“I’m really sorry, but could you wait a little bit, young hero?” said the old woman embarrassedly.
She tugged the young girl towards a flimsy metal cart that had been upturned in all the chaos from earlier. It clattered loudly when they turned it right-side up on its one wobbly wheel. The two of them started picking up all the things that were scattered on the ground and placing them back into the cart. Ru Meng hurried over to their side and started picking up things as well, but the old woman immediately put down whatever was in her arms to stop him.
After a lot of wrangling and very persistent words from the old woman (she had very strong arms for her age), Ru Meng reluctantly let go of the chunk of ore in his hands.
“Now you just go and sit on the rock over there while you wait for us, alright, young hero?”
But Ru Meng remained rooted to the spot. The old woman wouldn’t let him help (she kept looking back that he had nothing in his hands), but he didn’t want to sit down either. He looked around at all the other items that the young girl and the old woman were packing back into the cart. A pair of shovels, a pair of pickaxes with wobbly handles, a random assortment of oddly-shaped stones and metal ores, a small box of dirt-covered mushrooms and lichen that had been tipped onto the floor and of course, the still smoldering oil lamp on the ground.
The girl took out a light talisman with an anguished look and activated it as she put out the fire with a large cloth. The glass in the lamp had shattered into thousands of fine pieces when Ru Meng battered the hellrats over and over with it. The metal frame was badly bent from a combination of the fire and the repeated impacts. Ru Meng only now realized the damage he had done to it. He looked sheepishly at the young girl, who he now realized looked the same age as him, and mumbled an apology. The young girl was entirely too distracted and hadn’t heard him at all, but Ru Meng’s head was bent so low he couldn’t tell.
Ru Meng twiddled his thumbs while he waited for the woman and the girl to finish packing. At last, with a few well-aimed kicks at the wheel of the cart and a big jerk, they were ready to leave.
“Shall we?”
Ru Meng nodded and the three of them set off into another tunnel. The woman and the girl walked in front, Ru Meng trailing behind them. Several times he thought he saw the girl turning to glance at him, but that quickly stopped after the woman slapped the girl over the head. The rickety old cart clattered with its belly full of things, but despite its questionable condition, they were making substantial progress.
Fatigue was finally catching up with Ru Meng. The pain in his muscles had faded to a heavy numbness and his eyelids were threatening to droop with every step. How long had it been since he left the shelter? It couldn’t have been more than a few hours and yet, it felt like it had been weeks since he had seen his father. How did he get here, walking with two strangers he had only just saved from hellrats? He had no choice but to head to the market after all. The market, rife with crime and evil. How many more bandits like the one he encountered earlier were there, conducting their business of murder and pillage?
“Um…” Ru Meng opened his mouth to speak. The cart creaked as the old woman jolted in her step. Ru Meng hadn’t said anything in the past twenty minutes.
“Is the…the market safe?” he said timidly.
“The market? Is that why you’re going to the Nameless Town?” the old woman replied, a hint of something uneasy beneath her voice.
Ru Meng nodded and said, “I heard there are all sorts of bad people there.”
The old woman laughed nervously, “It’s the Nameless Town. There are all sorts of bad people everywhere. Well, it depends why you’re going to the market for—”
“Medicine,” Ru Meng replied curtly.
“Hmm…” the woman pondered for a moment, “I might know someone. Who’s the medicine for?”
The old woman’s eyes gleamed for a second and the young girl turned around to look again. Ru Meng didn’t reply. The old woman didn’t press the issue.
“Well, if you really need medicine, there’s a widow who lives near our house who makes some medicine on her own. It’s cheaper, effective and you won’t have to go all the way into the Nameless Town for the market,” the old woman flashed a toothless smile at Ru Meng. Ru Meng smiled back meekly.
He didn’t tell her that he didn’t have the money to buy anything. He had a few dozen grains of rice in a bag, some clothes and a random assortment of other things he had collected from his house in his backpack. He wasn’t sure those were worth enough for fever medicine, if anything at all. Maybe if he asked to borrow some rice from the old woman…
He looked at their shabby, tattered clothes, their callused hands, their sallow, sunken cheeks and shook his head. He would figure out something on his own. Ru Meng turned his attention back to memorizing the winding paths they were taking toward the Nameless Town.
The old woman spoke up every once in a while, remarking on his young age or praising his ability or asking questions about his family. Ru Meng didn’t want to talk about his father. He responded vaguely to everything and eventually, the old woman got the message and left him alone.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Some twenty minutes later, they emerged from one tunnel to find a crossroads of sorts, a small cave that bled off in six different directions. Wooden frames had been secured against the walls of the wider tunnels, old and rotting, missing in chunks here and there as if someone had taken an axe to them and hacked away pieces of timber.
“Old mining tunnels,” said the old woman as she turned into a small tunnel, stooping down as she shoved the cart into the narrow passage. Ru Meng and the young girl followed. The tunnel hung very low in certain parts, forcing Ru Meng to bend over, even as short as he was. A few times, the young girl had to squeeze beside her grandmother to help push the cart across some particular narrow passageway. The air was particularly damp and smelled of mud. Eventually, the small tunnel gave way to a tall but narrow corridor.
For the first time in a long while, Ru Meng could hear the soft humming of voices nearby, an indication of the presence of humans.
“We’re home now,” said the old woman with a smile, “Hurry up, we don’t want to stay out here for too long. It’s not entirely safe out here either.”
