The first tendrils of dawn barely touched the tiled roof when Yuqin's feet hit the cold earthen floor. Her bound feet, folded into centuries-old tradition, ached with each step as she shuffled to the kitchen, where three stone stoves waited like silent beasts. She struck a match, and the flame flickered to life, casting long shadows on the clay walls lined with gourds and dried chilies. The scent of last night's firewood lingered, mingling with the anticipation of another day's labor.
Fifty-six mouths to feed—twenty-eight hired hands, sixteen family members, and twelve occasional laborers. Yuqin's hands moved automatically, measuring rice with a wooden scoop that had worn smooth from decades of use. Beside her, the other women—her sister-in-law and two nieces—roused themselves, their own bound feet shuffling in unison. The clatter of iron pots echoed through the courtyard as they prepared congee thickened with millet, supplemented by salted vegetables and, on rare days, a single egg per communal bowl.
"Steady hands, steady heart," Yuqin murmured to herself, a mantra inherited from her own mother. She glanced at the window, where the first rooster had just begun its hoarse crowing.By the time the sun crested the rice paddies, the laborers would storm the dining hall like a summer storm, their calloused hands grabbing at bowls, their voices rough with fatigue. Yuqin had learned to cook in volumes that defied mathematics—enough to satisfy, but never enough to waste.
In the brief hours between breakfast and lunch, when the men worked the fields and the elderly napped in the shade, Yuqin claimed a corner of the veranda for needlework. Lijuan, her daughter, would settle beside her, a basket of indigo-dyed cloth between them. The girl's fingers, though young, were already as deft as her mother's, tracing patterns of chrysanthemums and cranes with precise stitches.
"Not too tight," Yuqin corrected, touching Lijuan's wrist gently. "The fabric must breathe, like a second skin." Her voice softened as she spoke, a rare warmth in a life dominated by duty. Lijuan nodded, her brow furrowed in concentration. Unlike her stepbrother Laiming, who spent his days in the fields or overseeing the laborers, Lijuan found solace in these quiet moments, where time slowed and the world existed only in the interplay of thread and fabric.
"Will you teach me the phoenix stitch today?" Lijuan asked, her eyes bright with eagerness. Yuqin smiled, a rare expression that transformed her weary face. "When you master the crane," she replied, "the phoenix will follow." Secretly, she took pride in her daughter's talent—Lijuan's embroidery would one day be her dowry, a tangible symbol of her worth in a world that measured women by their hands.
The matchmaker arrived on a humid afternoon in late summer, her red parasol bobbing above the dusty path like a ripe pomegranate. Yuqin received her in the ancestral hall, where the portraits of Lijuan's grandfather and his opium-addled son—Laijuan's father—looked down sternly. The matchmaker, a woman with a voice like wind through bamboo, spoke of a family in the next village: a widow named Mrs. Chen and her son, Tianming, who owned thirty mu of fertile land and six hired hands. "A mirror image of your own household," she trilled, "two women holding up the sky for their children."
Lijuan, hidden behind a screen, listened with a pounding heart. She had seen Jianshe once at the market—a tall, serious young man with his mother's sharp eyes. What scared her wasn't the thought of marriage, but the prospect of leaving her mother, her grandparents' indulgence, and the only home she had ever known. Yet tradition dictated that daughters belonged to their husbands' families, and Yuqin, though a stepmother, understood the weight of this expectation.
"She will go," Yuqin said finally, after the matchmaker had sipped her tea and praised the household's prosperity. Lijuan bit her lip, silent. Her grandfather, seated in his armchair, nodded solemnly—his guilt over his son's death manifesting in indulgence for the granddaughter he had failed to protect. "But she may visit often," he added, his voice firm. Yuqin glanced at him, knowing that such leniency was unusual, but said nothing. Some debts, she understood, were paid in memories.
