Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions

by Henry Lien

  I thought Sensei Madame Liao was my friend. I’m facing so much danger. A part of me hoped that if I couldn’t save myself, Sensei Madame Liao would help me. I thought if I couldn’t figure out all the answers that I—

  I notice the words on the placard dangling from the All the All Tree in front of me.

  It says, AVAILABLE: THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS. FOR SALE TO: ONLY MISS LOCK.

  Wu Yinmei’s words ring in my mind. You are the lock, Chen Peasprout, but I am the key.

  She put up this placard. Offering me what she knows I most want. She’s literally dangling it in my—

  Behind me, a voice hollers.

  “It’s a raid! Yao’s coming! Everyone get in your dormitories!”

  We all scramble out of the courtyard and race to our dormitory chambers. We slam the shoji doors shut. All the students pretend to be asleep and make no sound as we hear Sensei Madame Yao outside screaming, “Who did this?! Vile, devious students!”

  As Sensei Madame Yao proceeds to batter and chop the All the All Tree to splinters, I think of Wu Yinmei’s placard. She’s offering to sell me the answer to how I can prevail at the Annexations. And the answer to how I can stop the Shinian invasion.

  But the one thing her placard failed to say is this: What price does Miss Key want?

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  So I have to decide what to do about this Wu Yinmei. Quickly. Because the deadline to declare the lineups of our battlebands has arrived.

  Two days before the First Annexation, we are assembled at the principal training court at the Conservatory of Wu Liu for the official declaring of battleband lineups. The students who have already formed battlebands are gathered in clusters.

  Sensei Master General Moon Tzu and his mustache-bearers look down at us from a dais, but Sensei Madame Yao does all the talking. She announces, “Sensei Master General Moon Tzu says that today you shall finalize the lineup of your battlebands.” She gestures to a great urn filled with poles on which are suspended long scrolls of red pearlsilk.

  “You shall write the name of your battleband on the front of your banner, as well as the names of the captain and each member on the back.” She gestures with her open palm to a table of bowls filled with shimmering liquid and brushes. “The ink is resin made from the soil of the abalone burial ground, so it will dry within one hour. Choose your battleband name, captain, and members before it dries.”

  Across the water from the east, the tones of Chingu playing the wave organ moo at us. Is there really an oracle hidden in it? Does Wu Yinmei really know how to interpret it? Is the answer to my questions about how to win the Annexations and how to stop the Shinian invasion really being broadcast for everyone to hear, if they only had the key to understand?

  I announce to Doi, Cricket, and Hisashi, “We need to talk about Wu Yinmei.”

  Hisashi says, “Well, she told me she hasn’t accepted Suki’s offer to join her battleband.”

  So he’s still talking to her.

  Cricket says, “She figured out that the pearl responds to the sound of drums. She sees things that others don’t.”

  Hisashi says, “There are a lot of things about her that are extr—”

  I bark at him, “I don’t want to hear about how extraord—”

  “—emely complicated, but we can use her.”

  Oh.

  He looks at the expression on my face with puzzlement. He says carefully, “I’m not that smart, but I’m smart enough to respect the most extraordinary girl I have ever met.”

  The words all rush out of my mouth in a torrent. “What’s so extraordinary about her? What has she done besides be good at music? Chingu’s good at music. I don’t see anyone melting into a puddle about her. Why are braids suddenly so beautiful now? Just because she’s a princess? I thought Pearl didn’t believe in royalty. And she’s Shinian. Do you know how much hatred I got last year for being Shinian? How much hatred I’m still getting? From your father? And he’s sponsored her sanctuary status while trying to get me sent back to get chopped into a thousand pieces by her great-great-grandmother? What does she have that everyone loves so much? What does she have that I don’t? What’s so extraordinary about her?”

  I pant with the force of my words. Hisashi mashes his brows together again. It makes his expression look soft. Almost tender.

  He says quietly, “Peasprout. When I said over the infinity noodle that this past year, I met the most extraordinary girl I have ever met … I was talking about you.”

  It takes a moment for this to sink in.

  Me.

  He was talking about me.

