pushed Xiaozhuo away in a fit of pique and walked the slope alone until she reached an old willow tree, where she saw the frog again. Now that Xiaozhuo was seemingly not around, it had returned, hiding timidly under the willow tree, thinking human thoughts. With the arrival of the frog, Binu once again saw the gaunt shape of the drowned mountain woman, dressed in black and wearing her straw hat. The woman was crouched under the willow tree waiting for Binu; the woman’s ghost was waiting for her. Binu was able to see the ghost, because no one knows sorrow better than sorrowful people, and she felt a deep sadness for the mountain woman. Knowing how hard it had been for a blind woman to search alone for her son, Binu had sought a companion to travel north with her. The Peach Village women had avoided Binu and her idea like the plague. Even wild geese fly north and south in flocks, and anyone setting out on a long journey is on the lookout for companions. From summer to autumn Binu had looked in vain without finding a single one. Then along came the frog, which was not her ideal companion, but which she could not drive away because it was intent on travelling with her.
‘You are too eager,’ Binu said to the frog. ‘How can I set out before I have buried my gourd? You are a frog, hopping from place to place in search of your son, and you are more fortunate than I am, because when I die I will become a gourd. If I do not bury myself, I will be left at the side of the road waiting for a passerby to find me.’
The frog kept its vigil beneath the willow tree, listening intently to Binu’s footsteps. Holding the gourd to her bosom, Binu took a turn around the willow tree. Towards the east, she saw a hillside covered with some waterlogged locust trees. Off to the west, she saw higher ground and an old juniper tree, the tips of its high branches ringed with an auspicious sunset. But someone had set loose a small herd of goats to graze there and, even if she drove them away, it was not the right spot; the villagers could find her too easily. ‘Peach Village is so big, why can I not find a place to bury my gourd?’ she cried.
Finally, she abandoned the search for the ideal burial spot of her imagination and, looking morose, turned her attention to the willow tree. ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘You are not a shady tree to which people pray for good fortune, and I am not blessed with wealth and status, so neither of us can afford to be choosy about the other.’ She looked at the locust trees to the east and the old juniper to the west. ‘Let the others have their pines, their cypresses and their locust trees, I don’t care. This willow is the one I want.’
The young Xiaozhuo had by then climbed the heights of North Mountain to look down at Binu as she performed her solemn, secretive burial rite for the gourd. He had rich experience in burials: he had helped his father bury his grandfather, he had helped his mother bury his father, and finally he had buried his mother all by himself. Other youngsters would be interested in a gourd burial, but not Xiaozhuo – he had become too used to burying people. Nevertheless, he followed Binu’s progress with keen interest.
Binu was crouched, busying herself beneath the willow tree, and when she stood up again, the gourd was nowhere to be seen. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Xiaozhuo trumpeted down the mountain, ‘Come and look. Binu has buried herself!’ The words were barely out of his mouth when he choked on a gust of wind, which stopped him from revealing Binu’s secret. It would be the last time he laid eyes on his aunt. Everyone, including him, had heard the prediction by the Kindling Village sorceresses that she was fated to die on the road. Xiaozhuo considered the spot beneath the willow tree a good place and thought Binu’s choice of burial site was the only wise thing she’d done. On the day before she left Peach Village, Binu buried her gourd, and so buried herself in her hometown in advance of her death.
The mountains around Bluegrass Ravine had been badly eroded by heavy human traffic, until what had once been a steep slope had been flattened out and become almost unrecognizable. The area was densely populated, and each gust of wind carried smells of fried cake and cow manure. It was one of Blue Cloud Prefecture’s border regions. About thirty li away was the legendary Blue Cloud Pass, beyond which lay Pingyang Prefecture, a seemingly boundless expanse of cultivated flatland. People said that the King’s horse-drawn carriages were speeding across that plain on a mysterious southern excursion.
Binu walked on until she spotted wheeled carts, which were drawn by donkeys and oxen, as the horses had all been consigned up north. Equipped with brass bells, they were harnessed to carts and assembled at the side of the road to wait for heavy loads. There in Bluegrass Ravine, the animals showed their diverse natures: the oxen, taken from dreary fields, loudly snorted confusion, while the donkeys, suddenly highly valued, voiced a kind of heady arrogance.
Countless box-like constructions had been put up at the side of a red clay road leading down the mountain. Binu could not tell if they had been built for royalty or wealthy gentry; it was the first time she had seen buildings like these. Flags hung from tall poles, most with a colourful word written on them. Binu could not read, so she asked one of the donkey-cart drivers what it said. Clearly he couldn’t read either, for he stood there blinking for a moment, and then hazarded a guess. With a contemptuous glance, he said, ‘Can’t read, is that it? I would say that the word is “money”. What else could it be, since everything around here costs money.’
Blue grass adorned the mountain pass area like gold dust. Even during times of war, it grew in crazy profusion, until it was said that Bluegrass Ravine flourished because of its special grass, gradually evolving into Blue Cloud Prefecture’s most prosperous market town. As she made her way along the road, Binu met many women and children carrying blue baskets, and she assumed that they too were travelling north. ‘What would we go north to do?’ they asked her. ‘It would be suicidal. No, we are on our way to Bluegrass Ravine to gather grass. Ten baskets of it can be sold for one sabre coin.’
Binu looked around her and noticed a blue aura over the mountains; in the sunlight the blue grass was, truly, blue. The shabbily dressed grass-gatherers spread out and followed the stream, looking for thickets of grass, then eventually came together and, even though Binu was at the base of the mountain, she could see them up on the mountain fighting over clumps of grass. From a distance, the glowing fury of people scrambling on the mountain reminded her of wild animals fighting over food.
‘Are you here to gather grass too? If so, why are you carrying a bundle on your head? And where are your basket and your scythe?’ It was a donkey-cart driver in a green, turban-like headdress, a man of indeterminate age, with a bushy beard and unkempt sideburns. The look in his eyes was an uncanny mixture of evil and warmth.
‘No, I’m not. I was told that there are donkey carts in Bluegrass Ravine that can take me north,’ Binu said. ‘Elder Brother, will you take your donkey cart up north?’
‘To do what? Commit suicide?’ the carter replied, cruelly. He seemed to cradle his hands, as if cold, and raised a bare foot. He studied the bundle on Binu’s head out of the corner of his eye, trying to imagine what it contained. Then, without warning, he kicked Binu and demanded, ‘What’s in the bundle? Open it up and let me see!’
‘Why do you want to inspect it?’ Binu asked as she lifted the bundle down. ‘You see,’ she added as she carelessly undid the wrapping, ‘it’s nothing. It may look impressive, but it isn’t worth much: just a winter coat for my man, and a frog.’
‘Did you say a frog? You’re carrying a frog in that bundle?’ The carter was flabbergasted. His eyes lit up like a lantern, and he started to go through the contents. ‘A frog, you say, well I’ll have to see about that. Are you from Huangdian? Those people take a rooster with them everywhere they go, to lead the way. But a frog? How can a frog lead the way if you hide it in your bundle?’
‘I am not from Huangdian, Elder Brother. I live in Peach Village, on the other side of the mountain. My frog is blind and cannot lead me anywhere. I must lead it.’
‘How can you say you’re not from Huangdian? Your accent gives you away. You people are too sly to carry a bundle that is worth nothing. There must be a ghost in it.’
Binu did not know how to prove that she was from Peach Village,