The snow the year Chen Yan turned ten lasted longer than usual.
Wrapped in the thick padded jacket his grandmother had sewn, he squatted beside the stone mill in the corner of the courtyard, poking at a dark red stain in the crack between the millstones. It was the blood splattered there three days ago when Grandpa chopped a little golden-red snake to death with his woodcutting knife. The snow had fallen for three days, but the blood hadn’t frozen. Instead, it seemed to have seeped into the stone. When Chen Yan touched it, it felt strangely warm and tacky.
“Yan, come inside and warm yourself by the fire.” Grandpa’s voice came from the main room, rough with the rasp of a lifelong smoker. He was a taciturn old hunter who would head into the mountains with his rifle every spring. But for the past three days, his gun had stood in the corner, covered with a thin layer of snow, while he sat on the threshold, staring blankly at the bamboo grove beyond the courtyard gate.
Chen Yan didn’t move. He kept thinking of the little snake. When Grandpa put it in the bamboo cage, its golden-red scales had glittered like flecks of gold in the sunlight. It had flicked its tongue and brushed against the back of his hand, not aggressive at all. But early the next morning, a gap had appeared in the bottom of the cage, and the snake lay curled beneath the mill, split in two by Grandpa’s knife. Hidden behind the woodpile, Chen Yan had watched Grandpa wipe the blood from the blade with straw paper. The paper turned black as soon as it touched the blood, as if stained with ink.
“It’s a snake, the kind that sneaks in to eat the chicks. It couldn’t be allowed to live,” Grandpa had said. But he hadn’t seen the pair of amber eyes staring at the back of his neck from inside the woodpile.
That night, Chen Yan began having nightmares.
In the dreams, there was always a golden-red serpent thicker than a roof beam, crawling out from beneath his bed. Its scales scraped across the floor with a rustling sound like falling snow. Its tongue brushed his face, reeking of blood, and its fangs pressed against his throat. But it didn’t bite. It simply hung there, forcing him to look at the bloody stain on the millstones. Every time
