Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions

by Henry Lien

  They did.

  And the Shinian soldiers do not come again.

  The whole academy, the whole of the city, waits and waits for the soldiers to return.

  Honking Girl’s birds get a lot of exercise. There are two, sometimes three headlines a day. About the endless bureaucratic arguments among the Pearlian senators over whether to consider this an act of war. About how Pearl Famous’s harboring me is risking the safety of the entire island. About the increased calls by the mayor of the city of Pearl to hand me over to appease the Empress Dowager.

  But still, the Shinian soldiers do not come again.

  No formal statement comes from the senseis that the danger has passed. However, eventually, when no new threats appear, we move on. The headlines start reporting about other things, talk on campus starts to center on our studies and the upcoming Annexation, and academy life returns to normal.

  It appears that whatever Yinmei did, we are safe because of it. For now.

  What did Yinmei do?

  At last, she recovers enough to be moved back to her own dormitory. She declines care from the Shinian serving girls in her recovery. Instead, she asks for me.

  Me. The girl who accused her. The girl she almost died for.

  When I arrive, she rises slightly from her futon and asks, “Who has the mole hairs?”

  “Doi gave them to me to hold on to. I mean, not literally hold on to. I don’t want to actually touch—”

  “Did you hide them somewhere no one will find them?”

  “No, but I had Cricket use sewing needles to weave them into the shape of a ring. They look like metal wires. No one would recognize them for what they are.”

  She sinks back down onto her futon with relief.

  “You hold the safety of Pearl in your hands for now,” she says.

  “What did you do, Yinmei?”

  “I besieged the cloister of Xie to rescue the kingdom of Wo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Captain Cao. One of the Empress Dowager’s favorites. I recognized him despite the face paint because of the mole hairs. He’s brave but very superstitious—the only Shinian I know who says lucky instead of four.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you never read a mole atlas?”

  “Ah … yes, of course.”

  Why’s she smirking at me? She says, “Then you would know that a mole located in the center of the forehead indicates peaceful and happy later years. The longer the hairs are that grow out of it, the longer is one’s good fortune. Cut the hairs and you shorten the good luck. Burn them and you destroy the owner’s fortune. You hold the destiny of a very superstitious man in your hand. A very superstitious captain of the Shinian ships.”

  “Oh, I know. That’s what I was going to—”

  A laugh bubbles out of her throat. She props herself up on an elbow to look at me. “You don’t even remember if you’ve seen a mole atlas or not, do you? You’ve only been here in Pearl a year and a half. How quickly this place can make one forget one’s homeland.”

  My Chi rises, but I calm it down because I don’t want her to see that she’s bothered me.

  “I’m not insulting you,” she says. “I understand. This place has that power. But don’t forget where you come from. You sneer at Shinian tactics, yet Shinian tactics saved Pearl today.”

  “I don’t understand … why do you risk your life for me and then challenge me? I mean … Look, I’m going to have Doi take over your care. I wanted to look after you to thank you for, well, saving my life but if it’s upsetting to you…”

  “No,” she says. “Please.”

  And then, for the first time, I see Yinmei be … what is the word … insecure. I never thought I would see that. How brave she is. I would never let someone see that.

  As I help with the duties of feeding her, keeping her clean, and all sorts of things I’ve never done for anyone, her recovery continues steadily but with labor. Doi asks again and again to help take care of Yinmei, but Yinmei won’t even let Doi see her.

  At first, I’m perplexed. However, I come to understand. And it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with a complicated relationship that has been blooming right in front of me this entire time.

  One day, Doi meets me as I exit Yinmei’s dormitory chamber with a bowl of water and used garments. I cover the dirty washing with a towel so that Doi won’t see it. She notices my gesture and says, “Why won’t she let me tend to her?” Her tone is neutral, but her Chi pulses with emotion.

  She’s jealous.

  I say, “Doi. Don’t you understand anything?”

  “Just because she saved you doesn’t mean that you’re the only person who cares about her now. Or that you’re the only person she should care—”

  “Yinmei is permitting me to tend to her because she doesn’t care if I see her in so unattractive a state, but she—”

  “I don’t care if it’s unattractive! It’s not unattractive! Her courage, her—”

  “—but she does care if you see her.”

  “Why does she care? That’s silly, there’s no—”

  “Because she cares about what you think of her appearance.”

  She’s still confounded, but slowly, I feel a tide reverse in her Chi, and her spirit begins to float as the revelation finally sweeps over her face.

  “Doi,” I say as I skate past her, “you can be so oblivious sometimes.”

  * * *

  Yinmei proves to be an obedient patient, as she does not wish to push her recovery too quickly. When she thinks she is finally able to stand, she asks me to help her up from her futon. She stands for several moments. It goes well until, suddenly, a pain stabs through her Chi.

  “Help me sit, dajie,” she says to me between sharp breaths. Dajie. The Shinian term of affection for “big sister.”

  “I tried to do too much too quickly,” she continues in Shinian.

  Since we’ve arrived in Pearl, I haven’t allowed Cricket to speak Shinian; he needs all the practice with Pearlian that he can get. Having Yinmei speak Shinian to me day after day, when I’d not heard it for so long, stirs something in me, like the aroma of a favorite dish from childhood. I turn to hide the emotion in my face and wring a fresh facecloth in the bowl of water.

