Read "Hanging Waters" by Keith West online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
MING SO suddenly woke up in the night and lay perfectly still in his blanket. For a moment he imagined himself back at his mother's house in Ha Foo, and half listened for the familiar rustle of the night wind in the clump of bamboos beside the gate. But his ears now caught a very different rustle--the sound of silk rubbing on silk. Then a voice spoke on the deck near him--a woman's voice.
-"There are many mouths to be fed in the village, and little wherewith to feed them. Therefore, hearing of your arrival at the village of Seung So, I told my friend here of the previous business which I did with you a year past, suggesting that you might be willing to take into your own rich household one of these mouths. Her father has two sons and seven daughters."