“I make you best price!” she says in her broken Pearlian.
She chews betel nut. She blows the contents of her nostril onto the pearl. She lifts an earthen wine vessel.
“How much?” I ask.
“Two tael.” She looks me up and down and adds in perfect Shinian, “You’re a long way from home, young miss.”
How can she know I’m from Shin? There’s nothing Shinian in my speech, dress, or skating.
“I’ll take it,” I answer in perfect Pearlian.
The merchant sneers, switching back to her broken Pearlian. “You like speak Pearlian so much, we speak Pearlian. You think Pearl so fine and high. Don’t trust them. They love lie. They lie so much.”
I take out my small purse and count my seven taels.
When she sees the money, she says, “You look buy anything else? Betel nut? Sinkweed?” She looks at me harder, then recognition fills her face. “You Brightstar skater from Shin. You girl in Pearl Shining Sun newspaper.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She looks around to see if anyone can hear her. “You like buy nice salt?”
I’m about to wave her off when I think of Cricket and how little he seems to eat these days. It must be because of the lack of salt in the dining-hall food. If I could just get him a little salt, maybe he’d understand that I’m always thinking of him, no matter how my actions must seem sometimes.
“Pearlian so scare of salt. From children time they teach should very be scare of salt. They put little salt in children eye. Teach them salt terrible. Salt burn. Salt eat like fire.”
“How much is the salt?”
“Two tael one cup.”
Merchants back home in Shui Shan sold a whole bowl of salt for one tael. But what is there to spend my money on, anyway? Seven taels wouldn’t be enough to buy even one skate blade.
I drop lucky taels into her hand.
“Where you cup?”
“I don’t have a cup.”
“I sell you cup.” She lifts a rough, dented vessel. “Three tael.”
“Two taels for salt, and one tael for an old cup?”
“No. Three tael for cup. Two tael for salt. Two tael for wine. Seven tael total.”
“I’ll go buy my own cup.”
“No. You buy salt in my cup or no sell salt. Or wine. And I call police.”
At this point, other people and merchants are beginning to watch us, so I relent again and pay this vile creature her seven taels.
“Pearlian no use salt,” she says. “You Shinian. You use salt. You burn all down.” Hatred fills her face, but it’s not for me. She’s not even looking at me. She’s looking at this city of Pearlians circling us two villagers from Shin.
I tie the wine with a sash around my waist, take the cup of salt, and leave her, but her words follow me.
I hear a voice, and by the time I hear “That’s the girl!” I’m already performing the single-toe fire dolphin flip. I land, ready to meet them, with one hand pulled behind me holding the cup of salt and the other extended toward them like a blade.
It’s the two boys who harassed Cricket and me when we first arrived from Shin. From Number-One Best Discount Noodle Academy or whatever it’s called.
“You made us smell like stinky tofu for two weeks!” says the square-shaped boy. “We almost got kicked out because of you!”
“We weren’t allowed to serve customers on the floor because of you,” says the slimmer boy. “You made us late with our tuition.”
They’re vile boys. But they’re poor. They work to pay for their wu liu schooling. I used to be them. I could soon be them, if I don’t get to Chingu in time. Thus, I hold back.
“What’re you doing outside of Pearl Famous?” says the square-shaped boy. “A little shopping, neh?”
Together, they lunge forward. My response is slowed by my jagged skate blades and the glare in my unprotected eyes. I block one boy, but the other one snatches my cup of salt. Ten thousand years of stomach gas!
“What is this?” says the square-shaped boy. He sticks his finger into the salt.
“Don’t touch it!” I cry.
He grins at me, deliberately stirs his fingers around in the salt, and wipes it on his tongue. When he tastes the flavor, his eyes widen. He spits and gapes at me.
“Where did you get this?” he asks.
“Give it back!”
“We should report you!”
They leap onto the edges of one of the open chutes that carry the cargo sledges and speed deep into the harborside marketplace.
I’ll be arrested for illegally buying wine and salt! I pump my skates hard and chase after them.
These boys aren’t academy-level skaters. I quickly catch them on a stretch of the chute high above a busy street. When they see that they can’t outskate me, they turn and come at me with not just chops and knees but open blades. They hop and flip back and forth between the thin edges of the chute, their moves made inaccurate by their fury. I have to be careful here. I don’t want them to strike me, but I also don’t want them to spill my cup of salt for Cricket.
I block each of their strikes successfully, but I fail to disarm them. They should be no match for me, but the brightness of the white city stings my unshielded eyes and my blades make my steps uneven.
I see how to win. We’re high above the city on a chute. My opponents can only balance on its left edge or its right edge. And they can only be behind me or in front of me.
I don’t need my eyes. I close them and let the sound of the boys’ skates and hands cutting through the air show me where they are. Their reflexes are mediocre. Within five moves, I’ve sliced the straps from their skates and snatched the
