Auba

Saint of Light.

“They stand at the river’s edge as I swing from the willow’s branches, somersaulting with a whoop and a splash to the water. And I am watched for a season long while I perfect this technique, and while the branches I dive from grow higher. The men of the temple see my progress as the splashes turn into dives, and as the dives gain the perfection of hard practice, until I leave no bubbles, no ripples, behind.

“They watch my thickening arms, my broadening shoulders. They see my ability to balance, and the way I land following a tumble, or indeed a series of them, safe and strong and not splayed to the soil with a crash. They see the way I bend at the waist, my upper body tight against my lower. I make many surprising shapes with the suppleness of my limbs. And they add these things together, and see how I might help them.

“‘You are fearless, at a height, boy,’ Colo says one day.

“He takes me out to the bamboo groves. Wild emerald miles of them. At this time of year the stems soar high into the air, their upper leaves lost to the sky, though I see the sharp green patterns of them interlocking as I begin to climb.

“Twenty feet, at first. To the height of the willow branches that I know.

“And later, higher. Forty feet. Further. I do not need the rope that he offers, as I know I can do this. I understand, it seems instinctively, the flex of the bamboo, the way with knees and hands and feet I can edge higher. The way it sways beneath my weight yet doesn’t crack.

“By fifteen I walk the bamboo. To the very top. Till my head pokes out above the topmost leaves and I have emerged from the emerald canopy out into the wide blue sky. I walk the bamboo as safe as if it were the street beneath my feet.

“Some boys have fallen.

“I fly.”