Chapter 9 - Master Jo'el

Silence descended upon the squabbling monks as though the new arrival had tossed a Dragon into their midst. An enormously tall, rail-thin monk peered down at Lia, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robes, his ascetic face serene. What betrayed his power were the blue eyes, flashing at Lia like twin blades.

“This pustulent offspring of a windroc …”

The tall monk said, “Master Ja’alkon, please. Try to muster your dignity.”

Ja’alkon folded his arms with an audible sigh. “Master Jo’el, I am merely moved with righteous indignation that this female should appear from nowhere, invade our sanctuary, and–how did you get here, you miniature brigand?”

“Rallon, lift your brother off her,” directed the tall monk. “Girl, stand up, and–Islands’ sakes! What scanty attire is this? Quick, take my robe.”

Hualiama ducked her head in embarrassment. The monk thrust a robe over her head, which puddled around her ankles in a vivid demonstration of the difference between their respective heights. She wanted to protest about how uncomfortable her trussed hands were, but then it struck her that she knew the tall monk, who had an exceedingly long face with a fantastic beak of a nose that seemed perfect for staring down at diminutive girls and crushing them with a single look.

She essayed a bow curtailed by the throttling strip of loincloth.

“Master Jo’el, I trust you’ve had no more trouble with your Dragonship?”

“Well,” said the Master, eyebrows crawling toward the swirling blue tattoos adorning his pate. His lips seemed to quiver at their corners before he compressed them into a thin line. “Well,” he began again, a stutter-step as he took stock of his captive. “This is most unexpected.”

Ja’alkon made a triumphant crowing noise. “See?”

The blue eyes fixed Lia with unnerving intensity. “Who are you for, girl? Tell me, who are you for?”

“Er …”

“Which King?”

“My father, of course.”

In the stunned silence, Master Ja’alkon could be heard to splutter, “No, she isn’t. No. Is she? No. Couldn’t be.”

Master Jo’el folded his stick-thin arms across his chest. “Masters, I know this girl. She stopped to help me repair my Dragonship on Fa’akkior Island, last year after storm season, as I recall. She jury-rigged my broken sails and patched up a broken stove-pipe. Masters, I have great pleasure in presenting to you the daughter of our one true King, the Princess Hualiama of Fra’anior.”

“That pilfering scoundrel is a Princess?”

To Lia’s astonishment, Master Jo’el’s smile only broadened, crinkling the area around his eyes like old parchment. “And your rightful ruler in our King’s absence, Master Ja’alkon.”

She had the impression that Master Jo’el very much enjoyed making that statement, especially the emphasis he placed on the words ‘rightful ruler’. Perhaps now was not the moment to protest that she was a worthless royal ward and not a true Princess at all.

One should never steal a Dragon’s thunder.

Ja’alkon seemed in danger of choking as Lia turned a bright, albeit slightly brittle smile on him. “The Master is right. I should not have trespassed. I am truly sorry to have caused you such deep distress, Master Ja’alkon. Will you forgive me?”

The Master wrung his podgy hands as he laboured to formulate a polite response.

Jo’el put in dryly, “Well is it said that a woman’s smile is her greatest weapon.” His gaze paused on Rallon for a second as he spoke, causing the young monk to colour deeply.

A flutter of wings interrupted them. Flicker zipped through the open doorway and landed on Lia’s shoulder with a deft manoeuvre. “I leave you alone for one minute, Lia,” he hissed, in a whisper clearly pitched to carry to every ear present. “Could you not stay out of trouble for one whole minute?”

“And this?” squeaked another of the Masters.

“I shall take charge of this dumb beast, Master Ra’oon,” said Ja’alkon.

“Dumb beast?” spluttered Flicker. “I’ll give you a dumb beast, you great waddling ralti sheep.”

Lia clucked at him, “Shut the monkey-chatter, beast.”

Drawing himself up to his full two feet of height, the dragonet announced, “I am Flicker, and I saved this ungrateful imp’s life. Twice. But you are wise to keep her tied up. Indeed, she’s such a troublemaker, I must counsel you to lock her in your deepest dungeon, at once.”

“Oh?” said Master Jo’el.

“By the First Egg, indeed,” agreed the dragonet, warming to his task. “You might even consider feeding her to the Great Dragon.”

