Fiction: Group 4
out of the house, avoided their large gleaming eyes reddened by ash, their rough hands cracked from cold.
Thank you, he said, a man with thick eyebrows and a cut opened on his temple. What’s your name?
Qin. Like
qin lao
.
Qin, he said, and sighed it out, a breathy syllable.
Qin lao.
A good name. All your life you will work hard...
(She’s too young to do this, said Jie. Mama just handed Qin more corn to grind, a pile already stacked
higher than Qin could see over.
There’s no too young. Do you think there’s a wrong age to die, in their eyes?
Jie shook her head. You sound just like—)
The war had been won. Grandma exhaled, a long, swollen breath, and went to put a coat on, and Mama
put her fingers to her temples and rubbed, hard. Mei tipped herself across the back of the couch and leaned
over upside down, legs hooked over the couch and her hair falling straight down to brush the floorboards.
From this angle Mama looked ancient, a statue of stone that stood impossibly still, and bent with some
impossible weight on her shoulders.
Mei please don’t do that, said Mama. She leaned down—or leaned up—and pulled a boot on—or pulled it
down. Mei blinked, saw faint stars, and hastily straightened, falling back onto the couch cushions. Yes,
Mama.
Grandma came out, face as closed as stone. I’m ready.
Finally... Mama moved towards the door, her mouth a thin white line slashed across her jaw.
Zou le
. Let’s
go.
Bodies floated. Swollen monstrous. They came bursting down the fields as the river did, carried on a strong
thick tide of water, that had brought them life once, now it killed. Now it killed and killed and killed.
Qin waded through mud, through the swaying forest of wheat half drowned in the flood. Somewhere a
woman wailed. Qin wanted to, shaped a sound that snapped against the back of her teeth and couldn’t
squeeze out. She was cold all over. Under her feet the earth squelched. Qin had sludge on her fingers and
raked across her cheekbones, and icy water that stuck her clothes tight against her skin.
—Come on, girl. A hand slipped into Qin’s own, thin and tough with calluses.
Jie’s eyes were dark and like the pieces of flint Baba sharpened his harvest scythe on. Hurry up. You walk
slower than a snail.
They moved, silent and like ghosts, through the light mist rising off the great arms of water, towards the
river banks, looking for what they could save, and who. Who had been near the river when they broke the
dam, who had been scything wheat in the fields, who had been there to die, Baba. Who.
Houses had prostrated themselves onto the ground. Crumbled onto the people inside them. Qin stepped
forward and felt something soft that squished under her shoe, she looked down and a scream took shape, put
