CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Two hundred and fifty Sukis. That’s how I see the academy now that I’m planning to sneak off the campus into the city. Any of the hundreds of students could see me climbing onto the gondola rails leading back to the city and violating the academy rules. Any of them could report my suspicious behavior that seems to confirm Suki’s accusations and Pearl Shining Sun’s headlines. It’s like Suki’s just grown 498 extra eyes.
I could try to sneak out after dark, when the academy is asleep. The second- and third-years take turns patrolling the campus at night, but I could learn the patterns they travel during their watch. However, all the markets in the city are closed at night.
The week after my visit to Sagacious Monk Goom and Chingu, the answer is presented to me, because something extraordinary happens to day and night: they switch places. It’s the first day of the Season of Glimmers. During this season, the seas around the city of Pearl glow at night due to the luminescent plants and octopuses that migrate here during this season. The glowing sea life even works its way against the current, up the canals and aqueducts, turning the waterways into rivers of light. Pearlians harvest and use them as decorations during the Season of Glimmers to turn Pearl into a city fashioned of stars.
The whole academy goes nocturnal for the Season of Glimmers. Classes, Motivations, and meals all take place at night. We sleep during the daylight hours.
However, this reversal is just an academy tradition. The rest of the city of Pearl maintains its regular schedule of business. Thus, during the day, the academy sleeps but the markets remain open. I can sneak into the city during the day, as soon as I finish the next Motivation, since almost everyone at the academy is occupied for half a day with the conducting of each Motivation.
The Season of Glimmers brings me a way to get the wine for Chingu, but it also brings the Festival of Lanterns that will take place on the night before the fifth Motivation. This year’s festival will mark its two hundredth anniversary, so the whole city of Pearl will celebrate it with fanfare. Despite all the worries on my mind, I’m excited. We have lantern festivals in Shin, but they’re nothing like this.
From the eager whispers of my classmates, I learn that the entire academy will be decorated with lanterns made out of luminous octopuses. During the festival, everyone rows in boats into the glowing sea. They net octopuses and place a funnel into the beak of each one. They tie its arms into a bow to make a little basket, which rests under the cone of the funnel. Into this basket, they place a burning coal. The hot air rises through the funnel into the mouth of the octopus, filling it so it floats up. Beautiful shifting patterns of color swarm over the creature’s skin as it ascends.
I’m excited to have a chance to wear my flower dress at the festival. When I was young, before our parents disappeared, our mother took in other people’s washing for a year to save enough to buy the material for it. I know it’s not very high-grade material and that, in all likelihood, the rich students here only use this kind of material to polish their skate blades. However, it has folded cloth blossoms sewn all over it. It’s the best piece of clothing I’ve ever owned, and I want to wear it for Hisashi so that he can see that I’m not just a great wu liu warrior. I’m also a girl.
* * *
However, I can’t let such thoughts distract me. I have a plan to get into the city, but once I get there, I still have to find someone willing to sell wine to a luckyteen-year-old girl.
I doubt that any of the other students would know anything about the practices in the markets. Even if they’ve grown up in the city, they probably don’t do the market shopping. Parents or servants do that for them. And here at Pearl Famous, everyone has everything that they eat and drink provided for them in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, so they would never have to shop for—
Hisashi. He never eats in the dining hall because everything has animal parts in it.
He must have secretly been going into the markets in the city all year long! He got that wakame from the sea, but not the star anise or the sweet potatoes. Hisashi would know where in the markets someone might sell me red sorghum wine.
Hisashi will help me get the wine to give to Chingu to receive the oracle to prove my enemy and clear my name and make Cricket and me, at long last, safe.
I don’t see Hisashi for over a week after the luckieth Motivation. I finally run into him crossing the Bridge of Serene Harmony. I almost skate past him because his uniform isn’t decorated with luminous octopus slices like everyone else’s. Further, the lantern he carries isn’t an octopus lantern but one of the regular frosted pearlplate lanterns.
“Good midnight, Peasprout.”
“Good midnight, Hisashi. Are you excited about the Season of Glimmers Festival of Lanterns? I never imagined I’d be here for its two hundredth anniversary.”
The smile on his face dims.
“What have I said?” I ask him.
“I’m not going to the Festival of Lanterns.” He looks at me directly. “Those luminous octopus lanterns? Their bells swarm with light and wild colors like that because the octopuses are still alive when they’re being filled with hot air. Eventually, the coal under each one grows so hot, it ignites the digestive gases in the animal, causing it to burst like fireworks. Entire schools
