“Awooo!” Suddenly Dahe heard the black wolf above him howl in pain.
A furious wind erupted through the bamboo grove. The wolf roared and rolled off him, its head streaming with blood. Amid the howling wind, a bamboo leaf tore free from a branch and pierced the wolf’s right eye like an arrow.
The wolf staggered back a few steps, the pain apparently driving it even madder. Its remaining eye was as bloodred as the wounded one. With a roar it charged straight at Dahe again.
Another bamboo leaf hissed through the air and sliced across the wolf’s other eye like a razor-sharp blade, splitting it open. Blood spattered everywhere.
The wolf howled and shook its head, no longer able to tell where it was going. Maddened by pain, it thrashed and rolled across the ground, its four paws gouging deep, intersecting furrows into the earth.
Dahe sat where he had fallen, too stunned to move. He watched the enormous wolf roll about, howling as it stumbled toward the edge of the mountain path. In the gale, its footing grew more and more unsteady. It crashed through a sapling half a man’s height and vanished over the cliff, its blood-soaked body disappearing from sight.
Faintly there came another string of agonized howls, then a splash as something struck the water.
Dahe remained motionless for a long time before realizing the wolf had gone over the cliff and fallen into the water. The wounds on his shoulder and hands began to throb fiercely. He groaned and trembled uncontrollably, his head clouded and dizzy.
Large raindrops splashed against his wounds. He looked up in panic. After the gale, a torrential downpour had suddenly broken over the forest. Clouds blotted out the moon; darkness descended, and the trees and grasses became monstrous, swaying shadows in the storm.
He struggled to stand, but his injured arms were too weak and painful to support him. As he fought to rise, he froze again. An emerald robe had appeared nearby.
He lay on his side, half his body submerged in muddy water, while the rain beat brutally against his face. When he looked up, the mountain god was standing straight before him. The downpour struck the god’s head and shoulders just as fiercely, and his long robe billowed wildly in the wind. His long black hair clung wetly to his face like strands of waterweed. His bowed face was so deeply shadowed that Dahe could not make out his expression at all.
Wind and rain rattled and roared, beating against Dahe’s eardrums along with his pounding heart. Shocked and barely conscious, he heard the mountain god’s icy voice cut straight through the rain. “Get out!”
Dahe stared blankly, unable to comprehend those words. The mountain god swept a sleeve, and a blast of wind struck Dahe squarely in the chest, hurling him several paces away in an instant. He rolled painfully and ended on his hands and knees.
He struggled up on his hands and heard the mountain god’s voice grow sharper and colder. “Get out of here! Now!”
The rain thundered, and the pain in his chest felt like a blade carving into his heart. Still he stared without moving. The mountain god swept his sleeve again with unmistakable impatience. Dahe groaned as he was flung backward, landing heavily on the downhill path. A sharp stone struck his lower back, making his whole body jerk.
That piercing pain seemed to strike a nerve. In the gloom he fought to his feet, his head swimming and aching too badly to think. He staggered downhill on instinct alone. Ahead lay only unknown darkness in the wind and rain. Each unsteady step felt like standing beside a mountain spring swollen after a storm, where great waves tossed and surged.
Then a blinding white light suddenly appeared before his eyes, swallowing the darkness and obscuring his already confused vision. A deafening roar followed behind him. He heard heaven and earth shudder. It was the mountain itself trembling.
“Boom!”
His legs gave way as the ground shook like an earthquake. He pitched face-first into the mud and lost consciousness.
When he awoke, he found himself staring into Xiuxiu’s face, swollen and red from crying. Her hair was a mess and her eyes bloodshot. The moment she saw him awake, she grabbed his arm and would not let go. He instinctively hissed with pain.
He looked around. Everywhere was an unfamiliar expanse of white and sickly green.
His younger sister was keeping watch beside his bed too. She chattered about how Sister Xiuxiu had led the villagers up the mountain, crying and shouting all the while, and how they had carried Dahe down the path in a howling blizzard. After he fainted, heavy snow had begun falling in the mountains. Third Uncle and Xiuxiu’s eldest paternal uncle had taken him to the town clinic overnight. When he remained unconscious for two days, they finally transferred him to the county hospital.
It was his first time in the county town.
That evening, Third Aunt and Xiuxiu’s mother arrived with several big white steamed buns bought outside the hospital. Xiuxiu’s mother awkwardly thanked Dahe for saving her daughter, then prepared to take Xiuxiu home so they could return to work in the village. Xiuxiu was reluctant to leave and kept looking back at him, but Dahe was too dazed with pain to find the strength for a proper farewell.
