Face-Slapping19 min read
"I woke up as the matchmaker — and I sold the whole town a pot"
ButterPicks17 views
"Open the door, Madam Cheng! Open up!"
I sat bolt upright and stared at the yard outside the thin patched curtain. My throat was dry. My head felt like it had been scrubbed and emptied and then packed with someone else's memory.
"Who—?" I croaked.
My hand landed on a round, warm belly. It wobbled like a sack of rice.
"Oh no," I said. "No. No, no, no."
"Who is it?" a woman called from the yard. Her voice was quick with worry.
I threw the cloth aside and found a water jar. I peered down and saw my face in the water: round, flushed, hair tied with a simple ribbon, two small dimples when I forced a smile. A big black dot of paint—"matchmaker's mole"—decorated one cheek.
"That is not mine," I whispered. "I'm twenty-two. I am not supposed to—"
"She's awake!" someone shouted from outside.
"You are?" a tall girl with sun-dark skin and a bundle of firewood over her shoulder stepped into the yard and tossed the wood down like it weighed nothing. She looked at me and a bright, sharp smile broke out on her face. "Janiyah, are you better?"
"Janiyah?" I echoed. The name felt foreign on my tongue and also oddly right. I straightened, testing the weight in my arms and legs. The arms were thick but steady. The legs had firmness like tree trunks.
"Sit, sit," the girl said and scooped me up like I was a pail. She shoved me back onto the bed. "You mustn't sit on the cold ground. I'll cook for you."
"Who are you?" I asked, panic sharpening my voice.
She looked astonished. "I am your sister, Miriam. You poor thing, you had us all worried."
Sister. Mother. Matchmaker. I blinked and a wave of memory from my old life crashed through — a life with a boyfriend, a bank card, modern cafes. It snapped back like a mask. The heat and the smell of boiled porridge were all around me now. My hands were coarse. Someone had painted a mole on my skin and called me a daughter's name of a different century.
I swallowed hard and tried to steady my voice. "I… I don't remember some things," I said. "Maybe I'm ill."
Kristina—no, the woman who had hugged me and smelled like expensive perfume when she removed the makeup—she came in then, cheeks wet, and hugged me until the smell of rose oil made me sneeze.
"My child!" she cried. "You frightened your mother to death."
"Mom?" I asked, testing the new name.
"Kristina," she corrected, smiling through tears. "Everyone calls me Madam Cheng. Sit, sit."
She kissed my forehead and fussed with my hair. She spoke to me like she was reading a letter from a loyal friend. "You were fevered for days. The old doctor says your body is strong now. Only the mind is weak from the fever."
I let her fuss. I let the two girls fuss. I let them praise me for being alive and say I'm clever and sweet and tiredin a way that made me want to laugh and cry at once.
"Drink," Miriam ordered, handing me a bowl of watery egg congee. "Eat. You are still thin."
I ate like a person who remembered meals of the same taste a thousand times in books. The spoon hit the bowl and made a small ringing sound. The air smelled like onions and fish, and it felt like the smell had no end.
"Do you remember anything?" Kristina asked when the bowl was empty.
"I remember my parents. I remember friends," I lied. "But not this house. I woke up in your body."
Kristina's eyes widened and she squeezed my hand. "The fever! The old gods must be kind. You were sick for days. You are still your own, then. You will learn. You will be our matchmaker's daughter. We will teach you."
"Matchmaker?" The word made my stomach fall.
Kristina laughed. "Yes. I am Cheng Madam, a matchmaker. We help people find good matches. It is honest work. Sometimes I fail, but a living is a living."
"Do I have to—" I stopped myself. I was twenty-two in my last life, used to swiping cards and choosing roommates on apps. I did not want to be a matchmaker to other people's lives, especially in a world where women like me were sold into arrangements.
Miriam and Sofia — my two sisters — exchanged looks. Sofia, the middle sister, came in then with more wood and sat like a soldier. She had a jaw like a knife and a habit of tying her hair into a short knot. "She's strong," Sofia said. "Enough to carry heavy loads. Do not let her be lazy."
