Chapter 1

I was only five the year I was taken up the mountain.

Our destination was the women’s Taoist temple on the highest summit of Mount Tai.

I was too young to remember much. But I remembered Mother killing our family’s only chicken that day. Father tore off a leg and held it before my eyes. “Be good, Big Girl. Come with Father, and I’ll take you to worship the immortals. If they accept you, you can have this chicken leg.”

My mouth watered as I followed him all the way.

In the end, he never gave it to me.

The head of the temple, a woman who looked like an immortal herself, barely glanced at me. “She has some spiritual promise. Let her stay.”

Father happily took the silver and went down the mountain in high spirits.

He tucked the chicken leg inside his robe, patted my head, and said, “Next time. When Father comes back up the mountain, you can have it.”

It was a long time before I understood. The chicken leg had been bait. Once a foolish fish like me had taken the hook, there was no need to waste the bait. Meat was precious. He had to take it home for his son.

I never saw Father again. Nor did I see meat.

Yiyun Temple was a women’s Taoist temple. My teacher, Shanci, told me that female Taoists were forbidden to eat meat.

She had two disciples. I was the elder, and Huiyan was the younger.

No one called me Big Girl anymore. They called me Huixing.

Life at the temple was not bad. Vegetables and steamed buns left us half full each day. At home, I had never had white-flour buns, or even been half full.

And after meals, Teacher did not call me a money-wasting burden and demand to know why I still could not work in the fields.

She simply put Huiyan and me in the scripture room with a dozen or so children our age. The woman teaching us recited a line, and we repeated it.

If we misbehaved and made noise, we were beaten. The head of the temple liked quiet children, so we were all quiet.

All except Huiyan. No matter how often she was beaten, she still chirped like a sparrow.

Teacher grew stern and starved her for three days. Then she asked, her face grave, “A woman devoted to the Tao must be composed and quiet. Will you dare make noise during lessons again?”

Huiyan hugged her arm with a grin. “No, no! I won’t. I don’t mind being hungry, but I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

Teacher froze at those words. As she looked at Huiyan, warmth slowly rose in her cold eyes.

Huiyan was that kind of thoughtful child.

She was a few months younger than me, yet she comforted me when I was miserable. If she found some unusual wild fruit by the roadside, she hid it and brought it back to our room. She would pull Teacher and me down to sit, and we shared it out, one piece for each of us.

She was so good that Teacher’s gaze grew gentler and gentler. We often slept on either side of her, pressing close as though she were our mother.

Sometimes, late at night, Teacher held our hands and asked, “Do you love me? Will you look after me when you’re grown?”

However sleepy she was, Huiyan would answer at once, in her sweet voice, “Yes! You’re my favorite person on this mountain. When I grow up, I’ll buy you every delicious thing there is.”

I was clumsy with words and could not say it aloud. But in my heart, I said that Huiyan and Teacher were my favorite people in the world.

Huiyan first. Teacher second.