chapter 1

My father was dead.

My brother and I no longer dared eat our fill.

Every time the village grannies and aunties saw us, they warned, “You’d better mind your stepmother. What will you do if she sells you, abandons you, or remarries?”

My brother was ten and I was eight. After our stepmother married Father, she gave birth to our little brother, who was now six.

I stopped eating when I was only half full and carefully set down my chopsticks. “Mother, I’m going up the mountain to gather firewood.”

My brother put down his bowl too. “I’ll hoe the field.”

Only our little brother kept gnawing happily on his wheat bun, oblivious to everything. He ate so much. I was terrified that if he ate too much, we would run out of grain before winter. Then Mother might sell us—or leave us.

The three of us would have no choice but to become beggars.

Never mind. I would eat even less at the next meal and save the family some grain.

Mother stared at us for a moment, her fine eyes sweeping over our faces. “Are you two trying to die? Leaving perfectly good food in your bowls—are you itching for a beating?”

She snatched our bowls away and roughly ladled more coarse grain into them. She scraped the wooden bucket several times, but hardly anything came off the bottom.

Our family had too little land to grow enough food for five people. When Father was alive, he had worked as the village mason. Whenever someone built a house or dug a well, he helped, and they paid him with grain.

When there was no masonry work, he took his bow into the mountains. The hides and meat from whatever he killed could be sold, and sometimes we kept the game to make our meals a little better.

We had once been among the most comfortable families in the village. Mother was gentle and capable. Our clothes were always spotless, and there had even been money for my brother to attend the private school.

But burying Father required a coffin and a Taoist funeral service. The autumn term’s tuition had already been paid, leaving a poor family even poorer.

I stole a glance at Mother, lowered my head, and began to eat.

She placed a bite of wild greens in my bowl. I had taken my little brother to gather them. I hoped she would remember I was useful and decide not to sell me.

Then my brother said, “I’m not going back to school.”

My heart sank. While Father lived, he had wanted nothing more than for my brother to succeed in the imperial examinations instead of spending his life farming as Father had.

Now Father was gone. Even if my brother said nothing, we could barely afford food. How could we afford school?

A tear fell into my bowl.

“Just try skipping school. I’ll break your legs!” Mother snarled.

After Father died, her nature changed completely. The woman who had once been so gentle was now more frightening than Father had ever been when he lost his temper.

She began cursing again—Father for being heartless, and us for being burdens she had been saddled with.

We said nothing and finished our food as quickly as we could.

I strapped on my basket and went to the back mountain for firewood.

I ran into Granny Huang, who pressed a few peanuts into my hand. “Your mother scold you again?”

I nodded.

“Oh, my.” She muttered, “There’s no such thing as a good stepmother.”

Then she lowered her voice. “Erniu, don’t talk back to her. Let her scold you all she wants.”

I had heard a thousand times that stepmothers were bad.

From the day the matchmaker first suggested Father remarry until the day Mother entered our home, everyone in the village had waited to see how she would mistreat my brother and me.

While Father was alive, she had cared for us attentively. The adults said that was only because Father was not a man to trifle with and she was afraid he would beat her.

Now Father was dead, and Mother cursed us every day, loudly enough for the whole village to hear. Everyone said they had known it all along.

Their eyes were full of pity whenever they looked at my brother and me.

I tucked the peanuts carefully into the little pouch around my neck and continued up the mountain.

Autumn had carpeted the ground with leaves. Even the yellowed pine needles could be carried home as kindling. I cut a few branches with my sickle, gathered fallen sticks, and tied them into a load that rose above the rim of my basket.

Then I swayed home beneath it.

Gathering firewood and cutting grass were the chores I knew best. In the past, Mother had brought my little brother and me along when she worked. We played nearby while she labored.

Now she had taken over Father’s work, turning the soil and tending the fields.