The Master frowned. “On a dragonet’s word?”

Flicker appeared unfazed. “Unless you want to help her defeat Ra’aba. You see, that traitor tried to murder my Lia, but I rescued her–indeed, at great personal sacrifice.” At the sound of Lia clearing her throat, Flicker hurried on, “She has been living on Ha’athior Island ever since, with me. I have tried to teach her the basics of civilised behaviour, truly, I have. But I despair.”

Lia struggled to contain her laugher. Oh, Flicker! He had learned entirely too much Island Standard for her liking.

Master Jo’el, however, seemed to have the measure of the dragonet. Stroking his beard, he said, “This is wise counsel, my fellow-Masters. Clearly, this wild Princess is in need of a firm hand of instruction–”

“We are not taking her in!” announced Master Ja’alkon.

From his great height, Jo’el quirked a wire-thin eyebrow at the source of the interruption. “You can’t find her a private chamber in the apprentice quarters, Master?”

“But … but she’s already created utter chaos and mayhem,” spluttered the Master, seemingly gripped by a vision of the end of the Island-World, with stars hurtling to their deaths in the Cloudlands and volcanoes blasting the Islands to smithereens. “What of our dignity? What of these young, impressionable monks? She–” he collected himself with a supreme effort “–she’s a girl.”

Finally, Master Jo’el’s smile lit up his face. “Then I wish for us all the discovery of a little joyous indignity.”

* * * *

Hualiama smacked down on the hard-packed sand with a grunt. She rolled, dodging Hal’s follow-up blow, leaped to her feet, and promptly had her footing scythed out from beneath her by his five-foot ironwood staff. Lia ate sand this time.

Get up. Never give in. She swung her staff at the monk. Block, block, the ironwood rods clacked together with sharp reports–yelp, as he crushed her already broken fingers. Attack! For perhaps fifteen seconds, Lia had the measure of Hallon, despite that he stood over a foot taller than her, and was twice as wide and three times as strong. He defended robustly, forcing her to retreat, to shift her attack as she sought a way through the blurred reaches of his rock-solid defence. From the corner of her eye, Hualiama caught sight of Master Jo’el and his fellow-Masters filing into the training arena to watch the royal ward having the stuffing belted out of her for at least the five hundredth time in the course of the three weeks she had been training at the monastery. She groaned. That millisecond’s distraction allowed Hallon the opening he hardly needed, given the beating he was busy handing her. Again.

Lia landed flat on her back. “Bloody ralti–”

His staff bore down. “Yield,” snarled the monk, his face barely an inch from hers. His weight crushed her neck against the arena floor.

“Submit?” called Ga’ando, the Master of Weapons.

Lia felt her face turn purple as the shaft cut off her air supply. On an impulse, she kissed the handsomely cleft point of Hal’s chin. He gasped in surprise; she swung her legs up, wrapped them around his neck, and tried to apply a stranglehold she had learned that week. Hal toppled to the sand, losing his grip on the staff.

Two seconds later, the monk kicked her off as though he intended to launch her back over to Ha’athior Island. Lia somersaulted in the air, fluffed her landing, and landed with a jolt on her tailbone instead. Pain shot up her spine. Almost elegant. The story of her life. Master Jo’el could have his joyous indignity–Islands full of indignity–because all of it belonged to hopeless Hualiama.

“Enough,” said Master Jo’el. “Lia, how are you?”

“Fine!”

Lia limped over to her staff, and bent with clenched teeth to pick it up. There was no part of her body which did not ache. She was more bruise than clear skin. Only a complete null-brain would to try to keep up with warrior monks who had trained like this, sixteen hours a day, since their boyhood. The difference between their skills and those of the Palace guard was the difference between a dragonet and a fully-grown Dragon. Lia was efficient and creative in combat, but that simply did not shave the proverbial Dragon’s beard when it came to fighting warriors of this calibre.

A hundred pairs of eyes watched her hobble back across the arena. Two, in particular, disturbed her. One set belonged to an apprentice called Ja’al, whose dark blue eyes followed her every move with unnerving intensity. Handsome but aloof, she thought, wishing he might unbend just once to offer her a welcoming smile, rather than that constant, withering appraisal. Next to Ja’al, his older brother Hua’gon watched with brooding mien. Hua’gon was the one who had broken two fingers on her right hand the previous week.