  Even if the world is threatening to crumble on top of me, he sees me. And for some reason, that makes me feel as if I can face my world caving in. But he doesn’t need to know that yet.

  “Oh,” I say, avoiding his gaze. “I knew that. So. About this Wu Yinmei. It’s clear that she has talents. She even said that she figured out how to interpret Chingu’s oracles. But I don’t trust her.”

  Hisashi says, “I’m not defending her. But you need to be a good battleband leader if you want to win. She’s been groomed for leadership her whole life. Learn from her.”

  Cricket adds, “You might not like her, Peasprout. But sometimes we have to learn to work with people we don’t like. And maybe when we work with them, we learn to like them more.”

  Cricket might have a point. Not the part about learning to like her, but the other part. For as ancient Pearlian wisdom teaches:

  Embrace your enemies so close to you that they cannot draw bows.

  Clasp your enemies’ hands, for held hands can hold no daggers.

  Actually, I’m not sure these count as ancient Pearlian wisdom. I read them on the wrappers of the eating sticks at the vegetarian dumpling house where we usually ate while staying in the city during the New Year’s month. However, they did sound very wise, and it was a very old dumpling house.

  “All right, we’ll invite her,” I say. “Plus it’ll burn Suki like lava when she learns that we have a real princess in our battleband.”

  “That’s not very nice, Peasprout,” says Cricket. “Let’s be nice this year.”

  We find Wu Yinmei in the crowd of students and skate to her. I bow low and say, “Wu Yinmei. It would be my joyful fortune and profound honor if you would join my battleband.”

  She bows back moderately, balancing on her swiftboard poles to keep from tipping too far. “I would be honored to join your battleband.” She adds with a serene smile, “For now.”

  “What do you mean ‘for now’?” I say.

  “You will want to see if the alliance is suitable. As will I. Not every key fits every lock.”

  So she’s not going to tell me how to interpret the oracle yet. She’s going to see if it suits her purposes before she gives up that leverage. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. What do I do? Rescind my offer? If I do, she’ll never tell me how to understand the oracle. But if I let her in, she’ll have power over me. I wish I could ask Sensei Madame Liao for advice. But she’ll just say I’m being extreme and strange and unable to form meaningful connections.

  “Fine,” I say. I skate to the urn and lift one of the banners of red pearlsilk out. I grab a bowl of resin ink. I write on the back of the banner CHEN PEASPROUT, CAPTAIN followed by NIU DOI, CHEN CRICKET, NIU HISASHI, WU YINMEI. I turn the banner around, dip the brush in the bowl, and write THE TAMERS OF THE PEARL on the front side.

  “The Tamers of the Pearl?” asks Hisashi.

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s the name of our battleband.”

  “Bit serious, isn’t it?” he says. “Don’t we want something with a bit more style?”

  “We’re a serious battleband. I’m serious about winning.” I hesitate and know I shouldn’t say it, but out it comes: “Aren’t you?”

  “Peasprout,” says Doi gently, “I agree with Hisashi but for different reasons. I think it’s a little too boastful.”

  Boastful. Just like Sensei Madame Liao
said about me in The Book of Qualities.

  “It is the sort of name that Gang Suki would choose,” adds Yinmei. “Pretentious and conceited.”

  Make me drink sand to death.

  “This is the name of our battleband,” I say firmly.

  “Peasprout,” says Cricket. “Perhaps we should hear some other suggestions before deciding?”

  “Yes, why don’t we hear your wonderful suggestions,” I say, crossing my arms.

  Hisashi speaks first. “Well, I like the name Emperor Stardust and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I snap at him.

  “Ridiculous isn’t necessarily bad,” he replies.

  “Yes, it is,” I sputter. “I mean, that name is so ludicrously unsuitable for so many reasons that I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “What’s wrong with a little humor?” he says. Those dimples are starting to become very annoying very quickly.

  “We’re talking about our name,” I stress. “You want to make a joke of it?”

  “Peasprout,” says Doi, “nobody would choose a name that would—”

  “Oh, so now I’m nobody. That’s what all of you, clucking like a gaggle of fire-chickens, have concluded. Fine. Then why don’t we just call ourselves Nobody and the Fire-Chickens?”

