She leads us onto the outer rails, doing one single-footed twisting leap after another, and we all follow, making the body of the dragon seem to spiral in its flight over the dark water.
She leads us inside the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character and bows down in a side split as she skates past the restored statues, and we all follow, making the body of the dragon seem to bow to the heroes of Pearl.
She skates up the ramp of the temple, and we follow, making the body of the dragon thread up the spiral.
She leaps out of the arch at the top, making the body of the dragon fly out of the temple. She lets out a roar, and we follow and holler our throats raw, making the air thunder with a terrible bellow.
She leads us back to the Principal Island and the assembly court. We form a circle around her, and as we pound on our drums and saw on our strings faster and faster, Doi launches into a brilliant, furious spin. Fifty rotations. One hundred rotations. One hundred and fifty rotations. Two hundred rotations!
She’s done it! She’s broken the record! She has once again made Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword history! She ends the rotations with a hard skid, toes pointed on the pearl, one hand on her hip, the other spread in the air like a fan, head tossed back. The students scream with joy and the circle explodes in applause for this girl, the greatest artist of wu liu that Pearl Famous has ever known, for Niu Doi, my friend.
FINAL
CHAPTER
I spend as much time as I can with Doi in the final days. She’s going to travel back to her aunt’s in Tao-Ka several hundred li south of the city of Pearl. She’ll spend the New Year’s month there to await word of whether her father is truly going to send her back to Pearl Rehabilitative Colony to be committed as a novice nun.
Cricket and I are uncertain what our status here as exchange students is now, since the goodwill exchange between Shin and Pearl is clearly over. Sensei Madame Liao has temporarily arranged for Cricket and me to stay at a boardinghouse in the city during the holiday month. We can’t stay at Pearl Famous because it undergoes “maintenance” during the recess. I guess they don’t want students seeing what maintenance means.
The day before we are to leave, I hear a voice cry out, “Iwi, it’s brushtime!” I turn to see logograms forming in the sky. The birds spell out: “Empress. Dowager. Mysteriously. Cuts. Off. All. Communications. With. Pearl. Buy. Pearl. Shining. Sun. News. To. Get. Whole. Story.”
What can it mean? All I know is what the villagers below Tianshang Mountain learned the hard way: When the Empress Dowager goes silent, it’s not the last time you will hear from her.
* * *
In the final days, I cross paths with Mole Girl.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
She laughs. “Gou Gee-Hong.”
“Gou Gee-Hong, thank you.”
She laughs again. “For what?”
“For being good luck,” I say, and bow.
* * *
On the final day, when I’m finished with all I have to prepare, I skate to Doi’s dormitory chamber. She’s there with her few things bound in neat parcels of pearlsilk and string.
I can’t help it. It’s selfish of me. I should be brave for her now. But the tears come anyway.
“Don’t cry, Peasprout.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m frightened. Do you believe I’ll figure something out?”
“Yes! You’re the bravest, most talented, truest person I’ve ever known. If anyone can figure something out, it’s you.”
“Then I’m not so frightened. It might sound strange, but this has been the happiest year of my life.”
“What?”
“All those girlhood classics I read when I was young. I envied those girls so much. I wished for the friendships they found, which seemed more real than anything I’d ever known. Even though they were just imagined. And now, I’ve known friendship greater than anything anyone imagined. Thank you, my friend.”
Then, for the first time, Doi smiles at me and I see that she, of course, has dimples. I’m unprepared to see them there. I’m thrown. She looks at me, the smile and the dimples suddenly gone. She’s uncertain if she’s said too much.
Doi wants to embrace me, but she doesn’t. I feel, once again, the embarrassment and shame flash through her Chi.
So I open my arms and embrace her.
As I press her form against me, I smell that familiar scent, like plains sweetgrass, and it smells like someone I knew, but that person’s gone now. Forever. My heart clenches. I realize that there’s only one person who knows what I’m feeling right now, because she’s feeling the same thing.
When we separate, I see my friend’s face covered in tears that I caused.
And I know that she’s seeing the exact same thing.
Doi bows to me and says, “May we meet here in the New Year.”
I bow to her and say, through my tears, “May we meet here in Pearl.”
* * *
I shoulder my belongings and exit my dormitory chamber. Cricket told me that he’d want to wait until the last moment to say good-bye to all his friends. Cricket. With friends.
At last, the time comes and we have to leave for the boarding-house in the city. Cricket and I take our things and skate across the campus to the Great Gate of Complete Centrality and Perfect Uprightness at the entrance of Pearl Famous.
Something is happening at the bottom of the slope leading down toward the rail-gondolas that bridge Pearl Famous and the city.
Doi’s down there. She has her back to me and her hands cupped to her mouth as she faces some sort of great round container on a sledge being hauled by someone.
“Doi, what’s wrong?” I cry.
She turns around and lowers her hands with a look of profound emotion on her face, but I can’t tell if that emotion is happiness or misery.
“Doi, what’s happened?