  Between her whistling gulps of air, she says, “I wish I hadn’t heard what Doctor Dio said.”

  “Never listen to that quack!”

  “It’s too late. I know she’s right. Every time I inhale, I can actually count the individual rips in my heart and—”

  “She’s never right. Ever!”

  She turns her big, dark eyes to me. “Did she say something about Cricket?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Perhaps it is better to know. So that you can be prepared.”

  “She makes up diagnoses so she can seem valuable enough to keep her job. She’s never right. I mean, look: You’re already so much better.”

  “Because of your care.”

  “No, because you’re strong. And you’re going to be all better soon,” I say. “Because we need you for the Second Annexation.”

  “So you didn’t report what Sensei Madame Chingu said as evidence that I’m plotting against Pearl?”

  I’d completely forgotten about that. All my doubts about her evaporated after she saved my life.

  “Oracles can be misinterpreted,” I say simply.

  “So it sounds like you still want me in your battleband.”

  “Of course. I would be honored if you w—”

  “I follow nobody…” she says coolly.

  “I am so sorry that I doubted—”

  “… and her fire-chickens.”

  She smiles. It’s the first joke I’ve ever heard her tell. But she winces with pain again and struggles to control her breathing. “Please tell me a story,” she says. “To direct my attention until the pain subsides.”

  “What do you want to hear?” I reply in Shinian.

  “Tell me
how it feels to skate.”

  I don’t know what to say. Should I speak honestly or—

  “Why do you hesitate?” she asks.

  She always seem to speak what everyone else leaves unspoken.

  Yinmei continues, “Ah, I see. You fear it would be cruel to speak with passion about something that I will never be able to do. You are kind, Peasprout. I shall ask a less uncomfortable question. When did you first start learning wu liu?”

  “Near my fifth birthday.”

  “Tell me of the first day.”

  As I gently dab the moisture from Yinmei’s brow, I think of that day. A day of firsts and a day of lasts.

  “My parents brought Cricket and me to the door of a temple. They told us that it was a school where we would learn wu liu.”

  “Why does this memory make your voice turn sad?”

  I answer, “Because they’d dressed me in the only fine suit of clothes that any of our family owned. And when I learned that this was a school and there would be proper teachers here, I was ashamed of my parents’ patched clothes. I was afraid they would smile and show their missing teeth. I told them I didn’t want the teachers to see Cricket and me with them, and I told them not to wait with us. I told them to go away.”

  “You were little more than a baby,” Yinmei says. “You were blameless.”

  “Perhaps. But when I arrived here last year, all of the Shinian servant girls must have been so excited, because I was the first Shinian student at the academy. And I was the Peony-Level Brightstar. They must have felt so proud to have one of their own attend Pearl Famous as a skater and not as a servant. And I shunned them and wanted to undo my braids so I wouldn’t resemble them. I wouldn’t even look at them. How hurt they must have been. I’ve learned nothing since that day my parents took me to the wu liu temple.”

  “There’s anger hidden under your voice when you mention that day.”

  I finally say what I’ve never spoken aloud to anyone. “Because it was the last day that I ever saw my parents. I didn’t learn until years later. The reason my parents had to abandon us at the wu liu temple was because they, by accident, broke one of the Empress Dowager’s laws and had to flee.”

  “Which law?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But they couldn’t pay the fine. They used the last of their money to visit a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller said that my family’s destiny lay in my feet. My parents thought it meant that they should bind my feet so that I could be sold to a wealthy household. However, they didn’t have the heart to do it. So they left Cricket and me at the temple where we would learn wu liu. The last time I saw them, I was ashamed of their appearance, and I told them to go away. And they did. Forever.”

  Yinmei gently waves me aside when I try to continue dabbing at her forehead. She pushes herself up into a sitting position and peers at me with soft, intense eyes. She says, “Permit me to rebraid your hair in the Empress Dowager’s favorite hairstyle, the staircase royal phoenix crown.” I turn so that I am sitting on her futon with my back to her. I’m grateful for an excuse to turn away from her penetrating gaze. She begins loosening my braids and combing out my hair.

  “That is a painful memory, Peasprout. But the fortune-teller was correct. Your family’s destiny does lie in your feet. But you were meant to be a champion, not to be bought by a household of strangers.”

  “Yes.”

  She separates a section of my hair and gathers the rest to the side. She says, “Do you know how old girls in Shin are when they start to get their feet bound? Five years old. Just like you were that day that you were left at the wu liu temple. They are told that they must do so to keep their feet small and delicate or they will never find a husband. They are told that when they grow up, the bound feet will force them to take mincing steps in order to reduce pain, which will make their hips sway in a way that is attractive to men. Attractive to men. These girls are five years old and they’re already taught to think about husbands.”

  As Yinmei works my hair, I can feel her Chi rippling off her hands with rage.

