Free The Sword Dancer by Jeanne Lin Page A

ragged edge that grew damp from all the times she’d wiped her nose across it. She remembered tripping and scraping her knee against rock in the dirt path. She remembered Mother having to pick her up and carry her.
    Other details were hazy, as if seen through a veil of smoke. There were trees, hills, the sky was grey. She could sense that Mother was afraid, so she was afraid too. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen the men who were chasing them. Perhaps she’d just recreated them in her own mind, making them more awful and fearsome in the years to come.
    Wen shifu had told her about the mountain path he’d been travelling when he found her. When Li Feng had first returned to the province, she had gone to a place that seemed to fit both her fragmented memories and his description. There were trees, there were hills. The sky that day was blue, not grey.
    She had even found an opening in the hillside, too high up for a small child to reach on her own. The crevice looked small and desolate and dark, but just large enough for a little girl to crawl inside and curl herself up into a ball while she waited for her mother to return. Li Feng had reached her hand inside the rock and closed her eyes. She wanted to believe that it was the place and by somehow coming back there, she could connect herself with what had happened in the past and, through it, what had happened afterwards.
    When she opened her eyes, there were no answers for her. So she’d left the hillside to continue her search. She felt the same way now, her hand grasping for the past to have it disappear like smoke. She would listen to names of people and places and hope that one of them would contain the answers she longed for.
    She was standing on the riverbank now, at a tiny river crossing waiting for a ferry. After escaping the brothel, she’d remained close to the river, navigating downstream according to the directions the courtesan Lotus had provided.
    When Li Feng had arrived at the Singing Nightingale, Lotus poured tea for her and was eager for her story. The courtesan had a way of putting her at ease and Li Feng spoke of the jade pendant and her search for her parents as if they were long-lost sisters. Lotus had also been taken away from her parents at a young age.
    ‘The family was poor. They needed the money,’ she explained, though Li Feng caught the pang of wistfulness that crossed the courtesan’s otherwise tranquil face.
    Lotus went on to tell Li Feng of a man named Cai Yun who was the owner of the jade. Li Feng repeated the name to herself as a sampan boat floated across the river towards her. Had this man known her mother?
    ‘Is there a settlement on the other side?’ she asked the
ferryman when the boat came to shore.
    ‘There is a village up in the hills near the salt works.’
    Li Feng thanked the man and handed him a copper coin before stepping into the sampan. The vessel had a long flat keel that sat low in the water. There was one other passenger on board who sat hunched at the back. His robe was dark in colour and a wide conical straw hat shielded his face from the sun. She went to stand before him.
    ‘I don’t need to see your face to recognise you,’ she said drily.
    The man lifted his head, two fingers pushing back the brim of the hat to reveal the rough square cut of his jaw. The sight of his familiar face made her heart skip. She was starting to expect these meetings between them, even to the point of looking forward to them. She had no sense, no sense at all, and deserved to be caught.
    ‘It seems we are currently on the same path,’ Han said as his gaze moved over her from head to toe. ‘No longer wearing silk?’
    Li Feng swallowed. Did she detect a hint of disappointment? She was dressed once again in her shortened tunic and leggings, her hair pinned in a simple knot. The grey, peasant colour allowed her to disappear in a crowd and the loose fit and shorter length allowed her to move quickly should she need to flee.