The girl’s knees knocked together so hard the bamboo slips in her hands rattled like dry teeth.
She stood at the bottom of the three wooden steps leading up to the tea house porch, her bare toes peeking through holes in her frayed cloth shoes.
Her name was Xiao Qing. She was fourteen years old. Her family tended four acres of bitter mountain peach trees in the rocky valleys three ridges over.
In her village, rumors whispered that the being who lived atop this foothill was the Supreme Lord of the Cosmos. A terrifying immortal who had shattered the heavens with an iron nail and commanded emperors like farmhands.
Xiao Qing took a ragged, scared breath, tears pooling in her wide, brown eyes.
She had walked for three days through brambles and riverbeds, her feet covered in blisters. That was because the early autumn frosts had begun creeping down from the high peaks.
If the peach trees froze again this year, her family wouldn’t have enough grain to survive the winter.
The screen door creaked open.
