Red Skies (The Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters) Read Free Page A

finally secure a permit for their meager business. Still, it had been better than working the farm. At least with their new life, they had some time left in the day that wasn’t dictated by watering, seeding, picking, or caring for animals.
    Mari looped the strap of her bag around her neck and pushed the ladder higher on her arm so that she could use both hands to pull the camel. She dug her heels in and whistled, then pulled.
    Chu Chu didn’t move an inch.
    “Hello! Uh… Ni hao ….”
    Mari turned to see who was witnessing her embarrassing moment of tug-of-war with the camel and found herself face to face with a tall, light-haired foreigner with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He looked like what the elders called a foreign ghost.
    “ Ni hao ,” she answered, then went back to tugging on the rope. Her humiliation reached a new level.
    “You speak English?” he asked from over her shoulder.
    Mari wanted him to go away. It was times like these she wished she was still a girl growing up in the warm comfort of the small neighborhood hutong in Wuxi. She missed the days when everyone knew her as the local scavenger’s daughter.
    “Yes, I speak English.” Of course she’d had to learn basic English in order to do her job well. Most of her customers didn’t speak Mandarin, other than the occasional ni hao or zaijian . And learning English was one of the few things she’d done that her sisters hadn’t—something her parents proudly bragged about. But obviously this stranger assumed she was too poor or illiterate to speak another language. She stopped moving and took a long slow breath to calm herself. It wasn’t the man’s fault that her camel was a devil.
    “You have your hands full. It looks like you’re leaving—or trying to—but I wanted to see if you have time to do one more photo. You’re the girl that does photos of tourists on the camels, right?”
    She pushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes. “I’m one of them, yes. But it’s raining.” She pointed at the sky, as if the man needed to look closer.
    He laughed, and Mari was taken aback by the way his voice rang out, deep and pleasant, but strong, too. Strangely, he was not the least bit perturbed by the weather.
    “I can see that. But it’s like this. If you’d take just one more customer, you’d help me out tremendously. I’m staying here in Beijing for a while, but my boss—see that man coming up the lane?—he’s come from the States to check up on me and sightsee while he’s here.”
    Mari shrugged. How is that supposed to affect me?
    The man leaned in close and lowered his voice. “This will sound so silly, but here’s the deal. He leaves tomorrow, but he promised his bratty kids he’d get a photo of him on a camel at the Great Wall. I can take a photo, but I don’t have access to a camel. And if I don’t make this happen, he’ll lose face —as you people say here—and there’ll be hell to pay.”
    Mari stepped back to get some space between them. He talked so fast, she only caught fragments of what he was saying. The intensity of his stare felt like he saw clear down to her soul. She didn’t like it, either.
    She looked over his shoulder. There, huffing and puffing with a face as red as the inside of a ripe watermelon, was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Even in the cool rain, the laoban looked overheated but determined as he trudged up the steep walkway. He carried an umbrella, so Mari assumed the wet sheen on his face was sweat, not rain. He also wore a scowl that made him look like he was dragging the thunder right along with him.
    “ Dui bu qi , I was just leaving,” she apologized, but she needed to go on home. She really didn’t want to unpack her camera, set everything back up, then get even wetter just for a few renminbi. She tugged at Chu Chu. He resisted. Again.
    “Look—please. I’ll pay you triple what you usually get. And your camel doesn’t look ready to go, anyway. Please.” His voice went up