A polite clearing of a throat drew her attention.

Forming his long fingers into a cone reminiscent of the volcano he lived on top of, Master Jo’el said, “Hualiama of Fra’anior, you’ve completed three weeks’ probation. Masters, your assessments. Weapons?”

Lia gazed up at the ranks of Masters gathered on the stone steps above the circular training arena, trying not to disclose how her heart lurched toward her ankles, and from there leached away into the sand.

“She fights with great heart,” said Master Ga’ando, in his characteristic ruined whisper. A windroc had once tried to rip out his throat. Ga’ando, famously, had won that encounter by shoving his fist down the bird’s throat to strangle it. “Lia has tried as hard as any prospective apprentice I have ever trained. But I regret to conclude that, despite demonstrating basic capability, she seems to lack a natural aptitude for weapons–any weapons at all.”

Lia winced. Mercy. Don’t hold back, Master Ga’ando!

“Your tutors, Master Ha’aggara?”

The bookish young monk, whom the apprentices called ‘Aggers’, said, “Lia is a fine and dedicated student of literature, and the sciences, histories and Humanities, Master Jo’el. But she is deplorably fond of joking about serious matters. That aside, she corrected Tutor Ga’al’s knowledge of Dragonship aerodynamics. She’s a fine engineer.”

“I see,” said Jo’el, in a tone that made Lia shuffle her feet. If only she had not cracked a joke about Ga’al’s gaffe afterward. That had earned her a stern reprimand and a night spent cleaning the practice arena until not a grain of sand was out of place.

“Master Ra’oon?”

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The elderly Master managed a surprisingly nimble and florid bow. “As you know, Master Jo’el, the prospective apprentice sings like a purple-crested warbler, and plays a decent hand on the great-harp and the Jeradian pan-flute. Lia is a fine musician.”

“Master To’ibbik?”

The harsh Master of Arcane Arts sniffed loudly, as he was wont to do, in Lia’s general direction. “It is too early to tell if the girl has any ability in the mystical arts. But I doubt it.”

“Master Ja’alkon, your behavioural assessment?”

“Disruptive, Master Jo’el, as we expected.” Hualiama hung her head. Trust Ja’alkon to put it that way! “She behaves with the propriety one would expect of a member of the royal household, but the regrettable fact that she is a girl has the boys in uproar–we could cover her in a sack and they’d still swoon left and right to be the one to fall into her shadow. However, she is more motivated than any apprentice I have ever worked with. If she could master armed combat, the traitor Ra’aba would find he had a truly formidable enemy.”

Lia’s jaw sagged. She had concluded Ja’alkon hated her. Had his hatred mellowed into violent dislike?

“The Master of Secrets?”

Master Yiiba, the only non-Fra’aniorian among the Masters, inclined his dark, habitually searing gaze toward Hualiama. “The student displays a notable aptitude for code-breaking, lock-picking, and subterfuge,” he said, so mournfully that Lia wondered once again if teaching her caused him unspecified but excruciating pain. “She excels at espionage, is cunning and resourceful, adequate at disguise, and would make an excellent sneak-thief.”

Master Ja’alkon’s rubicund face broke into a smirk.

“After all,” said Yiiba, “who else has ever broken into our monastery, let alone the Chamber of Dragons?”

Ouch, double-wince as the Master of Secrets did what he did best, slipping in the unseen, unanticipated dagger. Maybe living in a cave was not so bad after all. Maybe she could beg Amaryllion to pop over the gap and swallow this ridiculous house of macho egotism and … she’d say, ‘Well, who’s laughing now? I’ve been hiding an Ancient Dragon in my pocket.’

Hualiama smiled involuntarily.

Gritting his teeth, Master Jo’el hissed, “Hualiama, what exactly do you find so funny? Do you think we’ve taken you in for any reason save duty to our King?”

She, and many others in the arena, gasped, Ja’al loudest of all.

No place in the Island-World had ever felt lonelier than the centre of that training arena. Lia knew it as a roaring in her ears, a melting of self into the storm. The Master’s words speared her soul. She had believed in this man; entrusted her life into his hands. Now the truth emerged. Hualiama was a burden. A duty. Master Jo’el had never wanted a royal ward in his monastery, nor had he viewed her bid to learn weapons-craft as more than a frivolous waste of time. Lia burned. A shaking began in her toes and worked up her body, wracking her with pain as violent and consuming as the fire the Orange Dragon had breathed into her cave.

