Prologue: The World's Scorn

The experiment was a complete and utter disaster. The house elves were still cleaning up the damage several weeks later, even though the sound of revolutionary slogans no longer echoed in the halls. The Headmaster was summarily removed and was in a state of quasi-exile. Tensions between the Middle Kingdom and all the other nations of the world were worse than ever with both sides pointing to the disaster as proof of their rightness. Despite the problems, Zhu-Ge Liang, formerly the Professor of Alchemy and now the Headmaster of the Dragon Pearl, more commonly known as the Southern School, was not about to give up. He sat in his office, at home in Chang-An, moodily shuffling papers in a vain attempt to look busy.

"Are you still determined?" his wife, Jiao-Long, asked. She had come into the room without him even noticing. That was a bad sign, if his concentration was that poor. She began to rub his shoulders and he tried to relax under her ministrations.

He nodded. "More than ever. This cannot go on."

She smiled slightly. "Even now, are you such an idealist?" It had been a decade since their youngest child had gotten married and left their home for good and many more decades since he had been part of the radical student movement demanding change.

Liang sighed and stretched, his knees and back protesting the movement. "It is not idealism that drives me to do this. We do not wish to change anything at all and it is clear that whoever is in control in Muggle China wants to change everything completely. Neither system is tenable forever. We cannot occupy the same land and be so divided." The flickering candle light emphasized the lines of his face, weathered by decades of teaching and chasing after students and his own children.

Jiao-Long moved to lean against his rosewood desk, so she could face her husband, blue silk robe whispering quietly as she moved. "They will say that it has worked for our ancestors for over eight hundred years." The light shone on her long black hair, now shot with white.

Liang rubbed his temples. "If we block off change for too long, then when it comes, we will be completely unprepared. As it is, the rest of the world is threatening to boycott and block diplomatic relations."

She shrugged. "You know that the most conservative will not mind that."

He laughed, bitterly. "They need to remember that it has been almost as long since we were the most powerful nation in the world. Once, we could have withstood the scorn of the world, but no longer."

His wife slowly removed his hands from his temples and held them for a moment. Her skin was soft and white, a noble woman's in every way. Even now, he still loved her hands, long, slender and graceful. She kissed each of his knuckles, slowly and he smiled at the familiar gesture. "What will you do?"

He sighed and stroked his long beard absently. "Watch and wait. Learn more about the Muggle world. If we had been better prepared then we would have known to wait for this..." He was unsure what exactly to call it and he settled on "movement to pass."

Jiao-Long pulled at his hands gently. "Then you can come to bed now, right?"

He glanced at the clock. "How long have I been sitting here?" he asked aloud, aghast at how late it had gotten.

"Come to bed," she repeated. "It's late."

With a sigh, he got up and followed his wife to bed.

The honored Headmaster of the Southern School watched and waited. He went to international conferences on education. He met headmasters from schools all over the world and learned what they did to solve this problem. A war in Britain started, ended, restarted, and then finally ended, taking the life of a friendly acquaintance in the process. The Americans suffered internal unrest bordering on outright revolt. Bolivia and Chile almost went to war, declared war, but never fired a spell and eventually settled things peacefully. Gran Columbia fractured. The Caliphate and the Sultanate engaged in a bitter cold war that never quite turned hot before signing an even more bitter peace settlement which left nothing changed. He never let anyone besides his wife know that he was planning to repeat the failed experiment. He learned all he could about the other side. He waited for the political situation to stabilize. He watched and tried to locate the right families, the right children.

More than anything else, Zhu-Ge Liang waited. He needed someone special, someone unique, someone who could break down over eight hundred years of self-imposed isolation and he was willing to wait to find the right person.

Chapter One: A Gymnast to Represent China

At ten years old, Song Feng never thought of herself as unusual, when she gave it much thought at all. She was only 142 centimeters tall, but that wasn't particularly strange. Certainly, she was from a village in rural Guangdong and she had a younger sibling when most of her teammates were only children, but while that put her in a minority, it didn't make her an oddity. Even under China's One Child policy, rural people were allowed to have multiple children. Her hair was still long, black and straight like thousands of other Chinese girls. She preferred to keep her hair shorter, but according to the regulations of the national gymnastics team, it needed to be long enough to keep up in a neat bun. Her eyelids, to her disappointment, did not have double folds but again, this did not make her different either. All the girls whose eyelids did not have double-folds bemoaned them.

If she had thought about it a little more, she would have conceded that being a gymnast in mainland China, in the People's Republic, was somewhat atypical. Only about three hundred boys and girls in all of China, go into the sports academy system for gymnastics. At ten, she was one of the youngest members of the junior national team, the best gymnasts in the entire nation. Still, despite this tiny percentage that she was actually a part of, she always had the company of the twenty or so other girls on the national team, so she felt that she was among sisters, friends and rivals, even if she wasn't with her biological family.

She still wouldn't have considered herself odd in any way, but perhaps that is part of the nature of children: to treat the abnormal as banal.

Like most of her fellow gymnasts, she had shown promise for the sport at an early age. Her parents said that she had been a handful as a toddler, constantly getting into things, trying to climb up drawers, anything she could reach. They had been afraid she would hurt herself. If she had thought about it, then she would have presumed that nothing happened since she was alive, healthy and whole. When she was barely three years old, a gymnastics coach came to look for new prospects at the nursery school. Her parents had been happy and sure that she would be chosen.

Sure enough, she was one of the lucky ones that were plucked directly from nursery school to gymnastics academy. She trained six days a week, six hours a day, from the time she was three, year after year after year. Her parents gave her to the state to raise and she was determined to be the best. For her, that was the end of that story. She would go on to be an Olympic champion and represent her country in front of the eyes of the world with gold medals around her neck. There was nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Everything that someone needed to know about her was emblazoned on her leotard right on her chest: the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China.

* * *

Her parents never told her that she had fallen. She had been climbing to the top of the biggest, tallest dresser when her foot slipped and she fell. Her mother, Song Lin, saw it happening as if time itself was slowing down, that Feng was going to fall on her head and die. Instead of her darling only daughter falling and killing herself, she landed and then bounced a meter in the air. Lin had grabbed her daughter and held her before she could drop, tears landing in the soft baby hair, even as the baby still giggled.

Song Bing, her father, had watched everything from the next room. He had been frozen in shock watching his daughter fall. Now that his precious daughter was safe, he managed to walk into the next room and pet her head gently. His hands were rough from a lifetime of working in the fields harvesting rice and in the factories that Deng Xiao-Ping had brought to Guangdong, which just emphasized the softness of his daughter's baby hair.

Lin and Bing had exchanged a look over their daughter's head. "The little Phoenix can fly," he said softly, referencing their daughter's name.

"More like bounce," Lin replied, still holding Feng, tears still wet on her round cheeks.

They never really talked about it again, but after that incident, Song Bing made sure to do calisthetics with Feng every morning before he and Lin went to work. The calisthetics tired her out and kept her from trying to climb the drawers. They also told her grandmothers, her Ngin Ngin and her Po Po, not only to keep her from the drawers - which they would have done anyway - but to make sure that she kept doing those exercises throughout the day.

"Who knows," Lin said once, "perhaps she is meant to compete for China."

Song Bing didn't respond to that initially. He just watched their daughter go through the set of exercises again. Her eyes had always been focused, determined, even as a baby before she could crawl. Her eyes scared people occasionally because of the energy in them, the ferocity and spirit in them. Occasionally, someone would remark that it was too bad she was not born a boy, because her spirit seemed ill-suited to a girl, particularly a girl baby.

"She will do well at anything she puts her mind to," he said finally after a long moment's thought. "If she stays that determined, then perhaps she will compete for China." He smiled. "Or perhaps she will join the Party or become a doctor. Who knows?"

Their daughter finished the set and ran to her father who picked her up. "You did well," he told her. She smiled broadly.

When a gymnastics coach came to her nursery school, it seemed like the sign they were waiting for. Her dark eyes had stared the coach down, before she jumped as high as she could. The coach barely cracked a smile, but that was enough. At three years old, she went to train with the provincial team, in the capital of Guangdong, Guangzhou.

* * *

At the provincial gymnastics academy, they were examined every day by the doctors. Training for six hours a day, six days a week is akin to torture on a young body and stresses it almost beyond what human beings are supposed to bear, so the children were carefully watched for health problems related to training.

When Song Feng was five, she trained on the uneven parallel bars until her hands blistered and then until she bled. She hid the bleeding, not wanting to get in trouble, but one of the coaches noticed the blood on the bar.

"Who's bleeding?" Coach Ma demanded. He was one of the largest of their coaches and Song Feng was most scared of him. She wondered how he had ever been a gymnast because he was so fat now.

All of the girls were silent.

"Someone is bleeding and that person should go to the doctors." His voice threatened worse than just going to the doctors.

She hoped fervently that her blisters would heal and the blood would disappear. She didn't want to go to the doctors, she didn't want to spend time away from training. She definitely didn't want to know what Coach Ma was threatening without directly saying it. Her hands ached, but it didn't matter. She needed to practice.

The entire gym waited a long second while Coach Ma paced in front of the assembled girls.

Song Feng tried to keep her face impassive as she hoped for a miracle. She rubbed her hands together nervously behind her back, wondering if Coach Ma could tell. He would walk along the silent row of girls and then stop and stare at a particular one and then keep walking.

Finally he barked: "Everyone show me your hands. Palms out."

By the time she extended her hands, the blood was gone and the blisters looked like they were old and healing, not fresh. She breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Coach Ma, on the other hand, was baffled. Someone had gotten blood on the bars, yet none of the girls in front of him had bleeding hands. "Alright. Go back to training," he barked. He eyed all of the girls wondering which of them it had been.

Song Feng immediately leaped back on the bars. Coach Ma stared. Had her feet touched the springboard at all? He hadn't heard the sound. He shook his head. There was no way that a five year old could jump straight on to the bars, even the lower bar. He turned back to spotting her. "Hand stand." She forced herself up into a hand stand. "Hold it." He placed his hand on her stomach. "Tighten your muscles in here." He kept her there for another moment. "Now swing back down and come back up."

Later that night, she looked at her hands. They were perfectly smooth, like they hadn't blistered that day on the bars at all. She shrugged. If it let her practice longer, practice harder, then it didn't matter. She didn't quite know why, but she had the feeling that she should keep it a secret. After that she regularly fixed her blisters, but she was sure not to let anyone know.

* * *

Song Feng also became an older sister when she was five. All of the girls were excited because none of them had younger siblings. The One Child Act ensured that most Chinese children were only siblings, but her family was rural and given an exception. Even though her little brother, Song Chun Yin was born in May, she had to wait until the following winter, at New Year's, to go home. Her parents had to plead and beg for a few extra days off, to visit home and meet her younger brother. Eventually, her coaches relented after Song Feng swore solemnly, on her honor, as a gymnast and as a citizen of the People's Republic, that she wouldn't eat junk food, that she would train every day and that she would be the kind of older sister that her brother would be proud of. Even the coaches didn't question her resolve after that kind of oath and that kind of fearsome energy in her face.

Song Feng went home and slept in her own bed for the first time in two years, but it was still for less than a week. Her grandmothers tried to spoil her with food, and she did her best to please them while keeping her promise to the coaches. Still, it was nice to eat home cooked food by her grandmothers, and her mother and she permitted herself a few extra helpings of jeen mein, pan fried noodles, and red bean soup. She just made sure to run laps and keep training.

It seemed like the entire village stopped by their house at some point. The prodigal daughter had returned and they also had a young son in the house. Her parents were the envy of the entire village.

The first evening when it seemed like there was finally a break in visitors, her mother reminded her, "You haven't properly met your own little brother yet." They were all sitting in the living room, her father casually smoking a cigarette, her mother mending an old sock, while Feng did handstands against the wall and Chun Yin just sat in his chair watching everyone. He was generally a quiet child, not prone to much screaming or crying. Like his older sister he had a very solemn gaze. Unlike her, he laughed with much more frequency, a big smile on his chubby face.

"Hi, little brother," she said to the baby solemnly. "I'm your big sister, Feng."

He smiled up at her. "Big... sister?" he asked, reaching his short little arms towards her. Their parents had tried teaching him the words for the last few weeks before she arrived because they were determined that their daughter would still feel at home, even if she lived far away in the training center. He had finally copied the sounds and it was one of the few things he said now. They held hands and smiled, looking at their children, finally meeting each other. Their lives were difficult working in factories, but they could live at home and they had two healthy children.

Song Feng grinned and gently stroked her little brother's head, marveling at how soft his hair was. "Yep, I'm your big sister. Big sister," she repeated solemnly, tasting the feel of the words.

"Big sister!" he cried happily, trying to pull at her hair.

"That's right." She wondered if he would remember her at all or if he was even aware of what the words meant. Eight months seemed too young to really remember anything. She turned towards her parents. They gestured towards her to say something else. She turned back to her brother, still burbling "big sister" over and over. "I'll always be your big sister. Even when I'm not..."

She was unsure how to put it. She stood there, feeling very awkward as her parents watched them. Finally she settled on "Even when I'm not here, I'm still your big sister. And you're still my younger brother." It seemed a very inane thing to say but she wasn't sure what else she could tell him. He wouldn't remember anyway. "And I'll always be thinking about you. I'll make you and mom and dad proud of me," she promised, hoping it was enough.

Song Chun Yin just smiled at her. "Big sister," he repeated.

"Little brother," she said back to him, a small smile forming at the edges of her lips.

It was one of the few times she was allowed to go home, so she also went to pay her respects to the dead. She stood with her parents and grandmothers, her brother strapped to her mother's back, as they burnt heaven and hell money for her grandfathers and their other ancestors and lit incense.

She bowed in front of the graves, hoping that her grandfathers were watching over her and protecting her.

* * *

At seven, she had an accident on the vault. Vault is one of the hardest events for a very young person. It takes a great amount of strength and size to sprint down the runway, hit the springboard with enough power to generate enough force to land on the horse, smack it and then flip and twist three or four times in the air and land.

Song Feng and the other girls in her group were only practicing simpler vaults - sprinting, hitting the springboard and hitting the horse and going over.

When it was her turn, Song Feng, ran as fast as she possibly could, but she hit the springboard badly. Her hands landed badly on the horse and she landed - not on her feet, like she should have - but with an ankle turned over. The bone cracked and she screamed in pain, tears running down her cheeks. Coach Li ran to her, quickly assessing. She had landed badly, her ankle was turned at a bad angle. It was almost certainly a break.

"Sssh, ssh," he whispered. "I'm going to pick you up now, ok, Xiao Feng?" He called her "Little Phoenix" in lieu of her actual name. She was one of his favorite students and when they were outside the training center he tended to call her "Xiao Feng" as a joke since one of the other girls also had the character "Phoenix" in her name.

She nodded, biting her tongue.

"Fengfeng," he said quietly, using a diminutive pet name to calm her down, "be brave, ok? Just relax for me and breathe."

Her jaw relaxed and she breathed deeply. Coach Li had been the one who soothed her when she had nightmares. He was the one who she actually sometimes called 'uncle' but privately called 'Coach Panda' since that was what he looked like. "Good girl," he said, picking her up gently, making sure not to bang her ankle.

He brought her to the doctors who gave her x-rays. It confirmed the worst. Her ankle was broken. She would have to be in a cast for at least six weeks , making it impossible for her to actually train on any of the apparatus, though, she would still do basic training and strength training. She didn't bother trying to hide her sigh. While strength training was important, it was much less fun than training on the different apparatuses.

"Come on, Song Feng," Coach Li called, returning to a more formal language, now that she had been fixed up. "Enough flying today, right?"

"Yes," she responded, slowly hop-walking forwards with the crutches.

She went to bed early that night, since it was annoying to get around with crutches and she didn't want to deal with anyone else. Everyone else was still at dinner or had other plans. At least one of the girls had mentioned going back to train more. It didn't matter to Song Feng. What mattered was that they were all gone. She glared at her broken ankle. Then she wondered, If I can make my blisters go away, I wonder if I can make my ankle heal?

She still wasn't sure how exactly she had managed to heal her blisters, but when she had thought at them to heal up, they had. She frowned. Could that be it? Wanting it badly enough made it happen? That didn't make sense. Then again, it certainly couldn't hurt.

Heal, she thought at it. Please heal. I want to get better quickly. It's hard to train in crutches. Heal, heal, heal. She fell asleep repeating her mantra in her mind: heal, heal, heal.

When she woke up the next morning, she felt a little groggy, as if she had over-exerted herself. She was also a little disappointed that her ankle still felt swollen and it still hurt.

Of course, she reasoned, an ankle is a lot harder to heal than just blisters. It's marrow and bone that need to be fixed, not skin.

She repeated that routine every day for the next two weeks. She would go to bed early and lie in bed, encouraging her ankle to heal up. She felt a little ridiculous, but it was better than just waiting for it to fix itself, even if she did wake up feeling tired. Besides, the more she did it, the less groggy she felt when she woke up. Exactly two weeks after her accident, when she went into the doctor, he gave her a routine x-ray. He blinked at the screen. It showed that the bone had completely healed.

"Your accident was two weeks, ago correct?" Dr. Chan asked, looking over the chart, gray hair falling into his face.

She nodded. "Two weeks exactly."

"I think I'll take off the cast and examine your ankle more directly." He cut the cast off and looked at the ankle. It did look fine. He gently twisted her foot one way and then another. "Tell me if it hurts." She nodded. "And don't lie. This could be very bad for your health and your future career if your ankle heals badly now."

She nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. "Yes, Dr. Chan."

He continued the examination. "Nothing hurts?" he asked at the end.

She shook her head. "Nothing."

He looked at her, over the frame of his glasses. "Are you sure, Song Feng?"

"Yes, Dr. Chan." She wasn't sure what the big deal was. Sure, broken ankles were supposed to take six weeks to heal, and then even more physical therapy, but what was so bad about being cured in two weeks?

"Well, we'll keep watching your ankle. No apparatus work for at least a little while, and make sure that you do physical therapy on both your ankles. You don't want to break either of them again. You need them strong. One break weakens the bone and the joint, and makes it more susceptible to breaking again, do you understand?"

"Yes, Dr. Chan." She slid off the examination table and then walked out the door, looking like she hadn't just had a cast come off for a broken ankle.

The doctor watched her go and noted in her chart: Exceptionally quick healing. Keep an eye on.

