Spin the Dawn(3)

“Keton, that’s enough,” Sendo chided.

“I don’t care about his palaces,” I said, turning away from my youngest brother to Sendo. His eyes shone with gentleness—he’d always been my favorite brother, and I knew he would understand. “I want to know what he looks like so I can become his tailor one day. An imperial tailor.”

Keton rolled his eyes at my confession. “That’s as likely as you becoming his concubine!”

Finlei and Sendo glared at him.

“All right, then,” Sendo promised, touching the freckles on my cheek. We were the only two of the family with freckles—a result of our hours daydreaming under the sun. “A portrait of the emperor for my talented sister, Maia.”

I hugged him, knowing my request was very foolish but still hoping all the same.

If I’d known it was the last time we would all be together, I wouldn’t have asked for anything.



* * *



? ? ?

Two years later, Baba received a notice that Finlei had been killed in battle. The imperial emblem stamped on the bottom of the letter was as red as freshly drawn blood, and hurriedly pressed so that the characters of Emperor Khanujin’s name were smeared. Even months later, the memory would make me cry.

Then one night, with no warning, Keton ran away to join the army. All he left was a quickly scrawled note on top of my morning laundry—knowing it would be the first thing I saw when I woke.

    I’ve been useless too long. I’m going to find Sendo and bring him home. Take care of Baba.



Tears filled my eyes, and I crumpled the note in my fist.

What did he know about fighting? Like me, he was lean as a reed, barely strong enough to hold up against the wind. He couldn’t buy rice at the market without being swindled, and he always tried to talk his way out of a fight. How would he survive a war?

I was angry, too—because I couldn’t go with him. If Keton thought he was useless, what was I? I couldn’t fight in the army. And for all the thousands of hours I spent creating new stitches and drawing designs to sell, I could never become a master tailor. I could never take over Baba’s shop. I was a girl. The best I could hope for was to marry well.

Baba never spoke of Keton’s departure, would not speak of my youngest brother for months. But I saw how his fingers became stiff as stones; they could not even stretch wide enough to hold a pair of shears. He spent his days staring at the ocean as I took over our faltering shop. It was up to me to drum up business, to make sure my brothers had a home to return to.

No one had any need for silks and satins, not when our country was devouring itself from within. So I made hemp shirts for the local fishermen and linen dresses for their wives, and I spun flax into thread and mended soldiers’ coats when they passed by. The fishermen gave us fish heads and sacks of rice in return for my work, and it didn’t seem right to charge the soldiers.

Toward the end of every month, I helped the women who were preparing their gifts for the dead—usually paper clothing, which was tricky to sew—to burn before the prayer shrines in honor of their ancestors. I stitched paper into the shoes of passing merchants and strings of coins into their belts to ward off pickpockets. I even repaired amulets for travelers who asked it of me, though I didn’t believe in magic. Not then.

On days when there was no business and our supplies of wheat and rice were running dangerously low, I took out my rattan basket and filled it with a few spools of thread, a bolt of muslin, and a needle. I roamed the streets, going from door to door, asking if anyone had mending to be done.

But few ships docked at the port. Dust and shadows wreathed the empty streets.

The lack of work didn’t bother me as much as the awkward encounters I’d begun to endure on my way home. I used to love going into the bakery across from our shop, but that changed during the war. For now when I returned to Yanamer Street, Calu the baker’s son would be there waiting for me.

I didn’t like Calu. It wasn’t because he didn’t serve in the army—he hadn’t passed the imperial health examination, so he couldn’t. It was because as soon as I turned sixteen, he got it into his head that I was going to be his wife.

“I hate seeing you beg for work like this,” Calu told me one day. He waved me inside his father’s bakery. The fragrance from the breads and cakes wafted out the door, and my mouth watered at the smell of yeast, fermented rice flour, and roasted peanuts and sesame seeds.

“It’s better than starving.”

He wiped red-bean paste off his palm. Sweat from his temples dripped into the bowl of dough on his table. Normally it would have made me wrinkle my nose—if Calu’s father saw how sloppy he was, he’d have a scolding—but I was too hungry to care.

“If you married me, you’d never starve.”

His forwardness made me uncomfortable, and I thought with dread of Calu touching me, of bearing his children, of my embroidery frames collecting dust and my clothes growing sticky with sugar. I stifled a shudder.

“You would always have plenty to eat—your baba, too,” Calu tried again, licking his lips. He smiled, his teeth yellow as butter. “I know how much you love my father’s puff pastries, his steamed buns with lotus paste, his coconut buns.”

My stomach grumbled, but I would not let my hunger overpower my heart. “Please stop asking. My answer isn’t going to change.”