Chapter 12
Chapter 12: Mother’s Death
“Mother!”
Jin An threw himself onto Madam Jiang’s body as it began to stiffen, sobbing until he couldn’t breathe.
Grandpa Ling dragged him back, voice rough with grief.
“Don’t let your tears fall on her. If her soul can’t let go, she won’t walk the road below. She’ll linger.”
Jin Sui didn’t have the luxury of breaking apart.
She pulled clean water from her pocket space and wiped Madam Jiang’s face and hands. She wrapped her in the clean blanket, careful and gentle, as if softness could make up for the end.
“We have to bury Mother quickly,” Jin Sui said, forcing her voice steady. “If the soldiers find her, they’ll drag her to the mass pit and burn her with the others.”
Jin An had seen the burning pits. Fear snapped him upright.
He wiped his face hard and—shockingly resilient for eight years old—helped Jin Sui clean Madam Jiang’s blood away.
Grandpa Ling moved to dig a grave outside.
Jin An caught him.
With trembling fingers, he removed the plain wooden hairpin from Madam Jiang’s hair. Calling it a hairpin was generous. It was a smoothed stick, barely enough to hold hair up.
Jin An twisted one end.
A key slid out.
“Grandfather,” Jin An said, voice hoarse, “Mother said there’s a box in Father’s coffin. It holds evidence to clear Father’s name.”
Grandpa Ling stared at it, then sighed and tucked it into his robes without a word.
Jin Sui watched him and felt something uneasy twist in her chest.
As dusk fell, they worked fast.
Grandpa Ling chose the burial spot by divination. Jin An gathered fresh leaves and lined the shallow grave, because Madam Jiang didn’t even have a straw mat to wrap her body.
Together, Jin Sui and Grandpa Ling carried Madam Jiang to the grave. They covered her, stacked stones in a ring, and left no marker.
Jin An stood there a long time, staring, memorizing every rock and tree, as if he could carve the place into his bones.
One day, he would return.
One day, he would move her grave and bury her properly.
The talisman paper Grandpa Ling had carried all this way finally found its use. He burned every last scrap before the grave.
Softly, he said, “Go in peace. I’ll take care of the two children.”
Jin Sui pulled Jin An into her arms.
At first the boy went stiff, refusing comfort.
Then the wind shifted. The burned talisman ash spiraled upward in thin, dancing circles.
Jin An whispered, “Mother.”
He broke.
He clung to Jin Sui’s waist and cried until his whole body shook, grief pouring out at last.
Something in Jin Sui shifted.
No lingering obsession pushed her now—only the raw fact of this small boy, too young for this kind of pain.
She held him tighter.
After the last talisman burned down, Grandpa Ling’s voice turned sharp with urgency.
“The guards outside are strict. If we want out, we go in the dark.”
He looked between them.
“Come. No delay. We leave Luo City tonight.”
Jin An’s name was still on the exile list bound for the Yan Lands. Jin Sui’s name was still on a wanted notice.
If the soldiers sensed anything strange, the three of them would die here.
Jin Sui stripped off her Daoist robe and shoved it onto Jin An.
“Don’t be afraid. Stay close to Sister.”
Afraid the boy’s strength would fail, she made him drink a bag of glucose water. She handed out three energy bars, and the three of them ate while they moved.
Jin Sui leaned close to Jin An.
“Don’t look.”
Ahead, sick people appeared from behind trees and stones—dozens of them, gaunt, coughing, eyes wild. They glanced at Grandpa Ling and the children but didn’t stop them. They were busy whispering to each other.
“Tonight it’s not Luo Yan Wang on duty,” one said urgently. “We have to escape. We can’t stay in this hellhole another moment.”
Grandpa Ling yanked Jin Sui and Jin An behind a tree. He squatted and tossed his divination coins into his palm.
Jin Sui was about to argue—his divination wasn’t always reliable, and chaos might be cover—when the valley mouth exploded with fire.
Then came the arrows.
One man ran faster than the rest and reached the valley’s edge.
Jin Sui’s stomach heaved. The scene was so bloody it felt unreal.
They retreated through the underbrush, nearly crawling, while a man’s roar carried through the night.
“Not a single one gets out! We can’t let the plague reach Luo City!”
Grandpa Ling looked back once.
Soldiers packed the valley mouth. Torchlight and fire turned half the sky into a burning wound.
He whispered, voice shaking, “Back. Back to the cave.”
They stumbled back into the cave and fought for breath.
But soon enough, torchlight flickered through the trees.
The soldiers came into the forest. They dragged bodies into piles and burned them, one after another, as if fire could erase sickness.
Grandpa Ling started to push Jin Sui and Jin An deeper into the cave, but Jin Sui grabbed his sleeve.
“Even if we hide here forever, we can’t escape the valley,” she said, voice low and hard. “And even if we slip out, Luo City has checkpoints. We’ll be caught.”
She pointed into the dark mountains.
“Grandpa… we should go deeper. Cross the Xiao Han Mountain Range. It leads toward Chang An.”
Jin An nodded fiercely.
“Yes. We have to go back to Chang An. We have to fulfill Mother’s wish.”
Grandpa Ling hesitated, staring south—the direction of home—then at the torches creeping nearer.
At last, he made the decision.
“Fine. We cross Xiao Han first.”
Jin Sui heard the weight in that word.
Cross first.
After that… who knew?
They bent low and slipped into the pathless forest.
They’d gone barely a hundred meters when Jin An stumbled and fell hard.
Jin Sui grabbed him.
In the moonlight she saw what he’d tripped over.
A corpse.
A boy’s corpse, about Jin An’s height.
One thought snapped through Jin Sui’s mind.
She gripped Jin An’s collar.
“Do you have a brand mark?”
In this era, convicts were branded. Men were often branded on the face. Women and children were branded on the back of the hand, behind the ear—sometimes elsewhere.
Jin An pulled his collar open.
On his chest was a blue brand as large as a bowl.
Jin Sui’s chest clenched.
A child this small, branded this big—how much had he suffered before he even understood what his “crime” was supposed to be?