28: The Upper Pine

The upper hills, in the days after the ridge above the bandit farm, were a country that received them.

Heizi did not, at first, have a word for it. He understood — by the second morning in the upper pines — that the country had a different temperament from the lower foothills they had walked through. The lower foothills had been a country in transit; the country had been on its way somewhere, with paths laid down by men going from one valley to the next, and the country had been impatient with anyone who lingered. The upper hills were not on their way anywhere. The upper hills had been here a long time and would be here a long time, and the small old herders' paths on them did not, by the look of them, arrive at any particular destination — they wandered up a slope, lost themselves in a stand of pine, came back down a draw, picked up again at a small spring, and ran on, in a small unhurried way, through a country that had no business being in a hurry.

The country, by the second morning, was beginning to put out the first real green of the year. The small leaves on the brush were small and tightly curled and the color of fresh young tea. The grass at the edges of the small old paths was beginning to push up between last year's dry stalks. The pines, which had been silver-grey in the lower foothills' winter, were beginning to show, at the tips of the new growth, a faint yellow-green of new candles.

It was, Heizi understood, the third moon coming into the fourth. Three weeks on the road. The year was turning. He had not, in three weeks, paid any attention to the year.

He paid attention now.

He paid attention because the lame boy was walking better, and the smith's son had stopped jumping at small sounds, and Heizi himself had — for the first time since the ridge — slept eight straight hours under the upper pines on the first night. Three boys in a country that had received them could afford, at last, a small interval of paying attention to the year.

They walked north through the second day at a slow even pace. Tie-zhu's foot, in the new broad-heeled sandals, took the upper paths well; the small unfinished elm-wood bird in his coat, against the half-mended seam of his belt, moved softly with each step.

By the third afternoon they came to a small open shoulder of slope where three small old herders' paths crossed and a small cold spring came up out of a flat slab of grey rock. The spring was the kind of spring that herders had been resting cattle at for some generations; the slab around it had been worn smooth by hooves. Around the spring, perhaps thirty paces back into the brush, was a small flat place where someone had — many years ago — laid a low ring of field stones for a fire.

There were no fresh ashes in the ring.

Heizi went to the ring and crouched at the rim. He put his hand into the small black depression at the center. The depression was cold. The black was old. It had — by the small look of the small charred sticks at the edges — perhaps two seasons since any fire had been laid in it.

He stood up.

"Brothers."

They came over.

"We will rest here. Two nights. Three, perhaps. The lame brother's foot needs another day. The wood is here, and there is no fresh sign that anyone has been at this place since the autumn. We will lay a fire — small, low, only at evening — and we will sleep around it. We will hunt the slope behind. There will be hares in the brush; the country has been turning, and the small green is up, and the hares are out at this hour. We have not eaten meat in eight days, and the lame brother's foot would heal faster on meat."

Wang Er nodded.

Tie-zhu nodded.

"How," Wang Er said.

Heizi paused.

He had thought, on the path the past two days, about this. He had no bow. He had no spears. He had Old Zhang's old militia knife at his belt, and the small charcoal-burner's knife was — was buried with Ah Si in the right palm, under perhaps four hands of earth at the eastern end of the third row in the burying ground at the hamlet of two wells. Wang Er had his hammer. Tie-zhu had his uncle's old paring knife. None of these were tools for taking a hare.

He had thought about snares.

He had seen snares laid, in the village, by Old Cui's eldest son in the autumn of his thirteenth year. The eldest son had laid them along the small old hare-runs in the brush at the back of the village, with a small loop of horsehair tied to a young flexible sapling. Heizi had watched. The hare had run into the loop; the loop had tightened; the sapling had sprung. He had not, at thirteen, paid the kind of attention he understood, in the upper hills, he should have paid. He remembered — vaguely — the geometry. He did not remember the specific knot.

He thought about it.