As the three of them walked down the corridor with the rattling cart, Ru Meng noticed where the voices were coming from. Along either wall of the towering corridor, crude, round holes had been carved into rudimentary rooms, four or five in a column, extending in a disorderly row down the corridor. Some of these manmade caves were illuminated with faint, flickering lights, but there was no doubt that most of them were occupied. Strange trinkets, ragged clothes and yellowing talismans hung out from the bottom of the caves, suspended by strings or poles stuck into the wall. Cloth was hung over many of the caves, patchwork quilts and dusty rags scrapped together somehow, creating an illusion of privacy for its inhabitants. Ladders made of rope, metal pipes and wooden scraps lined the length of the walls, letting the residents climb up and down from their homes. Thin wisps of smoke rose from a few of the caves, the cause for the black tarry trails stained along the walls.
The corridor itself was littered with an assortment of waste and garbage. A few clearly drunk men were slumped here and there in the street, bottles in their hand, tongues lolling out of their gaping mouths. The old woman clicked her tongue and kicked their legs when they got in the way of her cart. The drunk men would simply groan and roll over.
Soon, they stopped in front of the left wall, having passed about a dozen rows of caves. The old woman and the young girl immediately set about securing the cart with a series of ropes attached to a pulley, wrapping the rope around the handles and the wheel. When everything was done, the girl clambered up the ladder and hopped into a cave. The old woman looked at Ru Meng and said, “I’m so sorry, but would you mind giving me a hand, young hero?”
Ru Meng had been watching a small spider crawl up a drunk man’s shoulder and was waiting to see if it would find its way into his nostrils. He quickly turned around and hurried to the old woman’s side. Together, they grabbed the rope and slowly hoisted the cart up. When it reached the young girl’s height, she wrapped another rope around the cart and pulled it into the cave.
“Please,” the old woman said as she motioned at the ladder. Ru Meng looked at her for a moment before realizing she was inviting him to her home. Yearning for a place to sit down and rest for a moment, he nodded and climbed up the ladder.
The cave was much more spacious than it appeared to be on the outside, though it was much longer than it was wide. The young girl was squatting on the ground, unloading the cart and sorting the items into several boxes. A rough alcove had been carved into the wall near the entrance with a small fireplace and a small pot hanged over it. A kettle, a few pairs of chopsticks, some unnamed dried plants, fungi and several logs of wood had been arranged in a shelf of sorts that had been dug out of the wall, along with a few dishes stacked neatly together. A pile of straw sat to the side of the wall further back in the cave. A variety of other junk was piled all over the room, leaving very little room to walk.
The old woman squeezed in beside Ru Meng and directed him to the bed of straw.
“Sit, sit,” she said as she moved to the back and helped the young girl put the cart away.
“Are you hungry, young hero?” she asked as she tossed aside some of the junk and reached a well-hidden bag stuffed into a nook in the wall. Ru Meng thought he saw a look of panic on the young girl’s face, but the old woman grabbed her granddaughter by the wrist and shook her head sternly.
Ru Meng immediately shook his head and said, “I’m not.”
“Who isn’t hungry these days?” the woman said with a bitter, mocking laugh, “But don’t you worry about us. You saved our lives. The least I can do is cook a meal for you. A very meager meal.”
She laughed again as she said, as if there was something very funny about their impoverished circumstance. She shook off Ru Meng’s refusal and shuffled over to the fireplace.
“Get some water for the young hero and myself, will you, Yu Ning?”
The young girl sulked, but immediately procured a few cups and started pouring from a jug.
The old woman gingerly untied the bag and poured discreetly into the pot, as if to hide its contents. However, judging from the clear but sparse trickle of noises landing in the pot, Ru Meng knew that there couldn’t be more than a handful of rice in there. He hung his head in shame and said nothing. The woman poured a generous helping of water into the pot and started the fire with a piece of flint.
Smoke started to rise and glided along a groove out of the smaller cave into the corridor. Soon, the water gurgled loudly. The woman turned around suddenly.
“Oh, I forgot! We haven’t introduced ourselves yet. You can call me Granny Lan and this is my granddaughter, Yu Ning,” she said with a beaming smile. The young girl nodded sullenly at Ru Meng.
“What’s your name?”
Ru Meng paused for a moment and gave them his name. His stomach growled. Granny Lan smiled and assured him dinner would be ready soon. She continued to talk at Ru Meng, ignoring his silence while adding a few skinny stalks of mushroom, a few drops of oil and some seasoning to the pot, stirring as she did so.
A pleasant smell wafted through the room. Granny Lan ladled the watery rice porridge into a bowl and handed it to Ru Meng. Ru Meng hated to admit it, but he was starving. He finished the entire thing in a matter of minutes, only to realize that Granny Lan and Yu Ning hadn’t been eating at all. The young girl’s head was buried deep into her cup, as if trying to avoid looking at Ru Meng. Meanwhile, the old woman simply smiled at him.
Ru Meng felt his guts wrench. He wanted to throw up, but his body wouldn’t let him. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Granny Lan interrupted him, “Now, now. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s been a long day, yes? Get some rest and I’ll bring to around to get the medicine you need tomorrow morning.”
Perhaps it was a combination of the warmth in his belly, the smoky smell in the room and the straw bed underneath him, but when Granny Lan said those words, Ru Meng felt a slow but firm weariness spread through his limbs, curl around his spine and weigh down on his head. With a great big yawn, Ru Meng stretched and sank into a deep slumber.