Chapter 1
Edward Quan ·
On her deathbed, my grandmother made me marry the simpleminded man who lived in the mountains. She said he could keep me alive.
After the wedding, strange things began happening in the village. When night fell, ghosts roamed the roads.
Every spirit gave our home a wide berth. The villagers said the fool I had married was born under a lone, baleful star, one that could subdue ghosts.
Only I knew they weren’t being subdued.
They were afraid of him.
Last night, I watched him twist the head off a vengeful ghost. Then he turned and gave me a guileless smile.
“Wife... hungry.”
1
My name is Jiang Yu. I had been sickly since birth, my fate as fragile as paper. A fortune-teller said I would not live past twenty.
Grandmother refused to accept it. She tried everything: prayers to gods and Buddhas, doctors, remedies. Somehow, she kept me stumbling through life until I was nineteen.
But a month before my twentieth birthday, she reached the end of hers.
As she lay dying, she gripped my hand and made me promise one thing: I would marry Shen Shuyan, the fool who lived on the mountain behind the village.
“Xiaoyu, listen to me. Only he can save your life.”
Her clouded eyes pleaded with me.
Shen Shuyan was the village’s well-known simpleton. Orphaned young, he lived alone in a ramshackle wooden cottage up the mountain. He was beautiful, his eyes as clear as a mountain stream, but his mind was slow. He could only smile vacantly. He couldn’t even put together a complete sentence.
Marry a fool...
My life might as well be over.
But looking at Grandmother’s withered hand, I finally nodded through my tears.
After I agreed, she breathed her last.
Three days later, in a hastily prepared red wedding dress, I was half pushed, half dragged into Shen Shuyan’s home by several village women.
No banquet. No guests. Just a cold, empty house.
He sat on the edge of the bed in red clothes that didn’t fit, holding a wildflower he had picked somewhere. When he saw me, he broke into a foolish grin and held it out.
“For... for wife.”
It was the first time he called me his wife. An ache rose in my chest. I turned away without taking the flower.
That night, I lay on the cold bed, listening to the mountain wind howl outside. I didn’t sleep.
Shen Shuyan slept soundly, curled in a corner of the bed like a harmless little animal.
From that day on, I was the wife of Shen Shuyan, the fool.
By day, I washed clothes, cooked, and cared for that dilapidated house.
He followed me everywhere, trailing after me like a little tail.
He couldn’t hold a conversation. He simply smiled, occasionally uttering a few words.
“Wife.” “Pretty.” “Hungry.”
The villagers looked at me with pity and contempt.
“What a sin. A good girl like that, married off to a fool.”
“It’s that damned grandmother of hers. Who knows what she was thinking?”
I let their words pass. I only wanted to live quietly until the end, fulfilling Grandmother’s last wish.
But the peace didn’t last long.
Strange things began happening in the village...
2
Widow Li’s household, at the eastern end of the village, was the first to suffer.
Every chicken she owned died in a single night. Each had a ring of dark bruising around its neck, as though someone had strangled it.
She sat outside her door wailing, cursing whoever had done it to die without descendants.
The village head brought people to investigate. They found nothing and eventually let the matter drop.
Then Butcher Wang, from the western end, fell into the river on his way home one night and nearly drowned.
After being rescued, he lay delirious with fever, muttering, “There’s something in the water...”
“Don’t pull me...”
Panic swept through the village.
The old people said something unclean lurked in the mountains. Nobody was to go out after dark.
Strangely, while the whole village was in turmoil, the shabby home Shen Shuyan and I shared remained unnaturally quiet.
Even the nighttime insects fell silent.
It unsettled me, but mostly I felt lucky.
One evening, dinner was ready and he still hadn’t returned.
Usually, he clung to me. By mealtime, he would already be waiting at the table with his little stool.
Worried, I took a flashlight and went looking.
The mountain night was pitch-black. Wind moaned through the woods like weeping ghosts.
My voice shook as I called.
“Shen Shuyan? Where are you?”
When I reached the burial ground behind the mountain, my legs nearly gave way.
In the flashlight’s beam, someone lay on the ground.
A thug from the next village. A few days earlier, he had harassed me until Shen Shuyan drove him away with stones.
His face was pale and bluish, his eyes staring up at the sky.
He was dead.
I screamed and turned to run.
Two steps later, I collided with a warm embrace.
I looked up into Shen Shuyan’s clean, untroubled face. He held a bunch of wild onions, still muddy, as though he had just pulled them from the earth.
“Wife. Don’t be scared.”
He patted my back awkwardly, as though soothing a frightened kitten.
Still shaking, I pulled him home.
The next day, the body was discovered. The whole village erupted.
The village head brought in a spirit medium from town.
She walked around the village, then pointed toward our home.
“Something unclean lives among you,” she declared gravely. “Its baleful aura is too strong. It has offended the mountain god!”
Every eye turned toward Shen Shuyan and me.
3
The medium’s words struck the village like a stone dropped into still water.
The way people looked at us changed completely.
Pity and contempt became fear and hatred.
Widow Li went further. She blocked our doorway, pointed at my face, and shouted, “I said it all along! Since this woman married here, we haven’t had a peaceful day! Her cursed fate destroys her own family, and now she’s married a fool. Two jinxes together, bringing disaster on the whole village!”
“Drive them out!”
“Yes! Get rid of them!”
The crowd grew more and more worked up.
I clutched my clothes, my face bloodless.
Shen Shuyan seemed not to hear. He stood in front of me, smiling foolishly at Widow Li.
“Don’t... don’t... scold my wife.”
His attempt to protect me seemed heartbreakingly feeble.
At last, the village head intervened.
“Enough! Hold your tongues!”
He looked at Shen Shuyan, who was now shrinking behind me. A flicker of wariness crossed his eyes.
“We don’t know what’s happening yet. Stop talking nonsense.”