* * *

When Song Feng was ten years old, the Guangdong provincial team sent an group to compete at a national meet and she managed to be chosen. It was an important meet because coaches from the national team would be there and to make the Olympic team, a gymnast had to be a member of the national team first.

They had to travel six hours by bus to get to the competition site. Song Feng wished that she could just sleep on the ride over, but she was too nervous. She had practiced until her hands had blistered and bled again, and the coaches had ordered her to stop. It was even worse because she was entered in all of the events: uneven parallel bars, floor exercise, balance beam and vault. Her nerves were driving her crazy.

Calm, she had told herself. Calm, calm, calm.

She breathed deeply through her nose like Coach Li always said and forced the tension out of her muscles one at a time. She knew all of her routines. She could fly on the bars and the vault. She would dance and do her tumbling passes on the floor and beam. She would land perfectly. Feng smiled to herself. I've got this.

She wore a dark purple leotard. It was her absolute favorite color and she considered it a lucky charm, particularly since there was also a red star on the side. It was a highly unusual design - usually patriotic designs with stars were also only in red, white and yellow. She loved it even more for that.

Her first event was the uneven parallel bars. Song Feng tried not to grin. It really wasn't fair putting her on her best event first. She chalked up her hands and waited for the announcer to call her name. She saluted the judges with a wide smile and then turned back to the bars. She took a deep breath before jumping on the springboard and grabbing the bars. It was a familiar routine, she could probably do it in her sleep and she had dreamed it before: handstand, swing, handstand, reverse hand hold, reverse back to normal, leap for the high bar, swing, handstand, swing, handstand, back to the lower bar. It was all as familiar as her own room. Finally, it was time for the dismount. She swung around the top bar, gaining momentum, bending her body to go faster. Then she let go of the bar, spinning, twisting, flying through the air. It was a difficult dismount because she couldn't see the ground before she landed. Ground! Her feet planted themselves firmly and she landed with her chest up and a grin on her face. She turned to salute the judges again and then walked off.

The coaches congratulated her. It was an excellent routine, very few flaws. She high-fived her teammates hands and wished them luck.

She knew she would do fine on the floor and the vault. After her broken ankle on the vault, she had worked at it and even though she would probably never be the best at vault, she was quite decent at it.

The balance beam was a completely different kind of event than the bars. The bars asked for upper body strength, a complete lack of fear, but most importantly, a real daredevil's desire to fly. The beam, on the other hand, demanded perfect balance and a different kind of fearlessness: that even though the beam is only 10 cm wide, the gymnast will not fall or even bobble even while doing tumbling passes, pirouettes and leaps. Gymnastics is a sport of subtraction, every bobble is another tenth of a point subtracted; a cruel sport where there is no way to do better, only less bad.

Song Feng had always felt that performing on the beam was akin to trying to balance on a nail. This time, it was as if somehow she knew it would be fine. It was like she was disconnected from her body, as if she was just practicing in the gym. She made her penultimate salute to the judges. She placed her hands on the beam and pulled herself up into a handstand and then splits. She performed the leaps, the pirouette, the dance moves, the tumbling passes almost in a daze, but still she never slipped, never even bobbled. Finally, she was on the very end of the beam, readying herself for the dismount. She took a deep breath, then she ran for a few steps, did a cartwheel, flipped off the beam, twisting three times in the air and landed. She had to take a step back to steady herself, but she was still grinning. She saluted the judges without having to fake the smile on her face.

She knew she was in. Coach Li hugged her tightly, knowing it might be the last time he could see her in a long time.

When the results were posted a few hours later, it confirmed what she already knew in her bones. She had made the national team. She was moving to Beijing.

Chapter 2: Sisters, Friends and Rivals

It was both easier and harder than Song Feng thought to move from Guangzhou to Beijing. She was allowed a few days to go home and be with her family before she moved, which was more than she had expected from the national team. She got the distinct feeling that it was the last break they would give her for a very long time. The coaches were proud of her and most of the other girls were jealous. It was odd. She had grown up with these coaches as her replacement parents, and the other girls as her sisters, friends and rivals, but suddenly, she would be leaving them all behind and moving over a thousand kilometers north to the capital.

She took a long bus trip home to the village from Guangzhou, staring at the window the entire way. Almost no one was on the bus with her since no one from the cities would choose to go out to the villages and the village people who worked in the city couldn't go back on any day they wanted.

On a grand scale, nothing had really changed; however, it had been five years since she had been home. Everything looked a little bit different, a little bit odd. Her grandmothers made her all of her favorites despite her protests and fussed over her like they would never be able to again. The neighbors all came back to see her again and she obligingly did a few gymnastics tricks for them. Her little brother, Chun-yin was going to school now. She wondered where the years had gone by. She had seen photos of him that her parents sent to her, but still in her mind's eye, she still thought of him as less than a year old. Now he was five years old, walking and talking.

Her parents were mostly quiet. Her mother had held her for a very long moment when she had come back. "We missed you so much," Lin said.

"I missed you too," she said, hugging back.

"I'll make you red bean soup," her mother said firmly, as she let go.

Feng sighed. She knew it wasn't worth it to object to her mother trying to make her food. She would just have to work harder to make sure that she did not gain any weight while she was back home.

"We got you a new stuffed animal to bring up to Beijing," her father said. She looked at him curiously for a moment. "We thought you should have something else from home to bring up. It's in your room, if you want to see it."

"Thank you," she said as she ran for her room. Her parents kept her room the same, but with her winning certificates displayed on the desk. It was an odd feeling to be back in this room which had never really been hers to begin with. On her bed was a stuffed tiger cub. She picked it up and squeezed it to her chest, realizing that it was the first new toy she had gotten in five years. She walked slowly back to the living room, nose buried in the tiger's soft white fur.

"Thank you," she repeated and hugged her father, the toy still clasped in one hand.

"It doesn't make up for all the birthdays and holidays you've missed," Bing said to his daughter. "But while you're home, you should let us spoil you, just a little."

She nodded. "Okay, Daddy."

It wasn't enough time to be home, but she remembered to go out to her grandfathers' graves. She brought incense along with the heaven money and the hell money. Feng had asked to go alone, partially because she wanted to be alone with her thoughts and partially because she wasn't sure what to say to these two men who had died before she was born. She visited her Gung Gung, her mother's father first. Slowly, she counted out the incense: nine pieces, three for each of the three Buddhas of the past, present and future. Then she lit them and placed them in front of the stone. She burnt the money, first the heaven money, and then the hell money.

"I hope you're doing well, Gung Gung," she said finally. "I'm sorry that I haven't been back to pay my respects in so long. I hope I'm making you proud. Please look after me and Chun-yin."

Then she walked to visit her Yeh Yeh, her father's father. Her father and his father had not been on good terms and it was even stranger, wondering what to say to him. Her father never really talked about it, but she knew that somehow they hadn't gotten along. She burnt the incense and the money. "Hello, Yeh Yeh," she said finally. "I'm moving to Beijing. Please look after me and Chun-yin."

* * *

For the second time in her young life, Feng moved away from everything and everyone she had ever known. It was December and after a lifetime in the subtropics of Guangdong, she was woefully unprepared for the harshness of a Beijing winter with snow on the ground. Her parents had bought her a new coat before leaving Guangdong, but it didn't really stand up to a real snowy winter.

The national team provided ‘official’ gear - jackets in red and gold with ‘China’ emblazoned on the back in all capital letters or the characters ‘Zhong Guo’ for the Middle Kingdom and warm up pants in red with gold trim. Feng wasn't sure that she had ever worn so much red in her life, but she was definitely sure that she had never been so cold in her life.

The national team trained even longer and harder, but the facilities were nice and new in preparation for the Olympics. Even though Feng still had to share a room with three other girls, the room was significantly bigger. Instead of twin bunk beds, they each had a full sized bed. They even had a TV in their room.

Song Feng was the newest and the youngest, so perhaps understandably, she initially kept to herself. She was over a thousand kilometers from home, and at first, she felt every last centimeter of them. Most of the other girls already had their own groups of friends and she was too shy to ask to tag along with them after practice �” when she even had the energy to want to go do anything.

About a fortnight after she arrived in Beijing, that changed. After practice, one of her roommates, Li Fei, started mimicking Coach Au-Yeung. The man had a very strong accent which made it a little difficult for Song Feng to understand him and he tended to gesticulate wildly when he wanted to make a point. Li Fei did his voice and mannerisms so perfectly that Song Feng had to giggle.

"I'm glad to see that you're not just made of stone," Li Fei remarked. Song Feng bristled at that but Li Fei was right. She hadn't spoken much at all. "You're from the south right?"

Song Feng nodded. "Guangdong."

"Far south then," Li Fei commented. "I've never been that far south. I've only ever left Beijing for competitions, actually"

Song Feng brightened at that. "You're from Beijing?"

"Born and raised," Li Fei responded, stretching out a long leg and pointing her toes, before bending down to touch her nose to her knee. If ballet was a sport, she might have been scouted for that instead of gymnastics because her legs were long and her ankles strong.

"So what is there to do here?" Song Feng asked eagerly. She hadn't been sure exactly what to do on her time off and the coaches hadn't exactly encouraged wandering around the city.

Li Fei laughed, loudly. "What isn't here, in the capital?" she asked with a grin still on her face. Some of her hair had fallen out of her bun, so she pulled the ponytail holder to fix her hair back into a neat tail, turning thoughtful. "You're a bars specialist, right?" Song Feng nodded, unsure of where Li Fei was going with that idea. The older girl seemed awfully excitable though. "Do you like roller coasters?"

"I've never been on one," Song Feng confessed.

Li Fei gasped, eyes widening. "Never?" She didn't wait for Song Feng to confirm. "Then this Sunday, we're gonna go ride the biggest roller coaster in the city."

Song Feng's eyes widened. "Are you sure?" Sure it was a good idea, sure it was the biggest in the city, sure of anything... Feng wasn't even sure what she meant.

"Of course, I am!" Li Fei snorted. "Being on a roller coaster is the closest thing to being on the bars in the world. If you love bars, then you'll love a roller coaster. We're going," Li Fei finished in a way that brooked no argument. "Sunday. Promise?"

Li Fei's face was so earnest, that Song Feng didn't feel that she could refuse. She smiled slowly. "I promise."

* * *

When Song Feng actually saw the biggest roller coaster in Beijing, she sincerely regretted promising. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"Positive."

The anticipation made it worse, listening to people's screams and the sound of the roller coaster's tracks.

She shivered and didn't even realize it. “Hey, c’mon,” Li Fei said. “Don’t be afraid. No one’s died on this thing yet.”

Song Feng shot her an irritated glare with as much energy as she could muster.

“I mean, this is checked all the time. They wouldn’t let people go on it, if it were dangerous, right?” Li Fei continued.

Song Feng sighed. “Not helping.” She gazed up at the tangle of metal.

“It’ll be fine, little birdie,” Li Fei responded.

“Birdie?” Feng squawked.

“A phoenix is a kind of bird, right?” Li Fei responded, trying to sound as reasonable as possible, a grin playing at the corner of her lips.

Feng didn’t have time to reply before Li Fei grabbed her hand. “We’re next!” A moment later, they were in the car, pulling the safety restraints down over her shoulders.

The car slowly climbed up the first hill. "It needs to build up momentum," Li Fei said. "Think of it like pre-competition nerves." Song Feng nodded even as she stared stony-faced at the top of the hill ahead.

“Chill out,” Li Fei said a moment later, punching Feng’s shoulder gently. “You’re making me nervous and I’ve been on this thing dozens of times. Just breathe.”

Song Feng tried to take deep meditation type breaths with her eyes closed, trying to ignore the clatter of the wheels on the rails.

“Look,” Fei whispered.

The younger girl opened her eyes. They were at the very top of the hill. Feng opened her mouth and screamed as the car tipped over the edge and dove down the hill. A distant part of her noted that Li Fei was right �” being on the bars was a bit like being on a roller coaster. It was the closest that humans with their too-thick mammalian bones get to the feeling of true flight, of soaring on their own power.

"Wasn't that great?" Li Fei asked, slightly out of break from the screams, as the cars came back to the beginning.

"Yep." For the first time, in what felt like a very, very long time, Song Feng felt relaxed. Even more than relaxed, she felt at peace with the world and her place in it. She had made the national team, she had made a new friend, a new sister. She would be fine, even in these frozen wastes.

As they were walking away from the first roller coaster, Li Fei pointed to another. "Ok, let's ride that one next!" Song Feng blinked at the name.

"It's called the Spinning Batman?" she asked. Wasn't Batman an American character of some kind? Did he spin? Why would they call it that if Batman didn’t spin?

Li Fei laughed. "Who cares? Come on!"

That night when she called home, Feng was much more talkative than she had been since moving to Beijing. Her parents could hear her happiness even a thousand kilometers away and they were relieved. When she trained in Guangzhou, they could come and visit her some Sundays. In Beijing, it would be next to impossible to visit her ever. In a little less than a month, on the first of February, it would be New Year's �” another New Year's with her away from home. Even as they missed her all the time, it was worse during New Year's, when the entire family is supposed to be together, supposed to be whole and she was far away. They kept their thoughts to themselves though. They didn't want to distract her from training.

Their daughter sounded more vibrant and determined than ever, and they were not about to hold her back from her dreams, not as long as she still believed that they were achievable.

Song Feng would have been happy with just having Li Fei as a best friend, but she had a curious streak... and someone down the hall had great taste in music. After a few days of asking around, she discovered that the girl who always played music was named Chan Mei-ling. She was tall for a gymnast and pretty with high cheekbones. Instantly, Song Feng was nervous about talking to her. Chan Mei-ling seemed like the absolute epitome of cool. Feng had never been embarrassed about being a village girl before, but in comparison to Mei-Ling, she felt exactly like a village bumpkin.

Still, one day after practice, Song Feng gathered her courage and went and knocked on Chan Mei-ling's door. The music, which she could faintly hear through the door, abruptly stopped. Song Feng's heart sank at the sudden silence.

Then Chan Mei-ling called, "The door's open! Come on in."

Song Feng turned the knob slowly, pushing the door open. Then she realized why Chan Mei-ling hadn't answered the door herself. She was busy painting her nails. Song Feng stood there for a moment and blinked. Yes, Chan Mei-ling was painting her nails. She had never seen a gymnast with such brilliantly colored nails. There wasn't much point since they did so much work with their hands, the likelihood of the paint staying intact for even a day were pretty low. Chan Mei-ling followed her gaze. "Do you want me to do yours too?" she offered with a slight smile.

Song Feng shook her head. "I just... wanted to ask you about your music," she said in a rush, feeling stupid.

"You like it?" Chan Mei-ling asked, blowing on her nails to help them dry.

Song Feng nodded.

"It's called 'Hey Ya!'. It's by Outkast." Chan Mei-ling pronounced the English words carefully, trying to pronounce them correctly. "I can make you a copy if you want."

"Thank you," Song Feng replied, feeling so very awkward in front of a very cool, older girl.

"And sit down," Chan Mei-ling ordered, waving at a chair. "Stay for a bit, we can listen to the rest of the album." She turned the music back on. Song Feng listened to the foreign words, not understanding a single word of it, but wishing desperately that she did. Chan Mei-ling soaked her nails in a dish, making them dry more quickly.

"You're Song Feng, right?" The younger girl nodded. Chan Mei-ling turned to her bottles of nail polish for a moment, then back to Song Feng. "What's your favorite color, Song Feng?"

Song Feng blinked at that. "Are you going to paint my nails?"

Chan Mei-ling shrugged. "If you want. Why not? What's your favorite color?" she repeated.

"Purple," Song Feng said firmly.

Chan Mei-ling laughed a little. "Tired of wearing red and gold for the team? Don't blame you."

She plucked out a bottle carefully, making sure not to smear her polish. "This one has sparkles. I think it would suit you. Here." She gestured for Song Feng to come closer. The younger girl hesitantly put out a hand, and the older girl carefully painted one nail. "What do you think?"

It was a very pretty purple and it had silver glitter in the paint. It reminded Song Feng of her favorite leotard. "I like it."

"Good. Hold still, let me finish."

* * *

Over the weeks and months, Beijing became home. Even as she made other friends, Li Fei and Chan Mei-ling remained the most like the sisters she had never had. Even closer than her teammates from the provincial team. Her parents got used to hearing about Li Fei's tricks and pranks and Chan Mei-ling's beauty experiments and music along with how their own daughter's training was going. Even as Song Feng missed her family desperately for the New Year, she was invited to Li Fei's house to celebrate with her family. Even as the coaches were hard, she was rarely singled out for poor performance. Everything was going well. Even when she woke up in pain, it was tolerable. She knew her place in the universe and she was happy with what it was.

For a few glorious months, everything went great. She learned new and harder stunts and performed them consistently, the difficulty of her routines was just going up and up. Her coaches seemed proud of her. She had two best friends who she trusted to introduce her to new, cool things like Szchewan food, though that was more hot than cool. They had laughed when she took her first bite and then desperately gulped her entire cup of tea. Then they taught her how to avoid the chilies and make the spicy food closer to tolerable for her Cantonese palate. She tried new foods, explored Beijing and experimented with make-up. She believed that nothing could go wrong. She would make the Olympic team with her two best friends, they would win gold for China and everything would be fine. Better than fine. Everything would be perfect.

Then the letter arrived.

Chapter 3: The Letter

The letter arrived one evening when Song Feng returned from dinner. She was tired and was looking forward to sitting around, doing nothing, maybe watching some TV or sleeping. She had screwed up on an easy tumbling pass, almost falling at the end, and stepping out of bounds, and had suffered the wrath of one of the coaches for it. She was in no mood for anything unusual.

It was just sitting there innocuously on her desk. At first, she suspected it was some odd prank of Li Fei's. It wouldn't be the first time she had left an encouraging note or a coded message. The notes were a nice habit they had gotten into to keep their spirits up, while the codes were Li Fei's way of trying to get around the coaches' supervision. Still, she had just seen Li Fei in the dining room. It didn't make sense for her to leave a note... not that that kind of logic necessarily applied to Li Fei either. Feng smiled to herself. Fei would leave a note for no reason. It was like the older girl to be needlessly complicated, but that was part of the fun of being her friend.

Even before Song Feng picked the letter up, she knew something was wrong. For one thing, instead of paper, the letter was written on white silk with gold brocade. She dropped it back on the desk, and it landed with a soft thud, and then she backed away from it. She checked to make sure no one else was around. The room was empty.