What she had fought for was as the dust beneath her feet. She knew that his eyes measured Hualiama, and found her wanting.

In flat, definitive tones Master Jo’el said, “While you’re stood on that sand giggling like a parakeet, Princess, Ra’aba is out there, abusing and maltreating your people–”

The tearing of cloth arrested his speech.

Lia ripped the buttons off her shirt, sobbing as she fought her way free of the material. She whirled abruptly, facing away from the Masters, screaming into the mortified silence, “Look! See the gift Ra’aba left me!”

The use of two mirrors in her small chamber in the apprentice halls, had allowed Hualiama to examine her back. The scar ran jagged, angrily red, from behind her right shoulder blade to her left hip-bone. Despite Flicker’s best work, it was unsightly–only marginally more hideous than the wound the Master had just dealt her.

She turned, pointing just above her belt. “And before he threw me off the Dragonship, he stabbed me, here.” The dagger’s entry-points were puckered, two-inch scars in the indentation between her abdominals. The blades had exited right next to her spine, practically shaving the nerves which would have left her paralysed.

Unseeing, swaying as the memory cast a soul-shadow within her, she cried, “I tried to kill him. At the last, as he pushed me against the railing, I pierced him in the throat … but Ra’aba was too strong. He’s still alive and I failed. I failed all of Fra’anior.”

Clarity pierced her awareness. Despair coiled python-like about her throat, choking the living pith out of her. Ra’aba’s life had been hers to claim, if only for the briefest moment. Had her hand only been surer in the strike, had she flung the sword but an inch higher … her eyes blurred. Pain burned her scarred back as though the wound were bathed in Dragon fire.

Silence smothered the arena.

Only the abrasion of breath against her raw throat told Lia she was alive.

She rasped, “I need you to teach me, Master Jo’el. But, more than that, I need you to believe in me. I don’t have the strength. I can’t do this alone.”

Lia sank to her knees. An uncontrollable juddering shook her body as Master Joel’s words hammered her once more. Brutalising. Ruling with a Dragon’s iron paw. She had seen it in Ra’aba’s eyes. Not just casual contempt for another life. No, he had taken pleasure in dealing her that cut. She shuddered at the memory of his perverse delight as he drove the dagger deep; the hatred as he twisted the blade, soul-destroying. Lia had known Ra’aba since her girlhood. What drove him to wrest the kingdom from her father? To attempt her murder? What despicable passions had he concealed behind a dutiful nod, or a half-smile as he watched a child dancing for her parents?

She felt dirty. Lia desperately wanted to vomit out the memory of him, to purge Ra’aba from her body and from her mind.

Feet entered the periphery of her vision. Master Joel gathered her shaking hands in his own. “No, Lia,” he said, quietly. “It is we who have failed you.”

“Nay, Master I …”

“Aye. In your suffering, I sense the fires of the Great Dragon himself. We have not seen you for who you truly are. We must pledge ourselves to do more. Need we move the Islands to find a way, we shall.”

He meant this? Through veils of blurry tears, Lia saw a raw, fatherly vulnerability writ on the tall monk’s face–an expression she would have given the Island-World to have seen, just once, from King Chalcion.

Master Jo’el said, “Your probation is over, Hualiama. For the first time in our history, we followers of the Path of the Dragon Warrior accept a female student as Apprentice.”

A dignified ripple of applause travelled around the arena, broken by Lia’s shriek of delight.

* * * *

Flicker attended the soft sigh of Hualiama’s breathing. Behind her shuttered eyelids, her eyes darted about as though running for their lives. Where did she go in her shell-dreams? Even the smallest hatchling did not dream as she did. “Let’s fly together,” she mumbled, and rolled over. “Uh … fire, not the fire …”

If ever a person yearned to shed her skin and don Dragon-hide, it was his straw-head. Even Amaryllion’s two-thousand-year reserves of patience had cracked slightly at her obsession with all things Dragon. Lia. Flicker’s eyes streamed with inner fire as he regarded the Human girl. If he had a shred of Dragon sense, then he knew that this one was destined for great deeds–despite the fact that she was woefully Human, and not even as capable as a dragonet. Poor creature. This process they called training was really just an excuse to thrash young Humans until they displayed some strength. Why would their elders do this? Flying training was best done with love, not by beating hatchlings with sticks. Worse, their declarations that they actually enjoyed it!

