The Concubine's Daughter by null

be heard for a mile along the river.”
    Pebble waited for the power of her words to be properly heard, eager to continue. “Once, not so long ago, river pirates came in a four-masted junk to raid the mill. They would have taken the silk and the weavers too, but Yun held them off until Ming-Chou’s bodyguard came with their guns. The master did not reward him; the captain of the guard did not thank him. He returned to his hut among the groves with no more said of it.”
    Pebble grinned and spread her hands to complete her story.
    “This mattered nothing to him. Since they took away his hands, he says, his wisdom has increased and he has learned to speak with the universe and all things in it. He is a poet and a seer, a teller of fortunes, and he can make beautiful things from shells… . Now he pulls his cart to the groves and back again much faster than a buffalo.” Pebble bowed to her audience. “The bluecap is very happy in the mulberry tree.”
    She handed her empty bowl to Li-Xia. “Collect the bowls and wash them in the river; this will be among your duties as the youngest. Then we must sleep. Tomorrow you will ride the royal palanquin of Giant Yun to pick the celestial lychees.”
    The lamps were soon blown out and fireflies glowed all the brighter, flitting among the drooping swaths of mosquito nets like sparks stirred from a dying fire. The grating of bullfrogs was heard among the rushes as Pebble lay down on the bed next to Li-Xia with comforting words.
    “I will sleep beside you until you are truly among us. No one will trouble us. We have secret claws.”
    Pebble’s hands reached into the twisted mass of her hair, a curved hook of sharpened steel suddenly appearing from each of her tightly closed fists. The middle finger of each hand was thrust through the rings of buffalo horn attached to each lethal blade.
    “The hair knife,” she muttered with secret pride. “I made them myself from a broken sickle.” Even in the fast-growing darkness, Li could see that the steel had been lovingly honed to a razor’s edge. “Worn in my hair they are just another clip, a fancy pin, an ornament, just like the willow twigs and my crown of morning stars … but once in my hand they are the claws of the black bear and the talons of an ea gle, and no one can take them from me unless they chop off my hands.” The gleaming hooks of steel were again quickly hidden in the nest of her hair.
    Night settled over the secret thoughts of the mui-mui in a mantle of sounds—their dwindling voices, the breeze sifting through the canopy, crickets singing in the thatch above, the constant rattle of frogs.
    “There are both the good and the bad among us. Only the strongest survive without misery. We must always be prepared to defend ourselves and each other. It is the code of the family.”
    Li-Xia lay in silence, listening to the songs of the river, uncertain of what she might say in return.
    “Don’t be afraid, little Crabapple. Let the willows sigh in your dreams. Tomorrow you will begin to learn the ways of the mui-mui in the noble world of the silkworm.”

    Early the next morning, Li-Xia was awakened roughly to shouts and murmured curses of those about her. Slow to leave a deep, untroubled sleep, she opened her eyes when her nose was tweaked.
    “Wake up, Crabapple. We must bathe before the others and be first to the chop house while the congee is hot and the steamed bread still soft.”
    The voices quickly multiplied; bare-skinned girls of every shape and size made their way to the river’s edge, giggling as they stepped over those still half asleep.
    Mugwort and Monkey Nut grabbed Li-Xia by her hands and feet, lifting her bodily from her bed, carrying her down the dozen steps to the water’s edge—the cold plunge claiming her with its swirling grip and a silent explosion of bubbles.
    This was how Li-Xia’s first day of her new life began, beneath the colossalarchways of Ten Willows, high and grand in her eyes as the