She closed the door, locking it behind her. The letter still sat there, unopened on her desk. She didn't like things that upset her world. She liked things the way that they were and there was no way that a letter written on silk wouldn't upset her world. Li Fei would not have bought silk just to scribble something on it... someone thought silk was cheap enough to write on and she didn't know anyone like that.

She would have thought the silk was just a wrapping for something else, but written in a clear bold hand on the outside was ‘Song Feng’. Just her name, no address. She looked at her name, almost unable to recognize it. She traced the strokes of the characters, as if she were rewriting them with her finger. It was written in a thick red ink. She knew that it could not be blood�”blood dried to brown�”but somehow the look of the red on the white silk made it look like the silk had been cut and was bleeding.

It was stupid to be afraid of a letter and she didn't even know what was written inside. Still, she knew it couldn't be good. There was just no way it could be good. She picked it up again. She was acting like an idiot. It's not like there aren't fake silks. Li Fei must have just found some cheap fake silk and decided it would be good for a laugh. That has to be it. She ignored the fact that Li Fei's writing was spindly and that she would not have had access to a brush.

She turned it over. The envelope had been closed with a bright red fancy knotted closure, like the frogs on a cheong-sam. She stroked it. It felt like it was made out of silk too. Song Feng bit her lip and carefully undid the frog. There was another piece of white silk inside, along with a jade comb. Her mouth fell open. Things were just getting more and more ridiculous. Silk and jade? It has to be a trick. It’s just too stupid to be real. She left the comb in the envelope and removed the other piece of silk.

Suddenly someone knocked loudly on the door. "Yeah?" Song Feng shouted. "Who is it?"

"It's Li Fei! Open the door."

Song Feng hastily tucked the envelope and its contents under her pillow and then unlocked the door.

"It's not like you to lock the door," Li Fei commented as she entered the room

Song Feng tried to be casual, but she couldn't help wondering if Li Fei suspected something. She shrugged. "What are you planning on doing for the rest of the night?" she asked, sitting back down on her bed. She sat stiffly, her back ramrod straight.

Li Fei sighed and stretched. "Today was pretty rough. I might just sleep it off."

"Did you do enough cool down exercises?" Song Feng tried to keep the conversation deliberately banal.

"Yeah. Just one of those days, you know?" Fei flopped on to her own bed.

Song Feng really didn't want to leave the envelope sitting under her pillow, but she was sitting in front of Li Fei as awkwardly as she had when she first came to Beijing. She put her hands behind her head and lay back. “Yeah,” she echoed, awkwardly.

"You look tense." Song Feng could almost feel her muscles tighten at that comment, then forced them to relax.

"Just one of those days," she mumbled, echoing Fei's statement earlier. She had to do something before Li Fei just flat out asked her what was wrong. "Mindless television time?" she suggested, sitting up again.

Li Fei sighed, stretching her arms above her head. "Yeah. It's definitely mindless television time."

Song Feng got up and switched on the TV, feeling glad that Li Fei hadn't wanted to talk any more about it.

After a half-hour of some period martial arts drama, Song Feng felt slightly more relaxed. They had ended up both sitting on Li Fei's bed because it had the better angle for the TV. She leaned against the older girl's shoulder. Li Fei patted her back. "There's always gonna be days like this. You just need to know how to relax afterwards and let it go."

Song Feng nodded, watching the young man in the show declare that he would avenge his beloved and now deceased master.

"They always say that," Li Fei complained good-naturedly. It was the nature of these kinds of shows.

"Next comes the inevitable training scene," Song Feng added. "Intense training. With new techniques." Both girls laughed about that. The actors in the movies had no idea how bad actual intense training could be. Still, it was funny to watch intense training scenes in movies, with the actors trying to look like they were suffering and sweating.

Someone else knocked at the door.

"Come in," Li Fei called.

Chan Mei-Ling pushed the door open. "Hey."

"Hi," Feng said. "What's up?"

"I have a new eye shadow!" Chan Mei-Ling exclaimed happily, thrusting a bag forwards.

"And you need people to experiment on," Li Fei added, before Mei-Ling could finish.

"Yes, I do," Mei-Ling responded, sticking her tongue out at the other girl.

"Sure," Feng volunteered without even asking if Mei-Ling had brought a purple shade. She closed her eyes as Mei-Ling started fiddling with the powders and brushes. It was necessary for members of the national team to know how at least the basics of makeup, since part of competitions was looking ‘made-up’.

Feng actually disliked the stuff, particularly in the amount that they were supposed to wear for competition. It made her feel and look like she was a doll, but she supposed that that was the idea. Once, when she was very young and not used to wearing makeup at all, she had asked why they had to wear so much makeup, particularly the glittery variety. The coach had snapped that it was to make them look prettier for the judges and that the glitter was to catch the strong lights of the arena. These days, makeup was something that she put up with but did not enjoy, even sometimes when Chan Mei-Ling was performing an experiment.

She sighed and let Chan Mei-Ling put eye shadow on her, trying to forget about the mysterious letter. The unread silk lay under her pillow and she hoped that it wasn’t sticking out. Chan Mei-Ling and Li Fei both worried about her, but they kept their suspicions to themselves. They exchanged glances while Feng had her eyes closed, then mutually and silently decided that it didn't need to be brought up.

When Feng went to take a shower, she tucked the letter among her things. She could never be assured of her privacy any other way. Besides, since the showers were shared it was split with an area to change and the shower itself, she could keep the letter dry.

In the shower stall, she hung her towel up on the hook before daring to open the letter. The piece of jade was white, translucent and immaculately carved with flowers. They might have been orchids, she couldn't really tell. It was a comb, the kind that old court ladies tucked into their fancy hairstyles. She put it back inside the envelope.

Slowly she unfolded the letter. It was written in a black ink in the same bold hand as the outside. She squinted at the characters but there was no mistaking it. It was written in traditional script. She glared at it with displeasure. Literacy for modern Chinese was, as far as she was concerned, a gift of Chairman Mao's decision to create the simplified script. She had seen traditional script �” in movies, on temples �” but she couldn't read it. With enough time and a dictionary, she might have been able to, but at first glance, the letter was as comprehensible as Greek or Russian. She sighed and put the letter back, before throwing her clothes off in a pile over it. Her clothes would keep it from getting wet.

She stepped into the shower area and pulled the door closed, turning the water on hot. The heat of the shower eased her aching muscles and her mind. She scrubbed her face free on the makeup that Chan Mei-Ling had put on her. As she patted her face dry, she finally started feeling like herself again. She got redressed and snuck the letter back under her pillow. Then she fell asleep, utterly exhausted and uncaring.

It was a morning like most of her others: putting on a leotard, throwing athletic gear on top, getting on the bus at six-thirty a.m., after breakfast at five. She wished that she could just fall into the routine, but she couldn't. Coach Li yelled at her for her poor dance work, saying she ruined the morning lesson for everyone. She wanted to scream, but she took the verbal abuse without complaint and without a trace of emotion on her face. She silently resolved to do better.

***

Feng was depressed when she got back to her room. She glared at the letter. She didn't even have a dictionary to translate from traditional to simplified script. She had never needed one!

"I can't read a single word that you say!" she snapped at it, tapping the silk impatiently with her finger. Much to her surprise, the ink slowly started to wriggle and shift. When it was finished, she was able to read it all. Somehow the words had changed from traditional to simplified characters. How is that even... possible?

She shook her head and started reading.

It said that the Headmaster of the Dragon Pearl, Zhu-ge Liang wanted to come and speak with her. If she wore the comb then he would be able to find her. Song Feng stared at the letter. The Dragon Pearl? The context made it sound like a school, but it was like no school she had ever heard of. Most modern schools had very straight-forward names like ‘Beijing University’. A name like ‘Dragon Pearl’ sounded like it came out of some really bad, really cheesy martial arts movie. And who would dare name this child Zhu-ge Liang? It had to be a joke. It was too stupid not to be. The Zhu-ge last name was so rare and to actually give their child the name ‘Liang’. Zhu-ge Liang was the great strategist in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Sleeping Dragon himself. She had never actually heard of any actual person with the surname Zhu-ge, even though she knew that it did exist.

The comb, though... she had a jade bangle, she could test it. She had it in a little jewelry chest. She pulled out the bottom drawer and removed the bangle. It was a simple circlet of green jade, but the color was quite good and it fit �” an important feature for a piece of solid carved stone. Song Feng knew that if you tapped two pieces of real jade together, it would make a musical sound. She would have tried scratching the comb against glass to see if the comb left a mark, but she was afraid of scratching one of the windows and getting in trouble. She took a deep breath and then slowly breathed out. She tapped the pieces against one another. She knew the note was supposed to be musical, that it was supposed to be beautiful, but it was the worst thing she had ever heard and it lingered in the air like it was taunting her.

She shivered. The jade was real. She continued reading the letter. Miss Song, you have a gift that you must learn to control.

She paused. Of course, I have a gift, I'm a gymnast on the national team. She didn't understand the need to control part though. It's not like... she struggled to think of a circumstance in which not getting training for gymnastics would harm her. I guess if I just climbed all over things then I could get in trouble and fall. But that doesn't really have anything to do with gymnastics or my natural ability with that either. She giggled suddenly. What if I got stuck in a bridge and couldn’t get out of it? The image was funny, her back bent all the way backwards, her arms above her head, hands touching the floor and somehow not being able to go back up or continue backwards into a handstand. Still, that can’t be what they actually mean.

She frowned and continued reading. You have magical powers. It is likely that they have already manifested themselves. Perhaps you have an accelerated healing ability?

Feng almost dropped the letter at that. She had healed her ankle in two weeks when the doctor claimed it would take six. She hadn't thought anything of it. The doctor had been baffled but then left it alone. Her blisters always healed faster than anyone else's. She never told anyone... but she had never thought anything was wrong either.

The letter continued. It is unwise for you to continue to practice magic without any guidance or instruction. The Headmaster of the Southern School, Zhu-ge Liang, will come at the Hour of the Dog when you put the comb in your hair. There is much to discuss because the magical world has remained hidden for centuries and must remain so.

The letter finished with an elaborate seal that she didn't recognize and the stamp of what had to be the headmaster's chop, his personal seal that was as good as his signature. She examined the seal more closely. It looked like some kind of Five Element thing and was multi-colored. She pursed her lips trying to remember the pattern. The earth is in the center and China is in the center of the earth. North... is water, the tortoise. South is fire, the phoenix. East is wood, the blue dragon and west is metal, the tiger. If she looked closely enough, it did look like the animals were somehow stylized into the seal.

She frowned. Given what the other animals are... what could be in the center? The yellow dragon was the traditional symbol of the emperor, of the earth, of China... but it looked like... a dragon and a... a something else. She squinted at the symbol. Maybe two somethings else and not just one. It was immensely elaborate and there was no way she could see all the details of it. She made a face. What else could represent the center? She vaguely remembered some argument that put man in the center, because man was a ‘naked’ animal, while the other animals covered feathers, fur, scales and shells. It doesn’t... look like a man though. She brought the silk right up to her nose. Not just a man anyway.

Well... tapping the thing worked once... She tapped at the seal with a finger. Nothing happened. Maybe I have to talk to it? “Could you please get a little larger? I’d like to take a closer look.” Still, nothing happened. She made a face. So much for that. Still... the characters had shifted from traditional to simplified.

Feng put the letter away. She briefly considered pulling out one of the threads and burning it to test whether the silk was real, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. The smell, particularly of burning fake silk, might arouse suspicion anyway.

She didn't want to think about it, she didn't want anything to do with it. She didn't even know what the Hour of the Dog was. It didn't matter. It was someone's stupid prank. Someone with too much time and money on their hands.

Song Feng sighed and settled into bed. She had to be up early the next morning for practice.

Chapter 4: The Honorable Headmaster of the Southern School

The next weekend found Song Feng alone in her room again, pacing the floor, glancing up at the clock every few moments.

It was utterly stupid. That’s what Feng kept telling herself anyway. Utterly and completely stupid. Still, she hadn’t been able to help herself. The letter said at the hour of the Dog. That was seven p.m., which was in five minutes. She had looked it up in a few different places just to be sure. The old Chinese system divided the day into twelve, so each old style ‘hour’ was two modern hours. The hour of the Dog was seven p.m., which was in now in four minutes. She glared at the jade comb and then at the silk.

The jade had been real and so was the silk. She had ended up testing the silk after all and the thread burned white �“ real silk. Real jade and real silk meant that it wasn’t a trick. It probably wasn’t a trick anyway.

She had been over it a thousand times already. Either it was a trick or it was real. It was too stupid to be a trick and too unbelievable to be real. No one would play a trick with real silk and real jade, no one she knew anyway, and there was no reason someone she didn’t know would bother playing a trick on her. So, theoretically at least, the letter should be real. Except she had no idea what kind of school would send a letter on silk with a jade comb attached, with no address, no return address or postage! It didn’t make any sense.

What’s the worst that could happen, she tried to reason with herself, nothing. If she had to, she could even sell the comb. She might as well just do what the letter asked. Nothing would happen, she could get rid of the comb, and everything would go back to normal.

Her mind made up, she pulled her hair into a simple bun. With the force of years of practice, it was quite smooth and only took a few moments to put up. She glanced in a mirror out of habit, but it was fine. She held the comb in her right hand, then stubbornly stuck it in the bun to keep it together.

At first, nothing happened. She almost giggled out of the sheer stupidity of it. It was just a prank, nothing was happening. Her door was locked and she had checked the room twice. No one was there besides her. No one could get in the room and see her, looking like an idiot with her jeans and T-shirt and a jade comb stuck in her hair. She glanced over at the clock and watched the second hand tick on to the hour. It was seven p.m. exactly.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack.

A man suddenly appeared in her room. Song Feng blinked rapidly trying to take him in. He was old, with long white hair and a beard. He looked almost like he had stepped out of a picture of one of the Daoist Immortals, even his clothing style was old. She didn’t know how else to really describe it besides ‘old’, though in China that is an almost useless description, since for almost every time period, there is still something older. It was hanfu, she knew that much. It was traditional Han style clothing since before the Manchu arrived, other than that, she had no idea.

She noted that he carried a staff that was made of a dark wood. The staff was intricately carved and at the very top was a piece of jade. Somehow, the wood had been carved to just barely hold the jade in place, making it look like a natural extension of the wood, like some odd kind of tree.

He stared at her for a long moment before speaking. “Young Mistress Song, I presume?” he asked solemnly. His voice was grave.

She paused at that. Why on earth is he talking like that? She wasn’t sure she had ever heard that form of address outside of really historically accurate television series and novels. “Yes?” she managed to say, still trying to take in the entire ridiculous outfit and the staff.

“You read the letter.” In other circumstances, she would have described his voice as pleasant sounding, with an enjoyable resonance, but she had too many worries about the entire situation to think about it very much.

The girl nodded, picking up the letter and handing it to him.

He looked at the silk, frowning at the simplified script. She wondered what he was thinking. After just a moment, he handed the letter back to her politely. “Odd script...” he murmured to himself. Then he seemed to gather his thoughts. “As I wrote in the letter, my name is Zhu-ge Liang, the Headmaster of the Southern School of Magic, the Dragon Pearl.” He took a deep breath as if steeling himself. “Young Mistress Song, you are a witch.”

She wanted to burst out laughing, but it was wildly inappropriate, and, more importantly, Zhu-ge Liang’s tone was so serious that she couldn’t laugh at him. She managed to stifle a snicker. A witch?

“I realize that this will come as some surprise to you but it is the truth,” Zhu-ge Liang continued, completely misinterpreting her reaction. “There is a hidden, magical world. Witches and wizards live alongside Muggles, that is, non-magical people, but do not normally interact with them.” He spoke carefully, like he had memorized a script, or like he was trying very hard not to say something.

“So, why me?” Song Feng asked. “I’m a not-magical person too.”

“Young Mistress Song, I have just told you. You are a witch. You are magical and you have performed magic before. You have healed yourself, correct?”

She looked down towards her feet for a moment, digesting that information and ignoring his question. That would explain a lot about my ankle and my blisters... Then she lifted her head and fixed him with a glare. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe magic exists.” She was about to just finish there but then realized something was amiss. “How did you even get in here?”

“There is…,” he paused, as if wondering how to phrase it properly. “There is a tracking spell on this comb. It allowed me to find you and Apparate to where you are. As for magic...” he stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Magic exists. It runs in your body like your blood. It is a natural force of the universe. There is no why, only its existence.”

She looked at him skeptically. “Like chi,” she said, referring to the Daoist concept of energy.

“It is chi,” he replied. She stared at him blankly. He sighed. “I do not want to go in-depth with magical theory right now but magic flows in the body and is a system of energy. Essentially, it is chi. Magic is controlled through using specific movements with specific words to gain specific results.”

She swallowed. The explanation sounded all too reasonable and all too rational. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“I very rarely joke and never about matters of great importance such as this.”

Song Feng waved that aside. She didn’t know him well enough to make a judgement call on his previous statement, for all she knew he was making fun of her already. “Okay, even if magic does exist, and I’m not saying it does, what does that have to do with me? Even if I am a witch, there have to be other people who can do magic, right? Who cares if I know how to use spells? It’s not like I’m hurting anyone, just healing myself once in awhile. It’s not like I’m using my magic to do anything bad.”

Zhu-ge Liang looked at her and she felt like she was fixed to the spot. “Not everyone can do magic. To be able to do so is a gift, particularly, if your parents do not have it. You have it. And since you have it, you need to go to school to learn how to use it. If you don’t know how to control it, you will abuse it.”

“No.” The word slipped from her lips before she had a chance to think about what the man had said much less figure out what all that nonsense about gifts and her parents meant, much less abusing magic.

Now it was the headmaster’s turn to look confused. “No?” he repeated as if he hadn’t heard her.

“I....” She wasn’t sure how to put it. “I’d have to leave to learn magic, right? I’d have to go to your school, wherever that is, and leave Beijing?” Leave the team, she added, silently. Leave behind everything that ever mattered to me.

“You do not learn magic, you learn to control it. Otherwise, it controls you.”

She lifted her chin stubbornly. The Headmaster was splitting hairs, and she refused to have it. “I would still have to leave Beijing, right?”

He sighed. “Yes. You would have to attend classes at the Southern School in Guilin.”

“Then, no,” she responded firmly. “I’m not leaving.”

He opened his mouth like he was going to scold her or maybe even scream at her. She gritted her teeth, smoothing her expression to neutrality like she was facing one of her coaches in a rage. He shut his mouth and when he reopened it, his voice was calm. “Why?”

