The courtyard gate at home stood half open. Gu Lanshi ran in first, Zhu right behind him, and the two dashed through the front yard into the main room. Their mother was sitting there spinning hemp thread.
With her right hand, Miao Qiulian turned the spinning wheel; with her left, she drew out a prepared strip of hemp. The wheel rattled as it spun. She glanced outside, then returned her attention to her work. As the wheel turned, she raised her left arm to draw the fiber upward, paused in midair, then stretched back, repeating the same movement over and over.
"It's raining? Your father and Gou'er aren't home yet," she said.
"Didn't Father go to the fields? And Gou'er's cutting fodder for the pigs. They'll probably be back soon." Gu Lanshi lowered his basket. When he straightened, the little cloth pouch was still clenched in his hand.
Zhu set down his basket with great care; he still had a few raspberries tucked inside his clothes and was afraid of crushing them.
"Found any thorn shoots?" Miao Qiulian asked without taking her eyes off the spinning wheel. Both hands were busy.
"We did. We got lucky and picked quite a lot—enough for two meals." Smiling, Gu Lanshi crouched down and put the pouch on the floor, then began taking handfuls of wild mugwort out of the basket. The thorn shoots were underneath.
"Good. I've already sliced the meat. You can blanch the shoots later." Then she added, "We should have your father go to town for some good cotton. We'll spin it, weave cloth, and you can weave alongside me. Once it's done, we'll make two new outfits."
She stopped turning the handle. "If we can keep those two outfits set aside, they'll be part of your dowry. You can wear them after the wedding. I looked at the cloth shop last time. Good red cloth is expensive, but the color's brighter and prettier than anything we dye ourselves."
After considering it, she made up her mind. Looking at Gu Lanshi, she said, "We'll buy you a bolt of red cloth when the time comes. You only get married once. You ought to be well dressed."
"Mother, that's still ages away," Gu Lanshi murmured, his cheeks still warm.
"Not ages. Within the next two years! If we don't make your clothes early, you'll panic when the day comes. And if we can't finish them, what will you wear?" Miao Qiulian shook her head. "You're young and haven't a clue about planning ahead."
"All right, Mother, I understand. I'll start making them now," Gu Lanshi agreed hastily, before she could launch into another lecture.
"What? Don't like listening to your mother?" Miao Qiulian gave him an amused glare.
"Of course I do. Haven't I taken it to heart?" Gu Lanshi laughed and changed the subject. Turning to Zhu, he said, "Wash these."
Zhu had just finished taking the purslane out. He accepted the cloth pouch with a delighted grin. "All right!"
He also picked up the handkerchief from the stool and went to the kitchen.
Miao Qiulian noticed the unfamiliar pouch. "Where did that come from?"
Gu Lanshi grew a little nervous. They weren't supposed to take other people's food. He told the truth. "He gave it to me. It's only a few groundberries. Nothing else."
As the engagement wasn't yet settled, he wasn't sure what to call Lin Jinpeng, but Miao Qiulian understood immediately. Her expression softened.
When a marriage was almost agreed upon, there was nothing wrong with a young man giving his intended a few small things. A little attentiveness was a good sign, at least proving he wasn't stingy and had thought of the other person.
Relieved not to be scolded, Gu Lanshi fetched a large bamboo drying tray and cheerfully began sorting the wild greens.
"Mother, there's lots of tender wild mugwort. Let's steam it this afternoon." As he spoke, he picked weeds, twigs, and leaves out of the greens.
"All right. If you want it, we'll eat it." Miao Qiulian resumed spinning. When Zhu came running back from the kitchen with a bowl, he popped a raspberry into her mouth first.
Gu Lanzhu was the youngest child, and a fair-skinned, sweet-looking dual-born boy besides. Though Miao Qiulian never said it aloud, she doted on her youngest more than the others. The raspberry was so sweet that her eyes narrowed with pleasure, and she praised Zhu for being her best-behaved boy.
