The senseis find both of us guilty of violating curfew. The only destruction we caused was to the outer rails. No structures were damaged. We could have been expelled and maybe arrested if there were.
The damage from the prior attacks can’t legally be used against Doi because it was covered by the contract for service with New Deitsu, so it cost Pearl Famous nothing. The academy suffered no legal harm and any claim it had was transferred to New Deitsu when they repaired the damage. The last thing that the Chairman wants is more attention to this matter, so he’s unlikely to press charges against his own daughter.
Our sentencing session is all smeared in my memory, but I remember many of the senseis being vicious toward us. I wrinkle into ash at the memory, because we deserved their anger. However, I also remember Sensei Madame Liao staring them down, stabbing her finger at clauses on the scrolls of academy rules. The other senseis raged when they couldn’t find a path around her logic. I recall Supreme Sensei Master Jio saying that when they attain sagehood, they’ll understand the justice in mercy, and Sensei Madame Yao punching a hole in a table, and at the end of it, Sensei Madame Liao proclaiming, “That is final!”
Our punishment is harsh but less harsh than we deserve. Doi and I are both required to surrender our skates for the rest of the term. We’ll both forfeit the last Motivation.
* * *
I am grateful that no mention is made of Cricket in all of this. No one suspects him of having any part in the vandal attacks. Further, his speaking in code to help me escape out of the Dian Mai protected him from being implicated after all.
I have so many things I want to say to Cricket, but when he sees me, he skates away. That is probably for the best. He shouldn’t be associated with me.
* * *
New Deitsu comes to the campus and does its work quickly, since all they have to do is replace the rails. When they’re finished, Chairman Niu doesn’t follow it with another visit. I wonder if I’ll ever know if he sent my letter orb. I wonder if the Empress Dowager will ever receive it. If she’ll be fooled by it. If she’ll realize I tricked her. If I’ll ever be able to return to Shin. All I know is that I never wanted to choose between Shin and Pearl. But the Empress Dowager’s own actions forced me to. And when I had to choose, I chose my new home.
I chose Pearl.
* * *
Sensei Madame Liao and Supreme Sensei Master Jio command Doi and me not to talk to any of the other students about why we’ve been unskated. But it’s not going to matter whether we talk about it or not. The two best girl skaters in our class got eliminated from the final Motivation after all these attacks on the campus. No one is going to fail to put it together.
But it seems like the excitement of the final Motivation, and the upcoming Drift Season Pageant and Beautymarch, and maybe even a bit of satisfaction that two leading girls got kicked out of the running, mean that most of the students leave us alone more than I expected. I think that all the students can sense that we’re damaged, we’re trouble, we’re unlucky to know. Our spectacular downfall makes Suki as happy as if she had been anointed Empress Dowager.
* * *
Doi stops pretending to be Hisashi. She appears on campus as herself, with her close-cropped hair. The student known as Niu Hisashi simply disappears from the life of Pearl Famous. But then again, he never went to classes, never appeared in crowds, never seemed to have any more friends than I did.
You’d think that the son of the Chairman of New Deitsu would have a lot of friends. Perhaps he does.
I wouldn’t know.
I’ve never met him.
* * *
The secret of the pearl and the salt seems to be intact. As everyone said, the pearl comes from the sea. The sea is salty but only so salty. Everyone here seems to grow up accepting the danger of salt without asking why it destroys the pearl. That must be why no one uses anything saltier than seawater to season their food. That must be why none of the merchants at the market except for the Shinian woman had any salt to sell. She probably smuggled it in from Shin. She only sold it to me because she hates Pearl. She knew the destruction it could cause. I remember how she told me to burn everything down with it.
Why would they build a city that can be destroyed by so common and useful a thing? And not ask more questions about it? But then again, fire is common and useful, too. No one asks why fire burns. It’s just something that people are taught to be afraid of from when they’re little without needing more explanation. I’m starting to learn that there are a lot of things like that that we’re taught.
