In front of the young girl sat seven or eight little rascals. The oldest looked to be about eight or nine, while the youngest might have been only four or five. They all sat cross-legged on the ground, looking up at her.
Wu Yao did not make a sound. She crept forward a few more steps along the base of the wall, squinting her eyes.
The light at the end of the alley was filtered into scattered fragments by several crooked old trees. Phelin crouched on the ground with her back to Wu Yao, poking at the dirt with a small twig in her hand, her posture looking as if she were writing.
The group of little rascals formed a semi-circle, unusually quiet, with seven or eight pairs of eyes completely fixed on Phelin's hand.
Wu Yao's curiosity was piqued.
She took a few steps back, circled around to the side of the alley, found the courtyard wall of the neighboring house, and silently scaled it, landing next to a pile of firewood in the yard.
There was no one in the yard. Only two hens were dozing in the corner. Startled by her sudden arrival, they clucked twice and shrank back.
Wu Yao moved a few stacked adobe bricks from beside the firewood pile to stand on. Gripping the top of the wall with both hands, she rested her chin on the back of her hands, revealing only her eyes and half of her forehead over the edge.
Now she could see clearly.
Phelin was teaching the children how to read and write.
She used a small twig to draw characters in the dirt, pronouncing them slowly word by word for the children, who then traced them in the dirt in front of their own feet.
Stroke by stroke, they were as serious as if they were accomplishing some grand task.
“This character is pronounced ‘mai’,” Phelin wrote a crooked character in the dirt, then looked up to explain. “It means wheat. The wheat that is ground into flour to make bread. My mother walks by the wheat fields every day, so this is her favorite character!”
Wu Yao squinted her eyes to look at the character.
Her way of judging whether Phelin had written it correctly was very simple: she just had to see if the scribbles on the ground transformed into the Chinese characters she recognized.
This character for wheat was clearly correct.
The children lowered their heads and followed along, each holding their twig with their own awkward grip.
“This character is pronounced ‘hua’.” She drew another new character on the ground, which was much more complex than the previous one. She drew very slowly, her small lips pursed, as if every stroke was being squeezed out from the tips of her fingers.
A child with pigtails raised her hand. “Sister Phelin, what kind of flower is it?”
“Every flower is this flower,” Phelin replied righteously. “Purple flowers are flowers, yellow flowers are flowers, and red flowers are flowers. They all use this character!”
The child with pigtails nodded half-understandingly and lowered her head to start writing.
She wrote very diligently, taking four tries to get all the strokes down. Although it was crooked, it was barely recognizable as the character for flower.
Then she looked up, wanting to show off her achievement to Sister Phelin.
But as soon as she looked up, she made direct eye contact with Wu Yao, who was leaning over the wall.
The pigtail-wearing child shuddered, and the twig in her hand dropped to the ground with a clatter.
Before a scream could escape her throat, she saw the strange person on the wall press a finger to her lips, making a “shh” gesture.
Wu Yao winked at her and shook her head.
The child swallowed her scream, nodded obediently, bent down to pick up the twig, and lowered her head to continue writing.
However, every now and then, she would quietly peek up to check the wall, making sure the strange person was still there.
Phelin was a very attentive little teacher, and she immediately noticed her student's distracted movements.
“Sandra, what's wrong?” Phelin turned her head, following her gaze.
Atop the wall, a head was smiling right at her.
The braid tied with a blue-and-white cloth strip behind her head hung halfway down the wall, swaying gently in the breeze.
The person's eyes were curved into crescents, her lips curled upward, still carrying that fearless look.
“Sister Wu Yao!” Phelin cried out in pleasant surprise, the twig in her hand nearly flying out.
Wu Yao knew she couldn't hide anymore, and besides, her curiosity had been mostly satisfied.
Watching Phelin act as a little teacher, instructing a bunch of little rascals in reading and writing, was far more interesting than any cutscene she had ever watched in games.
She vaulted over the wall, the hem of her black robe unfurling in the air like a great black bird dropping down, her boot soles making a soft thud on the bluestone pavement.
The children's mouths fell open so wide they could have fit eggs.
One child who had just scrambled up from the ground rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.
This person had flown down from the wall! Not jumped down, but flown!
“Big sister is so amazing...” she whispered to her companion next to her.
Phelin had already run up to Wu Yao. Taking her hand, she turned to her students and proudly announced, “Sister Wu Yao is a witch! She knows many powerful spells!”
After saying that, she felt the word “witch” might not be shocking enough, so she quickly added, “She can summon fireballs! This big—”
She spread her arms to gesture an exaggerated size and continued, “She can also make the ground collapse! And she can make vines bind up all the bad guys!”
“Wow—”
The seven little rascals gasped in awe at the same time, their voices as synchronized as if they had rehearsed it.
The child named Sandra looked up at Wu Yao, her eyes full of shining little stars. “Can you really summon fireballs?”
Adored by the child like this, how could Wu Yao possibly hold back?
She cleared her throat, flattened her right hand palm-up, and slightly parted her fingers.
A ball of orange-red flame leaped out of her palm, even larger than the size Phelin had gestured, prompting a collective, even louder “Wow—” from the group of children.
“Do you want to feel what it's like to fly?” Wu Yao extinguished the flame and winked at them.
Eight little heads nodded up and down in unison, their frequency as fast as chicks pecking at grain.
Wu Yao stood up and spread her arms. Pale green wind elements drifted from her fingertips like a layer of transparent gauze, gently wrapping around each child.
She reduced the effect of the Wind Wings spell to the absolute minimum, which would make them feel exceptionally light and swift when running, but not to the point of jumping too high or flying into the sky.
“Alright,” Wu Yao clapped her hands. “Try running.”
The first to move was the youngest girl. She closed her eyes and dashed forward, her short legs churning rapidly. Then, she really felt as if she were flying, her entire body as light as a dandelion blown by the wind.
“I'm flying! I'm flying!” Her voice cracked with excitement as she spread her arms and ran wildly around the open space.
How could the other children possibly hold back now?
In an instant, the open space erupted in chaos.
The eight children scrambled to dash forward. Some spread their arms and flapped like birds, some kept their legs together and hopped like kangaroos, while others simply ran in circles until they got so dizzy they fell flat on their butts.
“Wait for me—”
“You bumped into me!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm going to fly away!”
The children's voices overlapped, noisier than a pond full of frogs.
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