“Where did you get those shoes?” Mother asked.

  “Those aren’t the shoes I gave her,” my aunt replied.

  “These are lovely,” the fortune teller said with a smile.

  “I made them,” I said with a wide smile.

  Mother slapped my face. “Don’t lie!” she snapped.

  “I’m not lying,” I said, rubbing my cheek. “I took the shoes Auntie gave me and redid the stitching to make them more beautiful.”

  The fortune teller held my foot with the shoe in her hand and turned it back and forth.

  “This is truly beautiful,” she said. “I have seen hundreds of embroidered slippers in my life, but this shoe is most unique. Imagine what she could do with good quality thread instead of this cheap stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” Mother asked.

  “Let me take the shoes,” she said. “I believe I can sell them in the city tomorrow.”

  “No!” I said. “These are my shoes. I love them. I made them myself.”

  “Give her the shoes, Yaqian!” Mother ordered. “If she can sell them, you can make another pair for yourself.”

  Hot tears filled my eyes. I didn’t want another pair, but I had no choice. I took the shoes off and threw them across the room. Mother raised her hand to strike me again, but then thought better of it in the presence of the fortune teller. She stomped over to retrieve the shoes, dusted them off, and handed them gingerly to the fortune teller, who placed them in her bag.

  “Now, then,” the fortune teller said. “Let’s have a look at your feet.”

  She said that my aunt had done a very good job of binding my feet and they would heal nicely. They were not the smallest feet she had ever seen, but they were satisfactory. I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening and wanted to stomp away to my room after she left, but tiny bound feet don’t stomp very well.

  Two days later, she returned and handed Mother three silver coins. It was more money than my father usually got for selling two baskets of silkworm cocoons.

  “All this for one pair of shoes?” Mother asked, shocked.

  The fortune teller nodded and pulled out a piece of paper. “And orders for five more pairs.”

  Mother sank into a chair, unable to believe her good fortune. She looked across the room at my father who was sitting by the fireplace. “We’re going to need lots of thread,” she said.

  He nodded.

  * * *

  Over the next few months, I made dozens of pairs of shoes. To me, each one was more beautiful than the last. I experimented with different kinds of patterns and colors and techniques. The better the shoes got, the more money the fortune teller brought back, and the more orders as well. I started using better materials. My father purchased real silk thread, which made a big difference. The thread simply glided through the cheap silk that covered the shoes and within minutes an image would start to appear.

  I loved making the shoes beautiful. With each finished pair I held in my hands, my heart soared. My fingers often cramped from working with such precision and my neck and shoulders ached from hunching over the shoes for hours at a time, but each shoe was worth it. To me, they were not simply shoes, but art.

  The only thing I hated was that I never got to keep any of them. My feet had been bound for nearly a year, and though I had made countless pairs of shoes, I did not have a single pair of my own. Every few days, when the fortune teller or my father took my new basket of shoes away, I would fight back tears and sulk in my bed for a day or two until I felt like starting the process over again. So much work and beauty went into each and every one and I would never see them again.

  I was grateful for my work, and my parents were grateful for the money I brought in, though as a six-year-old with newly bound feet, my only job should have been making my feet smaller. Binding a girl’s feet was an investment. Her only goal was to have the tiniest feet possible to make a good marriage. It would benefit the family when they gained a wealthy son-in-law. For a girl to earn money on her own was an anomaly. Mother should have been wrapping my feet tighter and tighter every night and ensuring I walked every day. Mother or my aunt would still wrap my feet every night, the feet had to always be cleaned, oiled, and the nails clipped to prevent infection, but I was not made to walk on them to continue the breaking process. I was still in constant pain during that time, but at least the pain did not get worse. I focused on my embroidery to help me forget the pain.

  * * *

  During one of her visits, the fortune teller said she had good news for me.

  “I will be bringing a very special guest to meet you next week, Yaqian,” she said.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Someone who will change your destiny,” she explained with a twinkle in her eye.

  “What is destiny?” I asked.

  “Yaqian!” Mother squawked. “Stop asking stupid questions and get back to work.”

  I wandered over to the fireplace and picked up my embroidery work without getting an answer to my question, but I continued listening as they spoke.

  “I told you she would be creative,” the fortune teller said. “Her thread is long, straight, and strong. Her future is bright.”

  “You were right, Laoma,” Mother said. “Her creativity has greatly benefitted us. For the first time, my husband and I will be able to give hongbao to our nephews for Spring Festival.”

  The fortune teller scoffed at that. “Why waste good money on worthless pigs?” She shook a wooden cup and a flat stick with numbers painted on it fell out. She picked up the stick and studied it closely. She glanced at me and then turned back to Mother. “This daughter will bring you great prosperity, far more than had she been a boy. I think there will still be boys in your future, and it is Yaqian will bring them into your life.”

  “She will marry well?” Mother inferred. “She will bring us a rich son-in-law and have many sons?”

  “I cannot see clearly how this will come to pass, but Yaqian will bring this family many blessings…with my help.”

  “The guest you are bringing?”

  The fortune teller nodded.

