My triumph at winning the fifth Motivation is brief. I have to get the wine for Chingu before the Chairman visits again. My Chi freezes every time I think of the pendant with the crushed body of a criminal inside. I suspect the Chairman isn’t the type to wait for sufficient evidence before enacting punishment.
After bowing to Doi in gratitude, I leave the site of the fifth Motivation and race toward the rail-gondolas leading back to the city. I have to get out of the academy while everyone is distracted with the aftermath of the fifth Motivation. Then I have to find wine in the city and get back before tomorrow, while the academy is still sleeping. And all of it before the Chairman arrives again.
“Iwi, it’s brushtime!” comes the call. The birds, wearing luminescent harnesses, take flight and begin writing logograms.
“Vicious. Third. Attack. On. Pearl. Famous. Inspires. Renewed. Calls. For. Arrest. Of. Chair—”
Suddenly, the words in the sky stop and the birds scatter, circling in confusion.
I don’t have much time to spare, but I sense that something’s wrong. I skate toward the spot on the campus over which the birds are swarming and squawking. When I pass under the Great Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness, I kick my heel to stop.
Near the rail-gondolas, Sensei Madame Phoenix is surrounded by the New Deitsu team. I duck behind an ornamental sculpture of the Enlightened One and peer around the corner. A man grips Sensei’s arm tightly. I can see the long nail of his little finger pressing into the sleeve of her arm even from here. Chairman Niu.
I skate as hard as I can in the other direction and almost trip on my nicked and jagged skate blades.
I hide on the original Conservatory of Music islet, which partially sank after a tsunami but was left there because people found the sumptuous ruins to be picturesque. No one ever goes there, because you have to hop across a series of tiny humps that rise out of the sea to access it.
I need to get out of Pearl Famous, away from the Chairman, and into the city as quickly as I can, but I don’t dare cross the campus and be seen in case he’s searching for me. I skate back and forth across the decaying floor of the conservatory, counting down the time.
After two hours, the air splits with a great clap, the same sound that I heard when they completed repairs on the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties.
I wait another hour to be safe and then skate back toward the rail-gondolas, staying close to the edge of the Principal Island. The fifth Motivation must be long completed by now. My plan to sneak off the campus while much of the academy was occupied with the Motivation is ruined. I just have to hide if I see anyone between here and the rail-gondolas.
When I near the landing, I see someone under the Great Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness. I skate to hide behind a copse of false ornamental trees, but it’s too late. I’m spotted. Make me drink sand to death! The person is waving at me with both hands.
It’s Cricket.
“Peasprout!”
I hop off and race to him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I saw them restoring the temple!”
“Cricket! You broke the rules!”
“No! They only said that we may not face in the direction of the worksite. They didn’t say that we couldn’t see it. The third-year students who’d devoted to the Conservatory of Architecture were gathered on the edge of the Principal Island facing the worksite. They were given special permission to watch the temple being restored.
“One of them is named Deen Dei-Hwun. She’s ashamed that one of her eyes wanders a little in the socket, so she wears smoked spectacles even at nighttime, which is ridiculous since she’s the prettiest girl at Pearl Famous. She let me talk to her while she watched the work being done. And I realized that I could see everything that was happening reflected in her spectacles!”
“Cricket, what have you done?”
“The work team brought giant metal spoons,” Cricket continues, his face glowing as if he can’t hear me. “They used them to sling great white balls at the ruins of the temple. And I saw the balls strike and eat away the ruins.
“Then I saw eighteen workers carry that palanquin to the site. They set down something small, the size of a skate. They blasted it with water from the sea pumped through a hose. Then there was a great crack and suddenly, the temple was there! I could feel the force against my back. It pushed the air so hard that everyone had to take a step to balance. It was so fast, Peasprout!”
“Cricket, you fool!”
“I haven’t done anything wrong! I didn’t face northeast.”
“How do you think it’s going to look if people find out that you watched how the temple was rebuilt? Suki’s going to say that the Empress Dowager sent me here to destroy the structures and that your job was to watch how they were being rebuilt to learn the secret of the pearl!”
“But we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter! You have no idea how much danger we’re in right now because of your stupid fascination with architecture. All I’ve done to keep us safe, and you just skate right over it, like a worthless, ignorant Shinian peasant!”
Cricket is silent, his chin buried in his bony chest. At last, he speaks. “Peabird, don’t say I’m worthless.”
“Stop with the baby talk!”
“I’m going to win the sculpture competition and—”
“Enough about architecture!”
I have to keep him safe. I reach out and pat roughly all over his body. He shrinks from my touch. He hates when anyone touches him, because he’s ashamed of his body, and I understand why. His limbs are as skinny as a fawn’s. Every hard angle that I feel poking out of his rickety body stabs into my heart.
“Where is it?” I demand.
“You can’t have it! It’s mine!”
I realize that he only has courage to say this to me because it’s not here on his person. I turn and skate as hard as I can toward the dormitories.
“Wait, Peasprout!” he cries, skating after me. He almost catches me because I’m slowed by my ruined skate blades, but I arrive at his dormitory chamber first.
He has so little, but everything is arranged with such care. The little cloth adorned with images of blue turtles that our mother used to wash his face when he was a baby is folded crisply into the shape of a blossom and placed on his pillow. The sight of that thin rag from Mother turned by his little hands into a thing of fineness cuts me.
But I can’t hesitate now. I rummage through his things.
“Peasprout, please!” pleads Cricket, arriving breathless at the door.
I find it hidden behind the roll of his futon, gently wrapped in his sleeping garments. His entry for the architecture contest is a sculpture in miniature of the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. The likeness is remarkable. The detail is so fine that I can see through the arch of the doorway the individual hairs that he’s carved on the bare arm of Lim Tian-Tai. And it’s not even completed. It’s astonishing.
“Please, Peasprout!”
He looks up at me with those shining, frightened eyes.
I look at this work in my hand into which he’s poured his whole heart.
I can’t do this.
“Peasprout, I’ve spent over a hundred hours on it!”
I have to cut him down to stand him up. For his own good. For his own safety.
I know I have to do what I think I can’t do.
I drop the sculpture to the floor, lift my skate, and stamp my blade down on it, slicing it in two.
I chop the pieces with my blade, ten, twenty, thirty times until everything is slivers and powder.
I push past Cricket and skate out of his dormitory chamber. I wait for the howls but hear only silence.
My little Cricket.
I cover my mouth with my hands to seal in the sobs as I skate away so quickly that the wind shearing against my face sweeps a shimmer of tears in the air behind me.