Chapter 3

After that, I became perfectly obedient.

Father praised me for having the bearing of an eldest sister, and Grandmother said I had grown steady.

Only my stepmother remained unchanged. Her gaze drifted past me and seldom settled on my face.

I often thought she was not very happy either.

But perhaps that was not quite right. Happiness meant something different to everyone.

Take Yuntang, my personal maid. Famine had struck her homeland and killed her entire family. While fleeing with other refugees, she never dared sleep deeply. If she did, no one would wake her when the group moved on, and a straggler could easily be eaten by wild beasts. If the refugees grew any hungrier, she might become food for people instead.

She could only trail the crowd from a distance.

Not until human traffickers caught her did she get her first sound sleep in all that time.

Now a full belly and warm clothes were enough to satisfy her, and her snores shook the room at night.

I did not dislike her snoring. It made the room feel inhabited, and accompanied by rain it sounded especially pleasant.

My second sister did not care for it as much.

She often came clutching the ugly doll I had sewn for her and asked to sleep with me. Whenever she did, Yuntang was excused from keeping watch.

My stepmother devoted all her attention to my third brother. Though Second Sister was her own daughter, Mother did not favor her much either.

I thought Second Sister and I were each pitiable in our own way. She disagreed.

She hated self-pity.

If her mother would not sleep beside her, she came to me.

Her goal was to have someone beside her. Once she achieved it, nothing else mattered.

Anything that could be solved, she said, was not worth grieving over.

It was difficult to imagine those words coming from an eight-year-old.

I told her she seemed more grown-up than I was. She pursed her lips. “Then you may call me Elder Sister.”

With a solemn little face, she climbed methodically onto my bed, tucked the ugly doll beneath the covers, and very politely wished me good night.

Her breathing soon became even. She fell asleep before the rain began.

I lay awake listening for a while. Banana leaves broke the force of the downpour; droplets gathered upon them and fell, striking deep puddles in the ground.

Before sleep took me, I was still wondering whether this was water wearing through stone or accumulated feathers sinking a boat.

Three years were only three cycles of spring, summer, autumn, and winter—three rounds of blossoms, leaves, grain, and snow. They passed quickly.

I drew a deep breath and sat in the covered walkway, looking up at the sky.

The even eaves framed it into a perfect square. That woman had once sat here with me.

She had looked at the sky with melancholy, then at me and smiled.

No matter how vast the courtyard, I thought, it would always be cramped to an eagle meant to soar through the highest heavens.

Father had once tamed an eagle, and I had been the chain around its talons.

Second Sister was eleven now. She no longer climbed into my bed and scarcely carried the ugly doll anymore.

She sat beside me, chin propped in one hand, and said,

“The sky isn’t beautiful when you look at it this way, is it?”

“No.”

“Eldest Sister, I’m going to leave someday—but not as a bride.”

She resembled neither Father nor my stepmother. She resembled that woman.

I nodded.

“Then you must go to the farthest place you can.”