Before her grandmother died, she clutched Su Wanwan’s hand and said just three words: “Go north.”
Su Wanwan went to the Great Northern Wilderness.
On her first night in the dugout, a chubby yellow weasel got stuck in the doorframe. After kicking its hind legs for a long while, it tilted its head and asked her, “You… can see me?”
From that day on, Su Wanwan noticed something strange: wherever she went, “things” watched her. Gray shadows crouched on the paths between the fields, translucent human shapes hovered behind tree trunks, and at night, sounds with no discernible source came from the mountains. They neither approached nor went away. They simply watched her in silence, as if they had been waiting for a very, very long time.
Then there was He Zheng, the silent mountain keeper. When she rubbed her hands raw, he left bandages and walked away; when she got lost, he carried her back over the mountains. The villagers all said that no man in the He family lived past sixty. He never explained. He simply wrote her name on the last page of his journal: “I will guard the mountain all my life, and wait for one person, too.”
As Su Wanwan touched the faint golden birthmark on her wrist, she finally understood the weight of her grandmother’s last words: go north. It wasn’t an escape from hardship, but a journey to fulfill a promise made three hundred years ago.
A sent-down youth in the 1970s, watched over by the immortal beings and loved for a lifetime by a rugged man. A lighthearted, healing story, sweet and satisfying, with no angst. Dive right in!
