Jié Qiáng looked around at the various stalls along the road as their group strolled through the marketplace. He thought to himself that it was no different than his kingdom, with successful merchants, unsuccessful ones, officials, homeless, and everyone in between.

 He looked down at Mîn Jíng holding his hand and brought her hand to his lips. She once told him she believed someone would come along to end the fighting through honest communication and understanding. In only one day, the two of them accomplished just that, and his hope for a real peace, not just one of necessity, was ignited.

 Mîn Jíng held onto Jié Qiáng as he kissed her hand and smiled up at him.

 “Are you having fun?” she asked.

 She looked over at Wén Mĕi holding his other hand while licking a fox-shaped candy on a stick.

 “Yes,” he told her honestly and smiled.

 He looked behind them to see Yáng Ning still holding Yán Mĕi’s hand and grinned at his guard. Yáng Ning had bought his new friend a wooden toy sword, which the little boy clutched as if it were the greatest treasure in the kingdom.

 “Uncle Qiáng,” called out Wén Mĕi excitedly. He looked over at her to see her pointing to their left. “Can I have one?” she asked.

 Jié Qiáng looked up at a rope strung with small lanterns. He smiled at Mîn Jíng from the memory before stepping toward the vendor.

 “Which one?” he asked his new niece.

 “The one with the fish,” she answered.

 He laughed at the coincidence of her choice that resembled Mîn Jíng’s from the night of the festival.

 “I want to take it down!” she cried as he reached for it. “I can do it! I can do it!” she shrieked.

 “All right, all right,” he replied.

 He lifted her onto his shoulder so she could reach the lantern on the highest string. As soon as she had pulled it free, he set her to the ground and paid the merchant.

 Yǒng Wěi stepped up to him as he handed the latest purchase to Yŭ walking behind them.

 “Do you have anything left?” he asked, motioning to Jié Qiáng’s moneybag.

 “Enough,” he answered with a chuckle, “but it’s getting light.”

 They both turned to look at the servants that followed them on their outing. Súnzi, Péi, Sī, and now Yŭ had their hands full of gifts he had bought for the children. All that was left was a gift for Mîn Jíng, but he was saving that until the children were sleepy and tucked away inside of the carriage.

 Féng Wěi had offered several times to take Wén Mĕi so the couple could have time to themselves, but Jié Qiáng felt the time spent with her aunt would help after he took Mîn Jíng away.

 “Where do you deliver the food?” Jié Qiáng asked them.

 “There,” Mîn Jíng answered and pointed to an open space near a side alley only a few yards away.

 He watched as Féng Wěi ordered the carriage driver and wagon servants to pull up to their usual place. Yǒng Wěi hopped up onto the carriage and pulled open the curtain as he and Féng Wěi motioned for some nearby men to help unload the crates.

 While the group distributed the food and material, multiple children began to flock around Mîn Jíng.

 “Princess Mîn! Princess Mîn!” they called out as they gathered around her.

 Mîn Jíng hugged each of them and guided them to a set of steps leading up to a small Daoist temple.  She called over a vendor selling candied hawthorns and another selling toys.

 “Pick one toy and one treat,” she told the children.

 She handed a few silver taels to the oldest boy in the group to pay the vendors.

 Already having toys and candy, Wén Mĕi and Yán Mĕi took their seats beside their aunt while they waited for the other children to return.

 Jié Qiáng watched as the children surrounded Mîn Jíng once again. He had begun to feel forgotten until she glanced over at him and smiled. Yǒng Wěi tapped him on the arm and directed him to join him in sitting on the driver seat of the carriage.

 “She’ll be like this for a while,” he told Jié Qiáng. “They get her undivided attention.”

 Jié Qiáng sat beside him and then looked over at his younger brother-in-law when he could tell there was more he had to say.

 “Some of these little ones are orphans, street kids,” Yǒng Wěi continued. “You see a lot of them with parents who are homeless or nearly homeless, but then there are those who have no parents or guardians at all. No one knows where they came from, but Mîn believes they experienced something awful and ran here to escape. It was the condition of their clothes and their bloodied feet from running,” he explained when Jié Qiáng gave him a questioning look.

 “There are six of them,” he continued and pointed to a small cluster of children closest to Mîn Jíng. “Ever since Mîn started doing this, no one bothers them. Even the officers on patrol look after them. Constable Liú lets them stay together in a cell when the weather is bad.”

 “You don’t have an orphanage?” wondered Jié Qiáng.

 What the people did for them was admirable but no comparison to a roof and healthy meals every day.

 “We had one,” he answered. “Officers that had been investigating an underground market discovered the couple who ran the orphanage was selling children to slavers. Father had them flogged to death and the children were sent to good homes in outside villages. The Constable’s office worked hard to find homes for them all.

 Now, the only orphans we have are these six who showed up one day at the gates of the capital. The oldest boy would only say their parents died, but they aren’t all related. He’s eleven. He doesn’t say much to anyone other than Mîn. She thinks he was badly hurt by someone and doesn’t trust anyone, especially with the younger ones he has taken responsibility for.”

 Yǒng Wěi pulled two loquats from his robe pocket and handed one to Jié Qiáng before continuing.

 “Mîn asked Father if she could bring the orphans into the palace, but Father refused. He said if we allow them in, poor parents across the kingdom would abandon their children at our gate. When she continued to argue, he explained to her that it was better to help parents keep their children and gave her the task of finding a way. That’s when she started doing all of this.”

 As Yǒng Wěi finished speaking, several nicely dressed children joined the group. Jié Qiáng looked behind them and noticed they were brought over by servants.

 “These children are…” he questioned with a nod in their direction.

 “Officials’ children,” Yǒng Wěi answered. “The officials all know Mîn, and their children love her stories. Some officials have a problem with their children playing with the homeless ones, but you see that some of them follow Mîn’s philosophy that children shouldn’t look on each other in terms of status.”

 Jié Qiáng looked around the group of children as they told Mîn Jíng their latest adventures and news about their health. She quizzed them on a lesson she had apparently given them the week before, and they showed her papers with their writing practice.

 The wealthy children were intermingled among the poor. They paid no mind to the dirty condition of the homeless children as they played and even held hands in friendship. 

 He found himself blinking furiously to keep back the tears. As bold and strong as he was as a prince and a soldier, the suffering of innocent children always tore at his heart.

 “We have street children in my kingdom, too,” he told Yǒng Wěi, “but no one cares for them like your sister does with these.”

 He looked toward Yáng Ning, who had just finished handing out the last of the food with Féng Wěi and the others. He remembered his older brother once telling him Yáng Ning had been an orphan, although his guard didn’t like to speak of it. It was a part of his past he preferred to keep in his past, and Jié Qiáng respected his need for privacy.

 As Féng Wěi, Yáng Ning, and the others in their group joined Jié Qiáng and Yǒng Wěi around the carriage, Mîn Jíng began her fairy tale.