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on the floor before the ancestors. “Kneel here,” she said. “Now take off your shirt.” I kneeled with my back to my parents so none of us felt embarrassed. My mother washed my back as if I had left for only a day and were her baby yet. “We are going to carve revenge on your back,” my father said. “We’ll write out oaths and names.”
    “Wherever you go, whatever happens to you, people will know our sacrifice,” my mother said. “And you’ll never forget either.” She meant that even if I got killed, the people could use my dead body for a weapon, but we do not like to talk out loud about dying.
    My father first brushed the words in ink, and they fluttered down my back row after row. Then he begancutting; to make fine lines and points he used thin blades, for the stems, large blades.
    My mother caught the blood and wiped the cuts with a cold towel soaked in wine. It hurt terribly—the cuts sharp; the air burning; the alcohol cold, then hot—pain so various. I gripped my knees. I released them. Neither tension nor relaxation helped. I wanted to cry. If not for the fifteen years of training, I would have writhed on the floor; I would have had to be held down. The list of grievances went on and on. If an enemy should flay me, the light would shine through my skin like lace.
    At the end of the last word, I fell forward. Together my parents sang what they had written, then let me rest. My mother fanned my back. “We’ll have you with us until your back heals,” she said.
    When I could sit up again, my mother brought two mirrors, and I saw my back covered entirely with words in red and black files, like an army, like my army. My parents nursed me just as if I had fallen in battle after many victories. Soon I was strong again.
    A white horse stepped into the courtyard where I was polishing my armor. Though the gates were locked tight, through the moon door it came—a kingly white horse. It wore a saddle and bridle with red, gold, and black tassles dancing. The saddle was just my size with tigers and dragons tooled in swirls. The white horse pawed the ground for me to go. On the hooves of its near forefoot and hindfoot was the ideograph “to fly.”
    My parents and I had waited for such a sign. We took the fine saddlebags off the horse and filled them with salves and herbs, blue grass for washing my hair, extra sweaters, dried peaches. They gave me a choice of ivory or silver chopsticks. I took the silver ones because they were lighter. It was like getting wedding presents. The cousins and the villagers came bearing bright orange jams, silk dresses, silver embroidery scissors. They brought blue and white porcelain bowls filled with water and carp—the bowlspainted with carp, fins like orange fire. I accepted all the gifts—the tables, the earthenware jugs—though I could not possibly carry them with me, and culled for travel only a small copper cooking bowl. I could cook in it and eat out of it and would not have to search for bowl-shaped rocks or tortoiseshells.
    I put on my men’s clothes and armor and tied my hair in a man’s fashion. “How beautiful you look,” the people said. “How beautiful she looks.”
    A young man stepped out of the crowd. He looked familiar to me, as if he were the old man’s son, or the old man himself when you looked at him from the corners of your eyes.
    “I want to go with you,” he said.
    “You will be the first soldier in my army,” I told him.
    I leapt onto my horse’s back and marveled at the power and height it gave to me. Just then, galloping out of nowhere straight at me came a rider on a black horse. The villagers scattered except for my one soldier, who stood calmly in the road. I drew my sword. “Wait!” shouted the rider, raising weaponless hands. “Wait. I have travelled here to join you.”
    Then the villagers relinquished their real gifts to me—their sons. Families who had hidden their boys during the last conscription volunteered them now. I