After the others had gone, Third Aunt sat beside the bed, shared the buns between Dahe and his younger sister, and began her familiar complaints. His hospital stay had exhausted the savings of both their household and Xiuxiu’s. Every family in the village had contributed what they could, too, though of course the money would have to be paid back bit by bit after he went home.
Third Aunt did not say it outright, but she was deeply unhappy. Yes, Dahe had saved someone’s life again. But if he had not gone up the mountain in the middle of the night, none of this trouble would have happened and the whole village would not have suffered such misfortune. And wasn’t the only reason he had had to save her own children all those years ago that he had led them up the mountain at night in the first place?
Having reasoned it out this way, Third Aunt grew even more dissatisfied. With a sour expression on her sallow face, she went to speak to the doctor. Since the boy was awake, surely there was no need to keep him hospitalized? At this rate, she would simply refuse to pay the bills.
Fortunately, Third Uncle and Xiuxiu’s eldest paternal uncle arrived in time to stop her from making a public spectacle of herself. Third Aunt couldn’t bear being scolded in front of others and got into a furious argument with her husband in the corridor. Third Uncle tried to strike her, but Xiuxiu’s uncle and the doctor restrained him. Furious, Third Aunt took her daughter and declared she was returning to the village. Dahe’s uncle ignored her and went inside to see his nephew.
Dahe lay weakly on the bed while Third Uncle explained his injuries. The wounds were deep but had spared his bones and tendons. He was strong and young; once healed, he would be able to run, jump, and work again, so he needn’t worry. Xiuxiu’s eldest paternal uncle thanked Dahe on behalf of the whole family and said that while in the county town, he had arranged to meet an old friend of Xiuxiu’s late father. The man drove for a factory in the county town and was looking for an apprentice. The position came with food and lodging, and wages that villagers would consider fairly generous. The only requirements were a willingness to work hard, learn the trade seriously, and take night shifts.
It was a good opportunity, and the wages could help repay the debts their families had accumulated. Third Uncle made the decision for Dahe and agreed on his behalf.
Dahe stayed another week in the county hospital before going home with his uncle, covered in bandages and smelling of medicine. After another month or two of rest, once he was healthier, he could go into town to learn how to drive.
The village Party secretary was unhappy that Dahe was dropping out of school. He came to Third Uncle’s house with his little mustache bristling, looked around at the windows patched with cardboard and the children’s mended clothes, and let out a long sigh. In the end he simply asked after Dahe’s wounds and went to explain the family’s circumstances to the school principal himself.
Dahe spent his days lying in bed at home, huddled beneath the quilt and gazing through the drafty window at the distant, snow-covered mountains. After an entire year of warm weather, this had unexpectedly become one of the coldest transitions from winter to spring in recent memory. The villagers said the mountains had been sealed by snow since that night. Blizzards had raged for days, freezing even the mountain springs. The water beneath the ice had turned murky with mud, rotting branches, and fallen leaves, making it unfit to use. The heavy rain and snow had caused a small mudslide that spared every other household but destroyed the old family home at the edge of the village where Dahe had once lived.
The village women discussed these events over meals and tea. Some claimed Dahe’s family was cursed. Others insisted the old family home had miraculously sacrificed itself to protect Dahe, which was why he hadn’t ended up in a wolf’s belly like his father. Everyone had a different theory, and the gossip went on and on.
Dahe knew nothing of the pointing fingers outside his window. He only stared toward the mountain. His simple, empty mind held a single image: in the tangled darkness of that night, the mountain god standing coldly before him and ordering him to get out.
He could make no sense of anything that had happened that night. All he knew was the pain in his head and chest. He drew his long, strong limbs tightly against himself like a huge, grieving animal, curled into a ball, and began to weep silently, trembling.
He lay in bed like a corpse for a month before the valley finally showed signs of spring. The mountain snow began to melt, and the streams grew clear again. One day, when Third Uncle and Third Aunt had both gone out for spring planting, he stumbled out of bed, dizzy and unsteady, and made his way up the mountain.
The plants along the path had not yet begun to grow. Dead black branches lay withered and lifeless, and bamboo stalks crushed by the heavy snow blocked parts of the trail, their faded leaves still wet with lingering drops.
He trudged through the mud toward the shrine, then gave an involuntary cry, his eyes widening.
A heap of mud and rocks had tumbled down from the mountain. Both the shrine and its altar were more than half buried. The shrine had collapsed, and among the broken clods of earth Dahe could barely make out a corner of red cloth.