"Lazy?" I blinked. "I can cook. I can sell. I don't want to force people into bad marriages."
Kristina squeezed my hand. "We do our best. We match people who will be safe together. Come, today we go to Anshan village. I have a match. You must see how a match is done."
Anshan was five miles outside the county. I walked with them. The road was rough. People stared at the round woman who laughed and pushed a cart, and I kept thinking I would wake up.
At the village entrance we met Birgit Johansson — the other matchmaker. Her dress jingled with beads. Her red linen was loud as a bird. She glared across the field like a woman who owned the road.
"Well if it isn't Madam Cheng," Birgit said, every word sharpened. "Coming to take our work, have you?"
Kristina kept a smile but her fingers flexed. "Business is for all of us, Birgit. Today I'm here with a decent plan."
"You steal the wrong match, and you will pay," Birgit hissed. I felt anger like static in the air.
A chesty woman in a red dress stepped forward. "Who is the groom?" she demanded.
"This is Wu the shopkeeper," Kristina said. "Widower, runs a small shop — Eben Fournier — and has a child. He wishes to remarry."
"Eben Fournier?" I repeated under my breath and made a face. "He sells the worst pickles in town. My sister's pickles tasted better." I caught the look on Kristina's face. She did not laugh.
Birgit leaned close and whispered to Eben like a snake. She told him a story about a young girl who withdrew from a betrothal because of the groom's misfortune — and she spun the tale with the pity that made men soft. Eben's eyes widened. He was young for a widower and thin from worry. His pained body and small shop tugged at something in me. He wanted to be loved and respected. He was not a villain; he was tired.
"Eben, take her," Birgit said under her breath. "She's pure and young and your kind will like her. No stain."
Kristina's offer favored a widow with a kind heart and low dowry. Her pitch was different, a promise of steadiness. The two offers balanced like scales. Eben frowned between them.
"You can't judge a woman by those stories," I burst out. "You can't. Stop telling him lies."
Birgit stared at me. "Who are you, child? Mind your mouth."
"I am Janiyah," I said quickly. "I am the matchmaker's daughter."
She laughed like a struck bell. "A child of the new matchmaker? Please. Stay out of grown women's business."
I wanted to slap her. Instead I pushed. "If you think she's stained, then look at her. Ask her yourself. Stop selling her like a thing."
Eben looked at me for a long heartbeat and then — unexpectedly — he smiled, calm like someone who had been offered two warm bowls and chose one. "There's room for truth in a shop," he said. "Tell me, what is your name?"
"Arianna," a soft voice answered. It was the family girl, Arianna Patel. She stood like a small reed, wearing patched shoes but eyes like tea. She bowed her head. "My name is Arianna. I am not unclean."
Arianna's family looked embarrassed when Birgit had mewed lies. Kristina gave them a small nod; I felt that this was how marriages could be steered gently: not by loud lies but by an honest word.
"What did you do?" Kristina asked me later as we walked from the house, sun burning the dust on our feet.
"I said the truth," I replied. "I couldn't let her sell someone like that."
Kristina smiled like someone who had won a small battle and pulled me into the crowd. "Good. You have a tongue that can bite or heal. Use it well."
On the way home, Birgit followed us with her eyes. "You will not last here," she muttered to Kristina.
"Then we will make our business survive," Kristina said. "We have nothing but grit."
That night Kristina told me the truth: she had begun match-making to survive, and she had stuck to rules. But Phoenix County's matchmakers — Birgit, one called Mo, another Wang — formed a narrow cartel. They took high fees, and they bullied new people who tried to undercut them.
"We were attacked once, right when I started," Kristina said, pressing my hand. "They sent men. If not for your sisters and a few strong arms, I might have been beaten into the ground."
"Who did this?" I asked. "Did anyone pay?"
