The Married Tree
The newly widowed Lady Cui weeps each night at the old riverside camphor, until the trunk splits and quietly takes her to wife.
Upon the bank of the Yuan River stood an ancient camphor, several arms around and of unguessed age. The local custom held that a newly widowed woman would, on moonlit nights, embrace the tree and weep, calling it 'telling her sorrow.' The tree had a spirit: when it heard weeping its leaves would rustle.
The widow Cui's husband had traded abroad and drowned when his boat went down, leaving a three-year child. Cui was poor and lived by pounding rice by day; by night she went to embrace the camphor and weep. So passed a year, and the villagers grew used to it and wondered not.
One stormy night Cui came again, weeping the more bitterly. Suddenly the trunk split a seam, and from it rose a warm breath like a man's; it seemed an arm came forth from the seam and circled her waist in the air, light as nothing. Cui's fright passed into calm; she felt her cold shoulder warmed, and a hand wipe the orphan's tears. Thenceforth she came each night; the seam closed as before, yet upon her clothes clung camphor leaves, a green mark that would not leave.
More than a year went by, and Cui's face grew round, and the orphan grew too. When the village spoke of a match for her, she shook her head and said, "I have already one who takes me." Asked who, she pointed at the camphor: "This is my husband." The crowd thought her mad, yet Cui wept no more, and on returning from her pounding would set a bowl of rice at the tree's root, as one serves her parents-in-law.
When Cui died in ripe age she was buried beneath the camphor. The next spring the tree put forth new boughs that wound about her mound and bloomed white as snow. Then the villagers believed: the tree had indeed taken her to wife.
The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: In the world's marriage, go-betweens and bride-price oft clothe a beast's heart in a man's face; yet a dead tree can warm a widow's shoulder and shield a three-foot orphan. Human kindness grows cold, and falls short of the feeling of grass and wood. Yet was it the tree that 'took' her? Nay—'twas Heaven pitying her sorrow, borrowing the tree to comfort her.