Three days.
For three days, I hadn't seen that brat.
Not that I wanted to—it was just that this dump didn't even have WiFi. My only entertainment was lying in the tent counting hairs on the sheepskin. By the time I reached hair number thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and forty-one, I decided I was done.
The servant who brought food didn't speak English or Chinese—even though I spoke both, he spoke some bird language I couldn't understand. I tried pantomiming "Where is the Prince?", and he got so scared he threw the food box on the ground and ran.
Fine.
I spent these three days doing one thing: reciting the UCLA course catalog from memory. EDUC 210, Child Developmental Psychology; EDUC 225, Behavioral Modification Theory; EDUC 240, Trauma Intervention for Children—
I was up to EDUC 310 when the tent flap was lifted.
It wasn't the food servant. It was the burly man from the other night. What was his name again? Ah—something starting with Ah. He stood at the tent entrance, the sunset burning orange behind him, making him look like a wall walking out of hell.
"Come."
Two words. Like commanding a dog.
I stood up and dusted off my skirt—even though I didn't know what was good about dusting off this rag, but I had to findsomething to do.
He led me through the camp. Everyone stopped to look at me, their eyes treating me like an alien. Well, in a sense, I was. The time-traveling kind.
We stopped in front of the largest tent.
"Go in."
I lifted the curtain.
The inside of the tent was different from three days ago. On the low table sat a wooden board, next to which were a few pieces of shaved charcoal. And a stack of paper covered in writing—crooked and歪歪扭扭 (wāi wāi niǔ niǔ - crooked/twisted), the same character written over a dozen times, getting messier and messier, until the last few strokes tore right through the paper.
He was sitting behind the low table.
The eleven-year-old brat, wearing fur clothes, his hair braided into small plaits tipped with turquoise. His right hand was still wrapped in the bandage I had applied three days ago—so dirty you couldn't tell the original color, but the knot was still there. The one I tied.
Three days, and he hadn't taken it off.
Nor had he let anyone else change it.
He looked up at me.
"You're late."
"No one told me to come today."
"Now you know." He jerked his chin toward the opposite side. "Sit."
I sat down, my line of sight exactly level with his. There was a dark grey circle under his eyes—lack of sleep, or no sleep at all.
"Your hand," I said.
He looked down, turning his hand over. The edges of the bandage were frayed, dirty, like a band-aid that had been used for three months.
"Three days without changing."
"You said you would come change it." He looked at me. "You didn't."
I almost laughed out loud.
Was this brat acting spoiled with me? Using that tone of "you didn't do what you promised"?
"I wasn't allowed to come," I said.
He didn't respond, rummaging under the table for a clean cloth and a clay jar, pushing them toward me.
I reached out to untie the bandage. This time his fingers didn't retract—three days ago when I first touched him, his whole body had stiffened, like he'd been electrocuted. Now he obediently placed his hand on the low table, motionless, watching me untie the knot.
The wound was slightly better than three days ago, but the edges were a bit red and swollen.
"It's inflamed," I said.
"What does inflamed mean?"
"It means..." I thought about how to explain bacterial infection to an 11th-century Western Xia child. "Your wound is angry. Because you're ignoring it."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Wounds get angry?"
"Yes. If you don't change the medicine, it shows you its anger. Redness, swelling, pus, fever—it has many ways to get angry."
I used the cloth dipped in water to wipe the wound. This time he didn't ask "Have you done this before?" or "For whom?". He just watched me quietly.
"Three days," he said suddenly. "What did you do?"
"Counted sheep."
"...What?"
"Counted the hairs on the sheepskin," I said. "Thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and forty-one. Do you want to check?"
He stared at me for three seconds.
That expression—the furrowed brow, the pursed lips, the eyes holding a confusion of'is this person sick in the head?'—almost made me laugh.
"You," he said slowly, "have a screw loose?"
He said it so calmly. Not comforting me, not sympathizing, just stating a fact—like saying "It's getting dark" or "The wind is blowing."
I looked up at him.
"I know," I said.
He looked at me, something moving in his eyes. I didn't understand it, and I didn't want to.
"They don't like you," he said suddenly.
"Who?"
"Everyone."
"I know."
"Aren't you angry?"
"Why should I be? They don't like me because I'm Han. That's not my fault."
His fingers twitched. Very lightly, as if burned by something.
"Your brain," he said, "really has a screw loose."
"Thanks for the compliment."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know."
He stared at me for another three seconds.
This time the corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile, but close.
"Let's start." He took a short knife from under the table and placed it on the wooden board. "Teach me."
I looked at the knife, then at him.
"Teach what?"
"Chinese characters."
"What are you holding the knife for?"
"If you teach badly, I'll kill you."
I looked at his serious face and resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
"Fine." I picked up a piece of charcoal. "Then we start with the simplest. Person (人). This character is pronounced 'ren'."
I wrote a "人" (Person) on the board.
He looked down, picked up the charcoal, and wrote one.
