If Tears Were Wishes And Other Short Stories by Ruth Nestvold

Feather and Ring

    The line of cars in the single lane street stretched as far as the eye could see — unmoving. Lindsay twisted the band on her ring finger and wondered how much longer she was going to be sitting in the stupid taxi. On either side of the river of colorful sheet metal, the stores, open-front food stands, and soup joints sported signs in a hodgepodge of Chinese and Latin characters. A roofed market caught her eye, with its bins of unknown, exotic produce. The strangely shaped purple fruit just outside the window struck her as much more inviting than a taxi that smelled like smoke and sounded like Mariah Carey.
    The hotel was still blocks away, but she could use a walk, get some of the pain and frustration out of her system, even if she did have to breathe exhaust fumes while she was doing it. Taiwan was wonderfully foreign, but the problems she had fled followed her, twisting in her gut like acid at unexpected moments. All the things she'd relied on in her life were disappearing at once — business, money, husband. She'd been with Trevor since high school, and they'd started their software company Cleio just after finishing college. By the age of twenty-two, she already had the life she wanted, and she'd assumed she would have it forever.
    Well, now it looked like she might be in this taxi forever. At this rate, she'd get to the hotel faster walking anyway.
    Lindsay used her best impromptu sign language and smattering of Chinese to indicate to the driver that she wanted to get out here, now . After paying 150 Taiwanese dollars (all of five bucks) for her release and extricating herself from safety belt and back seat, she wandered into the market and another world. Bins of strange fruits that she had no words for stood in an open roofed area, and farther back she saw vegetables and herbs. Here the street sounds were muffled and the air fresher.
    She picked up one of the wild, purple fruits — actually more like a psychedelic pink than purple, now that she saw it up close — and a young saleswoman hurried up to her. Nodding enthusiastically, the woman sliced open the fruit and gave Lindsay a piece. The inside was white sprinkled with dark seeds. It looked like straciatella ice cream, and it tasted simultaneously sweet and sour, the fruit firm and juicy like kiwi.
    For a moment, the fresh taste made her forget the knot of pain in her stomach; it was a good thing. She had to hold on to that.
    She nodded and picked up one of the bright fruits, pulling her wallet out of her shoulder bag, but the young woman shook her head, waving the wallet away.
    Lindsay blinked and smiled. "Shie shie." Thank you . Even after a week in Taipei, she still couldn't get used to how totally different the attitude towards foreigners was here than anywhere else she'd ever been. Every time she entered a store, morning or evening, people brightened up and said, "Good morning!" proudly. Instead of being a nuisance, she was interesting. Her hair was straight and dark and her skin olive, but her eyes marked her as different. Lindsay suspected that to the young saleswoman, she was as exotic as the fruit she held in her hand.
    She put it in her bag and left the market out the other side, feeling much better than she had stuck in traffic, much better than in the office of NGTS, Cleio's partner in distribution and localization.
    Much better than she had in Austin before she left.
    No, she wouldn't go there now, wouldn't go to Trevor's painful revelation that she'd become more business partner than wife — and, of course, he'd fallen in love with someone else. She would go to the decadently colorful temple she had been admiring out of the windows of taxis all week, the temple with its red columns and green dragons and gold-tiled roof.
    A week in Taipei, and she still hadn't had time to do any sightseeing. The schedule for the test of the English-language version of NGTS's new game White Magic was grueling-- the only reason they'd gotten out of