She shook her head. "We survived. But we live at the edge. We need protection and luck."
"Protection" in that time means having a friend in the underworld or a man with muscle. We needed more than luck. We needed money. We needed allies. We needed—my brain was already working like an old machine: list, fix, sell, profit.
"I can sell," I said finally. "Not love. Not fake promises. Things. Pots. Sauces. Food. People need pots to cook and sauce to flavor food. Good pots are rare. If I sell the pot plus the sauce plus a recipe, people will come."
Kristina blinked. "You mean like hawking? A little stall?"
"Yes. And make food on it to show the pot is good." I ran my hand through my hair. "We will turn our mouth into a store and sell trust."
"Then make a store," Miriam said. "I will guard it."
Sofia added, "And I will cut wood and run errands. We cannot let Birgit sink us."
So we began. I sold pots that a good blacksmith made — Brock Donnelly, who had a lean, steady face and a laugh like a hammer on iron. Brock agreed to let me sell his pots on commission for a price that made me dizzy with hope. I ordered bottles from three local brewers and vinegar makers — Mark Kuenz, the old doctor, connected me to them — and I rented a small space on West Street with a man called Antonella (she of the leather vest, known as "Xiao San" by her men).
"You want this spot?" Antonella asked, sitting sideways on a crate.
"Yes," I said. "It fits three fires."
Antonella leaned close. "You sure you can handle the heat?"
"I have handled hotter things," I lied. "Mostly, I can yell."
She peered at me and grinned. "Then you're safe."
The first day I opened, I burned my tongue; I shouted until my throat rasped; I waved a spatula like an army banner. "People! Come and see! This pot does not stick! This sauce is not weak! Buy a pot and I will show you a meal!"
I cooked a dish in front of them: egg fried rice with the new pot. I added a spoonful of Chen's sauce, a pinch of Zhao's vinegar. People gathered. A man called Spring Flower — a ten-year-old girl with a cheeky grin — handed out plates. The food went fast. The town loved it.
"How much?" an old woman asked.
"Two taels for the pot today," I said, and for a moment my heart jumped. Then an old man in the crowd hollered, "She is selling the best pot! I buy!"
Half a day in and we had sold several pots, dozens of bottles. I paid our helpers, gave Antonella a little fee for standing watch, and walked home with heavy coins clinking in my pockets. For the first time since waking under Kristina's patched curtain, my chest felt light.
But the town was small and shops were many. Birgit did not like customers leaving her orbit. Next morning she sent one of her men to tip a tray of vinegar and say loud lies: "Cheng pot is cheap trash!" He pushed a child and knocked over a jar. A fight started.
"Stop! Get your hands off my stall!" I would not back down.
Antonella appeared like a storm. "You push my girl's stall, you pay." Her voice cut like a blade cut cloth. Her small cluster of people — boys and girls in patched vests — spread out like a net.
One of Birgit's cronies, a fat man with a sour face, lunged at Antonella and got slipped under a sweep kick. He landed in the dirt and spit teeth.
"Keep your hands clean," Antonella muttered. "This is public. You break it, you pay with your face."
They left. Birgit spat a promise I could hear in her teeth. "This isn't over."
In a business that moves in small margins, threats make you bleed. Birgit kept at us: rumors, broken jars, spooked customers. She had allies — a slim man named Eben's uncle hired muscle once — but we had a growing crowd and the county clerk's attention. Mark Kuenz, the doctor, spoke up loud in the market: "Cheng's pots are honest. Tested."
One morning a messenger came to the stall with the county seal. Grant Harris — the county magistrate — was inviting me to the county house. He wanted my "stew" of three dozen pancake things for the magistrate's small feast. Twenty taels. My mind dropped to the floor.
"Why me?" I asked Miriam that night. "I'm a woman on a stall."
"Because you are loud, smart, and you cook," she said. "And because someone at the county had a hungry man and a wise mind."
