Chapter 2

Snow fell that night. People say snow is silent, but a heavy fall makes a soft, ceaseless rustle. That was my only thought as I lay on Spring Breeze House’s stone steps waiting to die. The ice soothed the fire in my back. I closed my eyes almost peacefully. Nothing in this world was worth missing.

Through the haze, someone kept calling “Miss.” I waited for him to leave, but the nuisance persisted until anger gathered my scattered consciousness. I opened my eyes and snarled, “Go away.”

Then I saw the scholar in a clean, plain green padded coat, several scroll cases beneath his arm. Against the snow and ruined mortal world, he stood like slender bamboo, concern in his eyes. Had I known he was so handsome, I would have shouted more softly.

He removed his coat and covered me. Wanting to tease him, I said, “I have the pox. Don’t you want this coat anymore?”

He frowned in difficulty, and I sneered inwardly—until he smiled. “Then I certainly cannot leave you here. My humble home is in the south of the city. If you do not mind it, come recover there.”

I lay across his back in the driving snow. Wind cut the lashes on my back like knives, but I bit my lip without a sound.

When first sold into Spring Breeze House, I cried constantly: longing for the mother who abandoned me, hating the father who sold me to feed his gambling, resenting Madam Sang for forcing a respectable girl into prostitution, and fearing an old courtesan’s end beneath a straw mat in a paupers’ grave.

Madam Sang called my tears unlucky. She chained me in a woodshed for three days without food or water and left only a lively white rabbit named Miaomiao, beloved by the courtesan Yao Huang, who wanted to buy her freedom. “If you want death, do it. If you want life, show some cruelty. I keep no weeping trash.”

Miaomiao nuzzled my hand. I stroked its fur and wept. After two days, hunger burned my organs together. I pounded the door and screamed that I was wrong. The guards outside heard me over their dice and ignored me. When night came again and I imagined the delicacies in the front hall, moonlight slipped through the door and lit the rabbit eating grass from a crack. At last I understood.

“Miaomiao,” I whispered. “Come to Big Sister.”

On the third evening the chain fell. Madam Sang looked at the bloody fur by my feet and smiled. “The girl has finally improved.” Yao Huang rushed at me in tears and slapped me. I slapped her back.

The woodshed taught me that no one here cared about tears. To live well, I had to climb. If Yao Huang could not become top courtesan, that was her failure. Had Miaomiao belonged to Wei Zi, Madam Sang would have worshiped it.

Within a few years I displaced Wei Zi and became Spring Breeze House’s star. Jinling said Xiangsi possessed a thousand faces. They were wrong: not one of them wept. Spring Breeze House did not believe in tears, nor did Jinling. I learned to smile brightest when I hurt most.

So I breathed into the scholar’s ear. “For saving my life, may I repay you with marriage?”

He stumbled, ears blazing. “P-please do not jest. I have a fiancée.”

“Is she prettier than I am?”

He answered solemnly, “To me, she is the finest woman in the world.”

I pouted. I did not believe any woman could surpass Xiangsi.