick her back up into the air, skate to skate, and keep her airborne.”
Kicking a partner up skate to skate? How are my skate blades possibly going to survive that? By the end of the fifth Motivation, they’re going to be so saw-toothed that the only thing I’ll be able to use them for is combing my hair. However, I can hardly afford not to do my best at this Motivation. Suki would use my drop in ranking to support her allegations to Pearl Shining Sun or something. I’m never going to skate into one of her traps again.
“You must choose your partners by the time of the fifth Motivation,” says Sensei Madame Liao gravely. “Choose wisely.”
The girls all hum with excitement. I soon realize that as they’re talking, they’re all stealing glances at the same three girls—the only three girls not talking to anyone else in the class. Suki, Doi, and me.
Suki’s face looks like the masks they use in puppet performances of The Hideous Warthog Demon of the Western Swamp. The two people who she hates the most under heaven, the two people who cost her the third Motivation, are the two people who would be the most advantageous partners if she wants to prevail at our most difficult Motivation yet. The two people who would prefer to drink sand to death for ten thousand years than partner with her.
“Infuriate me to death!”
I look to Doi. She looks back at me. We would be unbeatable together. And maybe partnering together would gain me her trust. Then I could find out whom she was talking to about “hostages” and what she knows about the Empress Dowager’s actual plans.
“Not so fast!” says Suki as she skates between us. She’s afraid that we’re going to pair up and form an unbeatable team.
She turns to Doi. “You know what Peasprout said about you? Peasprout said that the Chairman told her that she’s the kind of daughter he always wanted.”
“You lying, vicious—” I start to say.
“Don’t encourage her,” says Doi. “It’s like leaving table scraps out for badgers.”
“Wah, so bold!” cries Suki. “Then why did your father skate right past you like a ghost but invite Peasprout to meet privately with him every time he came to Pearl Famous?”
How did she know that? She must have been spying on me!
“And why,” she continues, “did he give her that precious pendant that she was wearing around her neck?”
“It isn’t a pendant!” I say.
I look to Doi, but her face is unreadable.
“Then what is it?” says Suki.
I don’t know how to answer.
“And you,” she continues to me. “I’m going to tell you…” She slows and begins to smile, pleased with herself. “I’m just going to tell you what you already know about her. Do you know what you know about Niu Doi?”
I don’t give her the courtesy of a response. I won’t let her drive a wedge between Doi and me.
Suki smiles sweetly and begins to skate away. She turns to say over her shoulder, “Nothing.”
I stop and let her word sink in. When I turn to look at Doi’s reaction, she is already gone.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
I hate relying on anyone else for anything because I hate being disappointed. But I find myself forced to rely on so many other people. I’m going to have to convince Hisashi to help me find someone in the city market willing to sell me wine. I’m going to have to choose a partner at the fifth Motivation. Only two weeks left before the Fifth Motivation and my chance to escape into the city, and I haven’t made any progress on either of these tasks.
As if this weren’t bad enough, a week later, Sensei Madame Phoenix comes up with the worst class assignment. She announces, “You are to form small groups and write a one-act opera based on a historical event by the end of the class hour.”
A group project.
I came to Pearl to become a legend, not to work in a group with other students like donkeys leashed to a cart. However, Sensei Madame Phoenix refuses to let me work alone.
I say to her, “Sensei Madame Phoenix, I would like to do the project on my—”
The sleeping birds let out a squawk, and Sensei Madame Phoenix bats me on the head with the Too Exciting! paper paddle.
I whisper, “I can produce a much more beautiful script by myself about Little Pi Bao Gu and Cloud-Tamer Zwei.”
“So you think you are entitled to special treatment,” she replies, “just because you are the ‘special emissary’ of the Empress Dowager.” I don’t like how she says “special emissary” and I remember that she’s the one delivering the Pearl Shining Sun headlines, so I back off.
Meanwhile, all the other students have formed into pairs, signed their names on the scroll listing the members of each group, and pushed their desks together. They’re staring at me, ready to begin the exercise.
“Find a group and be swift,” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix.
Two girls with meek faces sit together at the back of the room. I’ve seen them before in class, I think. They never speak. They just look at each other as if they’re exchanging words encoded in Chi pulses.
Their eyes widen as I skate over.
“May I join your group?”
They look at each other, turn expressionless little mouse faces back to me, and say nothing.
A thought strikes me. What if they’re a couple, like those second-year boys, Hong-Gee and Matsu?
“Are you two together? I don’t want to interrupt.”
They exchange looks, peer at me with bright blinking eyes, and say nothing.
“I mean, are you together, as in … are you in love with each other?”
That didn’t come out as gracefully as I hoped. The girls regard me as if I were one of those vile crusted creatures that suck onto the bottom of a ship or whale. I sense them subtly shift their weight to adopt defensive combat positions.