The county compound was a world apart: stone floors, cool breeze, an oak inside the inner hall. Grant Harris sat by the lotus pond, tall in his robe, younger than I expected, but with an air of power that made the air feel heavier.
"Your pancakes were recommended," he said when I presented the hot stack. "You included a recipe for the staff. I will pay twenty taels for today's meal. Come again when I ask."
Twenty taels was a life. It felt like the door to a different place.
"Anything else?" he asked softly, his eyes calculating like a merchant. "Are you married?"
"I am not," I said.
"Good," he said. "Then sometimes the county needs a cook at gatherings. For twenty taels I can ask you to come sometimes. I will pay."
"It is an honor," I said, but in truth I felt a tug in my chest. He was a man with a job and with power. He smiled in a way that suggested the world was smaller than it looked.
From then on my life became a race against the next day. I expanded the bottles on shelves. I taught Spring Flower to wrap pots in straw. I hired three scruffy kids — Thim, Asha, and Adrien — to be runners and plate passers. We became something like a market.
But Birgit was patient. She wanted to destroy us not just financially but by shame. She started whisper campaigns: "Cheng steals fortunes," "Cheng is unfit to teach daughters." She spread a rumor that one of my pots had gone rotten and killed chickens; it failed because it was ridiculous, but people are mammals who prefer to believe the grimmest tale.
"Don't worry," Kristina said again. "We will weather."
There was a larger storm on the horizon. A plot to swap brides—Birgit's best and vilest trick—arrived in a whisper one dawn. "They will swap Arianna with Eva Beck," Antonella told me, lips thin. "Put Arianna in the reach of another groom, and then swap at the wedding. Birgit and Eben will make a quick bargain."
Eben had been leaning toward the pretty, but he had also been pressured. Birgit seeded doubt and the men of the town, forgetting they had a child and a small shop, were easily swayed by a rumor that sounded like honor.
"At the wedding?" I asked.
"Yes. Many guests, two brides. They will move the veil and the wrong girl will be claimed. By the time anyone notices, dawn will be dim and the bride will be in the groom's house. The shame will be on the matchmaker and the true bride."
"That's cowardice," Kristina spat. "That is a criminal plot."
"We stop it," Antonella said. "We will not let them take that girl's life."
We were three people: Kristina the tender, Miriam the muscle, me the talker, and Antonella with her village of misfits ready to move. We set a plan: we would not wait for the swap. That morning, before the wedding bell rang, we set off to Anshan and placed a ring of firecrackers and drums. We stayed in the shadows.
The day was bright. Two brides left their houses at the same moment. Firecrackers screamed. In the chaos, three of Birgit's men tried to switch the brides. They moved like raccoons. Antonella's people had the signal. Miriam and Sofia were there, carrying a plank and three pails, and I had a string of lamps to show the way.
When the switch happened, we detonated the drums and the firecrackers at full force, and with every eye on the noise, we moved the brides back, gently but with an iron hand. The town watched in astonishment as Arianna came back to her place and the pretender stood exposed in a red dress that no longer fit.
"Eben!" cried Birgit, "you were tricked!"
Eben looked between the two girls and then at me. "I will not be tricked," he said. "Arianna, will you take me?"
Arianna bowed and whispered, "I will."
The town celebrated, several men were striped of face, and Birgit's plan found only humiliation. She slapped the air and bellowed promises. "This isn't finished!"
That night I slept like a child. Our stall boomed. For a few days the town believed in us.
Then came the worst morning: a woman named Huang Hehua — she had gone through years of abuse by her husband and his family after being swapped into that family long ago — stood in my stall and pointed to a man who was now caught in a web. She was small and scrawny and had hands like dust. "He hit me," she said. "He broke my ribs. He broke my fingers."
"You go to the magistrate," Kristina said.
We went.
The court scene lasted a long hour. People lined the courthouse steps as they always did for entertainment. Huang knelt, voice thin but fierce. The man — Zhao Mingli — stood and spat and cursed. He had been cruel. The magistrate, Grant Harris, listened and didn't snap like a tyrant but rather like a careful judge.