Now that I know, it seems so obvious. Salt is prohibited because it destroys the pearl, which means the pearl is made from some living matter. It’s probably a rare crop, just like bamboo. Shin invaded Pearl for its bamboo, and Pearl is afraid that Shin is going to invade again, this time for the pearl. Shin and Pearl are sending their most famous skaters as pawns in the fight for the pearl.
Salt. The pearl. My fame. All of them fine, sparkling things. All of them responsible for the position I’m in now. All of them leading me to my decision to become a traitor to Shin.
* * *
One evening, as I’m shuffling in my socks back to my dormitory chamber after evenmeal, I pass a gathering of students. The twilight has repainted the campus in hues of black and kingfisher blue. A cluster of boys huddles in a golden glow of lanterns under the Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness.
They’re playing some sort of game. Each boy holds the carved wooden sculpture that he’ll be submitting for the competition. There’s a boy in the center of their circle with a band of cloth folded over his eyes. Cricket. One of the other boys holds out a sculpture. Cricket reaches out with just his thumb, his pointing finger, and his long finger.
As soon as his three fingers touch the sculpture, lightly, Cricket cries out, “The Pavilion of Dreams in Red!”
The boys around him laugh and demand, “How did you know?” And then, as if they’re used to hearing the answer, they sing in chorus, “Proportions!”
Cricket looks as happy as a brightstar of wu liu, taking his place on the stage of an opera. He doesn’t have to excel at wu liu now to prove that he’s not a spy who is just decent enough to pass for a skater.
Architecture comes as naturally for him as wu liu does for me. When you’re doing it, it feels as if all the forces within you are pushing you to your destiny. It doesn’t matter whether I think he’s good enough to succeed in architecture. It’s not for me to decide.
With an indescribable heave in my breast, I say good-bye to the brother I have known.
“Farewell, my little Cricket,” I whisper. “I release you. You have found your grain.”
* * *
Doi and I each struggle alone across campus in our socks on the slick pearl. She won’t speak to me. I’m not sure I want her to. She lied to me and made a fool out of me. She played me like a pearlflute.
Why did she do it? She must have known that it was pointless.
She created something, then let me start to like it, then destroyed it.
Not something, someone.
Not like, love.
I miss Hisashi. I miss the kind, strong, brave boy who showed so much heart and shared so much of his heart, who did so many things for me that I can never forget.
Except that boy didn’t do those things.
That boy didn’t suffer the punishment in Sensei Madame Yao’s class.
That boy didn’t patiently teach Cricket and choose him as his partner.
He didn’t fight Suki for me over the pearlflute.
Or open my eyes to the cruelty we inflict on living creatures.
He never listened to me when I felt so lost here.
He wasn’t the one who saw me and heard me and understood me.
Someone else did those things.
Someone who tried to help me, who stood against her father for me, and who lost her career in wu liu as a result. As well as everything else she cared about.
My anger fades.
Doi only wanted what everyone wants.
What I wanted.
I can’t give her what she wants most.
But I can be her friend.
* * *
Watching the last Motivation take place without us is hard to describe. I know how I would once have described it. With grand statements and the sweeping, extreme language that I loved to use so much.
The girls’ final Motivation is Drunken Grasshopper Dance. It’s just a simple spinning and jumping exercise derived from an old Shinian children’s game called hops-and-crosses. I was champion of hops-and-crosses for all of Shui Shan Province three times before the age of six, but I don’t like to boast.
Suki takes first place in the sixth Motivation by completing ninety-seven continuous rotations. Doi did one hundred and sixty rotations during the “Dragon and the Phoenix” routine when she was only ten.
As I watch the girls compete and turn their bodies into those beautiful forms, a pain that I can’t describe fills my breast. There’s only one other person who knows how that pain feels. However, when I look over at Doi, she stares straight ahead at the girls on the pearl doing what we are not.
* * *
At the conclusion of the final Motivation, the final wu liu results are announced at an assembly of all the first-year students. My heart bursts when I learn that Cricket is in the top half of his class! Near the bottom of the top half but the top half, nonetheless.
