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From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

I set out to explain myself to you.

To tell you my story from my perspective in the hope that you would forgive me.

Now that

I have your forgiveness, I find myself unsure of how to end this letter to you.

I was surprised though also relieved to hear the optimism in your message and what you saw in both Edward and Louise, that

perhaps these stories may have a use, after all.

So let me leave you with a bit of optimism, and my own message for you, which

really comes from Torou, the man who is the greatest fortune I did not deserve, the awkward soup boy turned best grandfather,

and in the middle, the steadfast partner who helped me in every way.

There was an afternoon when it was just me and him in the hospital.

He was nibbling on a cookie, and I was trying to write.

Neither of us found our tasks satisfying, so we ended up staring out the window, at the lamppost in the emptying parking lot,

already dark, the sun setting so early in these Boston winters.

I took his hand.

After all these years, he still wears a watch every day.

I unclasped it from his wrist.

“Four oh-five,” I said.

“You have until four fifteen to tell me everything you’re thinking.”

He laughed, shaking his head.

But he obliged.

He told me about all the preparations Monica was doing at home.

At 4:07 he told

me that Edward was coming back.

He asked if we had been too hard on him, a question we’ve asked each other so many times.

At 4:09 he told me he did not think Edward would return if it were not for me.

Not because of my illness, but because I was

the one he loved.

He insisted Edward had left because of him, the difficult father, and that he would do better this time.

He was grateful for this second chance.

At 4:12 he said the sun really sets too early these days.

But that there is nothing quite like a New England sunset in the

winter.

And at 4:14 he said that for all of our suffering in this life, he hoped to still find me in our next one.

Finally, at 4:15, I could speak again.

I told him I had brought him enough misfortune for one lifetime, let alone all that

was yet to come, that it hurt to even think about what he and Monica and Edward would have to go through.

He shook his head

and waved his hand.

“The only thing I would change about our next lives,” he said, “is that we choose a house without stairs.”

And we both laughed until tears came, and my body ached, all too aware of the truth of his words, my whole body grateful for

him, for everything about him.

When I began my relationship with Torou the second time, I made sure he knew the truth, for it was my hiding that had driven

him away initially, all the way to America.

He did not press me to reveal my secrets to him.

I wished to anyway.

Above all,

without you or Mother in my life, I was feeling very lonely in this power.

But there was the complicated matter of my having disappeared from the Nationalists’ watch, having unceremoniously burned down their house.

If Torou were to even mention to his parents he was seeing me, word would no doubt spread through that small Taiwan community and eventually into the ears of Mr.

Gao.

So I told him he could not let anyone from home know he had found me and, ideally, nobody in America either.

“Tell me what you have to hide,” he said when I made this request.

And I was ready to tell him.

I had it all planned out—a ridiculous series of events, really, now that I think back on it.

The plan combined the truth by making it more palatable, or so I hoped, via seduction.

“Take me to your room first,” I said.

He lived in a small dormitory room with a bed for one.

“This is what I bleed,” I told him, holding up a new Phoenix Pencil Company pencil.

He smiled at first, thinking it a metaphor.

Then I kissed him and pushed him onto the bed.

I still had the pencil in my hand even as my legs wrapped around him, even as our breathing quickened, and he traced his lips

along my neck.

When I pushed the pencil into his hand, he broke away from me.

“What do I do with this?”

“Write something.”

“Write what?”

“Whatever you’re feeling.”

“Can it wait?”

“No.”

He fumbled with a notebook on his bedside table, distractedly flipping it open as I turned his face back to me.

As he entered

me, the scratching of the pencil heart against paper thundered, the paper crinkled, and I almost forgot what the next step

was supposed to be.

“Press it into me,” I remembered.

“Mm.”

“I mean the pencil.”

“What?”

“Into my wrist. Don’t worry. Just push it in.”

He was too tentative.

I guided his hand, pushing the heart deep into my wrist, watching the vein along my arm turn black.

For a moment I could feel his thoughts as he had been writing, could see myself the way he saw me.

I held him tight.

“What is happening?” he breathed, tracing my arm.

The phoenix glowed.

I raised my hips and he moaned, all other thoughts gone.

The phoenix lightened, fading from dark to gray as he rocked into

me.

His notebook fell to the linoleum with a clatter.

We were as connected as two people could be.

Our bodies pressed against

each other, his thoughts coursing through my blood.

My body Reforged his words eagerly, the most pleasurable Reforging I ever

had.

I closed my eyes and let the Reforging take over.

There we were, on his bed.

The last time I had Reforged his pencil was six

years earlier, a lifetime and a continent ago, when I saw him working on his math and felt a hint of his love.

