When it's dark, don't go out.
Those words had echoed through the Village of Broken Elders for so many years that no one could say when they had first been spoken. But no one doubted them. They were truth.
Grandma Si watched the last of the sun sink behind the mountain and felt her old heart tighten. As the final thread of light died, the world fell into a stillness so complete it was almost without sound. Then darkness came rolling up from the west, swallowing river and road, tree and peak as it came, until at last it reached the Village of Broken Elders and drowned it whole.
At the four corners of the village stood four ancient stone idols, their faces mottled and worn. Not even Grandma Si could say who had carved them, or when they had first been raised. But when the darkness came, the idols began to glow with a faint, gentle light, and the old folk of the village let out their breath. Beyond the village the blackness grew ever thicker, yet so long as the idols burned, the village was safe.
Suddenly Grandma Si's ears twitched. She froze. "Listen!" she gasped. "There's a child crying, out there!"
Old Ma shook his head. "Impossible. You misheard... eh, there really is a baby's cry!"
From the dark beyond the village came the thin, desperate wail of an infant. Every elder who was not stone-deaf heard it. They looked at one another in confusion—how could a baby be near this remote and barren place?
"I'm going to see!"
Grandma Si grew excited. She tottered to the corner where the nearest idol stood, and Old Ma hurried after her. "Woman, have you lost your mind? The sun's down. Step outside that wall and you die!"
"If I carry this idol out with me, the things in the dark fear the idols. I won't die yet!"
She bent to hoist the idol onto her back, but she was a hunchback, and could not lift it. Old Ma shook his head. "Let me do it. I'll carry the idol and go with you!"
Another elder limped up, a crooked figure on one good leg. "Old Ma, you've only got one arm. You won't bear it long. I've got two hands—let me carry it."
Old Ma glared at him. "You crippled fool, you've lost a leg. Can you even walk? I may have one arm, but this arm has strength to spare!"
With his single arm he hefted the idol. It was unimaginably heavy, but he steadied himself. "Grandma Si, let's go!"
"Don't call me old woman!" she snapped. "Cripple, Mute, all of you keep your eyes open. The village has lost one idol. Make sure nothing from the dark slips in!"
Old Ma and Grandma Si walked out of the Village of Broken Elders. Strange things swirled around them in the blackness, but the moment the idol's light touched them they squealed and scurried back into the dark.
They followed the crying, a hundred paces and more, until they came to the bank of a great river. The infant's cry rose from there. The idol's light reached only so far, so they strained their ears to fix the sound, and walked upriver. A few dozen paces on, the crying was close. Old Ma's single arm was barely holding. Then Grandma Si's eyes lit up—there, a faint glow. A basket lay at the water's edge, its own pale light flickering from within, and the crying came from it.
"There really is a child!"
She stepped forward and went to lift the basket, but hesitated—it would not rise. Beneath it, held up out of the black water, was an arm boiled white by the river. That arm had held the basket, and the child within it, raised all this way to the shore.
"Don't worry," Grandma Si whispered to the woman beneath the water. "The child is safe now."
The drowned woman seemed to hear her. Her hand unclenched, and she was swept away, gone into the darkness.
Grandma Si lifted the basket. Inside was a swaddled infant, and on the swaddling lay a jade pendant that glowed faintly. Its light was much like the idols' light, but far weaker. It was this tiny glow that kept the child safe from the things of the dark. But it was enough only for the child—not for the woman who had held him up.
"It's a boy."
Back in the village, all the elders crowded around—all of them old, broken, maimed. Grandma Si lifted the swaddling, looked, and grinned with her few scattered teeth. "At last," she crowed, "the Village of Broken Elders has one whole, sound person!"
The Cripple, who had only one leg, was startled. "Grandma Si, you mean to raise him? We can barely feed ourselves! I say we give him away..."
Grandma Si flew into a rage. "I found him with my own hands. Why would I give him to anyone?"
The villagers fell silent, none daring to argue. Then the Village Chief was carried over on a stretcher. He was the most pitiful of them all—the others at least had some limbs, however few, but he had none at all, neither arms nor legs. Yet everyone respected him deeply, and even the fierce-hearted Grandma Si did not dare speak out of turn before him.
"So we will raise him," the Chief said. "Then he should have a name." He turned to Grandma Si. "Old woman, is there anything else in that basket?"
Grandma Si rummaged. "Only this jade pendant, no note, nothing else. There's a character carved on it—Qin. The jade is flawless, and full of a strange power. It's no common thing. It must come from a great house."
"Is he called Qin, or is Qin his family name?"
The Chief thought for a while. "Let Qin be his family name, and his given name, Mu—Qin Mu. When he grows up, we'll send him to the pasture and the herds. At least he'll make a living that way."
"Qin Mu." Grandma Si looked down at the infant, who was not afraid of her. To her surprise, the child babbled and laughed.
Years passed. By the riverside, a young herds-boy sat astride a mother cow and played a flute, the notes clear and sweet. He was eleven or twelve, with delicate brows and clear eyes, red lips and white teeth, his shirt half open and a jade pendant hanging at his chest.
This boy was the infant Grandma Si had lifted from the river eleven years ago. All through those years the elders of the village had labored to raise him. Grandma Si had obtained a cow from somewhere so that baby Qin Mu might drink milk, and so he had survived the dangerous years when infants so often died.