Then the girls are announced. Suki takes first ranking. Etsuko and Chiriko take second and third. In fact, they’ve done so well that their final scores dwarf those of the boys. The three of them will be awarded the top roles in the Drift Season Pageant.
Doi ranks fifteenth. The hall hums with whispers when this is announced. We all know that she’s the greatest practitioner of wu liu at Pearl Famous. I can admit that now.
My final points rank me sixteenth. Unlike Doi, I’ll have next year to make up for my shortfall, and I know that I still have a chance to be asked to devote to the Conservatory of Wu Liu at the end of the second year. But who knows what’s going to happen next year? I came here as part of a goodwill exchange. That goodwill has ended.
What’s going to happen if my plan works and the Empress Dowager is tricked by the letter orb? She’ll be furious. What if Shin decides to invade? Will that give the government here a legal right to take me as a prisoner of war? What about Cricket?
When I think of how I only cared about taking first ranking and the lead in the Drift Season Pageant as the first student from Shin, I burn with embarrassment. What a silly, self-involved girl I was.
* * *
As we leave the assembly, the students race out in a noisy flood, cheering the official end of the term.
They skate past me with unnecessary speed, but I don’t blame them. They’re just happy that the Motivations and rankings are done. Happy, because they have the Drift Season Pageant and Beautymarch to look forward to. Happy, because it’s hard not to be happy when you’re skating on the pearl.
When the crowd blows past, a figure remains on the pearl. She must have slipped as all the other students raced past. She’s kneeling with her legs splayed out to keep her balance, like a fat goose. Niu Doi. Who has never once fallen down in the year that we’ve been here. Except for when she stood on her hands in Sensei Madame Yao’s class. For me.
Two boys skate to her. Hong-Gee and Matsu. Whom Doi defeated at the boys’ third Motivation. They both extend an arm to her. She hesitates. She must resent their pity. But then she reaches out her arms and they lift her to her feet with that grip, forearm to forearm, like pilots of battle-kites. She grasps the balustrade of the path beside them. They bow to her. Nothing comes out of her mouth; nothing expresses itself on her face. The boys leave her.
I take careful little steps over to her, holding on to the balustrade. We must look pathetic together with our bare socks and our hands gripping the rail like drunkards.
“Why didn’t you just let me do it?” Doi says. “Why didn’t you let me destroy Pearl Famous?”
“I had to try to stop you from doing more harm to yourself.”
“I was going to do it anyway.”
“I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
“What does it matter? I’m done here.”
“Who knows what the New Year will bring?”
“What do you care what happens to me?”
I don’t say it. She needs to say it. If she doesn’t say it, it’s not true. I was wrong. It’s not something that I can offer, whether she accepts it or not. That’s not friendship. That’s pity.
At last, she turns to me, her lips pressed together to hide their trembling. “You truly are my friend.”
“It takes you a while, but you get there eventually.”
“You’re the friend I’ve waited my whole life to meet. I was stupid to push that away just because I couldn’t have everything else that I wanted from you.”
She places her hands on her chest to emphasize these last words. When she does so, her balance falters. Doi scrambles in her socks, and reaches out to grab the balustrade beside us. Her hand briefly brushes my hand, resting on it.
She snaps her whole arm back and takes two small steps away from me. Doi’s gaze fixes on the pearl between us. Hot waves of shame roll off of her Chi. Her face burns with an expression of profound hate.
I realize that this hate is aimed wholly at herself.
She hates the strongest, bravest student here at Pearl Famous because of what that girl liked.
Whom, not what.
Loved, not liked.
I don’t know much about these things. But it seems deeply wrong that love should ever be a reason for hate.
I take her hand in mine and fold my other hand over hers.
Doi looks at me with astonished eyes. It cuts slices into my heart to think that she, who defended me so many times and paid so high a price for it, should be so surprised at such a small kindness in return.
When she sees the tears on my cheeks, her heart at last caves in.
“I don’t want to leave here, Peasprout! I’m frightened! And what’s going to happen to you? What are we going to do?”
I have no answers for my friend, and the only thing that I can do is offer my hands and join my weeping with hers.