At last, Cricket and I climb up the steps of the towers and hop onto the thin rails atop them leading over the water.
I warn Cricket to skate cautiously due to the winds and the waterspouts. We work our way across, leading with one skate and pushing with the other. It’s an unnerving sensation to be skating over open sea balanced on a slim rail.
At last, the islets of the academy come into view. In the fading light, the campus is profoundly beautiful. There is one central island composed of terraces, great sweeps of plazas, and roofs. It’s ringed with smaller islets, all of them connected by rails. Everywhere there are banners fluttering and snapping. Canals atop the structures send water flowing down their sides. The roofs shimmer in the twilight, their edges and spines weaving across the campus in exuberant curls like dragons nested with each other. We reach the landing and leap off the rails.
We pass under a vast arch in the form of milky sea horses meeting snout to snout, garlanded with flowers and carved with the words The Great Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness.
“That’s the first new structure that Cloud-Tamer Zwei built after the Great Leap of Shin!” cries Cricket.
“Cricket, what did I say? Don’t talk about the Great Leap!”
We skate through the gate and up to the entrance of a crystalline hall with a roof wider than I thought was possible in this world. A prefect stands at the door, clutching a scroll of what I assume are the names of new students. She lifts her arm and flaps her hand at us. “Come, come, come! The Feast of Welcoming is almost done!”
Cricket and I hand her our academy scrolls for inspection. We bow, apologize for our lateness, and beg her not to turn us away. The girl smiles with an Enlightened One’s face of kindness and says, “No troubles. You missed Supreme Sensei Master Jio’s speech. That’s a good thing. Now, in you go before all the hot food and all the cold food swap temperatures! And happy Year of the Dolphin!”
It seems that not all Pearlians are like those boys from the discount academy. I wish we could go to our dormitories first to put away our belongings, but we’re already very late, so we skate in.
The hall is a wide, open structure lined with rows of milky tables and benches, filled with laughing students. Strange, gelatinous lanterns hang everywhere. One wall is covered by a great curtain of silky white.
This is our first chance to meet some of our fellow academy students. We have to make a good impression as the first students from Shin ever to attend the academy.
Heads turn toward us. Girls whisper to one another. Are they laughing at us?
Cricket and I take a little of every dish offered at the central serving table onto our trays. I don’t recognize a single food. No pickled chicken feet or sheep intestines or any of the other comforting home-style foods we have in Shin. And there’s no one to stop us from taking too much. Is food so plentiful here that they don’t have to control portions?
We look for a place to sit, but everyone is packed together, deep in their conversations and private jokes. I feel like I’m skating straight into a cold sea.
No one sits alone except for one girl, at the end of the hall. Her hair is a long black waterfall. On a technical level, I admit she’s slightly more beautiful than I am. However, she stares at the table in front of her in a very unattractive way.
The girl lifts her face and meets my gaze. I turn away quickly.
When I glance back, she’s still looking at me! Pearlians have no manners. In Shin, we never look people in the eyes, unless they are speaking to you and they are at the same social level.
“Peasprout,” says Cricket, tugging on my robe in the way that I hate. “Everyone’s almost finished, so let’s not bother them. Let’s eat at that empty table.”
Ten thousand years of stomach gas. As if it were not hard enough to make new friends here without Cricket isolating us at every opportunity. I scan the rows and see two boys sitting at a table by themselves.
I can do this.
I was wu liu champion for all of Shui Shan Province five times before the age of ten.
I was the Peony-Level Brightstar.
I am the emissary of the Empress Dowager.
I skate toward them. I look back to Cricket and urge him to follow, but he only shakes his head.
When I reach the two students, I see they’re very handsome. I flash my famous smile, which everyone loves, even if they haven’t seen it on the posters and paper dolls. I cast each of them a flirtatious look. Then I notice that the two boys are holding hands across the table. They unclasp hands, bow their heads to me, and politely ask me to join them as my neck and face flood with embarrassment.
I catch their names as Ong Hong-Gee and Song Matsu. Beyond that, I can barely hear the polite questions they’re asking me between the sound of the blood beating in my ears, the heat on my face, and my attempts to eat more quickly than I’ve ever eaten in my life. All the strange foods are bland, as if Pearlians didn’t use any salt, and I can’t tell if some of them are sauces or dishes.
The boys, kind souls that they are, ask me please not to rush, as they were just about to get second servings themselves. I protest that I’ll be finished shortly, too, but they won’t allow it. By the time they come back to me with full plates, I am finished. Then it’s my turn to sit and watch
