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“Add a bronze mirror too,” she said, “like the princesses in Jappor have.”

“How do you know what the princesses in Jappor have?” asked Baba.

“Mama told me.”

“Naturally she did.” Baba exchanged a smile with our mother.

“Mirrors are expensive, Falina, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Baba.” Fal kissed him on the cheek.

Next came Nomi, whose request was the same each time.

“I should like a sack full of books,” she said in as low and serious a voice as her eight years could manage.

“And if you can’t find a dragon, I will settle for a mermaid.”

“One with waves of green hair and a violet tail painted of twilight?” I already knew.

“And pearls underneath her eyes,” added Nomi excitedly.

“I read that mermaids cry pearls. The purest pearls in thesea.”

“That sounds painful,” remarked Falina.

“Not if you’re a mermaid,” Nomi said.

“It’s as natural as bees making honey.”

While Fal clucked her tongue at our sister’s romantic notions, I humored Nomi and added a dragon and a mermaid to my painting.

The paper was getting crowded, thanks to all of Fal’s dresses, but I was rather proud of my dragon.

I didn’t know what dragon scales and noses were supposed to look like, so I’d drawn a series of uneven ovals that ended up looking more like teardrops, and a straight and proud nose—the sort Mama said resembled a waterfall of money—and a tail that fanned out like a flame.

“I don’t think dragons have legs like that,” observed Fal with a wrinkled nose.

“He looks like he’s walking, not swimming.”

“I like him,” said Nomi, taking my side.

“He looks regal. Almost real.”

He did look real, except I hadn’t given him pupils yet.

Baba said that a dragon’s eyes were its spirit, and to always add them last when drawing a creature as unpredictable as a dragon—lest it leap off the page and whisk me away.

“Don’t forget to leave space for your wish, Tru,” Baba reminded me.

“What would you like?”

I didn’t have to think long.

“I’d like you to finish carving this,” I replied, passing him the small wooden ship he’d made for me years ago.

“I’m ready to paint it.”

Baba smiled, but his eyes turned wistful as he took the piece from my hands.

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked worriedly.

“No. No.” He slipped the wooden ship into his bag.

“I’m just thinking how much taller my girls will be the next time I see them.”

With that, he scooped Nomi into his arms, mussed my blue hair, and patted Falina’s braid, then slid his arm around Mama’s waist.

She made a face, but when she thought we weren’t looking, she scooted closer to him.

My painting was done.

I’d drawn the five of us in front of Baba’s ship, with Fal’s dresses dancing in the air and Nomi’s dragon watching skeptically, and an extra-large pan of fried crullers in the middle for good luck.

Together, we blew it dry.

Then in unison, as if we were priestesses blessing a charm, my sisters and I chanted, “Magic paintbrush.”

One by one, Baba embraced each of us.

When it came my turn, I wouldn’t let go.

“Never mind the wooden ship,” I said into his ear softly.

“Or Fal’s dresses and Nomi’s mermaids. Only promise that next time we can all come with you.”

Baba cocked his head to the side, his eyes twinkling.

“Are you sure Fal would want that?”

“Nomi and me, then.” I smiled, tucking the ends of his green scarf over his shoulder.

“She can look out for dragons while I count our treasure.”

“You are my treasure,” Baba said, kissing my forehead.

“You and your sisters and your mother.” He touched my hair tenderly.

“And this will be the last time I leave my treasures behind.”

Then he left for the port, his traveling chest under one arm and leather satchel swung over the other, a corner of my painting peeking out of the half-open flap.

Nomi and I ran to the window, watching him braid through the crowds on the road.

I was grateful that his Balardan blood made him tall, so I could track him until he turned the corner.

When he did, I closed the window shutters and started on the dishes.

Baba had left us dozens of times before.

There was no reason to think this time would be any different.

How wrong I was.

Four months later, on the gray and wintry morning before New Year’s, a pot shattered in the kitchen.

Nomi heard it first.

She was the lightest sleeper of us three, and she jolted up, kicking me awake.

“What was that?”

I stilled, listening to the aftermath of the sound.

Silence.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

“Maybe it was a rat.”

Nomi let out a silent shriek.

“A rat?”

“They’re out to celebrate New Year’s Eve,” I teased, sitting up to peer out the window.

There were lanterns hanging off the larches, and overnight, blue waterbells had bloomed.

Star shaped with yellow bells, they were the first envoys of spring—and my favorite flowers.

“Come see, all the shophouses put up rat banners. Tomorrow it’ll be theiryear.”

Nomi rubbed her eyes.

“I hate the year of the rat.”

“Don’t say that. It’s the first of a new cycle.”

“In Balar there’s no rat year. Only numbered years. Makes more sense for keeping track, don’t you think?”

