Women’s Court is untouched by the battle, though it’s changed in a different way. It bustles with activity as Papers and demons of all kinds go about their various tasks in the post-battle cleanup, or snatch a few moments of rest in the lush gardens. All the spare rooms have been assigned to our warriors and the palace shamans, many to one room given the sudden swell in numbers. But no one complains, and the smiles cast our way are friendly as Wren and I head to Paper House.
Like a few of the palace buildings, it’s been converted into a makeshift sick ward. Supplies are rushed down the corridors, doctors and soldiers and residents who have offered to help hurrying between rooms.
I could make the walk to our old quarters blindfolded.
The hallway where our bedrooms branch off is narrower than I remember. The paper screens are drawn for the privacy of the patients they now belong to. My heart lurches with each step, thinking of the girls who once occupied them. One of them lost to us forever. Another lost to me in a different way.
My room is the only one that’s empty. A patient must have recently left.
I stare in from the doorway. Even though the furnishings are the same, it looks foreign somehow.
“Do you want to go in?” Wren asks.
I shake my head and draw her away.
The bathing courtyard has retained its purpose, its tubs standing full and steaming. We’ve lucked upon a quiet time; the tubs are empty. The bamboo trees lining the walls rustle in the breeze. The air is honeyed and warm. The fragrance of the courtyard brings back so many memories, and I let them flow over me as we wander through. The girls’ laughter. Lill’s grin as she told me stories while washing me. The bite of Blue’s voice when she insulted my mother, and Wren’s firm grip when she stopped me from retaliating. It was the very first time we touched.
Like our quarters, the courtyard seems smaller than I remember. I wonder whether it’s some trick of the mind. When a place holds power over you, it looms large, and once that power is stripped away it appears how it really is. Just a room, or a courtyard, or a house, or a palace. Walls and floorboards and gates and archways. Building blocks. Pieces of a place—but not the heart of them.
“There’s something I want to do before we leave,” I tell Wren.
She lifts a brow. “Oh?”
We’ve come to my tub. It’s half hidden by the overgrown bamboo, the summer light through their leaves painting dancing patterns on the water. I slip my arms around Wren’s neck, a smile slinking across my lips.
“Let’s take a bath,” I say. “You really smell.”
She returns my smile, sweet and tentative and hopeful, and as our lips touch I feel something warm swell through me, just as sweet and tentative and hopeful.
A place is just building parts brought together. Its true heart—a home—is the people who inhabit it.
THREE MONTHS LATER
FORTY-TWO
LEI
STOP PUSHING!”
“I’m trying to get a better look!”
“So are the rest of us!”
“Well, if you’d just move your ginormous head—”
“What are you implying?”
“Oh, come on, Zhin, I saw you going back for seconds at every meal at the Jade Fort—”
“Lei’s auntie is an excellent cook!”
“As your giant head proves!”
“You’re ridiculous. Heads can’t get fat, Zhen—”
“Tell that to yours—”
“We’re here,” Blue interrupts hastily, shoving the twins aside to get to the carriage door.
I scramble after her, relieved to be out of the cramped quarters the five of us have been sharing for the past week. I help the twins out, then hold out my hand to the last girl.
Lill takes it with a sheepish grin, leaping to the cobbles. “Your home, Lei!” she exclaims, her doe ears fluttering. “I can’t believe you’ve been away for one whole year! How does it look? Is it just like how you remembered?”
It is just as I remembered.
The shop front with its tall shuttered windows, half drawn against the last of the summer heat. The weathered wooden facade. The way it seems to lean out slightly over the road, and how cramped it is by the houses next to it, the whole street a row of old, peeling buildings clustered together as though huddled for safety—which, in a way, we always were.
Zhen and Zhin have already disappeared inside. Blue hovers by the open doorway. She holds something up. “Tien is demanding we wear these ridiculous slippers. If this is what all you poor villagers are subjected to, it’s no wonder you’re the way you are.”
“The way Lei is is awesome,” Lill says.
I laugh, ruffling her hair. My eyes are warm from the sight of my old shop-house, but my tears don’t fall until Tien’s barking voice comes from inside.
“Aiyah, what’s taking so long?”
I can practically hear my father’s sigh from here. “Give them a moment, Tien. They’ve had a long journey.”
“The same journey we made two days ago, and I was still unpacked and cooking you dinner not five minutes after we arrived.”
I enter my house, beaming so widely it hurts.
Tien tuts at me from where she’s bustling behind the counter, selecting herbs from the boxes lining the walls for tea, while Baba rushes to greet me, opening his arms wide.
“Happy tears?” he asks, with a touch of concern as he draws back my hair to dry my wet cheeks.
“Very happy tears.”
We embrace again. When I finally let go, he smiles in welcome at the others before muttering into my ear, “I have a surprise for you.” He leads me by the hand to the back of the shop. “Hurry,” he says in a carrying whisper. “Before the old demon changes her mind.”
“Change how?” Tien grumbles. “I never approved of it in the first place.”
“Approved of what?” I ask.
Baba only winks. We move through the small rooms and corridors of my house. My eyes drink in every detail. I feel off-kilter, as though I’ve slanted through some crevice in time, finding myself in a pre-palace world—maybe even a pre-raid world, when Mama was still around and my father’s smile was always this wide, and these walls and the people within it were all I needed to feel safe.
The door leading to the garden lets through a slither of light. As my father goes to slide it fully open, a tiny wet nose appears in the gap.
There’s a high-pitched yap—then the door opens to reveal a furry black face, bright sable eyes, and floppy ears, with a patch of white on its snout. The little dog bounds inside, waggling so hard I can barely hold on to it. I drop to the floor, bundling it up in my arms.
“We’ve been calling her Kuih,” Baba says as I’m ravaged by puppy licks. “Thought we could keep your mother’s tradition of food names going. But we can change it if you don’t like it—”
“It’s perfect,” I say, struggling to speak through my tears.
That’s twice now I’ve been gifted kuih by someone I love.
“Keep her outside! She’s not yet toilet trained!”
Tien’s voice bounds from the kitchen, along with Lill’s confused response.