Lijuan's marriage chamber in the Chen household smelled of new lacquer and unfamiliar herbs. Mrs. Chen, a thin woman with a perpetual frown, ruled the kitchen with a bamboo ladle, measuring rice as if it were gold. Jianshe, though kind, was often absent, overseeing the fields or negotiating with grain merchants. Lijuan, accustomed to her mother's quiet competence, floundered—burning the rice, mismeasuring salt, and accidentally cutting a treasured silk handkerchief while attempting to embroider it.
By the third moon after the wedding, she began her pilgrimages home, her blue cotton dress dusty from the three-mile walk. Her grandmother would cluck in sympathy, her grandfather would pretend annoyance while ordering the servants to prepare her favorite jujube cakes, and Yuqin would simply pull her into the kitchen, handing her a bundle of linen to hem. "Your mother-in-law's kitchen is too small for two cooks," Yuqin would say softly, not unkindly, as they worked side by side.
In these visits, Laijuan found temporary refuge. She taught her mother about the Chen household's peculiarities—how they stored rice in earthen jars instead of wooden chests, how Mrs. Chen insisted on praying to the kitchen god before every meal. Yuqin listened, nodding, but her heart ached. She knew Laijuan's frequent returns scandalized the village—married women were supposed to adapt, not cling to their natal homes—but she couldn't bring herself to scold her. Not when she saw the loneliness in her daughter's eyes, a mirror of her own after her first husband's death.
The children came quickly—first Laijuan's son, then a daughter, then another son, each birth bringing both joy and chaos. Laiming and his wife, Meihua, also blessed the Wang household with three children, the first a son named Mingchen who became the focus of his grandfather's pride. In traditional households, grandsons carried the family name, and Yuqin, though she loved all her grandchildren, felt the invisible hand of custom pressing her toward Laiming's brood.
It was a subtle shift at first—she would linger longer at Mingchen's cradle, embroidering a tiger motif on his swaddling cloth while Qiuye,Laijuan's second child, gurgled in a less elaborate blanket. When both grandchildren fell ill with fever, she stayed by Mingchen's side through the night, only visiting Qiuye in the morning, her eyes heavy with fatigue. "Grandma's here," she would murmur to the little girl, but her hands were already twitching to return to the boy.
Laijuan noticed, of course, but said nothing. She understood the rules of patriliny, even as her mother-in-law's death left her struggling alone. Mrs. Chen had passed away during Qiuye's infancy, leaving Laijuan to manage the household, the fields, and three young children with only a single elderly servant for help. Yuqin would visit twice a week, her bound feet protesting the journey, but she always left before sunset, citing duties at the Wang household. "Laiming's wife needs me," she would say, avoiding her daughter's gaze.
The autumn brought an unrelenting heat, wilting the chrysanthemums and drying the rice paddies prematurely. Yuqin arrived at Laijuan's house one afternoon, her forehead damp with sweat, a basket of medicinal herbs on her arm. Qiuye,now four years old, saw her grandmother from the window and giggled, planning her attack. She had noticed that Mingchen could make Grandma laugh by mimicking the village fool, but her own attempts had failed miserably.
"Grandma, look!" Qiuye cried, darting around the courtyard as Yuqin hung the herbs to dry. She waited until the older woman bent to pick up a fallen leaf, then lunged, her small fingers scribbling at Yuqin's sides. "Got you!" she crowed, expecting the usual peals of laughter.
But Yuqin stiffened, her face tightening. She grabbed Qiuye's wrists gently but firmly, setting her aside. "Not now, child," she said, her voice clipped. "There's work to do."
Qiuye stared, confused. Why didn't Grandma laugh? She had seen her laugh at Mingchen's antics just yesterday, her eyes crinkling with delight. Was it because she was a girl? The thought planted a seed of hurt in her tiny heart, though she couldn't yet name it.
