These perfumes are a record of power, of the empresses and aristocrats and merchants who benefitted from my family’s ability and could pay for our talent. It’s also a collection of counterfactual histories, as each sample represents a changed emotion, something that could have meant life or death for a person—or a nation. When I was younger, my mother spoke about being able to move the collection to a better, more secure place, the implication being that my moli would pay for it. That’s another dream I killed. No wonder she’s had it with me.
I move to the other side of the room. My grandmother’s perfumes sit in an orderly line, her name in neat English beside the characters below. Beside them are my mother’s. The shelf next to those is where my fragrances should be. Only one sits there, a testament to hope but a record of failure.
I drop to the floor beside the battered steamer trunk that had brought these riches across the ocean and reach down to touch my right thigh. Each eldest Hua daughter has a birthmark that declares her as one of our line. Mine, like the others, is a small silvery blotch that looks like a peony, if you squint. Whenever I see it in the bath, I long for home like a drug I’ve only told myself I’ve kicked.
I rub my eyes. It’s too late to try again. It had hurt when I’d failed; the pain mixed with an almost comic sense of disbelief, which caused it to bite bone-deep before the combination eviscerated me. I can’t do that again. Moving back to Vancouver to make regular perfumes for regular customers would be almost as unbearable. Mom would be on my case every day about my moli, and it would hurt to turn down orders I couldn’t satisfy. It would hurt more to watch the requests peter out as word of my inability spread.
I did my best twelve years ago, and that will have to be my legacy.“Sorry, Waipo,” I whisper to her shelves.
When I stand to leave the room, my joints ache and creak. The door clicks behind me and the locks fall into place.
That part of my life ended a long time ago. If I remember anything from the register, it is the words from Hua Xiaoting when she abandoned her Nanjing home in exchange for safety:There is no room in the future for regrets.
5
Hua Aiai
650 CE, early Tang dynasty
Ganye Temple, on the outskirts of Chang’an
The door shut softly behind Hua Aiai, closing like a trap. For amoment she stared, open-mouthed, at the private room draped in pink silk that glowed in the morning sun, the luxury unexpected given the plain decorations of the rest of the nunnery. Then she saw who was seated on the low platform and dropped her eyes as she bowed.
Lady Wu might have only been a fifth-rank concubine of the dead Emperor Taizong, but she still far outranked Aiai, a poor distant relation. She felt Lady Wu’s eyes boring into the top of her head and fought an intense need to reach up and scratch her scalp, despite the ruthless way her mother had checked her for lice before she’d left home several days ago.
“Let me see your face, girl.”
Aiai raised her head but kept her eyes low. Her hair, painstakingly wound into two drooping buns that she had thought so sophisticated when getting dressed, now made her feel dowdy and small, a brownmouse in front of a sleek tiger.
Finally, the buzzing in Aiai’s ears cleared enough for her to discern words instead of noise. “I’ve heard of you,” Lady Wu was saying, in a voice trained to be as sweet and soft as a ripe peach. “My aunt told me of your power.”
“It is a poor thing, unworthy to speak of, my lady.” Aiai tried not to mumble, tucking her tanned and callused hands together under her sleeves to hide their shaking. This was why she’d been summoned. Aiai gathered her nerve to peek up at Lady Wu’s face to gauge how frightened she should be, but Lady Wu’s expression was as smooth as the crimson blush that painted her cheeks and revealed nothing. Her maids, all wearing robes far nicer than Aiai’s, stood beside their mistress, equally impassive.
“Yet speak of it, we will. Is it true? You can draw in one’s true love with a mere scent?” She tilted her head to the side. The golden ornaments adorning the high bun of her gleaming black hair gave a pleasant tinkle as they brushed against each other. Not for her was the shaven austerity of the other nuns. Lady Wu was a phoenix among sparrows. Aiai brought her gaze back to the smooth wooden floor.
“Yes, my lady.” There was no point in lying. “The Peony Goddess came to me in a dream and asked me for a scent to gift to the Queen Mother of the West. That was my reward.”
“A girl who can please a goddess might be able to do the same for me,” said Lady Wu. “Your perfumes are powdered?”
Aiai nodded, calming slightly at the idea that she could simply supply Lady Wu with an appealing scent and be dismissed back to the safety of home. “They can be burned or put in sachets my mother embroiders.”
Lady Wu waved her hand as if the skill of Aiai’s mother was of little importance, although the stylish ladies of the Xin family clamored for her designs. To one such as Lady Wu, perhaps even the haughty Xinswere unimportant.
“Good. You will become my personal perfumer.” She announced this in a regal tone, no doubt learned from the emperor himself. The thought of such familiarity made Aiai almost faint. When the rumors of Lady Wu’s ascendance at court had reached Aiai’s family, they had been eager to claim the connection to the emperor, however far removed. They said she had been a favorite who had worked as the emperor’s personal secretary, invigorating him with her wit and spirit. After his death she had been banished to the nunnery to pray for his soul, as had the other imperial concubines who had not produced a precious son. The men in Aiai’s family had noted this with disappointed satisfaction, gratified that a woman should be returned to her place in the background, where she belonged, but regretting the loss of perceived status.
“My lady?” This time fear mixed with disbelief gave Aiai the courage to risk another quick glance upward. Lady Wu had made the pronouncement without any thought for Aiai’s wishes, but Aiai expected little consideration from one such as she. “Here in the nunnery?” That was the part that confused her. Nuns were not to indulge in worldly pleasures, although it was clear the woman before her cared nothing for temple rules.
Lady Wu’s smile was mischievous enough to make Aiai’s stomach churn. It was the same expression her younger brother wore when he was about to steal food and blame it on her. “We won’t be here for long,” Lady Wu said. “We need to be at the palace.”
“The palace?” Although her father was a merchant, until she arrived at Ganye Temple, Aiai had never been farther from home than the nearby market town. That had been enough for her, with its noise and filth. She’d heard even more extreme beauties and follies could be found in the districts of Chang’an, where—they said—the streets were so busy from dawn to dusk that one could lift one’s feet and be carried to one’s destination by the crowd.
“That’s where Emperor Gaozong is. He came to the temple to see me, but…” Lady Wu’s voice trailed off. “He is a weak man. The Empress Wang has lost favor, but she remains a formidable woman.”
“Yes, my lady,” Aiai said, not understanding but knowing better than to say so. Court politics were beyond her. Her own life was simple, or had been until the Peony Goddess had blessed her. She had woken before the sun and spent her time helping her mother dry and grind the herbs they grew in their gardens and the spices that came from her father’s caravans. Her great pleasure had been to create the fragrances that caused a wave of a lady’s sleeve to perfume the air around her with indescribably lovely scents, like those of the fairies.
Lady Wu gazed at her so intently that it made Aiai shiver. “Tell me, to have the emperor fall in love with me, will I need him near enough to smell your magical fragrance?”
Aiai’s arms pressed against her sides in involuntary protection as she scrambled for an answer. There was much she didn’t know regarding her gift, including this. She had tried to eke out moments to test her scents at home to better understand the power wielded by her fragrance, fearing being unmasked and punished as a fraud. Her mother had locked her in a storage room when she’d tried to ask clients about their experiences, telling her no one would buy a true love scent if they thought Aiai herself was ignorant of what it could do.