  Her anger surprises me. I grew up in Shin never questioning foot-binding, because it was everywhere. Both among noble women like Yinmei but also poor women, who I watched struggle through their work in kitchens and fields on feet folded in half. Here in Pearl, every part of a girl is valued, including her feet. I think of what has been done to, what has been stolen from, tens of millions of Shinian girls. How many of those girls could have become legends of wu liu?

  They could have had my destiny.

  And I could have had theirs.

  Yinmei loops a section of my hair around the rest to create a knot, saying, “The Empress Dowager might do things that are brutal; I have suffered her ruthlessness more than anyone under heaven. However, I cannot condemn her completely because I know that she is working to change the laws of Shin concerning girls and women. If she is able to bring Shin an unprecedented treasure, the Great Council must allow her to change the laws to allow females to inherit and to ban further foot-binding. As the proverb teaches, A precious thing is defined by being costly.”

  “Yinmei,” I say carefully. “May I ask you … how did you avoid having your feet bound? I thought all ladies of the imperial court were subjected to foot-binding?”

  “The Empress Dowager abhors the practice,” she says, her hands shaking in my hair. “It is ignorant, barbaric, repulsive, maddening, and heartbreaking—the practice of a backward, decaying, mindless culture.”

  Her ferociousness startles me.

  Yinmei collects herself and continues, “The Empress Dowager spared all of her female descendants from foot-binding and had us raised in secret, away from view, so that no one would protest. That’s why you never heard about me.”

  She gathers another section of my hair and combines it with the end of the knot. She repeats the process again and again while I work up the courage to ask her a question I fear to ask. Perhaps because I fear the answer.

  At last, I speak, “But if she deplores foot-binding so much, how could she bear to bind Zan Kenji’s feet? Even if he was her hostage.”

  Silence stretches between us. Yinmei gathers the braid around my head and pins it in place, forming a ring around my head.

  At last, she says, calmly, “Little girls have had their feet bound for a thousand years to please men. Eighty million girls living in Shin today have had their feet bound.”

  She hands me a mirror. I look at myself. My braid encircles my head in a staircase royal phoenix crown.

  Just like the Empress Dowager.

  She says, “Perhaps the Empress Dowager thought that if binding the feet of one man could save the next generation of eighty million girls, it was worth it.” I’m chilled by the logic of her calculation.

  She adds softly, “And perhaps she is right.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-LUCKY

  Yinmei’s sympathy for the Empress Dowager, and for ruthless tactics in general, sits in my belly as well as a stone would. However, I know I need her. If it weren’t for her, my corpse would be pierced against the side of the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties by Shinian arrows. If it weren’t for her, the Shinian soldiers would have probably tried to invade Pearl Famous again. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have someone to write the songs that we need to drive the drumblades.

  It becomes clear that the drumblades are how we’re going to maintain first ranking at the Second Annexation and continue proving my value to Pearl, because the Annexation will be all about speed.

  Each battleband will be tasked with defending one designated member, whose feet will be unskated, from being captured by the opposing battleband. Any opponent who we are able to make fall on the pearl is eliminated. We’ll be scored based on how long we can keep them from capturing our unskated battleband member and reaching the edge of the Principal Island with that captive. Thus, the speed that the drumblades grant us to respond to a threat will be a critical advantage.

  Cricket sourc
es the discarded gondola blades, laboriously files away the chips in them, and makes six customized drums for each of them from raw kelp leather. From the enthusiasm that he shows for his work, I can tell that there’s nothing really wrong with him. He just gets a little sick when he gets near a dragon that’s trying to drown or crush or eat him. Who wouldn’t? His heart’s not too small, what nonsense. Dr. Dio is a fool.

  The drumsongs that Yinmei writes to control the drumblades are astonishing in their precision and power to turn music into motion. Cricket, Doi, Hisashi, and I practice every White Hour together in the Garden of Whispering Arches, where the games played on sound shield the drumming of our practice from the ears of others. Yinmei joins in when she feels strong enough, which is more and more often. We rehearse each song that Yinmei wrote to make the drumblades accelerate, turn, skid-stop, drift-swipe, leap, rear, and even execute an instant course reversal using a flip and half-roll.

  I think I know every battleband on sight by now, even the lowest-ranked ones. But then, shortly before the Second Annexation, a small new band appears at the morning assembly that I’ve never seen before. They carry a banner with their name: the Pink Army.

  They are three girls, or at least I think they’re girls. It’s hard to tell from their combat armor and severe haircuts, which are perfectly chopped above the shoulder and feature blunt bangs that look like someone placed a bowl over their heads and cut whatever stuck out beneath the edge. They seem to be evaluating the appearance of every other battleband. The girl in the middle looks familiar … at least, that sneering express—

  Heavenly August Personage of Jade, it’s Suki! But she and the two other girls in her battleband have been made over to look like nightmarish soldiers.

  Hisashi winces as if he just smelled something rancid. “Uuukk, it looks like Sensei Madame Yao grew little copies of herself.”

  Suki barks at the members of Forever Action Beauty Girls, “I said form a line, citizens!”

  The girls and boys of this battleband have today braided their hair into one another’s so that they are arrayed in a double loop. The leader of their battleband, Pearblossom something or other, says, “We can’t. We braided our hair today in a defensive formation—”