Bones Under the Locust Tree - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I asked her who I was.

She looked at me, her tears falling.

“You are my daughter.”

“Did I come from your womb?”

Her lips trembled for a long time.

Finally, she squeezed out two words.

“You didn’t.”

When those words fell, I didn’t cry. Instead, I just felt like the room had suddenly become empty. Even the walls felt far away from me.

She tried to reach out and pull me toward her.

I took a step back.

Her hand stopped mid-air.

“Ah Ning.”

“Don’t try to soothe me.”

“Tell me the truth, clearly.”

She lowered her head and looked at her own rough hands.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t look up.

“Madam Sang.”

Her body jolted.

I had never called her that before.

She finally looked up, her face a blur of tears.

“Ah Ning, don’t call your mother that.”

“Then stop lying to me.”

Eighteen years ago, it was also June, and it was also raining heavily.

A coffin had been unearthed from beneath the Old Locust Tree.

A woman lay inside the coffin.

She wore a red bridal gown, her belly was swollen, and a Red String was tied around her wrist.

My fingers tightened as I heard this.

Mother continued, saying the woman in the coffin had already stopped breathing.

But she had a child in her arms.

“You.”

“I was still alive then?”

She shook her head, then nodded.

When I was first picked up, I didn’t cry. My body was as cold as mud.

“I was scared out of my wits back then.”

“But the moment I touched the bell on your foot, you suddenly started crying.”

That cry was very faint. Like a kitten’s mewl.

Back then, she had been married for three years without a child, and the villagers were constantly talking behind her back.

“Some called me a barren woman.”

“Some said Sang Dashan had the worst luck in the world for marrying me.”

“So you just took me home?”

She gripped the hem of her clothes.

“I… I wasn’t thinking straight in that moment.”

“And you haven’t been thinking straight for eighteen years?”

Her voice dropped lower as she spoke.

“I just… I brought you back.”

I looked at her.

“Were you saving me, or were you stealing me?”

She didn’t flinch.

“At first, I was after the money.”

My heart felt like it had been crushed.

“But later, I heard you cry.”

I let out a cold laugh. “Do you even believe that yourself?”

She looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot.

“Ah Ning, it doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not.”

“The only reason you’re alive today is because I hid you.”

“Who wanted to bury me back there?”

She remained silent.

“It was the people of this village.”

She closed her eyes.

“Why?”

Her voice was very soft. “Because you are the child of the Locust Tree Maiden.”

I had heard those three words-Locust Tree Maiden-before.

The village elders often used them to scare children. *Don’t go under the locust tree at night, or the Locust Tree Maiden will drag you into the dirt.*

I had always thought it was just a ghost story.

“Huai Mountain Village has had this filthy tradition for a long time.”

Every twenty years, they would send a woman beneath the tree.

“Send her where?”

She looked at me. “Under the locust tree.”

I felt a chill run through my entire body. Buried alive.

She didn’t deny it.

“The villagers don’t call it that.”

They called it “Inviting the Lady.”

I almost laughed. Nailing someone into a coffin and calling it an “invitation.”

“I was scared back then, too.”

Everyone was scared.

“So you all just let her die.”

She lowered her head. “I didn’t have the courage back then.”

“What about that man?” I asked. The one who came knocking tonight.

Her expression changed.

“His name is Pei Zhao. He was your mother’s man.”

I froze.

“Pei Zhao isn’t from this village. He was a carpenter from beyond the mountains. He had great skill and a stubborn temper. He once made a vanity box for your mother, and the two of them fell for each other. The clan wouldn’t allow it. They said that someone offered to the Tree Lord couldn’t have ties to the living. But your mother was pregnant with you.”

My throat tightened. “What was her name?”

Mother was silent for a long time.

“Ah Heng. Sang Aheng.”

That was the first time I heard my biological mother’s name.

The village had called her the Locust Tree Maiden for eighteen years. But my mother said her name was Sang Aheng.

I repeated the name silently in my heart. *Sang Aheng.*

The name felt too light. Too light to be pressed under such deep earth.

“Why do they call Pei Zhao ‘Second Brother’?”

“He was the second child in his family. Everyone outside the mountains called him Second Brother.”

She paused. “Your mother called him that, too.”

“You saw them together?”

Mother nodded.

“Once, when I went to the river to wash clothes, I stumbled upon him carving a hairpin for your mother.”

A locust wood hairpin, carved all crooked and uneven.

“A carpenter could carve something crooked?”

Mother gave a bitter smile. “His hands were steady when he made things for others. But when he made things for your mother, his hands would shake.”

Hearing this, a sudden ache filled my chest. It turned out that the scary stories told to children in the village once had the faces of living people. They had once talked by the river. They had once laughed for a long time over a poorly carved hairpin.