The Silenced Tale, стр. 28
“What about the traditions of your culture?” Nancy asks after the prayer is concluded. Well, I suppose she must have some sense, at least, if she had enough to remain silent during that.
“Mine?”
“I can’t place your accent, exactly . . .” she fishes, leaving me a space in which to enlighten her as to the origins of it. But I do not answer. Perhaps that is cruel of me, but I am not feeling particularly warm toward this woman. I never feel particularly warm toward anyone who dares tell my wife that she has lived her life incorrectly, no matter how well-meaning their intentions may be. “But, uh, surely there’s something you want to do for your daughter today?”
“Many things,” I agree.
I want to hold a ball in Turn Hall. I want to summon the Chipping to marvel at the beauty and cleverness of my child. I want to dress her in a Turn-russet frock with thread-of-gold stitching, and dance with her and Pip to the accompaniment of the Turnshire minstrels. I want to invite hedge witches to bestow protective charms upon her, and centaurs to read her destiny in the stars, to feast on Cook’s rabbit pie and Dorthi Pointe’s unparalleled seed cakes. I want to laugh at Bevel Dom trying to teach my toddler the steps to a Bynnebakker jig, and feel nothing but pride as my brother Kintyre gives her a horrifically inappropriate gift, like a sword with a live edge; for while it would have been impractical, I know it would have come from a place of love and a desire to protect Alis. I want to watch Alis smear cake all over her cousin Wyndam’s doublet, and play with Lewko Pointe the Younger, and frolic with Capplederry and Bradri.
But these are things I cannot have. Things that I have said goodbye to twice over. Things that I am learning to yearn for less and less. Oh, I will never cease to wish that my family were with me, but I have also been in this realm long enough that I have learned to hold my memories of them with love in my heart, and to not let the bitterness of missing them poison me against this place and its people and customs. I made my choice. I do not regret it.
“Such as?” Nancy probes, and Pip snorts into her wine glass.
I shrug. “Things that can wait until it is just the three of us at home. We are very keen to have Alis steeped in the culture of her mother’s family, so that she may be a proficient bilingual, and today is all about the Chinese way of celebrating. I am happy to be patient. Oh, look, they are going to step on the turtle now.”
It’s probably the least subtle subject change I have engineered in my whole career as a spymaster, but it is effective, at least.
Nancy turns in her seat to watch as wai po and Mei Fan urge Alis up onto her feet. Mei Fan puts a paper plate by Alis’s bare foot. On the plate is a gong gui hao, a small red cake shaped like a turtle. There is some luck around turtles and longevity, I know, and a correlation between the written word “step.” So, it is tradition, I am told, for a child to “step” into life by stepping on a turtle—but as no one cares to harm a real one, a cake is substituted.
Alis—blood kin to Kintyre Turn that she is—stomps on the cake with mad glee in her eyes. Then she promptly lands herself on her well-padded rear, lifts her foot to her mouth, and pulls off a glob of cake with the few teeth she possesses.
“Bie chi, zang!” wai po laughs, and pulls Alis’s leg away from her face.
“Okay, time to swoop in,” Pip says, jumping to her feet and setting down her wine glass. “Alis, baby, don’t eat the cake off your feet. Yucky.”
“No!” Alis opines, and shoves her fingers into her mouth. There is some smashed cake on them, too. Pip scoops Alis up, and tosses her gently into the air. Around her fingers, Alis squeals with joy and adds: “Bu!”
“No?” Pip says, grinning, and rubs her nose against Alis’s miniature replica when she catches our daughter. “Who are you to tell me no, little girl?”
“Bu!” Alis giggles again, dimpling with delight.
“Ah, clever girl,” I tell her as I sit forward on the sofa. Alis turns to me and beams at the praise.
“No bu buu bu yao nooo!” she chants as the assembled guests laugh and applaud her for defying us all in two languages. She applauds with them, clearly pleased to be the center of attention—again, showing that she is very well related to my brother—before Pip and Mei Fan sweep her off to the kitchen to clean up.
Mei Fan comes back out with a platter of small red turtle cakes for the rest of us.
“For eating, though,” she warns her adult guests as she sets it down on the coffee table. “Ruin my carpets, and I will end you.”
Chuckling, I snag up one of the cakes and indulge. As I promised Pip, I have returned to fencing, so I can allow myself this treat. Mei Fan’s baking is a wonder, anyway. Nobody will be Dorthi Pointe, it’s true, but then, Mei Fan was not Written to be only the plump, cookie-baking housewife. Dorthi has an unfair advantage on all other cooks in the Overrealm when it comes to the wellspring of her talent in the kitchen.
“Now what?” Nancy asks me when Pip and a cleaned-up Alis return with a bowl.
“Oh, the cháng shòu miàn,” I answer, doing my very best to mimic wai po’s accent. She beams at me from her chair across the open floor and winks. I feel myself flush under her silent praise.
“The what?”
“Long noodles for