A young man and a girl followed. The young man carried a small lacquerware box, the girl a covered basket. She was tall, nearly as tall as my mother, with hair dressed in two heavy braids looped with ribbons on either side of her head, glossy and thick. Her padded winter tunic of dark blue flannel just reached her ankles.

Then came a female servant holding a little boy by the hand. Two more female servants entered, gazing around and up, but they didn’t see my face peering from behind the vines.

“Lao-er, where’s our lucky orange tree?” The jovial voice belonged to the round-faced man. He stood at the threshold of the inner gate, ready to enter the main courtyard. “Go, go. Plant it!”

The servant who had first spoken pushed the entrance gate open wide and wheeled in a barrow. On the barrow were gardening tools and a small orange tree, its root ball bound inside a muddy burlap bag. The small procession crossed through the inner gate and into the main courtyard. More handbarrows and workers followed, loaded down with furniture and belongings.

My mother wasn’t among those parading in and out.

Back in the courtyard, I shook one of the plum trees at the edge of the bamboo garden. Four aged fruits fell from its branches. I scooped what I could into my hands and ate it all, not caring about the grit that covered the plums. I spat out the pits and arranged them on my checkerboard.

A scraping noise sent me scuttling into the playroom, the sound of the gate between the two front courtyards opening. I waited, kneeling by the window. Through the carved latticework of the window shutters, I saw a figure enter the courtyard. It was the girl.

For a moment she vanished from sight as the path took her through the bamboo trees, then she appeared again, following the path through the rockery and under the garden arch. She took her time, pausing to look at a rock, a striped bamboo trunk, the carved stone of the arch. She gazed around the courtyard and the buildings that enclosed it, the two-level main house at the far end of the courtyard, the erfang where I was hiding, the derelict erfang opposite, the bamboo garden she had just come through. She climbed the steps to the veranda of the main house and peered through the carved lattice windows, into the rooms where my mother and I had lived. Then she walked back down the veranda steps and paused to look down at the plum pits lying on the makeshift checkerboard.

Show yourself to her, the voice said.

I blinked at the Fox who had appeared beside me. I reached my hand out to touch, to feel whether it was real. The creature gave me a small lick, a raspy warm sensation that gave me courage.

“Who are you?” I whispered.