He thought slowly. He thought the way he had been thinking about things for some weeks now — quadrant by quadrant. The horsehair: he had no horse; he had, in the sleeve of his coat, a single small length of cord that Wei Da-niang had given him at the door — a length of dark hempen string, perhaps two feet long, that the woman had pressed into his palm at the last along with the pickled cabbage, with the small understanding of a woman of the country that a young man on a road would want a length of string for some unspecified purpose. The string was thin enough to make a snare. The string was thicker than horsehair; the loop would be more visible; the snare would be less effective; but with patience, in a good run, set against the run's prevailing line of approach, the snare would still catch.

The sapling: there were saplings on the slope. The loop knot: he could approximate, if he could not remember exactly.

The run: he did not yet know where the runs were on this slope.

"Wang Er — make the fire ring ready. Build a small even pile of the very dry needles at the center, with the smaller dry sticks above. Do not light it yet. We will not light until dusk. Lame brother — sit. Soak the foot. There is the cold spring two paces away. Take the bandage off. Soak. I will go on the slope with the cord."

He went on the slope.

He went up the slope behind the small flat place, through the brush, in the late afternoon light. He moved slowly. He looked at the brush.

He looked at the brush the way Old Zhang had taught him, in the noon hours of his fourteenth summer, to look at the lower field — slowly, low, kneeling at the edge to look at the underside of the green. He looked for the small worn places where small feet had pressed. He looked for the small flattened path of dry leaves where a small body had been pushed through. He looked for the small specific droppings — small, dark, round — that he had, in the village, been able to identify on the path beside the bean fields when there were too many of them to make sense of, and that Old Zhang had once shown him, briefly, in a small heap at the edge of a thicket, with the small remark *that is a hare's place; if you wish to know the hare, the place will tell you.*

He found a run.

It was a small narrow path through the new green, at the foot of a small old oak. The droppings were fresh — perhaps a day old. The flattening of the leaves was even on both sides; this was a run that was used in two directions, by perhaps several hares. The run came down the slope from a thicker stand of brush above, passed the foot of the oak, and continued down toward the cold spring — the hares were going to the spring at dusk, as they did everywhere they had water and brush.

He laid the snare.

He laid it slowly. He chose a sapling — a young flexible birch perhaps the height of a man, on the upper side of the run. He bent it down to the run's level. He tied the hempen cord at the top, in the simplest knot he could make that would hold under tension. He shaped the cord, at the lower end, into a small loop perhaps the breadth of a man's open hand — sized for a hare's head and shoulders, by his memory of Old Cui's son's snares. He set the loop standing in the run, at the height of a hare's running head, by propping it on two small forked twigs he stuck into the ground on either side of the run. He covered the lower part of the cord — where it went from the loop to the bent sapling — with a small handful of last year's leaves.

He stepped back. He looked at it.

The loop hung crookedly. The cord was too thick. The covering was too obvious.

He fixed the loop.

He fixed the cord — he could not, but he could try to, and the trying produced a slightly straighter setting.

He fixed the covering.

He stepped back. He looked.

The snare, in the late afternoon light, was the snare of a fifteen-year-old who had watched his headman's eldest son lay snares two summers ago and had not paid sufficient attention. The snare would, he understood, with high probability, fail.

He left it.

He went back down the slope.

By dusk, the lame boy's foot had been in the cold spring for an hour. Wang Er had laid the small fire ring carefully. Heizi added a few more dry pine needles to the pile, in the small old way Old Zhang had laid a kindling pile in the village. He took, from the inner pocket of his shirt, the small piece of flint Wang Er had been carrying since Cao Ergou's hut — they had, in three weeks, struck no fires of their own; the flint had not, in the inner pocket, been used. He struck.

The first spark did not catch.

The second did not.

The third caught a single pine needle. The needle smoked. The smoke threaded up. He bent close, very gently, and breathed on it. The pine needle gave way, slowly, to a small flame perhaps the size of a finger joint. The flame took the next needle. The next. The smaller sticks. By the time the small thin moon was up over the eastern slope, the small fire ring was holding a small steady fire perhaps the size of a man's head.

