to Binu’s hut, in part to share their thoughts on waiting in an empty house, but also to pry into her private affairs. With discerning eyes, they spotted traces of her tears around the stove and on the bed, and their noses picked up the bitter, sour scent of those tears, which spread through the room.
Without warning, a large drop of water fell from the thatched ceiling onto the face of one of the women. As she wiped the water from her face, she cried out in alarm, ‘Mother of mine, Binu’s tears have flowed up to the roof!’
Another woman went to the stove and removed the lid on the cold pot, revealing half a pumpkin. She took a taste. Her brow crinkled. ‘That pumpkin broth has tears in it. It’s bitter and sour. Binu, are you cooking this pumpkin in your tears? Whoever heard of such a thing?’
Standing in the rain-cloud of her own tears, Binu was wrapping up a large bundle. In it she had placed a finely tailored winter coat embroidered in a colourful pattern, a sash and a pair of boots lined with rabbit fur. That, the women thought, must be a bundle intended for Qiliang. Well, who wouldn’t want to prepare a large bundle for a husband who had left home in such a hurry? They asked Binu how much the handsome coat had cost her, but all Binu could tell them was that she had traded away the nine mulberry trees, plus three baskets of silk from her cocoons and her spinning room.
The women shrieked in alarm. ‘Binu,’ they said, ‘how could you trade away nine mulberry trees, three baskets of silk and your spinning room? How will you live from now on?’
Binu replied, ‘Without Qiliang by my side, whether I live or die does not concern me.’
Then the women asked, ‘Who are you going to get to carry that wonderful bundle to the other side of Great Swallow Mountain?’
‘If no one else will take it,’ she said, ‘I will.’
The women were convinced that Binu’s mind had become confused, that she had no idea that Great Swallow Mountain was a thousand li away.
Binu said, ‘If I have a horse, I’ll ride it. If I have a donkey, I’ll ride that. If I have neither, then I’ll walk. An animal can walk that distance. Are we not superior to animals? Who says I cannot walk a thousand li?’
The women, rendered speechless, ran out of Binu’s hut holding their hands to their breasts, not stopping until they were well clear. They turned to look back at the quivering figure of the woman in the hut, and many of them felt a deep sadness. She may have stopped searching for Qiliang’s straw sandal, they said, but her soul has not returned. One envious woman, wanting to hide her feelings, said cynically, ‘A thousand li just to deliver a winter coat? Does she suppose she is the only woman who loves her husband!’
Another woman could not really say if she had been struck by the power of emotion or if she had been stung by something Binu said, but she was no sooner out of the hut than her head began to ache. In order to dispel her mental and physical discomfort, she spat several times in the direction of Binu’s hut. The others followed her example, and the noise drew a chorus of barking from the village dogs, who howled at Binu’s hut all that night. Children got up out of bed, but were sent back, their little heads clasped firmly in their parents’ hands.
‘The dogs are not barking at us,’ the adults told them. ‘They are barking at Binu. Her soul left her the day Qiliang left.’
Binu went to see the sorceresses of Kindling Village, bearing gifts, and told them of her plan to travel north to find her husband. She was anxious to know how to reach her destination before winter set in, so she could take him some winter clothing. The sorceresses revealed that they had travelled great distances north on spiritual wanderings, and one said she had used the feather of a crow as a compass. Every night she had roamed the three great cities of the north. Another said she had passed over North Mountain by hitching a ride with a caravan carrying tribute to the capital, secretly pasting a strand of her hair on the tribute chest, allowing her to watch the people feasting in Longevity Hall in the light of day.
The sorceresses cleverly avoided giving Binu an answer; instead, they examined her tongue and cut off a lock of her hair, which they held over a flame with a pair of tongs. She did not know what it was the sorceresses saw, but they knelt on a straw mat, placed bleached tortoise shells in an earthen vat, and then emptied them back out, all the time chanting incantations. Binu stared at their gaunt faces, their expressions a mixture of fear and joy.
‘Do not go,’ they said. ‘If you do, you will not return, but will be struck down by illness on the road and die on the plain.’
‘Will I die on the way there,’ Binu asked, ‘or on the way back?’
The sorceresses blinked rapidly as they examined the pattern created by the tortoise shells on the mat. ‘Do you not fear death?’ they asked. ‘Is it your wish that you will die on the way back?’
Binu nodded. ‘If I can deliver winter clothing to Qiliang,’ she said, ‘I will die happy.’
The sorceresses of Kindling Village had never before met a woman like this. With censorious looks in their eyes, they said, ‘What sort of men’s winter clothing is worth dying for?’
‘Winter clothing for my husband, Qiliang, is worth dying for,’ she replied.
The sorceresses were speechless. Then, one last time, they placed the tortoise shells into the earthen vat and emptied them out onto the mat. They fell in the shape of a horse. ‘Since you are willing to sacrifice your life,’ they said, ‘then go. Do not forget that you must hire a Blue Cloud horse, for only a Blue Cloud horse can bring you back home.’
So Binu went to hire a horse at Banqiao, only to discover that the domestic animal market there had closed down. An autumn flood had caused the river to overflow its banks and swallow up temporary bridges erected by the horse traders. Their riverside thatched sheds stood empty, and the fodder and the smell of livestock had drifted off on the wind, leaving only posts standing askew as they forlornly awaited the return of the horses, though indications were that they would not be coming back.
Water and straw merged to reclaim the riverbank and, in the wake of the plunder, Blue Cloud Prefecture was waterlogged and bleak. Binu stood at the water’s edge, recalling how she and Qiliang had passed through Banqiao on their way to Cinnamon City to sell their silk. There had been many, many horses in the livestock market that day. The half-naked horse traders used to lead the animals down to the river to drink, all the while calling out to the women tending distant paddies, ‘Big Sister, Big Sister, come and buy my horse.’ That is what Binu had come to do, but traders from the Western Regions or from Yunnan were nowhere to be seen. All that was left of their presence was a large, cast-off, chipped vat in front of one of the sheds, filled half with rainwater and half with the remnants of burnt straw; a raven was perched on the rim.
Binu followed the riverbank, hoisting up the hem of her robe – pink flowers on a blue background – until she met up with the old pig tender, Sude, who stared at her in wonderment. ‘Are you trying to hire a horse? That, I’m afraid, is out of the question. There are so few of them left in Blue Cloud Prefecture that you could try for the next ten thousand years and not be able to hire one.’
She walked on in despair, thinking of the sorceresses’ prophecy, and was just stepping through a profusion of wild chrysanthemums when a frog hopped out from the water and, inexplicably, began to follow her. She stopped. ‘Why are you following me?’ she asked. ‘You’re not a horse and you’re not a donkey, so go, go, go back into
