Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The sixth year of Taichu. Rain.

Sha County in Yuezhou had lost a woman.

That mattered very much to me, because she was my mother.

To the villagers of Sha County, however, she was only a woman-and women were the one thing this place never lacked.

Strange, really.

Sha County always produced so many daughters. Drown one and another arrived, like wild grass no fire could burn away. The county’s men found it endlessly tiresome.

Beating one’s wife was therefore a local custom.

Every year brought the same reports: Second Brother’s wife had hanged herself; another woman had jumped into the river… and so on.

This year, it was our family’s turn.

Mother neither hanged herself nor jumped into a river.

One night before bed, she simply said to me, “Little Tai, I am leaving.”

I did not dare turn around to look at her.

Her foolish sickness had come upon her that day. She had stolen two gold pieces from Father and hidden them somewhere, so he had beaten her especially badly. Her eyes and nose were black and blue.

I could not turn around. If I saw her, I knew I would cry-and the men of our county decreed that no woman in a household was allowed to make the sound of weeping, lest she bring ruin upon its master.

“Where are you going?” I whispered.

“Up to heaven,” Mother said. “To become an immortal.”

I sighed soundlessly and humored her. “All right. Go to sleep. I hope you have that dream.”

Mother seemed to smile. She edged closer behind me, and fingers so thin they hurt brushed my cheek. They were wet.

“Don’t cry, Little Tai. Mother will protect you even from heaven. Call me three times and I will come.”

She went on saying one absurd thing after another.

That I could fly by riding the old yellow dog. That if I mastered her cultivation manual-which was really just a stack of wastepaper she had covered with wild charcoal scrawls during her fits-I would gain divine strength and defeat everyone who hurt me.

I listened in silence.

Sometime near midnight, with the moon at its zenith, her soft rambling suddenly stopped. Half asleep, I rolled over.

“Mother,” I called.

Three times.

There was no answer.

See? She had lied to me after all.

Mother was buried behind an earthen slope. A crude plank stuck in the ground was all she had for a grave marker.

Many women lay buried there. After dark, even the bravest man in Sha County dared not come near. They said the yin energy was thick and female ghosts were the fiercest of all.

Strange, really. Women who ranked beneath everyone in life inspired men’s reverence the moment they became ghosts.

Mother had been wrong about one thing, then. Better to become a ghost than an immortal.

Temples seldom housed statues of goddesses, and even when they did, men disdained to bow before them. Replace the goddess with a ghost, though, and their precious knees would hit the floor faster than anyone’s.

There was only one other thing before which they bent those knees.

Money.

When word spread that aristocratic families in the capital had taken to buying maidservants from Yuezhou, the girls of Sha County aged thirteen and fourteen enjoyed a few good days.

Their fathers stopped beating and scolding them at every turn. They no longer worked like oxen. Their gruel held less chaff, and at noon they might even receive a morsel of meat from a brother’s bowl.

Their families wanted them to fatten like pigs, pale and smooth, so a buyer would choose them and pay a handsome price.

Their brothers found this profoundly unfair. Not only had they lost food and opportunities to shirk work, but they were suddenly worth less than their sisters. “Women have it so easy!” they muttered resentfully.

Father, however, did not agree this time.

He hesitated, almost unwilling to sell me.

The village head came to persuade him in person. “Fourth Qiu, your Little Tai is the prettiest girl in all Sha County. The brokers are fighting over her.”

Father sat in his wicker chair, hands as broad as palm fans clasped together, his wide jaw sunk into the shadow beneath the eaves.

“My wife gave me only this one wretched girl. Now that she is dead, if I sell our daughter, she will weep underground…” he mumbled. “You know me, Village Head. I, Fourth Qiu, am a man of deep feeling. And it isn’t as if I need the money…”

The village head slung an arm around his shoulders in brotherly understanding. “Of course, of course. You once served in a government office in the capital. You’re a man of the world and a man of feeling. What man in Sha County doesn’t have a tender heart? But about this business-look…”

With a mysterious air, he opened one hand and gave it a little shake. “This much. Hmm?”

Father flicked him a glance but said nothing.

Gritting his teeth, the village head raised his other five fingers as well.

Father’s mouth twitched open into a grin.

He turned to me like a loving parent. “Good daughter, go take a little trip with Grandpa Village Head.”