Chapter 31: A Little Squirrel

His father’s embarrassment made it plain he had no answer.

“Father,” Zuo Shaoyang said, “I brought some pills. Three-Ingredient White Pills and so on. Which should we use?”

The suggestion gave Zuo Gui something to grasp.

“Mm… the child has an excess of phlegm. Let’s try Three-Ingredient White Pills.”

A ready-made pill required no prescription or decocting, so cinnamon twig need not enter this treatment.

Three-Ingredient White Pills, San Wu Bai Wan, were the pill form of Three-Ingredient White Powder from the *Treatise on Cold Damage*. Widely used in the Tang, the formula warmed and purged cold excess, cleared phlegm and broke up accumulations.

At first glance it sounded suitable. But the immediate issue was not clearing phlegm. It was extinguishing wind, calming convulsions and restoring consciousness, so the child could cough without suffocating.

Otherwise surgery would be necessary. Zuo Shaoyang had neither the proper instruments nor prepared medicines. Operating with an ordinary blade and no anaesthetic was far too dangerous.

Three-Ingredient White Powder could not achieve what he needed.

He had mentioned it only to prompt his father into choosing something he could secretly replace.

Among the remedies made during his sleepless night was Purple Snow, one of the three cooling treasures. It did not appear until after the middle Tang; no one in the early dynasty knew it. It cleared heat and opened the orifices, extinguished wind and stopped spasms. For childhood convulsions due to high fever from various causes, its fever-reducing, spasm-relieving and consciousness-restoring effects could be immediate.

That was what he meant to use.

Pleased that his father had taken the hint, he opened the medicine chest and selected a Purple Snow pill.

He bent beside the child’s ear.

“Can you hear me?”

The boy managed a faint nod.

Good. The attack was recent; some awareness remained. Had he fallen unconscious and lost the ability to swallow, medicine would have required a tube through the nose into the stomach. Zuo Shaoyang had learnt the technique, but where could he find a suitable tube now?

He removed the tongue depressor and loudly asked the child to open his mouth, helping by pressing his cheeks. Dazed though he was, the boy understood enough to try.

Zuo Shaoyang put in the pill, bit the stopper from the water gourd at his waist and poured a little water into his mouth.

“Good boy. Swallow.”

With an effort, the child gulped it down.

Zuo Shaoyang breathed out and shouldered the chest.

“Quickly, take him into town. We’ll come with you and watch him on the way.”

Moved by such responsibility, the father nodded repeatedly.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

The elder and the mother bowed too. They knew travelling doctors had their limits, but having these two along was better than going alone.

The tenants lifted the couch and hurried from the village. The father, mother and steward went in front, the two physicians behind.

Outside, the path sloped downhill. Laohuai stood almost at the summit. Two days of snow had left the track muddy, and fear of slipping kept their pace slow.

They had gone less than an incense stick’s burning time when the child began coughing violently.

His father went pale and called a halt. In her haste, his mother slipped into the mud. Crying for her son, she scrambled up without a thought for her clothes and caught him as he bent over coughing.

“How are you, my child?”

His father called anxiously too.

Zuo Shaoyang felt reassured.

“Coughing is good! Let him cough. He must bring the phlegm up before it blocks his breathing.”

Understanding, the parents brightened. His mother held him and gently patted his back.

“Let me look.”

They moved aside. After examining him, Zuo Shaoyang turned happily to his father.

“The fever’s eased, the spasms are much less severe and he can cough. Your medicine really works!”

Zuo Gui stared, astonished and delighted. He had plainly not expected this.

The parents were overjoyed. His mother held him and began to weep.

“Not now,” Zuo Shaoyang said. “Keep moving. He’s more alert, but his cough is weak. He may still be unable to clear the phlegm. We must reach a physician in town, and the underlying illness needs treating or the convulsions may return.”

She stopped crying. At the father’s order they continued downhill.

Halfway down, a mountain song drifted up the path:

A spider spins beneath the eaves;
the wild wind snaps its nine-strand strings.
Broken threads are joined once more;
scattered threads are drawn full round.

The familiar voice stirred Zuo Shaoyang.

Far below, at a bend beside an osmanthus tree, stood a woman with a load of firewood propped behind her. She was too distant to recognise.

As the song ended, she bent beneath the carrying pole and started uphill. The bundles were so large they hid her.

Both the voice and the load seemed familiar.

The firewood brought a face to his mind: the dark-skinned girl who had rescued him from the cliff when he first arrived here.

Could it be her?

She came closer and stepped aside for the sick child’s party, though the bundles still obscured her.

As they passed, he saw the embroidered hem of her skirt fluttering in the wind. With it came that tender scent of spring grass.

Delighted and distracted, he slipped and landed squarely in the mud.

The girl saw it and burst out laughing.

Propping himself on his hands, he looked up. Dark skin, large liquid eyes, faint freckles beside her nose; a sturdy slender waist between her full figure and rounded hips.

It was her.

What a humiliating way to meet again.

He scrambled up, rubbing mud from his hands.

“Oh, it’s you! We meet again. You sing beautifully.”

She glanced at him, still laughing softly, but said nothing. Once the couch had passed, she took up her way.

She loved singing but disliked talking. He was used to that.

As she came alongside, something squeaked inside her clothes. Curious, he leaned to look. A furry little head poked out at the opening of her jacket and trembled in the cold.

“What have you got?”

She stopped and smiled.

“A little squirrel.”

“A squirrel? May I see?”

Without putting down her load, she nodded and took it out with one hand.

He received it carefully in both palms. Golden-furred and no bigger than a child’s fist, it still had its eyes closed. Its little mouth opened as it sniffed about. A cut between its brows had clotted.

“Did you catch it?”

For once, she had plenty to say.

“No. While I was gathering wood, I saw several weasels fighting two squirrels in a tree. The squirrels fought fiercely. They scratched the weasels bloody and blinded one in an eye. But there were too many weasels. The little squirrels were bitten.

“I threw clods at them and drove them away, then climbed up. The two adults were badly hurt and soon died. The weasels had killed the babies in the nest too, except this one. Its head was scratched. I don’t know if it’ll live.

“I felt sorry for it and brought it back. Since you like it, and you’re a physician, keep it. You can treat its wound.”

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