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.