Jade Blossom lived in a beautiful house in the middle of Seoul. Her family was highly respected because her father was an important adviser to the king.
Jade's family was not just her mother and father and two brothers. Along with Willow, three uncles and their wives and children—twelve cousins in all—lived in the house too.
But it was big enough for all of them—and for the gatekeeper, the cook, the stableboys, the maidservants, the gardener, and Schoolmaster. The Han house was one of the finest in all of Seoul.
The house was built like a U around the Inner Court. The women lived in one part. The men's rooms were at the front, near the gate to the Outer Court. There was the Great Hall for family gatherings and ceremonial days, and the Hall of Learning for the boys' lessons. The Garden of Earthly Peace was at the back of the Inner Court.
The Outer Court was surrounded by a wall. Inside the wall were the servants' rooms and the stables.
Yes, it was a fine house—and it was Jade Blossom's whole world.
***
It was the custom for women and girls in noble families to be protected from strange men. As a little girl Jade had been allowed to play in the Outer Court, feeding grain to the horses or helping the servants gather eggs. When she reached the age of eight, however, even the Outer Court was forbidden.
Since then Jade had not been allowed to set foot outside the Inner Court. Her mother, aunts, and girl cousins—none of them ever went beyond the Inner Court except on the rare occasion of a wedding. Jade would be allowed to leave her home only twice in the future—to attend Tiger Heart's wedding at the home of the bride, and finally to move to the home of her husband after her own wedding.
Jade and all her girl cousins knew that this was the way of things. None of her cousins minded too much. There was always plenty to do in the Inner Court. Jade was learning to embroider. She hoped one day to be as skilled as her mother. Her mother could paint with a needle and thread—a fierce red dragon snorting fire, a willow tree that seemed to move in the wind. She had made a beautiful silk pouch for Jade, padded and lined with more silk. In it Jade kept her most treasured possession—a carved ivory ball.
Jade had once seen a flock of cranes fly over the garden. That picture was in her head now, and someday, when she had skill enough, she would make it come alive with a million tiny stitches. For now, she practiced embroidering flowers on scraps of silk.
When the sewing, embroidering, and laundry were done for the day, there was time to play. Jade and Willow loved the Garden of Earthly Peace. It was quiet there, in a far corner of the Court away from the beat of the laundry sticks. Willow trees and irises surrounded a little pond. A bridge arched gracefully over the pond.
The two girls would stand on the bridge and watch the fish swim. It was usually on the bridge that their little pranks were discussed, out of earshot of the rest of the household.
There were frogs in the garden. Jade and Willow caught them sometimes, and put them in a box to watch them jump. Once they had even put one in a rice bowl—then waited just outside the kitchen to hear the cook's outraged screech. But they always let the frogs go afterward.
Jade would often bring her precious ivory ball to the garden. She and Willow would take turns hiding it for the other to find.
It was a miniature version of a much larger and more intricate ball in her father's room. That one was the size of a full-blown peony bloom. It was hollow and held another, smaller ball. The second ball held another ball, and so on, and so on, forever. Or so Jade had thought as a child. Tiger Heart had once told her that there were actually only a dozen balls, but Jade preferred to think that the balls decreased in size until they were too small to see.
Her greatest wonder over this marvel was reserved for the nameless person who had made it. How had he sculpted its lovely flowers, leaves, and birds? There were no seams on any of the balls; it had been carved from a solid piece of ivory. Jade could not even imagine how the artist had accomplished such a trick. How long had it taken him? What had been in his mind as he planned and created such a lovely thing?
The King had presented Jade's father with the ball as a mark of favor many years before. It had been a gift from the Chinese court. As a small child, Jade had crept into her father's room on many occasions to stare at it.
At last year's New Year celebration, to her great surprise and delight, her father had given her the tiny carved ball. Only then had Jade realized that her father knew of her interest in the large one. The little ball immediately became her good-luck charm, and although she knew it was unlikely, she liked to think that the same person had made both balls. Whenever it was her turn to be the seeker of the ball, Jade felt that she was hunting treasure.
It was during such a game of hide-and-find, a few days after refusing to go along with the pants prank, that Willow told Jade the news.