On the thirteenth day of the fourth month in the first year of Wutai, two thousand people died at Heyin, north of Luoyang.
The histories recorded it in four words: “They folded their hands and let themselves be killed.” Not a single person resisted.
The Yellow River stopped flowing for a quarter of an hour. Later, the water flowed again, but some things came with it into Luoyang.
Five years later, in the southwestern corner of South Market, a woman was kneading dough beneath a crooked locust tree.
Her name was A Heng. She was Xianbei, and her entire clan had died in the Heyin Incident. She should have died, too, but somehow she came back to life without a single wound.
She could smell a certain scent, one that seeped from those about to die. Illness smelled bitter, violent death smelled sour, and obsession smelled sweet.
She wanted no part of it. All she wanted was to sell her tangbing.
But the times would not let her live in peace. Strange things were happening more and more often in Luoyang: well water turned bitter, children spoke with the voices of the dead, the sound of ceremonial robes dragging across the floor came from new houses, and people would suddenly stop in the middle of the road, muttering, “Your servant wouldn’t dare.” They were the two thousand people who had died at Heyin, their thoughts still lingering.
A minor judicial official, maddeningly determined to get to the bottom of everything, insisted on investigating. A young man whose entire clan had been wiped out, just like hers, understood all her pain. And a food-loving old man from the streets taught her to use her ability, while hiding secrets even deeper than hers.
She was pushed forward, from street vendor to the person the whole city relied on, from “Stay away from me” to “I’m not leaving.”
Someone died protecting her, saying with their dying breath, “You reminded me that I was alive, too.”
Someone stayed by her side for a lifetime, never managing to say a single word about love.
In the end, she made a choice. The price was that she could never smell that scent again. She became an ordinary person.
