Chapter 4: Forty Days

It rained on the thirty-ninth day, and the plum garden filled with the smell of wet bark.

Mingzhu wanted to walk in it.

"You will catch cold," Ruoxi said.

"Then you will make me a ginger soup and taste it first."

She said it so easily that Ruoxi laughed before she could stop.

They went out under one oiled-paper umbrella, because Lanyin had only brought one.

Ruoxi held it.

She was a head taller than the princess, so she tilted it low, and their shoulders touched under the paper.

The path was black with rain, and the last red plums lay in the grass.

"Tell me something that isn't about food," Mingzhu said.

"I don't know anything that isn't."

"Liar. What did you do when you were small?"

"I sold tea from a tray," said Ruoxi. "My mother couldn't stand in the cold. I walked the outer market with a kettle on my back and shouted prices."

"What was your price?"

"Two coppers a cup. I said it so loud that the fishmongers paid me to go away."

Mingzhu laughed until she had to stop and hold the umbrella handle.

"And what did you do?" Ruoxi asked.

"I ate alone at a table for ten."

"Every day?"

"Every day, until I was sixteen. Then I decided I wanted company, and I arranged some."

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