He rushed forward and knelt on the cold ground, pulling stones away from the pile. Carefully he dug out the torn, filthy cloth, then even more carefully unearthed the little statue of the mountain god. The clay head his grandfather had made had been smashed to pieces. The statue was left with an abrupt, bare stone neck, its fracture smooth and dusted with bits of earth.
Clutching the statue, he suddenly felt cold all over. He looked around in helpless bewilderment and called in a voice shaking with fear, “…Mountain God?”
“…Mountain God!”
“Mountain God…”
The bamboo grove was utterly silent. Not even the wind seemed to rustle the leaves. The insects and birds, too, seemed still lost in their deep winter sleep.
He spent several days secretly returning to the mountain to clear away the earth and stones, rebuild the little shrine, make another clay head for the statue’s broken neck, and wash the red cloth before covering it again.
One day, while squatting beside the remains of the altar and tidying it up, he suddenly seemed to notice something. His eyes widened. He dug with his mud-covered hands, turning over every stone and clod that covered the ground and searching everywhere within a meter of the altar.
He found only a few broken eggshells and a worn little plastic bag that had once held a red-centered sweet.
No mother mantis or baby mantis. None of the lifelike little animals he had made. Not even a scrap of them.
He remained frozen there. Then red flooded his cheeks, spreading from his neck to his forehead, and he shouted, “Mountain God!”
He struggled up and looked around wildly. “Mountain God!”
“You took them away, didn’t you? Mountain God!”
“You’re still here, aren’t you? Come out!”
“I… I believe in you! Come out!”
The forest remained as silent as death. The sun was sinking toward dusk.
Suddenly, in that fading light, he began to understand something. “You… don’t want to come out? You don’t want to see me?”
“I’m sorry… I’m stupid… I did something wrong… I don’t understand…” Panic overwhelmed him, and his words came out in a jumble. Then he began to cry, tears streaming down his dark, strongly defined face. He felt a grief that nothing could ever make right. He did not understand. He did not know what he had done wrong. He did not know whether the bamboo leaves that had wounded the wolf that night had been driven by the wind or by something else. He did not know why the mountain god had been angry, why he had told him to get out, to get out at once.
He wiped his tears with the back of a dirty hand and kept speaking incoherently. “I’m sorry. I’ll go away. I just wanted to see you. I miss you. I… I’ll go away…”
He staggered down the mountain, grief and longing bowing his tall back until he looked like an old man crippled by illness.
Behind him, the shivering wind of early spring finally stirred the new buds on the treetops.
An emerald robe appeared before the newly rebuilt shrine. The mountain god stood silently, simply watching Dahe walk away.
Dahe went home in a daze. Third Aunt had finally reached the end of her patience with his eating without doing any work. She spent the entire day sulking. Afraid Third Uncle would slap her, she dared not truly vent her anger on Dahe, who had only just recovered from serious injuries. Instead, she refused to eat herself.
Third Uncle was at a loss with his perpetually unreasonable wife. He was about to hit her when Xiuxiu’s eldest paternal uncle, who happened to be visiting, stopped him. Xiuxiu’s uncle had business in the county town a few days later, so he asked whether Dahe had recovered enough to go with him and start his driver’s apprenticeship.
That night, beneath a sky filled with glittering stars, Dahe hurried up to the shrine.
The little shrine still stood alone in the moonlight. No immortal lounged against its roof, arching an eyebrow at him before taking him into his arms with a warm smile.
“I… I’ve stopped going to school. Third Uncle is sending me to town to learn how to drive,” he said, standing awkwardly before the shrine.
“When I go… I’ll be living there. I won’t be able to come back for a long time.”
“Do you know where the county town is? Of course you do, don’t you? First you go to the town, then take a vehicle into the city.”
“Mountain God, have you… have you seen a car? You must have. I saw one when I went to the county town for the hospital. They’re very big and can carry lots of people. They go so fast.”
“Mountain God…”
His hands trembled as he stood there. Then he lowered his head and took from his pocket a dried yellow father mantis woven from straw.
“I made another father mantis for you. But… I couldn’t find any pretty leaves.” The winter had been so cold that almost all the bamboo leaves on the mountain had withered.
He bent to set the father mantis on the altar. As always, he weighed down one of its hind legs with a stone to keep the wind from carrying it away.
Then he raised his head and looked at the stone statue inside the shrine, its head hidden beneath the red cloth.
He went over, knelt before the low little shrine, and gazed sadly at the statue.
Then he reached out and, very gently, very carefully, touched the face beneath the red cloth.