My heartfelt thanks (along with big hugs) to Diana Link, Joyce Lin, Eva Liu, Evelyn Lu, and Amaris White—a few of my dearest and oldest friends—for reading my earlier novels, cheering me on throughout the years, and keeping me sane over countless IMs and phone calls while I sought to become a published author, as well as lending your critical eyes and ears (not least, for telling me what it’s really like to ride a camel and climb a mountain with ice picks).
This book would never have happened without the support of my family. Thank you to my po po, for sitting me with her at the sewing machine when I was little as she worked, and telling me all her stories. You are one of the strongest women I know.
To my parents, for teaching me the value of persistence from a young age. To Dad, for sparking in me a love for fairy tales, for being proud of me no matter what I chose to pursue—but wisely advising me to work hard and be the best I could be in those pursuits. Everything I have done is thanks to your wisdom. Mom, whose talent for arts and crafts never ceases to amaze me: thank you for emboldening me to be creative. I wouldn’t be the musician or writer I am today without you.
To my sister, Victoria, for pushing me to make the book more romantic (always, ha-ha!), for being a sounding board whenever I needed an honest opinion, and for giving me design and fashion advice. My life would be far lonelier (and less entertaining) without you.
Most of all, thank you to my husband, love, and best friend, Adrian. Thank you for nourishing me with countless breakfasts and dinners and for reminding me to eat lunch when I was so immersed in editing that I forgot to, for spending hours reading my drafts and giving me the brutal edits (and no-less-valuable encouragement) I needed, for hugging me during the lows and laughing with me during the highs, and for buying me a more comfortable desk chair. You are my inspiration and my joy.
Thank you to our baby, Charlotte, whose infectious smiles and giggles make me anxious to wake up every morning to spend time with you. Already I can’t wait to read and sing and dance—and write with you.
And lastly, thank you, dear reader. For picking up this book and giving it a chance, for following me through the wilds of my imagination, and for (hopefully) making it all the way to the end. Until next time!
I had a mother once.
She taught me to spin the finest yarn and thread, made from silkworms raised in our court of mulberry trees. Patiently, she would soak thousands of cocoons, and together we wound the gossamer threads onto wooden spools. When she saw how nimbly my little fingers worked the wheel, spinning silk like strands of moonlight, she urged my father to take me on as his seamstress.
“Learn well from Baba,” she told me when he agreed. “He is the best tailor in Gangsun, and if you study hard, one day you will be, too.”
“Yes, Mama,” I’d said obediently.
Perhaps if she’d told me then that girls couldn’t become tailors, my story would have turned out differently. But alas.
While Mama raised my brothers—brave Finlei, thoughtful Sendo, and wild Keton—Baba taught me to cut and stitch and embroider. He trained my eyes to see beyond simple lines and shapes, to manipulate shadows and balance beauty with structure. He made me handle every kind of cloth, from coarse cottons to fine silks, to gain mastery over fabrics and feel how they draped over the skin. He made me redo all my stitches if I skipped one, and from my mistakes I learned how a single seam could be the difference between a garment that fit and one that did not. How a careless rip could be mended but not undone.
Without Baba’s training, I could never have become the emperor’s tailor. But it was Mama’s faith in me that gave me the heart to even try.
In the evenings, after our shop closed, she’d rub balm onto my sore fingers. “Baba’s working you hard,” she would say.
“I don’t mind, Mama. I like sewing.”
She lifted my chin so our eyes were level. Whatever she saw made her sigh. “You really are your father’s daughter. All right, but remember: tailoring is a craft, but it’s also an art. Sit by the window, feel the light, and watch the clouds and the birds.” She paused, looking over my shoulder at the patterns I’d been cutting all day. “And don’t forget to have fun, Maia. You should make something for yourself, too.”
“But I don’t want anything.”
Mama tilted her head at me thoughtfully. As she changed the burnt-out joss sticks by our family altar, she picked up one of the three statues of Amana lining the shrine. They were plainly carved, faces and dresses washed out by the sun. “Why don’t you make three dresses for our mother goddess?”
My eyes widened. “Mama, I couldn’t. They’re—”
“—the most beautiful dresses in the world,” she finished for me. She tousled my hair and kissed my forehead. “I’ll help you. We’ll dream them together.”
I hugged Mama, burying my face in her chest and holding her so tight a laugh tinkled out of her throat, like soft strokes of a dulcimer.
What I would give to hear that laugh again. To see Mama one more time—to touch her face and comb my fingers through her thick braid of black hair as it loosened into waves rippling against her back. I remember no matter how I tried, I could never weave silk as soft as her hair. I remember I used to think the freckles on her cheeks and arms were stars. Keton and I would sit on her lap, me trying to count them, Keton trying to sweep them off.
The stories she’d tell us! It was Mama who dreamed of leaving Gangsun and living by the sea. She recounted to us the tales she’d grown up with—of fearless sailors, water dragons, and golden fish that granted wishes—tales Sendo drank with his soul.
She believed in fairies and ghosts, in demons and gods. She taught me to sew amulets for passing travelers, to cut paper clothes to burn for our ancestors, to write charms to ward off evil spirits. Most of all, she believed in fate.