"You are brave," Grant said to Huang. "You will be heard."
We brought doctors — Mark Kuenz wrote a paper. The magistrate read it. The crowd gasped when the evidence was weighed. When the magistrate ruled that those who beat wives would be punished and that Zhao would be taken and flogged, the crowd's cheers tore the air. The law had been used as a sword for the wronged.
Zhao was hauled away. The town looked at us with a new respect. I felt something like iron in my belly: justice is a currency as good as coins.
Birgit seethed and tried to plant more lies. She sent a bribe to the magistrate's clerk and tried to buy influence. Grant's clerk — Calder Burke — was young and nervous and made a play for a bold theft. He tried to make offers.
When he came to me, flushed with hope, I surprised myself. "What do you want?" I asked.
"A favor," he said. "We could make your life easier. The county takes a cut of new projects. I can help you get the county to use your toilets — I mean, the new privies — if you give me a share."
I had already pushed a plan to build better latrines; poor people were drowning in filth and children were falling into open pits. I wanted to build three-pit systems that would work. It was modern ingenuity with old clay and stone. It would be human and profitable.
"Who do you work for?" I asked carefully.
He swallowed. "Grant Harris. He will want half."
"He wants half?" I repeated.
Calder looked proud, but his face dropped when I laughed. "No," I said. "If you and your master want this, you will give us a fair share, and we will build the toilets and keep the rest. We don't sell our souls for a seat."
When Cal-der repeated the request to His Honor — for a cut — Grant's face did not crumple. He measured us like a jeweler. "I will accept a split," he said finally. "The county takes some to fund roads. You take the rest to run your enterprise. But I want the work to be honest. If I find graft, I will cut it down."
That night Antonella looked at Grant's name and rolled her eyes. "One can't trust a man with robes," she grunted. "But you make a fair bargain."
So we started building latrines. We dug pits and mixed lime and clay and put in a flow. For the first time, small children could use a clean place and not fear a nightfall. For the first time, people stopped cursing the rain because it meant the latrines flooded.
Our project grew so quickly that the county ordered more. Suddenly we had work crews and men to pay and materials to buy. The blacksmith Brock Donnelly earned more. Mark the doctor saved more lives. We had built not just latrines but a network.
Birgit saw our success and tried to muscle in on the profits. She bribed men, started rumors about our work being rotten, and once even tried to steal an invoice. We caught them red-handed: a paper with forged signatures that would have cost a poor village a year's grain.
We took the paper to the magistrate. Grant read it in a quiet voice and then looked at Birgit. "You forged a document?" he said.
Birgit's face twisted. "I did what I must to survive!"
"You forged?" Grant repeated.
She started to sputter and tried to name other names. Then the court spoke. The forged paper was exposed in the public square. Birgit's oldest ally — a man called Mo — tried to hit our messenger. He was dragged to the magistrate. He blamed Birgit and found only the magistrate's cold justice.
When the town watched Birgit's humiliation, their mouths fell open. She had been loud for years, but now she was small. A matchmaker with a rotten reputation went from queen to street beggar in one public hearing. People clucked and shook their heads.
That did not stop her hatred. She tried one last plan: to set up Eben, the widower, as an unwitting pawn. She told him that switching brides would ruin Kristina's family if found out, and that if he married the wrong girl he would be saved and clear. Eben fell for the idea because it meant he could be chosen by prettier hands and the shame of being a widower would fade. He humiliated himself by saying small, foolish things. The town saw his greed. He lost his good name.
At last Birgit came to the market and, hands trembling, tried to sell candies outside my stall. People turned their heads. "Do you want lies with your sugar?" someone hissed.
We closed our stall and went to watch. Kristina went forward and broke a small piece of dried bread to Birgit. "You did a bad thing," she said softly. "Are you hungry?"
Birgit's eyes filled with water and with fury. "I will ruin you!"
