American who
wants to learn internal arts. Besides, I just got here, and I have to start somewhere.”
“Just got here? From where? Your English is too good for China.”
“Ha! Shows how much you know! They speak quite good Queen’s English in Hong Kong, I’ll have you know.”
“You don’t sound British,” Antonine said, smirking slightly, eyebrows raised. teach fighting.”
“1 used to. Then I moved to Chinatown in New York for a year. I was almost sounding like an Italian when I got out of there!”
Antonine laughed. “Okay, I buy it. I’ve got to get back to work, though. I’ll be back tonight.
What’ll I call you anyway?”
“Laughing Crane.”
Antonine laughed again. “Any first name?”
“Just Laughing Crane. I’ll see you tonight, Antonine.”
Antonine shook his hand and headed back to work. It wasn’t until he was slapping price stickers on canned peas that he realized he’d never given Laughing Crane his name.
Laughing Crane was a revelation. At their second meeting, Antonine’s first training class, he performed a series of martial maneuvers. After each lesson, he turned to Antonine and said, “Now you do the same.”
Antonine diligently tried to imitate him, with only fair results. Laughing Crane, shaking his head with a mix of approval and disappointment, transformed into a giant, wolfen creature and stared at Antonine with his piercing yellow eyes. They spoke of infinite depths and dimensions beyond the material.
He then said, in a deep voice with a rumbling growl: “Now you do the same.”
Antonine stared aghast, trembling. But before fear could start his quivering legs to running, something in Laughing Crane’s demeanor calmed his nerves and heart. Instead of fear, he was overcome by relief, freedom from the confused pain and doubt of his rail yard experience. It had indeed been real.
Antonine’s Garou training began in earnest.
For the next two years, he trained with Laughing Crane not only in the ways of the internal martial arts-Bagua, Tai Chi and Hsing-I-but in the ways of the Stargazers, werewolves devoted to Eastern ways of knowing.
He learned that being a werewolf did not consign him to hunt humans under a full moon, fated to be shot dead one day by a silver bullet. The knowledge that his rage and his shapeshifting powers could be controlled through a disciplined mind was the happiest discovery yet of Antonine’s young life.
Antonine later learned that Laughing b a n e had been watching him in secret since he arrived in the city. The Theurge’s spirits had told him of his coming, and he had soon realized that Antonine did not yet know who or what he was.