by Henry Lien
“Did they teach you why he did that?”
“The eunuch wanted to schedule precisely when the earthquake would strike. The populace of Shin could be warned to be outside so they wouldn’t be killed when the structures came falling down.”
“And what did they teach you about the boy Lim Tian-Tai?”
“He was sent by his father, the leader of the city of Pearl, to stop the eunuch Mu Haichen because the tsunami that would surely follow the earthquake would destroy their entire island. The boy didn’t kill the eunuch when he had the chance, and the Great Leap destroyed both Shin and Pearl.”
“Ah, I see. You view it differently in Shin. That hadn’t occurred to me. Here in Pearl, we honor them as heroes. They couldn’t bear to kill each other because they came to see the nobleness in each other’s cause. They allowed the Great Leap to proceed.”
“But the tsunami destroyed your city!”
“Yes, but it also washed away the old wood and stone structures here. The city would never have been rebuilt so quickly out of the newly discovered pearl. That’s why they’re both cheered by everyone in Pearl as heroes. It’s a city built on the softness of their hearts.”
I feel ill. Sensei Madame Phoenix will probably fail our group project for defiling the names of heroes. She already hates me. I don’t really care about how I rank in literature, but when I think of how Sensei will humiliate me in front of everyone, and how furious those two girls will be with me, and how overjoyed Suki will be, and how there will probably be some Pearl Shining Sun headline accusing me of attacking the graves of heroes or something, I almost want to cry.
Hisashi looks at me with tenderness and says, “I see the sorrow in your face. I’m touched that you’re so moved by their story. But don’t grieve too much. If Mu Haichen and Lim Tian-Tai had not done what they did, there would be no city of Pearl here under our feet and you and I would never have met.” He smiles. “Now, see how the great ramp along the walls spirals up and ends at the arch at the top?”
“Yes.”
“We have to skate up it as fast as we can and go shooting out through the arch.”
“Why? It’s open sea out there.”
“It’s part of the gift. Do you trust me?”
“If you get my dress wet, I’m going to sue you.”
“Your dress won’t get wet. When we go out the top, stay close to me.”
He twists a ring from his longest finger. It’s a band topped with a small, carved animal, perhaps a dog or a qilin, but it has no legs and some complicated tail. He untwists the carving from the band and presses the little creature into my hand. He covers my hand with his.
We skate up the spiraling ramp, holding the carving in our clasped hands. The temple seems to spin in place beside us as we skate around, the statutes of Mu Haichen and Lim Tian-Tai turning as if on a potter’s wheel. The stars show through the arch, and we go speeding out of it and fly toward the open sea.
Below us, rivers of light marble the dark water and flotillas of boats gather with students and senseis atop them holding up octopus lanterns.
As we hurtle toward the water, our cloaks whipping and snapping behind us, Hisashi yells, “Throw it!”
The little carved ring hits the water below us and swells into the form of a boat with an audible crack.
We fall into the boat and send a crown of drops spraying out around us.
The head of a dragon adorns one end of the boat, the head of a phoenix, the other. I run my hand over the sides. It seems to be made out of the pearl, but it has a softer, more porous texture, like a sea sponge.
It expands when wet. And shrinks when dry. Like the trinket.
“You got my dress wet!” I say.
“I’m sorry! It doesn’t spray that much when it’s just myself.”
“I told you it would!”
“I know! I know! Because you’re a shining, thousand-story-tall goddess and I’m a cannibal barbarian slave!”
“You have to pay a price for getting my dress wet.”
“What do you want?”
“You have to answer any question I ask you truthfully.”
“All right.”
“Forever.”
“So expensive!”
“You don’t get to set the price of the vase after you’ve broken it.”
“Start with easy questions.”
“First question. Can we do that again?”
“No. We have to wait for the boat to dry before it becomes small again.”
“Second question. Where did you get this?”
“I carved it.”
“Is this some form of the pearl?”
“Yes.”
“But where did you get the material?”
“Ah … somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.”
He smiles, but it’s clear he’s uncomfortable. The children of the Chairman of New Deitsu Pearlworks Company must have access to things others don’t, even if they don’t talk to their father.
I change the subject, as I’m trying to pay more attention to the feelings of others. “I’ve never seen a boat with two heads. Does it mean something?”
“Yes.” That’s all he says. He smiles so sadly that I wish I hadn’t asked. Do the two heads have something to do with him and his sister? I want so desperately to ask him why he and Doi have been communicating using Chi pulses instead of talking to each other directly. However, the expression on his face at this moment looks so defenseless that I don’t have the heart to ask him anything confronting.
Out across the water, the rest of Pearl Famous is beginning the festival celebrations. I don’t feel guilty for enjoying the music that washes over the water toward us. However, I refuse to look at the octopus lanterns as they’re sent up and burned alive. I hear the sound of them bursting and sizzling as they hit the water, returning the animals to their home as ashes. They didn’t die because they had to feed another animal. They died to entertain people. They died for nothing. And over it all, applause. Ignorant, cruel applause.
