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Summary
I was born with the power to make my words come true.
On the day I was born, a wandering Daoist priest burst into our marquis’s residence. Pointing at me in my swaddling clothes, he declared:
“This girl speaks with the authority of Heaven. A single utterance can decide life or death. But she may speak only three times in her life. After the third, Heaven and Earth will seal her voice.”
No one believed him. Then, when I was five, Father marched north to Xiangbei. Everyone at court said defeat was certain.
I put my arms around his neck and said, “Father will win this battle.”
Half a month later, news of his victory reached the capital. With three thousand battered soldiers, Father had routed twenty thousand enemies and taken eight thousand heads. The entire court was stunned.
The winter I turned seven, my stepmother refused to give me a padded coat. Shivering, I said:
“For the cold I suffer today, Mother will suffer a hundred times the pain.”
The next day, chilblains covered both her hands. The sores ate down to the bone and took three months to heal.
She never dared touch me again.
When I was nine, my stepsister Shen Qinghe snatched my bracelet. I couldn’t be bothered to fight her for it.
“It looks so lovely on you, Sister. From now on, those hands can be purely ornamental.”
The following day, while trimming plum branches, Shen Qinghe accidentally severed the tendons in her hands. She could never play the qin again.
She cried until she fainted. My stepmother wept to Father that I was a demon.
After some thought, he moved me to a remote side courtyard and forgot about me.
I had spoken three times. Now I had no voice.
Weeds grew tall behind the courtyard’s high walls. No one came.
Until the night of my elder sister’s wedding. My stepmother brought in a bowl of osmanthus tangyuan. I sensed something was wrong, but I couldn’t force out a word.
Sure enough, half an hour after eating them, my sister died in my arms.
Later, my stepsister married in her place. Father died of illness. A wall in my courtyard collapsed and buried me beneath it. No one came looking.
When I opened my eyes again, I was five. My elder sister was still alive.
And I hadn’t spoken a single word yet.
Father was about to march off to war. I kept silent. Half a month later, he came home with one ruined leg.
My stepmother denied me warm clothes. I endured the cold without a sound.
At last, I made it to the year I turned ten. My sister’s wedding day.
My stepmother brought out that bowl of poisoned tangyuan again.
And finally, I spoke for the first time.
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