Alexa's grip on the steering wheel became tighter and tighter, so much so that she began to lose sensation in her fingers. She kept reminding herself to relax. She took several deep breaths and kept repeating to herself a mantra she had learned in a yoga class years ago: let your mind hold to nothingness, focus on your breathing, and follow your inner voice. She could only imagine how the crew at the tai chi school would think she had lost her edge the way she was panicking over her sick dog and all. It would be hard for her to explain the affection she felt for her dog.

She remembered going to the house of one of the city's top dog breeders and looking over the litter of rottweiler puppies and being immediately taken with the runt of the litter — the only female in a litter of six pups.

"Why'd you pick that runt?" asked the breeder, squinting his eyes as if to get a better look at Alexa.

"I dunno. Maybe because she reminds me of myself in a way," Alexa answered.

"Well, it's a good thing you want it, 'cause people looking for a good dog around here don't want nothing to do with no runts. If you hadn't happened along, I was going to give it to those kennel folks downtown."

Even then, she thought she saw something special in this little pup that no one noticed: fearlessness. And as if on cue, the runt began waddling right toward Alexa just as she was about to walk over to pick her up. "That's it! Fate has spoken," Alexa said loudly, cradling the puppy in her arms, loud enough so that a few customers in the breeder's shop snapped their heads around and gawked at Alexa for a few seconds before returning to look at puppies. "Hey, little girl," said Alexa, holding the puppy at eye level, "don't you worry, I'm going to take good care of you always."

"Well, you still got yourself a pretty good hound there even if it's a runt," said the breeder, eyeing Alexa as she patted her new puppy on its head.

"I'm Jim Bossum, but everyone around these parts calls me Jimbo, like the circus elephant Jumbo, 'cause of my size." He then let out a roaring laugh that caused his belly to shake underneath his shirt.

Alexa chuckled then said, "Good to meet you too, Jim — I mean Jimbo." She was still somewhat amused.

With that, he took her hand in his and firmly shook it. "That'll be $375, miss."

"Oh well, I hadn't really planned on spending quite that much," Alexa countered.

"Look it, miss, you got yourself one of them top-of-the-line pedigreed rottweiler dogs. They come out of Germany. Them dogs are as strong as an ox, and there ain't an inch of fear in them — not one bit. And they have a real protective streak in them too. Now that's the kind of dog a pretty girl like yourself needs around the house late at night. Plus," Jimbo added, "rottweilers are some of the most even-tempered and obedient dogs you can find. I'll even take fifty dollars off. She's yours for three hundred and twenty five dollars. Now you can't beat that with a stick!"

"I'll take her," Alexa replied.

She placed the puppy down on a display countertop momentarily while she wrote a check out to William Moore's Champion Breeder's Company for $325. As she handed the check to Jimbo, Alexa said, "And by the way, I'm pretty good at taking care of myself late at night."

"I'm sure you are, miss, I'm sure you are," said Jimbo, smiling.

Alexa picked up the puppy and headed for the front door. As she turned to close the door behind her, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Jimbo behind the counter, still smiling.

Alexa could in fact take care of herself, thanks to her uncle Viggo, who introduced her to the fundamentals of movement and old-world calisthenics — beautiful strength — at the tender age of twelve, and to the expert martial arts coaching she received later from Master Lo and Head Instructor Miguel at Five Element Tai Chi School of Boxing. The school was located on 222 Belvedere Street, second floor, above Dave's Pizza Palace and next door to a popular late-night college hangout, the Hong Kong Club, in midtown Amaryllis, Ohio.

Amaryllis got its name from German immigrant sheep farmers who settled in the southern part of Ohio during the last half of the 1800s. They were so taken by the beauty and abundance of the amaryllis plants, which have red or pink flowers resembling lilies, they named the town Amaryllis, town of lilies.

OMAR AND THE REVOLUTION

The tai chi school was about a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk or eight- to ten-minute bus ride from the Amaryllis University Community College Campus, and a few of the students from the community college would stop by the tai chi school to observe a class. Some of the students would remain there well over an hour, listening intently as Master Lo recounted his early life experiences in China and the rigorous martial arts training he endured as a disciple under Master Kee Wu-Liang.

The second-floor space was a renovated artist loft that now resembled a cross between a dance studio and boxing gym: treated wood floors, mirrors along a front wall and sidewall, a row of six windows above whitewashed brick wall on the north side of the studio that looked out onto the rooftops of a several industrial buildings nearby. Training equipment was sparse: two hanging heavy bags, a speed bag, half a dozen leather medicine balls, a bar for pull-ups, an assortment of jump ropes and boxing gloves, and a dozen bottles of dit da jow ointment (knockdown wine) for treating bruises.

At the far end of the studio was a five-by-four-foot red-gold-and-black-colored wooden altar with a three-foot-tall bronze statue of Buddha sitting on top along with a pot of sand for placing sticks of incense. Propped up behind the statue and pot was a ten-by-twelve-inch photograph of Master Lo's tai chi teacher Taoist Master Kee Wu-Lian standing in front of the Taoist temple of the Jade Dragon in China, taken six months before the Communist Party came into power, ushering in what historian's refer to as China's Cultural Revolution. Spearheading the Cultural Revolution were the infamous Red Guard, whose motto "Down with the liberal intellectual bourgeoisie" spurred them to institute a law that forbade Western-style clothing and intellectual or artistic pursuits of any kind that the Communist considered selfish and elitist and not conducive to the betterment of the Chinese society as a whole.

Within days, many religious leaders, elders, authors, teachers, musicians, artists of all sorts were rounded up, often beaten in the process, and sent away to a reeducation work camp where they toiled, breaking boulders into smaller and smaller pieces ten to twelve hours a day. Labeled traitors by the Communist, detainees were required, as part of their reeducation, to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party three times daily, asking forgiveness for their previous liberal bourgeoisie way of life in front of Red Guard group leader Chairwoman Madame Q before retiring nightly.

Master Wu-Liang, who had been known throughout China as Wu the Invincible for his fighting prowess and superextraordinary feat of fending off a band of drunken Hungarian foot soldiers, mortally wounding seven, who had, on the previous night in a local village, kicked to death a young boy's dog for barking at them, assaulted three women for spurning their advances, beaten an elderly man nearly to death for...