"Your ruin is yours to make," Kristina said. "But if you are hungry, eat."
People watched the scene like it was a small play; Birgit ate and then walked off. For the first time, her breath stopped like a angrily wagged tail. She had lost a market and a good name. The rest of the town would make it slow and noiseless: they would refuse her hand.
The market kept turning. We expanded the line: jars of sauce, bottles of vinegar, a small pantry of goods with our label. I introduced "Cheng's Recipe" — a small packet of ways to cook a pot, tied with string. People bought it like a map.
One evening Grant walked to my stall and sat with me. "You have done well," he said.
"You paid twenty taels," I replied. "You made me a cook for a day, and you made me known."
He smiled. "I did more than that. You built a thing for the county that works. I steward some things. I like good work."
"Do you like me?" I asked, testing.
He blinked as if he'd been given a very small, honest question and then answered in a simple voice. "You are unlike other merchants. You are direct and kind and loud. I respect it."
"Do you want me to come to the county more often?" I asked.
He paused. "If you want to. Perhaps sometimes. I will pay you fair for your work."
"I will take wages for my cooking," I said.
That night I told Kristina I would not marry the magistrate. I would not sell myself to power. I wanted to keep this life: pots, stalls, latrines, small comforts. Kristina nodded and kissed my forehead.
"Love will come, child," she said. "But not if you sell yourself for it. Build first."
And so I did. I built a brand and a life. My stall became a place where women came to buy tools and recipes. I trained girls — young women who could lift, who could carry, who could shout until the whole market listened — to sell and cook and measure.
"Be careful," Antonella said once, passing me a cloth. "Power does not like shadows."
"Thus be in the light," I said and looked at the crowd who now trusted our pots.
Months passed. My name traveled to nearby towns. The magistrate invited me to bigger events. The day a large fire came to a neighborhood and hundreds of families lost their pots, we sent carts at dawn and rebuilt more than pots: new kitchens and cleaner latrines. When the villagers cried, we cooked and fed them. I watched faces change: hunger replaced by hope and by a sharp hunger — the right kind.
Birgit tried again and this time she accused us of stealing her men. In the market she attempted a vendetta: she gathered a small mob and planned to publicly shame Kristina. But she had forgotten one thing: people remember who feeds them.
At the square, Birgit shouted and flung her arms like a woman who had been given a blade that cut her own hand. "She bought off my men! She bribes authority!" she screamed.
"We give wages," Miriam answered. "People choose to be paid."
A man in the crowd named Dermot Booker — a young man from the neighboring village and now betrothed to Arianna — stepped forward. "My men choose to work," he said quietly. "They do not work for the loudest coin; they work for the honest wage. That is Janiyah's truth."
Dermot's voice carried like a bell. He had come into my life as a quiet figure who loved wood and who carried himself like a soldier who loved the sun. He did not bow to prestige; he bent to truth. People looked at Birgit and saw her small tricks. Someone called out, "Enough!" and the crowd turned its face to Birgit.
The magistrate had a hand in this too; Grant's presence at the back of the crowd was calm and like a tide. He did not shout or bully; he looked at the woman and showed the law's firmness. Birgit disappeared like smoke.
Afterwards, the market people celebrated with cakes and boiling pots. Dermot found me and gave me a small carved box. "For your kitchen," he said simply. His callused hands brushed mine and something quiet lived in the space between us.
"I like your hands," I told him, unguarded. "They are honest."
He laughed. "And yours are loud."
We did not speak about marriage that night. We spoke of plans and of safe latrines and of how the pan worked in cold weather. It felt like a beginning.
Months later I sat under a trellis, watching the men of the county come to my gate to ask for work. Grant came too with a serious face and a folded scroll.
"I must inform you — the county will commission you to build toilets, not just for Phoenix but for three neighbor towns," he said. "I will fund half. You will lead."
My heart hammered like a pot drum. "We will need bricks and lime and men."
