Light From Uncommon Stars(89)

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Katrina had come back from the mall. She’d just bought a new pair of short shorts, which made her really happy because one thing about her body she liked was her legs. She dashed upstairs, put them on, and called after Astrid.

“Miss Astrid, what do you think?”

“You’re not going out in those, are you?” Astrid said.

“But I thought they would be nice for summer…”

Astrid chuckled. “Well, when I was your age, I had a nice body, too. Just make sure you bring a jacket so you don’t chill your buns.”

“Miss Astrid!”

What was that sound? That fluffy, glowy, goofy sound?

It seemed to draw sunlight into the room. It made Astrid suggest new curtains and furniture and spend afternoons browsing the latest pretty things on Amazon Prime.

Someone was in the kitchen, laughing.

Katrina Nguyen was laughing.

Think of a piece of music. Is it not a miracle that each time the notes are played, the music is reborn? No scratches, no fading, no loss of fidelity.

Shizuka would play Martha, and she would be in this very house, years and years ago. As she played, as her parents were listening, and outside were her playmates, and when she was done practicing, they would upturn rocks in the backyard to search for interesting new bugs, for the sun would still be young and warm in the sky.

No scratches, no fading, no loss of fidelity.

One does not play memories of music; one plays music itself. And lifetimes, from beginning to end, are as sheets of music, ready to be played.

Shizuka had waited nearly forty-nine years to hear such music. After Yifeng, she had almost given up.

But finally, the seventh.

“With the violin, I can sing, speak, be beautiful,” Katrina had said. “I’m not worrying about what bathroom is safe, or if the store is empty enough to go shopping. Playing a violin isn’t always easy. But it’s easier than everything else.”

Isn’t it, though?

Lan had once told Shizuka that she would have made a good mother.

The Queen of Hell smiled as she looked through her window, down to the fishpond below. Her father had dug that fishpond, stocked it with koi, before she had been born. She thought of all the koi that had been trapped there over so many years. How many parents had lived in that pond? How many children had each of them had?

Yet the pond did not acquire more fish.

For the older ones, the graceful ones … the chosen ones, the brilliant ones, the ones gilded with darkness, with flame … were also the ones who ate their young.





29


Miss Satomi’s door was ajar.

“Hello? Miss Astrid said you wanted to see me?”

Miss Satomi waved Katrina inside.

In all her time here, Katrina had never seen her teacher’s room. She had never even been on this side of the hallway.

Miss Satomi frowned. “You’re not going out in those, are you?”

“Miss Astrid said they were okay,” Katrina said.

“Well … wear a coat when you do.”

Katrina’s eyes scanned the room. It was large. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t large—it was empty.

She had expected a lush, sumptuous room, full of tasteful items and trophies from past conquests. On the walls, there would be oil paintings, woodblock prints, concert programs written in French. There would be elegantly framed pictures of family, notes from paramours, maybe someone in a kimono. Miss Satomi would be in front of a fairy-tale mirror, lounging on a bed that was plush and velvet, with precious things made of jade and ivory next to her on an antique nightstand.

But this room had nothing. Yes, there was a mirror, bed, and nightstand. There was a simple desk and a dresser, and on the bed, Miss Satomi’s new laptop. There was a music stand in one corner and a small lamp in the other.

There were no mementos from past vacations. No souvenirs. No dried flowers. No paramours or family photos. The walls were empty as well.

Miss Satomi sat on the bed, all alone but for what was she holding.

“I just retrieved this from Lucía Matía. Please, take a look.”

In Miss Satomi’s elegant hands, the bow seemed surprisingly plain. Although it had new silver fittings and was freshly polished, it still seemed thin. The wood smelled sickly.

No, not quite sickly. Hungry.

“Many years ago, this was given to me by Tremon Philippe. At the time, I was a violinist like you—only a lot better.”

Miss Satomi held the bow like a most lovely and terrible addiction.

“As a child, when I played, the world seemed bright and happy. My parents stopped yelling. My mother would talk about her childhood, we’d watch the rain and sing, ‘teru teru bohzu, teru boh-zu.’ Sometimes my father would even pull out an old harmonica.

“As long as I played, everything was all right. After my first competition, my violin teacher cried. He said when I played, he saw his father in uniform, and his mother, her hair still soft and brown. They were all going shopping, and there were cakes with the aroma of cinnamon and clove…”

Miss Satomi shrugged.

“But then, competitions became larger and shinier. And at some point, people stopped listening.

“Oh, they still acted as if they did. They would say how beautiful I was. They would call me brilliantly exotic, a China doll. They gave me awards. They praised me. Yet, little by little, what they wanted eclipsed what I was, until they even forgot that I was from Monterey Park. And my music?