When the tall one who resembled a reed had shouted at her, Flicker had been on the cusp of attacking them when Lia exploded like a proper Dragoness and displayed her scars for all the bald, tattooed men, and they had suddenly made friends and there was a cheering ceremony that made his scales itch. There was no understanding the madness of these Humans.

Could it be some kind of disease? Hopefully, nothing infectious.

Flicker scratched his chin. Would he develop fungus, too, if he kept learning from these Humans? No dragonet would take him for a mate if he had facial fungus! And as for these Human males who chose not to take mates, how insane was that? Surely, they all saw how perfect his Lia was? Indeed, she had created endless waves among them, like smoke billowing into a wasps’ nest.

Now, his sensitive ears detected a noise in the corridor outside her room. Here came the younger, less fungus-faced ones. Ha. More moons-madness. Fascinating.

The door creaked open. Eight young monks filed into the room, their eyes gleaming in the semidarkness as they surrounded their intended victim, fast asleep on her pallet. The one called Ja’al, who Lia liked to show her teeth to, motioned him to move aside.

“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Flicker growled, baring his fangs.

“We won’t.”

One of the others counted silently on his fingers, One, two … three.

Flicking the thin covering off the sleeping girl, the apprentices pounced. A strong hand muffled her shrieks as they hastily bundled Lia into a sack. She kicked and thrashed, trying to bite the hand that muffled her cries. Flicker almost assailed them. She was terrified! Lia managed to elbow one of them in the jaw, but the young man only laughed, and with at least six bodies holding her down, Lia had no chance.

“Shut the trap,” hissed Ja’al, tying the sack shut. “This is a friendly kidnapping.”

The sack shifted. A muffled voice emerged, “Uh, Ja’al? Is that you?”

“No, it’s a Dragon. What do you think?”

Three of them grabbed the rough canvas sack and lifted Hualiama off the bed.

Flicker? Her voice sounded in his mind. Where’s my brave protector?

Laughing in the corner, he said.

You! I’m going to … I’ll peel you like a fruit!

Chuckling wickedly, the monks trotted up the corridor with their captive, who sounded rather underwhelmed by the experience. Flicker flitted sentinel-like behind them.

“Where’s Master Ja’alkon?”

“Snoring,” said Ja’al, with a wicked chortle. “Terraba-juice in your drink will do that.”

“Good. Hurry. Where are the others?”

“Already outside.”

With the excitement of a troop of dragonet hatchlings attending their first communal singing, the apprentices filed out of the main temple building into the cool pre-dawn gloom. They jogged along a path Flicker had noticed previously, which led to an outcropping above the crater lake which the dragonets favoured for teaching fledglings how to fly. Flicker narrowed his eyelids to an anxious crack, unsure how Lia would respond to this after her experience of being thrown off a Dragonship. They handled the sack with due care on the climb, however, soon appearing on the ledge two hundred feet above the water.

As her tousled head emerged from the canvas, Lia spluttered, “I’m not sure I appreciate–”

“The new apprentice will remain silent,” said Ja’al. His sapphire-blue eyes sparked noticeably. Flicker chirped animatedly to himself. A Human who had magic? Fascinating. “In a moment, you will demonstrate the high jump for us. Usually the apprentice is stripped for their maiden flight, but given your special situation, we have prepared a modest outfit for the occasion. Put this on.”

Lia took the garment in hand. It took her a few moments to figure out their plan. She scowled, “It’s a monkey suit.”

Ja’al said, “Oh, is it?”

One of the others, a thickset young man called Ya’orra, chuckled, “As you are such a fine dancer, Lia, we felt you might brighten our morning with a monkey dance, first.”

A treacherous snort of fire escaped Flicker’s muzzle.

Lia glared at him. “In my future kingdom, dragonet, you will be summarily demoted from royal companion to royal door-stopper. Do we understand each other?”

“Oh, not at all,” said Ja’al. The monk bowed to Flicker. “We do not insult the noble beasts of the air, Hualiama. Flicker, you have my permission to dream up a suitable punishment.”