"You will have them," Grant said. Then he looked at me differently, with the weight of an offered hand. "And I will require one more thing: that you allow me to visit and see progress. I will be your partner in the work for the county."
"Partner," I repeated.
"Yes," he said. "In the work. In the good work."
I smiled, because it was a fair offer. "I will not sell my freedom," I said.
"You will not have to," he said. "I only ask to be allowed to stand beside you."
We shook, like two hands closing a shared hammer. It was an agreement and a promise, without chains, and I liked it.
The years that followed were not easy but they were honest. We cleaned wells and built latrines and sold pots and kept the market alive. Birgit moved away, a rumor on the road, and we gained customers and friends. Antonella took in stray children and taught them to read. Dermot and Arianna started a small shop with honest bread. Grant kept his eyes on the law and sometimes came by to taste my fried rice. Calder — the clerk who had once sought a bribe — joined our crew and learned how to sweep a floor humbly.
One day we sat in the market after a hard morning. Spring Flower, now taller, blinked at the sun. "You saved our town," she said to me.
"I didn't alone," I replied. "I had many hands."
Kristina pressed my knuckles. "You turned sickness into something useful. You made people want cleanliness and good food. That is a miracle."
I thought of my old life — the bank card I could no longer use, the apartment that felt as if it belonged to someone else. I thought of my mother's perfume and the theater of old city lights. I thought of the face of Janiyah reflected in a muddy jar at dawn. She was me. I had learned to be loud. I had learned to sell a pot and to save a life.
"Are you happy?" Dermot asked that night, leaning on a crate.
"I am," I said. "I get to decide what to sell and who to help. I get to cook for the magistrate and for a mother who has lost a house. I get to choose whether to hold a man's hand and when. I get to build a life."
He smiled, and the moonlight made his jaw look like old wood. He reached for my hand with no ceremony.
"Will you let me be one of your hands?" he asked.
I looked at him, at Grant who sat a step behind and who had always been gentle, at Antonella, Miriam, Sofia, Kristina, Mark, Brock, and the messy babes who ran between stalls.
"Yes," I said. "But first, I will sell the pot."
Grant laughed and handed me a small tin of money. "For the town."
I accepted it, as I accepted their hands and their trust. We had built something that could not be taken: trust.
Birgit's threats had faded to the kind of small gossip that dries and flies away. When people cursed the past, they said, "Remember when Birgit thought she could buy a town?" and then they laughed.
At night I sometimes wake and feel the tilt of two lives in the same chest, but now the chest beats with a steady rhythm. I cook, I sell, I build. I loved once, in another life, and I will again, in this life, when it comes. For now I have swelled the little county with small things: safer toilets, stronger pots, and a recipe book that has the names of everyone who helped.
"You're a matchmaker after your own way now," Miriam said once, tapping my shoulder.
"Yes," I answered. "I match people with food, with work, with safety. That is as good as love."
"And you?" Kristina asked as the lantern blazed low. "What will you ask for when you are old?"
"I will ask only one thing," I said. "That the kitchen remains loud and the pots keep singing. That our town's toilet always flushes clean."
They laughed then, a bright, honest laugh. The market closed and the night settled. Lanterns painted the street gold and smoke lifted. I leaned my forehead against a pot and felt the cool clay. It felt like home.
I have kept my promise: I did not become a pawn of power. I did not give up myself for comfort. I made a business, I saved people, I slapped back at slander with proof and the law, and I learned that the best revenge is a life made better by your own hands.
"Tomorrow?" Dermot asked as we walked under the moon.
"Tomorrow," I said. "We open at dawn. Bring two pots and three hungry hearts. We'll build another latrine next week. Then we'll sell a hundred jars."
He laughed. "Deal."
I looked at our town and felt the stars look back.
This is the life I chose when I woke as the matchmaker's daughter: a messy, loud, pot-strewn life that heals more than it harms. And when someone tries to take the town with a lie, we all gather, and the truth sells better than gossip.
The End
— Thank you for reading —