"That's the sky." "I know it's the sky. I want to know why it's the sky." "One line represents the open, two lines represent the sky and the earth, the big character plus a horizontal line, the top of the human head is the sky." Wan'er blinked. She took the word apart and put it together in her mind, and put it together again.
"What's up there that day?" "There's no up there. The sky is the biggest." "What about Princess Taiping?"
Mother's hand paused. Everyone in Yeting knows Princess Taiping. The pearl held in the hands of the current emperor and queen, the little princess who lives in the Tai Chi Palace, wears gold and silver, and has everything she wants. The women in Yeting liked to gossip when they were working, saying how favored Princess Taiping was, how much the Queen loved her, and how she could pick off the stars in the sky as long as she opened her mouth.
Wan'er has never seen stars. There is only darkness in Yeting's night, and even the moon is blocked by a high wall. But she had seen the sky, a small, square piece, embedded above the wellhead in the yard.