Gu Lanshi knew very well that his parents loved Zhu best. Sometimes when the family went to market, he would ask for a flaky butter cake and his mother would say they had no money or could buy one next time. But if Zhu wanted one, she would find a way to buy it.
When he was younger, Gu Lanshi had never noticed the favoritism. He had always been easygoing, never taking much to heart, smiling through everything, eating when it was time to eat and sleeping when it was time to sleep. After all, his family would never deny him a meal or let him go hungry.
In the last couple of years, now that he was older, he had learned to whisper to Zhu whenever he wanted a butter cake and let his brother ask for it. That way he could enjoy a treat without getting scolded. Wasn't that wonderful?
"Brother Lanshi, here." Zhu sat on the nearby stool with a raspberry tucked into his mouth and held out the bowl.
Besides four raspberries, it contained the slightly larger purple groundberries. They were a little smaller than apricots, a dark purplish black that showed they were fully ripe.
Once peeled, the flesh of a groundberry was purple too. Unlike the sweet-and-sour raspberries, its sweetness was stronger, and even its pit was sweet. They seldom had sugar water to drink, so after eating the flesh, they could suck on the pit all day and still taste the sweetness.
Gu Lanshi left the raspberries alone. He peeled a groundberry himself and popped the sweet flesh into his mouth. "Save two raspberries for your brother Gou'er. I won't have any."
"Mm." Zhu nodded and gently bit into the raspberry in his mouth, happily savoring its sweet-and-sour juice.
The brothers sorted the greens together. They would eat the mugwort and thorn shoots today. Purslane grew in abundance both by the river and in the mountains, so fresh leaves could be gathered whenever they wanted.
They cleaned the purslane they'd brought home and spread it out on a large bamboo tray. When the sun was strong again in a day or two, they would blanch and dry it for winter.
They were still working when the rain outside became heavy.
Listening to the raindrops crackle, Miao Qiulian leaned forward to peer through the curtain of rain. "Honestly, your father's still not back in a downpour like this! And who knows where Gou'er has got to. If they come home looking like drowned rats, they'll have only themselves to blame."
"Mother, the fields are far away. Father might be sheltering at someone's house. And Gou'er's clever; he'll have found somewhere to hide. You think he'd let himself get soaked?" Gu Lanshi said. "There are still some slices of old ginger in the kitchen from yesterday's cooking. If they do get wet, I'll make them ginger soup."
"That's true." Still, Miao Qiulian got up, took a bamboo rain hat down from the wall, and went to look out at the gate.
Gu Lanshi put the tray on a wooden rack and called outside, "Mother, it's pouring! Come back before your clothes get wet."
"I know, I know." Miao Qiulian looked toward the village entrance. Through the rain, a familiar figure came running. She called at once, "Gou'er!"
"Mother, it's me! Go back inside!" Gu Lanyu was only thirteen, an energetic boy in the prime of childhood. Even with a basket of pig fodder on his back, he ran remarkably fast. He was wearing a bamboo rain hat too.
Gu Lanshi had just gathered the sorted mugwort and thorn shoots into his arms to carry them to the kitchen when he saw his mother and younger brother run in.
"Did you get wet?" he asked.
"Not underneath." Gu Lanyu swiftly put down his basket and hat, then pulled off his outer jacket with a grin. "I ran into Eldest Brother while cutting pig fodder. He had a rain hat with him. His place was closer, and he said I could shelter there, but I couldn't be bothered going in, so he gave it to me."
Miao Qiulian dropped the wet jacket into a wooden basin. "Honestly! What harm would it do to go inside and shelter? Was your eldest brother going to eat you?"
"I didn't know when the rain would stop, did I? With clouds that thick, I thought I'd better get back to feed the pigs." Gu Lanyu accepted the cloth Zhu handed him and dried his hair and face.
Their eldest and second brothers were both married with children. They had split off into their own households a couple of years before; otherwise the family would have been far too crowded.
"There are raspberries and groundberries in the bowl. I'm going to make ginger soup. Drink a bowl in a bit." Gu Lanshi had an armful of wild greens in one hand and slipped a rain hat over his head with the other. There was no covered walkway between the main room and the kitchen, and he had no desire to get soaked.
