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  "You can keep saying it. You can keep adding me as an afterthought," said Xing Xing. "But they'll know you aren't doing it for me. As will the spirit of my mother."

  "The spirit of your mother? What has she to do with any of this? She's not my ancestor."

  "But she's mine," said Xing Xing sadly. "Whatever form she took. Whatever form she takes next."

  "What do you mean, 'whatever form she took?" Stepmother's voice was a thin, high screech. "What form did she take?"

  "You know as well as I do."

  Stepmother's fists pressed against her cheeks. "No."

  "What's going on?" asked Wei Ping, frantically pulling on her mother's hands. "What are you two talking about?"

  Stepmother sank to her knees, dragging Wei Ping to the floor with her. "It couldn't have been your mother. It was too big. Your mother was small. Maddeningly small."

  "You can try to fool yourself, but you can't fool the spirits, and you can't fool me," said Xing Xing. "Never again. You knew the moment Wei Ping told you I fed her with my shizhi, the forefinger I use to feed myself. You knew then, deep in your heart you knew, and you fooled me into going to the temple and leaving behind my old dress."

  "Feeding who?" wailed Wei Ping. "The fish? Are you talking about the fish? What are you saying?" Tears streamed down her face. "I don't understand anything."

  "But you do understand," said Xing Xing. "It's so sad, but we all understand."

  Chapter 29

  In the end, Wei Ping sided with her mother. What else could a practical girl do? Xing Xing hardly blamed her. Perhaps if her own mother had done something terrible, she'd have sided with her too. She couldn't know. She'd never been put to the test.

  Stepmother made a potion of centipedes, wasps, venomous snake, ants, hair cuttings, menstrual blood, and spit, and sealed it in an urn that she hobbled off with into the woods. She did it all before the girls' eyes—she didn't even try to hide. Xing Xing didn't know what magic the concoction was supposed to effect, but it didn't matter. Mother was beyond Stepmother's powers to harm her now. And Xing Xing was somehow unable to fear for herself. When Stepmother returned with dirt under her fingernails, neither girl said a word.

  Xing Xing watched Wei Ping and Stepmother primp themselves for the prince's visit to the village. Stepmother took off her mourning sackcloth and put on a brocade dress for the first time since Father's death. The two of them painted each other's faces. They arranged each other's hair. Then Xiu Mei came by and announced the most amazing news: The prince was paying private visits to each home. It was the only way to be sure that he tried the shoe on every single girl. Stepmother made Xing Xing clean the cave again. The ormanthus blooms were already open, so Stepmother had Xing Xing scatter the fragrant yellow flowers across the threshold of the cave.

  The prince sent gifts ahead of him. By custom, imperial visits were always preceded by gifts. They were beautiful tortoiseshells that made Xing Xing think of the tortoiseshell that Yao Wang used. Stepmother wouldn't let Xing Xing touch them. She got on her knees and quickly gathered up the ormanthus blooms and arranged them in these shells herself, muttering words Xing Xing couldn't make out.

  Finally, the prince's retinue came. Horsemen clad in brilliant colors led the way. Soldiers marched into their cave home and knelt on one knee, ready to rise quickly and obey the prince's every command.

  Stepmother and Wei Ping didn't know how to behave. They knelt in the most formal way, keeping their bodies erect. Their confusion showed in the stiffness of their shoulders and the way their eyes darted around.

  Xing Xing didn't kneel, though. She sat on her bottom in the shadows of the kang, her legs tucked under her and her knees spread out in front like a winnowing fan. Children sat that way when they felt lazy. Xing Xing didn't feel lazy. She felt alert and almost angry. This whole thing was a sham, and she had had more than her fill of shams. The prince was supposed to choose a wife by using a shoe. But, surely, many women's feet would fit the shoe. He had to know that. So, really, he was just looking for the woman who pleased him most. It seemed wickedly unkind for the man to make such a show when none of it mattered. Oh, she didn't feel sorry for Stepmother. And given how Wei Ping had turned against her, she didn't feel sorry for her half sister, either. But there were dozens of women waiting to try on the shoe. Hundreds maybe. She felt sorry for them. Innocent women, stupidly waiting.

  Xing Xing had changed gradually in the weeks since her fish mother was killed. She was determined to be no one's fool anymore. She felt strong. A strong woman in a world that tried to deny the very existence of such a thing. But she wouldn't be denied. She felt she could leap into fire like the mystics and not burn up.

