Li always wondered what became of his daughter, the little unwanted dove with the pearl-drop face and cursed life. In his memory, she was pure and perfect. He did not like remembering her as unlucky, unwanted. He did not like thinking that she had met an untimely end, like her mother.

Despite the fact that he had abandoned her, knowing that to do so would honor his beloved wife’s last wish, he often imagined that Jing-sei had not died out in the cold, with only the mountain for company. He knew that an infant could not survive out in the wilderness, not for very long at all. But Li still held on to the hope that some kind soul had found his daughter and saved her from her misfortune.

Li never lived to learn the fulfillment of his hope.

He never knew that a Buddhist monk who had come to meditate at the foot of the mountain found Jing-sei and brought her back to his monastery. He never knew that Jing-sei became a cherished pearl for the monks, who viewed her not as a curse but as an unexpected blessing.