68 pages • 2 hours read
Light from Uncommon Stars
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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “August/November”
Part 5, Chapter 28 Summary
Some time later, as Katrina and Shirley eat breakfast, Shizuka tells Shirley that her mother wants her back in the donut shop. Her family will probably still see her as a computer program, Shizuka warns, but Shirley should remember that her experiences are true. Lan comes to pick up Shirley.
Edwin teaches his family how to make donuts, and the shop’s popularity rises dramatically. Aunty Floresta worries about Lan, who is spending much more time turning the big donut into a stargate. Lan has also started playing the Stargate game, suggesting that she might be infected with the Endplague.
Shizuka muses about how ironic it is that Katrina finds safety in anonymity, while anonymity has been her curse. She considers how Katrina could carry on her legacy. Shizuka goes to Lucy Matía to get her del Gesù, and while there, acknowledges that Tremon has visited and that Lucy has been working on a cursed violin. Shizuka pulls out a violin bow made of dogwood, a material allegedly cursed because it was used to crucify Christ; this dogwood bow, she explains, was made to cause any user to suffer eternal torment. Back home, Shizuka listens to Katrina’s laughter and thinks about Lan’s comment that Shizuka could have been a good mother. Observing her koi fish, Shizuka notes that the ones who survived were the ones who ate their young.
Part 5, Chapter 29 Summary
Shizuka calls Katrina to her room, shows her the dogwood bow, and finally explains the story of her deal with Tremon Philippe. Decades ago, Shizuka played music that made the whole world better. But as she aged, people stopped listening and became more interested in exploiting her. When she developed a condition in her hand that prevented her from playing, Tremon promised she would play again if she sold him her soul. Shizuka took the deal, but when she went onstage in Berlin, she realized what a mistake it was—she stopped playing mid-performance and fled. Thus, her soul was left in limbo. Tremon offered to let her keep her soul if she would deliver him seven more. Once Katrina accepts the dogwood bow, Katrina will become her seventh soul delivered to Tremon. Katrina is ready to accept, but Shizuka declares she’s decided not to give it to her. She does not tell Katrina the cost: her own soul will be damned instead.
Realizing that Shizuka has decided not to sacrifice Katrina, Astrid suggests they find another student, but Shizuka has resigned herself to her fate. She believes Katrina will take her music to places Shizuka can’t even imagine. That night, Katrina hears Shizuka playing in her room and flashes back to elementary school when she wrote the name “Katrina” for the first time.
Part 5, Chapter 30 Summary
Katrina attempts to recreate the music she heard Shizuka playing. Shizuka tells her it’s the final piece written by Béla Bartók, the piece that she played in Berlin the night she lost her soul. Shizuka gives Katrina her old sheet music, telling her that it’s beyond her skill level but she is welcome to try. Katrina tracks down various recordings of the Bartók piece, but none sound right. Shirley then reveals a recording of Shizuka herself playing it; though all recordings of Shizuka were erased on Earth, this one survived via the radio waves that emanated into space.
Tremon tells Shizuka he knows she has no intention of selling Katrina’s soul. He comments that she must love Katrina, ominously adding that the final decision will be Katrina’s.
Part 5, Chapter 31 Summary
The CEO of a Chinese investment bank, influenced by Tremon, announces a global violin competition, with a rare Stradivarius as the reward. News of the competition spreads beyond the Asian community, sparking racist responses. Tremon also publishes a bio for Katrina referring to her as a “transgender icon,” and Katrina’s videos start receiving hateful comments. Shizuka notices that even the many encouraging comments are all about Katrina’s trans identity rather than her music. Tremon has thus effectively severed Katrina from her music; the only way to beat him is for Katrina to win the competition as a musician. Shizuka composes a piece for Katrina based on the theme of The NetherTale.
Part 5, Chapter 32 Summary
As Lucy and Andrew are working, a woman enters the shop demanding Lucy fix her son’s violin. The woman remarks of the upcoming competition that Asian people should stay out of “our” music. Lucy purposefully dulls the violin’s sound and gives it back.
Shizuka tells Katrina about the composition she’s written for her, but Katrina has already decided to do the Bartók piece. Shizuka warns again that it’s too difficult, but Katrina starts playing it, and Shizuka realizes that somehow Katrina found a recording of herself. Shizuka has Shirley play the recording for her too. Though Shizuka knows that even now she could still get her music back, she resigns herself to passing her music on to Katrina.
Aunty Floresta pulls Lan aside and asks why she’s been working so hard on the stargate. Lan insists that she doesn’t have Endplague, but she feels that she has to finish it. Lan also watches the recording of Shizuka playing the Bartók piece. Meanwhile, Shirley offers her family’s body modifiers as a way to make Katrina look more feminine, but Katrina declines, explaining that she’d have to relearn the violin if she changed her body.