Yuqin turned away, busying herself with the herbs, but her hands trembled. She knew what the child saw—a grandmother cold and distant—but she couldn't explain the weight on her chest, the knowledge that every moment spent with Qiuye was a moment stolen from Mingchen, the heir. Tradition was a river, she thought, and she was just a stone in its bed, worn smooth by its current.
By winter, Yuqin's steps had grown slower, her cough persistent. She dismissed it as a chill, but Meihua, Laiming's wife, noticed the way she paused to catch her breath on the veranda, her face pale above the steaming bowl of congee. "Mother should rest," she told Laiming one evening, but he shook his head. "The household depends on her," he replied, not unkindly. "Besides, she's always been strong."
Laijuan noticed too, during a rare visit when both families gathered for the Lunar New Year. She watched her mother move between the grandchildren, favoring Mingchen as always, but there was a fragility now, a hesitation in her movements. When the children played by the ancestral altar, Qiuye tripped and scraped her knee, crying out. Yuqin started to kneel, then swayed, steadying herself on the altar table.
"Mother!" Laijuan rushed to her side, supporting her weight. Yuqin smiled weakly, patting her hand. "Just a moment's dizziness," she said, but her eyes flickered to Mingchen, who was building a tower of jujube cakes with his cousins. "Don't make a fuss," she whispered.
That night, as the family slept, Yuqin sat by the oil lamp, stitching a new jacket for Mingchen. The fabric was coarse, but she embroidered a dragon at the collar, a symbol of power. Her needle slipped, pricking her finger, and a drop of blood stained the dragon's eye. She stared at it, transfixed—a bad omen, perhaps, or a sign of the pain to come.
She thought of Laijuan's children, especially Qiuye,the little girl who had tried to tickle her into happiness. Guilt gnawed at her—she had loved Laijuan fiercely, but in the end, tradition had divided her heart. Now, as her strength ebbed, she wondered if she had made a mistake, if the scales of duty had tipped too far toward the son who would never truly be hers by blood.
A floorboard creaked behind her. She turned, expecting to see Meihua come to scold her for staying up late, but instead, it was Laiming, his face unreadable in the dim light. "Mother," he said, his voice low, "we need to talk."
Yuqin's heart skipped a beat. Had he noticed her weakness? Or something else—something she had buried for nearly two decades, a secret even her husband had taken to the grave? She set down her needle, her hands steady now, as if preparing for a storm she had known would come.
"What is it, my son?" she asked, using the term of endearment she had forced herself to say every day, even as it tasted of ash.
Laiming stepped closer, his shadow looming over the dragon with the blood-red eye. "I found papers in Father's trunk," he said, his voice trembling with anger—or was it pain? "Papers that say I'm not—" He swallowed, unable to finish.
Yuqin closed her eyes. So the secret had been found at last. The truth she had guarded for so long, the reason she had always placed Laiming above her own daughter: he was not her husband's son by blood, but the child of her husband's first wife, who had died in childbirth. Her own daughter, Lijuan, was the only blood child she had, but in the eyes of the law and tradition, Laiming was the heir, the one who mattered.
And now, he knew.
"Please," she said, opening her eyes to meet his gaze, "let me explain—"
But Laiming turned away, his shoulders rigid. "There's no need," he said, his voice cold. "I know what this means."
Before she could speak again, he left the room, the door slamming behind him like a gunshot. Yuqin sat motionless, listening to the echo. Outside, a dog howled at the moon, and somewhere, a child—was it Qiuye?—began to cry.
She looked down at the dragon, the bloodstain now resembling a tear. In the silence, she wondered: what would Laiming do with this knowledge? Would he cast her out, as tradition allowed him to do? And what of Lijuan, who had always wondered why her mother's heart seemed divided?
The questions hung in the air, as heavy as the winter fog. Yuqin picked up her needle again, but her hands no longer obeyed. For the first time in her life, she didn't know what came next. The river of tradition had carried her for so long, but now, she stood at the edge of a cliff, wondering if the fall would break her—or set her free.