But this time

I felt all of it, or what I thought was all of it.

I basked in its warmth, its safety, having no idea how much it could grow

through the decades, how far-reaching it could be.

I saw him fumble with the pencil I had given him, watched him write nothing

but scribbles in his notebook.

I recovered to find him propped up on an elbow, looking at me curiously.

“I asked you to write something, not just scribble,” I laughed, tracing a hand along his cheek.

“It’s very difficult for me to think properly in certain circumstances,” he offered.

“And I thought you were the brightest in Taiwan!”

“Hardly. But even if I was, you have always been my weakness.”

He reached his hand out, and I gave him mine.

Pulling me back into him, he ran his fingers along my wrist, traced the dormant

phoenix.

“But how did you know I scribbled?” The notebook was still on the ground, untouched.

“Tell me what happened to that pencil

heart.”

I told him the truth.

And the truth started with you—from the day you came to Shanghai, how I bullied you and you struck back, how you lorded the knowledge of Reforging over me until Mother finally allowed me to learn.

I told him how Mr.

Gao worked our mothers, and the secret network he established thanks to their ability.

I told him how mostly we Reforged through bleeding, the words bled back out, but there was this second method where only the Reforger would experience the words, no one else, and that was what I had just done.

I even told him what we were doing in Taiwan, how we were working against locals like him.

I told him Linda had shared what your mother did in Shanghai.

And I told him every detail of what I had done in California, even though I knew it would hurt him, knew it would hurt to know about Mr.

Gao and the types of people I had betrayed.

But I had to tell him the whole truth.

If he was to turn me away, I had to make it now.

I could not bear spending more time with him knowing he could still leave me because of the pencils.

He sat up and ran his hand through his hair.

“How remarkable,” he murmured.

His intrigue did not carry any anger.

I nearly cried.

“All this time, I was studying how we

communicate. The age-old problem: How do you send a message to somebody else only they can read? And here you were the whole

time.”

“Pencils can’t be the only solution,” I said.

“Yes, but the other solutions are not as... elegant. The Egyptians had a way of substituting hieroglyphs by altering every

few symbols. But it was guessable by anyone who had enough time to sit down and take a deep look. The Greeks had a neat one,

too—they wrapped papyrus in a ribbon around a staff, then would write their message down the length of the staff. They would

then unwind the papyrus, which would be nonsensical without the staff. Two pieces were needed to form the message. Do you

see how it is a difficult problem?”

“But it’s been so long since the Greeks and Egyptians. Somebody must have come up with a better solution by now.”

“Not an unbreakable one. America had a good one, during the Great War. They had Native Americans transmit messages in their tribal languages. I have told you already how sorry I was to hear of your mother’s passing. I am even more sorry to hear how she was used. But the world has a history of exploiting people like you, people like your mother, people like the Native Americans, for their language and abilities, and then casting them aside.

“Now we have machines that can do all sorts of math, so we can formulate codes that are harder and harder to crack.

But the

other side has good machines, too, that can crack our math.

” He shook his head and laughed.

“And here you are.” He ran his

hand along my arm.

I found myself leaning away from him, gathering the sheets around myself again, the barest bit of separation possible.

He

noticed immediately.

“I wouldn’t make you do anything for me.” In that moment he was the boy alone at the party again, eyes wide, drinking soup.

“Even if it completed my thesis. Even if it landed me a professorship.”

When he opened his arms, I crawled into them and let my head rest on his chest.

I felt, for the first time since leaving Shanghai,

finally safe.

But if the community in Taiwan was small, the community of immigrants from Taiwan to Boston was even smaller.

I knew how to

avoid the ones who might be Nationalist spies—I had worked with enough of their type in California to pick them out.

Typically,

straight backed, slicked hair, wealthy in Taiwan, trying not to show their struggle in America.

Torou, however, did not have

the same instincts.

He was always curious, always meeting new people.

I doubt he told anyone my name or even that I came from

Taiwan.

Torou, or maybe even Linda, one of them must have mentioned me, then I was likely followed and figured out.

I knew

their ways, and still, I could not beat them.

One of these men grabbed my wrist when I placed a bowl of noodle soup at his table.

“A gift for you, from Mr. Gao,” he said.

He pressed a pencil into my hand.

As soon as he released me, I swept the pencil into my pocket and retreated to the kitchen.

The next time I came out, the man was gone.

In Torou’s dormitory, I sharpened the pencil.

Its black was a rare thing now.

With Mother gone and the Shanghai company burned

to the ground and me hiding in America, there was nobody left making these pencils.