“Chen Peasprout, do you have a group yet?” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix.
“Yes!”
“Group partner names?”
“Ah … these girls,” I say, pointing to them. How can I be expected to learn every student’s name here?
“Can we just get through this class?” I say to them. “I don’t want this any more than you do.”
I skate to my desk to retrieve my brush, ink, and scroll. When I return, the girls have already unsheathed a length of scroll and written on the title line, The Great Leap of Shin.
“No, no, we’re going to write about Cloud-Tamer Zwei and Little Pi Bao Gu.”
The girls look at each other and proceed to write.
“I’m not going to write about such a shameful episode,” I say. The Great Leap destroyed both Pearl and Shin. Why under heaven would they choose to write about that?
The girls don’t lift their attention from the scroll.
“Sensei said we have to work as a group!”
They continue taking turns to add lines of dialogue.
Fine, if they want to be stubborn, I’ll show them stubborn. I go back to my desk and begin writing my script about Cloud-Tamer Zwei and Little Pi Bao Gu. I’ll finish my script before they finish theirs and submit it as our group project. I’m not going to let them embarrass me with some mediocre effor
t.
While I’m writing the thrilling scene where Little Pi Bao Gu courageously leads the women and girls of Pearl to block the Shinian soldiers from coming ashore, a tear trickles down. As I wipe it from my cheek, a hand slaps sharply on my desk.
“I told you to work in a group!” whispers Sensei Madame Phoenix. The birds awake and begin screaming as if we’d just dropped a pile of snakes on the floor. Sensei claws the scroll from my desk, tosses it in the air, and slices it in two with a chop of her hand. Ten thousand years of stomach gas!
The two girls look at me, then at each other, and then turn their heads back to their scroll.
I skate over to see what they’ve written. Their prose is unbearable, their characterization tortured. Worst of all, these girls describe both the eunuch and the boy as heroes!
“Why are you referring to them as heroes?”
They look at each other. One of them says, “The boy refused to kill the eunuch when he had the opportunity.”
So they can speak, after all.
“That doesn’t make him a hero! The boy spared the eunuch who proceeded with the Great Leap of Shin, and the earthquake created a tsunami that destroyed your city! Pearl should hate the boy!”
“We know you hate the boy in Shin.”
“Of course we do! And the eunuch, too! The Great Leap caused the lakes and rivers of Shin to flood, and the earth cracked open and released poisonous gases. The Great Leap killed hundreds of millions of people in Shin! Everyone should hate both the boy and the eunuch!”
“They were heroes because the—”
“They were criminals! The eunuch was executed by Shin for his errors in calculation and the boy was executed in Pearl as a traitor!”
As the last drops of the water clock count down the final portion of the hour, I take my brush and blot out the word hero everywhere that it appears in the script and replace it with criminal.
The girls stare at each other with ghastly expressions, then turn and squeak, “Sensei!”
Sensei Madame Phoenix skates to us, furiously waving her Too Exciting! paddle, and says, “What is it now, Chen Peasprout?”
“This is supposed to be a group project. I get to make a contribution, too.”
Sensei looks at the water clock and says, “Finish now.”
I add lines at the end of the script for the Chorus of Heavenly Sages to denounce Mu Haichen and Lim Tian-Tai as filthy criminals with low characters. I submit the scroll to Sensei.
The two girls seethe. Let them. They’ll thank me when we get our grade.
* * *
In the last days before the fifth Motivation, this irritating experience in literature class makes me realize that whether I like it or not, sometimes I’m going to be forced by circumstances to rely on others. And the longer I wait to choose whom to rely on, the worse my options will be. I only have two days left to decide whether to ask Doi to partner with me at the fifth Motivation. Most girls paired up as soon as Sensei Madame Liao announced that we could choose our own partners.
Doi is clearly the best skater for me to choose. But what do I really know about her?
Why did she defend me over the soaps? Why did she fight Suki? Why won’t she talk with her brother? Is there any truth to what Suki said about their father causing their mother’s death?
Doi didn’t use a Dian Mai technique on Suki at the luckieth Motivation like I feared she might. However, what she ended up doing was almost as reckless, so I don’t know what else she might do. Maybe the Chi pulse exercise in the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness where she was talking about hostages didn’t have anything to do with the New Deitsu skaters. What if it had to do with a Dian Mai?
A Dian Mai could be used to hold a hostage, since it turns your own body into a prison. What if she’s planning to use a Dian Mai to imprison Suki as a hostage to make her miss the Motivation? Or use a Dian Mai on Suki during aerial combat? What could be a more spectacular way for Doi to take down Suki than to lock Suki’s body while she’s in midair so that she drops out of the sky like a stone for the whole academy to see? Suki could get killed. However, Doi is so extreme, she probably wouldn’t care if it gets her expelled or imprisoned. And her partner along with her.
