Chapter 19: Homecoming
Four days later, on the north bank of the Caohe.
Chen Jian wiped the sweat from his face and rubbed his shoulders, where the tow rope had chafed a bloody line into his skin. Alongside him, the other able-bodied tribesmen hauled the birch-bark boats.
The wounded, the children, and some of the older tribe members were on board, learning to use poles and paddles. Because they only had three boats and were traveling upstream, Chen Jian had decided they would tow them from the banks of the Caohe.
Before that, they had been delayed for two days near the gorge, where they had boiled a large quantity of salt. They salted the meat from the great boar and smoked it over pine branches. They also took the time to wander the river valley plain, where they found several types of primitive bean plants and a distant relative of wheat. Modern wheat is a mutated hybrid, like a fertile mule rather than a purebred horse, so what exactly they had found would remain a mystery until it bore grain.
The expedition had been quite rewarding, especially with the dozen or so piglets that had gradually grown accustomed to humans over the past few days.
They were loaded onto the boats along with a live sow. The sow's snout was bound with a rope, and all four of its legs were tied.
They had to restrain it; pigs are natural swimmers, far better than humans. After leaving the amniotic fluid of the womb, people forget their innate ability to swim. If most of the current tribesmen were thrown into the river, they would drown, making them far inferior to pigs in the water.
The boats' cargo wasn't excessively heavy, even pulling against the current.
Still, there is no such thing as a light burden on a long journey. The sun was scorching, and beads of sweat dripped into their eyes, stinging painfully.
"Jian, we're almost there! The Tao River is just ahead," Langpi said, pointing to a distant hill where the tribe used to hunt.
Chen Jian rubbed his eyes. The surrounding grasslands seemed to shimmer and distort in the heat haze.
"Let's take a break," he said. "We'll still get home before dark."
He told everyone to pull the boats to the shore and secure them. Several of the women immediately dug a fire pit to boil water, adding some salt as Chen Jian had instructed.
Song came over and asked, "Jian, why must we drink hot water? And why add salt?"
Chen Jian was happy to be asked. He held his sweaty arm out to Song. "Lick it."
Song licked it, looking puzzled. "It's salty," he said.
Then, realization dawned on him. Looking at the saltwater in the jar, he began to understand.
He remembered hunting with his former tribe in hot weather and how people would often faint from the heat. The sun had been just as hot these past two days, but no one had collapsed. He realized it must be related to drinking the saltwater.
He kept the question in mind, one of many things he had committed to memory on this journey. Chen Jian had given him his cloth bag, which was filled with various leaves, and had explained the use of each one.
Song studied the different leaves, chewing each one in turn to memorize its taste. The other tribesmen sat in the shade of a tree, talking and laughing about their journey. Langpi, however, seemed immune to the heat. He took a stone axe and chopped down a few saplings as thick as a man's arm, then began trimming the branches there.
"I'm going to make a bow so powerful it can shoot an arrow across the Caohe from our cave!" he declared, pointing at a straight trunk. His boast was met with laughter from the group.
He had discovered that the wider the wood of the bow, the farther and harder the arrow flew. He also learned that if he used his thumb to draw the string, the arrow flew true when rested on the same side as his drawing hand, but would miss if placed on the other side of the bow. He had also started carving notches into the tails of his arrows.
Amid the laughter, he shouted, "Don't laugh! One day, my name will be remembered by our descendants! You just wait!"
He ignored their good-natured teasing, dragged the trimmed logs to the boats, and threw them aboard, determined to make more bows when he got back.
Chen Jian watched Langpi with a smile, drank a few more sips of saltwater, and then got up with the others to continue the journey home.
While some were traveling home, others at home were eagerly waiting.
Yu Qian'er sat by the river, a small wolf cub nestled in her arms, waiting for her brother to return. The old grandmother had said he would be back when the moon was full, so Yu Qian'er had been staying up late every night.
On the cave wall, she used the counting marks her brother had taught her, and next to each day's mark, she would draw the shape of the moon.
The first night, the moon had looked like the boat her brother left on. Last night, it looked like a piece of fruit with a large bite taken out of it.
The frustrating thing was that she didn't know when the missing piece would grow back. She wondered if some beast had eaten it. What kind of beast could fly into the sky and eat the moon?
She had so many things to tell her brother: that Cousin Acorn's pottery bowls were getting rounder; that one of the wolf cubs had died because it wouldn't eat; that she had molded little lambs and deer out of mud for the younger children to play with...
"Oh, right, and the little birds I caught yesterday," she mumbled to herself. "They won't eat bugs or fish."
She pulled on her braids, pouting as she thought, and subconsciously chewed on the ends while stroking the wolf cub with her other hand.
Even though her brother was gone, his presence was felt everywhere in the tribe's life. She thought of him when she saw her aunts fishing with the new nets, and again when she watched her mother boiling fish into soup. Everyone in the tribe often wondered aloud when he would return. Every night, she would measure the missing part of the moon with her fingers, hoping the beast in the sky would spit the rest of it back out tomorrow.
Resting her elbows on her knees, she sighed softly. The little wolf cub in her lap nipped gently at her finger, and she tapped it lightly on the nose, making it squeak.
