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the question flapping about in her mind. She eased into Old Grandfather’s lap, mindful of his fragile bones.
    “Tell me, Second Daughter, what has put dragon fire in your eyes?”
    Kai breathed Old Grandfather’s cornstarch-and-smoke smell. “I met a baby bird. With a hurt leg.” As she talked, she spread her fingers to show what she had done, then had to poke Old Grandfather twice to open his heavy eyelids. How could a storyteller like Old Grandfather drift away as she recounted such adventure . . . and before her question?
    “Old Grandfather!” She raised her voice, clapped her hands.
    Life stirred between the folds and creases surrounding his marble eyes.
    Kai sat straight, determined to ask the question before Old Grandfather again left for the dream world.
    “Old Ling cursed my bird friend. Why?” Questions made Kai rustle about. “She spoke of old days. What did she mean by ‘finishing off’ birds?”
    Her questions hovered in the air, though Kai begged them to vanish since they sagged and shadowed Old Grandfather’s seventy-year-old eyelids.
    The questions refused to leave. They were stubborn things, just like her.
    Pale lips gripped the pipe. Smoke puffs encircled Old Grandfather’s nose. “In famine years, Chairman Mao decreed that sparrows gobbled up our crops. A campaign was launched to exterminate the wasteful creatures.”
    “Exterminate?” Kai’s teeth chattered at such an awful-sounding word.
    “Rock-hurling peasants stormed the fields. Teachers ordered students to beat washbasins, clang pot lids.”
    “Why?”
    “To disturb the birds’ feng shui.”
    “Just to . . . scare them away?”
    Old Grandfather puffed his pipe and shook his head.
    Her hand swelled as if ten hornets had attacked. “To . . . kill them?”
    Old Grandfather did not say a word. He did not need to.
    Chills zipped along Kai’s spine. “Our village? They did this here in our village?”
    Smoke seeped from Old Grandfather’s mouth as he slowly nodded.
    “No!” Kai’s heart throbbed pain. She struggled out of Old Grandfather’s lap.
    Though Old Grandfather’s lips moved, wings beat so violently against Kai’s heart that she could not hear him. The pipe smoke she had once loved swirled to choke her. Images of limp wings and bloodied feathers swooped in to join the attack.
    Free from Old Grandfather’s lap, Kai tore out of the house, past Mother, still working in the courtyard, through the garden, and to the ladder that leaned against the shed. She had to join her feathered friends in their sky home and leave the horrid ground behind! Sobs shook her body. Who would hurl sticks and stones at innocent birds? Her bare toes curled about ladder rungs as she climbed toward a world where nature’s creatures achieved perfect harmony. Her fingers dug into splintery wood. Higher! Higher! With each step she left the nasty killing world of men.
    Bird chatter began when she reached the top rung. Huffing, she collapsed onto the shed roof. “Chee, chee!” she cried as she wiped away her tears and pivoted enough to shove the ladder to the ground. “I, Chang Kai,” she shouted to the sparrows and gulls and bulbuls and ducks from her shed-top kingdom, “will never threaten your life.”
    Shouts rose from the yard, but Kai paid them no mind. She twirled to create a wind that would block the low world’s sounds. “I, Chang Kai, will honor you as long as the fates allow!”
    Oh, what chirping! What singing! The shed roof became her roost. Kai flapped her arms and hopped like the injured chick to show the birds what was in her heart. She hopped as the little bird had. Twirled. Hopped—
    Something whooshed, like kite tails battling an angry wind. Kai felt herself falling. She opened her mouth to scream, but the breeze captured her voice.
    For the span of two wing flaps, Kai hung in the air. Then she banged against the cold hard ground. The Healing Right Hand clawed the dirt.
    Dark descended. Heavy weights pinned her