chapter 2

chapter 2

“Nan Tao…” When she called my name, half-chewed pulp was still in her mouth. “Take the female fruit and bury it. If it grows into a tree someday, at least we won’t have wasted our money.”

I dared not look at her. I hurriedly took the fruit, coating my hands in sticky juice.

As I turned away, her curses followed me. “A female fruit! Nothing but trouble. A money-losing thing!”

The crisp, juicy sound of chewing came from the couch behind me.

Crunch. Crunch…

That night, I carried the female fruit to the rear courtyard and dug a pit.

The seller had said that ginseng fruits must not see daylight, so I waited for darkness. It was only a fruit, but it looked like a baby. If I had to bury it, I could not bear to do so while looking at its face.

Better to work in darkness. What the eye did not see, the heart need not grieve.

I dug a neat square pit and laid the female fruit on its back.

Then the fruit came alive.

Its eyes snapped open, shining in the night as it stared straight at me. “Don’t bury me!”

“Ah!” I screamed, dropped my little spade, and fell after taking only one step.

The female fruit sat up in its square grave. In the moonlight, fine down stood out clearly against its milky-white skin.

It reached out one tiny hand and spread its chubby fingers. “Stop screaming. Come here.”

I held the spade before me like a weapon. “Every debt has its debtor! I’m only a servant. Don’t take my life!”

“Fool, come here!” it cried anxiously. “I won’t hurt you. I have something to tell you!”

After a long hesitation, I crept closer.

“Look carefully at the red cloth around me,” she said. “What is it really?”

In the moonlight my vision blurred. When I focused again, the red cloth had become a baby’s swaddling wrap.

She clung to my arm, climbed out of the pit, and nestled against my chest. “I am a ginseng fruit. What do you think you are?”

“If you don’t escape, you will become a ginseng-fruit tree!”

Her words struck like lightning. My teeth chattered, but my mind raced to grasp what she meant.

A ginseng-fruit tree…

I looked toward the dead tree in the courtyard. Its tangled branches resembled ghostly hands in the dark.

No. I did not want to become a ginseng-fruit tree.

In the end, I did not bury the female fruit. I wrapped her in the swaddling cloth and carried her back with me.

By daylight the next morning, however, the red cloth held only a fruit shaped like a child. There was no trace of the baby girl.

Madam’s belly, meanwhile, had swollen impossibly large overnight.

Madam was pregnant, and she gave birth to a son.

The neighbors said the child resembled neither father nor mother. No one knew whom he looked like.

I knew. The young master’s eyes, ears, mouth, and nose were identical to those of the male fruit.

An ordinary pregnancy meant ten months of suffering.

When the day of birth finally came, if the mother lacked strength, a midwife might have to reach inside and drag the baby out. Sometimes scissors were needed. To pull a living person the size of a cat through such a tiny opening—lasting injury was the least of it. Women often died on the birthing bed.

But a woman who ate ginseng fruit escaped those ten months of torment. Her belly swelled in a single night, and by dawn the household had a bouncing baby boy.

They said this was because a ginseng fruit took ten months to ripen. The ten months it spent growing on its tree replaced the ten months it would otherwise have spent in its buyer’s womb.

The young master ate and slept, laughed and cried. Master and Madam counted every finger and toe. He was whole, with not one missing.

There was only one flaw. From the moment he was born, his manhood was far smaller than that of other boys—no bigger than a grain of millet.

Madam was furious and accused Master of choosing carelessly. Master protested that he had inspected every fruit and deliberately selected the one with the longest stem.

The couple quarreled often in those days. Madam always thought Master useless.

Her family had once been magnificent. Since her marriage, Master had squandered more than half their wealth.

He lived off his wife, yet did so with remarkable arrogance. He visited brothels, kept mistresses, and chased every skirt he saw.

Madam swallowed her anger. After all, it was her own barren belly that had failed her.

Whether a soaring phoenix or a scruffy hen, a bird that could not lay eggs was worthless.

If Master’s affairs produced a son or daughter, Madam was willing to look the other way.

Who the birth mother was did not matter. If the child could be adopted into Madam’s name and support her in old age, that was enough.

Yet no matter how many women Master found outside, not one ever became pregnant.

Madam believed it was retribution for her past sins. Years earlier, she had conceived once. Master summoned a physician, who declared the fetus female.

Madam did not want a daughter and asked for a cooling draught to expel it. The physician instead offered a pill that could “turn the fetus.” If she swallowed it, he promised, the girl in her womb would be born a boy.

The child was indeed male when it emerged.

But it was dead.

Babies grow fingernails in the womb, yet none of them had ever seen nails as terrifying as that stillborn child’s—long, sharp, scarcely human.

What lay below was worse.

Suffering from some unknown affliction, the child had used those nails to claw its own legs into bloody ruin inside the womb. Amid the red pulp, only a millet-sized speck remained between them.

The sight sickened Madam. Before her confinement month had ended, illness took root in her body. She tried every remedy thereafter, but never conceived again.

After giving birth to that grotesque corpse, Madam began to lose her mind. She claimed she saw her son crawling across the floor. She said the dead tree in the courtyard had come alive.

But after eating the ginseng fruit and producing the young master, her madness suddenly vanished.

One day she asked me, “Nan Tao, where is the female fruit?”

I kept my head bowed. “I buried it as you ordered, Madam.”

“Did you water it?”

“No… no, Madam.”

“Idiot! How is it supposed to become a tree without water?” she shrieked.

I burst into frightened tears. “You told me to bury it dead!”

At the word dead, the young master rolled over and giggled. Madam’s face immediately softened. She lifted him into her arms and cooed to him.

I dared say nothing more and quickly withdrew.

It was late by the time I finished my chores that night. When I returned to my room, the female fruit remained exactly where I had left it. Despite the summer heat, it showed no sign of rotting.

I picked it up and cradled it, uncertain what to do. If Madam discovered that I had not buried it, she might punish me.

Worse, if she thought I wanted the ginseng fruit for myself, I might not keep my life.

By rights, I should have buried it at once and put an end to the danger.

But I kept remembering the baby girl sitting in the pit that night, as though seated in her own little grave…

If she truly lived, how could I bury a life?

I opened the window and placed the female fruit on the sill beneath the moon.

Moonlight washed over its tiny body. Before my eyes, the glossy sheen of fruit slowly faded. Its skin softened, and a fine layer of down appeared.

The female fruit came alive once more.