Zhao Xiaobao found a spot full of wildflowers. She picked up a stick from the ground and hit the grass a few times. When nothing moved, she finally stepped forward and started pulling flowers and weeds.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, scattering across the ground and her face. As the wind blew, the light danced playfully.
“Auntie, are you making a flower crown?” Zhao Xi felt a bit uneasy seeing her sitting quietly without causing trouble.
“Yeah. Xiao Wu said he’d help me pick flowers, but he ran off,” Zhao Xiaobao pouted, a little unhappy. Luckily, she had many nephews—if one ran off, there was always another she could order around. “Xi’er, come help me.”
“Auntie, I’m digging a rabbit hole right now. I’m busy,” Zhao Xi said, reluctant. He wasn’t a little girl—how would he know how to make flower crowns? Catching fish or climbing trees to grab birds would suit him better.
“Then go bring Xiao Wu back.”
“Auntie, I’ll come help you right now.”
Zhao Xi didn’t dare leave her alone, nor did he dare take her to find his older brothers—they were digging out a snake hole. If she got scared, their grandparents would definitely scold them badly.
There was no shortage of wildflowers in the mountains. With one pull, you could gather a whole bunch—red, yellow, white. When the wind blew, the stems swayed gently, looking quite pretty.
The aunt and nephew cleared two patches of flowers. Zhao Xi wasn’t very good at delicate work—he didn’t have his grandfather’s skill of making anything look good. After a lot of effort weaving here and there, he managed to make two flower crowns. They weren’t exactly beautiful, but not ugly either. Zhao Xiaobao liked them a lot.
She kept both crowns for herself—one on her head and one around her neck. Feeling pretty, she forgot all about being upset.
After cheering her up, Zhao Xi went back to digging the rabbit hole.
Zhao Xiaobao played by herself for a while. When the excitement of the flower crowns faded and Xiao Wu and the others still hadn’t returned, she picked up a branch and started digging for wild vegetables nearby.
There were many edible wild greens this season, and she recognized some of them—her sisters-in-law had taught her. Shepherd’s purse, purslane, dandelion, wild onions, mint—these were everywhere in the mountains.
She especially liked shepherd’s purse. After blanching and mixing it with vinegar, it was very appetizing. It could also be chopped up for dumplings or omelets—very delicious.
She liked wild onions too. If she dug more, she could ask her mother to slice a bit of cured pork. Stir-fried cured pork with wild onions was incredibly fragrant.
As Zhao Xiaobao dug, she kept thinking about cured pork, and her mouth started watering.
She didn’t go far, staying within Zhao Xi’s sight as she pried at the soil with her stick. She got bored halfway and got distracted easily. After digging for a while, she lost patience and turned her attention to other things—lying on the ground watching ants move house, staring at unfamiliar insects, amusing herself quite happily.
Entertaining herself, she picked up another muddy branch and hopped around like a frog a few times, laughing and showing her little white teeth. Then she plopped down on the ground and casually pulled a nice-looking weed to start digging again.
Meanwhile, Zhao Xi finally broke through the rabbit hole and blocked the other end.
Seeing how unusually quiet his aunt was, he didn’t think much of it—as long as he could see her when he looked back. He carefully lit a fire and busied himself smoking the rabbit out.
“Xi’er, I dug up a radish!” Zhao Xiaobao’s cheerful voice came from not far away.
Smoke filled the area. The rabbit inside couldn’t stand it and ran out. Zhao Xi reacted quickly, lunging forward and grabbing it by the ears.
“I caught a rabbit!”
At the same time, Zhao Xiao Wu and the others pushed through the water plants and came out from the other side of the pond. Zhao Deng, walking in front, had a black snake slung over his shoulder. From far away, he shouted loudly:
“Auntie, Xi’er, I caught a snake! It’s huge—enough for a whole pot of soup!”
Three voices rang out at once, each more excited than the last.
The moment Zhao Xiaobao heard the word “snake,” she dropped the “radish” in her hand in fright.
She slowly turned her head and saw a headless snake draped over Zhao Deng’s shoulder like a black rope. As he ran, it swung back and forth, bloody and slick, getting closer and closer to her.
The scene was too shocking and terrifying. Tears instantly filled Zhao Xiaobao’s round eyes. She threw her head back, shut her eyes, opened her mouth, and let out a loud cry that echoed through the forest.
“Waaah—!”
“A-Deng!” Zhao Xiao Wu, who was walking at the back, jumped forward and smacked Zhao Deng on the head. “I told you to hide it, but you just had to carry it on your shoulder like that! Now you’ve scared Auntie into crying. Just wait till Grandpa and Grandma deal with you!”
“I already smashed its head—how could Auntie still be scared?” Zhao Deng scratched the back of his head, trying to defend himself. But seeing Zhao Xiaobao crying loudly, he froze in place, not knowing what to do.
“You go home first,” Zhao Gu said, pushing him from behind and lowering his voice. “Tell Mom to prepare the snake meat. Dig a hole and bury the skin—don’t let Auntie see it. And when it’s cooked, just don’t tell her it’s snake meat. She won’t recognize it.”
When she smells the meat, even if she realizes it, her mind will pretend not to.
Zhao Deng nodded quickly. “Then I’ll head back first. Second Brother, make sure you calm Auntie down. Don’t let her complain when she gets home—I don’t want Grandpa and Grandma chasing me with a pole!”
