Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I slipped away to help the girl.

She came from Sha County too. Her name was Ah Chou. Her family had had four daughters before her, all drowned. She was the fifth.

Ah Chou’s life was even more bitter than mine. At least Mother had loved and protected me. Ah Chou’s own mother beat her.

Sha County had no shortage of mothers like that-women who became men’s accomplices in hopes of pleasing their husbands.

Once I saw her mother jab a red-hot needle into Ah Chou’s back, claiming it would ward calamity away from an unborn little brother and help her conceive a boy.

Ah Chou never cried.

Even after losing a finger, she had remained numb and silent.

I stole a little wood ash from the stove, evaded the guards, and crept below. Among the heaps of curled-up “fish,” I found Ah Chou.

In a corner, I dressed her wound. She bit her lips bloody, trembling and drenched in cold sweat.

After a moment’s thought, I unfastened my robe and tucked her head against my chest. I clumsily soothed her as Mother had soothed me. “There, there. Hide in here. Don’t be afraid.”

Ah Chou’s shoulders shook. She cried because it truly hurt.

Once she recovered, we began discussing how to escape.

As I understood it, this boat had no single destination. Since demand for Yuezhou maidservants had grown, wealthy households not only in the capital but throughout the prosperous south were buying girls from traffickers.

The boat therefore stopped at riverside settlements from time to time, where some girls were taken away.

Ah Chou and I planned to use one such stop to slip away in the confusion.

Perhaps Mother blessed us from heaven, because we truly escaped the boat.

Ah Chou and I were both accustomed to hard work and had good stamina.

But I had forgotten about the tea Granny Wang forced us to drink. It contained a drug that weakened the bones. Even after I escaped, the procuress’s black hound could still track its scent on me.

I did not want to endanger Ah Chou, so I suggested we separate.

She shook her head. When she saw I could no longer run, she carried me on her back, pushing through crowded places to confuse the scent.

For days we made ourselves filthy and foul-smelling, hiding like beggars.

Then hunger finally left me without even the strength to move a finger. Ah Chou hid me beneath the altar in an abandoned temple and went in search of food.

She knew how to hunt. Back in Sha County she had made a wooden slingshot and once shot a blue, long-tailed pheasant for me. We plucked and roasted it together.

The memory of that delicious bird filled my stomach with sour water.

As if in answer, I heard something swallow beside me.

Every hair rose. I looked left.

A huge black dog nosed its way beneath the altar. Its breath was damp, its dark eyes fixed coldly on me.

“Ah!”

I scrambled out, only to collide with someone’s leg. The familiar scent of blood clung to him, and instinctive revulsion made me retch.

“Where did this little mouse come from?” A young man with a hand on his saber lifted me easily and examined me.

I had no strength to struggle. Amused, he cocked his head.

Several men entered the ruined temple and frowned at him. “Stop fooling around. There is an old woman outside looking for her daughter. Is that the girl?”

The man in the center was grave and imposing, perhaps forty years old. Unlike his lightly dressed companions, he wore a heavy cloak against the chill spring rain. His features were remote.

The others addressed him as “Commander.”

An official, I thought.

Mother had said officials were supposed to uphold justice for the people. Weren’t they?

So when Granny Wang rushed in, wailing for her “daughter” and trying to drag me away, I spent the last of my strength hooking one foot around the threshold and seizing the official’s robe.

“Commander… save me.”

The young man sensed something was wrong. He stepped forward and asked Granny Wang sharply, “Is she really your daughter?”

Granny Wang smiled obsequiously. “The wretched girl is throwing a tantrum. Forgive her, my lord.”

I shook my head in anguish. The young man’s grip tightened on his saber as if he meant to intervene, but a cold voice stopped him.

“Mind your own business.”

The young man looked uneasily toward the commander. “But…”

The official did not even lower his eyes to me. “As soon as the rain eases, we must hurry back to the capital. We have no time for other people’s affairs.”

With that, he brushed off my hand and stood beneath the decaying Buddha in the main hall, as though a human life mattered less than his shelter from the rain.

The young man retreated helplessly.

“No-”

My outstretched hand was dragged away in despair.

Beyond the doorway, rain streamed through a blue-gray bamboo grove tossing in the wind.