by Henry Lien
My Chi trembles. I can tell from Doi’s expression and the quiver in her Chi that she feels the same. None of the other students know that just one of these salt figures could melt all of Eastern Heaven Dining Hall and bring the structure collapsing down around us.
The metal cage keeps the figures of salt from touching the pearl beneath them.
Sensei Madame Yao was shaking the oiled cloth so that any loose grains of salt wouldn’t be dragged out of the cage and onto the pearl floor.
I force myself to look at the salt soldiers’ faces, bracing myself for their terror, but I’m surprised to see they all look the same, as if they were all conscripted from one family. Something’s not right.
The great doors of the hall burst open. Three students skate in. From the embroidered blue filigree trim on the seams of their robes, I know that they’re the three new third-year students invited to devote to the Conservatory of Architecture.
They’re dripping with water.
“Supreme Sensei!” cries one girl. “We beg your forgiveness!”
“What has befallen these three sweet embryos of the Conservatory of Architecture?” answers Supreme Sensei with a sweep of his arm.
“We were skating to the Feast of Welcoming from the Conservatory of Architecture when a little water cyclone blew us off the rail.”
“Blew you off the rail? Yet surely you did not enter the sea and violate the contract with the usually benevolent but now vicious coiling water dragons, did you, little ones?” Supreme Sensei says it not to the three wet students but to all of us, as if he were broadcasting his voice to the back of an opera hall. I try and catch Doi or Cricket’s attention. What is going on here?
“Yes! We fell in the sea. A dragon’s coming to punish us for breaking the contract! It’s flying here now!”
Everyone stands up from their seats. The hall resounds with students fervently debating what is happening, whether this is real.
It can’t be real. There aren’t any dragons except in stories. This must all be some sort of drill or experimental opera production. I know when I’m in the middle of someone’s plot. I don’t know what the plot is or who’s behind it, but one thing I do know is that dragons aren’t real.
What is happening here?
Fingers dig into my arm. I turn and see Sensei Madame Liao’s face, fury fighting with fear.
“Peasprout, protect Cricket,” she says. “This is real.”
Around us, the students are beginning to panic. “Students,” she announces to them. “This is not a drill.”
“Where’s Cricket?” I say to Doi beside me, searching frantically. “He was just here!”
“Senseis and prefects,” barks Sensei Madame Liao, “lock down all window slats and doors.”
The senseis and prefects race down the hall, sweeping the tall window slats shut with leaping third- and luckieth-gate spins, followed by one fan chop after another to secure the latches. However, Eastern Heaven Dining Hall was designed with so many windows because it was intended to be airy and open to the view of the sea over the cliff edge, like a temple floating on a cloud. The entire long back wall facing the sea is filled with slender window slats reaching three stories high. I don’t know how we’re going to securely lock everything down before the dragons attack.
“Now,” commands Sensei Madame Liao, “all students, gather in the center of the hall. Stay away from windows. First-year students in the innermost center. Second-year students around them. Third-year students around them. Senseis form a perimeter.”
I find Cricket in the center of the hall, Doi’s arms wrapped around him. I join them and throw myself around Cricket so that Doi and I form a basket of arms around him.
“Put out all lanterns, sweet ones!” commands Supreme Sensei.
The lanterns wink out around us and the hall grows as dark as the night outside. Students stifle their whimpers in sleeves and behind fans as we huddle in a mass of quivers in the center of the hall.
I see the Chairman. He’s huddled under the senseis’ vast dining table. He has undone the sash of his New Deitsu officer’s robe under his sensei’s robe and is using it to tie himself to the leg of the table. He urgently motions to Hisashi and this Wu Yinmei to get under the table and circles his fist to indicate tying.
Then the air begins to ring with a high metallic hum. The quality of the atmosphere changes. Friction sparks leap from my robe as the cloth rubs against the robes of the students crouched next to me.
A sound pierces the air. It starts as a high keening, then becomes a shriek buried inside a roar, as if a tiger opened its mouth to bellow while out of its throat flew one screeching eagle after another. The windows and doors of the hall rattle furiously in their frames as the winds whip and buffet us.
Under it all, the metallic hum rings with such force that my teeth ache. I look over to Cricket. His eyes are squeezed shut in a wince of pain.
“Cricket!” I cry, but he can’t hear me over the thundering noise around us.
His hands are cupped not to his ears but to his nose.
Red seeps out between his fingers as he tries to stanch the blood flowing from his nose.
“It’s going to strike!” screams Supreme Sensei. “Hold on to one another, little ones—the coiling water dragon is going to strike!”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The impact of the coiling water dragon rocks the hall and sends our huddle of students and senseis scattering on hands and knees in a fan shape across the floor.
What appears to be a dark, watery claw half as high as the hall rakes viciously across the entire back wall, sending the window slats clattering open as tendrils of black water lash toward us.
“We have to stop it!” cries Sensei Madame Liao at Supreme Sensei Master Jio.
“It is not possible to stop it,” he shouts back. “Don’t look at it, students!”
