A-Lan's "Love Story"

Crying drifted in faintly from outside—"Wuwuwu..."—enough to unsettle anyone's heart.

Qian Duoduo mouthed silently: "Someone's crying."

"I'm not deaf," Xu Changhuan replied.

Well, fine then.

The crying outside and the crying inside vied with each other, as if competing for first place.

Qian Yu and Xu Changhuan pretended not to hear, but as time dragged on, Qian Yu couldn't sit still.

"Wuwuwu, help me, wuwuwu... it hurts, it hurts so much..." A woman's voice, sobbing in broken bursts, as if her throat were being strangled, her windpipe cut open.

"I'll go take a look."

Qian Yu rose—but Xu Changhuan pressed her back down at once.

"Are you insane?!"

"But..."

"Have you never heard the legend of Amu?"

"Nope." Qian Yu answered honestly.

Xu Changhuan choked, her matter-of-fact answer deflating him completely.

"Amu is the name people gave to the anomaly in these mountains."

"What's an anomaly?" Qian Yu now had ten thousand questions.

"It's too much to explain properly. Roughly what it sounds like—something unlike ordinary things. A special kind of 'spirit' that can bring the dead to life and put the living to death."

"Ohh." Qian Yu nodded.

"Amu was an ordinary woman once," Xu Changhuan said slowly.

Many, many years ago—maybe only decades; nobody remembered exactly—Yunliu Mountain was just an ordinary mountain. There was a small village on it whose people rose with the sun and slept at dusk, living poor but contented lives.

One day, the strongest, best-looking man in the village brought a woman home from the outside world.

She was stunningly beautiful: a waterfall of black hair, smooth as silk; a face pure and lovely as a lamb's. Her fingers were slender, without a trace of roughness. Her figure was perfectly proportioned, made to hold every man's desire.

Her name was "Lan."

"A-Lan, A-Lan." That was what the man always called her.

The strange thing was, A-Lan never smiled.

Her lamb-soft face was always taut, her two cherry lips—cute and dewy—pressed shut. No matter who spoke to her, they never parted.

"She's a mute."

"She's a simpleton."

That was how the village guessed at her.

A-Lan and the handsome man married soon enough. Village weddings were simple but proper; the man wore brand-new clothes and led pretty A-Lan by the hand like a victorious general.

No one knew where A-Lan had come from, because she never spoke.

"She doesn't dare speak."

the villagers said.

"I heard her crying once."

"Must be she's got no home left."

The man's heart was good—he must have found her outside, homeless and pitiful, and given her a home.

The man's heart was good.

Before long, A-Lan was pregnant.

"It's bound to be a boy."

the villagers said.

"Her fate is a good one."

A-Lan didn't have to work. She stayed home every day.

The man didn't let her show her face outside—not even opening the window and sticking her head out for air.

Once, a farmer passing by with his tools over his shoulder saw A-Lan crack the window and lean half her face out.

The farmer was bewitched by that half face.

So beautiful.

A-Lan hadn't expected anyone to be outside either. She hurried to pull the window down—but before she could reach it, a big hand seized her hair from behind and dragged her back.

Bang—the window shut.

The farmer shook his head and walked on, a little sorry.

The man beat his wife.

"How can he bring himself to hit a wife that pretty?"

"What's the big deal? A woman who won't obey should be beaten."

"Beat her enough and she'll learn."

the villagers said.

A year after A-Lan came here, she bore her first child.

The baby was plump and fair-skinned, the fairness inherited from her mother. The little face hadn't grown into itself yet, but you could already see fine features and a thick head of hair.

The child was a girl.

"He beats his wife, you know."

"Every day. He'll beat her to death one of these days."

the villagers said.

A-Lan was allowed outside now.

She sat in the yard with her child in her arms. Only when the man went out to work the fields did she have a chance to walk a little farther.

The village men coveted her—even with a baby in her arms, even with bruises mottling the skin beneath her long-collared dress, washed pale and worn to fuzz.

"Tch. A used woman, and I can't even touch her?"

A man spat on her lamb-white face.

"Whose fault is it she came out?"

"Whose fault is it she led men on?"

the villagers said.

That night, the man nearly beat A-Lan to death.

She lay on the cold ground, her nose packed with bloody froth, barely breathing in, hardly breathing out.

"Wuwuwuwu..."

Her baby was crying.

She must be hungry.

A-Lan struggled to her feet.

The man had drunk his fill; after beating A-Lan, he lay down on the bed and snored the whole day away.

A-Lan finally stood. She picked up her baby.

"There, there. Don't cry, sweetheart." A-Lan rocked the child in her arm. She opened her clothes, and the baby latched on, sucking greedily. But A-Lan hadn't eaten in ages—she'd gone out at dawn, come back at nightfall, and not a bite the whole day.

No milk came. The baby wailed with hunger.

"Don't cry, sweetheart."

A-Lan kept rocking her, slowly, unsteadily rising to her feet and shuffling outside.

Maybe she could find bark to chew. Maybe she could dig up Guanyin clay.

Shuffling like that, she made it to a crooked tree on the mountain's back slope before her strength gave out and she crumpled.

"Bodhisattva..." A-Lan's lips moved, praying slowly. "Bodhisattva... can you hear me..."

A-Lan bowed her head deep.

Under the crooked tree, coils of ominous black mist wreathed the roots bared by the earth.

"Kill him."

"Kill him."

The sudden voices startled A-Lan. Dazed, she lifted her pretty face and asked the air, "Kill who?"

"Kill him."

"Kill him."

"He treats you badly."

"And how would I kill him?" A-Lan smiled bitterly. It wasn't that she had never fought back. She was just too frail—limbs slender, skin thin. She should have been a young lady of a good house. She was never meant to suffer like this.

"You want strength."

"You need strength."

"Accept us."

The black mist crept up from the roots and gathered around A-Lan's body.

"Kill him."

"I... I don't know." A-Lan mumbled.

The baby's crying pulled her back.

"She's starving."

"She won't last long."

the voices said.

A-Lan shook her head and staggered away.