The
Dutiful Daughter
Leah R Cutter
Copyright 2011 by Leah R Cutter
Published by Knotted Road Press
Discover other titles by this author on Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The Dutiful Daughter
Mama Chen pretended not to hear Xi Bao's cries as she bent her adopted daughter's four little toes under while pushing her big toe toward her heel. It wasn't that she didn't know how much the binding hurt — her own feet fit easily in the palm of one hand. But Mama Chen knew best.
"Please, don't do this to me," Xi Bao wept, the words echoing off the unpainted plaster walls in Mama Chen's windowless bedroom. She clenched her hands into fists, balling up the blue and silver patchwork quilt that covered Mama Chen's sleeping platform. At least she no longer tried to pull her foot out of Mama Chen's ancient hands: the beatings she'd received for such disobedience had finally made a difference.
"Shh, shh, Rare Treasure," Mama Chen said. "You're too big to be making such a fuss. Your cries even shame Chun Xing." She pointed with her chin toward the altar carved into the wall above the head of her sleeping platform. Crimson silk embroidered with fine gold thread covered the bottom of the niche. Two dainty white porcelain cups filled with rice wine sat before a faded portrait of Chun Xing, the immortal. The outline around his bulbous head had been worn off by years of fingers seeking his blessing. Portions of his staff and the peaches he held were only visible through the eye of memory.
"I don't care!" Xi Bao wailed. "It hurts!"
Mama Chen slapped the girl across the face. "I expect you to be more brave," Mama Chen chided her. "You're getting too big for all this nonsense."
Xi Bao's black eyes flashed with a violet light, making her face appear as white as the snow on top of Tian Hiu and more ancient.
"Don't you look at me like that," Mama Chen snapped at her. "Who else would have taken in a bad luck girl like you? Wandering alone down Lichang street during Ghost month? When all the shops were closed and the owners gone? A girl who doesn't even remember her own name, let alone her family?"
Xi Bao took a gulping breath before she sighed and looked down. "I know, Mama Chen," she said quietly. "I'll try not to cry any more."
"Good girl," Mama Chen said, smoothing out the binding cloth as she continued to wrap the girl's foot, moving her skeletal fingers as quickly as she could. "We have to do everything we can or else you won't marry well."
"But I don't need to marry anyone here," Xi Bao said. "I will take care of you myself."
It was an old argument. Mama Chen didn't know who had originally raised the girl or why they'd told her she didn't need to marry. She'd often sworn silently at the stupid woodcutters, peasants, or whoever it had been who'd lost their child in the city, who hadn't realized what a beauty she was. Mama Chen had taken one look at her face and known that not a man alive would be able to resist her once she'd grown up. Even though a husband wasn't supposed to see the face of his bride before their wedding day, Mama Chen had worked out a plan how her Rare Treasure would be "discovered". Then they would move from the Xuanwu district and the noxious fumes from the kilns down the street.
"True ladies have husbands as well as tiny feet," Mama Chen told her. "And servants, who will do anything for their mistress. Even fetching her a thimble full of the Elixir of Life."
That was another of Mama Chen's deepest wishes, though she disdained from visiting the Taoists hidden on Meitau lane. They'd been chased away and their teachings forbidden by the Emperor, who'd claimed they were in alliance with the hoards of horsemen in the north. However, the philosophers and doctors had never actually left, just crawled between the floorboards and buildings like cockroaches. Mama Chen didn't trust their grave-stealing ways — the thought of medicine composed of powdered bones of her ancestors made her sick — but she was still jealous of their abilities and their long lives.
"Mama Chen, I'll take care of you. Always," Xi Bao promised.
"I know you will. And we'll live together in a large, prosperous household. You will be a good daughter to me." It wasn't that Fei Yu, Mama Chen's only surviving child, wasn't a good daughter, but Mama hadn't known that the charming Yi Shang was lazy, and a drunkard to boot when his parents had come to court them. Mama Chen's husband and sons had been killed in the battle of Tumu, when the dirty hoards had marched right into the city. She'd been desperate to find a proper mate for her sole child. His parents had been very clever, showing only the good side of their son. Now, he wasted his time and her daughter's bride money drinking and gambling, giving a mere pittance to the rest of the household, barely enough for them to live. He hadn't even the skill to get Little Fei pregnant, though he blamed it on their bad luck household, as well as the bad luck girl who Mama Chen had adopted soon after he'd arrived.
"Just me," Xi Bao promised. "I will take care of you myself. No one else."
"You will have many servants," Mama Chen said. She was ashamed of their small household. When she'd been a girl, her family had commanded handfuls of servants. Now, there was only Old Gardener who maintained the compound and his wife, Little Crane, who cooked for them. All of Mama Chen's brothers had married and had moved out to live with their wives. Since Yi Shang's arrival, they and their families only visited once or twice month.