She waved her hand around to indicate her surroundings. “I have everything that I could want right here.” Her voice was quiet but determined and her gaze was steely. She meant every word of it. She didn’t need anything that wasn’t here.

He looked around and she wondered what he saw. A room with four walls, a ceiling and a door, with four beds and four desks and two big closets. The TV positioned above a dresser, good luck symbols plastered on the walls, pictures of home and stuffed animals. He couldn’t see the years of hard work that went in to getting to this place, to having this place. She picked up her white tiger cub and hugged it absently, staring at him defiantly.

He looked at her pictures of home closely. She wondered what he thought of her village in Guangdong. “You are not from near here. Your home is in the South, is it not?”

“Yep. I’m from Hoipeng,” she said it in the village dialect, half-wondering if he would know it, half-wanting to make his life as difficult as possible.

When he waited for an explanation, she added, “Taishan, in the delta of the Pearl River.”

“Then you are very far from home, indeed.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the obvious statement or tell him exactly how many kilometers lie between Beijing and Taishan. “I’m on the national team.”

The two stared at each other in utter incomprehension, both feeling that their statement explained everything that needed to be said about their position and the situation.

Finally, the headmaster broke the silence. “What is the national team?”

He doesn’t seem to be the type that is used to asking questions. Well, he is a Headmaster, Feng thought. “Gymnastics,” she responded, shortly.

When he continued to look politely confused, she lost her temper. “I don’t need your training. I train almost every day, for hours on end! And I have since I was three years old. I’ve worked so hard to get here and I’m not leaving. I could be on the Olympic team! I could win a gold medal for China at home, in Beijing! I don’t want your magic, just leave me alone!”

She thrust her hands out instinctively, emphasizing his exit from her room, throwing all of her rage behind the gesture.

He leaned on his staff a little, face growing pale, like he was dizzy or like someone or something had struck him.

“That was a powerful spell for someone completely untaught,” he murmured, after a long moment while the color slowly returned to his face. “What would have happened if you had tried to do that to one of your friends? If you had tried to magically throw one of them from the room, they might have ended up at the bottom of the ocean or even on the Moon.”

Song Feng wasn’t even sure what she did. He said the word ‘spell’ but she hadn’t even done anything. She certainly hadn’t hit him or tried to throw him from the room. “I don’t want to hear anymore about magic. Just leave.”

He frowned. “You will have a completely fresh start and you will be able to go home again.”

She glared at him, not even bothering to figure out what he was trying to say. “This is my life. This is my destiny: the national team, the Olympics, representing the nation, winning a gold medal in front of the world. Three golds, actually. One for the bars, one for individual all-around and one for the team.” She counted each gold on her fingers, as if that would make them more real. If she did that, she would be a hero of the nation. All of her struggle would be worth it.

“Your destiny is what you make of it,” he responded sharply. “You can make a new destiny.” She fixed him with the iciest stare she could possibly manage with her nerves feeling ready to snap. She didn’t know what he meant, she didn’t want to know what he meant. He sighed. “I will come back and speak with you again.”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped at him.

He raised his staff like he was going to perform some kind of spell and disappear again, but then paused for a moment. “Do not forget, this conversation and that letter must remain secret, Young Mistress Song.”

“What difference does it make?” she shot back at him.

“Have you ever heard of the magical world before?” Before she had a chance to respond, he answered his own question. “No, of course you have not. The magical world has been kept secret from Muggles, from non-magical people, for centuries.”

Centuries? How was that even possible? There aren’t enough places in the world for people to hide for centuries.

“Young Mistress Song, you are a witch, you are one of our kind and you need to be trained. I will be back, but I will let you think about this for awhile.”

Then he vanished with another crack and she took a deep, shuddering breath.

She pulled the comb from her hair and for a brief moment considered throwing it at the wall. But it was jade and it was beautiful, and she was not in the habit of destroying beautiful things. She glared at it and then threw it in her jewelry chest, slamming the little drawer shut.

* * *

She was still trembling a little when she went to bed. It had been hours since Zhu-ge Liang had left and all her roommates had slowly drifted back to their room.

Magic. An entire new world that was somehow out there. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to care. I have everything I need right here: the national team, the Olympics in five years, a gold medal for my nation... flying on the bars. Three gold medals, she corrected herself. She had told Zhu-ge Liang that she would win three and she would. It’ll take a lot of work on the beam, she conceded, but I can do it.

This is everything I’ve ever hoped for, everything I’ve ever dreamed of. I don’t want to leave. Don’t I? She wanted to chew on something, but if she bit her nails then Chan Mei-ling would notice and be angry, and she couldn’t have a stick of gum or a piece of candy. I’ll be losing everything that I ever fought for, that I ever tried for, my entire life’s work. I can’t leave. I won’t leave. If I don’t have gymnastics then... she didn’t want to finish that thought.

“Birdie?” Li Fei asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just... stressed. I haven’t been doing that well lately.” She had never lied much before, she had never needed to. Now it seemed like she had to lie about everything, about magic, about the stupid letter, about the stupid Headmaster... stupid, stupid, stupid. She pounded her pillow a few times out of pure frustration.

Li Fei walked over and started rubbing the younger girl’s back, trying to soothe her. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got time. You just have to trust in yourself.”

“What would you do?” Song Feng asked, before she could stop herself.

“If what?”

She had said it now, there was no taking it back. “If you could get out. Would you leave?” Feng turned around to look at the older girl’s face.

“We’re free to leave if we want�“” Fei started.

“What else could we do with ourselves?” the younger girl asked bitterly. “We’re barely literate. We’d be years behind our classmates in normal school.”

The older girl shrugged. “We were chosen for this. It’s... an honor that we just have to live up to.” Song Feng just sighed. “What brought this on?”

“I’m just wondering why we do this, I guess,” Feng said after a moment. “Why... why we try so hard and take so much. And in the end, it’s all for what? They choose maybe seven of us to go to the Olympics, to actually compete abroad? What are the rest of us supposed to do? We can’t even do anything else.” She sighed, heavily, clutching her knees to her chest. “I’ll be better after some sleep.”

With that finality, the younger girl settled into her bed, and pulled up the covers, turning her back to her friend. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Fei echoed a moment later.

* * *

The next day was worse. Feng actually fell off the beam at one point during her routine. Even worse, it was during a simple move, just a pirouette. She took her scolding as gracefully as she could manage, which was not well. Normally, she could take anything they gave her. This time, her whole body shook like she was about to cry and her cheeks burned bright red.

She had to excuse herself to get a drink of water and try to clear her head. I represent my people and my nation, she reminded herself. It’s not just about me. It was never just about me.

The rest of the week went by slowly and painfully. It was almost as if she was starting to learn gymnastics all over again. She just kept making stupid mistakes, even on the bars. She could have screamed with frustration, but she couldn’t even do that. Instead, she just worked until her hands blistered again and her coaches pulled her from the bars, her palms bleeding. She glared at her blisters, demanding that they heal, feeling them recede, feeling the skin knit itself back together. It gave her a kind of grim satisfaction to do magic intentionally. Now that she knew what it was, anyway.

When the weekend finally arrived, she didn’t even want to go out or do anything besides lie in bed in her room. It was all she could to keep herself from collapsing into a desperate heap.

She thought about calling home, but she knew that if she heard her parents’ voices, she would cry. The last thing she wanted was for her parents to worry about her. Everyone else had gone out. Li Fei was spending the weekend at home, with her parents. The older girl had invited her, but she had declined. She couldn’t face her own parents, she wasn’t going to be a burden to Li Fei’s.

It was all the fault of that stupid Zhu-ge Liang and his magic school. Until she received the letter, she was doing fine, great even. Now she was doing terribly. She couldn’t concentrate, she couldn’t do anything.

No one was around. She got up and locked the door, to make sure no one could come in either. She pulled the comb out from her jewelry chest. Then she pulled her hair into a barely neat enough bun and shoved the comb into it to keep it together.

At first nothing happened. “Zhu-ge Liang,” she snapped at the air. “Where are you? You said you would be back.”

After a moment and another small crack, the headmaster of the Southern School had reappeared in her room. Before he could say anything, she practically growled at him, “What did you do?”

He blinked, clearly surprised. “I did nothing.”

“You did something to me. I can’t concentrate during training. I’ve been messing up all week. It’s all your fault!” She spat out each word of the last sentence.

“I did not do anything to you,” Zhu-ge Liang said gently.

“I don’t believe you,” Song Feng snapped back at him.

They stared at each other for a moment, Song Feng still glaring daggers at him.

“I know that you do not believe me.” He sighed. “Would it help if I take you home for a short period?”

Feng’s eyes widened. “How are you going to do that? Is it even possible to take a short trip home?”

Zhu-ge Liang smiled, just a little. “I would like to say that with magic, anything is possible, but that is not quite true. It is true that we can go to your home and visit your parents.”

“And I’ll be back before the coaches notice that I’m gone and I get in trouble?”

“Yes.”

Feng tried to think of any other objection, but she couldn’t. “How does it work?”

Zhu-ge Liang extended a hand. “Take my hand.” Slowly, the girl took it. “Close your eyes. Think of your home. Think of where you want us to appear.”

Feng screwed her eyes shut. Home. Where her mother patched their clothes and cooked delicious food, where her father smoked and her brother did his homework. Her room that was somehow not her room. The room that was still hers, even if she was rarely there, with the pictures of her on the walls.

“That’s good,” he said quietly, not to break her concentration. He focused on the place she was creating in her mind and pushed more of his magic through her.

With a crack, they disappeared.

Chapter 5: Going Home

With a crack, they reappeared in her bedroom at home. She stumbled, almost falling on to her bed before catching herself. It was so odd to be back here, in the room that was hers but had never been hers at the same time. The air was warmer here, she could even smell her mother’s cooking... or was that just her imagination? She inhaled and breathed in southern food, warm tropical air, a thousand things that meant home even if she couldn’t identify them. One more breath and she just relaxed even more. She realized vaguely, that one of those thousand things was the relative lack of pollution. She could actually breathe again, at home.

She hadn’t realized how much it would mean to be home. Even when she was in Guangzhou, she was still in Guangdong. It was still tropical, still warm; warm in a way that Beijing wasn’t. Certainly, the weather in Beijing was quite hot in the summer... but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t explain it, it was just true.

She glanced around her room. Not much had changed. Her bed looked exactly like she left it, neatly and crisply made, and her desk and her chair were still in the same spot. There wasn’t even any dust on the furniture. Her new awards had been framed and put up along with a few more photos of her. She touched one of her in the middle of a dismount from the bars, her body in the middle of twisting, spinning through the air. That one is new. It was a good picture; the photographer had really captured her in the middle of flying. She wondered when it had been taken. It had to be recent, but she couldn’t tell when.

“I can’t... I can’t believe it,” she whispered, turning around again. She was home, really, actually home. She brushed the wall, feeling the paint underneath her fingertips. Suddenly something occurred to her. “What am I supposed to tell my parents? Beijing is thousands of kilometers away and it’s not like I can just leave for the weekend. Plus, I didn’t even come in through the front door! We just appeared in my room.”

Zhu-ge Liang gently placed a hand on her shoulder to interrupt her. “You will have to do what the children from Muggle families always must: tell them about magic.”

“And you think I can just waltz into the living room and do that?” Her tone was skeptical but her pupils were wide with genuine fear.

“I will be right there with you,” he said, and for some reason, that actually made her feel a little bit better. Sh wondered, vaguely, if he was casting spells on her.

“You better do a better job explaining to them than you did to me,” she muttered.

“That is why I am going to let you lead this conversation,” he pointed out.

She nodded and took a deep breath before pushing open her bedroom door. She could faintly hear the sound of the TV in the living room. It sounded like a competition show of some kind. Some judge was complaining about... something.

They walked together, slowly through the house. It was all familiar, but not. It was her home, but she couldn’t remember living here. Her feet knew how to go to the living room, but her head couldn’t remember it. The house wasn’t always this big was it? Finally they stopped in front of the door to the living room. Feng took a deep breath before slowly opened the door.

For a moment, she couldn’t even say anything. It was just too weird standing there with her mother sewing, her father smoking and everyone watching the TV. Her younger brother, Chun-yin was lounging across the couch. She blinked. It had been a year since she had seen him, hugged him good bye at the airport. He had gotten taller, bigger. It was almost like looking at a stranger. She cleared her throat, and when she finally spoke, her voice was a lot smaller and a lot younger then she wanted it to be. “Mommy? Daddy?”

Her mother dropped her sewing things and raced across the room to hold her. “Feng? How is this possible?”

A moment later, her father was beside her too, the cigarette he dropped burning a hole in the carpet. “Feng-feng, how did you get in? Why didn’t you tell us you had been allowed leave to come home? Did you have to take the bus all the way from Guangzhou? We could have picked you up. We have a car now, remember?”

How was she supposed to even begin to begin explaining? She had no idea where to start.

Her brother stood awkwardly in front of the couch, hands in his pockets, watching his parents with the sister that he only knew from her weekly phone calls and pictures. “Who’s he?” Chun-yin asked, suddenly.

Abruptly, her parents straightened and looked at the stranger in their midst. “Are you... one of Feng’s coaches?” her father asked, skeptically. Feng glanced back to Zhu-ge Liang. He was still wearing ridiculously old-style clothes. It was a different, but no less elaborate hanfu than the last time he had showed up. No wonder her father had been confused. Coaches always wore athletic gear: warm up pants, T-shirts, zip up jackets. No coach in their right mind would wear hanfu... ever. She corrected herself. Maybe, if a coach led them to multiple gold medal wins at the Olympics and he was to meet the Premiere, then maybe he would wear hanfu, but it still wasn’t likely. The politicians and their coaches still preferred to dress in crisp, dark Western style suit.

“I am not. Young Mistress Song, would you care to explain?”

Her parents looked even more confused after his old fashioned form of address. “Feng?” Song Bing, her father, asked faintly.

She sighed. “I don’t... actually have leave. The reason I could come anyway, and not get in through the front door... is through magic.”

“Magic?” her parents echoed in disbelief. Then they looked at each other briefly.

“She did... bounce,” her mother said softly, thinking of when her daughter had fallen but bounced instead of breaking her head. Her father just shook his head.

“Why should we believe that there is any such thing as magic?” her father demanded.

“You have seen it,” Zhu-ge Liang said in a tone that brooked no argument. “How else could we have come here without your seeing?” He pulled out a small wooden stick from a pocket inside his sleeve. He whispered a word, and a bouquet of flowers burst out. He handed them to Song Lin, Feng’s mother. She took them, hands trembling.

“Young Mistress Song also has the ability to do magic,” Zhu-ge Liang added, deciding to avoid the word ‘gift’. “She needs to go to school and learn to control her ability or it will end up controlling her.”

“She is already being trained for gymnastics. She is on the national team. She could go to the Olympics and represent our entire country,” her father protested.

“I understand your concern for your daughter’s future, Master Song, but you have nothing to be concerned about. The Southern School would provide your daughter with a full education and a complete scholarship to pay for everything, including travel expenses to and from your home during the vacation periods.” The headmaster’s voice was eminently reasonable and Song Feng hated it.

“Feng... would be able to come home?” her mother asked. “She would have periods of vacation where she could come home and stay with us?” Feng hated the way her mother asked that question. She knew that it was hard on her mother, her being away all the time, but she was practically begging the man, a stranger, for reassurance.

“Yes, we have three vacation periods. School begins a week after the Mid-Autumn festival, then runs until a week before the Winter Solstice. From the Winter Solstice to New Year’s, the students return home and are with their families. A week after New Year’s, the students return to school. Then for Qing Ming, the students are allowed to go home for a week. The third vacation period is from the Spirit Festival to Mid-Autumn.”

Everyone was silent after that long list. Feng was baffled. I guess magic people still organize their calendar on the moon and the old holidays. She would have to mark all the days on the current calendar so that she could get it straight.

“Yes,” her mother said suddenly. “Feng will go to your school.”

“What?” Song Feng demanded. “You don’t even know where the school is! You don’t even know anything about him!” Of course, she didn’t either, but she hadn’t agreed to go to the school yet either!

Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I know that I’m tired of you not being here for New Year’s, for the Mid-Autumn festival. I’m tired of our family not being whole. It’s been a year since we saw you last, Feng!”

“Mommy....” She couldn’t think of anything to say to her mother. She had never seen her mother cry, never. Not even when she left for Beijing. Her mother had just hugged her good-bye and told her to stay warm up in the northern capital. She turned to her father. “Daddy?”

Her father sighed. “You’ve put in a lot of time and effort into gymnastics and making the national team. If you want to stick with gymnastics, then I am not going to try and stop you. In the end, it is still your life.” He took a deep breath, ignoring his wife’s teary and accusing gaze. “But what are you going to do when you are too old to compete anymore?” He didn’t have to add that gymnasts were considered too old to compete by the time they were in their twenties. Most gymnasts were retired before they were twenty-two or twenty-three.

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.” The Party takes care of those who win, but what happens if I don’t win? Even if I make the team... if I don’t win...

“Allow me to fill in some of the details then,” Zhu-ge Liang said. “May I?” He gestured to the couch.

“Ah, of course. Please forgive our poor manners,” her father replied hastily. He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off, silencing the program which had still been playing in the background.

They all moved to the couch and the chairs. Feng sat next to her brother. The siblings eyed each other for a moment, getting used to one another’s presence again. He was six years old now. She had called home to wish him happy birthday and he had described all the delicious food their mother had made for him. She had cried afterwards, missing home so badly. She didn’t even know what to talk to him about. She had been even younger than him when she had left home.

“Very well then,” Zhu-ge Liang said after everyone had settled back into a seat. “My name is Zhu-ge Liang. I am the Headmaster of the Southern School, also known as the Dragon Pearl. It is the oldest and most prestigious school of magic in the Middle Kingdom.”

Silence greeted those assertions, so Zhu-ge Liang continued. “The Southern School is located in Guilin. The curriculum is designed to take eight years, though there are some exceptions. It is a boarding school, so students live at school when class is in session. As I mentioned before, in the case of Young Mistress Song, all expenses will be paid for by the school. Her books, her tuition, everything will be paid for. All we need is your permission.”

“And after your students graduate?” Song Bing, Feng’s father, asked.

“They find jobs in... various fields. In our government, in the bank, all kinds of positions,” Zhu-ge Liang responded carefully.

“In the magical world,” Song Feng pointed out. “I still won’t have any skills to get a normal job.”

