Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Elder Brother said he was leaving that year, right at the start of spring.

He said this land would never yield any gold, and he wanted to head south to see the world.

The south… I’d heard the buildings there were taller than mountains, and the metal shells racing along the roads were more numerous than the toads in the fields.

In this world, no one wants to live a life with their face to the yellow earth and their back to the sky, but few truly have the courage to pull their feet out of the mud.

Elder Brother was one of those few.

As for me, I hadn’t passed the college entrance exams.

It wasn’t long before word started getting around.

A family in the neighboring village had a son with a slight limp.

His previous wife… some said she died of illness, while others whispered she’d been beaten so badly she just couldn’t hold on anymore.

His family sent a matchmaker to say they’d taken a liking to me. They said I had honest features and looked like the type who could work hard and bear many children.

Grandmother bit her lip, her mouth missing most of its teeth, and remained silent for a long time.

I had once tentatively asked Grandmother if I could stay with Elder Brother.

Grandmother said his family was as poor as if they’d been washed clean by water-just three lopsided mud-brick rooms and a sickly old mother.

Marry him? And live on nothing but the north wind?

But my family was poor too.

I had lived on the north wind my entire life; I wasn’t afraid of it.

Since that day, I hadn’t dared to look him in the eye.

When he sharpened his knife, when he shouldered his shovel to head into the fields, when he crouched in the sunset to smoke, his profile silent and stoic like a mountain crag… I avoided him.

But the feelings in my heart, the more they were kept from the light, the more wildly they grew, tangling around me until I could hardly breathe.

The day Elder Brother left, the sky was heavy and overcast.

He sent word through someone, saying he would wait under the old locust tree at the village entrance at dawn, and he wanted me to see him off.

I agreed, but when the time actually came, I didn’t dare go.

What was I even supposed to be? I didn’t even have the courage to stand before him.

I was afraid of seeing his eyes, afraid he would ask why I had been avoiding him. I was even more afraid that he wouldn’t ask anything at all, and the light in his eyes would slowly fade away.

I hid behind the earthen slope at the north end of the village, where I could see the bare branches of that old locust tree from a distance.

I saw a blurred, sturdy figure standing there, occasionally stomping his feet-likely from the cold, or perhaps from the anxiety of waiting.