  * * *

  The fortune teller returned a few days later with her esteemed guest, Lady Tang. Lady Tang was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Tall with a long white neck, she wore a flowing, green silk robe embroidered with yellow flowers. Her hair was carefully arranged on top of her head and decorated with little jewels and her lips were painted dark red. I imagined that if fairies existed, they must look like her. When she walked into our sitting room with its dirt floors, I felt very small and filthy even though I always kept my hands clean for working on the shoes.

  “Is this the little girl?” she asked, glancing at me. She smiled with a genuine warmth that I had never seen before, not even in my own mother.

  “Yes,” said the fortune teller. “Her name is Yaqian.”

  Lady Tang sat in a chair by the table and motioned for me to sit in the chair across from her. “Tell me, Yaqian,” she began. “How did you learn to make such beautiful shoes?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I see pictures in my mind and then I make the picture on the shoes.”

  “You have a natural talent,” she said.

  Mother used two hands to present Lady Tang with a cup of hot tea. She accepted the cup and sipped it delicately before placing it on the table. She moved slowly and effortlessly, as if she had rehearsed every flick of her wrist and blink of her eyes a million times.

  “Let me see your hands,” she asked. I held them out. Her hands were warm from holding the teacup and very soft. She looked at my palms and examined each of my fingers, taking special notice of the calluses that had developed on the tips.

  “Your hands are well-formed for this kind of work,” she said to me. “Your fingers are thin and nimble and have developed calluses in just the right spots.”

  I blushed as she spoke. Her words were so kind, and they were directed at me. She spoke to me like I mattered. She made me feel important.

  “I told you she was lucky,” the fortune teller said to my mother.

  “Indeed, some of it is luck,” Lady Tang said as she let go of my hands and picked up her teacup. “But it takes far more than luck to become a master artisan, something that she could become in my care.”

  Confusion swept across my face. I looked at Mother, but her hard expression did not change.

  “Yaqian,” Lady Tang said, looking at my feet. “How old are you?”

  “Six,” I replied.

  “Your feet are only in their first year of being bound, yes?”

  I nodded.

  She stood up and turned to my mother and the fortune teller. “The girl would do well at my school,” she declared. “She has an amazing natural talent and fingers made for embroidery work, but she lacks training and the proper technique. If she becomes my apprentice, there is no limit to what could become of her.”

  If I didn’t know Mother better, I would have thought I saw her eyes swell with pride in that moment.

  “But…we…” Mother stammered. “We have no money to send with her. We have saved a little money since Yaqian started making shoes, but not enough to live with such an esteemed person like you.”

  “I cannot take her now,” Lady Tang said. “She is too young and her feet are not finished. I cannot be bothered with the daily care she still requires. When she has reached seven years, I will take her. That will give you a year to raise money.”

  “Still, Lady Tang,” Mother continued. “I do not think we could ever afford to send her away. If we saved money, you could take her for a few months, maybe a year, but what then? Without Yaqian to help us earn money, we would have no money to pay for her care with you.”

  Lady Tang shook her head. “No, my dear Yang Furen,” she explained. “I have many clients in need of embroidery. The fortune teller and I have already found better quality buyers for your daughter’s shoes. You only need to come up with the money for the first year of your daughter’s training. After that, the embroidery she makes with me we will sell to cover her costs.”

  Mother fell to her knees. “Lady Tang, you honor us. To take this ugly, worthless daughter from our home and teach her to be useful is more kindness than my lowly family deserves.”

  Lady Tang bowed to my mother. “It is nothing, Yang Furen,” she said. She stood tall once more and smiled to me. “I will see you soon, Yaqian.” She walked out of the house where a red sedan chair was waiting for her.

  “What is happening?” I asked Mother. “Am I going away?”

  Mother collapsed into the chair Lady Tang had been sitting in and took several deep breaths. “Eventually,” she finally said.

  I tottered to the front door as two men carried Lady Tang away and I smiled wider than I had ever smiled before. Perhaps my tiny feet would carry me from this place after all.

  3

  Rural Hunan, 1849

  I lost track of how many shoes I made over that next year; my numbers did not go that high. I did not walk as much as I should have to train my feet and keep making them smaller – my focus was on making shoes. From morning until it was too dark to see, I would embroider the tiny slippers. All through the winter, I sat huddled by the fireplace as close as possible to keep my hands from cramping in the cold so I could keep working.

  When spring came back, it was still cold, but the sun was shining more often. As much as possible, I would pull back the tattered window covering so I could work in the sunshine. The colors of the threads were so much more vivid in the natural light. I tried to make each pair different from the last and to use different stitches and patterns. I was trying to train myself to be as good of an embroiderer as possible before going to stay with Lady Tang. I had no idea how much I still had to learn.

  It was the first spring in my life that I did not go out into the field to tend to my silkworms, but I had something else to look forward to.

  When my birthday arrived, Lady Tang did not send for me. Every day that passed was torture to me. It was over a month later before the sedan chair came back.