“You will still have a job,” her mother pointed out. “And you would be able to come home during the vacations. Even when you work, you will be able to take vacation and come home to see us. Isn’t that right?” she asked Zhu-ge Liang.

“Yes, essentially all forms of employment offer some vacation time,” Zhu-ge Liang responded. “Particularly around the holidays.”

Feng turned away from her mother. “Take me back. I don’t need anyone to realize that I’m gone.”

“Alright.” The wizard took out a piece of silk from his robes. “You can contact me using this. Just write my name on it and we can arrange a meeting.” Her father took the piece of silk gingerly.

The wizard extended his hand to her again. He turned to her parents. “The existence of the magical world is a closely guarded secret. Telling anyone about the magical world will jeopardize your daughter’s admission to the Southern School, so please do not tell anyone. We have the ability to erase your memories, and I would not like to have to do that.”

Feng shivered. He never mentioned that before. She took the wizard’s hand and they disappeared with a crack.

Chapter 6: The Decision

They reappeared in Song Feng’s empty room. The young gymnast flopped on to her bed, face buried into her pillow.

Wisely, Zhu-ge Liang took his cue and vanished, leaving the girl to her thoughts.

What am I supposed to do? she thought bitterly. She thought of her mother’s tears and she clutched her pillow a little tighter. I could make Mom so happy. I’d be home for New Year’s.

She thought the words but they didn’t even really compute. She couldn’t remember a New Year’s where she had been home with her family. When she was in Guangzhou, they weren’t usually granted a long enough leave to go home. Her family would come and visit her instead. Last New Year’s, at Li Fei’s, she got a glimpse of what she had been missing. It hurts. Li Fei’s entire family was there, and all the food was home cooked and delicious. Northern style food was fine, and Li Fei’s family was very nice, but it just wasn’t her mother’s delicious Southern style cooking... it wasn't her food and it wasn’t her family.

She flipped over on to her back, seizing her stuffed tiger cub and clutching it to her chest. What am I supposed to tell Li Fei and Chan Mei-ling? And our coaches? I don’t... I’m not a quitter. But she was, wasn’t she? If she left the team... then she was quitting, she was admitting that the system had beaten her. The system took care of those who succeeded. If she made the team, if she won a medal, then yes, she would be set for life. And if I don’t make the team... or if I make the team and don’t win a medal... the system ate and spat out the lives that it had used and abused. She knew that. The sports system in the People’s Republic is not kind, it is efficient. She had always known that. But she had also always been confident that she could surpass everyone else; that she could be that one in ten thousand to make the national team, that she could be the one to win a gold medal.

She had no useful skills to do... well, anything. She couldn’t go back to school - normal school at any rate. She would be years behind. The only math she knew was basic: adding, but mostly subtracting, so that she could calculate her scores. She had read the three of the Four Great Classics: Journey to the West, All Men are Brothers, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but she only paid attention to the fighting parts. Her little brother would have to tutor her. She made a face at the thought. She was the older sibling. She was supposed to help take care of him.

She couldn’t even get married in the future. She didn’t know how to cook or clean or take care of a baby. If she stayed in the sports system, she would never learn either. Even if she retired at a relatively young age like eighteen, it would be hard to learn how, after a lifetime of not. There were different kinds of cleaning, weren’t there?

She was utterly useless for anything but gymnastics... and apparently magic. This is my one shot to do something different with my life, she realized. Otherwise, my only choice is to stay in gymnastics and try to make the Olympic team... and win a gold medal. Otherwise, I’ll just be a burden to my parents.

Then something else dawned on her. This will be the third time that I’ll be picking up and leaving. The third. She sat up and looked around. How long did she have to decide, how long before she never saw this room again too? How long before this bed belonged to some other girl?

She forced herself to stand. She had better take a shower before everyone else got back for the night. Even though it was summer, she felt cold. A hot shower would make her feel better, feel more human.

* * *

Another Monday, another day of the same. Waking up at an ungodly hour, eating breakfast, getting on the bus to go to the training center, stretching, getting lessons, practicing routines - the same thing, the same schedule that she had done for years. It was the only kind of life that she had ever known.

Somehow, it was as if knowing she wasn’t going to stay much longer made her relax into her normal, good form. Her coaches even praised her once or twice. She could have laughed until she cried at the bitter irony of it all. It wasn’t fair.

Now that she was leaving, she stuck every landing, did every leap, never even wobbled on the balance beam. Now that it no longer mattered.

Another week of handstands, pirouettes, leaps and vaults. Will I ever vault again? she wondered as her hands hit the table and she went sailing over it. Will I ever fly again? she asked as she let go of the top bar, spinning and twisting in the air. Probably not, she realized again and again. I’ll never fly again. I’ll never, ever fly again. Her feet hit the ground, her knees together, her chest up, her hands above her head, a perfect smile pasted on to her face. Salute the judges. The smile faded as she walked away from the bars. Never, ever, again. She brushed the chalk from her hands. Never again.

Song Feng had never been so sad to see the end of a week of training. It was over - forever.

She called home that night. “Mommy, Daddy... I’ve decided to go.” She could only handle a few minutes of their responses, which she barely heard. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk for long. Bye.” She hung up, barely having heard their assents to her decision. She didn’t want to hear the happiness in their voices that she was coming home.

She took out the piece of silk that Zhu-ge Liang had given her. She wondered briefly if it mattered that she only had a ballpoint pen, but then wrote on it anyway. If it didn’t work, then it didn’t. It would be his fault then. You win. In a few days, I’ll put the comb back in my hair. I’ll give more details when I can. Come when I call. She scrawled the words in a hurry, and in the simplified script, wondering if that would be a problem. She couldn’t write in the traditional style, and she wasn’t about to look up it up in a dictionary. If the words on her letter could change from traditional to simplified, then it should be able to translate back.

The ink faded into the silk and then reformed the word, “Affirmative." She wondered if it was Zhu-ge Liang who wrote the words or if he had left his responding piece of silk with someone else. It didn’t matter.

The next day, Saturday, she went out with Li Fei and Chan Mei-ling. She told them that she wanted to play tourist, and they had obliged her. They had gone to Tiananmen Square, to the Winter Palace, to the Temple of Heaven, to many of the famous sites in Beijing. She wondered if she should have tried to get into line to see the Chairman, if he would have approved of her choice, if this is what he had intended with the sports system. The line was too long, and she was afraid that seeing him would make her change her mind.

She had whispered goodbye to all of the places, even though she had barely known them. She took tons of pictures, knowing they would be the last ones she would have of Beijing, of Mei-Ling and Fei. Click. The three of them in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Click. The three of them next to the Whispering Wall. Click. The three of them in front of the Empress Dowager’s marble boat. She didn’t want to forget. She wished she could have brought her camera to the training center, but that would not be considered normal. Besides, she had no place to put it when she was actually training. She would have to make do with photos of tourist Beijing, the Beijing she really didn’t get a chance to know.

Finally, they had ended up at a relatively nice, but inexpensive restaurant that they often visited. They ordered a fair number of dishes for only three girls. Song Feng insisted on ordering more than normal. She didn’t know when she would be back, if she would ever be back and she would miss this place too.

“We’re happy that you seem to be better, but�”” Chan Mei-ling looked over at Li Fei.

“�”you’re still acting strangely,” Li Fei finished. Song Feng wondered if it was her constant picture taking, her request to play tourist or something else entirely that had given her away.

“I’ve decided to leave the team,” she said quietly. Feng wasn’t sure what to expect �” accusations, tears... she hadn’t expected deafening silence.

Her friends stared at her like she had gone mad. She wondered if maybe she had and Zhu-ge Liang and the Southern School was just part of some hallucination. It would explain a lot.

“You’re leaving?” Chan Mei-ling blurted out finally.

She didn’t want to think of it like that. “I’m... going home,” she whispered.

“Why?” Li Fei demanded.

Feng blinked. She couldn’t really tell them she was going to a school for magic. For one thing, they would never believe her. Besides, Zhu-ge Liang had told her it was a secret. She didn’t want to think of what magical people could do to her if she broke their laws. She had to think of something else to tell them. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? They would never just accept her resigning from the team without some kind of explanation.

“You were doing better this week. The coaches even praised you. Why are you going to leave?” Chan Mei-ling added.

Their first plate arrived, and she stared at the soup, with the crispy rice on the side. The waiter dropped the rice pieces into the soup, and they crackled. The waiter served the soup, bowed slightly and departed.

She considered lying and saying that her mother was sick, or something like that, but it seemed like inviting bad luck to say something like. “I... I can’t tell you,” Song Feng finally stammered out. At least that was the truth.

“You didn’t get transferred to the diving team, did you?” Li Fei asked, suspiciously.

Feng blinked. Why on earth would Li Fei think such a thing? “No. No, I didn’t.”

Li Fei shrugged. “It could happen. It has happened. You’re good at bars, it probably would transfer well to diving. At least the platform kind, from ten meters up.” Song Feng wondered if Li Fei knew someone who had been transferred to the diving team. She certainly didn’t and it didn’t sound like the kind of thing that happened all the time.

Mei-ling pressed on. “So why?”

Feng watched the steam rising from her bowl of soup. “Maybe, I’m just tired and I just need to go home.”

“Maybe?” Mei-ling demanded, her voice rising. Feng winced. She had never heard Mei-ling raise her voice before. “You’re on the national team. It’s only five years until the Olympics, here in Beijing! Here in China! What happened to your spirit, to your determination? What happened to winning gold medals for our nation?”

Feng sighed. She didn’t want to say she had lost it. She hadn’t lost it. She... couldn’t have lost it. She refused to believe that. But she couldn’t watch her mother cry like that... and she couldn’t devote herself entirely to gymnastics anymore, not now, knowing that she had a choice, knowing she had a legitimate way out.

“My mom cried... the last time I talked to her over the phone,” she added hastily. “Just because she missed me so much. I just... I can’t take five more years of this. Not seeing my parents, not seeing my brother grow up, not being home for holidays.” It was all only half-true, but at least it wasn’t half a lie.

Her friends shook their heads. The nation is more important than the individual. Feng could see them thinking it. “Soup’s getting cold,” Li Fei commented. Silently, they all began eating their soup.

It was a silent meal and a silent trip back. She watched the city go by, feeling distinctly disconnected from everyone and everything around her.

When they had gotten back inside their building, Mei-Ling finally broke the silence. “When do you leave?”

Feng paused, thinking as Li Fei opened the door to their room. She hadn’t even told the coaches yet. She really had planned the entire thing poorly. Then again, she had never planned to leave the team before. “I don’t know yet. You’re the first to know. After my parents, I mean. I haven’t told any of the coaches or anything.” Fei looked vaguely amused, probably at her lack of forethought, but Mei-ling was just completely blank.

“I wouldn’t want to tell them either. But tell them tomorrow, before Monday. Then you can sleep in and pack.” Li Fei patted Feng on the back. “Good luck, Birdie.” Mei-ling left, walking down the hall towards her room without saying a word.

Feng sighed, entering their room and flopping onto her bed. It was an action she was getting all too used to.

“You have time to change your mind, Birdie,” Fei said quietly, closing the door behind her. “You don’t have to leave.” The older girl walked over and sat down on Feng’s bed. “You haven’t told the coaches yet.”

She didn’t want to think about that. It was too tempting to stay in Beijing, to continue to work hard and to maybe, finally, actually achieve the dreams that she had had since she was three years old. She was a gymnast, a junior member of the national team. If she wasn’t that, then what was she? She had no idea and she didn’t like it.

She had better tell the coaches first thing, so she couldn’t change her mind, again. She was going home. She was going to learn magic, whatever that meant. She had to remember that. She had to.

Feng turned slightly to look at Li Fei, blinking back tears. “I’ve never seen you cry, Birdie. You’re too tough.” Song Feng managed a small smile at her friend’s assertion that she was too tough to cry, even though, clearly it wasn’t true.

Fei sighed. “You’re not telling us something. I can tell.” Feng wiped her eyes and opened her mouth to respond. “You don’t need to say anything. If you don’t want to tell us, you don’t have to. Come here.” Li Fei gathered the younger girl into her arms. Feng cried on her sister’s shoulder.

“Big sis,” she whimpered through her tears again and again. She didn’t want to leave. She was abandoning all of her hopes, and all of her dreams, everything she had ever worked for in her entire life. She was throwing it all away, and for what? She didn’t know anything about magic, or the school she was going to, or the other students. She was leaving everything she had ever known. Again. She wondered how many times a person could be uprooted before they no longer knew who they were or where they were from.

“Go take a shower,” Li Fei said after a few minutes. “Go on,” she repeated, nudging her. “You’ll feel better. Mei-ling will come around.” Feng held her for a second longer before letting go. I’ll probably never get to hug Big Sister Fei ever again either.

She silently gathered her shower things and left the room, trying not to sniffle.

After Feng returned from her shower, Li Fei had the TV on. One of the martial arts dramas again. Silently, Feng sat down next to her, as the hero on the screen swore vengeance on the villain for the murder of his master. “I’ll miss you,” Fei said abruptly. “You will write, won’t you?”

Song Feng wasn’t sure how she could send letters from the wizarding world to the normal world. Maybe she could send them to her parents and then they could send it to Fei the slow way. She wanted to say something, but she was afraid that everything would come tumbling out if she opened her mouth.

She sat there for a long moment, feeling like a fool, wishing she could tell Fei everything, but afraid of the choice that she was making. In the end, Feng only nodded, unable to say anything at all.

Chapter 7: Leaving

When she woke up the next morning, she felt like a prisoner going to her execution. The nameless, wordless dread made her sick to her stomach. Everything was changing -- again. Even if it was ostensibly her choice, it didn’t feel like she had any control over it. She had never been in an earthquake, but she wondered if that would be the right metaphor for it. The very ground under her feet seemed to move.

Later, she wasn’t sure how she talked to the staff. She just remembered that her coaches were stony faced and took care to make her feel like a quitter when she told them that she was leaving. She was barely able to look them in the face, but at least she had.

They booked a one way flight for her to go Guangzhou for Tuesday, and paid for it. She had been half-hoping that they would make her family pay for it, and then she could make Zhu-ge Liang pay her family for the flight, but that was simply not going to be the case.

After that, she just had to pack. Tomorrow, she wrote on the silk. I’ll be at home, in Hoipeng. Not sure what time.

“Affirmative,” was the reply she received, again.

Feng sighed and turned back to her task.

She had somehow acquired many more things than she had when she went up to Beijing a year ago. Just a year, it was such a long year. And now it was over. Her life was over. She corrected herself. This part of my life is over. A new part is beginning. She wished she could feel happier about it, instead of defeated.

The packing went slowly. She had so many leotards. She supposed she ought to keep them, but she wasn’t sure when she would ever wear them again. It wasn’t like they had much use outside gymnastics. At the very least, they folded up quite small.

Her fingers lingered over the last one. It was the one they had given her when she had made the national team, the official uniform of the women’s team, with the National Emblem of the People’s Republic of China emblazoned on the breast. She stared at the picture of the Forbidden City, the symbol of the Middle Kingdom that was so potent that even the Communists had decided to leave it standing, even in the wake of the Revolution. She traced its outline, trying not to cry. Good bye. She rolled it up and packed it away.

Then she carefully took down her pictures of home, and put them away carefully. She wasn’t sure if magical people had photographs, but she knew that she would need her pictures when she went away to school again.

Slowly, everything got put away into her suitcase. In the end, her corner of the room was bare. It felt odd, but also painfully familiar. Was it just a year ago that I left Guangzhou? It felt like so much longer than that.

* * *

No one went with her to the airport.

It didn’t matter.

She hadn’t expected anyone to go with her.

* * *

Song Feng had only flown once before, when she moved to the northern capital from Guangzhou, so she supposed that she should have enjoyed the second flight of her life. She had certainly enjoyed the first.

Everything looked so tiny from the air. She had forgotten. She wondered where the plane was, or rather, where it was above. She wondered how many dozens, hundreds, thousands of people were below.

Feng felt exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. She felt restless, and her hands itched to be holding on to a bar, or better still, letting go of a bar and then tucking close to her chest as she spun through the air. Her hands opened and closed convulsively, until she forced herself to shove them into her pockets. She wanted to cry, but she felt like even if she tried, she couldn’t manage even a single tear.

* * *

Several hours later, she was back in the village. Everything was dustier, dirtier, and shabbier than she remembered.

Her father, Song Bing, had picked her up at the airport. She almost wished that he hadn’t. Her parents were older now, they had decided to stay in the village and work their land instead of living as migrants in the city. The long, dusty bus ride back to the village would have suited her mood, even if it would have been a lot less comfortable. He had caught her mood though, and the drive back was silent.

She trudged to her room, hating everyone and everything. She sat down at her desk, the one that she had never used and that was still slightly too high for her, and pulled out the silk and a pen. She scrawled across it in giant characters, “I’m home.” She left the silk on her desk, not waiting for a response, and flopped onto her bed, her face buried into her pillow. It smelled like home, and tears welled up in her eyes. It smelled like her mother, like the South, like real food, like everything she had missed being stuck in the northern capital.

She was home, she was finally, really, actually home, and she couldn’t be happy about it at all.

* * *

Song Feng woke up an hour or so later to a damp pillow and her mother, Song Lin, calling her down for dinner. It was odd. She wondered if this was what being a normal child was like: going home after school, taking a nap, getting called down to dinner.

She didn’t look at the piece of silk before she went downstairs, but she did make sure to wash her face before going to dinner.

When she sat down at the dinner table, she had to take a moment to look at the spread. Her mother had made all of her favorites.

I wonder how long it took Mom to make all of this. Feng was about to remind herself not to eat too much, because otherwise she would gain weight and then she wouldn’t make the final Olympic team... but it didn’t matter anymore. She supposed it didn’t matter if she gained a kilogram, even if she gained two or three. If the wizards have anything like old style standards of beauty, it would be better to be plump than skinny anyway. It was cold comfort.

She ate mechanically, and, even though she had longed all year for her mother’s cooking, she could barely taste any of it. It really wasn’t fair.

Feng heard the conversation around her, but she didn’t, couldn’t listen to it. It was filled with updates of various gossip in the village, things that her brother’s classmates were doing. Song Chun-yin complained about his teachers, his classes, but it seemed like they were familiar things to her parents even if they were utterly alien to her. Even if she tried to pay attention, she wasn’t sure that she would understand it. She barely recognized her brother as it was. He was growing up, and she wasn’t there to see it.

She excused herself after dinner, and went back upstairs to her room. Feng wanted, needed time alone, time to think and absorb everything that had happened over the past week.

