by Henry Lien
When the crowd blows past, a figure remains on the pearl. She must have slipped as all the other students raced past. She’s kneeling with her legs splayed out to keep her balance, like a fat goose. Niu Doi. Who has never once fallen down in the year that we’ve been here. Except for when she stood on her hands in Sensei Madame Yao’s class. For me.
Two boys skate to her. Hong-Gee and Matsu. Whom Doi defeated at the boys’ third Motivation. They both extend an arm to her. She hesitates. She must resent their pity. But then she reaches out her arms and they lift her to her feet with that grip, forearm to forearm, like pilots of battle-kites. She grasps the balustrade of the path beside them. They bow to her. Nothing comes out of her mouth; nothing expresses itself on her face. The boys leave her.
I take careful little steps over to her, holding on to the balustrade. We must look pathetic together with our bare socks and our hands gripping the rail like drunkards.
“Why didn’t you just let me do it?” Doi says. “Why didn’t you let me destroy Pearl Famous?”
“I had to try to stop you from doing more harm to yourself.”
“I was going to do it anyway.”
“I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
“What does it matter? I’m done here.”
“Who knows what the New Year will bring?”
“What do you care what happens to me?”
I don’t say it. She needs to say it. If she doesn’t say it, it’s not true. I was wrong. It’s not something that I can offer, whether she accepts it or not. That’s not friendship. That’s pity.
At last, she turns to me, her lips pressed together to hide their trembling. “You truly are my friend.”
“It takes you a while, but you get there eventually.”
“You’re the friend I’ve waited my whole life to meet. I was stupid to push that away just because I couldn’t have everything else that I wanted from you.”
She places her hands on her chest to emphasize these last words. When she does so, her balance falters. Doi scrambles in her socks, and reaches out to grab the balustrade beside us. Her hand briefly brushes my hand, resting on it.
She snaps her whole arm back and takes two small steps away from me. Doi’s gaze fixes on the pearl between us. Hot waves of shame roll off of her Chi. Her face burns with an expression of profound hate.
I realize that this hate is aimed wholly at herself.
She hates the strongest, bravest student here at Pearl Famous because of what that girl liked.
Whom, not what.
Loved, not liked.
I don’t know much about these things. But it seems deeply wrong that love should ever be a reason for hate.
I take her hand in mine and fold my other hand over hers.
Doi looks at me with astonished eyes. It cuts slices into my heart to think that she, who defended me so many times and paid so high a price for it, should be so surprised at such a small kindness in return.
When she sees the tears on my cheeks, her heart at last caves in.
“I don’t want to leave here, Peasprout! I’m frightened! And what’s going to happen to you? What are we going to do?”
I have no answers for my friend, and the only thing that I can do is offer my hands and join my weeping with hers.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-LUCKY
The final weeks of the school year are filled with preparations for the Drift Season Pageant. The opera that the first-year students are going to perform is The Great Leap of Shin. Sensei Madame Phoenix selected a script written by two girls whose names I don’t recognize. When the winning students are called to ascend to the front of the hall at the announcement ceremony, I see that it’s the two silent girls whom I forced to partner with me in literature class. Good.
Mitsuko is chosen by Sensei Madame Yao for the score that she composed. Two first-year boys and one first-year girl are chosen for their sculptures. They’ll assist the three third-year students who have devoted to the Conservatory of Architecture in designing and building the opera stage. I wonder how much the first-years are entrusted with the secrets of the pearl.
A great sheet of pearlsilk that’s twice as tall as the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character encircles the site of the construction on the central performing stage at the Conservatory of Music. Whatever they’re building in there must be epic. The three students’ winning sculptures are displayed on slender plinths in front of the site. They’re fine works. However, it hurts to notice that none of them has an interior as Cricket’s had, with two sculptures inside. He should be behind that sheet of pearlsilk now, helping to create the stage.
“Cricket, can you ever forgive me?” I cry at the wall of pearlsilk.
There’s rustling behind it. I didn’t realize that anyone was working there. The curtain parts and a head appears. It’s Cricket!
When he sees me, he freezes. There are so many things I’ve wanted to say to him since I destroyed his sculpture, but the only words I get out are “What are you doing in there?”
“I’m helping with the creation of the stage.”
“But … how?”
“I helped the three winning students carve their entries, so they asked me to help them as their assistant. And then Supreme Sensei Master Jio saw a design I drew and he liked it.”
Two third-year students suddenly appear through the slit in the pearlsilk. One of them, a tall, bossy-looking girl, says, “Cricket, you promised to help—” She cuts herself short when she sees me there.
“I’m sorry, Peasprout. I have to go. I’m doing something important.” He says this without gloating. He smiles wanly and disappears behind the screen.
* * *
Since the Drift Season Pageant is cast according to wu liu rankings, Suki was given the lead role of the chief engineer, Mu Haichen, but refused it, because she found it “disgusting” to play a eunuch. The role went to Etsuko, who also was offended at playing this great hero. Suki instead chose to play the role of the boy Lim Tian-Tai. However, she threw a fit at playing a boy and insisted that the script be changed so that at one point, it’s revealed that Lim Tian-Tai was only pretending to be a boy and was actually a classical beauty and a princess in disguise, and that at least half of her time onstage be spent in beautiful gowns. Sensei Madame Liao fired her from the production for insubordination, but Sensei Madame Yao and Sensei Madame Phoenix brought Suki back and insisted that her requested changes be made.
