Chapter 7: Gyatso

Two years before the comet. Southern Air Temple.

The south terrace after the fourth bell was my favorite hour of the day.

Dorje’s compression had a snap to it now. He’d pull, hold for five seconds, six, and when he pushed the current stayed tight for the full twelve feet and hit the stone with a sound like someone clapping with cupped hands. The chalk mark on the terrace wall had a chip in it the size of my thumbnail from his best shot last week. He’d stood there looking at that chip for about ten seconds with his mouth open before he said “I did that” in a voice like he’d found money on the ground. Not that he’d know what money even is.

He was doing it again. Pull, hold, push. The current snapped out clean and hit the chalk mark dead center. Dust puffed off the stone. He shook out his hands and reset his feet without being told. A year ago I had to remind him to reset after every shot. Now his body just did it.

“That went straight,” I said from where I was sitting on the bench. “Do two more and then rest.”

“I can do five more.”

“Do two. Your left hand is starting to drift.”

He looked at his left hand like it had betrayed him. He adjusted. He pulled again.

Behind him, on the far side of the terrace, Lhamo was working at a different section of the wall. She’d been with us for three months. I’d spotted her during an afternoon training session with the older novices, throwing a standard Second Breath arc that came out tighter than the form called for. Her instructor corrected her and she widened it back out, but I’d seen her hands. She’d been gripping. Nobody grips in standard training. I recruited her the next day.

I’d talked to her the next day and she’d been on the terrace the day after that.

She worked. Her compression was rough compared to Dorje’s, the current spreading wide instead of holding a line, but the power behind it was real. From eight feet she hit the wall hard enough to leave a mark the size of a palm print. When she missed, she set her feet and went again. When she hit, she set her feet and went again. Everything got the same flat focus. Both hands had burn scars from childhood. She never mentioned them and I didn’t ask. She came to the terrace to throw air at a wall, threw air at a wall, and left when she was done. Dorje talked enough for three people anyway.

Jampa was sitting against the far wall drinking from a water skin. He was the newest, twelve years old, and he could hold a compression for about three seconds after two weeks of training. That was better than I’d expected. His problem was that he only practiced when I was around. Dorje had been practicing in the dormitory at night within a week. Lhamo practiced before breakfast. Jampa practiced when I was watching. He’d either find it on his own or he wouldn’t.

Dorje’s second shot hit the mark. His third drifted right by about a hand’s width and he made a face like the wall had insulted him.

“The left hand,” I said.

“I know.” He dropped his arms and rolled his shoulders. “I keep pulling it in on the release. I don’t even feel it happening.”

“That’s why there’s two of us.”

He grinned, the same grin he’d had since the first day, quick and easy, like his face just defaulted to it when nothing else was going on. He walked to the bench, sat down next to me, and reached for his water skin. We’d been doing this for a year. He practiced, I coached, he sat, I practiced, he coached. Somewhere along the line it had just become what we did after the fourth bell.

I stood up and moved to my spot, twenty feet from the wall. My range had been growing. Fifteen feet was reliable now. Eighteen was where the edges started to fray. At twenty I could land maybe three out of ten. That was going to get me killed if it didn’t improve.

I set my feet and went through the same sequence I’d done a few hundred times by now. Pull, hold, push. The boring part is the hold. Four seconds of keeping the air compressed between your palms while your whole body wants to let it go, every reflex you’ve trained since you were four screaming at you to release. I tightened my hands and pushed.

The current crossed the twenty feet and hit the chalk mark. A chip of stone the size of a grain of rice broke off. Twenty feet. A year ago I was excited about hitting a cushion at fifteen.

“Good one,” Dorje said from the bench.

The second shot spread at sixteen feet, a weak fan that wouldn’t have bothered a candle flame. I’d been thinking about the technique instead of doing the technique, which was my favorite way to ruin a perfectly good session.

I threw three more. Two of them hit, one scattered.

Lhamo had stopped to watch. She had that stance she got when she was paying attention to something, weight back, arms at her sides, completely still.

I was pulling for the next shot when the back of my neck went cold.

