by Henry Lien
I’m having trouble keeping the volume of the beats exactly the same as required to make the drum float in place. My drum keeps shooting out from under my hands at wild angles. I look over at Wu Yinmei. Her beats are as delicate and regular as beads on a necklace and her drum is floating slightly above the pearl. I can’t see her hands, though. Then, as if she heard my thoughts, she switches position so that I can see that she’s keeping the heel of one hand on the top of the drum, dampening its vibration. She keeps her gaze on the drum, but I know she knows I’m watching her.
Look at this girl from Shin turned out by the only other girl from Shin here. This girl who also suffered under the Empress Dowager’s wrath, trying to find her way in this new place, dealing with suspicions because she’s not from here, doing what she felt she needed to do to be safe, in a world where she is alone. I’m the only one who knows how she must be feeling.
Was I wrong about her? I want to be wrong about her. And it’s not only because I need her points from the First Annexation. It’s not only because this girl’s talents would help me prevail at the next Annexations.
It’s because I admire her. How could I not?
This is what I feel about her as I watch her, uncomplaining, helping me, even when I shunned her.
But I also know that this is exactly what she wants me to feel about her.
* * *
The Season of Spirits starts a little early this year, in the middle of the sixth month. Clouds come down from heaven and float above the pearl at waist level, tumbling slowly, changing from the shape of animal to animal, following us along the paths of the academy like fat, magical pets. It’s a real hazard, because so much is shielded from view by them that near-collisions between students are a constant problem.
Why don’t the senseis erect the fans that they use during the Season of Drifts and blow the vapors out to sea? Maybe because the clouds are so adorable and the effect is so picturesque, which matters to the senseis. And to me, too, actually. They can tell us that we’re no longer an arts school—that we’re a military academy now—but we are artists. Beauty matters to us. Joy matters. Even in a time of impending invasion.
Our first class of the Season of Spirits is being taught on the open courtyard of Divinity’s Lap. Sensei Madame Yao is teaching, which makes everyone sneer, but then we learn that the lesson is devoted to learning about using forcedrums in wu liu, which makes everyone grin.
We spend the class working with the open-bottomed forcedrums that my battleband used in the First Annexation. What Yao teaches us goes beyond the simple dodges and escapes that my battleband demonstrated. Yao is combining her music and wu liu skills to teach us how to turn our jumps and spins into great bounds. You pound on the drums just as you are jumping and hit a certain resonant spot on the drumhead with the right volume, and boom! You greatly magnify the height of your jumps and go flying.
At first, we’re cautious because it’s hard to see due to the clouds and because of our proximity to the edge of the Principal Island. No one wants an uncontrolled jump to send us falling into the water. We’re also afraid of losing grip on a drum and having it shoot out into the water. Throwing Ong Hong-Gee’s skate into the water didn’t rouse the coiling water dragons, so Yinmei was right about non-living objects. However, everyone is still so frightened of them that no one wants to take a chance.
Soon the paths of our jumps have tunneled so many holes through the cloud layer that it’s safe to go free-form. The entire court of Divinity’s Lap becomes a joyful party, and everyone is bounding and flying in steps that are stories high, as if the world beneath us is harmless, safe, and fun.
Off to one edge of Divinity’s Lap, I find Cricket. I tense when I see that he’s alone with Yinmei. But then I notice what they’re doing. They’ve each used the inner sash of their academy robe to strap a small forcedrum to their bellies. They’re drumming their drumsticks on their forcedrums with unbelievably fast but soft little strikes that are so rapid, regular, and controlled, they blur like the wings of buzzing bees.
Then I look down at their feet. They aren’t touching the pearl.
They’re floating slightly above the pearl!
The stunning precision of their drumming channeled the energy of the forcedrum so that it was balanced between shooting up and being pulled down, causing them to hover!
