The Pig Spirit

Old Qiu kept only one pig in his yard, every year without fail.

A widower, he had seen his son and daughter-in-law leave by the river road for the south years ago and never return; only his granddaughter, Xiaoman, stayed behind. Xiaoman was eight, round-faced, barefoot by choice, forever circling the pigsty out back.

That spring, from a pig trader called Second Ma, Old Qiu brought home a piglet as black as wet ink. Second Ma said its mother had died and the runt would not eat; it would likely not survive, so he let it go cheap. Old Qiu's heart was soft, and he carried it home wrapped in his jacket.

For three days the little thing shivered in the corner and would not touch even rice porridge. Xiaoman crouched by the pen and fed it spoonful by spoonful, blowing each one cool, and at night she slipped it half a roasted sweet potato. On the fourth morning the black runt actually stood, nudged Xiaoman's bare foot with its snout, and thus accepted her.

Old Qiu named it Mo'er. It grew fast, yet never turned dull and vacant like other pigs. It knew Xiaoman's footsteps; at her call it would lift its head from the mud, shake its dripping ears, and trot over. One summer she chased a dragonfly into the bamboo behind the hill and lost her way; it was Mo'er who tracked her by scent and led her home—a pig, quicker to the task than the yellow watchdog they kept.

In the eighth month the rains came and did not stop for half a month, and the stream ran thick and brown. Suddenly Mo'er would not enter the pen. It circled the yard wall, humming low in its throat, and with its snout kept tugging Old Qiu's trouser leg, pulling him toward the mountain. Old Qiu cursed it for a beast throwing a fit—but at midnight a muffled crack rolled down the slope, and the mudslide poured along the old channel, swallowing exactly the side room where they slept. Had Mo'er not dragged them up the bank with all its strength, the old man and the girl would have been lost in it.

When the rain cleared, Mo'er was gone. Old Qiu searched the bamboo edge for three days and found only a single black bristle curled in the wet earth, as if someone had gathered it with care.

Xiaoman wept half the night. Old Qiu laid a hand on her head and said nothing. He remembered what Second Ma had said the day he carried Mo'er home: things in these hills, they remember a kindness.

The next spring Old Qiu left the empty corner of the pen and built there a small stone platform, setting upon it a bowl of clear water. Afterward, whenever the rain fell, a few black bristles would come to rest before the platform, stirred by the wind, light and slow—as if someone still kept this household in mind.

Xiaoman grew, and in time left the hills. Yet she always remembered: that at eight years old, a black pig had once nudged her home from the bamboo with its nose.