Free On the Verge (A Charmed Life Book 1) by Joseph Bonis Page A

proudly.
    As she stretched and went through some solo warm up kata, other students began arriving.  Smiles and soft greetings were made between everyone, and the main room soon was a mass of unorganized preparations and warm ups, the quiet replaced with a warm and comfortable chatter as people caught up with each other.
    It was not long before Grandmaster Lee came out and started the class, and the students immediately cut off their conversations and lined up to face him.
    “Class,” he said, “I have good news.  Next weekend, there will be a black belt test after class for Tracy! She's going for First Dan at last!” The class applauded with polite little golf claps, except for Amy who patted her on the shoulder with a more enthusiastic “about time!”  Tracy had long been the best student in the class, over ready to enter the black-belt 'Dan' class instead of the white-belt 'kyu' class.  Few of the kyu actually knew Tracy - most of the people she had used to practice with had either lost interest with Aikido or gone on to the black belt classes.  Other than Amy, she just never had hit it off with any of the long-time students here, and even Amy was someone she only knew from class - they had never met outside of Aikido.
    Today's class started with some almost superfluous stretching - most of the students had taken their tips from Tracy and started stretching and practicing before class started.  After everyone was ready, they started in as a whole on some warm up solo katas, everyone moving in harmony along with Grandmaster Lee.  After a short time of that, he set about pairing everyone off for some dual katas.
    The class lost the organized, synchronized appearance and dissolved into a mess of small pairs.  The pairs had their own poetry, though, as they proceeded through the martial dance, one attacking as the other redirected the attack in movements going back to the founding of Aikido, matched and flowing into mirror positions so that the second person could repeat the movements of the first without disrupting the dance and flow of the kata.
    Grandmaster Lee paired up with Tracy, helping her to practice while giving her pointers on what to watch for during the test.  Tracy could never fail but compare herself to Grandmaster Lee.  Even with the same technical movements, he moved so much more smoothly, his superior skill shining through.  Tracy thought of his talk of control, earlier, and hoped that someday she could attain the same level of control and grace in her own movements.  “I'm not worried about you during the test,” he assured her, “I just figure you'd be more confident if you know what to expect, going in.”
    Sometimes Grandmaster Lee stayed with her and practiced with her, simultaneously making her feel clumsy and inspiring her with his grace, but most of the time he left her to practice one half of the dual kata by herself while he went off to walk among the rest of the class and help them improve their own skills.  He would stop one pair to correct a stance, giving a soft nudge to a foot and a tap to the knee to illustrate how the weight should fall, then he would stop another pair to slide a hand's grip a little bit along a wrist, to adjust the way the fingers lay upon the elbow.
    As she practiced, she started to feel a faint pressure, as if a headache was just threatening.  Unlike a normal pressure headache, though, it didn't just settle behind her temples, but kept moving around to different parts of her head.  Or rather, she realized, the pressure was always in the same direction, no matter how she turned – towards the front of the building.
    “Not again,” she murmured with annoyance, an impossible idea occurring to her as she remembered last night, and a similar feel this morning.  She finished off her current kata and stepped away, giving a short wave of reassurance to Grandmaster Lee as he shot a concerned look in her direction.  It wasn't entirely uncommon, with twenty