Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Mother suddenly looked more than a decade older as she stumbled dazedly out of the courtyard.

Worried, I hurried after her. When my six-year-old little sister woke to find no one there, she thought she had been abandoned. Her heart-wrenching cries rang throughout the courtyard.

My sister and I couldn’t keep Mother from leaving. She had given everything to Father, had lost faith in him, and had been driven out of her mind with grief over my little brother.

She grieved day and night, wandering aimlessly along the riverbank. I stayed by her side constantly, trying to comfort her.

She couldn’t see me. She couldn’t hear me.

I was heartbroken and confused. Why couldn’t Mother turn around and look at my sister and me, even once?

I was filled with both anguish and fear. Why couldn’t Mother stay with my sister and me?

I would grow up. I would love her. I would protect her.

Who needed Father, anyway? If he wanted to divorce Mother, then let him. Other than reciting a few lines of poetry and prose, he wasn’t good for much.

Mother planted the fields, Mother wove the cloth, Mother obtained the money, and Mother raised us. Mother could do anything. She was so strong-so, so strong.

One morning, when I failed to keep watch over her, Mother staggered to the beam and hanged herself.

Her eyes were wide open, glaring at everyone. All she left behind was a sheet of paper bearing a few crooked words: [I am innocent].

Father sighed. “Why did you have to do this?”

As he spoke, a few tears slipped down his face.

The villagers said she had lost face and killed herself out of shame.

I silently watched as Mother was buried in a thin-walled coffin. Her strong body and gentle face disappeared, and no one cared, as though she had never lived at all.

Mother’s death caused not the slightest ripple in Father’s heart. He only noticed her absence when he ordered me to cook, when the fields lay fallow, or when he had no clothes to wear.

His eyes burned with fervor as he immersed himself in the pursuit of an official career, devoting himself to his studies. A true man ought to serve the sovereign and repay the nation by dedicating himself to the realm.

The fields at our home fell into neglect. Everyone else’s fields in the village, however, yielded bumper harvests.

When harvest season came, I sat on the ridge between the fields and looked at the sparse stalks of rice in ours.

I heard Butcher Liu laugh at me. “Little Ying’er, is this all the rice your family managed to grow this year? You’re going to starve!”

My little sister cried out from hunger. I rubbed her back, just as Mother used to rub mine.

In the end, Father never got to see the autumn examination begin.

What came instead was the Tatar people’s cavalry.

The Tatar people had not halted their advance because peace talks had succeeded. They had been gathering their tribes for a full-scale invasion. The Great Wan court was routed, and it fled south.

That day, I took my little sister into the mountains to look for fruit.

Horses neighed, hooves thundered, and armor clattered. In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen Tatar horsemen appeared before us.

I hurriedly shoved my little sister into a cave and covered her with dry grass.

The leader spoke in halting official speech. Pointing a long saber at my throat, he demanded viciously, “Child, where is the food?”

As I looked at the Tatar people, who were said to have three heads and six arms and to kill without blinking, I smiled with innocent delight just as his saber was about to pierce my chest.

“I know where the food is.”

“There’s lots of it.”