When they see me, they look at each other, then each begin beating slightly harder with one hand than the other, causing themselves to pivot toward me as they hover. They lean forward, drive toward me, and touch their feet down. They shake their hands out in exhaustion and say to each other, “Bwei bai.”
“Cricket, that was remarkable!” I say.
Cricket smiles. “It’s fun! It was Yinmei’s idea. I told you she was better than us at music.”
I give Yinmei a cool look, then say to Cricket, “I can’t see how that can have practical applications, though. It looks like it takes too much strain to control the rate of the drumming and just to lift a tiny bit off of the pearl.”
“True. But that’s not what I was thinking of mostly. Yinmei, I need your drum and sash.”
Cricket skates to Yinmei’s bladechair, parked at the edge of Divinity’s Lap. He sits down on the pearl and lashes the forcedrums to the sides of the bladechair with the cloth, adjusting their angle so that they’re balanced between pointing down and pointing to the back. He then gestures at it with an open palm.
Yinmei’s face flutters with a sequence of emotions: She comprehends, she is astonished, then delighted, then grateful, then moved.
She unclamps her feet from the swiftboard and lays her poles on the pearl. She sits in the chair. She lifts the drumsticks and taps the drums strapped to her bladechair.
The bladechair nudges forward.
She taps three times on both drums, immediately followed by two taps on the right drum. The bladechair moves forward, then turns left.
She starts a moderate pounding rhythm, alternating between the two drums. The bladechair goes speeding forward. Yinmei begins to drum confidently, gaining speed. She quickly adds a roll of delicate taps to adjust her course and avoid a group of three boys fussing with their forcedrum straps in front of her.
A pair of students abruptly comes crashing down onto the pearl in front of her after a careless leap. She pounds hard on the right drum with the butt of her drumstick and makes a sharp turn to the left.
She speeds to a clear corner of the courtyard. She experiments with a series of drumbeats, alternating between two drums, in what I recognize as a mathematical progression that goes from slow to very fast. It sends her bladechair racing in the form of a spiral that circles tighter and tighter and tighter until it ends in a furious spin in place. Ten rotations, twenty rotations, thirty rotations.
She’s doing rotations. She’s transformed music into motion. This girl, who has been cursed never to take more than five steps again in her life, who has been imprisoned in her own body as if in a Dian Mai, is doing rotations like any practitioner of wu liu.
She finishes by striking the drums with a quick sequence of beats that stops her spin so abruptly, she’s almost jolted out of the bladechair.
And she’s laughing.
As is Cricket.
As am I.
With Cricket.
With her.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
“Where have you been? What happened to your hair?” I reach out to touch Cricket’s hair, which is blown back so severely that it looks like he’d been tied to the prow of a ship.
“I was working on a … special project.”
“What special project? Who were you with? Were you with Yinmei?”
“Maybe. Why can’t I work on something with her?”
“Because she’s not in our battleband.”
“Peasprout, she didn’t want to leave our battleband. You can’t stop me from being friends with Yinmei. And anyway, we make a good team, like with the forcedrums. I would never have thought of applyin
g music in that way.”
That’s true. I fold my arms across my chest and huff, “That’s not true, you might have come up with the idea on your own if she didn’t interfere.”
“Let me work with her to come up with something for the Second Annexation.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. Even if she’s a spy, Cricket can, in his own way, spy on her. I want to relent, but I can’t let him think he won this battle with me. It just wouldn’t be good for our battleband to have members defying me.
I throw my hands up and skate away, saying, “If you’re not going to listen to reasonable discussion, then I don’t know how to talk to you.”
Soon thereafter, I begin to hear strange drumming every afternoon, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from due to the mists. It must be Yinmei practicing on her new drumchair on the campus. I never see her at it, as she usually does it during White Hour, when I’m at the Conservatory of Wu Liu getting in extra training. It’s impossible to see far in any direction during the Season of Spirits. However, I know she’s out there, because I can hear the pounding of drums when there are no music classes scheduled, hear her turning sound into force, creating something that has never been before.