The two boys with the highest rankings in wu liu take the roles of the girl assassins Shok-Bee and Yumi. Suki and Etsuko were originally offered the roles, but they insisted it would be humiliating and morally outrageous to make them play supporting characters. Thus, the opera ultimately proceeds with two girls playing males and two boys playing females.
At last, the evening of the performance of the Drift Season Pageant arrives. We gather in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall for the End-of-Term Feast. Doi and I don’t eat a single bite because everything has animal parts in it and Doi made dumpling soup and vegetable curry-fried rice for us beforehand. However, it’s also because we’re restless with anticipation to see the opera performed. At last the clarion formed by the tower on the eastern side of the Hall of Lilting Radiance sounds, and a great cheer rises up. We all proceed to the site of the performance at the Conservatory of Music, Doi and I rowing a small boat across the water so we don’t have to navigate the rails in socks.
When we arrive and finally view what they’ve been building behind the great sheets of pearlsilk, we gape in shock and delight.
The entire stage is a vast structure of the pearl in the form of a massive tsunami wave. It curves over itself and reaches out toward the audience, looming over where we sit. The surface of the structure seems to indicate a riot of busy detail within the wave itself. However, the stage towers so high above us that, in the dim light, it’s impossible to see what’s embedded inside it.
When the sun has finally set, we take our seats. The lanterns lining the aisles are
dimmed. A student skates onto the dark stage. She does a pinwheel flip ending in splits and flings two torches to either side of the stage. They strike twin fuses leading to strings of firecrackers. As the explosions race up the fuses, we see that the stage is braided with lattices of fireworks, lighting thousands of tiny candles strung through the interior of the wave to swell the whole structure with a sweep of golden light.
We gaze, dazzled. Then another gasp goes up as we see that the whole structure is translucent and deep inside are carved giant dolphins and sharks and whales and schools of fish and monstrous unnamed things churned up from the sea floor by the tsunami, all in living detail but far more massive than they would be in reality and all hanging above us instead of swimming below.
It’s like something out of a fever dream, vivid, impossible, and so unbearably beautiful that it brands itself onto the sleeping mind and is wrenched with us into waking. The marvel on everyone’s faces, bathed in golden light from the wave above us, tells us that we’re all awake together and that tonight, reality is better than a dream.
As I stare up at the form of the wave bearing every wonder of the deep, I realize that there’s only one person who has the skill to carve these sculptures within a sculpture. My heart’s bursting so full of pride that I can’t hold the tears back.
When the opera begins, it quickly becomes apparent that it bears only the most rudimentary resemblance to the true events of the Great Leap of Shin. If the boy Lim Tian-Tai had as many costume changes during his desperate race to the Imperial City as Suki has during the performance, he would still be only halfway there now. However, as pure spectacle, it’s staggering.
As the dance battle between the armies of Lim Tian-Tai and Mu Haichen escalates, the skaters begin to skate round and round to gather speed. Several of them sweep up the half cylinder formed by the wave and use it to launch up and engage in aerial combat. Several battles end with the loser kicked through the air and flying over the audience.
The forms and the movements and the sounds are so striking, they impale themselves in your mind so that you quickly get to the point where you feel that there’s no other form of fighting in the world, no other form of sport, no other form of dance. This is the only way to move. Everything else is just a pale shadow.
Watching this, I know that wu liu is all I’ve ever wanted to do. And I know that wu liu, and everything else that’s important to me, might be taken away because I chose to help Pearl; I chose to help my friend.
I also know that I had to do what I did.
For I am Chen Peasprout. And being Chen Peasprout is more important to me than being a legend of wu liu.
I’m drawn out of contemplation as the opera hurtles toward its great finale. The eunuch Mu Haichen issues the command with a chop of his hand; the great fireworks cannons strike the beat for the leap; the Great Wall of two hundred million men stretching six hundred li across the vastness of Shin, represented by the army of skaters in black, leaps in unison on the central spine of the earth. At the seventy-eighth leap, the earth shudders and quakes and cracks and breaks.
A rumble rises behind the audience. We all turn to look. A phalanx of skaters in blue, trailing fluttering ribbons, washes down the aisles through the audience, representing the tsunami wave launched by the Great Leap of Shin. The skaters fling themselves into the half cylinder, take its curve hard, and come whipping up and back at us, soaring overhead and scattering petals of blue paper as we’re all washed under by the tide that drowned the first city of Pearl. We roar as the structure is flushed with water, and the candles are put out, and we’re plunged into darkness.
The cast, composer, author, and architects take their ovations. Afterward, the three stars come down from the stage to meet their fellow students and show their sumptuous costumes up close. The first-year students who won the sculpture competition are gathered with the third-year Conservatory of Architecture students on the stage, basking in the majesty of their handiwork.
“Where is Cricket?” I hear one of the stage design team say. They search in the audience and see him. They skate down together to bring him up on the stage.