I held in my hands likely one of the last

Mother ever made.

I had to Reforge it, even if I feared the message it contained.

Torou was bent over his desk, angling his light on his textbook.

He paid me no attention, did not even notice I was Reforging.

Only when I sucked in a breath from the cut did he turn around.

It had been a while since the last time.

I had forgotten the

pain of it.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Mr.

Gao’s characters formed slowly across the page—so slowly, did it always take so long?

I already knew what it would say.

He was sending his men to take me back to Taiwan.

I could no longer be trusted in America.

I would work for him, take over

for Mother, until I could repay him for the house I burned and for my betrayal.

Torou crumpled the note.

“Leave the state for a month or so,” he said as if it were the simplest thing.

“They have no real power here.”

“They will take you in to find out where I have gone. Or they will threaten my father back home.”

I could tell he did not believe me.

He had been coddled—he was what they wanted, the star student who would prove to the Americans

that there were worthwhile people in Taiwan.

He might have been more familiar with their ways once, but here, I knew them

much better.

I had been one of them.

I was cornered.

I was also ready to gnaw off my own arm before leaving this little life I had built with Torou.

He would graduate before long, find a job, gain citizenship, and we would marry and, eventually, I would have citizenship too, and then I would bring you over.

It was a long process, I knew, but it was the first time I was remotely close to realizing this dream.

“I’ll think of something,” I said.

I paced the long corridors of MIT while Torou was in class.

Nobody stopped me.

I peered into classrooms, mulling the idea

I had posed to Mother before I had left Taiwan: Was it possible to make a pencil that could not be Reforged?

That was the

key, I believed, or rather the lock—a lock on this ability.

Torou winced when he heard my idea.

It would be painful, mostly for me.

But he saw I would not change my mind and connected

me with his friend who had access to a kiln on campus.

I worked at the restaurant during the day, ending my shift after midnight, and then I would go to the kiln.

I dredged up all

the theory Mother had taught us.

Torou helped me research, lending his always curious mind to material science.

By then I

loved him, though I still ached for your presence.

Your mind would have easily solved this problem or would have at least

sparked more thought on my behalf, more competition.

I would prototype a pencil heart, stab it into my wrist.

Each time, Torou flinched.

I was looking for a heart that would not

melt into my wrist at all.

I tried every percentage combination of graphite and clay, and every one still Reforged.

So I began

to mix in different elements, whatever I could get my hands on.

The heart still needed to be able to write.

It needed to still

be a pencil.

And I only had until Mr.

Gao’s men made it to Boston.

My only comfort was that Boston took much longer to reach

than California.

And eventually, we did it.

It was a mixture of a whole host of elements, along with graphite and clay, but no matter how I

angled the heart at my wrist, my body would not accept it.

Torou smiled, eyes tired.

“It hurts me to lose this method of secure communication,” he teased.

“I am securing it for everybody,” I said.

“Between a person and their paper, and no one else.” I carved our phoenix into it.

I was ready to face whatever men Mr.

Gao sent.

Never did I imagine that he, himself, would show up.

I almost ran at the sight of his crisp western suit, the slicked-back hair, the familiar air of confidence.

He had aged, of

course, though he still sat straight, appearing far too high-class for our dingy restaurant.

Had I actually meant something

to him, for him to come all this way?

Or had I merely injured his pride?

I took deep breaths in the kitchen, clutching the stack of pencils I had made.

It was all that I had.

Under the guise of politeness,

he escorted me out of the restaurant and to a small office on the corner of the block.

“Yun,” he sighed.

We sat across from each other at a desk.

The lines around his eyes had become more severe.

Around us, his

men stood in a suited line against the wall.

Of everyone who had been a part of our lives in Shanghai, at the end, it should

have been me and you here.

It was a distortion, a sign that something had gone horribly wrong, how instead, at the end, it

was me and him.

“Did you think I would not find you?”

“I can’t go back,” I told him.

“You should save the money on my airplane ticket.”

He practically rolled his eyes.

“We need you in Taiwan. And you owe us terribly. Your father would be happy to see you.”

The mention of my father was a threat.

Though we had never been close, the thought of him alone in Taiwan still hurt.

“I can’t Reforge anymore,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

Though his voice was calm, I recognized his anger.

“I lost the ability,” I said, heart beating fast, clutching the pencils behind my back.

“How could you have lost the ability?” he demanded.

His eyes, which had known me since I was a child, had seen everything my body had to offer, drilled into me.

I gripped the arm of my chair so tightly I could not feel my fingers anymore.