  If she wanted, she could marry this prince. That was true. Amazing truth. All she had to do was produce the other shoe. How odd that circumstances had given her power.

  She had no idea whether she would exercise that power. Father used to say that once you understood, truly understood, you would find what you were looking for. That is fate. He said that if there was evil in your heart, you would find demons. Xing Xing's heart held no evil, so she was not afraid of demons. But at this moment she understood only what she was not looking for. So her qi lay open, waiting to understand what she was looking for.

  And then the prince came in.

  His clothing made so much padding around his body that she couldn't be sure, but she thought he was only mildly corpulent. Less than her father. And he was shorter than Father, too. He had a thin mustache, a small wispy beard on his chin, and a longer, pointed slip of a beard on his neck, but he was clearly young-—surprisingly young for one who had risen so high in the military. He wore a little red cap with an elephant on the front. Altogether, he seemed pleasant enough, but nothing special. Hardly what one might expect of a prince.

  He ordered one of his soldiers to try the shoe on Wei Ping. Only the front half of her foot could get in, of course. He ordered the soldier to try the shoe on Stepmother. But her heel couldn't make it in, no matter how hard she jammed it.

  The prince looked crestfallen. "That's it," he said. "You were the last two names on the list. I've tried every woman who went to the cave festival. The shoe fits none of them."

  Really? Her mother's shoes were that special? Those beautiful, glowing shoes. Not even Xing Xing had realized their uniqueness, but perhaps the prince had somehow understood that instinctively. Perhaps his hunt wasn't a sham after all. "Most Honorable One," said Xing Xing from the shadows.

  "Who's there?" asked the prince.

  "It's no one," said Stepmother hastily.

  "No one with a voice," said the prince.

  "Just my stepdaughter. A foolish girl, given to saying crazy things."

  "Did she go to the cave festival?" asked the prince.

  "Of course not," said Stepmother.

  "Most Honorable One," said Xing Xing, "do you believe her?"

  "Shouldn't I?" asked the prince.

  "If I were a prince," said Xing Xing, knowing such words were dangerously daring, yet still getting to her feet and coming forward into the light, "I'd want an answer directly from my subject, not via a representative—especially one not chosen by the subject herself." She bowed and got on her knees before him.

  "But look at you," he said. "You're far from a prince."

  "Justly spoken." She bowed till her nose touched the ground. Then she sat back on her heels again. What next?

  The air seemed to swirl around them, through them, faster and faster, almost dizzying her with its chaos, when, in a minute dot of time, everything stopped. Everything became as clear and sharp as a sword point. Her choices boiled down to marrying this prince or wandering far and wide, saying crazy things, becoming the person Stepmother accused her of being. Without a plan and without logic, she leaped into the fire, the freedom and risk rendering her euphoric: "And padded clothing can make one appear fatter and, so, wiser than he is."

  The prince jerked his head. "I think you just insulted me."

  "Or
perhaps I teased you," said Xing Xing. Her breath fluttered like tiny birds, filling the cave, rushing toward their fate. "Did you not just suggest that looks tell the worth of a person, when you clearly don't believe it yourself?"

  "The girl is quite mad, I tell you," said Stepmother. "She raves. But my daughter here, she's a fine one."

  "I'm talking to the girl—the young woman," said the prince. "Be quiet."

  Xing Xing found those words charming. They tapped softly on her heart.

  The prince pinched his upper lip between his thumb and index finger in thought.

  Xing Xing found that gesture charming as well. She smiled.

  The prince looked surprised at her smile. Then delighted. He smiled back. "You're certainly not subservient, whether you make a show of bowing or not." And he laughed. "All right, then. Did you go to the cave festival, Impertinent One?"

  Being called impertinent was more charming still. "Indeed, I did," said Xing Xing. Tap tap tap on her heart.

  "She couldn't have," said Stepmother. "She was sick."

  "I got well quickly," said Xing Xing.

  "She doesn't have a green silk dress. The girl with the gold shoes had a green silk dress," said Stepmother.

  "And a feather cloak," said Wei Ping.

  "Well?" said Xing Xing to the prince.

  "Well, indeed," he said back, his thumb and index finger again pinching his upper lip.

  She couldn't help but grin.

  He grinned back. "Do you have a green silk dress and a feather cloak, Impertinent One?"

  "And more," said Xing Xing. "Can you be patient?" She didn't wait for an answer. She crawled into the storeroom and dressed quickly in the dark. Then she crawled out and stood before the prince in the green silk dress with the feather cloak on her shoulders and the pearls around her neck. She held her hands behind her back.