  I lay the banner on the pearl, scrape the logograms for the Tamers of the Pearl off with my skate blade, and smear the resin ink back into the bowl. It’s gotten harder already, so I stir it vigorously with the brush, then write NOBODY AND THE FIRE-CHICKENS on the banner in jagged logograms.

  “Peasprout…” says Doi, reaching for the banner, but I snatch it away.

  Behind me a voice says, “So what name did you choose?” I turn to see Suki bearing a banner on which is written RADIANT THOUSAND-STORY VERY TALL GODDESS followed by the House of Flowering Blossoms girls. I see that they’ve added about twelve new recruits. Suki continues, “Stealthiest Skaters from Shin? Unstoppable Secret Weapons of Shin?”

  I’m in a bad mood already. I don’t need Suki putting ideas in people’s heads. One thing Suki taught me last year is that if someone says something enough times and with enough volume, a line of believers starts snaking behind her. So I need to separate the head from the rest of the snake.

  I shout at her, “I am so sick of your stinking, sour face. And you know what? I’m not the only one. Etsuko, why are you following her? She’s just going to shove you into a vicious crowd again as soon as it serves her. She kept you hanging on as her second choice last year at the Fifth Motivation. Until she was turned down by her first choice: me.”

  Suki seethes and says, “How dare you speak to my first lieu—”

  I talk over Suki, “And you know why I turned Suki down? Because she’s a thousand-tailed scorpion. Etsuko, you placed second last year. You could have placed first if she didn’t stop it. She’s keeping you down.” I turn to the rest of Suki’s girls. “She’s keeping all of you down. Etsuko should be the captain of your battleband. Not Suki. Suki’s only strong if you make her strong. She’s nothing without followers. She’s nothing without you. And she knows it.”

  Suki hisses, “You filthy, low-quality, Shinian— What are you doing?!” She turns to see that Etsuko has snatched their banner from her. “How dare you! Give that back to me, or I’ll have you whipped for insubordination!”

  Etsuko steps one skate back behind the other in a defensive combat position. Then one girl after another places her skate in the same position, facing down Suki.

  I can’t believe this.

  I broke their battleband.

  I started a palace coup.

  I dethroned their Empress Dowager.

  Only two inconsequential girls skate over to join Suki. Suki says to Etsuko and the rest of the girls, “You are going to pay for this. I will live to hear you scream for mercy as I wreak my revenge on you.” She spins to face me. “And I’m going to enjoy watching you beg for help as you’re being torn in two.”

  As Etsuko scrapes off the resin ink spelling out the names of the expelled members from their banner, Suki and her two remaining followers skate to the urn and take out a fresh banner. Suki brushes the name RADIANT THOUSAND-STORY VERY TALL GODDESS on the banner.

  “Etsuko, look,” I say.

  “You can’t use that name,” says Etsuko.

  “I thought of it!” cries Suki.

  “Sensei Madame Yao!” calls Etsuko.

  Sensei Madame Yao skates over.

  “Think of a new name, Gang Suki,” she says. “And hurry up. Any battleband without an acceptable name by the end of the hour will be called Last-Place Losers on Skates.”

  “Infuriate me to death!” says Suki, but she scrapes the hardening resin ink from the banner. She writes RADIANT TEN-THOUSAND-STORY MOST TALL GODDESS MADE OF GOLD AND RUBIES.

  “No names that are too close to other names or are misleading,” says Sensei Madame Yao. “Think of a new name quickly. Time’s almost up.”

  Cricket tugs at my sleeve and says, “Peasprout…”

  “Not now, Cricket!” I’m enjoying watching Suki’s humiliation.

  She looks like she’s about to burst into flames with fury, but she scrapes off the name and begins to write in gummy letters PRINCESS SUKI AND—

  “She can’t use that name,” I say to Sensei Madame Yao. “It violates the rule against misleading names, because there’s a real princess at Pearl Famous now.”

  Sensei Madame Yao nods in agreement.

  “Peasprout…” says Cricket more urgently.

