Chapter 1

Mother thrust a basin of clothes into my arms, and I carried it to the river to do the washing.

My little sister followed beside me.

Both our faces appeared on the water.

Hers was small and fair, with large eyes, curved brows, and lips that were always slightly upturned, as if she were forever smiling.

Mine was broad, rough, dark, and ruddy. My brows were thick, my eyes so large and empty they looked fierce, and the corners of my mouth drooped as if I were forever angry.

I smiled at my reflection. Ha. I really was ugly.

How could a face like that sell smiles from a doorway?

I did not know then what the phrase meant, but from the adults’ expressions, I sensed it was nothing good.

At supper, Mother repeated the old Daoist’s words to Father.

From then on, Father valued my brother even more. He did not believe any of that nonsense about supreme sovereigns or mothers of the realm.

He believed only that his sole son would pass the imperial examinations and make an honored old master of him.

Every greasy scrap of meat on the table went into my brother’s bowl.

My little sister swallowed hungrily as she watched. I did not even dare swallow.

When the family had eaten, I took the bowls out to wash. I scraped my brother’s bowl with the last pinch of wild greens and bran, then put it in my mouth and chewed slowly.

So that was what meat tasted like.

In truth, Mother and Father did not treat me badly. They never beat or scolded me.

Our family was simply too poor. Only one person could study. Only one person could eat meat. Only one person could be spared from work.

That person was not me.

And to support him, I could never study, never eat meat, and never stop working.

When I was fourteen, the Prince of Zhennan rebelled in the south.

His battle standards darkened the land, and his army swept forward unchecked, soon reaching the banks of the Lian River.

Every trade withered.

Company after company of soldiers combed through the villages and carried off everything they could.

Grain. Copper coins. Any man who could still walk.

Father hid my brother in the cellar and was himself seized for military service.

We lost both a pair of working hands and our grain. Life grew harder by the day.

Mother fell ill and took to her bed. My little sister, ten years old, lay beside her crying.

And my eighteen-year-old brother? He was a grown man who remained no different from a child.

He knew how to read and write, but not how to shoulder a hoe or cook a meal.

He paced about impatiently, sighing, a crumpled book clutched in his hand.

I knew we could not rely on him.

Two months passed. The Prince of Zhennan’s army still had not crossed the Lian River.

But the last wild grasses and scraps of bark in our village had already been eaten.

Mother and my sister were skin and bone.

My brother no longer had the strength to pace.

All four of us lay together on the bed beneath the dry, yellowing thatch.

Starvation had made my little sister’s belly swell. Her whole body was bloated like a ball that would burst at a touch.

Half asleep, I felt something tickle my face. A ground beetle had crawled onto me.

My brother snatched it up and stuffed it eagerly into his mouth—

I stared at him, first startled, then afraid.

Hunger had driven him mad. He was a man four years older than me and more than a head taller.

If he went on starving until the day he decided to sell one of us—or eat one of us—

I would have no strength to stop him.

That night, I took my little sister to the river.

It was a shallow, clear stream. When we were younger, seven or eight of us used to play there together.

Now some had been conscripted and vanished without a trace.

Others had been married off far away—or sold far away, which amounted to the same disappearance.

By a strange twist, troubled times had allotted women and men the same fate: leaving home, journeying far away, being scattered, and dying.

My sister and I sat beside the stream. I washed her hair in the water. Hunger had turned it dry and yellow, and in my hands it felt like a bundle of straw.

My tears fell onto her face.

She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Big Sister, I can smell meat.”

I wanted to laugh and tell her hunger was making her talk nonsense, but then a warm breeze brushed my face, and there it was—the smell of meat.

I froze as a thought struck me.

We ran home together. The door banged open. Mother lay on the bed, my brother sat at the table, and everything looked as usual.

I let out the breath I had been holding, panting hard. The smell of meat flooded my chest more brazenly than ever.

It was meat. I had not imagined it.

Everyone smelled it.

We stumbled after it in a daze, like marionettes, like puppets, like donkeys maddened by a carrot dangling before them.

Thirty, forty, perhaps fifty zhang farther on, dozens of people had gathered in the street.

We pushed open a gate. A pot stood over a fire in the courtyard, and one tiny arm protruded from it like a section of lotus root.

I turned aside and vomited.

That night, my brother’s eyes seemed to glow.

Mountain folk knew the look well. Shine a torch at a wolf, and its eyes gleamed just like that.

I held my little sister tighter in my arms.