Before Three was called Little Melon, she had another name.

  A given name.

  She couldn’t remember what it was, but she had a feeling that if someone would call it out, she would know it was hers.

  Her surname could have been Zhi, Chi or Shi. Whatever it was, it had a rough, sharp tone, one that flew from her mother’s lips in a high, quick burst. She could never figure out which it was as her mother, bought from some distant province, spoke in an accented Xianyu where all her words slurred together.

  But the sweetest melodies she’d ever heard were the songs her mother sung of that distant pce, of the folktale lulbies.

  ‘The tales of shepherds,’ her mother would say. ‘My home.’

  She was also told many tales, some twisted and some warm, in a mix of broken Xianyu and native dialects. They ended, more often than not, with death and reward, where the hard-working and conscientious lived out happy ends.

  But reality wasn’t like the tales.

  ‘Ma, you’re bleeding,’ she whispered. She reached out, her tiny hands grasping her mother’s, eyes fixated on the gring red and purple marks on that white shoulder. ‘Can I help?’

  Her mother, sitting on that gold silk bed, ruffled her hair and patted her shoulder. ‘You not able,’ said the older woman. Those bruises crawled up her arms, along her neck, and wrapped in a cage on her ribs.

  The child couldn’t take her eyes away.

  ‘It is nothing,’ her mother said. A hand ruffled her hair. ‘Go sleep.’

  She went back to bed but id awake all night, staring at the wooden ceiling brackets.

  There wasn’t much she could remember.

  But she knew, in the way that she could recall why she had scars but not the pain, her mother never spent a day without a wound. Her mother hid from Father, because whenever the two would meet, things would smash and someone would scream and finally, Mother would hobble out from the red pilrs and glided walls.

  New lovers also came. Sometimes they were men, sometimes they were women. She had to call them ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’, and she was seven years old the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen repced Mother as the main wife.

  ‘That means,’ her teacher said, ‘you’re no longer a wife-born daughter. You’re concubine-born. You must call your birth mother “Aunty” and the new wife “Mother”. Do you understand?’

  ‘…Alright,’ she said.

  Until she was eight years old, when that beautiful woman — the main wife, her “Mother” — ended up dead.

  ‘Aunty,’ she asked, gripping her mother’s hand, ‘did Father beat her to death?’

  ‘No.’ Scarred hands combed back her hair, the sunlight sliding through bloodless fingers. The rich scent of osmanthus flowers filled the air.

  Liar.

  She paused. Hugged her mother’s thin body. ‘He hits you too.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Are you going to die too, Aunty?’ she whispered. ‘Will he kill me next?’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Aunty, I’m not stupid.’ She looked up at the clouds — the curved eaves of the courtyard had cut out a square in the sky, like the high stone walls of a well. ‘I’m always watching, and Father beat “Mother” to death.’

  Her eyes turned to the other’s, clear and shining like gutter oil. She held her mother’s hand.

  ‘Aunty, are you going to leave me alone?’

  She didn’t remember the colour of her mother’s eyes or skin, or the texture of her hair, or exactly how tall she was.

  But even now, after all those years, she knew that her mother was utterly horrified that day. Terrified, even.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her mother whispered. ‘I was blinded too long.’

  She just held her mother’s hand.

  That very day, her mother left everything behind and went to the prefect’s office for a divorce.

  It was a decision they would both learn to regret.

  *

  ‘We can’t hire you, kid. Not your mum, either.’ The man at the docks turned them away with a shake of his head.

  ‘Sir, please,’ she begged, ‘I will work hard. I can do anything —’

  ‘Kids are too fragile.’ The man shoved her off the fishing boat. She nded hard into the mud, her fingers churning up dirty water and fish scales. ‘If another one dies, the officials will have my head.’

  ‘Wait!’ She scrabbled forward, lunging to tch onto the net hanging off the boat. ‘Don’t register my name! They won’t know, sir, please —’

  He hesitated, but still pried her hands off with his spear. She let go, red stinging lines wrapped around her fingers. ‘You talk big, girl. Just go home!’

  The boat left the riverbank.

  She slowly stood up. Mud fell off her in sheets, her skin and clothes were hidden under the yer of brown. Her hair was certainly no better; even now, the cold, slimy touch of a fish scale cut into her neck.

  Wringing her clothes out, she waddled to the shore, ignoring every cutting gnce and tut. She tried to talk to the masons, to no avail. The restaurants drove her out, and the farmers had no need for extra hands.

  ‘We have enough bour,’ they said. ‘There are many more children like you in this city.’

  No-one was willing to employ a ten-year-old.

  …The wind blew cold, even with the te summer air.

  She made her way through the city’s back alleys. There was a strange duality to it — the street faces had rich, gmourous fronts, constantly wafting with the smell of meat and wine, yet just behind were the beggars, poorer filth and strays.

  A woman was waiting for her by a restaurant’s backdoor.

  ‘Ma,’ she called. Then, she wilted. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t get any work.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Her mother brought her into a shallow hug. ‘I work, at restaurant… they will pay in meals.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma,’ she said. ‘I’ll try harder.’

  *

  She could never find any work, so she ended up begging on the streets. There was never enough money — there were hordes of younger children, those more pitiful than her, competing for others’ compassion, and whatever food that was in the night-soil vats was often taken away by rats or stray dogs.

