The Silkworm God

Everyone in Cocoon Bridge Town raised silkworms. At the east end stood a tiny shrine, no more than a foot tall, housing the Silkworm God — the Horse-Head Maiden: a clay body set with a horse's face, said to be a girl of old who gave her body to become the goddess and save the silkworm keepers. Each spring, at the Clear and Bright festival, the keepers held the "silkworm-flower rite"; offerings, candles, the three sacrifices — none might be omitted. The old said the goddess had sharp eyes: wherever the heart was false, the cocoons came empty.

Widow Zhou was known in town for her diligence. Her husband died young; she raised a son alone on a few trays of silkworms. Each year at the rite she arrived first, offering not only the three sacrifices but a bowl of fresh steamed green dumplings — the goddess, she said, should taste something new. She kept her silkworms by a strict rule: the room clean, the leaves fresh, the hand gentle; she rose at night to lay leaves and never once slackened. Others laughed at her solemnity; she did not mind. "Silkworms," she said, "if you fool them, they fool you."

Qian Gui at the west end kept a different ledger. Young and clever, he thought the rites wasted good money; the first year he cut the three sacrifices to a slab of cured pork and lit but half a stick of incense. The worms ate leaves, not smoke, he reasoned — why bother? That spring the weather swung hot and cold; other houses managed, but his worms sickened first. The trays turned black, and seven or eight of every ten cocoons were hollow shells, collapsing at a pinch. A whole season's hope, gone like water from a bamboo basket.

Unconvinced, the next year Qian Gui did away with the pork too, offering only a careless kowtow. It was worse: at the third molt the worms died in droves, leaving few cocoons even hollow. His wife wept, saying they had surely offended the goddess. Qian Gui held his tongue, but his heart went uneasy.

Before the third spring, Qian Gui dreamt. In the dream the shrine lamp flared; the horse-faced image came down from its altar and stood before him, not angry, only saying quiet: "Do you think I covet your slab of meat?" Then it pointed to his empty trays, and to Widow Zhou's bright-lit rearing room, and was gone.

Qian Gui woke in a cold sweat. For the first time he went to look at Widow Zhou's silkworms — clean, orderly, the leaves a shining green, the worms raised like a troop of knowing children. He thought of his own black, hollow shells, and his face burned.

That year he said nothing, but quietly mended the shrine's broken tiles, filled the cracks in the clay image, and scrubbed the altar till it shone. At the rite he laid out, for the first time, the proper three sacrifices, candles, and green dumplings, and — copying Widow Zhou — added a bowl of fresh steamed cake. The town wondered; Qian Gui gave no explanation.

Strangely enough, that year his worms behaved. The cocoons hung heavy, and the reeled silk was long and bright, selling for three times the old years. Qian Gui claimed no credit; only, from then on, each year on the eve of gathering the first mulberry leaves, he would burn one stick of incense before the little shrine, stand a while, and return.

Years later Widow Zhou died old, and Qian Gui's hair went white. One Clear and Bright, a young man asked why he lit incense before every first leaf. Qian Gui thought, and said: "Not to ask her blessing. To remind myself that some things cannot be fooled with."

The shrine still stands at the east end of Cocoon Bridge Town, the horse-faced clay image sitting as quietly as ever. The keepers change with the seasons, yet each year before the first mulberry is gathered, someone slips to the shrine and lights incense — never much, just one stick.

The Chronicler remarks: what the Silkworm God punishes is not the thinness of the offering but the slowness of the heart. Qian Gui's later abundance lay not in mending the shrine but in mending the bit of himself that dared not fool.