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She slept for a while, then woke and ate some dried yam slices that Mother had wrapped in a newspaper.

When she was tired, she fell asleep again.

Many days and nights must have passed when the landlord came with a broomstick.

He had given her enough time to grieve, he said, but Anyu was twenty days behind on the rent.

Fumbling in the cabinet, Anyu only found twenty cents at the back of the drawer. Eight silver dollars short for rent.

Growling, the landlord said he would take all that was in the room for payment and ordered her to leave.

Her mouth dry, Anyu looked around: the rattan chair, the cabinet, the two bowls, the blue vase Mother had cherished, the kerosene lamp, and the warm cotton bedding.

She struggled for words but found none. Eventually, she packed up her clothes, her drawings, and her pencil and stuffed them inside the pillowcase Mother had embroidered. Then she stumbled out.

On the street, she held tight to her sack. The blurry sun looked like a melting ice cube; the neighbors were scattered in the distance, indistinct, their shadows dark as wolves. A wave of panic raced through her body. It couldn’t be; she was motherless, homeless.

She felt faint, her legs weak, her stomach grumbling.

Down the muddy track, she passed the potato barrels, the haggling vendors, the hawkers gripping bills.

At nightfall, she slept near a statue in the vast square in front of the St. Sophia cathedral.

A few nights later, she awoke to three drunken ruffians pulling at her pants and unbuttoning her coat; she quickly fled.

The next few days, she got some rest behind a gravestone in the cemetery until a homeless woman holding a bundle and a tattered blanket drove her out.

Then, temporary respite in a dark alley reeking of urine and, later, a corner behind a sand dune at the shores of the Songhua River.

Ice had thawed, water rushed, and the area was busy with women collecting their fish, fishermen cleaning their nets, and the Russian bathers who staked out the beach, brazenly baring their fat bellies.

Holding her sack, Anyu wasn’t sure where else to look for shelter.

Her grandparents’ names and address were unknown to her, nor did she know any other relatives.

The last person she could turn to was the warlord, who lived an hour away.

The thought of him filled her heart with longing and fear.

She had never met this man, only seen his serious face in the newspapers and heard about his insatiable appetite for deep-fried silkworm pupae and his capricious and cruel nature.

However, she had thought of the warlord, sensed acutely his absence, and felt envy upon seeing a father-and-daughter pair passing by, and she was even haunted, at times, by an unspeakable desire to meet the man, to be simply in the same room with him.

What if she revealed herself to him? Would he nod at her and smile? Unlikely. But he couldn’t have her executed for being his daughter, either.

Anyu slung the sack over her shoulder and walked to the warlord’s mansion, the building she had known since childhood.

For hours, she waited outside the gates.

They remained closed, and eventually one guard began interrogating her.

Her heart pounding nervously, she explained the relationship between her mother and the warlord and showed the guard the necklace with the Guandi pendant around her neck, hoping it would mean something.

Where did you get that? Give it to me, the guard demanded.

She fled but stayed stubbornly at the far end of the road.

When the enormous gates finally swung open, she held her breath, searching, as an army of foot soldiers carrying rifles marched out, followed by cavalry, then eight black automobiles—the warlord, always concerned about assassination attempts, was fond of decoys.

She tried to get closer but was held back by the multitude of foot soldiers.

When one black automobile passed her, for a fleeting moment, she caught sight of a man’s sharp face inside, the face of the father she had never met.

In the corner near the train station that had been her sanctuary, Anyu slumped to the ground and burst into tears. Harbin was vast, but there was no place for her; her blood relatives were out there, but no one wanted her.

Her sleeves drenched, she fumbled for something to wipe her tears, and there, in her pocket, was the handkerchief the jeweler had gifted her.

She stared at the elegant letters and the jewelry shop address on the soft fabric.

It had been eight months and two weeks since she came across the Russian jeweler.

She could no longer recall his face, but she remembered he had promised to look after her.

And his magnificent egg. She would like to see it again.

It was an impulsive decision, a decision that would lead her down lightless alleys and to a secret world, but as was often the case when an idea latched on to her, it was hard to shake it off.

Anyu wiped off her tears and rose. In a pawn shop near the Modern Hotel’s pink stone building, she unfastened her necklace with the pendant of the lord of war and exchanged it for one fifty-Chinese-dollar bill, too low for the necklace’s worth in her opinion, but enough to purchase a one-way train ticket to Shanghai.

Later, holding her sack, she climbed over the collapsed platform at the train station, boarded the train, and sat between a stocky businessman with a mustache and an old man hugging a cage of hens in his lap.

As the train lunged forward, gathering speed, a shiver ran through her.

She was riding a train for the first time; her life was racing forward.

The rhythmic clatter of wheels rang in her ears in a thrilling cadence, the air infused with coal smoke from the engine.

Outside, the area where she was born, where she grew up, and where Mother was buried rapidly faded away, and she pressed against the glass window, cold as a diamond; her face revealed no trace of fear.