Chapter 31: The Mother Of Hekou
She had been a girl of fourteen when she told her mother she wanted to learn to heal people.
Her mother had looked at her for a long moment and then said, "Then go to Sun Ai."
Sun Ai lived at the edge of Chenjia village in a modest hut that was filled with herbs. She never did explain much, she simply demonstrated and waited.
She expected her apprentices to ask the right questions, and if they couldn't formulate the right questions she waited until they could, which had seemed maddening at fourteen and seemed, now, like the only honest way to teach anything.
She had loved those years.
Then her father had introduced her to Pei Desheng. Her choice was not consulted, and it had turned out to be her great fortune.
Her father had told her he was a hard worker who would take good care of her and that Desheng had hounded him for his approval to talk to his daughter.
She had looked at him standing in the doorway and doubted it.
He was smaller than the other men her father had considered, also quieter with no defining features that stood out to her.