Light From Uncommon Stars Read online

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  For Katrina, and Katrinas everywhere …

  People think selling one’s soul for music is as simple as “Sign this contract and—poof!—you’re a genius!”

  Were it that easy, the world would be awash in transcendent song. Obviously, this is not so.

  Souls are cheap.

  The trick is finding the right soul.

  FEBRUARY

  1

  Shhh …

  Yes, it hurt. It was definitely not just a bruise. Yes, she was scared. Her throat was raw from screaming.

  Cautiously, Katrina Nguyen felt under her bed.

  Girl clothes. Boy clothes. Money. Birth certificate. Social security card. Toothbrush. Spare glasses. Backup battery. Makeup. Estradiol. Spironolactone.

  Katrina had made an escape bag the first time her father threatened to kill her.

  At first, the bag seemed an “in case of emergency,” a glass that one would never break.

  But after tonight …

  Why had she let it come to this? Why couldn’t she be what her parents wanted?

  Part of her was in a panic. What have you done? Apologize. Knock on their door right now. Say it’s all your fault—say you’re sorry, say you’ll promise to change.

  But another, stronger, part of Katrina was calm, even cold.

  You have to escape. Tonight. Breathe, be quiet, and listen.

  And so, Katrina listened … for footsteps, for breathing, for sleep. She listened, and listened. Through the dark, she heard her mother’s one last cough. Her father’s one last flush.

  And then, finally, there was silence.

  Katrina clutched her ribs, then propped herself up. The pain was sharp, but manageable. She was in her room, behind a locked door. All she needed to do was be quiet. And calm. She could do this.

  She could do this.

  By the light of her phone, Katrina applied concealer around her eye and to her cheek. It would be better not to face the world with visible bruises.

  Then she placed a note on her bed.

  In it, she had written that she was sorry, that she wished she’d never been born, that she didn’t want to make them angry, and that she’d never bother them again. That part was true.

  But then she wrote that she was going San Francisco.

  There’d be no reason to doubt her; of course she would go there. That’s where the queers went. Her father would punch the wall, throw something heavy and breakable; her mother would cross herself and utter a prayer. In a day or two, her mother would call Tía Claudia across the Bay to find their stupid son and send him home.

  By that time, though, she’d be almost four hundred miles away.

  Silently, Katrina put on her coat. She slid open her bedroom window. Outside, there was noise from a police helicopter, noise from some family next door. There was noise from the highway, from nice cars leaving and less-nice cars coming home. Yet, Katrina moved steadily, almost gracefully, as she gathered what she needed.

  Ticket. Laptop. Escape bag.

  Violin.

  Then Katrina crawled atop her desk, and dropped to the ground. Mercifully, adrenaline overrode her pain. She reached up, slid the window closed, and looked at her phone.

  Good. There was still time. As quickly as she could, Katrina limped past the neighbors, the highway, the cars, the police helicopter overhead. She’d catch BART to Oakland, then find somewhere to wait out the night.

  In the morning, she’d get on a big white bus to Los Angeles.

  Those who’ve never ridden a big white Asian bus probably never will. These buses don’t load at Greyhound bus depots or train stations. Instead, one catches them at an Asian shopping center or supermarket.

  Some are Vietnamese, a few are Korean; many are Chinese. Some trek to Las Vegas. Others shuttle to the casinos of Morongo, Pechanga, San Manuel. Yet another subset runs along a network of Asian communities throughout the state. Oakland Chinatown, San Francisco Chinatown, Little Saigon. San Diego Chinatown.

  And, of course, fleets of them converge on the San Gabriel Valley—Rosemead, San Gabriel, Monterey Park, and the rest of the Asian-American Holy Land.

  “I think girl,” the woman said. She didn’t bother whispering. So what if the kid could hear? They were speaking Cantonese; the young ones were either Americanized or learning Mandarin.

  “Not girl!” the other woman insisted. “Too ugly to be girl.”

  “But she’s wearing makeup!”

  There was silence.

  “Too ugly to be girl,” she finally agreed.

  “Definitely boy. To be a girl would be sad.”

  “Yes, so sad.”

  Those women were around her mother’s age—they could have been her mother’s friends. She didn’t need to understand them to understand them, for it blended with the chatter that she heard every day.

  Katrina didn’t try to block their words; she had given up on that long ago. Instead, Katrina leaned her head against the window and listened … to the voices of the women, the drone of the engine, the roar of a passing truck. She listened to the pain in her ribs, the throbbing keeping time with each swerve and a bump in the road. It was all music.

  Let it be music. If she could make it music, Katrina knew there would a place where she could breathe. A place where she could rest.

  She cradled her violin. She heard a melody.

  Finally, Katrina Nguyen let herself sleep.

  * * *

  Shizuka Satomi opened her eyes. Twenty-two hours ago, she had been in Tokyo.

  And now?

  As if on cue, Shizuka’s thoughts were interrupted by a most horrible sound, as if a violin were choking on a windshield wiper.

