“All right, all right.” Seh sighed. “I'll give it a try. When do you want to start?”
Hok felt a smile creep up her face. “First thing tomorrow.”
The next morning, Hok was surprised to wake to the sound of Seh's voice. She opened her eyes to find that he had gotten out of bed on his own and dressed in his gray peasant's robe and pants. He was at the far end of PawPaw's main room, talking with Cheen and Sum as they finished their packing. By the time Hok had wiped the sleep from her eyes and gotten out of bed, Cheen and Sum were ready to leave.
Hok helped Seh walk down to the river to say their final goodbyes. Seh held on to her arm the whole way, and he only slipped once on the slick yellow river mud near the water's edge. Hok thought it was a good start.
Hok was sorry to see Cheen and Sum go. However, she realized that Sum was completely healed and the two of them had to get on with their lives. Hopefully, she and Seh would do the same soon. After several long hugs and a few tears among themselves and PawPaw, Cheen and Sum shoved off aboard the battered old skiff that had brought them there. As soon as they were out of sight, Hok and Seh got to work.
Hok began Seh's training with an exercise that seemed simple enough but was surprisingly difficult. She had Seh stand on one leg. Hok knew firsthand that balancing on one foot with your eyes open is easy but once your eyes are closed, everything changes. Grandmaster had made Hok practice standing on one leg blindfolded for hours on end, like a crane, when she was younger. Because of his own previous training, Seh had little trouble mastering this.
Hok decided to move on. She made Seh do one-legged squats next, with his raised leg held parallel to the ground. This Seh found more challenging, especially when Hok dared him to squat all the way down until his butt touched the ground. However, Seh quickly got the hang of this demanding exercise, too. Even better was the fact that Seh said his dizziness was beginning to subside.
Another nice side effect of the training was that Seh's snake seemed to be getting used to Hok being near it. When she would grab Seh now, if he lost his balance or needed a hand, the snake didn't appear to notice. Seh told her that snakes often grew accustomed to their handler's scent. While Hok wouldn't go so far as to touch the snake, she certainly felt less uneasy reaching out to Seh now.
Hok was feeling very good about Seh's rapid progress. She decided to keep pushing him.
Hok found an old board behind PawPaw's house and placed it over several small, flat rocks. The board formed a narrow walking platform that was twice as long as Seh was tall and rested only a few finger-widths off the ground. Hok held one of Seh's arms and made him walk across the board. This exercise was designed to both improve balance and teach a person to walk in a perfectly straight line. Hok knew how much this training had helped her, improving her skills to the point that she could easily walk blindfolded across a board spanning the distance between two Cangzhen rooftops. Fortunately, Seh didn't need to get to that level. By that evening, Hok was confident Seh had gotten all he needed out of this exercise.
After their evening meal, Seh said that he wanted to continue his training. PawPaw took over and showed Seh a few practical exercises that she had developed. Hok thought the most ingenious one was when PawPaw had Seh pour water and leave a single finger inside an empty cup so that he could feel how full it was.
Over the next three days, Hok taught Seh basic hand- and foot-juggling techniques. She used to practice these blindfolded, too, in order to help improve her reaction skills and timing. Hok thought that if Seh's hands and feet could react quickly enough to keep an object in the air, he could react fast enough to stationary objects while walking that he could avoid knocking them over. Seh had always had exceptionally fast hands thanks to his snake-style kung fu training, and he turned out to be an outstanding juggler.
On the fifth day Hok had run out of things to teach Seh, so she took him into the forest and made him walk unassisted. Seh did remarkably well. Each time his foot met a rock or his outstretched hands touched a tree, he compensated and changed course in mid-stride, continuing forward without tripping or bumping into anything. He seemed to have developed a sixth sense almost overnight.
As strange as it sounded, Hok also thought that Seh's snake might be helping him in some way, too. On more than one occasion, Hok had seen the snake's head poke out of Seh's sleeve, tightening its body whenever Seh was dangerously close to bumping into something.
Whatever it was that led to Seh's new skills, the overall effect was that Seh's mood improved dramatically. He wasn't quite back to his old self, but he was definitely in much better spirits. PawPaw noticed, too. She took Hok aside at the end of the day.
“You've done well with Seh, Hok,” PawPaw said. “You should be proud of yourself.”