Hisashi sees me resisting the urge to look each time the blossoms of color light up the sky and our faces. He cups his hands over my hand and says, “Thank you.”
I look in his face and almost tell him that there’s nothing he needs to thank me for, that I don’t want to look at the lights, that no matter how beautiful they are, they’re ugly. That no matter how beautiful they are, they can’t be as beautiful as what I’m looking at now.
I would gag if I heard someone say that, but when it’s you who wants to say it, it’s completely different. Still, I find enough discipline to keep my emotions collected.
Hisashi lays out a meal for us. It’s sushi made from wonderfully firm braised tofu that has a delightful, chewy skin on it, strings of crisp green pepper and onion, kernels of crispy rice scraped from the side of a stone hot pot, and pickles rolled in sea vegetable as thin as paper and as faintly fragrant of the sea as any fine fish, all of it lightly drizzled with a thin but rich sauce of curry, miso, and cashew cream. He serves it in beautiful lacquered bento boxes. It could use some salt, since it seems to be salted with what I think is just boiled seawater, like all the food here, but I have no complaints.
It seems that having the distraction of eating allows Hisashi to speak more freely.
“The two heads on the boat are a dragon and a phoenix,” he says. “Do you know what dragon and phoenix twins are?”
“Doesn’t that mean boy and girl twins?”
“Yes. Very lucky symbol. Usually. Not so lucky when the two of them are entwined in the womb so they can’t be born naturally. And their father has to decide whether to save the children or the mother. Our father chose us.”
My heart aches like a sore muscle.
“I don’t blame our father for sending us away all these years. Everyone thinks he’s coldhearted. But he’s not. He just loved our mother so much that he could never forgive us for causing her death. I can’t, either.”
Tears well in my eyes. Tears for Hisas
hi, for Doi, for their mother. Even for the Chairman.
“But it’s going to be all right. My sister and I have a plan. To show our father how much we love him. We’re going to unbreak our family.”
Is that what Doi is talking to Hisashi about through Chi pulses? Do they not want to be seen together so that people won’t know they’re working on some plan?
I can feel the struggle in his Chi. Whatever their plan is, however much they believe in it, he’s frightened of what he has to do. I want to say something to comfort him. Something that lets him know that I feel how he feels.
“I understand this boat,” I say slowly. “Two heads. Pulling it in two directions. It doesn’t know which way to go. It’s uncertain which way is forward. But then, who of us is ever certain which way is forward?”
The fact that I want him to appreciate me for saying it doesn’t mean that it’s not also completely sincere.
His dimpled smile is like a radiant banner unfurling.
“Do you like your gift?” he says.
“What, you mean this boat? This is my gift?”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I can’t accept this. It’s too big a gift.”
“It gets small again when it dries.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know. I shouldn’t joke. It’s not too big a gift. You’ve done more than you know. For me. And my sister.”
I don’t want to pry, but I think he wants to tell me about it.
“Hisashi, what is the plan that you and your sister are working on?”
He stiffens and says nothing.
“Why don’t the two of you talk to each other in person?”
“Peasprout … there are things concerning our family that I can’t tell you about. And if I could tell you, I wouldn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d be afraid that you wouldn’t allow me to do this again.”
“What? Take me on a dragon-phoenix boat?”
“No. This.”
He draws near. His scent is like soft plains sweetgrass. He smiles and it feels like the dimples in his cheeks are making little mirror indentations into my heart.
He’s a remarkable boy, but he has secrets. Something tells me that I’ve yet to see the true Hisashi. I don’t know him yet. And I’m not going to kiss a boy I don’t know.
When I hesitate, he hesitates. The smile fades but returns.
“I’ve wondered if reincarnation always has to be vertical,” Hisashi says, pulling back. “Why does the next life you come back in have to take place after the life you just left? What if reincarnation is sometimes horizontal? And we sometimes come back and live a life that happens at the same time as another life we lived? Any living creature that you are cruel to could be someone you love. Or yourself.”
“I’ve never thought about that before.”
“And what if we come back to our own time and we meet ourselves and we feel the perfect harmony? Maybe that’s what we call love.” He gazes down at his hands and thumbs the rough calluses on his knuckles.
“But what if you come back as another boy?”
The dimples press into his checks again. “Who said love must always be easy?”
I can see that he wants to lean toward me again, but I still can’t. He relents. He doesn’t resent me for my hesitation. And it makes him even more beautiful to me. He’s the one person here I can trust.
“Hisashi, I need your help.”
“Anything.”
“Where can I buy red sorghum wine in the city?”
“Why do you need red sorghum wine?”
“For Chingu. I need to ask who the criminal behind the attacks is.”
He tenses when he hears this. “You shouldn’t get involved in this, Peasprout.”
“I’m already involved. This is the only way that I can prove that Suki’s behind this, not Cricket and me.”
“You don’t know that it’s Suki.”
“Are you defending her now?” I say. I don’t believe what I’m hearing.
“No! Just don’t give Suki any more reason to come after you. She’s got her attention on Doi these days. Doi can handle her.”
“Meaning that I can’t.”
