She lay on the Wang family’s battered earthen bed, covered by the wedding quilt she had brought from her parents’ home when she married. Now it was riddled with holes. Outside, the wind howled like countless vengeful ghosts wailing. Her mind drifted in and out of clarity, until at last it fixed on the enormous cobweb on the ceiling. The spider had spun it in the third year after she moved into this room. Now the spider was dead, but its web remained.
