When the phone lit up, it had barely any battery left.
Chen Xiuyuan pulled the door nearly shut. His thumb tried the shattered screen several times before he managed to open the conversation containing his mother's voice message.
The message had arrived before he set out.
"Xiuyuan, your dad replaced the window screen. He said the old thing still had some use left in it, so don't go buying another one. Remember to eat on the road, and let us know when you get there."
His mother spoke quickly. The sound of running water mingled with the latter half, as though she were standing in the kitchen washing vegetables.
There was also a distant remark from his father: "You have to tell him about changing a window screen, too?"
Then came his mother's laughter.
Chen Xiuyuan sat beside the stone bed and turned the volume down a little.
The voice message finished playing.
He looked at the profile picture on the screen and held down the voice message button.
"Mom, I'm here."
The moment he said it, he himself realized something was wrong.
Here where?
An animal hide covered the stone bed. Outside the window, someone passed carrying a burning piece of wood, and the heavy rasp of a blade being sharpened came from beyond the courtyard wall. The cloth around his calf had just been changed, but lifting his foot still pulled at the wound.
He swiped his thumb to the side, canceling the message.
There was no signal at the top of the screen. Failure icons remained beside the texts he had sent earlier; moving to the window had done no good. His mother's voice was still here, but his own words could not get out.
When he pressed play again, static crackled from the speaker.
Chen Xiuyuan hurriedly laid the phone flat on the bed. Only once the sound became clear again did he take out his notebook and write down his mother's words, one by one.
The window screen, eating, letting them know he was safe.
As his pen reached the final word, his mother's voice stopped again.
He folded down a corner of the page and did not press replay.
The camera was shattered, and the voice recorder was broken, too. Among the scattered scraps of paper, what he could still piece together was the itinerary he had checked with Qin Chuan. A last-minute note in the margin reminded them to take more shots of the old bridge at the mountain pass on their return.
Qin Chuan's handwriting was scrawled, the wood radical in the character for "bridge" trailing out a long way.
Chen Xiuyuan pressed the scraps flat with the pad of his finger.
When the collapse happened, he remembered Qin Chuan being ahead of him, turning back and reaching out a hand. Everything after that was a jumble. He could not even be sure whether that hand had touched him.
On a fresh page, he wrote down Qin Chuan's name, then recorded where he had last seen him, the color of his clothes, and the bag he had been carrying.
When it came to his whereabouts, he could only leave it blank.
Someone in the courtyard knocked twice on the door.
"The meat's tender. Come out and eat."
Chen Xiuyuan answered, switched off the phone, and wrapped it in a relatively clean piece of cloth.
Elder Shi's house was small. The room on the north side was for sleeping, and the one beside it held medicine. A low shelter stood by the doorway, with an earthenware pot beneath it. Beside the pot was a little stool with a leg that had broken off and been reattached. Chen Xiuyuan had nearly tipped it over when he first entered the house; now the old man had steadied it firmly with a stone.
He moved the stool a little closer to the fire and sat down.
The earthenware bowl held chopped meat and roots boiled soft. Elder Shi pushed a few of the more tender pieces into his bowl, then picked up the other bowl himself.
When Chen Xiuyuan saw how much was in that bowl, he pushed his own toward the middle.
"I can't eat all this."
"Your stomach's been growling, and you can't eat it?"
Elder Shi picked up a piece of root, blew on it, and put it in his mouth.
"Stop pushing it back and forth. Aren't you going to the meat shed tomorrow? How will you work on an empty stomach?"
Chen Xiuyuan held his bowl and stopped pushing it away.
The meat had been stewed very tender, with an unfamiliar hint of herbs and wood. He had thought he would find it hard to stomach, but as soon as he swallowed the first bite, warmth spread through his stomach. He ate the next few mouthfuls quickly.
Elder Shi added some broth to his bowl.
"Slow down. There's more."
Chen Xiuyuan slowed his chopsticks and asked, "What will Shi Yuan have me do tomorrow?"
"Start by cleaning up the scraps and learning to recognize beast meat. Do as much as you can. His tongue's a little stern, but he'll pick suitable work for you."