Though the folk of the Village of Broken Elders were fierce in look, they were gentle with him. Grandma Si, a seamstress, taught him to cut cloth; the village healer taught him to gather and brew medicines; Cripple Grandpa taught him the way of the legs; Blind Grandpa taught him to read positions by sound; and the limbless Chief taught him to breathe and circulate his qi. The years passed quickly.
That cow had been his wet-nurse through childhood. Grandma Si had meant to sell it, but Qin Mu could not bear to part with it, so the task of herding fell to him.
He often grazed the cow by the river—blue mountains like painted brows, green water and white clouds, a pleasant life.
One day, as he sat on the cow's back, the cow suddenly spoke. "Qin Mu, Qin Mu, save me!"
Startled, Qin Mu leapt from its back. The cow's eyes brimmed with tears, and it spoke in a human voice. "Qin Mu, you drank my milk and grew strong. I am half a mother to you. You must save me!"
Qin Mu blinked, wary. "How can I save you?"
"There's a sickle at your belt," the cow said. "Peel the skin from my body, and I'll be free."
Qin Mu hesitated. The cow grew urgent. "Have you forgotten the milk I gave you?"
Qin Mu raised the sickle and carefully slit the cow's hide. Strange to say, as the skin peeled away no blood flowed—the hide was hollow, empty of flesh, muscle, and bone.
When the hide was half peeled, out rolled a woman of twenty or thirty years. Her two legs were still sheathed in the cow's legs, the flesh fused to the hide, but her upper body had shaken free of the leather.
Hair wild, the woman snatched the sickle from the stunned boy, sliced through the hide that bound her legs, then turned on him, anger blazing in her eyes. She pressed the sickle to his throat. "Little villain," she hissed, "because of you I was turned into a cow. For eleven years I have eaten grass and nursed you with my milk! Just before I was transformed, I had given birth—and that witch cursed me, made me into a beast to feed you! Now that I am free, I'll cut your throat, then bathe the village in the blood of its villains!"
Qin Mu's mind reeled. He had no idea what this woman who had crawled from the cowhide was saying.
She raised the blade to strike. Then her back went cold. She looked down and saw a blade protruding from her chest.
"Mu'er, your healer grandfather says it's time for your medicine." The woman toppled. Behind her stood Cripple Grandpa, kindly of face, plain and honest-looking, a dripping blade in his hand as he smiled at Qin Mu.
"Cripple Grandpa..." Qin Mu's limbs went weak. He looked at the cowhide and the corpse, and could not make sense of it.
"Go home, go home." The Cripple patted his shoulder and chuckled.
Qin Mu stumbled back toward the village, glancing back to see the Cripple toss the woman's body into the river.
The shock of it was too great. He did not even know when he reached the village.
"Qin Mu! You brat! How many times must I tell you? When it's dark, don't go out!"
Night fell. The idols at the four corners flared to life on their own. Grandma Si caught hold of Qin Mu as he tried to slip out and check the cowhide by the river, and dragged him back in.
"Grandma, why can't I go out after dark?" Qin Mu looked up.
"When it's dark, terrible things move in the darkness. To go out is to die." Grandma Si was grave. "The idols in the village protect us. The things of the dark dare not enter."
"Do other villages have such idols?" Qin Mu was curious.
Grandma Si nodded, but her face was troubled, and she kept looking out beyond the village. "The Cripple should be back soon... I never should have let him go. That fool has only one leg..."
"Grandma, something strange happened today..."
Qin Mu hesitated, then told her about the woman who had come out of the cow's belly. Grandma Si waved it off. "That woman? The Cripple told me. He handled it well. I said we should sell that cow the moment you were weaned at four, but you couldn't bear it, so we kept it. You see what happens now? I always said nursing till four would give you feelings for the beast."
Qin Mu's face went red. Weaning at four was rather late, but surely that was not the real point.
"Grandma, that woman—Cripple Grandpa killed her..."
"Good riddance." Grandma Si laughed. "That was a mercy. She should have died eleven years ago. If she hadn't been needed to nurse you, would she have lived this long?"
Qin Mu did not understand.
Grandma Si glanced at him. "That woman was the lady of the lord of Gilded Dragon City, a thousand li away. The lord was lascivious, and she was jealous beyond measure. The lord went about the city seducing and seizing honest women, and every time he spoiled a woman's innocence, his lady had that woman beaten to death. I slipped into Gilded Dragon City meaning to kill her. But there she was with a newborn, only three months old, and I thought of you with no milk to drink—and her, full of milk. So I turned her into a cow and brought her back to nurse you. I never dreamed she would break from the seal and find her voice, and nearly kill you."
Qin Mu stared, speechless. "Grandma... how can a person be turned into a cow?"
Grandma Si cackled, showing her few broken teeth. "Want to learn? I can teach you... Ah, the Cripple's back!"
Qin Mu looked. The Cripple was limping toward them, one hand on his crooked cane, the other dragging a kill over his shoulder. The darkness came rushing like a tide after him, and Grandma Si shouted: "You fool! Hurry, hurry!"
"What's the rush?"
The Cripple did not quicken his pace. The instant he walked within the village walls, the thick blackness swallowed the land around them. On his back was a striped tiger, still alive. Its tail swept across the dark and suddenly the tiger let out a terrible howl. Qin Mu looked—the tail had been stripped to nothing but knobs of bone. The fur, the flesh, the blood were all gone, as if something had gnawed them clean away.
Curious, Qin Mu peered out at the darkness beyond the walls. There was nothing but black, black that showed him nothing at all.
What lives in the dark? he wondered. And what does it feed on?