They sat around it.

The fire was the first fire Heizi had been beside, since the morning of the burning, that did not ask anything of him. It did not need to be put out. It did not need to be hidden. It did not need to be fought. It was a fire of his own laying, in a cold ring of old field stones, in a small flat place above a slope in the upper hills, and it was — for the duration of the small steady burning — his.

He had, until tonight, not understood that this was a thing.

He let himself sit beside it.

Wang Er, beside him, said, in the small low voice the smith's son had been using since the funeral: *the small spring is good water.*

"It is."

"And the cold takes the throb out of the foot."

Tie-zhu, on the other side of the fire, with his foot wrapped in a clean section of his bandage that Heizi had, that afternoon, washed in the spring and laid on a stone to dry, nodded.

"We will eat tonight," Heizi said. "If the snare holds."

Wang Er did not, on the firelight, look up.

"Brother. The snare."

"Yes."

"I have laid snares with my brother."

Heizi turned his head. The smith's son had not, until this moment, said anything about snares.

"Wang Er."

"My brother — the one who went on the canal in Da-ye three — used to lay snares behind our smithy. Old Cui's son taught him. He used a small four-strand twist of the cord we used at the forge — for binding the heavier hammer-heads. The four-strand twist was thinner than your hempen cord, brother, and it set straighter. But your hempen cord will work. Did you bend the sapling on the upper side or the lower?"

"The upper."

"That is right. The lower would pull the loop sideways at the moment of the run."

"I did the loop hand-wide."

"That is wide enough. Did you cover the cord between the loop and the sapling?"

"With leaves."

"How thick."

"Half a hand."

"That is too thick. The hare reads weight on its run. A half hand of leaves over the cord changes the texture of the run-floor. You want the cord covered only in the same kind of leaves as the rest of the run, in a layer no thicker than three or four leaves. Otherwise the hare will balk in front of it."

Heizi looked at him.

He had not, in three weeks, fully understood that Wang Er had been sitting on knowledge of this kind. He had assumed — without examining the assumption — that the smith's son had only the knowledge of forges and of hammers. He understood, on the firelight, that the assumption was the assumption of a young man who had not yet learned to ask a brother what he knew.

The third option. *Ask*. Wei Lao-han had said it.

"Wang Er. Will you come up the slope with me at first light. Will you fix the snare. Will you — will you teach me how to lay the next one."

The smith's son nodded.

"I will."

That night they ate a small portion of the millet and the dried fish and the salt and the wild greens. The portions were small. The bowls were not full. The fire burned down by the second hour of the watch. Heizi banked it slowly, in the small careful way Mei-er had banked the brazier in his foster father's house every night of his life — the small layering of ash above the embers, the small flat patting with the back of the hand, the small final breath of the embers settling.

He took the first watch.

The brush around them, in the small thin moon, was the brush of the upper hills; he had begun, by the third afternoon, to read its small night sounds; the small intermittent call of a high-branch owl was an upper-hills owl, with a different two-note pattern from the lower-hills owls; the wind in the pines was a slow steady wind that did not, in the upper hills, come up suddenly the way it had come up in the foothills; the small running of the cold spring was the small steady ordinary sound of water on rock that would, until the dry summer, never stop.

He listened.

He listened, on the watch, the way he had been learning to listen — for the shape of the silence.

The shape of the silence in the upper hills was wider than any silence he had been in yet. It opened upward. He understood, sitting at the small banked fire ring, that the upper hills were a country in which a young man could, if he allowed himself, hear a kind of quiet that the lower country had not had room for.

He let himself, for a quarter hour, hear it.

He did not, on the watch, dream.

He did not, on the watch, make any small decisions for the years ahead. He had been, for three weeks, making such decisions every night; tonight he made none. He sat at the small banked fire ring and listened, and the upper hills' silence opened around him, and the small thin moon went down behind the western pines, and the sky came clear above the small open shoulder of slope, and there were more stars than he had seen on any night of his life.