A sudden sinking feeling—I had practiced this scenario with Torou, but never had Torou’s kindness remotely resembled Mr.

Gao.

“After I lost your child,” I invented wildly.

You were right—when we were young, I was always lying.

Lying to trick my grandmother into telling me more about Reforging,

lying to have Mother do the same.

It was like his eyes stripped me down to my essence, to the only skill I had been born with,

my most outstanding trait, and I lied and lied to save myself.

“What?” he said again, this time darkly.

The men around the room began to shift.

“Yes. You slept with me and then left. My blood didn’t come that next month. And I was alone here, carrying your child, running

a restaurant and your surveillance network. But I Reforged too much. It was in my blood. In the baby’s blood. The baby didn’t

even make it a few months in my body before the pencils killed it. And when I lost the baby, I lost my Reforging too.”

“That’s...” He had gone pale.

“That’s not possible. Your aunt never said...”

“Did you ever think that maybe she didn’t lose your child on purpose?” I was treading on thin ice.

I recognized this weak

point, knew this was where I needed to twist.

“That maybe the same thing that happened to me happened to her?”

“Don’t—”

“You made us Reforge, over and over. You killed us.”

“Your aunt never lost the ability to Reforge.”

“You just didn’t know Meng and I were doing them all.”

His jaw tightened.

“But you Reforged my pencil. A few weeks ago.”

“I did not. I guessed what you had to say. Do you want me to prove it? You, who made us go through this?” My voice became shrill.

I pulled out a pencil, one whose heart I made with Torou and which I had encased carefully in the darkest wood I could get my hands on.

“You, who promised me your heart, then left, whose child took away my one power? Took away my aunt’s? I’ll show you, let me show you—”

I stood tall in front of him, pulling up my sleeve, the phoenix pale.

I stabbed it with the pencil.

It gouged my skin and I shrieked.

He stepped back and the men stepped forward.

“Stop her,” Mr.

Gao said weakly.

A man tried to grab me from behind.

I threw him off and stabbed my wrist again.

The tip of the pencil was red and gleaming,

blood trickled down my phoenix, pure red without any ink in sight.

I stabbed again and again, screaming, and crying, thinking

of you and your mother and my mother and all of the wars and countries we fled, until two men were able to separate my arms

and I was weeping, really, truly, weeping, from the pain, and from so much more.

“Clean her up,” Mr.

Gao commanded from what sounded very far away.

“She is useless to us.”

The men were kind about removing the pencil from my hand, wiping my blood from the ground, from my arm, then bandaging it.

Maybe they really did feel for me.

One of them walked me back to the restaurant, even bowing before departing.

Torou was there, waiting for me, pale next to Linda.

He took my hand, my arm, and pulled me into him.

“I’m fine,” I breathed, holding on to him tight.

“It’s over.”

And then he told me something I thought I would never forget.

I will forget it, I know that now, but maybe if I pass it on to you, you can remember for me, and maybe the world can remember that there was once a man like him, who somehow managed to love me through all I have put him through.

“So many messages, sent through you,” he murmured into my hair.

I want to share his words with you, for your life and my life have always been intertwined.

“But you have a story, too, and you deserve to live it.”

How many stories passed through us?

Combined with our mothers, it must be in the thousands.

Stories Reforged in our bodies

and bled back to life, whether we wanted it or not, whether or not the authors wanted it.

I don’t know if we have done enough

good in the world for all the harm we have caused.

But I understand.

Finally, I feel you close once more.

I understand and I forgive.

Neither of us had an easy time, made worse

by our abilities.

Perhaps my grandmother was right, all those years ago, to not want me to learn.

But that would mean I would

not have been able to feel at one with you.

Perhaps you are right, and in this world, which is kinder than the one we grew up in, it would be okay to share my story.

Oh, don’t wave your hand and pretend like this isn’t a big deal for us, or that you don’t still care for me, after all these

years.

I know what you have done for Monica.

Knew as soon as the pencil-shaped package showed up in the mail with Louise’s

name on the return address.

Where else would your girl get one of our pencils but from you?

Thank you, truly.

I’ve asked Monica to go to Shanghai to give you this last pencil heart of mine.

Edward has already invited her.

I will likely

never see you again—who knew, at our young age, that would be the case.

Traveling would disorient me too much, and the version

you would see likely would not be a version I would want you to see.

Take my words, take my heart, they are yours always.

Even as my mind fades, I give my story to you, you who know in the same way that I know, their power.

I have lived mine, and you have lived yours.

That our stories can be together now, for this moment in time, is a gift.

That they can help another two girls move forward with their lives—that is the greatest power of all.

—Wong Yun