Seeing the sun was about to set, she knew she had to get up and go catch bugs for the animals. Just then, a few figures flickered in the distant bushes. Yu Qian'er rubbed her eyes, saw the person leading the group, and broke into a run, shouting with joy.
As more people emerged from the trees, Yu Qian'er grew a little scared, as she didn't recognize them. But her fear vanished as she threw herself into her brother's arms, chattering excitedly and telling him everything she had been waiting to say.
Chen Jian smiled and stroked her hair, then told her to run back and let everyone know they had returned.
Yu Qian'er glanced at the more than thirty strangers, her mind full of questions, and then turned and ran toward the cave.
"Brother is back!"
Her crisp, happy cry echoed through the hills. The old grandmother came out from where she was weaving, followed by the others. Acorn stopped her pottery wheel. People who had been digging for fern roots and wild vegetables on the mountain hurried back.
Parting always weighs heavily on those connected by blood, and this was the first time the tribe had been separated for so long. Hearing the news of their return, the small anxieties in their hearts finally dissipated.
The entire tribe gathered by the river. Watching the scene, Song was inexplicably moved. He touched the pendant containing his mother's remains hanging from his neck and sighed.
"Grandmother, this is Song. From now on, he and his people will be our tribe."
Chen Jian gently guided Song forward, and his family looked at the newcomers with curiosity.
Song clutched his mother's bone pendant for a moment, then walked up to the old grandmother and said softly, "Old grandmother."
"Ah! Good boy. We are all one family now," she said warmly. "Bluegrass! Bluegrass! Take some people back to cook! Do we still have maple syrup? Give some to the children! Go!"
The clansmen immediately sprang into action. The men began unloading the boats, while the women gathered around the newcomers, each holding a piglet or offering a small pottery pendant or toy as a welcome gift. The women fussed over the new children, chattering away.
Song felt a sense of ease wash over him. Looking at the tribe's neatly combed hair, he felt he should be like them, but couldn't understand why their hair wasn't as greasy as his people's.
Back in the cave, a large bonfire was already blazing. Several of the new, large pottery pots were half-buried in the embers, some baking and others boiling, filling the air with different aromas.
Chen Jian showed the jar of salt to the tribe. They were fascinated by the white, snow-like substance. They dipped their fingers in, tasted a little, and hummed with delight.
Yu Qian'er tried to pull her brother over to see the moon drawings on the wall, but the old grandmother shooed her away with a laugh. She ran off and brought back the little birds to show Chen Jian instead...
Langpi was recounting their adventures, while Song was telling the story of his own tribe. The cave-dwellers were shocked to hear of a tribe that forced others to give them prey; the idea was unimaginable to them.
The new women quickly blended in with the others, finding common ground around the cooking fire, the easiest place for women to connect.
The resulting dinner was magnificent. When the salted soup was served, the tribe was full of praise.
They tore off pieces of roasted mutton and sprinkled them with a little powdered salt, a taste that was even more unforgettable.
Today, their food finally had the most important of all flavors, and it made all the difference.
Looking at the smiling faces of his tribe, Chen Jian stood up. "I think it is time for us to move to the lower reaches of the river."
This time, no one objected. The old ways had been broken once; it didn't hurt to break them again. The salt, the pigs, the new knowledge he had brought back—all of it had earned their complete trust.
"Grandmother, how much food do we have left?"
"We have enough dried fish and fern root for six or seven days."
"Good. Tomorrow, everyone will chop down trees, strip the bark, and collect resin."
"Are we all going by boat?" several of the men who had stayed behind asked eagerly.
"Yes," Chen Jian confirmed. "We're all going by boat."
A cheer went up through the tribe. Someone took out a piece of willow bark and blew into it, producing a shrill, whining sound. It was harsh and had no rhythm, but it was met with a burst of applause.
The adults began to dance around the fire, imitating the courtship ritual of the grouse in a wild, primitive expression of their hopes for a new life.
Yu Qian'er looked around the cave where she had lived since birth and felt a strange reluctance to leave. She knew her brother would make life better for the tribe, but her moon drawings were on the wall. Even the stone she had once tripped over no longer seemed so annoying.
"What will life be like in the future?" she wondered, but couldn't imagine an answer.
After a while, she pushed the strange thoughts aside and went to Chen Jian, holding the two little birds.
"Brother, I caught these by the river, but they won't eat bugs or fish."
In her palms were two fluffy, light-yellow birds. Chen Jian looked at their orange-red, webbed feet, their flat beaks, and the small knobs on their foreheads. He smiled and told his sister that these birds didn't eat fish; they only ate grass.
"Then are they good to eat?"
"Delicious," Chen Jian said, nodding with certainty as he recalled the taste of smoked goose from his past life. Yu Qian'er hurried to grab some of the wild greens her aunt had picked. The little birds opened their mouths and eagerly swallowed them.
Goose was considered the finest of the three main domesticated fowls and was the only pure vegetarian among them. It swam happily in the water, propelled by webbed feet that a cat could only dream of.
In the future, he envisioned, their village would have a pond with lotus roots and a few white geese floating gracefully on its surface.
He squatted down, recalling everything he had seen on their journey, and began to sketch the layout of their future village on the ground with a piece of charcoal, his mind brimming with ambition.