Monday, August 5, 2024 - 4:00 PM
Sabriya’s piercing green eyes never left the slitted browns of her combatant. A turquoise silk gi hugged her sleek, cocoa-toned body, and a yellow headband held back her thick obsidian hair. Her attacker, an older man, was strong, fast, and clever, yet Sabriya matched his speed and deflected his lethal blows with her two-meter bo staff, only slightly longer than her 173 cm barefoot frame.
Her opponent, Master Singha, was a graying, oval-faced man who wore a brown linen gi and a blood-red headband embroidered with three back hanzi characters signifying his rank as a master Wing Chun sensi. Wasting no time, he lunged his larger frame at the smaller woman and smashed his two-meter rattan bo staff at her exposed neck—a sure fatal blow.
But Sabriya, quick as lightning, evoked her bo staff, deflected Singha’s blow from her neck, and parried it to the side, simultaneously countering with a left-to-right sweep of her staff at the man’s forward-lunging calf. Singha stumbled, then leaped back to safety.
The fierce clash looked nothing like a well-rehearsed form, and indeed, to the fighters, it was formless and spontaneous. Their bo staffs crossed with loud CRACKS, blocked, swept, smashed, and poked at heads, legs, and necks. Their bodies advanced, retreated, jumped, and dodged. Their calloused bare feet danced across the smooth volcanic stones of the symmetrical courtyard in the midst of an asymmetrical oriental garden of rocks, pools, evergreens, moss, and ferns. The garden and courtyard were at the rear of the ambassador’s residence, but the action was front and center in the British embassy’s 20-acre walled-off compound. On the perimeter of Meijing, Pellagore’s capital city on the South China Sea, the compound was buttressed by dragon bamboo to the northwest, and peonies and wisteria on the southeast, all basking in the shadow of the lush Aruvel Highlands of Southeast Asia, and the temporary warmth of a late afternoon sun.
The free-sparring battle continued. Perspiration soaked both fighters’ gis and headbands; their lungs grew weary as they gasped for breath. Upon turning her opponent’s back to the modern villa and the sparse embassy audience, the woman chanced a glance at the second-story veranda. Behind the rail stood her gallant, 36-year-old husband, intently staring down at the demonstration contest, surrounded by a dozen of the sensi’s male students, all sitting cross-legged around the perimeter, in the city for a tournament. Was he actually worried, she thought? His majesty’s new ambassador to Pellagore was dressed, as usual, in white casual cotton pants and sandals, an open-collar shirt, and a neckerchief. He held a glass of tea in his left hand, and with his right, tightly gripped the veranda rail in fear that he might topple over to get closer to the action. She glanced again at his chiseled face, his swept-back, black hair that framed his admiring brown eyes. She looked closer at his eyes—they didn’t blink. The dear man thinks I might get hurt, Sabriya thought.
After the sparring lesson, an exhausted but confident Sabriya reintroduced her sensei to the new ambassador—her husband, Sir David Kensington. Master Singha took the opportunity to respectfully and with good humor remind the senior diplomat, as he did at their wedding years earlier, “Your wife is very skilled. I recommend that Sir David, the new Ambassador, treat her respectfully. There are consequences for crossing her good nature."
Sabriya, David, Sensi Singha, and his students sat in rattan chairs and cooled off in the veranda’s shade as servants served iced tea. Taking her rest and sipping her tea, Sabriya began to ponder what battle she would have to fight next, hoping it would not be her last. For the combat she feared most was the one she must fight to reconnect with Busaba and Jia Kun. Finding them promised danger and the repercussions she must suffer when David discovered the full truth about her past, a life presumed innocent but established in shame, and her need for redemption.
A WEEKLY SERIALIZATION
NEW CHAPTERS ON FRIDAYS
READER COMMENTS ARE ENCOURAGED
No comments:
Post a Comment