He had barely entered the kitchen when a tall, thin figure passed beyond the courtyard gate.
The man wore only a rain hat. He didn't run despite the rain soaking his clothes, and there was something inexplicably silent and forbidding about him. As the rain grew heavier and the sky darker, he seemed to be shrouded in an impenetrable black cloud.
"Oh! He's so tall!" Zhu exclaimed at the retreating figure. Their courtyard gate was nothing like the lofty gateways of wealthy households, but it was considered spacious by village standards. Yet the passing man seemed as tall as the gate itself. He would have had to bend to enter some other houses.
Miao Qiulian hadn't seen him properly, catching only a glimpse from the corner of her eye.
Gou'er picked up a raspberry and ate it. "That's Pei Yan, the one who came back to the Pei family. You just don't see him often. What's so surprising?"
"Why bring him up to Zhu?" Miao Qiulian said disapprovingly.
She hesitated, then couldn't resist a little gossip. Looking at Zhu, she said, "You don't remember, but when he left four years ago, he was only fourteen, about a year older than Gou'er is now. You were just six. Of course you wouldn't remember him."
Lowering her voice, she continued, "That Pei family really is heartless. When Pei Yan came back last year, they flatly refused to let him through the door. Whatever else you say, he was only a half-grown boy when he took his eldest brother's place in military service. His family got reductions in the land and head taxes, so it's not as though they gained nothing. But they won't remember a single kindness."
"Fourteen! Why, that's barely grown. His luck was rotten too. In his very first year, war broke out up north. Once the fighting begins, no one cares how young you are. Even if it's a field of corpses, you have to march onto it. I don't know how he survived." Miao Qiulian rambled on, then glanced at Gu Lanyu, who was carelessly enjoying another groundberry, and sighed as she shook her head.
"Thank goodness the imperial court won, and quickly too. Nothing serious has happened in the past two years, and the recruiters haven't come our way. Otherwise, even if our family paid to buy exemption from service, it would be hard to manage." She hastily spat twice to ward off the ill luck of her words.
"But how did he grow so tall?" Zhu was still young, and understood little about military service or war.
"That's what I wonder! Even when he left four years ago, he was half a head, perhaps a whole head, taller than Gou'er is now. When he came back last year, I only saw him from a distance, and he didn't seem this tall. Maybe he's grown again." Miao Qiulian sat down to spin. "He's only eighteen. Growing taller's nothing strange at that age. It's just a pity."
Gou'er ate another raspberry. "Mother, what's a pity?"
Miao Qiulian glared at him before lowering her voice. "A pity his parents are so cruel they wouldn't even give him a decent name. Tell me, what decent person puts a character meaning 'loathed' in their child's name? And you know everyone calls him a bringer of calamity—do you know where that came from?"
Gou'er played along and lowered his voice. "His parents made it up?"
"Exactly. Years ago, before he joined the army, his mother told me and some of your aunties the same thing. The words 'solitary star of calamity' came straight from her mouth. I've lived this long and never seen a mother like her, cursing her own son to die. There really are all sorts in the world."
When she finished, Miao Qiulian warned the two children, "Remember, don't go repeating this outside. Keep away from the younger Peis so you don't get dragged into trouble. And don't pay attention to Pei Yan or go crowding around him."
"I know. I wouldn't go near him even if you told me to." Gou'er curled his finger and tapped Zhu on the forehead to frighten him. "Better remember Mother's words. If you provoke Pei Yan, those little arms and legs of yours won't stand a chance. Even your big brother here couldn't take a beating from him."
"Oh, get out of here!" Miao Qiulian burst into exasperated laughter. That rascal only knew how to scare his little brother.
Holding his forehead, Zhu nodded like a chicken pecking grain at the thought that both of them might be beaten. He repeated that he understood. Just then Gu Lanshi called him to help tend the fire in the kitchen. Zhu snatched another groundberry from the bowl and slipped away.
