“The food will last us a few days,” her mother said. “Tomorrow, you and Dove should gather as much cloth and wool as you can find. We need a blanket. Once we have the materials, I should have enough money saved to ask Old Lady Fan to sew what we have together.”
Sparrow nodded and looked over at the pitiful collection of rags and old blanket filling they had gathered together in a corner. Mostly discarded pieces of clothing and blankets older than Sparrow herself, Old Lady Fan, a seamstress who lived nearby, would help Mama sew the pieces into a “new” blanket—for a fee.
“Yes, Mama,” Sparrow said.
Sparrow, Dove, and Mama all ate their dinner in silence as Pheasant noisily nursed before the sun set and their little room was plunged into darkness. Once that happened, there was little more to do than try to sleep, huddled together for warmth, until the sun rose and Sparrow went back out to the streets to pick pockets again.
Two
“Hey! Give it back!”
“Let go!”
“Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Sparrow ran up to the group of other kids who lived in the same hutong as she did that had formed down the alley as she was heading out for the morning, little five-year-old Dove following closely behind.
“What’s going on?” Sparrow asked another girl.
“The foreigners are leaving!” the other girl said between cheers for who she thought would win the fight between the two boys in the middle of the crowded circle.
“Yeah, so?” Sparrow asked.
“They are tossing out good stuff!” the girl explained. “Clothes, blankets, bowls, furniture. Everything they can’t take back to their wicked homelands.”
“Blankets?” Sparrow asked, but the girl had pushed forward into the crowd to get a better view.
Sparrow elbowed her way through the crowd too, even as she kept a tight grip on her sister’s hand. Sure enough, when she got to where she could see, she saw that one of the items the boys were fighting over was a clean, plush blanket. Well, it had probably been cleaner before they started fighting over it. But still, it would be significantly warmer than anything they could make from collecting scraps.
Sparrow slipped her way back out of the crowd and started running down the alley.
“Where are we going?” Dove asked her. “Mama said we need to collect cloth for a new blanket. Pheasant was so cold this morning her fingers were blue.”
“I know,” Sparrow said. “But if we can find a blanket the foreigners are throwing away, it will be worth the journey.”
Sparrow didn’t need to ask where the foreigners had been tossing out their stuff. There was only one place in all of Peking where foreigners lived—the foreign legation.
Sparrow and Dove made their way to the main street. They hung back out of view, looking for a donkey cart heading in the right direction they could catch a ride on. The foreign legation was much too far away for them to walk the whole distance. After a moment, they saw a man with a cart with only a few things in the back. Plenty of room was left for two small girls. They waited until the cart passed, and then they ran along behind it. Sparrow picked Dove up and tossed her into the cart. Then, Sparrow jumped up into the cart beside her sister. After a while, the cart turned in the wrong direction from where they needed to go, so the girls jumped down and then found another cart. After riding in three different carts and half the morning had passed, they were only a block away from the legation.
The foreign legation was a walled city of its own, nestled along the south wall of the Forbidden City itself. Any foreigner living in Peking was required by law to live in the legation, even Japanese. The legation had homes, schools, shops, post offices—almost anything a foreigner could need without ever setting foot into the rest of Peking.
The girls walked to the end of the street and peered across at the legation. The other kids had been right. The foreigners were not just leaving, it looked like they were fleeing. Dozens of carts and carriages lined the street where men and women, and even children, were frantically trying to load up as many of their possessions as possible to take to the port to sail away. Anything they could not take with them was being tossed on the ground, on the sidewalk, even into the middle of the street. And the goods they were abandoning were far more than clothes and blankets. Silver candlesticks, crates of books, paintings in gilded frames, piles and piles of children’s toys.
Sparrow’s mouth salivated at the idea of how much money she could get for any one of the abandoned items. However, news of the massive dumping of precious goods had apparently already circulated, and there were dozens of looters ready to snatch up anything of value—adult looters. If Sparrow and Dove tried to join the fray, they would certainly be cast out, and probably injured in the process.
“What are we going to do?” Dove asked, seemingly reading Sparrow’s thoughts.
Sparrow sucked on her lower lip. “I’m not sure,” she said. They couldn’t just leave empty-handed. They had traveled so far, and there was so much being tossed out. Surely Sparrow could find a way to grab something to make their trip worthwhile. She grinned to herself as she noticed that the gate to the legation was wide open as the foreigners rushed in and out. If the foreigners were tossing out this much stuff outside, how much more were they abandoning before they even left their homes? If she could get inside the legation, she could grab the good stuff before it ended up on the street where all the looters were waiting with greedy claws.
“Stay here,” Sparrow commanded Dove, but Dove grabbed tightly to her sister’s sleeve. Sparrow sighed and removed her sister’s hand. She patted the little girl’s cheek. “I’ll be right back. Wait for me. Don’t go off with anyone. Do you understand?”
Dove nodded, her eyes wet with tears of worry. But Sparrow could not delay. She had to slip in while she had her chance. Who knew when one of the guards would close the gate. The guards, armed with rifles, were still in front of the legation, but instead of standing watch as they should have been, they were being ordered to help the various families load their goods onto the carts. The families—and their Chinese servants—were rushing in and out of the gate with such frequency, the guards barely had time to take notice. Still, Sparrow knew she couldn’t just walk in. She had to make sure the timing was right. She walked slowly but purposefully toward the gate, looking for an opportunity.
As she got close, she saw a young Chinese girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, walking with a basket of fresh vegetables toward the legation. She was very clean, and the coat she wore was neat and fit her prettily. Sparrow realized that the girl must be a maid for one of the legation families. Sparrow quickly smoothed her hair and straightened her wrap—foolish actions since with her tangled hair, dirty face, and tattered shawl, she could never pass for a maid for a foreign family. Still, she had to try. She didn’t think she would get another chance. There was nothing she could do to make herself more presentable, so she might as well just keep walking.
She fell in behind the maid so closely she had to careful not to step on the girl’s shoes. The maid glanced over her shoulder at Sparrow and her eyes went wide, but Sparrow simply put her finger to her lip in a plea for silence. The girl let out a little huff, but said nothing. She turned back to the gate and kept walking. Sparrow’s heart beat quickly in her chest. It was likely the maid was going to alert the guards as they went through the gate. If Sparrow wanted to escape, she should turn away now.