  Who could possibly be creating such infernal—

  Oh. Of course.

  Shizuka stilled her breathing and listened further. In addition to the rooster, there were also two hens. Pigeons, four of them. A duck. An old Asian woman humming a pentatonic folk song. A freeway in the distance. And someone just drove up in a Mercedes.

  No other place sounded like this.

  The Aguilars lived in the yellow house. On the corner were the Laus, and next door, the Lieus.

  This was her house in Los Angeles … Monterey Park to be exact.

  She was home.

  Shizuka looked about her room. Thanks to Astrid, her move was already complete. Clothing, furniture, her instruments, all were ready and waiting. Her car had made the trip from Japan and was parked in the driveway downstairs.

  The only item she had personally brought with her lay on her nightstand. It was a long and thin music case. Old, battered, yet exquisitely made, what it held seemed almost impatient, callin
g from just beyond hearing.

  Not yet, Shizuka thought. But soon.

  As the rooster crowed again, Shizuka stood and stretched. She had timed her sleep perfectly. Even with the jet lag, she felt as if she had just taken a refreshing afternoon nap. Of course, she’d be exhausted in the evening, but if all went as planned, she would have already found who she was looking for.

  By the time Shizuka came downstairs, Astrid already had her breakfast ready—rice porridge, hot tea, a soft-boiled egg.

  There was also a peeled tangerine.

  “Astrid, I didn’t ask for—”

  “From Mrs. Aguilar,” Astrid explained. “She brought a whole bag. Won’t you have one? They’re really sweet.”

  Shizuka finished her egg, toast, and tea.

  “I’d rather not give my body any surprises while it’s still unsure of the time zone.”

  Astrid shrugged. “But Mrs. Aguilar said you always liked their tangerines.”

  It was wonderfully sweet, just as always—and juicier than a winter fruit had any right to be. Every neighborhood should have a Mrs. Aguilar …

  “Miss Satomi?”

  “Yes? Oh, I just drifted a little.”

  Astrid frowned. “Miss Satomi, why don’t you rest? It’s only the preliminaries. The finals won’t be held until next week, and Ms. Grohl is sure to advance.”

  Shizuka reapplied her lipstick, a little powder, then reached for her sunglasses.

  “If she is really the seventh, that girl will have no need for the finals, will she?”

  2

  Six times, Shizuka Satomi had created brilliance. Six times, she had taken an aspiring musician, trained them, formed them, and created a star.

  Even more incredible, while most teachers seemed to cultivate a characteristic sound or style, Satomi’s students were at turns icy, devastating, blinding, delicate, frenetic, breathtakingly sensual …

  Her success, her touch, the effortless, almost inevitable way she pulled genius after genius from thin air, was uncanny, almost supernatural.

  Little wonder, then, that people began to call her the Queen of Hell.

  However, it had been over a decade since she had taken on a new student.

  Why?

  Some believed she was the victim of a shattered heart. Before his death, Satomi’s last student, Yifeng Brian Zheng, had been seen with her in Annecy, laughing over hot chocolate and mille-feuille. The dashing young violinist had thanked her from every stage he played; and in a television interview, he claimed it was only after studying with Shizuka Satomi that he understood the true meaning of love.

  Perhaps they’d been more than teacher and student?

  Others surmised that the reason was more mundane, that she might have simply retired. The Queen of Hell had taught Yifeng Zheng, who had followed Kiana Choi, who had followed Sabrina Eisen. And so on and so on.

  Even if she found another, what would be left to accomplish?

  Whatever the reason, with each passing year, more people assumed that the Queen of Hell had no intention of ever teaching again.

  Idiots.

  For ten years, Shizuka Satomi had been searching. From Lausanne, Salzburg, Sydney, most recently Tokyo, she had listened, searched prospect after prospect.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Not that they didn’t try. Not that musicians had not traveled to her, offered her everything they had, all they could imagine.

  As if all they could imagine could be close to enough.

  Others around her, including Tremon Philippe himself, had suggested she was being too selective, perhaps even arbitrary. Surely over the past ten years, she had found musicians who might be appropriate.

  Of course she had.

  Her previous six students had been an almost uninterrupted string of genius. All had been perfectly appropriate. Yet, with each one, Shizuka became more and more aware that something was wrong. No. Something was missing. As she watched each of them shine and fall, sparkle and burn, Shizuka became more and more obsessed with a music playing just beyond hearing—maddeningly familiar, yet always beyond her grasp.

  Until finally, in Tokyo, she heard it.

  Through the din of thirteen million people, and vending machines, ramen joints, Internet cafés, electric trains, and cherry blossoms for each of them twice over, she heard it—coming not from within that city, but from far across the sea.

  Coming from, of all places, home.

  Shizuka swerved past a very slow Lexus, then accelerated onto Huntington Drive.

  The San Gabriel Valley resembled an Asian-American Monopoly board. Cambodians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Vietnamese-Chinese, a few Koreans, even some Japanese crisscrossed past the working-class neighborhoods of Rosemead, Monterey Park, El Monte, through middle-class Temple City, San Gabriel, and Alhambra, all the way up to Boardwalk and Park Place—San Marino and Arcadia, where Shizuka was arriving now.

