Chen Wuya crouched beside the vegetable patch, his knuckles smeared with wet mud, the shard of stone in his palm still bearing scratches from the night before. He stared at the ground, where three short, shallow marks were slowly being soaked by the morning dew, their edges beginning to blur. Most of the dust drifting along the distant mountain road had dispersed. The wind swept through the treetops, lifting one corner of the cloth curtain beneath the eaves.
Bai Zhi came out of the house, her footsteps soft. She carried a thick outer robe in her hands. Walking up behind him, she said nothing, merely draping it over his shoulders. The cloth weighed faintly upon him, carrying the warmth of having been baked dry.
He looked up at her, his Adam's apple bobbing. Without a word, he only nodded. Then he slowly rose, brushed the dirt from his hands, and walked toward the wooden sign by the courtyard gate. Four words were carved deep and hard into it: Trespassers Die.
He grasped the base of the sign and pulled hard, splinters tearing up several strands of grass root. As he turned, he drove the sign upside down into the soil at one side of the courtyard, its front facing the house and its back toward the outside. The motion was clean and decisive, like severing an old vine.
"From this day on, this gate will open only for the three people within."
Bai Zhi stood where she was, her fingers gently stroking her lower abdomen as her gaze settled on his back. After a moment, she retreated beneath the eaves and sat leaning against a pillar, saying nothing more.
Chen Wuya returned to the hoe, bent down to pick it up, and drove its iron blade into the earth, turning