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jump to life when the sunlight from her father's knives streaks across her face. And as she giggles, consuming and exuding energy, the street peddler cries out, just beyond the front gates, Steamed buns! Steamed buns here! She streaks down the stairs, her toes barely brushing the ground, her mother hissing Be careful! but not too loudly, for she knows her daughter's secret and would just as soon not attract any attention to it, but the words are enough to bring her to a skidding halt just short of the courtyard, and with the utmost effort of will, her limbs slacken into courtesy. She wipes sweaty brow with perfumed sleeve, and bustles into the court- yard, past her father, who notes her ladylike, petite steps, the childlike excitement on her face as she calls out to the peddler, Here! Over here! We would like some buns, please! Flush with 
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parental pride, he executes a final stroke, a certain death blow to all but the most experienced of warriors, and with a speed that belies his age, the knives are back at his side, their steel fogged with the warmth of his body. *** The would-be warrior is young and ruled by absolutes: one's destiny measured by mileposts, days spent under-neath a heavy sun or adrift on a starry ocean. What use are these ideas? Uncle sighs, and with aggrieved fingers he stabs at the parchment - another civil servant examination failed. But in his nephew's world, it is the exams themselves that are the failure. The rote memor- ization of political successions, actuarial tables, spellings, quadratic laws - of what worth is it? A  |
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