All this time, I’d been trying to get closer to Doi. Not just because she could further my ranking or tell me about the hostages and what she knows about the Empress Dowager’s plans, but also because she was kind to me. But Suki was right. I really know nothing about Doi. If I’m going to make a decision about partnering with her, I have to know more about her than nothing. I need to find out once and for all whom she is communicating with through Chi pulses about hostages.
* * *
The night before the fifth Motivation, an hour before evenmeal, I’m here, hiding on the tiles atop the wall forming the far side of the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness. This is the side from which I’ll be able to read the logograms that Doi is forming in the boxes of sand. She made me stand at the other side near the entrance the first time so that the logograms would be upside down to me and I wouldn’t realize that they were words. If I can see the whole message, maybe I can find out what she’s planning and whom she’s gotten mixed up with.
She skates in just as the clock pagoda begins to strike the hour before evenmeal. She assumes the first square. She closes her eyes and cups her hand in front of her. Her Chi practice is outstanding because almost immediately, she has established the connection. She begins to walk across the sixty-lucky squares of sand, marking some and passing over others. The squares begin to form logograms, and the logograms begin to form sentences.
“Plan. Failed. Situation. Grown. Dangerous. Don’t. Tell. Anyone. About.”
She stops. She opens her eyes as if jolted awake. I know the look on her face. It’s how I feel when Cricket gets a coughing fit while we are Chi connected and the link is abruptly severed. Whomever she is talking to has been interrupted. Whomever she—
“Hisashi? Are you still there? Hisashi?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
So she’s been talking with Hisashi through Chi pulses. Sensei Madame Liao did say that twins have the strongest Chi entanglement. But why won’t Doi talk to him in person? Is it because they don’t want to be seen together? Why not?
Doi and Hisashi go to the same school and talk to each other every night through Chi pulses but refuse to be seen together. Their father lives in the same city as they do but hasn’t seen them in years and walks right past his daughter when he visits the academy.
What is going on in this family?
The more I discover about Doi, the less I know. As much as I want to win in the fifth Motivation tomorrow, I don’t know if I can partner with her. How can I trust her?
There are things that I don’t understand about Hisashi, but I know in my heart that I can trust him because of his kindness to Cricket. Which is why I shouldn’t keep putting off asking him for help. Who knows when Suki will attack next? I need him to help me find where to buy red sorghum wine for Chingu to clear my name. I plan to talk to Hisashi tonight, at our private celebration in place of attending the Festival of Lanterns.
* * *
I leave my dormitory chamber to meet Hisashi with my Chi in an uncollected state. It’s not just because of the Motivation. All the other girls I come across are dressed in fine pearlsilks for the festival. The fashions are so strange. They all wear black or silver high-collared, sleeveless qipaos with embroidery that’s the same color as the fabric.
Out on the central path of the Principal Island, I pass Suki and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls. When they see my dress, they all burst into laughter.
“What is she wearing, a burlap tent?” says Suki. “And look at those flowers; they look like crumpled toilet paper.”
I refuse to look down at my dress with eyes colored by their hate. My mother worked a whole year to buy this cloth. This might be the last thing from her that I ever receive.
However, when I arrive at the entrance
of the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character, I’m glad that it’s so dark. I’m ashamed of my dress, and I’m ashamed that I’m ashamed.
I see the light of Hisashi’s dim little futon-side lantern approaching from the distance, and I quickly wipe my tears.
“You look beautiful, Peasprout,” he says. “Pink chrysanthemum is Doi’s favorite flower. Mine, too. How did you know?”
He means it. He’s not being kind. Good. I don’t want him to be kind. I want him to like how I look.
“I have a gift for you,” he says.
“Ah, and I have nothing for you.”
“You already gave me a gift by being here tonight. But you have to do what I say if you want the gift.”
We pass under the main archway into the round temple. I’ve never been inside it. There are braziers and candles lit throughout. It’s like stepping inside a great drum lined with fireflies. I hate the idea of Cricket having to leap off these steep walls at tomorrow’s Motivation. Maybe all the wasted time he’s spent carving the little sculpture of the temple will help him understand its structure so he can take advantage of it.
In the center, towering stories above us, stands the massive sculpted likeness of a man with his hand resting on the shoulder of a boy. At their feet is a plaque engraved with the words The Heroic Mu Haichen and Lim Tian-Tai.
My heart sinks. “You mean this temple is for them?”
I look closer at the statues looming before us. They are in fact likenesses of the eunuch and the boy.
“Why is there a temple honoring criminals?” I ask.
“Criminals. What did they teach you about the Great Leap back in Shin?”
“During the Zhang Dynasty, the vermillion emperor of Shin had his eunuch Mu Haichen organize two hundred million men to act as a human explosive. They jumped in unison on the central spine of the earth to trigger the impending great earthquake.”
