The Willow Spirit

At a bend of the clear river there stands an old dike, and upon it an ancient willow whose age no one can reckon. Its trunk is so thick two men must join hands to span it; its roots thrust out from the dike's body, knotted like an old dragon's claws, clawing fast to that patch of earth and water. Its shade spreads half a mu, and beneath its feet stands the thatched shed of the Zhou ferry folk.

Three generations of the Zhous have plied the ferry. Old Zhou Yao's father and his grandfather both moored their boats here and swallowed their cold meals here. The boat is willow-wood, the oars are whittled from willow, and even the rafters of the shed's roof came from a willow branch severed by lightning. Year on year the catkins drift, a wash of white across the river, like someone scattering a riverful of broken snow. Zhou Yao says that on the night he was born a pair of white egrets roosted in the willow and did not fly off until dawn — the family took it for a blessing, and every year they heap fresh earth about its roots.

In the year of the great drought the river fell three feet. Down from the upper reaches came a timber merchant, surnamed Qian — round-faced, in a melon-shaped cap, the beads of his waist abacus clicking like firecrackers. He walked the dike once around, measured the willow with his rod, and clicked his tongue. "Fine stuff. Sawn to planks, it would build two cabin-boats." Zhou Yao stopped him. "Boss Qian, this tree must not be touched. Three generations of my family have sheltered beneath it; even the river-god takes it for his bank." Qian laughed at his foolishness. "The tree is dead, the man is living. You won't let me cut, I'll find another."

That night Qian came with three hired hands, saws and axes in hand. The moon was a sickly white, and the willow leaves hung still — yet though there was no wind, they rustled, as if someone sighed within the trunk. The hand A-er had scarce set his saw to the bark when his grip slipped and three teeth flew from the blade. Qian, enraged, swung the axe himself. Where the axe fell the wood did not split; instead a sour, foul sap sprang out and splashed his face. At once a rash broke upon his cheeks, burning and maddeningly itchy.

In summer once the river rose in a storm; black clouds pressed the sky, and Zhou Yao's ferry, scarce off the bank, was spun about by the waves. It was the willow's roots that reached up from the water and wound about the anchor-rope; it was the willow's branches that pinned down the awning the wind had torn loose, and so the boat did not overturn. Zhou Yao said that night he plainly heard, deep in the tree, someone hum an old boatman's song.

Three days later Qian hired idlers from another village and, while Zhou Yao was ferrying downstream, came secretly to fell the tree. Halfway through the sawing the dike suddenly caved in at one corner — for the willow's roots were the very bones of the bank. The river came gurgling in; the idlers dropped their tools and ran. Qian stood on the shore and watched, helpless, as his own cargo boat, its anchor dragged loose by that very collapse, drifted onto a hidden reef; thirty taels' worth of timber in its hold was lost to the water.

Qian fell sick. In a dream he saw an old man in hemp clothes and straw sandals, white of beard and hair, standing beneath the willow, who bowed and said: "I have taken nourishment from this earth and water through many generations. To take my body is to take away the support of three generations of Zhous, and the very bone of this dike. What befalls you today is no malice of mine, but simply as it must be." With that he turned to a wisp of green smoke and sank into the trunk.

When Qian woke he sent men with three kinds of sacrificial meat and a jar of old wine to the ferry, and never again spoke of cutting the tree.

Deep in autumn the leaves turn yellow, and Zhou Yao sweeps them one by one into the stove. This fire, he says, burns with a living warmth, unlike other firewood that burns dead. At the first snow of winter the willow branches are clad in silver, and Zhou Yao's granddaughter hangs two little red lanterns on them; when the wind stirs they sway, as if the tree had opened its own eyes.

Ever after, each Dragon-Boat Festival, Zhou Yao still ties a bundle of mugwort beneath the willow and pours out half a bowl of realgar wine, honoring that nameless old friend. The willow stands as it always did, its roots clawing the dike, its shade spreading half a mu. When the river wind passes, the leaves whisper all together, as if to say: only what keeps its roots can keep its people.

The Chronicler says: the world calls plants and trees without sense, yet a single tree that guards a dike and shades a household outlasts many a man who hangs the word "duty" on his door. Qian's misfortune was no haunting by a tree-spirit; it was that he saw only timber and not roots. Cut the root and the dike fails; fail the dike and the boats overturn — and is it only a tree to which this applies?