“Senseis, secure the windows!” orders Sensei Madame Liao. The twelve senseis leave the students and launch themselves at the slats. The Chairman stays lashed to the leg of the table under which he’s hiding. Doi and I crouch with Cricket wrapped in our arms, but I can’t see where Hisashi and Wu Yinmei are in this pile of students.
The senseis launch themselves in snapping lotus kicks at the seaward wall, their skate blades scissoring together to slam the window slats shut in their frames, but there are only twelve senseis and eighty-seven window slats. As soon as they kick one set of windows shut, the coiling water dragon rips open more, and the simple latches and hooks can’t hold against its force.
“There aren’t enough senseis!” says Doi.
“We have to help them!” I say.
We both rise.
“It’s coming again!” hollers Cricket through his hands cupped over his bloodied nose.
Everyone turns toward the window slats flapping open and revealing the sea beyond.
“No, the other side!” cries Cricket.
At that, a force punches open the two great doors of the main entrance behind us. A whipping frenzy of cold black tendrils bursts through the entrance, lashing us with their wet fury.
“Doi!” I command. “Take it from the left.” I search out Hisashi in the crush of panicked students. “Hisashi, take it from the right.”
Doi, with her short hair and black academy robe swirling like a dark orchid, turns into a blaze of movement on the left. On the right, Hisashi, identically shorn and dressed, turns into a matching flurry, whipping through the same motions.
The two of them turn and bound in perfect mirror synchrony with each other, weaving across the hall like a fine embroidered design rendered in black cloth and silver blade, to meet in the middle at the two main doors to the hall.
“Hit it now!” I shout at them.
They explode at the doors with the power of twin fireworks cannons in some complex pairs move that I’ve never seen before.
Doi’s and Hisashi’s kicks slam the doors shut, severing the lashing tentacles and tails protruding through.
The dragon’s amputated appendages drop to the floor and appear to turn into splashes of water.
“Secure the doors!” I say, throwing two chairs toward them.
Doi and Hisashi each stab the leg of a chair through the handles of the great doors, barring them. The two of them press against each other, back-to-back, fists lifted in preparation for the next attack.
“It’s coming from the north, along the seaward wall!” yells Cricket.
I skate to the north end of the hall. The rumbling grows and grows as the coiling water dragon speeds toward us. I call to Cricket, “Tell me when it’s going to strike us!”
“Seven beats! Six beats! Five! Fo—lucky!”
I burst down the hall toward the south end. At the last moment, I turn and give up one of my lifetime’s riven crane split jumps and leap over the cage of salt soldiers.
“Three!” shouts Cricket.
I channel the Chi force from the riven crane split jump off the south wall, toward the front wall. I skate along its unbroken surface, veering over the main doorway, with Doi and Hisashi peering up at me from below.
“Two!”
I sling myself midair into a reverse flying halberd triple jump, flipping and bounding off the north wall.
“One!”
I kick off the end of the triple jump and fling myself toward the window slats of the seaward wall, just as the coiling water dragon flies past the hall outside, like a thundering train of rattling iron carriages. The force of my leap sends me flying alongside it.
As the coiling water dragon blasts each window slat open with its passing, I sweep along the seaward wall beside it, my skate extended in front of me, slamming each window shut as soon as it opens.
The roar and scream of the creature diminish as it flies over the sea, then rise as it circles back for another attack.
I shout at Cricket, crowded with the other students in the middle of the hall. “Cricket! How many beats until it—”
Every window slat swings open at once, and the coiling water dragon vomits torrents of water, pummeling us and threatening to drown us in the hall. The coiling water dragon then hurtles out toward the sea. I exhale in relief, then realize that the dragon is moving away from us so quickly that it leaves a void of pressure in the hall. It begins violently sucking the water out the slats in streams.
“Hold on to something!” commands Sensei Madame Liao.
I dive under the table nearest to me as the other students scramble to do the same. We all wrap our arms around the table legs and one another as the water around our skates forms a tide rushing out the slats. Although the tables are carved into the floor of the hall itself, the water tries to pull us out and take us with it, spilling over the cliffside and into the sea.
“You have to stop this!” bellows Sensei Madame Liao at Supreme Sensei Master Jio again. I can barely hear her over the roar of water and the screams of the students.
“It’s too late!” he cries back.
The ringing and thunder in the air begin to rise again, and we brace ourselves for another attack.
“We all have to help!” announces Sensei Madame Liao. “Second-and third-years, form lines in front of each window slat! Take turns leaping at it. We must not let the coiling water dragon reach inside again.”
Doi, Hisashi, and I take our positions in front of the window slats. Most of the students, however, remain huddled in the center of the hall, too afraid to move.
“Students!” cries Sensei Madame Liao again. Still, only a few students move to join us.
A beat begins to pound in the hall. We all turn toward the sound.
Standing on her swiftboard at the dais is this Wu Yinmei. She’s pounding on the lectern with her poles, as if beating on a great drum. She opens her mouth, and a voice as piercing and serene as a pearlflute sings out.
“‘Sisters of the skate!
“‘Brothers of the blade!’”