  I took my few pieces of clothes in a small bag, some of my favorite needles, a brush for my teeth and one for my hair, a set of chopsticks, a teacup, a bowl, and the piece of red thread from my first pair of shoes. Mother, Father, Auntie, and the fortune teller were all there to bid me good-bye.

  “Do not disappoint me, Yaqian,” Mother said with the same stern face she always had. “Always do exactly as Lady Tang tells you.”

  I nodded and headed out to the sedan chair where one of the men helped me climb up. I opened the curtain and waved to everyone. The man closed the curtain and tied it shut. Then the whole thing rocked and I fell back into the seat as it began to move forward. I yelped in surprise and glee and then laughed at the sensation of being carried. I rocked back and forth in the chair. I sat up and pulled at the curtain to see out, but it was tied so tightly I could barely see the people on the street looking at me as I passed. I could not believe that I was forbidden from getting a better look at the world on my very first trip from home. I yanked on the curtain as hard as I could to try to get it to open, but it would not budge. I took a needle out of my bag and began to rip out the stitching on the ties holding the curtain shut. The thread began to come loose in one long piece. As I ran it through my fingers I realized I that it was the finest piece of silk I had ever seen. It was softer and smoother than any thread I had used before, but was strong enough to hold the heavy window ties shut. I coiled the thread around one of my fingers and placed it into my pocket with the other one.

  I finally managed to completely remove one of the ties and the curtain flew open just as we were crossing the Xiangjiang River! The bridge extended over the middle of Orange Island. The trees were bright green and little white flowers were beginning to bloom on them. The island was long and narrow and on either side the river flowed quickly. There were people on the river in small canoes and large steamers. People fishing and catching frogs and crabs were all along the sandy bank.

  There were very few other sedan chairs on the road, but there were many people being pulled in rickshaws. I smiled and waved at people as we passed and most just looked back in confusion. Sedan chairs are usually reserved for weddings and the wealthy, and the women inside would never be seen by those outside. What must people have thought seeing this round-faced urchin looking at them from such a beautiful chair?

  The main road heading through the city was crowded and noisy. There were so many shops and carts. There were people carrying all manner of birds and fish to market on long polls. A man clapping a piece of wood drew attention to the rat traps he was selling. An elderly couple wailed over the body of their son and begged for donations to bury him. I held my nose as we passed closely to a stall selling stinky tofu.

  The sedan chair finally pulled in front of a large moon gate set in a long stone wall. Two men rushed from small guard stands to open the wooden doors. We entered the most beautiful courtyard. The grass and white stone walkways were laid out with precision and the flowers were planted in just the right places. It was clear that an artist had designed this place.

  As we approached the main building, I fumbled with the curtain ties to try and make them look closed again. The sedan chair rocked forward unexpectedly as the men set it down. I still had not recovered my balance as the door was opened and I fell out onto the ground! I heard a tittering laughter. I looked up to see Lady Tang and several girls who had come out to greet me. I quickly stood to dust myself off and made a very low bow to try and hide my beet red face. But Lady Tang made no mention of my embarrassment and offered her hand as a greeting.

  “Welcome, Yaqian,” she said. “These girls are some of my other apprentices,” she explained, motioning to the girls who each gave a small bow in turn. “They have been here for a few years and will help you get settled. Let me show you to your room.”

  The girls were each dressed far more finely than any young girl I had ever seen before. Their clothes were simple silk chaopaos, the high collared Manchu-style gowns that upper-class women wore, but very high quality. Each was a different color, from dark blue to pale red and heavily embroidered. I wore only a white cotton shirt and black cotton trousers. I did wear a pair of embroidered slippers I had finished the day before, but compared to the shoes they wore, I was beginning to doubt my talent. They also each had their hair properly done and delicately adorned while mine was simply tied back with a piece of fabric. I guessed the girls were about twelve to fourteen years old.

  I followed closely behind Lady Tang as we walked through the building. “This is the main house,” she said. “This is where the living and dining areas are and a few areas for small gatherings and places to read and study. The dining room is to the west and your rooms are too the east.”

  My family home had been quite small, a single open room with a small loft for storage and where I would sleep when the weather was mild. Lady Tang’s home, no – estate would be a better word, was sprawling, with dozens of buildings and courtyards connected by walkways and all surrounded by a tall wall. My feet began to ache at the mere thought of having to walk so far to get from my room to the dining and work areas every day. But Lady Tang and the girls all had bound feet, so I knew I would have to get used to it. I also noticed that they had a more elegant swaying gait than I did. I sort of hobbled in an attempt to put as little weight on each step as possible. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out as I followed behind them and did my best to mimic their movements and keep up.

  We walked down a long path and finally Lady Tang stopped. “This is your room,” she said. I opened the door and was shocked at what I saw. There were four beds, one in each corner of the room. Each had silk blankets and embroidered pillows. Next to each bed was a small desk with embroidery tools, a candle, and a washbasin. There was a small chest at the foot of each bed. The room had a large latticed window facing the east that let in the morning sunlight. There was a stove in the middle of the room for warmth and boiling water. The room was beautiful, clean, and bright.