The air on the terrace had changed. It was small, the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t an airbender who’d been using this specific terrace for three years. The wind came from the south, hit the back wall, and scattered. I knew what that scattering felt like against my skin the same way I knew what my own breathing sounded like. Right now something was interrupting the pattern, something between me and the corridor entrance.

I turned around.

Monk Gyatso was standing at the corridor entrance with his hands folded in front of his robes. He had the face he wore during morning meditation. The breeze moved his robes and nothing else. He stood with his weight so centered that the air moved around him instead of through him. I had no idea how long he’d been there. It could have been ten seconds or the whole session.

My stomach dropped straight through the stone floor.

Dorje saw him a half second after I did. He made a sound in his throat like a hiccup and stood up from the bench so fast the water skin hit the ground. Lhamo went rigid. Jampa, who had been leaning against the wall with his eyes half closed, opened them and went white.

For about three seconds nobody did anything. Dust from my last shot was still settling in the air between us.

Gyatso looked at the chalk mark on the wall. He looked at the chips in the stone around it, the accumulation of months of focused air hitting the same spot. He looked at the meditation cushions propped against the base of the wall, the ones I’d been rotating out of the lower hall for the past year. I watched him read the wear marks in the fabric and I knew he understood what had made them.

“I wondered where my cushion went,” he said. His voice was mild, unhurried, the same voice he used to tell children about Yangchen and Old Iron. “I blamed the lemurs.”

None of us laughed. Lhamo’s hands were fists at her sides. Dorje looked like he was trying to remember how breathing worked. Jampa was already edging toward the corridor. I was running through every version of the next thirty seconds and none of them were good.

Gyatso walked to the bench. He sat down. He folded his hands on his knees and looked at us like he looked at the valley during evening meditation, as if the view was going to be there for a while and there was no reason to rush.

“Carry on,” he said.

Jampa left. He walked, and the speed of that walk said everything his mouth didn’t. He was through the corridor entrance and gone within five seconds. If he talked to anyone in the dormitory tonight, I’d know about it by morning. Then I’d have a different problem to solve.

Lhamo looked at me. I looked at Dorje. Dorje looked at Gyatso.

“You want us to keep going?” Dorje said. “With you sitting right there?”

“I have only just sat down. It would be a shame to leave so soon.” Gyatso’s eyes moved to the cushions against the wall. “Those are good cushions. I would like to see what you are doing with them.”

Dorje looked at me again. I gave him a small nod. He turned back to the wall, set his feet, and pulled. The compression held for three seconds before it fell apart into a wide puff that barely reached the stone. His worst shot in weeks. His hands were shaking.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Hey. Breathe,” I said. “Just start over.”

He breathed. He reset. The second one was better. Four seconds of hold, clean release, the current hit the wall about a hand’s width from the chalk mark. By the third he was back in his range, the shaking gone from his hands. Whatever else you could say about Dorje, the kid could recover. Put an airbending master three feet behind him and he’d fall apart for exactly one shot before his body remembered what it was doing.

Lhamo had not moved. She was watching Gyatso. He was watching Dorje. After Dorje’s fifth shot she turned to her section of the wall and started working without a word. That was Lhamo’s version of a decision. Dorje was still throwing, so she was still throwing.

We practiced for another twenty minutes without talking. I worked at my twenty-foot line and my best shot of the afternoon cracked against the chalk mark hard enough to send a spray of stone dust into the air. Gyatso watched the dust settle. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or horrified or both. The light was turning orange by the time Dorje sat down on the bench, arms spent. Lhamo stopped and looked at me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Both of you.”

Dorje stood, glanced at Gyatso, and said, “I hit the mark six times today. That’s a new best.” He said it to Gyatso, not to me. Then he left before anyone could respond. Lhamo left without looking at anyone. Her footsteps faded down the corridor.

“Where did you learn Compression?” Gyatso said.

“The archive.”

“The restricted archive.”

Three words, and it was not a question. He already knew I could open the Tier 15 door.

“Yes,” I said.

“The Hollow Wind scrolls.” He said it quietly. “I read them once, a very long time ago. You have been teaching the forms in order.”

“I memorized all nine of them.”

He looked at the chips in the stone wall for a while. Then back at me.

“How long have you been doing this, Sonam?”