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She sipped the deep red tea and exclai of me!”

He slid into her shoes and exclai of me!”

And so it was

Now, the years went by and though Saffiya stitched her shoes and Elpidios steeped his tea, they had no child of their own Saffiya was not greatly troubled, as she had plenty of baby shoes to ed for a daughter, and his teas began to taste bitter and brackish, and he no longer made the dream tea at all Finally, he went to his wife and said:

“The ways of the world are e Let us take my finest teas and fashion them into the shape of a child We will place her in one of your shoes for her cradle, and let her lie under the light of the Stars Who knohat may happen?”

“Husb

and, this is not the way ofa child”

“Let us try And if it remains a pile of brown leaves with no life in thein to brew le red leaf once more”

Saffiya was mild and even-tempered, and she knew that madness reen shoe with crimson teaberries on a snowy hill embroidered on its sides It had a little heel of cherry-wood On the tongue she seith infinite care a living chrysanthemum with sixteen petals But when it came time for Elpidios to reveal his tea doll, he refused

“There is one leaf hest hills with a sack on his shoulder He was gone through the fall and into the winter, and Saffiya began to worry for him Perhaps she should have ht She drank a pale tea of dried birch bark and strawberry leaves he had left behind, and stroked the sweet green shoe But at length Elpidios did return, s his old smile In his hands he held a slender leaf, the color of thewife that he had heard of a place where a tea bush grew that had been touched by a Star in the first days of the world, and that he was certain now that their child would wake

So together they placed this shi leaf in the center of the tea doll, and placed the doll in the shoe In the long rows of tea they laid the sweet green shoe, and waited

Forhappened Saffiya assured her husband, for by now she had begun to hope, that all children take tirow Elpidios paced in his teahouse Finally, they heard a crying in the tea rows, like a kettle boiling The tea- leafy paths and found there a little girl wailing in a sweet green shoe

But I do not re made of tea I suppose no one remembers what the world looked like from inside their mother

We lived happily and well, and I drank the dream tea every day, and found how often reen shoes on my own brown feet, and found how often hest hills I learned to reen teas and black teas and red teas and yellow teas, and white teas like melted ice I learned to stitch forests and flowers and fashion shoes of gold and silver and leather and glass In tih I was younger than I would have liked when this occurred, I dried my tears I made both the famous tea and the famous shoes, and I believed myself complete

But as they were not beauties, I am not Even when the procurer came with a sword at his hip and velvet in his coat and a warh to be stolen for the Raja’s bed, only for his prison of silk and bronze None of the girls in our village were spared service of some kind or another, and I was made a slave to slaves, maid to the wives and concubines I paint on their breasts as once I drew patterns on the silk for stitching They are unhappy, and I do not kno to soothe them, for I am unhappy, too But I make for them the dream tea of le red leaf, and hope they taste my dream of a life outside