Then one day, something in the drumming changes.
There are two drummers hidden in the mist. I know because, sometimes, their sounds come from different points on the campus. And the music has become stranger. Faster but clearer. Wilder but more controlled. More complex and layered but more precise.
When he comes back to the dormitories to wash up for evenmeal, I say, “I need to know what you’re doing out there.”
“It’s a surprise,” says Cricket.
Doi says, “Let him do his work. I partnered with him last year during the boys’ Third Motivation. He comes up with ideas no one else does if you just let him.”
“But I’m the leader of this battleband.”
“Oh, let him surprise you,” says Hisashi. “It’ll make him so happy. Plus, you look so cute when you’re surprised. Do you know that?”
So I let him work.
* * *
One night, during evenmeal, the winds pick up. All the students are terrified of sitting near the windows after the coiling water dragon attack even though the shutters are kept latched now. The rattle as the wind plucks and paws at them is unnerving, but I see a strange gleam on Cricket’s face.
Afterward, we skate out of Eastern Heaven Dining Hall toward the Hall of Six Excellences for tea anemone hour. The night sky above the garden between the two halls is clear. The winds have sent the clouds from the Season of Spirits tumbling away. Cricket says to Doi, Hisashi, and me, “Tonight is perfect! Please come in half an hour to the eastern edge of Divinity’s Lap. I have something to show you.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Something that should be useful for the Second Annexation.”
Doi, Hisashi, and I arrive at the eastern edge of Divinity’s Lap. We stand under the great clarion in the shape of an orchid trumpet running up the tower on the eastern side of the Hall of Lilting Radiance. A thin veil of cloud has started to re-form on Divinity’s Lap.
Then we hear the drumming. It’s regular and low and emanating from the far side of Divinity’s Lap. From across the dark square come Cricket and Yinmei. What they are seated on is unlike anything under heaven that I’ve ever seen.
They’re each riding on a great blade, the sort that is attached to the bottoms of the gondola boats that take us to the conservatories, longer than a person is tall. The blades have been modified so that each one has a seat and pedals, like on a cycling apparatus, except pitched forward at an angle. But the strangest thing is that each vehicle has a complex set of six taiko drums strapped to it, three to a side, which are also tilted so that the bottoms of the drums are angled halfway between pointing down and pointing to the back.
Cricket and Yinmei drum in synchronized rhythm and then each pound with the heel of their left drumstick. The blades obey by skidding to the right in a sideways stop, carving a half-moon in the pearl below them. The two of them continue lightly tapping on their drums with both drumsticks, using the gently thrumming music to keep their blades upright.
Cricket moves forward on his seat to make room and says to me, “Get on! We’re going to have a race!”
He gives Hisashi a lacquered fan and says, “You’ll judge the winner. Please go to the entrance of the Garden of Whispering Arches.” Hisashi bows majestically and skates off.
Yinmei slides forward on her seat and nods to Doi, who gets on behind her. Doi holds on by placing her hands on Yinmei’s shoulder. Yinmei says over the purr of the drums, “That will not suffice. We shall go much, much faster than that.” Doi’s arms gently encircle Yinmei’s waist, like vines wrapping themselves around the trunk of a tree.
Cricket says to me, “There’s a set of drumsticks for you under the seat. When I yell ‘strike,’ pound on the two back drums as hard as you can.”
He looks to Yinmei. Together, they chant, “Five! Lucky! Three! Two! One! Drum!”
Cricket and Yinmei bring their drumsticks down hard on their middle drums.
The speed is astonishing. We slice across the court of Divinity’s Lap, cutting through the thin lingering mist so quickly that it flies apart in our wake, as two ribbons curling past our knees.
Beside us, Yinmei is pounding a furious rhythm, her drumsticks moving like a galloping horse.
Cricket alters his rhythm, and we veer into the path of Yinmei’s blade.