It was crooked, like a bug that couldn't stand steady.
"Not good looking," he said.
"For a first time, this is already very good."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
"Those teachers all said 'very good', and then they stopped teaching."
"That's because they were afraid of you," I said. "I'm not afraid of you."
He looked up at me.
The tent was quiet, quiet enough for me to hear the sound of charcoal ash falling on the board.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"Sure. You're only eleven, what can you do to me?"
His eyes narrowed slightly.
That expression—like a provoked wolf cub considering whether to bite—made my back feel a little cold. But I didn't flinch.
"Write it ten times," I said. "Until it looks good."
He lowered his head and started writing.
Second time. Third time. Fourth time.
The charcoal made a rustling sound on the board. The sunset leaked through the tent cracks, turning the characters he wrote a warm orange.
By the tenth time, the character "人" was standing steady.
He put down the charcoal, looking at the character he wrote, and suddenly said: "You just said, it's not your fault they don't like you."
"Mm."
"What if it was your fault?"
"What?"
"If they don't like you because of something you did."
I looked at him.
Eleven years old. Hand injured. Everyone around him telling him Han people are untrustworthy.
"Then I should apologize," I said. "Or make amends. Or not do it next time."
He listened quietly.
"Not doing it next time," he said. "Is that useful?"
"Not necessarily. But it's better than doing nothing."
He didn't speak. Lowered his head, and started writing again.
Eleventh time.
Pie (撇), Na (捺).
"Person (人)."
He put down the charcoal.
"Okay," he said, "Next character."
I thought for a moment, and wrote "月" (Moon) on the board.
"This is pronounced 'yue'. It means moon."
He looked down at the character.
"Moon (月)." He recited it once, then looked up at me. "You are named this."
"Mm. Jiang Jinyue. Moon soaking in water."
"Why did your parents give you this name? What did they want you to do?"
"Maybe..." I thought. "They wanted me to be close to water. My home is in Jiangnan, there is a lot of water. The moon shining on the water surface looks very good."
He listened quietly.
"Jiangnan," he said. "You can't go back."
"I know. You've already said that."
"Will you miss it?"
"Miss what?"
"That place of yours. Jiangnan."
I thought of the river in my hometown of Shaoxing, the lights of the UCLA library, the palm tree outside the window when the professor was lecturing on "Trauma Child Intervention".
"Yes," I said. "But missing it is useless."
He didn't speak.
Lowered his head, and wrote a character on the board.
Water radical "氵" on the left, Moon "月" on the right.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Your name." He put down the charcoal. "You Han people's characters are too troublesome. Left is water, right is moon. Moon soaking in water."
He looked up at me.
Moonlight leaked through the tent roof, falling on his face.
"I don't have to write that many times, do I?" he said.
I looked at the character he wrote. Crooked, the radical was too big, the moon on the right squeezed into a ball.
"No," I said. "For this character, once is enough."
He glanced down, threw the charcoal on the table.
"Tomorrow," he said, "Teach me characters for war."
"What war characters?"
"Win. Lose. Kill." He paused. "Live."
I looked at him.
Eleven years old. Hand injured. The first word he learned was "Person", the second was "Moon". And now he wanted to learn—Win, Lose, Kill, Live.
"Okay," I said.
Someone shouted outside the tent. He glanced toward the curtain.
"You should go."
I stood up. My knees were a bit numb.
"Tomorrow," I said.
He didn't answer.
I turned and walked out. As I reached the curtain, I heard a voice from behind.
"Jiang Jinyue."
I stopped.
"That character," he said, "I will write it better tomorrow."
I looked back at him.
He sat behind the low table, moonlight on his face, outlining the not-yet-fully-grown contour of his chin.
"Good," I said.
I lifted the curtain and walked out. Night wind rushed in, making me shiver. The moon had risen high, hanging over the entire camp, plating all the tents with a layer of silvery-white frost.
No one was waiting for me.
I walked back to my tent alone.
Behind me, the lamp in that big tent was still on.
I didn't look back.
But the corner of my mouth curved up.
This brat is actually quite interesting.
Inside the tent.
The youth sat behind the low table, looking down at the character written on the board.
Left is water, right is moon.
He picked up the charcoal and wrote it again next to it.
A little better than before.
"Moon," he recited.
Outside the tent, the moon happened to shine in.
He put down the charcoal, flipped the board over so the wind wouldn't blow away the charcoal ash.
Then he lay back on the pile of furs, holding his right hand up before his eyes.
New bandage, tighter than last time.
The knots she tied were always tighter than the ones he made.
He closed his eyes.
"You're only eleven, what can you do to me?"
He opened his eyes.
The corner of his mouth slowly curved up.
Eleven can't do much to you.
But twelve? Thirteen?
He placed his right hand on his chest.
The bandage was a bit tight.
He didn't dislike this feeling.
Outside the tent, the moon slowly sank westward.
The wind on the grassland stopped.
End of Chapter 3