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almost level with hilltops, turned the river into a ribbon of flame as the sampan bumped the jetty beneath the row of towering willows. Li-Xia was the first to scramble from the prow, eager to arrive at this place so different from the brooding shadows of the great pine. Far from the echoing stone-flagged rooms and strident voices, the solitary gloom of the rice shed and the flat muddy fields of the spice farm, she was dazzled by flickering ceilings of leaves, delicate reflections strewn like flowers at her feet. She opened the yellow sunshade among the dancing blades of light, only to have Yik-Munn snatch it away.
    “Where did you get such a thing, to cast a shadow on the face so carefully prepared for inspection? Who gave you permission to pose beneath a sunshade made for wives and concubines?” He snapped it closed and tossed it into the river, to swirl away on the fast-flowing current. Silently, Li-Xia followed her father along the jetty, past a gang of boys who,stripped to the waist, loaded sacks and baskets into the open hatch of a river junk. Some paused to leer at the girl in the apricot sam-foo , their skinny bodies slick with sweat.
    They passed through towering scarlet doors and into a huge space, its walls lined with shimmering bolts of brightly colored silk. A row of chairs was lined along one side opposite an altar to the Supreme Being Yu-Huang—the Jade Emperor—to assure those he smiled upon of a prosperous life. Li-Xia did not know of such a god and found little comfort in his bloated belly and greedy smile. Before the altar was a high desk holding an open ledger, an ink block, a bamboo cup of brushes, and an abacus. A high wooden stool stood behind it.
    After a slow, silent wait that caused Yik-Munn to adjust his hat and smooth his hair many times, nervously sucking his teeth, a short, round woman seemed to roll into the room. She was followed closely by the silent figure of a girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, attached to her wrist by a silken thong. The stout woman, Li-Xia had already been warned a hundred times by her father’s nervous whisper, was the all-powerful Ah-Jeh, elder sister of sau-hai and superintendent of the mill.
    “You must remember your place in the presence of such a worthy person. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. It is she who will take you to Great-Uncle Ming if you do not displease her.”
    Crossing to the stool, Ah-Jeh hopped with unexpected agility onto its elevated seat, her short legs and broad feet hanging inches from the floor, to look down at Li-Xia with the eyes of one guessing the freshness of fish. She was dressed in a black tzow —a high-necked tunic with wide-legged trousers of waterproof twill that shone like the wing of a crow, making a faint swishing noise when she moved. A large white handkerchief hung from a pin on the sloping bulge of her breast.
    Her oiled hair was the color of ashes, skinned back like a skullcap and caught in a finely plaited bun at the back of her round head with a simple wooden comb, so smoothly held it gleamed like sculpted metal. The dark worm of a vein beat visibly in her temple; a tear of dark jade hung from a thin gold chain around her short neck.
    Her fleshy face was pampered and powdered until it was white as amooncake; her thick brows drawn together in a frown of expectation; thin, disapproving lips daubed red as a fresh wound. Flat, waxen lids were stretched over eyes that were black and unyielding as spilled treacle. She hops onto her stool like a crow hops onto a dunghill. Li-Xia had learned to observe such things without any visible sign on her face or in her eyes. It was, she had decided, the voice of her heart.
    The girl behind Superintendent Ah-Jeh, who was dressed in the same oily black, carried a furled black sunshade and a large fan of black feathers. Over her shoulder, a bundle of willow wands—some thin as whips, others thick and heavy as a club—were slung in a sleeve of leather. As though she had done