  The rats were lucky. They could eat things without getting sick.

  Otherwise, she’d eat the damn things.

  When night fell, she scampered off to find her mother.

  ‘Ma —’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ The thin woman by the firepce dug out the ashes, scooping them into a wooden bowl. Her fingers, once pampered although scarred, now were covered in little burn marks and callouses. Her skin had tanned a few shades too. ‘Address to me properly. You must learn manners.’

  ‘Sorry, Mother.’ The girl couldn’t help but stare at the top of the stove — the meat scraps, the boiled head of a cow and sheep’s lungs, sat there, brown and white under the mplight. Her stomach growled. She flushed. ‘I’m not that hungry though.’

  ‘…Come here,’ her mother said. She was handed the bowl of ash. ‘Throw it out and come back to eat.’

  She nodded and left.

  When she came back, the sheep’s lungs were gone.

  She and Mother shared the cow head.

  *

  ‘I can take you as a concubine, but I won’t adopt your daughter.’ The man sat with a zy, carefree air about him; her mother, quiet and thin, stood before him, the ashes and dirt on her face hastily washed away.

  ‘She won’t be a hassle.’

  ‘She is. I’m not going to raise a kid for nothing, especially not a mutt like her.’ The man id back and pced an order for another bottle of wine. ‘I’ll take you, but not her. Otherwise, it’s over.’

  The girl peeked out from behind the door, eyes wide.

  Would Mother leave her?

  The man tried to reason, ‘Listen. You’re uneducated, unskilled and poor, not to mention your nguage barrier. The kid can’t help you either, she’s just a burden. You would live a good life with me — I don’t have bad habits. I won’t hit people.’

  ‘…She’s my daughter,’ her mother just said, and that was that.

  But her portion of dinner was smaller that day.

  *

  Life was getting harder.

  The restaurant wasn’t paying as much; food grew smaller and smaller. It was as though the void in her stomach was growing bigger and deeper, until she felt as thin and as ft as paper, desperate enough to try catching the rats.

  It grew worse as winter set in.

  ‘Child,’ her mother said, ‘stop by the river and check the fishermen’s carp nets.’ Their breaths mingled in the small, cramped space of the warehouse; there was only enough space for her mother to sit, right on the mouldy pile of hay.

  ‘What if I get caught?’ She gingerly stepped a little closer, only to be pushed away. Her heels, reddened from the cold, left skid marks in the dust and ash.

  ‘You won’t be.’ Her mother’s face didn’t turn, with only a thin outline lit up by the mplight. That shadow huddled smaller. ‘They don’t check the nets at night.’

  She nodded and walked out the restaurant’s shed, slipping on her ripped shoes.

  The alleyways were long and thin, with yers of grime on the worn stones. The chill of the air froze the skin on her cheeks, the sides of her ribs and her matted hair — even as she walked down to the riverbank, she wondered if frost could grow on her eyeshes.

  The river was roaring.

  She wandered up and down the banks. The water, a dark, churning dragon of icy spray, sometimes stole chunks of dirt and rock from her feet. In the dark, in the tangled forest and the freezing wet, a sudden, terrible desire to flee back to the warehouse and the pile of hay and her mother’s arms overtook her.

  Her breaths turned into clouds.

  The only fish that could be caught in the winter months were river ice carp, and they tended to live in the deepest parts of the water, deep under the ice.

  The nets would be there, too.

  Glinting shadows rolled with the tumultuous current. Brown and bck trees seemed to part before her, leaving a path to a rope tied high in a tree.

  The dirt crunched under her feet.

  She shivered.

  The river’s rage was deafening; she fought back the urge to cp her hands over her ears. Carefully stepping down to the river’s edge, shoes sinking into the mud, she knelt and reached out to a thick rope.

  The hemp rope was a long one, its end tied around the trunk of a tree. It was as thick as her arms and burned her hands as she pulled at it. Its length vanished into the dark water; though hidden, it would eventually come out on the other side of the bank. With each tug, the earth beneath her seemed to slide, bringing her closer and closer to the churning dark.

  She froze.

  If she fell in, she would drown.

  Mother, I’m scared…

  Holding back a terrified whimper, she continued to pull the rope. Its heaviness was like that of a chain in her fingers, slick with wet and dark things she couldn’t see. The net spanned the width of the river, its weight a terrible thing. She felt how each tug closed it, deep underwater, in the vibrations and the resistance of the rope in her hands. The more she pulled, the more sway she felt, for the rope and its bundled, muddy net was pulled by the surface current.

  The night seemed endless.

  Then as she heaved, the net was lifted out of the river and dragged to her side.

  It was a massive mass, bck like hair, and filled with rocks and mud. There was no fpping fish, no strange, squirming monsters — just empty cold, like the water that trickled down her arms and pierced into her lungs.

  Nothing.

  Why did Mother send her here?

  Why?

  Why?

  Trembling, she reached out to open the net. The rope wouldn’t budge — it kept slipping from her numb fingers, stubbornly tied shut, and as she waded into the mess to pry it open the mud, she slipped, she stumbled —

  She seized the rope, sliding to a stop in the mud, a foot in the water, her shoe washed away.

  Her heart pounded in her ears.

  No-one checked the nets at night.

  She got up, shoved the net into the water, and walked back to her mother.