Part 5, Chapter 33 Summary
While eating duck at a restaurant, Lan asks Shizuka how her music can do “that” (312). Lan also wonders how people can be so good in some ways and so terrible in others. Shizuka explains that people learn to live the way musicians learn music: section by section. People fear the sections where the key changes or something differs from what they expected. But Shizuka imagines there could be a music in which every note is both complete on its own and also part of the whole. Back at home, Lan listens to more of Shizuka’s music, and after searching for more information, figures out that Shizuka only has three months left to live.
Katrina struggles to learn the Bartók piece. The next day at the duck pond, Lan reveals that she knows Shizuka is going to die. Lan can’t let it happen, even though Shizuka insists there’s nothing that can change it. Lan goes home with Shizuka that night.
Part 5 Analysis
The story of the night Shizuka “left her soul onstage” provides long-anticipated context for all of Shizuka’s previous actions. While her sacrifice of her first six students was heartless, Shizuka’s deal with Tremon was motivated by more than a desire for fame and prestige. Shizuka was driven by a desperate desire to regain the music that she had lost: “[A]s long as I played, everything was all right […] [but] at some point, people stopped listening […] there were just bigger performances, bigger cities, and bigger spotlights. A conductor would give me his hotel key; a sponsor would brush her hand where she shouldn’t” (274). In this exploitative world, the spirit of Shizuka’s music was drowned out. Her desperation to make people listen led to her developing the condition in her hand that left her unable to play. While her previous students were driven by ambition and ego, Shizuka made the mistake of taking her deal in her effort to regain access to The Transformative Power of Music.
Katrina’s stark contrast to Shizuka’s previous students, which relates to Katrina’s role in the theme of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance, gains greater significance in these chapters. In Chapter 9, Shizuka observes that “Hell favored people who recognized their brilliance, who believed they deserved success” (75), but Katrina was never that kind of person. While anonymity is a curse to Shizuka, it has been “salvation itself” (268) for Katrina. And yet, Katrina’s music carries a power similar to that which Shizuka’s once had. Shizuka thus comes to see Katrina not as a necessary sacrifice but as her legacy. She tells Astrid, “when I listen to Katrina, I realize she will take this music to places I would never dream. I think that’s enough for any teacher—to know that her music will continue long after she is gone” (280). This realization ties into the theme of The Influence of Parents on Children, as both Shizuka and Tremon recognize that Shizuka has grown to love Katrina as a daughter. Observing the koi fish, Shizuka notes that the ones who have survived “were also the ones who ate their young” (272). Through this symbol, Shizuka realizes that survival is not necessarily living. While those koi fish might survive, they would “never question, never leave that pond, never, ever change” (278). If Shizuka sacrifices Katrina to save herself, her music will inevitably stagnate and lose its soul, similar to the effect of the Endplague on civilizations. However, if Shizuka sacrifices herself to save Katrina, then the music will grow and evolve into something new. Though Shizuka is resigned to her fate, she also has a strange sense of hope, embodied in her composition based on the music from NetherTale. This composition represents to Shizuka her new belief in the possibility of “rescue without killing” (299), which she sees as core to Katrina’s character. While Shizuka thinks she’s writing this piece for Katrina, she is actually writing it for herself.
The symbolism of the koi fish also connects to the theme of The Inevitability of Change and Transition. Shizuka’s conversation with Lan about people who live their life in “sections” also reflects this theme. Transition and change are inevitable features of music: “[S]ometimes, sections change keys, tempos. They change moods. Timing…Some melodies don’t resolve in an expected way. Some don’t resolve at all” (313). Accordingly, Shizuka says, people start to fear playing beyond the familiar sections, and the same is true of the way people live their lives. In this application of the motif of music, people like Katrina, Lan, Shirley, and even Lucy Matía represent the unfamiliar sections: in some way, their identity challenges what people are comfortable with, and because of that, they are pushed to the margins of society. This rejection is at the heart of The Struggles of Refugees and Outsiders. But Shizuka invites Lan to imagine a different kind of music:
[M]usic with no sections, with every note resonating with the whole composition […] Lan, what would happen if someone played their existence not only to its inevitable end, but also to its inevitable beginning? What if someone played their music to its inevitable everything? (314).
A music without sections is one that embraces change, rather than fearing it, and renders the inevitable end no longer terrible. Though neither Shizuka nor Lan make the connection right away, Shizuka has discovered the solution to the Endplague sickness: rather than falling into self-destructive despair over the realization of mortality, the answer is to embrace the music of change and let “each fragment [pass] eternity onward” (315).
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