Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
The Magic Black Belt
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Dana Yamamoto was the worst martial artist in school. When she first stepped on the mat, Mirabelle Hayes jeered, “Are you dead?”
Dana didn’t challenge her to a duel. She just blushed and hunched.
“She means you’ve got your gi on backwards,” Samantha MacKinnon said. “Left side over right. You put the right side over the left on a dead person.”
Nobody told her that at least one girl a year stepped on the mat dressed as a dead person.
She drove her sparring partners wild, the way her hands shook like the Mars lander.
The day she tore her gi pants for the sixth time, Hepplewater Sensei followed her into the dressing room. She settled across from Dana, who sat mending the gusset with Mars lander hands.
“Must be hard, being the daughter of a general,” said Sensei.
“Yes, Sensei.”
“She expects a great deal of you, I imagine.”
“Yes, Sensei.”
“And what do you want?”
Dana looked up.
“I w-want to be the best student in the school,” she blurted out. “And,” she added, shocking herself further, “I want to th-throw Mirabelle Hayes all the way across the mat.”
“Hurt her, you mean?” Sensei Hepplewater asked.
“No. Just throw her.”
Sensei nodded. Dana thought to herself, this is where Sensei decides to train me in secret, or gives me a magic black belt. Or sends me on a quest to a distant mountain, so I come back able to fight off six attackers and fly over the roofs. She waited.
“You can be the best student in the school, though what that means may change for you. And you can throw Hayes all the way across without hurting her. But you must do one thing.”
“What?” Dana’s hands shook even more than usual.
“Keep training.”
Hepplewater Sensei left the dressing room. Dana stitched and cried, and left an hour later. She lay awake all night thinking and crying, so that the next day she arrived so tired that she broke her wrist taking falls, and had to sit on the bench for three months.
“Do I have to watch class every day, Sensei?” she pleaded.
“Yes,” replied Hepplewater Sensei.
She sat and watched, every day. When she returned to the mat, she threw Samantha MacKinnon halfway across it.
“Your hands don’t shake anymore,” accused Mirabelle Hayes as she came in for the attack.
“Th-they don’t,” agreed Dana.
One Way of Knowing
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Dr. Sarah Meckham knew how she felt by what she did. She knew she must feel nervous, because she kept dropping crumbs on the rug.
Companies fought over her for her neatness. No jet engine she designed, no part she machined, ever failed.
“Don’t worry,” said Lady Stirling. “These are crumbly scones. I have people to worry about the crumbs.”
“I don’t normally drop them,” said Dr. Meckham. The crumbs marred the pattern of the Turkish carpet, scattered across its blue and red hexagons. She’d even spilled some tea. She never spilled her tea!
“May I refill your cup?” asked Lady Stirling. Dr. Meckham wasn’t sure.
“So you’ve come to have your fortune told,” Lady Stirling said, giving up. “Doesn’t sound very engineer-like.”
“Yes, I know,” Dr. Meckham said, and thought, ‘and that is how I know I’m afraid.’ “I believe that you may help me understand the odds.”
“Odds of…?”
“Of surviving. Some people want to be the only ones who know how to make some of the machines I have designed. And other people would like me to stop making machines that make their military buildup difficult, or meaningless. You see.”
“That explains the gentleman and the car waiting outside,” said Lady Stirling.
“Yes.”
Lady Stirling watched more crumbs fall.
“And the men on the ridge and in the gazebo?”
“They prefer it if I pretend not to know.”
“I see. So you are interested in probabilities, not tall dark handsome men.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Meckham.
“That’s wise. Well,” said Lady Stirling, slapping her hands on her tweed skirt, “I think you’ll do for the next decade, particularly if you remain vigilant. After that, you must hire a different driver, because your enemies will blackmail this one. That’s about all the detail I can get at the moment. I should be delighted to have you to tea in nine years’ time, if you can manage it, so we can look a bit further ahead. Does that help?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Meckham. “That was very quick. I expected…”
Lady Stirling smiled. “Palm reading? At least a pack of cards? No. I don’t normally explain my mechanism, but to a mind like yours I will offer a hint: even perfectly neat eaters drop crumbs on this carpet.”
All the way out the door, Dr. Meckham treaded carefully, staring at the patterns. Lady Stirling smiled gently again, amused.