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will tell the  lang zhong  to let all his healed patients know that you were the source of their recovery, that you are the one who understands the virtues of plants. Every man values a woman with such gifts. He'll advertise you over the whole province. Word-of-mouth propaganda is the most useful."
    "But I know nothing of plants," said Wei Ping.
    "What flowed from my mother to me should naturally flow to you."
    "It doesn't seem to have done so," said Wei Ping.
    "It will, soon enough. Besides, once you're married, will it matter?" Stepmother didn't wait for an answer. She pulled the large basket from the corner. "Time for work, Lazy One."
    Xing Xing put the bowl holding the fish on the  kang,  grateful for the opportunity to bow her head so Stepmother couldn't see the shock on her face at what she'd just said: "will it matter?" Stepmother had never before expressed explicitly such crass acceptance of deceit. Was Wei Ping also hiding her face?  
    As Xing Xing leaned over the bowl she looked sideways at the sleeping raccoon. Whenever it woke, it was immediately hungry. And if she wasn't there to keep guard, its sense of smell could lead it to the beautiful fish. Just at that moment, as though the raccoon was responding to Xing Xing's thoughts, the skin above his nose wrinkled and he sniffed without waking. So she set the bowl inside the basket and carried it outside with her to the jujube trees, singing little comfort songs to the beautiful fish as she walked.
     
     

 
    Chapter  8
    Xing Xing sat high in a jujube tree and stuck her fingers in her mouth to soothe them. She'd gathered the dates last autumn, but the job had been much easier then. She'd simply strung nets under the trees and beaten the branches with a stick. The ripe fruit dropped easily. But these green fruits had to be wrested individually from their stems. Her fingers were sore already, and she was only on the second tree of five.
    It was hard to find a comfortable perch in the thorny branches. Last year Xing Xing's body had still been childlike. Now her sensitive chest and soft thighs kept getting jabbed. This was a more unpleasant task than she'd expected.
    A scream sheared the air. It was like none she'd ever heard before, and it came from the cave. In her haste to get down, she fell from the tree, opening a wide gash on her forearm.
    The air was filled with multiple screaming voices now—Wei Ping and Stepmother together, as well as inhuman screams that Xing Xing realized must be coming from the raccoon. She ran as fast as she could, straight into the cave, and slipped in blood slime. At first she thought it was the blood that dripped from her own elbow, but then she saw brains and lungs and intestine and fur—all that remained of the blind raccoon kit. The stick he'd been bashed to death with lay in the midst, bits of innards clinging to it. Stepmother's blood-spattered face looked crazed as she ripped at the shredded bandages on Wei Ping's left foot. The girl had both hands in her hair and howled at the ceiling, throwing herself around.
    "Hold her tight," shouted Stepmother to Xing Xing.
    Xing Xing grabbed Wei Ping from behind and looked over her half sister's shoulder in horror as the bandages came away. The unnaturally arched foot that Xing Xing had seen before was now missing the two biggest toes.
    "Devil raccoon," spat Stepmother. "Teeth like knives. At least he died in pieces, so his spirit will never be whole. Go for fresh water, Lazy One. Run."
    Xing Xing grabbed the bucket and pole and practically flew down the hill to the pool. She was back, panting, faster than she'd ever moved before.
    Stepmother washed Wei Ping's feet—the mutilated one and the whole one—rubbing off the dead skin and kneading them more fully into the desired shape. With her thumbs, she worked in pulverized alum. "My baby," she murmured as she pressed, "my sweet baby." There was no blood from the holes where exposed bone showed. Xing Xing stared at the ragged bone