I want to go to him, I want to say things to him, but I don’t know if I have the right. I turn to Doi beside me. She nods toward the stage.
I shamble up the ramp at the side of the stage. When Cricket sees me, he is still. He doesn’t look away or bury his chin in his breast. Is it his turn now to be ashamed of me, in my socks, with my sixteenth-place ranking? He nods his head slightly. I shuffle to him. His friends part to let me through.
I reach down and take his hands. I look at the wave yawning over us and say, “That came out of your hands? These little hands?” The tears trace down my cheeks. “Can you forgive me? I was so wrong.” He turns his face up to me, weeping openly as well.
“How could I not see?” I say. “Those statues you carved inside your sculpture of the temple. They were just too small for me to see how beautiful they were.” I look up at the giant dolphins and whales and other sea life teaming within the form of the wave hanging over me. “But now, you’ve made something so big that it fills the sky. And even someone as stupid as I am can see.” I place my hands on his shoulders. “I see you, Cricket. And I’m so proud of you.”
And there, in front of all those people, I open my arms to him. I don’t embrace him; I don’t wrap him up in my arms. I come toward him as he comes toward me, and we embrace each other.
* * *
When the Drift Season Pageant is over, the students all proceed to Divinity’s Lap to participate in Beautymarch. No rankings. No competition. Just every student getting a turn to skate for everyone else, for the pure joy of skating. Doi and I row to the Principal Island and come ashore. We hold on to each other for steadiness as we follow the other students.
“Go get your skates.” We turn to see Sensei Madame Liao.
“We’ve been unskated for the term,” I say.
“The term is over,” says Sensei Madame Liao. “Now, go get your skates. You are skating in Beautymarch.”
We gape at her. I look at Doi. Her face is filled with doubt. The doubt is the shame of parading ourselves in front of our fellow students after our spectacular humiliation.
“You have paid what the law required you to pay,” says Sensei Madame Liao. “Do not let anyone else make you pay more. Never let anyone do that to you.”
Doi and I slip and stumble back to our dormitory chambers as quickly as we can, and every time we fall down, I laugh, knowing that we’re about to skate again.
When we arrive at Divinity’s Lap, Beautymarch is already under way. All the first-year boys and girls are arrayed in a vast circle, each student playing an instrument. The sound of erhus and flutes and traveling zithers and taiko drums fills the air as the great sculpture of the Enlightened One towers over us, her hand resting on the roof of the Hall of Lilting Radiance, her smile sweeping over us all. Sensei Madame Phoenix skates about, directing her birds to spell out auspicious logograms over the Enlightened One’s head. The luminescent harnesses crossing their green bellies spell out GENEROSITY! LOYALTY! FRIENDSHIP!
“Chen Cricket!” Sensei Madame Liao calls out.
Cricket tosses his taiko drum to the skater exiting the circle. He takes the center and skates strange little fidgets, doing no real wu liu, only fussy footwork, as he does when he’s nervous. He’s finding the grain in the pearl with his skates, working it with little twitches of his blades. As he does so, he’s making the pearl change color! It turns blue and silver under his skates and then we see that he’s making a figure in the pearl. He creates the image of the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. Everyone cries out with delight at his clever trick. The pearl quickly heals over and the image vanishes.
“Chen Peasprout!” calls out Sensei Madame Liao. I toss my erhu to Cricket as he exits the center. It doesn’t matter how I skate. It doesn’t matter what the other students think. I’m simply grateful for the joy of skating and for the honor of sharing a c
ourt with my friend Niu Doi one last time. There are cheers from some of the students as I give them one of my lifetime’s 608 riven crane split jumps.
“‘The Pearlian New Year’s Song’!” calls out Sensei Madame Liao. I exit the center and go back to the circle of students as we begin to sing, joined by Sensei Madame Phoenix’s birds.
If I learned just one thing, then the year has not been wasted.
If I traded one illusion for a revelation,
If I kept just one friend, then the year has not been wasted.
May we meet here in the New Year. May we meet here in Pearl!
“Captain!” calls out Sensei Madame Liao. Whom is she calling captain? It’s a term of affection in Pearl. It means “the best,” “the bravest,” “the highest.”
Suki makes to enter the center, but Sensei Madame Liao glares at her, turns away, and calls out, “Captain! Captain! Captain!”
Sensei Madame Liao stares down the length of the circle of students. As she beats on her drum and calls out “Captain!” it’s clear that her stare isn’t a challenge.
It’s not a command.
It’s an invitation.
She’s inviting us all to support something.
A few students begin to take up the chant. “Captain! Captain!”
She’s inviting us to put aside childish rivalries. She’s inviting us to search within us for enough imagination and heart to become our next, better selves. She’s inviting us to show that we’re ready to advance to the next year.
The court resounds with chants of “Captain! Captain! Captain!”
We all look to where Sensei Madame Liao is looking.
She’s looking at my friend.
Doi enters the center of the circle, her eyes shining with tears.
When she crosses her skates and rises on her toes and begins to wave her arms in wings, a cheer erupts from the crowd and the students cry out, “The Dragon and the Phoenix! The Dragon and the Phoenix!”
