Chapter One: Cloth Shoes in the Tree Hole
When the stinging fog, wrapped in the fishy smell of the sea, spread over the ridge of Wuyu Island, Su Yan's rubber boots were crushing the third rotten leaf. The soft sound of "rustling" swayed in the forest, startling several egrets to fly up from the aerial roots of the mangrove. The tips of their wings swept across the brim of her hat, and dropped a feather with salt particles.
"Naughty again." She smiled and put the feathers into the mountain patrol log, and drew the frightened egret on the page with her fingertips - the lines were crooked, like the simple drawings drawn by a child who had just learned to write. This was the third month that she had taken over from her father to guard the forest. The pages of the diary had turned yellow and the corners were curled into waves, but she had carefully tied them three times with hemp rope, like she was holding a rare treasure.
Wuyu Island is a small island hanging on the edge of the continental shelf. It is not large in area, but it hides a rare "symbiotic forest": the roots of century-old camphor are entangled with the aerial roots of mangroves, and fragments of coral reefs are embedded in the gaps of volcanic rocks. Even the sea breeze carries the smell of a mixture of plants and the ocean, as moist as a freshly wrung towel. My father said that this island is alive, breathing, and can remember things, and the ranger must learn to listen to it.
But Su Yan always felt that her father described "disappearance" too poetically. During the typhoon season three years ago, he went into the forest to rescue the thousand-year-old camphor tree and never came out again. The search and rescue team searched for three months, but only found half a polished copper pocket watch deep in the tree hole. The hands always stopped at 3:17 in the morning - that was the time when my mother left, and it was also the time when the camphor trees bloomed every year.
"This is the seventh time." She murmured to herself while squatting under the camphor tree, fingertips stroking the rough bark. Tree