He counted, idly, a stretch of sky above the eastern slope.

He stopped counting at sixty.

He had, until tonight, not understood there were that many stars in any one piece of sky.

He let the stars sit above him. He listened. The owl called twice. The wind moved. The water ran. The lame boy and the smith's son slept the slow even sleep of brothers in a country that had, at last, received them.

In the morning, before the second cock, Heizi and Wang Er went up the slope in the dim grey to the small old oak above the cold spring.

The hare was in the snare.

The hempen cord — too thick, by Wang Er's reckoning — had nonetheless, by some small mercy of the upper hills, taken a young hare by the neck. The young hare had run, at the small first failure of the hempen cord's grip, in a small frantic circle around the foot of the oak, and the cord had worked itself tighter, and the sapling had, on the third tightening, sprung. The hare hung from the bent birch by the tightened loop, neck broken, eyes still open, the small soft body still warm.

Heizi stopped at the snare.

He did not, at first, take the hare down.

He looked at it.

It was a small hare. It was perhaps the size of a small cat — younger than the hares he had seen at Old Cui's son's snares in the village. It had grey fur with a small white belly. The eyes were open. The small mouth was open in a small last gasp, with a small bead of foam at the corner.

Wang Er, beside him, said: *brother.*

"Yes."

"It is a small one."

"Yes."

"Take it down. We will dress it at the spring. There is enough on it, for the three of us, for one good meal of meat. I will show you."

Heizi took the hare down. He took it with both hands. The small body was warm and limp. The neck under the cord was the soft warm neck of a small wild creature that had been, until perhaps half an hour ago, alive in this country, and was now in his palms.

He did not, on the slope, weep for the hare.

He carried the hare down to the spring.

The dressing was the work of perhaps a quarter hour. Wang Er, who had dressed many hares in the village's autumns, taught with the small low even voice he had been using since the funeral. He showed Heizi where to make the first cut at the throat — there, at the small natural crease of the neck, before the body cooled. He showed him how to peel the skin away from the small thin muscle without tearing — slowly, with the small care of a man removing a coat from a sleeping child. He showed him how to take the small soft inner organs out in a single careful movement, and how to keep, separately, the heart and the liver, which they would cook first in the fire because they did not keep, and how to discard the small bitter gall bladder.

Heizi worked slowly. The work was new in his hands. The hands were learning.

By the second hour after dawn the hare had been dressed. Wang Er had cut the small carcass into three even portions. Heizi was at the cold spring washing the small knife and the small thin hands and the small streaks of blood on his wrists. The blood, he noted, in the morning's clear light, ran off into the spring's small running channel and was carried, in a small thin pink ribbon, down the slab and into the small lower watercourse, where the country's slow cold water took it and carried it on, in the small unhurried way of a country that did not count.

He thought, briefly, of the streaks on his hands at the morning of the burying.

He let the thought come.

He let the thought go.

He had, on this morning, killed the first thing he had ever killed in his life. The first thing was a small hare on a slope in the upper hills, taken in a snare he had laid badly, by a hempen cord his foster father's wife's friend's daughter's mother had given him at a doorway he would not see again. The first thing was small. The first thing was warm. The first thing was now in three even portions on a flat stone beside a low fire ring in a small flat place above a cold spring.

He filed it.

He filed it not as the first kill — the small interior register did not, on this morning, want a column for kills — but as the first feeding. The first feeding of the brothers by his hand in this country. The small new beginning of a kind of work he was going to be doing for the rest of his life, by hands that were, for the moment, learning the small specific motion of a small thin knife at the throat of a small warm thing in a country that received them.

Wang Er, at the fire ring, was breathing the embers back into a small flame.

Heizi went to the fire.

The morning was the third morning of the upper pines, and they were going to eat meat.