Nomi, so young and already so regrettably practical.

She jerked her head, suddenly sitting up in the bed.

“I hear Mama.”

So did I.

“You stay here where it’s warm,” I told her as I started climbing over Falina—who wore cotton buds in her ears and could sleep through a monsoon.

“I’ll go see.”

Inside the kitchen, I found Mama sobbing.

At first I thought it was over the broken pot of waterbells, the mangled flowers and orange clay pieces scattered across the tiled floor.

Then I saw the letter in her hand.

My heart sank and sank until I could hardly breathe.

All I could croak out was one word: “Baba.”

I’d never forget how the air leaked out of Mama as she spun to look at me.

How the muscle in her jaw jumped and her lips pinched together tight, as if she wished, for my sake, that I were still asleep.

She sagged against the wall, and the letter dropped from her hand.

I caught it before it fell into the puddle of dirt.

The paper was wet at the creases, the bright red ink smeared from old rain.

The characters in Baba’s name were missing a few strokes—bureaucrats never knew how to translate his name to A’landan—but even so it was clear enough: To the Family of Arban Saigas.

The rims of my eyes were burning, and the ink blurred as I read.

Baba’s ship had been caught in a storm.

Most of the crew had survived, thanks to him.

But Baba was lost.

Lost.

The word exploded in my head, and suddenly I felt like I was swimming in the pages of Nomi’s dictionary, trying to find a meaning of the word that wasn’t missing, vanished, gone.

Dead.

No, no, it couldn’t be.

“Is Baba…” I couldn’t say it.

My knees buckled, and a strangled cry tore out of my throat instead.

Mama covered my mouth with her hand.

“Don’t wake your sisters. Let them sleep a little while longer.”

It was too late for that.

Nomi was behind the door, her jacket half-buttoned as she slipped out of the shadows.

She had heard everything.

Falina too.

Falina scooped Nomi up in her arms.

My youngest sister’s lips had turned bluish, and she clutched at her chest as she coughed, her lungs convulsing with shock.

Tears welled in Fal’s eyes as she patted our sister’s back.

“Stop it, Nomi.”

Not knowing what else to do, I reached for Nomi’s hand, wiped her nose with my sleeve.

It’ll be all right, I wanted to tell her.

Fal and I will take care of you.

But the words wouldn’t come.

Only tears.

I held my sisters, desperately rewriting the morning in my head.

A morning where Baba came back like he always did.

With presents, with little carved animals and sweet treats wrapped in banana leaves, and new stories.

Any moment, he’d stride through the door.

But as the seconds passed, it became clear that each scene I envisioned was an illusion.

A fanciful dream and nothing more.

Nothing could undo the stinging reality of Mama slumped against the wall, Baba’s name in red smearing the crescents of her fingernails.

Baba, dead.

That was when Mama blurted, “Your father isn’t dead.”

Nomi gasped for air.

“What?”

“He isn’t dead,” Mama repeated.

Fal looked up, unsure.

“But that letter…Baba…Baba’s lost at sea.”

“ Lost only means he hasn’t been found yet,” said Mama.

“I’m the best fortune teller in Gangsun. That means I’m practically the best in the world.”

“Can you find him?” Nomi dared ask.

“Yes,” she said.

“But I’ll need money first.” Her jaw tightened.

“Your father didn’t leave us much of that.”

Her tone was thick, not with resentment but with worry.

This was a side of Mama I’d never seen before.

She put on her gloves, picked up her basket.

“Sweep the floor. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Where are you going?”

Mama hesitated.

“To buy more rice.”

I knew the rice was just a cover.

She was going to confront Baba’s business partners for answers—and for money.

Now that he wasn’t coming back…

Using my sleeve, I blotted Nomi’s tears.

“Cry all you need,” I said, holding her close.

While Nomi sobbed in my arms, Mama disappeared out the door without another word.

Fal touched Nomi’s shoulder.

Nomi was her favorite too, and the only time we came together was for her.

“Didn’t you hear what Mama said?” she asked.

“She’s going to find him.”

The conviction in Fal’s voice made Nomi look up.

“You…you really think he’s…he’s a-alive?” she asked us shakily.

She sucked in a breath.

“You think…you think Mama can find him?”

Fal looked at me, her bloodshot eyes reflecting the same desperate hope as Nomi’s.

The letter had gone limp on my lap, the coarse paper stained with tears.

Red ink smudged my fingertips, the sight forever seared into my memory even after I wiped my hands clean.

No, I should have said.

I don’t think she can.

That would have been the truth.

But for the first time, I’d seen the cracks in Mama’s stony veneer.

I knew she was pretending.

She had to.

For our sake.

And, seeing as our fortunes had turned to ash, I put on a brave face too.

“Yes,” I lied to my sisters.

“I think she can.”