“Just go already!” Zhao Gu kicked him on the backside. If he hadn’t caught the snake, they wouldn’t have let him show off like this.
Zhao Deng chuckled and ran down the mountain.
After he left, the brothers hurried over to comfort Zhao Xiaobao. They praised her flower crown, said she was capable for digging so many wild vegetables by herself, and promised they’d beat up Zhao Deng when they got home. They even said the snake had already been thrown away and they were just playing with it—they wouldn’t bring it home…
After a long time, they finally managed to calm her down.
Sniffling, Zhao Xiaobao directed them to gather the wild vegetables on the ground. But when she saw them roughly bundling everything together with random grass, tears welled up again. These were the wild onions she had worked so hard to dig up. She had been thinking all along about asking her mother to cook cured pork with wild onions. She hadn’t dug much of the other greens—she focused almost entirely on the wild onions. But since they were already here, they couldn’t go back empty-handed, so the boys quickly dug up a bunch of whatever edible greens they could find nearby.
“That’s enough. Let’s head back—Grandpa will start worrying,” Zhao Xiao Wu said. The boys immediately packed up and prepared to go down the mountain.
Zhao Xiaobao walked over to him on her own. As soon as her eldest nephew crouched down, she quickly climbed onto his back, still holding the “radish” she had dug up.
Only then did Zhao Xiao Wu notice what she was holding. It looked like a radish, but also a bit like the kudzu root Uncle Youcai had dug up last year. Looking closely, it even resembled a small child—with arms and legs, round and sturdy.
But two thicker roots at the bottom had been broken off, making it look a bit odd.
“Auntie, what is that?” Zhao Xiao Wu asked curiously. “Where did you dig it up? Can you eat it?”
“I dug it over there,” Zhao Xiaobao pointed in a direction. Talking about it made her a bit unhappy again. She had asked Xi’er to help her, but he refused, saying making flower crowns had already delayed him from catching rabbits—he wouldn’t help her dig weeds. She had even broken one of her sticks from digging so much.
“Radish soup is really tasty. Xiao Wu, you’ve had it before, haven’t you? Don’t you remember?” Zhao Xiaobao wrapped her arms around her nephew’s neck, swinging her legs happily. She felt quite proud—being able to dig up a radish in the mountains. Her parents would surely praise her when they got home.
After all, who had ever heard of someone digging up a radish in the mountains? Hehe.
“I don’t think it looks like a radish,” Zhao Xiao Wu said doubtfully. There was no such small radish, and it didn’t look juicy either.
But he couldn’t throw it away—who would dare throw away Auntie’s things?
So he just carried it along.
The group of boys ran noisily down the mountain. When they reached the ditch where they had picked toon shoots, Old Man Zhao was tying up firewood—two large bundles taller than a person, along with a basket full of pine needles and dry leaves for kindling, piled high.
“Dad!”
“Grandpa!”
Old Man Zhao turned at the sound and saw Zhao Xi holding two rabbits tied by their legs, Zhao Gu and the others carrying wild vegetables, and Xiaobao happily swinging a muddy root in her hand. A smile appeared on his old face. “Why are only you here? Where’s A-Deng?”
“A-Deng went home first. Didn’t you see him, Grandpa?” Zhao Gu handed the wild vegetables to Zhao Feng and went over to carry the firewood.
“No. Maybe he took another path,” Old Man Zhao said, helping lift the basket. Zhao Gu hoisted it up easily. Though it looked like a lot, the pine needles and leaves weren’t heavy when packed down. He even felt he could carry more.
Old Man Zhao shouldered the two bundles of firewood and carried the small basket of toon shoots. The whole family slowly made their way down the mountain.
The sun was high in the sky—it was close to noon.
From halfway down the mountain, the entire village came into view.
The long river outside the village shimmered under the sunlight like a fallen galaxy. In the crisscrossing fields, farmers carrying hoes walked along the ridges. Around the village, thin smoke rose from kitchen chimneys. Children ran along the paths, and faintly, the barking of the surviving big yellow dog from Zhao Youcai’s house could be heard.
Walking at the back, Old Man Zhao kept glancing at the “wild root” in his daughter’s hand. The more he looked, the stranger it seemed. Near the foot of the mountain, he couldn’t hold back anymore and asked:
“Xiaobao, what are you holding? It looks a bit familiar…”
“It’s a radish Xiaobao dug!” Zhao Xiaobao grabbed two thick roots and turned to him, swinging it around. “Dad, when we get home, ask Mom to cut some cured pork and make radish soup!”
Cured pork with wild onions, cured pork with radish—meat, meat, all meat on the table.
Old Man Zhao felt his eyesight was still good for another ten or twenty years. But the more he looked at that thing, the more it resembled something he had once seen in his youth—when he took his wife to a medical clinic, he saw a wealthy old lady buy a piece of ginseng at a high price.
The only difference was that the ginseng had been placed neatly in an exquisite box, clean and spotless, even its roots white.
But the thing in Xiaobao’s hand had just been dug out of the soil. Some roots were broken, and it was covered in wet dirt. Though it looked dirty, its shape still vaguely resembled a human figure—short, thick limbs, with over a dozen roots extending from the bottom, some long, some short…
Her chubby little hand gripped one of the thicker roots, holding it upside down like a baby, swinging it back and forth—just like his trembling heart at that moment.
“…”