“Keton says it isn’t my fate to become a tailor like Baba,” I sobbed to her one afternoon, weeping from the sting of my brother’s words. “He says girls can only become seamstresses, and if I work too hard, I won’t have any friends and no boy will ever want me—”
“Don’t listen to your brother,” Mama said. “He doesn’t understand what a gift you have, Maia. Not yet.” She dried my tears with the edge of her sleeve. “What matters is, do you want to be a tailor?”
“Yes,” I said in a small voice. “More than anything. But I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be,” she promised. “It isn’t in your fate. Tailors are closer to fate than most. Do you know why?”
I thought hard. “Baba says the threads he stitches into his work give it life.”
“It’s more than that,” replied Mama. “Tailoring is a craft that even the gods respect. There’s something magical about it. Even the simplest thread has great power.”
“Power?”
“Have I told you about the thread of fate?”
I shook my head.
“Everyone has a thread tied to someone—a person who’s meant to be by your side and make you happy. Mine is tied to Baba’s.”
I glanced at my wrists and ankles. “I don’t see anything.”
“You can’t see it.” Mama chuckled gently. “Only the gods can. The thread may be long, stretching over mountains and rivers, and it may be years before you find its end. But you’ll know when you meet the right one.”
“What if someone cuts it?” I worried.
“Nothing can break it, for destiny is the strongest promise. You’ll be bound to each other no matter what happens.”
“The way I’m bound to you and Baba, and Finlei. And Sendo?” I was mad at Keton, so I didn’t care if my youngest brother and I were tied together.
“It’s similar, but different.” Mama touched my nose and rubbed it affectionately. “One day you’ll see.”
That night, I took a spool of red thread and cut a string to tie around my ankl
e. I didn’t want my brothers to see and make fun of me, so I tucked the loose end under the cuff of my pant leg. But as I walked with my secret tickling my ankle, I wondered if I’d feel something when I met the person I was fated to be with. Would the string give a little tug? Would it stretch and bind to its other half?
I wore that string around my ankle for months. Little by little, it frayed, but my faith in fate did not.
Until fate took Mama from me.
It came for her slowly, over many months, like the cypress tree outside our shophouse. Every day, leaves trickled from its spindly arms, only a few at first, but more and more as autumn loomed. Then, one day, I woke up to find all the branches were bare. And our cypress tree was no more, at least until spring.
Mama had no spring.
Her autumn began with a stray cough here and there, always covered up with a smile. She forgot to add cabbage to the pork dumplings Finlei loved so much, and forgot the names of the heroes in the stories she’d tell Sendo and me before we went to sleep. She even let Keton win at cards and gave him too much money to spend on his errands in the marketplace.
I hadn’t thought too much of these slips. Mama would have said if she weren’t feeling well.
Then one winter morning, just as I’d finished adorning our statues of Amana with our three dresses of the sun, the moon, and the stars, Mama fainted in the kitchen.
I shook her. I was still small, and even her head was heavy for me to lift and rest on my lap.
“Baba!” I screamed. “Baba! She won’t wake up.”
That morning, everything changed. Instead of praying to my ancestors to wish them well in their afterlife, I prayed that they spare Mama. I prayed to Amana, to the three statues I’d painted and clothed, to let her live. To let her see my brothers and me grow up, and not to leave Baba, who loved her so much, alone.
Every time I closed my eyes and pictured the future, I saw my family whole. I saw Mama next to Baba, laughing, and teasing us all with the fragrant smells of her cooking. I saw my brothers surrounding me—Finlei reminding me to sit straight, Sendo slipping me an extra tangerine, and Keton pulling on my braids.
How wrong I was.
Mama died a week before my eighth birthday. I spent my birthday sewing white mourning clothes for my father and my brothers, which we wore for the next one hundred days. That year, the winter felt especially cold.
I cut the red thread off my ankle. Seeing how broken Baba was without Mama, I didn’t want to be tied to anyone and suffer the same pain.
As the years passed, my faith in the gods faded, and I stopped believing in magic. I shuttered my dreams and poured myself into keeping our family together, into being strong for Baba, for my brothers, for myself.
Every time a little happiness seeped into the cracks of my heart and dared make it full again, fate intervened to remind me I couldn’t escape it. Fate took my heart and smashed it piece by piece: when Finlei died, then Sendo, and Keton returned with broken legs and ghosts in his eyes.
The Maia of yesterday picked up those pieces and painstakingly sewed them back together. But I was no longer that Maia.
Beginning today, things would be different. Beginning today, when fate caught me, I’d meet it head-on and make it my own.
Beginning today, I would have no heart.
Adrian Ow
ELIZABETH LIM grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was raised on a hearty diet of fairy tales, myths, and songs. Before becoming an author, Elizabeth was a professional film and video game composer, and she still tends to come up with her best book ideas when writing near a piano. An alumna of Harvard College and the Juilliard School, she now lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Spin the Dawn is her first original novel, and its companion, Unravel the Dusk, will be published in summer 2020.
ELIZABETHLIM.COM
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