She pushed open the door only to find Zhu-ge Liang waiting for her. As usual, he was dressed immaculately in clothes that were out of style by at least a century, probably more. This time, in addition to his staff, he was carrying a fan of crane feathers, and she almost asked him if he was trying to emulate his namesake, the Sleeping Dragon of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, on purpose. Instead, she just sighed.

“I sent a message, but you didn’t respond, young mistress Song” he said, his voice betraying a trace of irritation.

She shrugged. She didn’t know what he expected her to say. Worse, Feng wasn’t even sure that she cared.

After a moment, Zhu-ge Liang asked, “Young mistress Song, where are your parents? You have some paperwork to sign before you can come to the Dragon’s Pearl. Then we should be off.”

Her jaw hit the ground and she finally found her voice. “We should be off? I thought classes didn’t start until after Mid-Autumn. It’s only June!” She was infuriated. She hadn’t been home in a year, and he wanted to take her away already! How dare he!

“Young mistress Song, you do not even know how to write properly. You cannot start school in this kind of condition. Where are your parents? We should be discussing this with them.”

Feng grit her teeth, biting back every angry retort that was boiling in her blood, then stalked back downstairs with Zhu-ge Liang following behind.

She stood in front of her parents for a moment. “Guess who’s here?” she asked, trying not to let her tone betray her.

“Ah, Headmaster Zhu-ge, it’s good to see you again,” her father said, looking up from his book. “What brings you back to our humble home?”

She wished that her father wasn’t such a polite person.

“Well, first, I have some paperwork for you and your wife to sign, along with the young mistress.” The headmaster took out a long hand scroll and began unrolling it, and her father took a pen and began to sign where the headmaster indicated.

The hand scroll was probably made of silk, so the pen did not ‘scratch’ against it, but the sound was just as grating in Feng’s ears.

“He wants me to leave with him. Today.” Feng informed her parents, trying not to shout her frustration or whine. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded at either.

“Today? Feng only just came back,” her mother protested.

The headmaster indicated one last place for her father to sign. “Young mistress Song does not know how to read or write. She does not have even the most rudimentary knowledge of magic. She needs tutoring or she will be terribly behind when school starts.”

It finally sunk in how badly educated she was. He was right, she was barely literate in simplified, she was illiterate in traditional. If she were more literate in the simplified text, she could probably scan traditional characters and understand them, but she couldn’t even do that... not really.

Still, she wasn’t going the day she had arrived home. “I don’t want to leave yet,” she said slowly and clearly. “I was traveling all day. I only got home a few hours ago. I’m. Not. Leaving.” She enunciated each word slowly and carefully, then glared at the headmaster as coldly as she could manage.

Zhu-ge Liang pointed out one last place for her father to sign, then straightened to face her. “Then when do you want to leave, young mistress Song?”

Song Feng was about to open her mouth and retort, ‘never,’ but she couldn’t say that. She had already left Beijing, she was not going to go work in the fields with her parents or in the factories. Magic was her one chance for something new and something better. She pursed her lips, staring at the table.

“Give me at least today,” she said, finally, hating how small her voice sounded. “Please.” Feng finally looked up at Zhu-ge Liang.

“Of course. I should not have been so hasty to take you from your home the day after you arrived, young mistress Song. I will come to call again in a week,” he answered soothingly. “Mistress Song, if you don’t mind?” He gestured to Song Lin, Feng’s mother.

She hurried over. “Ah, of course.” Song Lin began adding her signature to her husband’s on the scroll.

Feng hated that her mother had given in. She hated that Zhu-ge Liang could make it sound like giving her a week at home was a favor. She hated this intense feeling of entrapment, that no matter what she did, she had no real options.

Feng watched her mother finish signing the scroll. It was her turn now. She walked over to the table and accepted the pen her mother handed her. She was about to sign her name, when something occurred to her.

“Why do you even need my signature?”

Zhu-ge Liang paused for the briefest of moments, idly fanning himself, before responding. “Well, of course I need your signature, young mistress Song. You are the one who is to be attending the Southern School, the Dragon Pearl.”

Song Feng considered that briefly. I guess that makes sense. Laws in the magical world are different. Why not? She picked up the pen and signed where the headmaster told her to.

“Well, that is that. I will come to call again, at the end of the week. Until then…” He bowed slightly, and then vanished with a pop.

* * *

The rest of the week was dull.

Song Feng went to pay her respects to her grandfathers, more out of a sense of duty than a desire to make sure that they were taken care of in the afterlife. Her grandmothers tried to spoil her with food, with toys and she didn’t have the heart to try and stop them anymore. They told her grandmothers that she was being invited to a special school, but they didn’t really explain what. Her parents had decided that magic would be too much for their old hearts to bear. It was good enough for them that she got vacation time, that she got time to come home.

Feng unpacked her bags and removed everything that she had needed for gymnastics. She would have to buy clothes in the wizarding world anyway, but there was no sense in taking things that were absolutely useless. In the end, she managed to pare down her things to one bag. My whole life is in that bag now. At least that’s how it felt. Her stuffed white tiger, her non-gymnastics clothes, her pictures of home, her jewelry... all of her things were packed in just one bag.

Zhu-ge Liang came as promised. She hugged her parents and her little brother. Her grandmothers weren’t there because no one could think of a way to explain away the headmaster.

She was leaving, again. “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry,” she told her parents, barely managing a smile. Feng picked up her bag.

“Are you ready?” Zhu-ge Liang asked.

She nodded, and took his arm.

They vanished with a pop.

Chapter 8: The Western Capital

Song Feng and Zhu-ge Liang reappeared on what seemed to be the outermost wall of a city. Feng blinked rapidly. She didn’t recognize the city below, not that she expected to. She looked at the buildings, wondering what the problem was, why the cityscape below looked so strange.

There aren’t any skyscrapers, she realized suddenly. “Where are we?” She asked. Zhu-ge Liang had said that they were going to his home and that she would stay with him and study there, but he hadn’t mentioned what city it was in.

“We’re only stopping here briefly,” Zhu-ge Liang replied as he finished tapping out an elaborate pattern on the stonework with his staff.

Before she had a chance to ask Zhu-ge Liang what he meant by that, and why he didn’t just answer her question, they disappeared again.

* * *

When they reappeared this time, they were inside. This must be Zhu-ge Liang’s house. The room looked expensive without being tacky. It reeked of old money, of restrained but deliberate class and aristocracy. Feng didn’t want to like it, but she couldn’t hate it. It was all too beautiful. They were facing an altar, with a sword and an old man’s portrait hung above it and several pieces of porcelain on it, including something that looked like an old fashioned water clock.

Feng sneezed, almost dropping her bag on her own foot. She pulled out a tissue and wiped her nose, then she put the bag down before she could sneeze again and drop it. The house smelled like jasmine and other flowers that she couldn’t name, in addition to the incense burning on the altar. Are we right next to the garden?

She assumed, correctly, that the Zhu-ges would have a garden, most old houses like this did. Zhu-ge Liang stifled a short laugh. She glared at him.

She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him, just that it was going to be annoyed, but before she could even open her mouth, she heard another pop.

Feng turned around and tried not to gape. Some sort of small pointy-eared creature stood in front of her. It was dressed in what had to be a rag, even if it was a very clean one. It bowed to them. “Ling-ling is here, Master Zhu-ge and Young Mistress Song.”

Ok, she, Feng corrected herself internally. The voice was clearly a female one, even if the person did not look particularly female at first glance.

“Ling-ling, please take the young mistress’s bag to the guest bedroom on the west side, the spacious one next to the garden.”

Ling-ling bowed again, picked up her bag and vanished again.

“Who was that?” Feng asked.

“She is one of our house-elves. Her name is Ling-ling.” Zhu-ge Liang responded easily, adding: “We will have to buy you new clothes so that you can fit into the wizarding world.”

Feng looked down at herself. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a zipped up hooded sweatshirt with her favorite old sneakers. Then she glanced back up at Zhu-ge Liang, in his elaborate hanfu. “Well if everyone dresses like you, then I suppose so, yeah.” She really didn’t want to have to get used to old style clothing, but it looked like she wouldn’t have a choice. She liked wearing pants; she liked wearing clothes that just pulled on.

“For now, let me show you around the house a bit.” Zhu-ge Liang started to lead the way out of the room they had Apparated into, but Feng didn’t move.

She stood there, absolutely stock still for a moment. “Where are we, exactly?” she asked. “I mean, this is your home, but where is it?”

Zhu-ge Liang stroked his beard thoughtfully, as if he had not even considered the question. “Ah, we are in Chang’an, the Western Capital of the Middle Kingdom.”

If Song Feng had had a better sense of her own people’s history then she probably would have made some comment about how some things never change; that the same sites, and even the same names are reused over and over as capitals. Chang’an had first been a capital of the semi-legendary Western Zhou dynasty thousands of years earlier, the dynasty that Confucious himself extolled for its virtues. Instead the only thing she could think of to say was the modern name of the city that she assumed was the same. “Xi’an,” she whispered before she could stop herself.

“What did you say?” Zhu-ge Liang asked.

She felt stupid for saying anything at all. “Nothing.” Then she added, “We’ve changed the name, that’s all. It’s not Chang’an, Long Peace, anymore, it’s Xi’an, Western Peace.”

The Headmaster nodded. “Many things will appear strange for you, I think. But come, you should get a bit of a look around the house. My wife, Jiao-long is probably out, but you will most certainly meet her at dinner, if not at lunch.”

* * *

As Zhu-ge Liang led Song Feng around, she hoped that she would be able to find her way around the house. It was easily the biggest she had ever been in. They didn’t even go through most of the garden, which was also huge, though they did stop by the pond.

Feng liked the pond a lot, particularly because it was filled with brightly colored fish. Some looked like they were koi, others were probably magical. Stones were set into and above the pond to provide a path and then a high arching bridge to the other side. The stones that formed the bridge floated in the air. Feng stepped very carefully on to the first stone, and the floating ‘bridge’ stones lowered. She blinked.

“They move depending on the height of the person walking on them.” Zhu-ge Liang explained.

Feng continued very carefully along the stones until she reached the first floating stone. She took a careful breath and stepped on to it. The stone didn’t move or even wobble. It seemed just as steady as the ones in the pond. She brought her other foot up on to the stone and it still didn’t move. She smiled and continued walking. Maybe magic isn’t so bad if wizards can do things like this.

When Feng reached the highest stone, she sat down on it, letting her legs dangle. It was a nice view of the garden. The Zhu-ge family has orchards, she noted. I wonder what they grow. Maybe they have lychee or long-an or persimmons or loquat. She did not realize she had named most of her favorite fruits.

Feng could have stayed in the garden for a lot longer, particularly going through the orchard and eating some of the fruit, but there was more of the house to see.

Zhu-ge Liang also lingered in some rooms like the library, where he had pulled out several scrolls and books which were to be her textbooks on magic. Feng glanced at the titles, but unsurprisingly, she couldn’t even read most of them. She managed to recognize the words “magic” and “history”, but not much more. She winced. This isn’t going to be fun.

Perhaps the headmaster noticed her expression because he pulled down a few more titles. “These are children’s stories. They will be easier to read than the textbooks.”

Feng accepted the extra books silently.

Zhu-ge Liang waited for some kind of response for another moment, and then led the way out of the library.

Finally, more than an hour later, they reached the west wing of the house.

“Here is your room,” Zhu-ge Liang said, opening the door. They walked in the room. “Go on, wash up and change into something from the wardrobe over there. Some of my youngest daughter’s old things should fit you. We will be eating lunch in another two hours. If you get lost, Lingling will help you.”

Feng nodded, silently. She put the children’s books down on the desk. Zhu-ge Liang placed the rest of the books and scrolls down next to them. “And Young Mistress Song, things will be all right,” he added, as he left the room.

“Sure,” she said flatly. She closed the door behind him. Well, the Zhu-ge family is definitely rich. She eyed the silks that were on the bed, the quality of the wood and the intricate carvings. It was all bordering on absurd really. The room was easily three times the size of her room in the village and had a window looking out to the garden. Her bag looked absurdly small and out of place at the foot of the bed.

She walked over and kneeled down, unzipping the bag. Feng sifted through the bag, ignoring the clothes. Finally, she found her stuffed white tiger. She hugged it tightly. I hope I get to bring you to school at least. The tiger had gone to Beijing with her, and kept her company those first weeks before she had made friends with Li Fei. She didn’t want to face a new school, a new city without it now.

After a moment, she sighed and got up. She put the tiger on her bed and walked to the window. She traced the latticework. That looks like a bat, and these... she stroked a wooden flower. It looked the same as the one on the jade comb that Zhu-ge Liang had sent to her. Bats are easy, those are for luck and prosperity, but the flowers... She wasn’t sure what they could represent. Still, she was far from an expert on symbolism, and she couldn’t even name the kind of flower.

There was another door on the other side of the room. Feng pushed it open to find a bathroom. She sighed. They were rich enough so that their guest bedrooms could have bathrooms attached. Well, she really didn’t have an excuse not to get washed up then.

The bathroom was also huge. Feng looked at the sink... or what she thought should have been the sink. There was a jade dish that looked like an old fashioned washbasin, but she didn’t see any faucet. She frowned at it. Maybe it’s automatic, like the stones in the pond. She stepped up to the dish, but no water appeared. Well, it had taken a voice command to get the letter to work. “Water?” she asked, hesitantly.

For a long moment, nothing happened. “Please, water?” she asked again. Still nothing happened.

She frowned at the washbasin. Well... Zhu-ge Liang said that magic is based on wanting it to happen... “Water,” she said again more firmly, tapping the dish with a finger for good measure. Water appeared in the dish.

She stripped off her sweatshirt and put her hands in the pleasantly cool water. She splashed water on her face and her arms, then took the soap and actually washed up properly. The bathroom had been filled with fluffy towels and she dried herself off briskly.

After washing up, Feng felt a lot better about herself. She steeled herself and went to the wardrobe. It was a lot of high quality cotton, thankfully, not too much pure silk. She didn’t like the idea of wearing pure silk, even if it did feel very nice. It was too nice, too expensive for just her. Everything in the wardrobe had silk embroidery on top though. She sighed.

Everything looked somewhat too large for her too. Things were starting to look more in her size though, the further back she went. Finally, she pulled out something that looked like it would fit her.

This hanfu was mostly an off-white color, with phoenixes on the edges of the sleeves. She sighed, silently wishing for something less ostentatious, but started changing into it anyway. At least it isn’t red, Feng thought, trying to console herself. I’m not going to look like I’m getting married.

Zhu-ge Liang said that lunch isn’t for two hours. What does he expect me to do for all that time? Feng looked over at the pile of books on the desk. Probably read.

Feng forced herself to sit down at the desk. For a moment, she hesitated between the two piles of books. Then, feeling stubborn, she picked up the top book from the pile of textbooks. She couldn’t even read the title. She squinted, trying to make sense of the characters, before giving up. I am doomed.

She put the book down, and crossed her arms on top of the desk. Then she laid her head down on top of her arms. She hated everything. What was Zhu-ge Liang thinking? What were her parents thinking? Feng didn’t bother trying to answer the questions.

A few minutes later, she picked up the top book from the “children’s literature” that Zhu-ge Liang had given her. Feng flipped past the cover without looking at the title this time and quickly realized that the book was a series of short stories. Many of the stories felt familiar, but there was something odd about them. She couldn’t figure out what was different about them, since she was barely reading them. What was worse was that the pictures helped her comprehension more than she wanted to admit to. After skimming through the entire volume, she put the book away.

She had no confidence that she would be able to make her way back to the dining room without getting completely lost and she was getting tired of trying to figure out the characters. She should have brought a simplified-traditional dictionary with her. After checking her reflection to make sure that she had managed to put the traditional garment on more or less correctly, she left her room.

* * *

Feng managed to make her way through the house alright, even though she definitely made at least one wrong turn at some point.

She entered the dining room feeling very awkward. She had forgotten to change shoes and the old sneakers looked even that much stranger under the pretty hanfu she was wearing. She slowly walked into the dining room.

Zhu-ge Liang and a woman that must have been his wife were discussing something in very earnest tones. She had to be as old as Zhu-ge Liang but she was still the epitome of restrained, aristocratic elegance. She wore a cream colored hanfu, and her long silvery hair was pinned up in a dark, wooden comb carved with tigers. Her long, slender fingers were clasped around a tea cup. Somehow, Zhu-ge Liang’s wife managed to be even more frightening than him, without saying anything.

Song Feng stood at the door, unsure how to interrupt their conversation, if she should walk straight in, knock on something or cough...

The woman looked up and noticed Feng standing awkwardly at the door. “Phoenix,” she breathed.

“Yes...?” Feng said awkwardly. She had thought that Zhu-ge Liang’s wife would have called her “Young Mistress Song”. That’s what Zhu-ge Liang always called her anyway.

The woman shot Zhu-ge Liang an annoyed look. “You didn’t mention that her given name is Feng.”

Zhu-ge Liang shrugged, but his eyes betrayed his amusement. “You are incorrigible,” the woman informed him. “You must be Young Mistress Song, please have a seat.” The woman gestured to the remaining seat at the table.

“Thank you, ma’am.” She stepped forward and sat down quickly, feeling very awkward.

“My name is Jiao-long, I’ve been married to Liang for longer than I care to remember right now.” Feng stifled an amused giggle. I think I like her. “Welcome to our home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Zhu-ge. You have a very lovely home,” she added, trying to be polite.

“You’re welcome, young mistress Song.” Jiao-long smiled, not bothering to correct Feng’s minor misspeak. “Lunch will be served momentarily. I asked the house elves to serve a variety since we were not sure what you liked.”

Feng looked down at the table. “I like most kinds of food. I’m not particularly picky.”

Jiao-long looked ready to ask her another question, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Ling-ling and another house elf with their lunch. “Master and Mistress Zhu-ge, Young Mistress Song, lunch is served,” Ling-ling said. They bowed and left.

Feng stared at the spread. The entire table was covered in dishes. A variety was an understatement: there was everything from jook, the plain rice porridge, to camels’ feet. She eyed the camels’ feet suspiciously. She had heard that people in the far West ate camel, but she had never even seen them on a table before.

“If I may ask a personal question, young mistress Song?” Jiao-long asked pleasantly.

Feng forced her eyes from the camels’ feet and up to Jiao-long’s face. She didn’t seem angry at least, though the girl was still unsure why the older woman would ask a question before asking a question. “Yes?”