"Will your portion be enough?"
Elder Shi raised his eyes to him.
"When I was young, I ate more than you do. These days I sit at home. How could I still eat that much?"
After speaking, the old man moistened his lips with some broth and offered no further explanation.
Outside the courtyard, people were hurrying home. A child fell on the path and began wailing loudly. The woman following close behind pulled him up, brushed the dust from his knees, and pressed half a piece of cooked meat into his hand. His cries grew muffled, then soon disappeared behind another door.
Chen Xiuyuan lowered his head and looked at the broth in his bowl.
"That voice just now," Elder Shi suddenly asked, "was that someone from your family?"
He nodded.
"My mom."
Seeing the old man's slight confusion, he added, "My mother."
"Something she said was kept inside that thing?"
"Yes."
Elder Shi glanced toward the room.
"Then keep it safe. If the thing's broken, remember as much as you can while you can."
Chen Xiuyuan set down his bowl.
"I wrote it down."
The old man nodded and put away his chopsticks. Bracing himself against the edge of the table, he stood and moved the firewood beside the courtyard gate farther inside. He picked out several thick pieces and arranged them in the little stone trough before the gate.
The fire burned a little brighter than the one in the stove.
Chen Xiuyuan followed with his empty bowl and heard the old man begin singing softly as he poked at the firewood.
"Vast lay the wilds, cold blew the northern wind,
Battle robes were torn, blood not yet dry.
Long blades in hand, we guarded our homeland,
And gazed toward home beyond mountains piled high.
Souls, return along the rivers of old,
The courtyard fire burns bright, awaiting your return."
The old man's voice was quiet, the final few words drawn out slowly.
Chen Xiuyuan stood by the gate and waited until he had finished before asking, "Is that your tribe's song?"
"'Ballad of Awaiting Return.' People sing it elsewhere, too."
"For people leaving home?"
"Those leaving listen, and those seeing them off sing it, too. Some come back. Of others, only names remain. Speaking of them is better than having no one remember."
Elder Shi pushed a piece of wood that had not burned through farther into the fire.
Chen Xiuyuan watched the flames and remembered the kitchen's running water in his phone.
His mother was probably already waiting for word that he was safe.
"Elder Shi, how far can someone travel from here?"
"That depends on how capable you are."
The old man pointed outside. Beyond the courtyard gate, the mountains were gradually sinking into the night.
"When I was young, I traveled plenty of roads with the warriors. Ask me to walk them again now, and my legs would be the first to refuse. Shi Lei and the others can reach more places than those children; some people stronger even than the initiates have traveled farther than we have."
"How far?"
"Far enough that I've never been there. Ask me, and I couldn't tell you clearly."
Elder Shi answered frankly.
"If you remember where home is, don't let yourself perish here first. Eat your meals, heal your wounds, and learn what you can little by little. When the day comes that you can set out, ask someone who's traveled farther."
Chen Xiuyuan looked beyond the courtyard.
There were no lights beyond the mountains, only the occasional flicker of fire at the gate. He still did not know how many roads lay in that darkness, much less at which end of them his home might be.
His fingers found the folded itinerary in his pocket. Qin Chuan's whereabouts remained blank, and so did the direction home. First, he would have to become capable enough to make it out of these mountains.
"I'll go to the meat shed tomorrow morning," he said.
"I heard you. Don't say it a third time."
Elder Shi waved him inside, then carried the little stool back beside the fire and slowly sat down to rub his legs.
After returning to his room, Chen Xiuyuan did not go straight to sleep. He wrote the old ballad at the back of his notebook. When he copied "awaiting your return," his pen paused briefly. Then he placed the notebook beside the switched-off phone.
Leaning against the edge of the bed, he turned the notebook back to the page with his mother's words and laid it beside his pillow. He still had no cultivation technique, but at least there would be work he could do tomorrow morning. He would put these two hands to use first.
A light clack of stone came from the doorway.
He turned and saw that Elder Shi had placed a fine whetstone just inside the threshold, with the short knife beside it.
"The edge is chipped. When you get up tomorrow morning, I'll teach you to sharpen it."