  “Not now!” I say.

  Suki hurriedly begins scraping the name off when we hear a bwong resound in the air. Sensei Master General Moon Tzu and his mustache-bearers have struck the gong.

  “Time’s up! Brushes down!” calls Sensei Madame Yao.

  Suki’s battleband is now committed to the name Last-Place Losers on Skates.

  I turn to gloat over Suki’s reaction. Her mouth looks like a jellyfish trying to turn itself inside out.

  But then she starts to smile. She’s looking above and behind me.

  I turn around.

  I see all of my battleband mates.

  Doi is furious. Cricket is shaking his head with sadness. Yinmei peers at me in disbelief. Hisashi is laughing.

  I look up and see what Suki was smiling at.

  It’s the banner displaying the new name of our battleband.

  Nobody and the Fire-Chickens.

  Make me drink sand to death for ten thousand years.

  CHAPTER

  LUCKYTEEN

  So our battleband is now called Nobody and the Fire-Chickens. And the whole school is talking about it. I hear whispers all around me as I pass other students. “What kind of captain would choose a name like that?” and “Maybe she doesn’t speak Pearlian very well,” and “Someone who finished sixteenth is pretty much nobody,” and “If I had a captain like that, I’d feed myself to a coiling water dragon in shame.”

  The day following the naming disaster, Sensei Madame Liao approaches me after the morning assembly. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since reading her comments in The Book of Qualities. I can hear those words as if spoken in her voice. Boastful, sometimes strange, often extreme, and intensely lonely with a pronounced difficulty in forming lasting, meaningful connections.

  “Peasprout,” she says. “Please meet me in the Humbleness Chamber at the Conservatory of Wu Liu. I have selected you to participate in a special class on leadership.”

  All that morning, my Chi hums because my heart is full. A special class on leadership. So Sensei Madame Liao does appreciate me. I’m ashamed that I doubted her belief in me. The Book of Qualities probably mixed in false sensei evaluations with accurate performance logs.

  When I arrive at the Humbleness Chamber at the beginning of White Hour, Sensei Madame Liao is already there. I bow deeply to her. “I am humbled by the honor of being selected to participate in this special class.”

  “Please take a seat,
Peasprout.”

  There are only two desks. This must truly be an advanced class for there to be only two—

  A girl comes skating in frantically. “Oh, I’m so sorry, am I late?”

  It’s Gou Gee-Hong.

  “Oh, hi, Peasprout. Congratulations! I heard you’re captain of your own battleband, too!”

  She’s also the captain of a battleband? Who would want her as a captain? And why is she in an advanced class with me on leadership? I mean, I like Gou Gee-Hong, but I wouldn’t call her leader material.

  Before I can ask Sensei Madame Liao if there’s been a mistake, she begins reading to us wisdoms from the Pearlian Analects of Sage Leadership and Benevolent Rule:

  “‘A leader makes decisions that no one wants to make.

  “‘A leader doesn’t just make decisions between two unbearable choices. A leader finds a new third way.’”

  On and on she drones, running through maxims that seem as empty as they are basic. Why are we wasting time on this? Then, over the course of the hour, as we hear one rudimentary military leadership aphorism after another, I begin to realize something with horror.

  This isn’t an advanced class on leadership. It’s a remedial class.

  So she really does think that little of me. It should infuriate me to death, but instead, it just takes everything out of me. It hurts.

  At the end of the hour, Sensei Madame Liao says, “And Peasprout. There is one maxim from the analects that I would like you to contemplate especially: ‘The true leader leads by exhibiting honesty in the face of a mistake and humility in admitting responsibility for it.’”

  I bow my head, my face burning with shame. I want to be a true leader. I want to exhibit honesty if I have made a mistake. I want to learn humility in admitting my responsibility for mistakes.

  Except that it wasn’t my fault that we got stuck with the name Nobody and the Fire-Chickens. If my battleband mates hadn’t been so unreasonable about the beautiful name I chose for us, we wouldn’t be in this situation now. Stubbornness is a devastating character flaw, and it would be wrong for me to shield them from responsibility for their own flaws.