“Where do you hail from, Young Mistress Song?”

Feng blinked at the archaic language before remembering that it meant where she was from. “I’m from Taishan, in the delta of the Pearl River.”

Jiao-long took out a fan from her sleeve. What is she going to do with that? Jiao-long tapped the table and the dishes shifted. Feng blinked, and the camels’ feet were on the far side of the table. She breathed a small sigh of relief and noted that the house elves had made crackling rice soup.

“Well then,” Zhu-ge Liang said. “Feel free to help yourself.”

Feng barely remembered to say thank you, before she reached for the soup. Then she realized that there was nothing to serve it with.

“Would you like some soup, Young Mistress Song?” Jiao-long asked.

Feng looked at the soup cautiously. “Yes, please... I’m just not sure how to get it.”

“It has been so long since we had young people in our home that clearly Liang has forgotten that for most people it is more difficult to use magic to serve soup then not.” Zhu-ge Liang didn’t deny the accusation, though he gave his wife a slightly bemused look.

Jiao-long tapped the soup with her fan and gestured towards Feng’s bowl. The soup raised itself in an arc and entered her bowl, then stopped neatly without spilling a drop. A few pieces of rice followed the soup.

“That’s amazing,” Feng said. “How do you do it?”

Jiao-long considered the question. “You practice. You concentrate. In addition, the way we make things, like the soup bowls and the tureen, they become infused with our magic, attuned to our thoughts and desires.”

Feng considered that statement. If it wasn’t automatic, but it did react then this magic was more... “Like the dish in the bathroom.”

“Yes, precisely.” Jiao-long said, with a smile. Feng looked down at her bowl. “Go ahead and eat, while it’s still hot.”

“Thank you,” Feng responded quickly, grabbing her soup spoon. For a while, they ate in a pleasant silence. Zhu-ge Liang and Jiao-long used their chopsticks to pick up pieces of various dishes, and put them into their rice bowls, so Feng copied them without worrying about serving utensils. It was the traditional way to serve and eat, anyway.

Eventually, Jiao-long spoke again. “I admit that my husband has not told me much about you, Young Mistress Song. Please, tell me about yourself.”

Feng put her chopsticks down, and considered the question. Before, it would have been so easy to answer. “I was born on National Day, on the 1st of October in 1992.” She paused, realizing that Jiao-long probably would have no idea what that meant. “I was born under the sign of the Water Monkey,” she added. “I turn eleven in the autumn.” She didn’t know the exact day on the lunar calendar. Should I say twelve? Traditionally, you count one year when you’re born for being alive one year inside your mother...

Jiao-long just nodded and Feng continued, describing how she became a gymnast when she was three and left home to join the provincial team, and how she had a brother when almost everyone she knew was an only child. She kept expecting Jiao-long to interrupt and Zhu-ge Liang seemed ready to ask a question several times, but Jiao-long kept stopping him. At least Zhu-ge Liang listens to his wife. As he should, she thought approvingly.

“Last year, I competed in a major national tournament and I did really well. I made the national team.” Feng was surprised at how steady her voice was. “I moved up to Beijing. I was...” her voice broke. “I was going to be on the Olympic team, I was... I was going to win gold medals for us, for China! My whole life, all my life’s work, everything I’ve ever done...” She was crying, sniffing and feeling like a fool. She thought she was over this feeling, but clearly she wasn’t.

Jiao-long got up noiselessly and pulled the girl into a hug. “It seems that my husband and I have made you give up a lot. For that, we are sorry.”

Feng sniffed into Jiao-long’s shoulder. “I’m going to ruin your silk hanfu with my snot...” she murmured.

If the older woman was confused by the very modern slang, she didn’t show it. “One of the benefits of magic is that cleaning can be quite a bit simpler,” she responded. “It will be all right,” she added.

Somehow, for some reason, when Jiao-long said it, Feng believed her. Things were going to be all right.

Chapter 9: The Delicate Dragon Roars

As Feng’s tears slowly stopped, she became aware that her cheeks were burning. I’m such an idiot, to go and cry on Mrs. Zhu-ge’s shoulder right after I meet her. Still, Jiao-long didn’t seem to mind, so Feng held on for an extra moment before pulling away. Jiao-long let go of her slowly, as if to make sure that the girl was okay, and then handed her a silk handkerchief.

After Jiao-long straightened, she briskly tapped her shoulder with her fan. The stains disappeared immediately. “You see? It’s all better now.” Feng nodded, and blew her nose into the handkerchief. She wasn’t worried about ruining the silk, if cleaning in the magic world could be accomplished so easily.

“I know that magic has taken a lot from you, but I want you to remember that it has also opened a lot of doors. It will be hard for you, but I know that you will succeed here.” Feng hesitated, but Jiao-long seemed sure. Li Fei had had faith in her too, but that hadn’t changed anything in the end.

Jiao-long changed the subject before Feng could decide what to think about the older woman’s faith in her. “Are you finished with lunch?”

Feng blinked, but she really wasn’t hungry anymore. The amount of food on the table was still staggering though. She wondered idly, how much of it would be eaten by the house-elves and how much would be saved for dinner. “Yes, Mrs. Zhu-ge.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I think I need to have a long talk with my husband and remind him of the meaning of my name.” Feng’s eyes widened involuntarily. Jiao-long looked ready to murder Zhu-ge Liang, though her voice had remained absolutely calm. Her eyes looked dangerous, her brows were drawn tightly together, and her hands were squeezed into two fists.

The meaning of her name? She considered the various meanings for ‘jiao’ - delicate, lovable, cunning, charming, pampered... she wasn’t sure how it was written. Long... probably meaning dragon. Uh oh. Feng glanced over to Zhu-ge Liang. He’s in trouble.

Feng did not realize that Jiao-long was not only referring to the second character of her personal name, dragon, but her clan, the Tiger. She also could not know that Jiao-long was reminding her husband that despite the ‘delicate’ in her name, she was both a dragon and a tiger, and thus, not to be trifled with.

Despite his wife’s apparent rage, Zhu-ge Liang remained outwardly calm. He sat completely still at the table, gazing back at his wife evenly, his expression carefully blank.

“Ling-ling!” Jiao-long called.

The house-elf appeared and bowed. “Yes, Mistress Zhu-ge?” Feng abruptly realized she had been using the modern word “Mrs.” as opposed to the traditional “Mistress” and reminded herself to stick to the traditional. Just because Mrs, no, Mistress Zhu-ge doesn’t seem to care, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.

“Please take the young mistress to see the garden. I need to talk to Liang.” Her eyes never left her husband’s face.

Ling-ling didn’t seem particularly worried. “Yes, mistress. If the young mistress pleases?” The elf bowed again.

“Of... course.” Feng carefully got up. She followed the house elf out the door. It was still silent when they left.

* * *

The house-elf led the girl back through the house to the garden. “Is there any place that the young mistress would like to go to?” Ling-ling asked.

“Can we... go back to the pond?” Feng asked. She wanted to look at the floating stones again.

Ling-ling nodded, and they walked silently towards the pond. Feng wasn’t sure what to say to the house-elf, and Ling-ling seemed content to walk in perfect silence. The garden was fantastical, filled with plants that she did not recognize along with normal flowers. One particularly pretty flower sparkled in the sunlight like it had been sprinkled with glitter or fairy dust. Another constantly shifted colors.

When they reached the pond, Feng immediately stepped on the first stone. The floating stones for the bridge lowered so that she could step up to them easily. I wonder if I could do a backflip on to one of the stones? It was a silly thought and she would probably hurt herself and misjudge the distance or rip the pretty hanfu. Still, she missed gymnastics. Feng walked up the high arching stone bridge again, and carefully sat down on the topmost. There was something about the height that made her happy.

She looked down and around, trying to see what else was in the garden. There were definitely fruit trees. She noticed at least one pavilion as well. She couldn’t tell if the other tiled thing was a pavilion or the wall surrounding the garden. Well, they have water, buildings, and plants... Feng tried to remember what else was supposed to be in a traditional garden, but she couldn’t. A wall to protect the garden and keep people out was one of the elements that Feng couldn’t remember, even though she had noticed the wall earlier.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, swinging her legs and enjoying the early summer warmth. She wasn’t sure when she had ever had so much ‘free’ time. Time to do what she wanted with, time that wasn’t scheduled for her. It was still an odd feeling. When she was home, she felt like she had to cram in as many things as possible. Now... there was literally nothing for her to... do; nothing that needed to be accomplished. Now what? she asked herself. It was a question that had haunted her over the past week.

Slowly, she walked down the stone bridge to the other side of the pond where Ling-ling was waiting for her. “What kind of fruit trees does the Zhu-ge family have here?”

“The lychee and the longan should be ready to be picked soon,” Ling-ling said. “The peaches will be better in a few weeks.”

“Are there loquat?” Feng asked eagerly. She loved loquat, though peeling an entire bag of them inevitably made her thumb turn a darker color.

Ling-ling answered, “The loquat will not be ready until spring. If the young mistress wishes, we can have some lychee and longan.” The house-elf’s tone could be characterized as long-suffering, though Feng would not have noticed.

Feng nodded. “Yes, please.” She had enjoyed fresh fruit while she was home, since her parents kept a few fruit trees. Fresh fruit was one of her favorite treats when her parents came to visit her while she was in Guangzhou, and that was something that she had missed a lot when she had moved to Beijing.

The lychee and longan trees were beautiful and covered in fruit. Feng grinned. She reached up and was about to pick a few longan, when something occurred to her. “Is this tree okay?”

“Yes, young mistress, you may take fruit from any tree in the garden.” The house-elf’s voice was ostensibly polite and unemotional, but there may have been a hint of exasperation underneath.

Satisfied that she would not get in trouble like the Monkey King for stealing fruit, Feng gently picked a few longan from the nearest tree. She grinned to herself at that thought. Of course, Sun Wukong got in even more trouble, since he stole Immortality peaches and not normal fruit. Like most Chinese children, her favorite character from Journey to the West was the irrepressible, outrageous, impatient Monkey King.

Feng was about to get some lychee, to go along with the longan when Ling-ling stopped her. “Mistress Zhu-ge is calling us. We must return to the house now.”

The girl quickly jumped up and grabbed one lychee from a low hanging branch and then turned to the house-elf. “Okay.”

Ling-ling gave her a look very akin to disapproval, and then led the way back to the house. Feng ate the fruit along the way, peeling off the skins and licking her fingers.

* * *

Instead of going back to the small dining room, Ling-ling led Feng to what she was supposed was a practice room of some kind. She didn’t think that she had been inside here earlier. It was a very plain room, at least for this house but it was quite large. The floors were stone, and full racks of weapons covered the walls. Feng was surprised at the variety - swords, spears, axes, bows, crossbows, knives, a few metal fans, even what appeared to be rifles. There’s enough to supply a small army she marveled. The weapons were all fastidiously maintained: polished, sharpened and waxed. They were also all well used, not that Feng could tell.

Zhu-ge Liang was pacing when they arrived. “Master and Mistress Zhu-ge, Young Mistress Song and Ling-ling are here.”

“Thank you, Ling-ling. You can go now.” Jiao-long responded, coolly, as Zhu-ge Liang finally stopped pacing. The house-elf bowed and vanished.

Feng stood at the door, feeling very strange and even more out of her depth than normal. She was very conscious that her hands were sticky from the fruit that she had gleefully eaten on the way back to the main house.

Suddenly, Zhu-ge Liang bowed very deeply to Feng. “I’m very sorry, Young Mistress Song.”

Feng had been shifting her weight uneasily from side to side, suddenly froze. “... Why?” She barely managed to say.

“I have not been completely forthcoming about your position at the Dragon Pearl.” Zhu-ge Liang responded, keeping his head down. “The Dragon Pearl is, indeed, the oldest and most prestigious primary school of magic in the Middle Kingdom; however, I did not tell you earlier that you will be the only Muggle-born student attending. The school has traditionally been barred to Muggle-borns. This is partially why I insisted on your leaving home for tutoring. I want to prove that Muggle-borns can perform as well as anyone else.”

Feng blinked, trying to understand everything that Zhu-ge Liang had just told her. She would be the only Muggle-born, historic discrimination... but before she could even begin to understand everything, Zhu-ge Liang continued: “I want to keep your heritage a secret until the end of the year, so that when you excel, the detractors have nothing to say against you because you will have already proven yourself. I think it will be better for you to be adopted into the Zhu-ge family and be one of our grandchildren. At least for the first year, so you will not appear to be a Muggle-born.”

For a long moment, all three people remained silent and still: Feng just inside the door, Zhu-ge Liang bowing, and Jiao-long standing off to the side. “So, I am sorry, Young Mistress Song. We will try to arrange some times for you to visit your family during these months of tutoring. I should have been more aware of the life that you had to give up to come here. I am deeply, truly sorry.”

“It’s fine, honestly, just... please stop,” Feng finally managed to say in a rush. I’ll think about the rest later, he just needs to stop bowing! Her head was still spinning from all the information.

Finally, Zhu-ge Liang straightened. “I need to return to the school tonight. Jiao-long will be in charge of your lessons.” He looked like he was waiting for her to say something.

“That’s... good?” Feng said. “Can I... go back to my room and um... think?” She wasn’t sure what to say, what to do or what to think. The headmaster of her future school, the person that had turned her life utterly inside out, had just apologized to her at least twice and given her a ton of information. She needed to sit down, preferably with her tiger.

“Yes, of course,” Zhu-ge Liang responded, just a little too hastily. “Jiao-long will see you for dinner.”

“Okay,” Feng said, and backed out of the room carefully. She really needed to get out of there.

* * *

Back in her room, or rather the room that was assigned to her but wasn’t really hers yet, Feng went to wash her hands clean of fruit juice. The problem with eating really ripe fruit was that the juice got everywhere.

Her hands clean, Feng collapsed on to the bed. The mattress was softer than she expected. She thought that old style beds would have been a lot more uncomfortable than modern ones. It was definitely the largest bed she had ever had, and the most ornate with a large wooden frame and canopy.

She rolled over, grabbing her stuffed tiger and squeezing it. Zhu-ge Liang had apologized so many times, but he had been so obstinate and unapologetic before. What could have made him change his mind? It must have been Mistress Zhu-ge. She must have said something to him. She looked pretty mad at him earlier.

So why would Jiao-long care what happened to her? The older woman had gone out of her way to comfort her, and to take her side against her own husband. Feng tried to reason it out, but she couldn’t think of anything. Maybe it’s just a motherly thing. She didn’t come up with any better theories. She assumed that Zhu-ge Liang and his wife had children. Voluntarily not having children was a modern phenomenon of the middle-class.

All the thinking made her tired. She hadn’t slept well the night before either: too much stress. A nap wouldn’t hurt, right? she thought, yawning. She probably shouldn’t sleep in the hanfu though. Even if magic could probably get rid of the wrinkles instantly, it wouldn’t be very comfortable to sleep in. It wasn’t as tight as a qipao, the high-necked, Mandarin collared Manchu dress, but it still wasn’t as comfortable as modern, athletic gear or her Western-style flannel pajamas.

She forced herself to get up and take the hanfu off and put it back in the wardrobe. She rummaged through her bag for pajamas. Not the flannel ones, it’s too hot for those. She ended up with thin cotton ones and pulled them on. Then she went back to the bed, grabbing her white tiger and falling asleep under the heavy silk covers.

* * *

Song Feng woke up hours later, to the sound of someone singing a lullaby. “Mommy?” she murmured, half-awake.

“No, Song Feng, it’s Jiao-long.”

“M’kay,” she said into her tiger’s fur, clutching it closer, still too sleepy to make much sense.

“It’s time for dinner,” Jiao-long said, a bit more sternly. “Come on, get out of bed.”

This time Feng actually stretched and yawned. She slid out of bed, her white tiger dangling from her right hand. Then she walked into the bathroom. She fumbled, looking for the faucet.

“Water,” Jiao-long said from the door, eying the white tiger that Feng still held. Feng washed up, splashing the cool water on her face, her tiger squished between the sink and her chest, leaving her arms free.

“Ah, that’s better.” Feng looked up into the mirror above the washbasin. She froze, suddenly remembering exactly where she was and who was in front of her.

Jiao-long smiled slightly. “Are you awake now?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Feng said, drying herself. “I’m quite awake now. I’m sorry, I was very tired, so I took a nap. I suppose I’m just a bit overwhelmed.” She was probably babbling, but she felt like an idiot for not even noticing that Jiao-long was there at all.

Jiao-long just smiled gently, instantly stopping her babbling. “We can just have a quick dinner, then you can sleep. You don’t have to change; you’re fine as you are. We’ll start your lessons tomorrow.”

The older woman started leading the way from the room, but Feng had one last question. “Will you read me one of the stories?” Jiao-long turned towards her, slight confusion on her face. “I... I think it’ll help me learn the traditional characters.”

Jiao-long considered it. “That’s a very good idea. But first, I think we should have dinner.”

Feng forgot about the long, odd conversation that she had with Zhu-ge Liang that day. At least, she did for a while.

Chapter 10: Obsidian and Phoenix Feather

A quiet month passed. Slowly, Song Feng got used to reading, writing and magic. Her days started following a new pattern of reading, writing, learning magical theory and some history, talking about differences between Chinese magical and non-magical cultures and eating meals with Jiao-long and sometimes Zhu-ge Liang. She would even go home every other weekend. It was odd, being able to see her family so often, but Feng was getting used to that too.

She made slow but steady progress. It was difficult, it was different, but it was oddly, at least mostly, enjoyable: like stretching a muscle that she had forgotten about - she supposed that was her brain, though she doubted that it was a muscle. Feng still hated traditional characters, and her writing still looked more like a five year-old’s than a ten year-old’s, but she was improving. Jiao-long kept reading to her every night, and Feng made sure to fix the form of the characters to the sound of the words.

Feng was looking forward to having a wand of her own, though. She had gotten an ordinary paper fan just because it was hot, but it wasn’t magical like Jiao-long’s and she couldn’t use it to serve herself soup. After a lifetime spent in gymnastics, and not in school, she wanted to be able to actually practice spells instead of just learning the theory. She didn’t need to know physics to be able to fly on the bars. Falling was a far better teacher than a book. After breaking her ankle on the vault, she had never over-rotated that badly ever again. Plus, she still wasn’t positive why she needed to know magical theory, much less history to actually perform magic.

