and rice were running dangerously low, I took out my rattan basket and filled it with a few spools of thread, a bolt of muslin, and a needle. I roamed the streets, going from door to door, asking if anyone had mending to be done.
But few ships docked at the port. Dust and shadows wreathed the empty streets.
The lack of work didn’t bother me as much as the awkward encounters I’d begun to endure on my way home. I used to love going into the bakery across from our shop, but that changed during the war. For now when I returned to Yanamer Street, Calu the baker’s son would be there waiting for me.
I didn’t like Calu. It wasn’t because he didn’t serve in the army—he hadn’t passed the imperial health examination, so he couldn’t. It was because as soon as I turned sixteen, he got it into his head that I was going to be his wife.
“I hate seeing you beg for work like this,” Calu told me one day. He waved me inside his father’s bakery. The fragrance from the breads and cakes wafted out the door, and my mouth watered at the smell of yeast, fermented rice flour, and roasted peanuts and sesame seeds.
“It’s better than starving.”
He wiped red-bean paste off his palm. Sweat from his temples dripped into the bowl of dough on his table. Normally it would have made me wrinkle my nose—if Calu’s father saw how sloppy he was, he’d have a scolding—but I was too hungry to care.
“If you married me, you’d never starve.”
His forwardness made me uncomfortable, and I thought with dread of Calu touching me, of bearing his children, of my embroidery frames collecting dust and my clothes growing sticky with sugar. I stifled a shudder.
“You would always have plenty to eat—your baba, too,” Calu tried again, licking his lips. He smiled, his teeth yellow as butter. “I know how much you love my father’s puff pastries, his steamed buns with lotus paste, his coconut buns.”
My stomach grumbled, but I would not let my hunger overpower my heart. “Please stop asking. My answer isn’t going to change.”
That made Calu angry. “Too good for me, are you?”
“I have to run my father’s shop,” I said, trying to be gentle. “He needs me.”
“A girl doesn’t run a shop,” he said, opening the steam basket to take out the latest batch of buns. Usually he would give Baba and me a few, but I knew he wouldn’t today. “You might be a fine seamstress—the finest in the village—but with your brothers away fighting for the emperor, isn’t it time to be sensible and settle down?” He reached for my hand. His fingers were powdery and damp. “Think of your father’s health, Maia. You’re being selfish. You could give him a better life.”
I jerked away, stung. “My father would never give up his shop.”
Calu huffed. “He’ll have to, since you can’t keep it running by yourself. You’ve gotten thin, Maia. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” He sneered, my rejection making him cruel. “Give me a kiss, and I’ll throw you a bun.”
I raised my chin. “I’m not a dog.”
“Oh, now you’re too proud to beg, eh? You’ll let your father starve because you’re so high-and-mighty—”
I was done listening. I fled the bakery and stormed across the street. My stomach growled again as I slammed Baba’s shop door behind me. The hardest part was that I knew I was being selfish. I should marry Calu. But I wanted to save my family myself—like Mama said I would.
I crumpled against the door of our shophouse. What if I couldn’t?
Baba found me there, sobbing quietly.
“What’s the matter, Maia?”
I wiped my tears and stood. “Nothing, Baba.”
“Did Calu ask you to marry him again?”
“There’s no work,” I said, evading the question. “We—”
“Calu is a good boy,” he said, “but he is just that—a boy. And he is not worthy of you.” He hovered over my embroidery frame, studying the dragon I’d been stitching. It was difficult working on cotton, rather than silk, but I’d striven to get every detail: its carplike scales, sharp talons, and demon eyes. I could tell Baba was impressed. “You are meant for more, Maia.”
I turned away. “How can I be? I’m not a man.”
“If you were, you would have been sent to war. The gods are protecting you.”
I didn’t believe him, but for his sake, I nodded and dried my tears.
A few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, good news came: the emperor