Fu Hao was slim and wiry, with a firm but warm demeanor. She did not speak of her life, though I suspected that she was more than a general, a priestess or a queen, based on her manner. Every day I rose two hours before sunrise to meet her on the training grounds adjacent to Guan Yin’s palace.

  First, we focused on breath and qi, creating energy with intention, and putting me through various forms inspired by animal movements. Each animal--crane, deer, bear, tiger, and monkey--related to the five elements and impacted the yin and yang of the internal organs.

  After a month of this training, which was half lecture, half painfully slow movement, she had me imagine that I was rooted into the ground and knocked me down repeatedly. I dodged and blocked her attacks pushing and pulling my qi as she instructed. But when I had succeeded in evading her hits, she swept my legs from beneath me.

  Two months later she handed me a staff to utilize for defense and how to use my smaller size as an advantage with larger opponents. Our sparring resulted in deep bruises, more than one concussion, and several broken bones. But each night Guan Yin would offer me a cup of her healing water and by morning I would be ready to start again.

  Physical pain was a regular part of my day and there were many nights I considered Guan Yin’s offer, convinced that I would never be good enough. Then the jade ring would warm my chest and I would hold it, inevitably thinking about Hou and determining to prove that I was not some fragile thing.

  Lung Nue whispered that Hou Zi was trapped under a mountain as punishment, and I pretended not to care. Though his rejection still stung, my heart was glad that he was alive. Even if he was a jerk.

  The second year with Fu Hao was harder, though I doubted that was possible. She recruited heavenly guards to assist in my training, or humiliation as I like to think of it. I was humbled daily as several of them delighted in my weakness. Hu, Park, and Guirin were three of the more patient guards and offered words of encouragement as they batted at my strikes as if they were playing with a pup. After I got the better of Hu, more by accident than skill, Guirin broke my nose, three ribs, and dislocated my shoulder. But they all started calling me Mei Mei after that.

  Lady Fu Hao shrugged and said simply, “You won’t know what you will be facing, and must prepare for each opponent to be meaner than the last.”

  I learned the eight limbs, striking and kicking with hands, elbows, feet, and knees. My shifu taught me which pressure points to hit to do optimal damage, and how to use someone’s momentum against them. With the staff I learned to strike and thrust, to spin and use it to vault.

  Each night I rolled into bed bloody and exhausted, and each day I did it again.

  Fu Hao was unyielding in her expectations, but she was fair, and often kind. Her words were encouraging and steady, and whenever I was injured, she tended me herself until Guan Yin arrived.

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  We trained on horseback, and I don’t remember a day when I wasn’t sore. The celestial horses were irritable, and I had to utilize everything Hou had taught me while trying not to think of him.

  I learned I had no great talent for archery which, though I hit the target, Fu Hao would point out that my aim was no good in battle. I heard the frustration in her voice as she set me to continue until the fletching made my cheek bleed.

  In two and a half years I grew a little taller and much stronger but still felt inadequate for the greater task before me, knowing that my parents lived and were slaughtered on earth.

  In the meantime, I studied mathematics, geology, and languages that would be dead in a millennium. I studied strange cultures that did not worship the gods I knew, learning their politics, their stories, and their music. Guan Yin made me learn the Suona (a double reed instrument that is played for the living and the dead). Sometimes I wish I had learned the piano or the cello but those were not options then. Maybe I will learn them in my next life when all is said and done.

  In the mornings I sat in meditation with Lung Nue and Shang Tsai, who often made breakfast for me before I went to the training grounds. And, though I did not love it, it did calm my mind. It was only in the nights when sleep would not claim me that I thought about Hou Zi and wondered if he ever thought of me.

  Muzha visited the gardens regularly, sometimes with a fairy or two trailing behind. He asked why I trained like a man when I should be learning more courtly skills. I stuck with Guan Yin’s explanation, that I hoped to be a heavenly guard one day. He laughed and shook his head but did not openly mock me.

  Nue cautioned me against Muzha, saying that he was only a distraction. I felt the truth in her words but found myself watching for him each day and smiling a bit too much when he attended to me. I laughed too hard at his wan attempts at humor, then chided myself for being inauthentic.

  Guan Yin spoke to me after dinner one evening. “It’s nice to be noticed, isn’t it?”

  My cheeks burned.

  “I know you are lonely,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it and nodded.

  “Is saving your father and Zhilan the most important thing to you still?” she asked passively. “You could still have a regular life, if you wish it.”

  I paused, tasting the words before I spoke. “It is what I must do.”

  She clutched my hands, our hands grown similar in their roughness. “This is the most difficult part of your training,” she said. “Distractions will naturally arise, and you are growing tired of the harsh routine set before you. But you must be stubborn with your intention each day. If you cannot overcome the simple desires of attention and flattery, then you will fail.”

  I bit my lip. I had wanted more--to flirt with someone handsome, and wear something other than armor and servant’s garb. I envied the fairies that lounged in the orchards and were entertained by someone who doted on them. But I knew that was not my fate. No matter how much I occasionally wished it.

  “I’ll never be like the other girls, will I?”

  “No,” she said. “But why would you want to be? Lung Nue was never like the other girls, neither was I. And I think there are plenty of girls who feel like that no matter their circumstances." She smiled gently. “I began my service at an early age, much like yourself. It was not easy to do what needed to be done, and sometimes it still isn’t. But I have never regretted my service.” Her eyes shone. “When you decide that you don’t need to be like anyone else, you have the freedom to be so much more than labels and self restriction allow. Guan Yin patted my hand. “Then you can make your own fate.”