Yinmei throws a roll into her drumming and swerves to the right.
Cricket changes the pattern of his drumming, causing our blade to shift back toward Yinmei’s blade.
Then the two of them are weaving tightly back and forth, braiding their paths in a blinding show of virtuosity, bringing our two blades so close to crashing that my knee brushes Doi’s twice.
As we whip past the statue of the Enlightened One, the western perimeter of Divinity’s Lap comes into sight. The bridge spanning the canal in front of us leads to the edge of the Garden of Whispering Arches, where Hisashi stands.
Cricket and Yinmei both turn their drumming into a rampage of beats, as they each try to gain speed and overtake the other to cross the narrow bridge first. There isn’t enough room for both blades to cross the bridge together, so whichever blade takes the bridge will crowd the other out, forcing it to cross after. There won’t be enough time for the second blade to catch up before the first one crosses the perimeter of the Garden of Whispering Arches.
Yinmei unleashes a torrent of drumming, her hands blurring as she pounds with both ends of each drumstick, playing all the front and middle drums nearly at once. Her blade pulls ahead.
“Cricket, slow down or we’re going to drive into the water!”
“Strike!” he shouts at the top of his voice.
I pound as hard as I can on the back set of drums as Cricket brings down his drumsticks on the middle set. Our blade jumps into the air, over the canal, landing next to Yinmei’s blade.
Ahead of us, Hisashi waits to call out the winner. Our two blades fly past him as we cross the perimeter of the Garden of Whispering Arches. I crane my neck backward to see who won, but Hisashi doesn’t snap open his fan to his left toward Cricket and me or to his right toward Yinmei and Doi. Instead, he sweeps the fan open and swipes right down the middle.
“Everybody wins!” he shouts. “It’s a tie.”
Grinning at each other, Cricket and Yinmei pound on their left middle drums in unison, bringing our two blades scraping to a side stop.
Heaving with exhaustion and pride, Cricket says, “See? As I said—something useful for the Second Annexation.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The very next morning, it becomes immediately clear how critical Cricket’s drumblades are going to be when we learn about the nature of the next Annexation.
“The Second Annexation,” says the Chairman in architecture class, “will test strate
gies for city defense. The Shinian forces shall number twenty to each Pearlian one. However, an invading army is especially weaker in a city, because those who call it home are familiar with its architecture and can use its layout to their advantage, even more so than on an open landscape. Further, wu liu practitioners are undefeatable on the pearl. Given this, which of you little birds can tell me why the Shinian army would attack the city of Pearl?”
“To besiege the cloister of Xie in order to rescue the kingdom of Wo,” says a voice. We all turn to look at Yinmei.
“Correct, little bird of Shin,” says the Chairman, smiling. “And what in the city of Pearl would they attack first?”
“They would try to capture the schools and take the children hostage,” she replies.
I hear shocked whispers from the other students and blurt out, “Not all Shinians believe in such tactics! I had never even heard of that before.”
The Chairman ignores me and continues, “Thus, the Second Annexation will test speed. Enhancing speed is critical in preventing an invasion of the schools. Increased speed will allow students who are less skilled in wu liu or otherwise vulnerable to successfully flee the enemy. It will also allow more skilled students to repel and even overtake the enemy.”
The Chairman gives us an exercise to draw the quickest paths between every major landmark of Pearl Famous and certain critical entry points onto the campus. As we work, I say to Doi, Hisashi, and Cricket, “If speed is what matters, the drumblade is the key to winning the Second Annexation. And we’re the only battleband that has it.”
Cricket knits his brow and gets that new standing-up-to-Peasprout expression that I’m growing to hate.
“What is it now, Cricket?”
“Yinmei knows about the drumblade, too.”
“Yes, but she can’t use it. It’s our idea.”
“We can’t stop her from using it. She helped me invent it.”
“No, she didn’t. You got the idea after you tied the drums to her drumchair.”