“No! Just stay out of Suki’s way. You can’t risk getting caught breaking rules now.”
“Well, I have to. Because your father’s coming at me. I don’t understand why you won’t help me. I thought … I mean—”
I’m angry, but I don’t want to start crying in front of him. I focus my Chi.
“Please listen,” I say when I’ve collected my emotions. “You don’t know what Cricket and I have been through. You don’t know why we don’t know where our parents are. You don’t need to know that now. But there is something I need you to know: I am the smartest, most capable person I know.”
He laughs. “You’re the smartest, most capable person I know, too.”
“No, you don’t understand! At all.”
He looks at me with gentle eyes and says, “Help me to understand.”
I swallow down my emotion and say, “Knowing that I’m the smartest, most capable person I know is the most frightening feeling possible. Because it means that if I can’t keep Cricket safe, no one can. It means that if I can’t save myself, no one can. It means that I’m on my own. Can you understand that?”
He says nothing. He takes my hand.
“So that’s why I need to get into the city and buy red sorghum wine. Will you help me?”
He squeezes my hand and says, “I’m sorry, Peasprout. I can’t.”
And so the moment ends.
“I should go check on Cricket,” I say.
He doesn’t try to change my mind with more talk. He churns the tail-oar of the dragon-phoenix boat. I wipe my cheeks with the sleeve of my ridiculous dress. We reach the shore of the islet of the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. We pull the craft up onto the pearl shore. It quickly drains of seawater and is soon small enough to hold in two hands. However, the hole formed by the dragon’s claws is still too swollen to run the band through, so I tuck it under my arm. I leave Hisashi there without saying good-bye.
At the festival, I see Cricket included in a game with other first-year boys that involves hopping from boat to boat while imitating the movements of animals in wu liu moves. He leaps and lands on the edge of a boat on only one skate blade. I almost cry out his name. He fights to keep his balance. Any of those boys could push him into the water. But they don’t. As he loses the fight to maintain balance, his skate jerks up and my heart lurches as he does a triple-toe dragonfly spin from the edge of the boat and lands on the opposite edge. The other boys laugh and start chanting, “Flyboy! Flyboy! Flyboy!” I didn’t read this term in The Imperial Anthology of the Humorous, the Satirical, and the Serenely Amusing, so they must not be laughing at him.
Then they’re applauding him. Cricket bows and steps down into the center of the boat to cut the applause short. He’s always so modest. The boys continue to clap, though, and give him friendly rubs on the back.
Every day, he skates further and further from me and my protection. But I’m the only one who can keep him safe. As soon as I am done with the fifth Motivation tomorrow, I’ll find my own way into the city and get that wine for Chingu. No more wasting time relying on other people. Other people always disappoint me. Always. So what if I’m on my own? I’m used to it by now.
I should go back to the dormitory chambers to rest. However, I can’t let this evening end quite yet. I know that it was neither the best nor the worst evening of my life. That’s ridiculous. No boy should be able to make it that. Still, I return to the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character just to be in this evening a little longer.
When I arrive in the temple, I find that the candles and braziers have been put out. I thought they’d just light them and leave them, since the pearl doesn’t burn.
Something moves within the temple. Something’s in here with me. Above me. U
p in the archway at the top, there’s something black and billowing, like great wings. It turns with a snap and is gone out of the arch.
It has to be Suki. She’s going to commit a third attack! While I’m absent from the festival with no alibis.
At last, my chance to catch her in the act.
I skate up the spiraling ramp as quickly as I can. Sounds like bursting vents of steam emerge from above. There are great snaps as something breaks within the temple. I skate up faster. Before I reach the top, I see that the pearl in the ramp above me has been grotesquely eaten. It looks like flesh that has been turned to liquid and has healed over in smooth pink scars. The rifts spread, sizzling, squealing, putting up tendrils of vapor, and sending rents racing down toward me.
I scrape to a stop and reverse direction. I skate down as hard as I can, but the steaming drips of matter have burned through the ramp and dropped onto the level below, blocking my descent.
I remember Cricket holding his little sculpture and telling a circle of boys that if the spiral is damaged, the whole structure will come toppling down.
I leap into the center of the temple onto the statue of the eunuch Mu Haichen, atop the shoulder nearest to the boy Lim Tian-Tai.
A great bulb of viscous matter slides down the spiral path. Dollops of it eat through the ramp, dripping down in thick wads. When it reaches the bottom, it spreads.
Within moments, the floor is covered in yawning holes, curling up vapor. Through the rifts below me, I see black churning sea.
The statue of Mu Haichen gives a groan as it begins to lean against the statue of Lim Tian-Tai, like an old man on his son.
I throw the dragon-phoenix boat down into one of the gaps in the floor. As it hits the water below, it expands out to full size. I get ready to leap onto it but the heads at either end begin to twist and arc, and the boat starts to cave in on itself. It’s pulled under with the chunks of floor that are slipping down into the water.
I ride the statue of Mu Haichen into the sea as the entire temple comes down around me and I’m in the lightless water and my eyes and mouth are filled with the terrible sting of salt.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-LUCKY
