Sagacious Monk Goom makes us form a line leading up to a lip of the pearl overhanging the sea. He skates, as rickety as a house built of ropes and branches, to the second student in line.
“Count the number of drops that splash up from the water,” says Sagacious Monk Goom.
“What drops?” the second girl in line asks.
Sagacious Monk Goom pushes the first girl in line into the water.
Chingu immediately begins to chop the pearl beneath her feet with the cleaver. She brings the blade down in both of her little hands with such force that her hind legs splay out in front of her and she lifts entirely off the pearl for an instant, balancing on the cleaver. All the time, she’s shrieking as if she’s being pulled apart into pieces.
“How many?” says Sagacious Monk Goom.
“How many what?” asks the girl.
“How many drops of water splashed up?”
“I don’t know! Seventy?”
Sagacious Monk Goom turns to Chingu. She finishes chopping out the count. Sagacious Monk Goom says, “Chingu says seventy-two! Mmm, very nice, very nice.” He smiles at the girl, and she smiles back and then he pushes her into the water. Chingu starts chopping and shrieking again.
“How many?” he says to the next girl.
So it goes all morning, with splashing and chopping and shrieking and Sagacious Monk Goom saying, “Mmm, very nice, very nice.” When my turn comes, I focus my Chi and stare at the ring of droplets that splashed up before my eyes as Mole Girl plopped into the sea. I close my eyes and try to picture their image burned in reverse on my retina. I can actually see some of them in the flashes of green and red behind my eyelids, but there is no way that I can accurately count them before they fade. I guess, “Seventy-eight?”
Chingu finishes chopping out the count.
Sagacious Monk Goom cries, “Chingu says seventy-eight!”
I smile in relief. Then Sagacious Monk Goom shoves me into the water.
By the end of the day, we’re as unnerved and disoriented as if we had been strapped to the wheels of a chariot and driven seven thousand li from Jinfeng Mountain down to the Purple River.
As I skate back to the dormitory chambers, wet and shivering and trying to center my Chi, the revelation comes to me. I thought all these exercises were useless. However, I learned two strange but critical things about the pearl today:
1. Building with the pearl requires outstanding eyesight.
2. Building with the pearl involves something very, very small.
CHAPTER
TEN
Two days. That’s all I have left to prepare until the second Motivation. Learning about the pearl and why the Empress Dowager has put us in this position are important but so is performing well so that I don’t look like a mediocre skater sent as a spy.
I haven’t made anywhere near the progress that I needed to in my meditation memory practice. I’ve been training by myself every day before morningmeal in the memory palace exercises at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness. During wu liu class, my ability to remember these strings of moves with many quick steps has been improving as a result. However, I know it’s still far from what I need in order to take first ranking at the second Motivation. I need to do more in these last two days. I need to make Doi teach me her meditation technique.
That evening, half an hour before evenmeal, I go to the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness and find Doi there just as she is finishing her meditation practice. It’s clear that she’s not happy about my being here.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her alone since the meeting with Hisashi in the Garden of Whispering Arches. I have to try to win Doi over so I can ask her about her meditation technique. Perhaps I can use what Hisashi told me about the history between Suki and Doi at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony.
I bow to Doi. She bows back, but there’s no expression on her face. Then again, there never seems to be anything on this girl’s face except two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
“What do you think the nuns at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters did with Suki’s hair after they cut it off?” I ask, trying for a smile. “Should one of us come in wearing it as a belt during the second Motivation?”
Doi’s face doesn’t change. “You don’t need to come here when I do. It’s not going to help you with the second Motivation.”
Her words feel like a slap.
“I’ve seen you meditating, but it won’t help you win,” she continues. “The second Motivation doesn’t really have anything to do with memorization.”
She’s so rude. How can Doi and Hisashi share the same mother and father?
“So,” I say, “if it’s nothing to do with the second Motivation, you shouldn’t mind me joining you here.”
“I’m done here.”
“What about tomorrow night?”
“I’d prefer if you’d not come when I’m using the squares.”
“There are sixty-fo—sixty-lucky of them. I only need one.” I cross my arms. “Why can’t I be here? What is it you’re doing?”
“It’s just a game that my brother and I came up with when we were young.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?” This girl is impossible. “I’m only talking to you because Hisashi—”
“Hisashi’s a fool!” She gets up and skates out of the square.
So I’m on my own for the second Motivation. Nothing new to me.
* * *
I skip my architecture, music, and literature classes the last morning before the second Motivation. I spend the extra time studying the Treatise on Chi Practice and the Visual Music of the Memory Palace and meditating. During wu liu class that afternoon, Sensei Madame Liao has us form a line and face her. We are to copy her moves, and any girl who makes a mistake is eliminated from the line.
I focus my Chi. I must be relaxed so I can absorb. I must loosen every muscle in my body, even the