The dragonet stretched lazily. “I like this Human tradition called hazing.”

* * * *

Dancing in a monkey suit was not so bad, until Hualiama discovered the itchy-powder the crafty apprentices had placed inside. This made her scratching rather too authentic. Lia begged to be allowed to jump, but her classmates forced her to keep capering and aping monkey noises for a further twenty minutes before allowing her the ‘privilege’ of jumping.

Great Islands, the water looked as though it was a mile away. Cold sweat beaded Lia’s neck. She had to do this, but her feet seemed to have put down roots.

“Need a friendly push?” Ja’al asked.

Lia knew that her stricken look gave far too much away.

“Look, Lia, we’re out to have fun. Still, given your story, there’s not one of us who’d force you to jump.”

“This is the tradition, isn’t it?” she asked, trying to decide if the wobbling of her heart was due to the height, or to his gentle understanding. He saw her. All the jewels of royal Fra’anior could not buy such a precious commodity.

“Aye.”

She cleared her throat hurriedly. “Any other advice?”

“Keep your body straight and don’t hit the water side-on, or you’ll be wearing the bruises for the next month.”

The Human mind was capable of peculiar forms of lunacy, Lia decided, and one of those was leaping off a rock into space. Nothing to it, except the sensation of her stomach flying up into her throat, chills running up and down her spine, the wind roaring endlessly in her ears as she fell–take a breath, idiot! Smack! She fell deep into a world of blue, her soles stinging, heart pounding, bubbles effervescing all around her body as she kicked for the faraway, silvery-gleaming surface.

She whooped as she broke into the air.

“Clear the way!” hollered Ja’al, making shooing motions with his hands.

Hualiama struggled through the water, weighed down by the monkey suit.

Shouting, “This one for the Dragon!” the monks came pouring off the rock high above her, a shower of young monks in blue robes fluttering through the air.

To Lia’s shock, Ja’al caught himself just above the surface. Levitation? Grinning at her disbelief, he shucked his robe to reveal a set of abdominals which could easily have doubled as paving stones, tossed the garment to the water’s edge, and then gracefully upended as he ‘dived’ into the cool volcanic lake. Lia wanted to hit somebody or something. Why could she not enjoy that power? And what madness had bitten the serious young monk? Now he was the leader of all the mischief-making? She certainly preferred this Ja’al to the unsmiling one.

Later, at lunch, Hualiama’s task was to wait on the Masters at their table, serving them fresh berry juices and wines, a selection of freshly baked breads, and spicy baked trout from the lake.

Ja’al whispered in her ear.

“No … no!” stammered Lia, turning a hot shade of pink. “I couldn’t.”

“It’s his birthday.”

“I am not singing–”

“Well, we learned the Dragons’ Praise birthday song, didn’t we?”

Lia pinched his arm. “Have I told you how little I like you?”

“Not more than ten times since this morning.” Ja’al drew a hand-harp from behind his back. “Oh, look, I just happen to have an instrument with me. Shall I play for you, or would you prefer to accompany yourself?”

“I’d prefer to bite you.” Her treacherous mind served up an image of Ja’al just before he dived into the lake. Perhaps something other than a bite was in order …

Ja’al strummed an overly dramatic set of chords upon his harp, quieting the dining hall. “Masters, tutors and apprentices,” he called. “Today is Master Jo’el’s birthday. We apprentices have arranged a special surprise. Hualiama will sing the Dragons’ Praise for our noble Master Jo’el, may the sulphurous fires of the Great Dragon himself ever burn within him.”

He made to pick out a chord, when the entire apprentice class yelled, “Stand up!”

“Oh, aye, up on this bench,” he said.

Lia bit the inside of her cheek as she took Ja’al’s hand to climb up onto the bench. He had elegant hands, which seemed to betray the gentility of his heart, and her disloyal fingers lingered on his before she allowed her hand to drop.

With a flash of those depthless eyes, Ja’al said, “And …”

“We can’t see her!”

“Aren’t they so mean?” he whispered to Lia, under cover of the laughter filling their great underground hall. “Up on the table with you.”

Oh, she was definitely going to have Amaryllion visit! Cheeks burning fit to combust, Lia stepped up onto the long trestle table. There was worse to come.

Their final dare was to kiss Master Jo’el on the cheek.