* * *

Song Feng came down to breakfast that Saturday as she had done for the past month. The food was already on the table and both Zhu-ge Liang and Jiao-long were already there. After a lifetime of waking up at sunrise or earlier, Feng had remained a morning person. She still could never beat Zhu-ge Liang and Jiao-long down to the dining room though.

She sat down, and Jiao-long sent a stream of jook into her bowl. “Thank you,” Feng said, breaking up a yutiao and then picking up a piece with her chopsticks and dipping it into the liquid and biting down with relish. She loved the taste of the fried bread after it got a bit soggy in the rice porridge. The additional salt also made the porridge taste better.

“Young Mistress Song,” Zhu-ge Liang said, to get her attention.

Feng looked up from her breakfast, swallowing another piece of fried bread. “Yes, sir?”

“Today, Master Liu, the wand-maker will arrive to test you for a wand,” the headmaster announced.

“Really? I’m finally going to get a wand of my own?” Song Feng asked. It’s about time! It’s already been a month! How much longer can I learn magic without having a wand to actually do magic?

“Yes. He will be arriving around lunch, I believe.”

Feng resisted the urge to sulk. He has to go and tell me that I’ll get a wand and then make me wait for Master Liu to even show up. “Why does he have to come here, anyway? Can’t we just go to his shop?” she asked grouchily.

Both Jiao-long and Zhu-ge Liang were silent for a moment. “Do you remember, we talked about keeping you and your heritage a secret for a while? If you go to Master Liu’s shop then everyone will know about you,” Zhu-ge Liang said finally.

“Why does it have to be a secret, again?” She vaguely remembered that long speech that Zhu-ge Liang had made but she hadn’t thought about it since.

Zhu-ge Liang sighed slightly. “Because there has not been a Muggle-born student at the Dragon Pearl for a long time. Muggle-borns have been historically excluded from the Dragon Pearl. It would be better if we didn’t reveal your heritage until at least after your first year of school so that the detractors cannot say anything against you.”

She considered that. I guess it makes sense. I’ve never been good at lying though. Well... I’ve never had to lie before either. For that matter... “So what are you going to say that I am? What am I supposed to say when people ask where I’m from?”

Feng and Jiao-long both looked at Zhu-ge Liang expectantly, Jiao-long with a hint of a smirk. “Well... I had been thinking that you could still be a farmer’s daughter, but one from our lands. That would explain why you have been staying with us.”

“And how will you explain her lack of knowledge about our culture?” Jiao-long asked, in an almost-lazy tone.

After a long moment, Zhu-ge Liang responded, “Amnesia.”

Feng blinked. Amnesia? For a moment she struggled to remember that word. It happened all the time in dramas... Losing your memory, she finally remembered. “Isn’t that all... very complicated and... unnecessary? Is it such a big deal that I’m Muggle-born?”

This time Zhu-ge Liang didn’t hesitate. “It is very important that you are Muggle-born,” he replied. “The Dragon Pearl is the oldest and most prestigious school in the Middle Kingdom.” Feng sighed. He kept saying that. It was true, though Feng certainly didn’t care or appreciate the gravity of that statement.

“And this year, the youngest son of the emperor will be entering school. If word gets out that you are Muggle-born, the conservative groups will not let you attend school,” he added sharply.

A real life prince... that will be interesting. The curious streak that had led Feng to knock on Mei-ling’s door made her ask, “Why?”

“They do not think Muggle-borns belong at a place like the Dragon Pearl,” Zhu-ge Liang answered shortly. “I disagree. It is time that some of these old, ridiculous traditions change.” He was as irritable as Feng had ever heard him be.

Feng shrugged. Politics is boring. Whenever Jiao-long tries to teach me some of it, I want to fall asleep. She went back to eating her breakfast and resigned herself to not meeting the wand-maker until the afternoon.

* * *

Lessons that morning felt dreadfully boring. She fidgeted at her desk and tapped the back end of her pen impatiently. Jiao-long kept trying to break her of using pens, but she couldn’t help it. Feng hated the mess that brushes made. A felt tipped pen made the same kind of marks and with significantly less possibility of accidentally splattering everywhere, ruining everything she had just written.

Jiao-long hid a smile at the girl’s antics. “Let’s talk a little about wands.”

Song Feng immediately sat up a little straighter at her desk. Finally, something useful!

“The five elements are?” Jiao-long prompted.

Feng refused to sigh at the question, even though she had been drilled in it more times than she wanted to count. “Wood, earth, water, fire and metal.” She answered in the ‘overcoming’ cycle, adding: “Wood parts earth. Earth absorbs water. Water quenches fire. Fire melts metal. Metal chops wood.” It was a memory trick designed to help students remember the five elements, but it was also one way of describing the relationship between the elements.

“Very good. For the first-year opening ceremony at the Dragon Pearl, you will complete this cycle. For the eighth-year closing ceremony, you will complete the generating cycle.” Jiao-long paused.

Feng took the hint and dutifully repeated the generating cycle: “Wood absorbs water. Water rusts metal. Metal breaks up earth. Earth smothers fire. Fire burns wood.”

“Good. Our magic is aligned with the elements as well. The most effective wands, staves and other weapons are those that are matched to the user’s element type. The cores are also matched to the user’s personality, which increase the power of the weapon.” Jiao-long placed her fan across Feng’s desk. “Take a look.”

Feng ran her hands along the smooth, cold, silvery metal of the fan. “It’s made out of steel?” she asked.

Jiao-long nodded. “With a core of dragon heartstring.”

A dragon for a dragon... well that makes sense. I wonder what kind of core, Zhu-ge Liang has. It was surprisingly light for steel, but very brightly polished. “It’s beautiful,” Feng breathed. She didn’t know much about metal work but she could appreciate the smooth coldness, and the way it almost hummed with energy. “May I open it?”

Jiao-long nodded. Song Feng slowly opened the fan. She had seen the inside before, but it was briefly and from a distance. The inside was embroidered red silk. Orchids for the Zhu-ge family and white tigers for Jiao-long and the Tiger clan. Feng traced a tiger’s claws gently. After almost a week of seeing orchids and some tigers everywhere, she had finally broken down and asked. She didn’t care about clan symbolism but at least she knew why they were plastered everywhere in the house.

“Did you get the silk redone after you got married?” Feng asked, curious.

Jiao-long smiled. “The body of the fan also has orchids and tigers.” Feng closed the fan and looked at the outside again. One side was pressed with a fanciful motif of orchids, the other side with a tiger on a mountain. “No, this was part of Liang’s wedding present to me. A very practical present.” Jiao-long smiled to herself. “Most men would probably not give their wives another weapon for the wedding.”

Feng blinked. Another? “Is it normal to have more than one weapon?”

She didn’t even think to ask whether it was normal to have weapons, in addition to wands. Jiao-long and Zhu-ge Liang had so many weapons in their training room and they were all regularly used and cleaned, so she simply took it for granted that all magical people in the world would utilize magical weapons to cast spells... as well as Muggle-type weapons, since Jiao-long and Zhu-ge Liang maintained several rifles in their collection and one pistol, which Zhu-ge Liang claimed was a gift.

Jiao-long pursed her lips. “For us, it is normal to carry multiple weapons. It is harder to be defeated if you have more than one weapon, particularly if they are different types with different purposes. Here.” The woman handed over a dagger from her belt.

Feng examined this one. A tiger’s face made up the guard, and more tigers were painted onto the scabbard.

“This is the one that I made in school.”

Feng put the dagger down carefully. “We make weapons in school?”

Jiao-long smiled and nodded. “It is the only real way to bind a weapon to yourself, truly and completely. You need to make it yourself, with as little interference from outsiders as possible. If anyone else tried to use that dagger, it would probably rebel.”

Feng was suddenly very glad that she had put the dagger down without trying to take it out of the scabbard.

“The Tiger Clan has always been associated with metal. Despite being an aristocratic family, we are all taught how to work with metal, especially steel.”

Feng struggled to imagine how Jiao-long would look in a forge, with her silk clothes and her fancy hair pins.

But if we make weapons then... “So why do we even need wands then, if we just make weapons ourselves?”

Jiao-long removed a slender gold colored rod from her sleeve. “Wands are more multi-purpose. They are also more practical for teaching beginning magic to students. Without a strong knowledge of the basics, a more specialized weapon will not help the user at all.”

“You never use your wand though,” Feng pointed out.

“My fan is more attuned to me and it is easiest to keep with me at all times,” Jiao-long admitted. “But should I lose my fan, I can still use my wand, or my knife.”

Suddenly, the house elf, Ling-ling entered the room. “Master Liu has arrived. Will the Young Mistress please attend Master Zhu-ge and Master Liu in the southern sitting room?”

“He’s early,” Jiao-long commented. Feng waited, at her seat, hands clasped, trying to look properly lady-like. “Well, go on.”

Feng grinned and ran out of the room. Jiao-long is the best.

* * *

“So this is your mysterious new stray,” the wand-maker commented when Feng entered the room. He was not nearly as old as Zhu-ge Liang, he was probably only middle-aged. His hair was still mostly dark though it was beginning to have gray streaks. Feng disliked him immediately.

“Master Liu,” Zhu-ge Liang said in a warning tone.

“Honored Headmaster Zhu-ge,” Master Liu responded, with a slight bow that was just slightly mocking.

She resisted the urge to glare at him and pulled out her fan to cover the lower half of her face so she could stick her tongue out at him without him noticing.

“You’ll have to do better than that to fool me, child,” the wand-maker laughed. “You, cheeky brat, come here.”

Song Feng sat across from him, trying not to sulk too obviously.

“I will need to prick your finger to get some of your blood,” Master Liu said.

She held out her left arm. He took her hand and then gasped. “Where did you find this girl, Zhu-ge Liang? Even farmers’ daughters do not have hands this rough.” Feng glared this time. He had been rude first. It had been a month since she had stopped training, she had even started using hand lotions. What is his problem? she thought grouchily.

The Headmaster smiled enigmatically. “I told you, that I could answer no such questions, Master Liu.”

The wand-maker grumbled and took out a long needle.

“What is your name, young mistress?”

Zhu-ge Liang gave her a stern look, but she ignored it. “Song Feng,” she answered.

“Which ‘feng’?” The wand-maker asked, as he heated up the needle with a spell.

This time Zhu-ge Liang cut her off before she could explain that the way she wrote her name was the character for phoenix and not for maple or bee or any of the other homonyms for feng. “No questions, Master Liu.”

The wand-maker snorted. “Keep your secrets then, headmaster. It’ll all come out in the end. It always does.”

He pricked her finger hard to get through her calluses and then let the blood drip on to a white card and a piece of silk cord. “The cord will go into your wand to further bind it to you,” Master Liu commented, as he smeared the blood evenly on to the undyed cord.

Zhu-ge Liang handed her a handkerchief to staunch the blood flow. She felt bad getting blood on it, but she would have felt even worse getting it on her clothes. At least magical cleaning was a lot more convenient than normal cleaning.

Master Liu had brought some kind of elaborate machine, that spun and whirred and did all kinds of odd things and he fed the card through it.

“In the mean time, we shall take your measurements. Stand up,” he ordered, as he pulled out a tape measure, and an abacus. He recorded a variety of measurements including her height, the length of her right arm, the width of her wrist, and the circumference of her head, while they waited for the machine to finish working.

Finally, the machine spat the card back out. It was bright red on both sides, with a feather shape missing in the center.

“You never make things easy, do you, Zhu-ge Liang?” Master Liu sighed after peering at the machine’s settings and fiddling with some knobs.

“What would be the fun in that?” Zhu-ge Liang said it with a very straight face, but Song Feng was beginning to be able to tell when he was kidding, and this time he was.

Master Liu snorted. “This is a bad sign. Let’s go outside and talk.” He gestured to the door.

Zhu-ge Liang sighed. “Go continue your lessons with Jiao-long, ok?” She didn’t even have a chance to respond before he turned around and walked outside with Master Liu.

Song Feng stared at the card, which Master Liu had left on the table. Bright red. Her magic was... fire aligned? She couldn’t hear the adults speaking and there was no point sitting in the room being bored. She sighed and walked back to her ‘classroom’. Besides, if she wandered around, the house elves were sure to find her and bring her back to Jiao-long anyway.

* * *

Feng reentered the classroom sullenly and sat down at her desk, sliding down her chair into a deep slouch.

“What did Master Liu say about your wand?” Jiao-long asked pleasantly, as if she hadn’t noticed Feng’s attitude.

“That there’s a problem,” Song Feng muttered.

“Oh?”

Jiao-long never let her get away with anything. She was even better than the coaches at spotting half-truths. Feng sat up, before Jiao-long could tell her to. “The card that he used to test my element allegiance turned really bright red on both sides.”

Jiao-long pursed her lips. “Well, I’m sure that Master Liu will be able to work something out. Shall we work on reading and writing for this afternoon?”

It was a statement posed as a question. “Yes, madam,” Feng replied, trying not to sigh. Traditional writing sucked.

* * *

Less than an hour, Song Feng had changed her mind. Traditional writing was terrible, brushes were worse. She had asked again and again to use a ballpoint pen, but this time, Jiao-long had stood firm. “You have to learn how to use a brush. That is all you are allowed at school,” Jiao-long repeated patiently.

“How am I supposed to take notes with this?” Feng growled, as she accidentally splattered her entire page with ink, rendering it completely illegible.

Jiao-long cast a quick charm, cleaning up the mess. She was about to answer, but something in the doorway caught her eye. “Ah, Master Liu, have you and my husband decided what to do about the young mistress’s wand?”

Feng made sure to carefully put down the brush so that it didn’t make more of a mess on the table or ruin the sleeve of her garment. Then she turned to face Master Liu. He looked troubled, his brow wrinkled, his hands rubbing together nervously.

“Well, the young mistress will have a phoenix feather core.” He bowed slightly. “It suits your name, my lady.”

Feng bowed back, slightly in her chair. She should have known that she would get a phoenix feather core. It was just a little too obvious, if she thought about it. She didn’t think to ask him when he had discovered or been told that her name was written as “phoenix.”

“As for the shell...” he paused. “The young mistress’s magic is closely aligned with fire. While it is a difficult task to craft an obsidian wand, the young mistress should receive her wand next month.”

Feng stood then and bowed to Master Liu. “Thank you, Master Liu.”

He grunted. “No need to thank me until you have your wand in hand, Young Mistress.” He nodded towards Jiao-long and then left the room.

“What’s his problem?” she asked plaintively. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Master Liu is just annoyed because obsidian is very difficult to work with,” Zhu-ge Liang said.

She fixed with him a stare, trying to remember her lessons in the elements and materials. “Obsidian, that’s volcanic glass, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you get the core inside it?” she demanded.

“The wand-makers have their secrets.”

She sighed. She should have known better than to ask Zhu-ge Liang that kind of question.

* * *

The next month as promised, Master Liu delivered her wand. She held it gingerly, admiring its shape and color. She now knew the properties of obsidian, but was still unprepared for the physical manifestation of its beautiful, glassy blackness. It even felt warm in her hands. She wasn’t sure how that was possible, since obsidian is a kind of glass, but it was true. She traced a long streak of red that spiraled from the base to the tip. It even looked like fire.

“Try it out,” Zhu-ge Liang suggested. “If you concentrate, you should be able to pull sparks. Just light, no heat.”

She frowned but grasped her wand a bit more firmly. Feeling quite a bit idiotic, she waved it around.

“Not like that,” Master Liu interjected. “You need to be more forceful with your wand, don’t just wave it about like it’s a stick.” From inside his robes he pulled a thick white wand. “Observe.” He made one fluid gesture, moving his wand in an arc in front of him, multi-colored sparks bursting from the tip.

She imitated the gesture, concentrating on the idea of sparks.

She got sparks, followed by flames. Oh dear.

Zhu-ge Liang tapped his stave against the ground and the flames promptly vanished.

“Lots of power but no control,” Master Liu snorted.

Feeling determined to prove him wrong, Song Feng repeated the gesture again. This time only light burst from her wand in red sparks. She turned towards Master Liu daring him to say anything. He laughed.

“Stubborn girl.”

She resisted the urge to see if she could actually use her wand to do a proper spell, after two months of tutoring and training. If she did anything of the sort, then she didn’t want to know how much Jiao-long and Zhu-ge Liang would punish her.

“I don’t know what you’re planning, but you be careful,” Master Liu told Zhu-ge Liang. “And young mistress, you had better take care of that wand.”

Song Feng bowed in response. Master Liu nodded and left.

I’m finally becoming a real witch. Feng thought happily, unable to keep herself from running her hands all over the wand.

“Oh yes, classes at the Dragon Pearl end next week,” Zhu-ge Liang commented. “You’ll be meeting some of your peers then, since they will be coming to visit at some point during the break. Remember -”

“I was in an accident and my memory is messed up, I know, I know,” she muttered, grouchily. She still understand why it was so important, but if Zhu-ge Liang and Jiao-long insisted, then who was she to say otherwise? She added, a bit louder: “Who are we expecting then?”

“Of students in your year, Zhu-ge Lan, and Kwok Hui-neng, our grandchildren.”

Feng tried, and failed to remember how the Kwoks were related to the Zhu-ges. Family relationships were apparently immensely important at the Dragon Pearl, and Jiao-long had begun to teach her the lineages and marriage relations of various important families. Feng wasn’t sure what she hated more, the politics, the magical theory or the family allegiances that she was apparently supposed to remember and recognize through the clan symbols that were constantly worn.

Jiao-long took pity on her. “Kwok Hui-neng is the second son of Zhu-ge Xiao-li, our second daughter and Kwok Luo-yao, the heir and chief designer at Kwok Heavy Industries.”

Feng sighed. “Right.”

Family trees moved to the top of the list of things she hated learning. If she had paid more attention in her social history lessons, then she might have asked why the daughter of an aristocratic house had married a man whose family worked in manufacturing - never mind that Kwok Heavy Industries was one of the largest and most prominent companies in the nation, and the largest arms supplier. If she knew more about Buddhism, then she might have asked why a son of the most prominent military goods company was named after a Buddha.

“Also, you’ll be meeting the twins, Zhu-ge An and Zhu-ge Zhang. They will be the student representatives of the Zhu-ge clan for the coming school year.”

More bureaucracy. Student representatives were the link between the individual clans, the clan hierarchy, the students, the teachers and administrators. They were also disciplinarians, hall-monitors, all kinds of things, but, in short, they were bureaucrats. Important, essential bureaucrats, but bureaucrats nonetheless. She hated bureaucracy. Well, it would be an interesting week, regardless.