She pounds out the rhythm of “The Pearlian Battlesong” with her poles like a calm and steady heartbeat.
“‘Come and lend your hands and stand up for your motherland!
“‘Answer the command!
“‘“Come and join our band!”’”
The sight of this girl with her immobile feet, unable to flee, unafraid and standing in the face of this crisis, causes a few students to collect themselves out of their panic. They join us at the lines in front of the window slats.
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!’” she sings out. Several more students remember themselves, as if called out of a dream, and add themselves to the students lined up to protect the hall.
“‘Come and join, come and join our band!’”
Several more students join the line and sing along, “‘Come and join, come and join our band!’”
“‘“Come and join our band!”’” she cries, pounding out each beat like a command to our better selves while the coiling water dragon flies toward us over the dark water. The hall shudders and quakes with its approach.
“Don’t look at it!” orders Sensei Madame Yao.
The creature rams into us.
We launch ourselves in volley after volley at the window slats, slamming them shut each time they threaten to flip open.
The air in the hall is filled with a high whistling as the coiling water dragon blasts its watery breath through the window slats trying to pry its way to us, but it can’t get in.
“It’s working!” I cry as the creature retreats from the seaward side. “It’s flying away.”
“No, it’s coming from the other side!” shouts Cricket. His nose is streaming blood again, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
The coiling water dragon plows into us from the other side with such devastating force that it tears the entire hall off the foundation of pearl beneath it, flipping the structure onto its side so that the window slats are now below us and the wall with the main entry doors is above us. Chairs bounce over our heads, but the tables, which were carved into the structure itself, hold to the floor, which is now the wall beside us. Doi comes sliding into me, but we shoot out our arms to cushion the crash. Cricket is hurtling toward us from the floor flipping beneath us. Doi and I catch him in a lucky-fisted palanquin position, absorbing his fall.
The coiling water dragon collides into us again, sending the hall sliding toward the sea. When the structure finally comes to a stop, one-third of the length of Eastern Heaven Dining Hall hangs over the cliff edge of the Principal Island. The window slats over on that end of the hall now swing open, revealing churning black water far below.
The students caught on that end of the hall scream with panic as they leap from window frame to window frame over gaping chasms, toward the safety of our side of the hall. I catch sight of Suki, her face twisting with panic as she nearly loses her balance launching off a narrow window frame, but she quickly rights herself. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look shaken.
The cage filled with salt soldiers is crammed at an angle in one window slat. The slender frame holding the cage from falling suddenly snaps. The entire cage plummets into the sea with the salt soldiers trapped within.
All the senseis fling themselves in hammer-throw moves toward the wall that used to be the floor, in an effort to flip the hall upright with their pounding impact. The Chairman dangles high above us on the wall, still lashed to the table leg. Rows of students join the senseis in leaping at the wall, but they can’t generate enough force to flip it. Their efforts only nudge the hall away from the cliff edge.
Doi and I look at each other. We see the solution at the same time.
“No!” we exclaim together.
“Sensei Madame Liao, don’t flip the hall upright!” I say.
“The window slats are facing down now!” says Doi.
“We just need to move the hall away from the cliff edge. The windows are blocked closed!” I cry.
Sensei Madame Liao nods at us and barks, “Everyone, stop trying to flip the hall upright! Leap instead at the
north end of the hall!”
Phalanxes of students and senseis turn and leap at the north wall in wave after wave like grasshoppers. The metallic scream begins to rise in the air outside as the coiling water dragon makes its approach again.
Each strike against the north end of the hall pulls us a little closer inland, but are we moving fast enough?
The structure shudders violently as the coiling water dragon flies toward us.
We leap in desperate strike after strike at the north end of the hall until it’s pitted like the head of a lotus.
We barely manage to shift the entire length of the hall safely onto dry pearl when the coiling water dragon strikes. Its screeches are muffled this time, now that all windows into the hall are sealed shut beneath us. The metallic hum doesn’t reach my teeth now. We can feel it trying to find a way in. It wraps around the ends of the hall like a dog mauling a bone too big to bite.
Everyone is tucked down with their hands over their heads, as taught in earthquake drills. But I can’t help looking up.
Above us, the great doors to Eastern Heaven Dining Hall shake furiously in their frame. I can see that Doi and Hisashi cleverly stabbed the chair legs into the handles in an arch formation, which is only strengthened with the more pressure that is put on it.
The main doors above us hold.
The window slats below us hold.
It can’t reach us.
We’ve foiled it.
The coiling water dragon screams in frustration with one last outburst of air from its lungs.
The two main doors above us are ripped out of their frame like paper shoji screens, and I’m staring straight up at the coiling water dragon.
I whip my head away in horror, but it’s too late. I saw it.
The whipping tendrils of water, like tentacles.
The furious black waves of its coils and tails coursing past, like a dark river in the sky.
I pat my limbs, shaking.
I saw it, but I haven’t been turned to salt.
Is it because I didn’t see its face?
Its sound is retreating. The roar has stopped. The screaming wind is dying down. We’ve defeated it.
It’s leaving us.