  "How on earth?" Stepmother gasped. She and Wei Ping clung to each other in their surprise.

  The prince stared, silent. He appeared unable to move at first. Then he blinked, as though he were waking up. "I like your clothes," he said breathlessly.

  "And I like yours," said Xing Xing. "Especially your funny hat."

  "I'm glad you like it," he said. "It's cotton. I got it in India."

  A man who traveled. Oh. Her mind swirled with the air of the cave.

  "And now, Impertinent One," he said, with the slightest tremble in his voice, "will you show me whether you are, instead, the truly pertinent one?"

  A man who liked puns. Xing Xing's hand responded of its own accord, holding out one gold and sacred shoe. "If you give me that other shoe, I'll have a matching pair," she said.

  "Allow me that privilege, please." The prince knelt on one knee and put both shoes on Xing Xing. "You're the one," he said. "You're my wife."

  "Is that an offer?" said Xing Xing. "We haven't even exchanged names."

  The prince stood. "My last name is Zhu. My first name is Cheng Yun. But I'm called Zhu Zhong— loyal Zhu."

  "I like it," breathed Xing Xing. "I am Wu. My first name is Xing Xing."

  "Xing Xing," said the prince. "Stars. That's perfect for our dynasty. 'Ming' means 'bright' with a level tone. The word for 'destiny' sounds the same, but with another tone." He moved his arms through the air as he spoke. The sleeves of his jacket crossed before her eyes. "A star is destined to be the brightness of my life. You, dear Xing Xing."

  Words of purity. Yet Xing Xing couldn't yield herself quite yet—she couldn't fully trust herself to understand quite yet. "There are dragons on your sleeves," she said softly. "My mother was a carp."

  "See?" said Stepmother. "I told you she was mad. Her mother died when she was seven. She's always been a lunatic."

  The prince pinched his upper lip. When he finally dropped his hand, his lip was white, he'd pinched so hard.

  "Your lip is as white as my mother's scales were."

  "Many of us never recognize our ancestors," said the prince at last. "You're lucky. Maybe she has become a dragon."

  What a delightful thought. "There are important things about me that you need to know," said Xing Xing.

  "Let me hear them."

  "I don't want to be bought or sold," said Xing Xing.

  "Neither do I."

  "I can read and write," said Xing Xing.

  "So can I."

  "My feet are not bound."

  "I noticed," said the prince.

  "I have no dowry."

  "I need none," said the prince. He stepped closer, and his face grew tender. "Leave this cave now. Leave this woman and her daughter. Come, dearest Xing Xing, come with me. We have the rest of our lives for the rest of your list."

  And so Xing Xing put out her hand, with full understanding, and the prince took it.

  And the world kept moving, not toward any ;oal, just going, because that's what life does, as Cong Fu Zi says. And it's bound to be better with a ompanion who knows how to be tender, a com-anion you may grow to cherish.

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  POSTSCRIPT

  In the summer of 1997, I taught at Capital Normal University in Beijing, where my modern students wrote modern stories that impressed me with how much the very way they were told was steeped in tradition. And what a wealthy tradition! Whenever I wasn't in class, I was wandering, sometimes in museums, but sometimes just along the road, and sometimes in the countryside to the north, all the way to the Great Wall, looking and listening. When I came back to the United States after that summer, a family friend, Michael Chen, gave me a book on the three perfections. That was the start of an enormous reading list that stretched on for the next six years.

  Cinderella stories can be found in many cultures, among the earliest of which are the Chinese versions. While there are multiple and varying Chinese versions, the traditional tales are brief—consisting of a page or two of text—and I have been faithful to details of plot across these various versions. However, the tale here differs from the traditional Chinese tales I have read in three ways: I have chosen to place it in Ming times rather than in Qin and Han times; in a northern province rather than in a southern province; and in an ordinary community rather than in a minority community. These changes allowed me to integrate cultural habits of time, place, and community—notably, the prominence of foot binding and the social revolutions of the first Ming emperor (who certainly was not an entirely positive figure, though his cruelty does not play a role in this book)— that brought the story in a direction that compelled me personally. I offer it with respect and gratitude.

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  Books by Donna Jo Napoli

  Breath

  The Great God Pan

  Daughter of Venice

  Beast

  Crazy Jack

  Spinners (with Richard Tchen)

  Sirena

  For the Love of Venice

  Stones in the Water

  Song of the Magdeline

  Zel

  The Magic Circle