  She could feel herself breathing faster as she passed the Santa Anita Plaza, a gilded shopping mall where one might procure truffle-filled dumplings, a Hello Kitty latte, and a two-thousand-dollar box of Chinese bird nest.

  Quickly, she sped by the Santa Anita racetrack, home to the fashionable 626 Night Market, drawing Asians of all persuasions for a night of stinky tofu, boba, taro macaroons, and international indie film screenings.

  Until finally, she arrived at her destination: Xinhua Phoenix Hall.

  Xinhua Phoenix Hall was actually the smaller of two buildings designed by the renowned Chinese architect An Wei. Across the courtyard, still shrouded in construction covers, was the site of Xinhua Phoenix Investment Bank’s grand “Golden Friendship Pavilion,” due to open the following year.

  Between them was a massive fountain, in the shape of an ever-flowing teapot. Inscribed in its side was a carved and gilded 永, the character for Eternity.

  It had seemed like 永 since Shizuka had so anticipated a performance. She didn’t know exactly how she knew, but she knew. And when Tremon Philippe mentioned the Grohl girl, that was confirmation enough.

  By now, she could almost feel it physically pulling her—a timeless music that her other students, for all their genius, had only been able to trace.

  Shizuka Satomi took a deep breath. There was no need to hurry. The Queen of Hell did not hurry.

  She checked her makeup one last time, then put on her sunglasses.

  Here would be her last and seventh student.

  Here would be her last and seventh soul.

  And then, what would be left to accomplish?

  Everything.

  * * *

  When one hears “violin competition,” one may envision nervous contestants and a stage. But within the foyer and surrounding hallways, a whole other competition is being waged.

  Someone mentions a trip to Berlin. Another invokes Juilliard. In the foyer of who-is-who, students don’t have teachers. Rather, they are “studying with somebody,” often identified only by last name, as in “she is studying with Korsakova.”

  Regardless of age, whether the competition is international or local, amidst chatter and coffee, in various accents, real and acquired, everyone wants to know:

  Who is more important than whom, and why?

  “I see that the princess reigns, as usual.”

  Landon Fung, of Freiberg Music in Temple City, was talking to Ellen Seidel, a longtime violin teacher, also from Temple City. The princess, also known as Tamiko Giselle Grohl, sat in the corner eating a tiny serving of macaroni potato salad. Amidst all the nervous patter around her, she seemed almost nonchalant as she reviewed her music.

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Of course. But I told her she’d be watching via webcast.”

  “Good. I mean why would Shizuka Satomi come here?”

  Several people turned at the sound of the name.

  “Landon … shhh.”

  “S-sorry!” Landon Fung nodded nervously.

  Of course she was not coming. She couldn’t be.


  Ellen tried to downplay her excitement. But still, Shizuka Satomi—the Shizuka Satomi—had sent a letter saying that she would be watching Tamiko Grohl—Ellen Seidel’s student—at this competition.

  Ellen Seidel had been teaching for years. She had endured spoiled students, careless students, untalented students, students with nightmare parents.

  And then came Tamiko Giselle Grohl.

  Yes, the girl was difficult. She threw tantrums, behaved strangely. But she practiced. She obsessed. And, she was a prodigy. To Ellen Seidel, Tamiko was a reward for so much frustration—an affirmation from God.

  Ellen glanced at her star student. Tamiko was ready for the next step in her career. She needed to grow; nobody stayed with one teacher. But no matter what, Ellen Seidel would always be her first.

  Most people assumed that Tamiko’s next step would be conservatory, like the Kilbourne School, or perhaps Juilliard. Ellen agreed this was logical.

  But Shizuka Satomi had nothing to do with logic.

  Because Shizuka Satomi’s last student was Yifeng Zheng. And before that, Kiana Choi. And before that? Sabrina Eisen. And so on and so on. These were household names, well, at least in the households of violinists. Each had won medals. Each had been stars.

  Were Tamiko to join that pantheon, Ellen’s life as her esteemed former teacher would never be the same. She’d accompany Shizuka and Tamiko to Paris. Frankfurt. A fourteen-stop grand tour of Asia. Meanwhile, back home, a line of brilliant young students would be waiting, each eager for her wisdom, for a promise of greatness.

  “I’m studying with Seidel,” they would say.

  And all this was possible if Shizuka Satomi, even if merely online, would watch Tami—

  And then, without warning, someone gasped.

  Long black hair. Blood-red dress. The timeless half smile that a madman might paint. And of course, sunglasses hid her eyes.

  Shizuka Satomi. The Queen of Hell.

  At her approach, the hall fell silent.

  Of course it would. Ellen Seidel had heard the stories, but nothing could have prepared her for this. This was more than power, ambition, beauty, or even genius. In the legendary teacher’s presence, such words seemed meaningless—devoured by an unrelenting, inescapable flame.