The rains returned. Yin Su regained her strength and resumed foraging in the countryside for wild vegetables. Commerce increased through the gate as merchants sent their wares to the foreign lands to the west. Yin Su helped several village women give birth. They did not always adhere to the traditional customs or honor the fertility gods, yet their children were healthy and survived. It pained Yin Su to walk through the community and see children of varying ages both male and female. Farmers recognized another mouth to feed also had two hands to work the land. The small community was slowly growing.

The Gatekeeper’s house was the exception. The courtyard there echoed with the noises of pigs and chickens, but no laughing children. Still, the Gatekeeper prospered. His superiors at the capital were pleased, as his pay was regularly brought when dispatches were picked up. Yin Su often observed her husband bury his coins in a corner of the house hidden by a small table. She wondered what use the coins were when there was nothing to buy in the community. Perhaps he spent them in the capital once a year, the one time when he took the reports there himself.

The local farmers gave part of their harvest to her husband as tribute. When the farmers prospered, her husband prospered.

Yin Su spent more and more time on the mountainside. She knew the best places to harvest certain herbs for cooking and other plants to heal the body. The village women had shown her how to extract seeds from the plants so she could grow them in her garden. Some of the plants preferred the environment high up the mountainside, so she learned to dry the entire plant for use in a poultice, in boiled water, or cooking.

One day she was higher up the mountainside than usual and she noticed two small piles of rocks on a stone ledge. It was not naturally formed and Yin Su was curious. She climbed up to the ledge. Her heart beat faster as she stared at the two piles of stones. Dare she look at what lay beneath? She moved a few of the stones around the edges of the smaller one and the pile shifted exposing a tiny human hand. It was partially decomposed, but still recognizable as human. Someone had left two babies here. Emotion flooded Yin Su and she began to sob. Tears ran down her cheeks and a wailing escaped her lips. She did not hold back, but let everything flow. She lay down next to the two piles and put her hand atop first one then the other pile. She replaced the stones as she found them, covering up the tiny hand.

There was no prescribed mourning ritual for children so young. Especially ones who had not lived until their naming day. Ones so young were not considered worthy of respect. Respect was reserved for elders. Children honored parents. Children grieved their parents’ death. Parents did not grieve a child’s death. Yet everything in Yin Su told her the custom was wrong. Women carried babies inside their bodies. Women endured the pain of childbirth. Women nurtured babies from their own bodies. How could that count for nothing?

This had to be her two babies. One healthy, one frail. Both taken by her husband as was his traditional right. Yet he did not throw the bodies in the river as she had thought. Then, there would be no trace. He did not leave them in a tall tree as food for the vultures. He did not leave them on the forest floor for scavengers. No, he brought them to a cliff ledge and covered them with stones, keeping away predators. Why? Why break traditions?

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