Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My second uncle was the one who pressed my thumbprint onto the contract, selling me off to Blackstone Village.

When the oxcart entered the village, the sun hadn’t set yet, but the entrance was already draped in red cloth. However, that red didn’t look like a celebration; it looked like old blood smeared on tree bark-dried, then soaked by rain until it turned dark and smelled of iron.

The matchmaker’s gums flashed as she smiled, telling me I was lucky to have arrived just in time for a grand event that only happened once every twenty years in Blackstone Village. Village Head Wu Shoucai came to receive me personally, staring at me for a long time as if he were sizing up a pig for slaughter.

“Where is the groom?” I asked.

The crowd of onlookers burst into laughter.

“The Mountain God is taking a bride. What need is there for a groom?”

I asked again, “Who is the Mountain God?”

A woman holding a child lowered her voice and tilted her chin toward the massive peaks behind them. “It’s the mountain itself.”

I almost laughed out loud.

Before she passed away, my mother performed Nuo opera in a traveling troupe; she could also make lanterns, perform stilt-walking, and walk tightropes. She often said that people love to blame their own evils on gods and ghosts. Now, hearing this village talk of the Mountain God, I knew immediately that the wedding wine wasn’t filled with blessings, but with human lives.

There were almost no young women in Blackstone Village.

As I looked around, I saw only hunched old hags, sallow and emaciated children, and a group of men whose eyes were glued to me. Those gazes didn’t look like they were watching a bride; they looked like they were eyeing a piece of cargo that had already been divvied up.

In the evening, Wu Shoucai locked me in the bridal chamber behind the Ancestral Hall.

The room was decorated with red quilts, red pillows, and red candles, but several pairs of old embroidered shoes were piled in the corner. The toes were worn through, and the soles were stained with brownish spots of mud. I pulled back the bed curtains and found a broken silver hairpin tucked under the bedboard, the character “Xia” engraved on its tip.

It wasn’t part of a dowry; it was left behind by a previous bride.

Outside the door, an old woman cautioned me through the paper window: I wasn’t allowed to cry, cause a scene, or take off my wedding dress before midnight. Once the gongs and drums sounded, I was to carry a lantern and walk into the mountains on my own.

“If the Mountain God takes a liking to you, you’ll be blessed.”

“And if He doesn’t?” I asked.

The space outside the window went silent for a moment.

“Then you’ll dissolve into the mountain,” the old woman said, “and make room for someone else next year.”

I looked down at the rope burns on my wrists and suddenly remembered what my second uncle said as he shoved me onto the cart the day I was sold.

“A woman has to get married to survive. What does it matter who it is?”

My mother died early, leaving me nothing but an old red lantern and a half-painted Nuo mask. Before she died, she gripped my hand and told me over and over: if I were ever truly backed into a corner, I shouldn’t run toward people; I should run into the mountains.

I didn’t understand it then.

I understood it now.

Before midnight, I changed into the wedding dress myself, picked up the old red lantern I had dug out of my bundle, and pushed open the door.

The people outside the courtyard were waiting to see me cry, to see me kneel, to see me bound and hauled up the mountain.

No one expected me to walk out with a smile.

“No need to escort me,” I said, holding the lantern a little higher. “Since the Mountain God has chosen me, I’ll go meet Him.”