Dragonfly Dreams by Eleanor McCallie Cooper

Author:Eleanor McCallie Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2021-07-04T11:06:06+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Moonlight streamed in the window that night, falling across Mei-mei’s sleepy round face. Was Mei-mei dreaming of Amah’s stories? Was she dreaming of the magic archer and the Lady in the Moon, or the Mongols and moon cakes?

My thoughts came rushing back as my stomach growled. Amah’s crumbling corn meal hardly tasted like a moon cake, and with only some thin soup, it didn’t feel like a festival at all.

If the Chinese long ago had had crumbling corn meal, I thought, they couldn’t have hidden messages inside. What if they couldn’t use the moon cakes to hide messages, then could they have defeated the Mongols?

It wasn’t the moon cakes that defeated the Mongols. It was their clever thinking! They used whatever they had. If they didn’t have moon cakes, they’d use something else, even corn meal or mud.

Mud? Yes, mud!

That gave me a clever idea.

“Wake up, Mei-mei! Wake up!” I shook Mei-mei until her eyes fluttered and she gazed sleepily at me.

“I have an idea! Listen,” I whispered in her ear, but her eyes shut again.

I was so excited about my plan that I couldn’t sleep. I got up and went to the window.

I could see over the low wall and into the field beyond it. The grasses were calm and still, and the moonlight made everything look like colorless day. Then something moved.

Is it a shadow? No. It’s a man. I couldn’t see his face clearly, because he wore a cap, but he looked like the man I saw watching Auntie Boxin’s house that day now long ago. Was he the robber who stole Auntie Boxin’s silver? Was he the same man I saw with Isabella in the dust storm?

I ducked, hoping he wouldn’t see me. When I peeked again, he was gone. I crawled back in bed. Who is this man? Is he spying on us?

Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I was so full of Amah’s stories that I had imagined a man in the moonlight. I pulled the covers up to my chin and tried to sleep in the eerie light.

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