Chapter 2

My name was Yuanyue—Xu Yuanyue. Mama had chosen it.

She would not let anyone call me Zhaodi, the name people gave a daughter when they were hoping the next child would be a son.

Mama had never owned anything fine in her life.

When Father married her, he paid half a sack of brown rice and one bolt of plain cloth. An old donkey brought her over in a manure cart.

The loveliest thing she had ever seen was a full moon in the sky.

On the fifteenth night of every month, when the moon was round, Mama would hold me in her arms and sit atop the tall grain stack to watch it.

“May my precious girl have a life as full and whole as the moon above,” she would say.

I understood nothing then. I only cupped her face and said, “May Mama’s life be full and whole too.”

She smiled bitterly. She was not yet thirty, but her smile belonged to someone already waiting for the grave.

Her life would never be made whole.

The day Mama forced Father to bring me home, she said she was going to Grandfather’s house to beg an egg and steam me some egg custard. She never came back.

The neighbors tried to take Father into the hills to search for her. He dragged his feet, made excuse after excuse, and finally went back inside to sleep.

Half a month passed.

On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the moon was full again. Missing Mama, I climbed onto the grain stack. Da Ju came with me and kept me company beneath the moon.

Da Ju had become a three-legged cat and could no longer catch mice.

Every night, I went to the back gates of the wealthy households and fished scraps from their slop buckets. That was how I kept Da Ju alive.

I cared for Da Ju the way Mama had cared for me.

When your heart is full of love, caring for someone never feels like a burden.

A fierce wind drove black clouds across the sky, whipping dust and dead leaves into the air.

I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up again, the moon had turned bloodred.

The village fortune-teller always said a blood moon was a dire omen. It meant calamity—or the birth of some savage beast.

My mind was too full of Mama to leave room for fear.

A few days earlier, the neighbors had returned from Grandfather’s house. Mama had never gone there at all.

Father scoffed and said she must have tired of our poverty and run off with another man.

I clung to the threshold and defended her in a small voice. “She wouldn’t. Mama could never leave us behind…”

Father shoved me hard, then strapped a bamboo basket taller than I was to my back.

“Go dig up your wild greens! If there isn’t enough for your brother and me, I’ll strangle you tonight!”

I was afraid to die. But I was even more afraid Mama would come home and find me dead.

I did not want to make her sad.

I wanted to see her life made whole.

Under the round, bloodred moon, I secretly wiped my tears.

As I rubbed at my eyes, a cold breeze swept past, carrying the strange perfume of dusang blossoms.

Da Ju had been asleep in my arms. The autumn night was bitterly cold, yet the cat suddenly sprang up, every hair on its body standing on end.

It growled at a dark shape to my left. When I did not move, it turned and ran away by itself.

I remembered stories of village children carried off by wolves, and my body went rigid.

I stared at a thicket as black as ink. Something rustled inside, drawing closer.

I was still wondering whether to bolt when a familiar voice came from the darkness.

“Yuanyue, don’t cry. Mama’s back.”

I shot to my feet in disbelief.

Out of the hazy night stepped a slender figure.

It was Mama.

She wore the same clothes she had left in.

Only now there were dark bloodstains around the collar.

I forgot everything else. I ran to her, threw myself into her arms, and wailed for my mama.

I did not even notice that her hands were colder than usual.

As cold as the hands of a corpse.

Only much later did I learn the truth.

The woman who returned that night was not Mama.

Father had strangled Mama to death in the depths of the forest.

The one who came back was a fox spirit wearing her body as its own.