My name is Jiangzhu, and I keep the embroidery shop. My mother found the name in a book — a crimson-pearl immortal plant that grew by the Spirit River, watered by rain and dew, which later descended to the mortal world to repay tears. A girl's hands, she said, should be deft as that plant wet with dew.
My needlework is the best in town — not my words, the townswomen's. Dragons and phoenixes, pines and cranes, I can stitch with my eyes closed. Hoop up, silk between the fingers, and not a wrong stitch all day.
One thing I won't touch: red silk. Pure red leno silk. The year before last, a traveler offered good silver for a hundred butterflies on red silk, and I wouldn't even stretch the hoop. Why? I can't say. Since I was small, a bolt of red silk has made my chest tighten — as if something were folded inside the red, watching me from the far side of the cloth. The town calls me odd. Let them. An embroiderer's instinct is sharper than her eyes.