The mining equipment droned steadily through the night, never completely dying away. Nor did it ever completely grasp consciousness. Aubry lay in bed thinking about the people he had seen, and the things that had been said, and realized that for the first time in … weeks?… he felt whole.
He levered himself up to sitting position, and decided to attempt the Rubber Band, the series of exercises that he had learned in childhood.
A series of exercises taught him by …
His father? No. Not his father. By Thomas Jai, a warrior who had given his life for Aubry. Who had given this one piece of his heritage to a small, frail boy, that that heritage might not die completely.
Aubry stood, feet close together. Breathing deeply, he felt a swell of warmth in his feet, let the warmth roll up his legs, connect with his hips, let himself begin to sway.
He bent backward, feeling his back muscles contract as his chest expanded. His muscles, unstressed for days, moved stiffly beneath his skin. He arched powerfully, expanding as he inhaled, swaying. Then he thumped down into an inverted V and placed his palms flat on the ground; as he had been able to do, with absolutely no warm-up, for all of his memory.
All his weight went onto his hands. His tendons creaked as they began to bear the load. The first of a long, unbroken series of breaths hissed from his mouth.
For the next ten minutes he was lost in the movements, as he transported himself to another time, and place.
He was once again in the city of his youth, a warren of alleys and sewers and abandoned shops. It was a place alive with memories. Sometimes the movements mimicked the shapes of the city, and sometimes the air in his lungs escaped like steam, mimicking animal sounds.
At the fifteen-minute mark, his breath began to grow ragged, and he felt the first trembles of exhaustion. And at seventeen, his entire body was shaking.
Sweat was pouring from him in a torrent, and he could no longer control himself. Then, during a complex movement where his weight was balanced on his arms, his entire trunk rotated to the side and parallel to the floor. Aubry could take no more, and collapsed, lying on the cold tile in a pool of sweat. Trembling.
But not unsatisfied. He was on the way to recovery.
From the doorway came five sardonic claps. There stood Challa, an enormous smile splitting his lips.
“Is good,” he said, in stilted English. “You have no teacher, for long time, yes?”
Aubry bit back his retort. This man suddenly reminded him of something … of himself.
Challa didn’t have Aubry’s size, but he conveyed the impression of concealed speed and effortless, efficient movement.
Aubry wiped sweat from his forehead, spattered it from his fingertips onto the ground. “You know this?”
“Every child know fire dance,” Challa said, still in English. “You do high form. I know low form. You want see?”
Aubry nodded, almost foolishly grateful.
Challa said, “You want see, you come to the dance tonight. You see!”
And he laughed, and left Aubry lying in the stink of his own sweat, thinking on things that he hadn’t considered for many years.