Goshawk

The woman who called herself a heroine watched the iron sparks fly and started cheering right along with the children, with not a trace of a true master about her. The boy called Goshawk stood off to the side, staring at her with wide eyes and thinking thoughts no one else knew. She was the one who had given him that name. She had spent three whole days scratching her head over it. At the time, she had rambled on and on about all sorts of things, dyes, birds, and who knew what else. He did not remember much beyond that. He had never said whether he wanted the name or not. She had never cared whether he did. She kept calling him that, and before long it simply became his name. When she seemed to have had her fill of the iron sparks, she stretched lazily. Goshawk immediately rushed over to her. "Now will you teach me martial arts or not?" She scratched her head. "Nope, not yet." Then the iron sparks rose again, and when the show reached its best part, she was right back to clapping and cheering. "If you don't care for this, there are plenty of other fun things at the fair. I'll give you some money. Go have a look around." "No. I want to learn martial arts." "With all these toys and tricks here, there's really nothing you like? When I was your age, I could wreck thirty of my senior brother's contraptions in a day..." "No. I want to learn martial arts." "Hm... sounds like you've still got too much strength to spare. Go up the mountain and catch a wild boar. We'll have boar tonight." "Fine. When I get back, you teach me." The boy, all brute strength and stubbornness, plunged straight into the mountains. That night, he really did return to the daoist temple where they were staying, a whole wild boar slung across his back. The last time they had crossed paths, he had tried to rob her and lost. By the law he believed in, the strong ate the weak. So if she wanted to kill him or cut him down, that was up to her. He would never run. As he ate the boar meat, white breath huffing from his nose in the cold, he stared hard at her. "You shouldn't be this strong." She really should not have been. She was not ruthless enough, not hard enough, not nearly wary enough. Every time she made a move, it was for something with nothing to gain from it at all: a beggar by the roadside, a sick old granny, some street kids fighting. None of it brought her anything. He had grown up scrambling through the streets, snatching food by force because he was stronger than the next person. He knew the rule for staying alive. The weak died, so the strong could live. He wanted to be stronger. Stronger. Stronger still. She looked at the disciple before her, a boy whose joy had been worn away, whose hatred had been worn away too, until all that was left was the need to grow stronger, or rather, the bare instinct to survive. After a long while, she gently patted him on the head. "You don't have to be in such a hurry to grow strong. Someday, you really won't have to." Later, Master taught him martial arts. Later, Master left the daoist temple. Later still, Goshawk learned how to perform iron sparks. Even then, he still did not really understand what use the craft had. You flung molten iron into the air and risked burning yourself, just to earn a few cheers. The blaze lasted only an instant before falling back into dull gray slag. It all seemed meaningless. And yet he still sent those brilliant sparks flying again and again, learning to face fire without fear, searching for the real truth behind his master's strength, something different from the old law of the strong devouring the weak.