The Snail Maid

Xie Duan was from Xie Family Bend. By the age of ten both his parents were dead; after two years with a clan uncle he kept his own house. The fields he was given were no more than two mu, beside a wild stream. He went out at dawn and home at dusk, transplanting rice, netting fish, weaving reed mats — he did it all, and never complained. The villagers called him a steadfast boy, though they pitied his thin fate.

That spring came a drought, and the river sank far back. Xie Duan went to the shoals for snails, hoping for some meat in the retreating pools. Lying in the shallow water was one snail, twice the common size, its shell carrying a dim green-gold sheen, heavy in the hand. He had meant to open it for the pot, but in the end could not bring himself to; he carried it home and set it in an earthen jar by the stove, with half a jar of clear water.

From that day the strange thing began. Each morning Xie Duan went to his fields; when the sun leaned west and he returned, the door was always ajar, a pot of thin rice warm on the stove, washed greens laid by the board, the floor swept. The first two days he thought a clan aunt had taken pity and come to help; he went to thank her, but she stared and said she had never set foot there. So he hid behind the haystack to watch. On the third day he finally saw it — the water in the jar stirred without sound, the great snail's shell opened slowly, and from within stepped a young woman.

She looked seventeen or eighteen, in robes the color of water, untouched by any dust. She lit no lamp, but worked by the last fire in the hearth — rinsing rice, slicing greens, coaxing the flame — her motions very light, as if fearing to wake something. Xie Duan watched, spellbound, until a dry twig snapped under his foot. The woman turned. She showed no fright, only a faint sigh.

"You are the snail in the jar?" Xie Duan stammered.

She nodded. She said she was a maid of the white waters; the Heavenly Emperor, pitying Xie Duan's orphaned diligence, had sent her to keep his kitchen for two years, until he should take a wife. But now her true shape was seen, the bond was spent, and she must return to the water. Xie Duan seized her sleeve in panic and said he could cook for himself, begging her not to go. The woman smiled — a smile with the cool breath of water in it. "Alone, you will manage. But a person needs a companion."

She took the empty shell from the jar and gave it to him. "Keep this. It is no treasure. Only, when your pot stands empty, a little grain will still lie at its bottom — my last care for you."

Then she stepped back into the jar; the shell closed, and all was silent. Xie Duan held the empty shell by the stove and listened all night for water — though there was no water anywhere.

Afterward he never saw her again. As she had told him, he set the snail-shell by the Kitchen God. In good years it stayed empty; in lean months a thin layer of rice would lie at its bottom, enough for a meal. By that small mercy he weathered several spring famines.

The village later spoke of matches for him; he agreed, then withdrew each time. Asked why, he only said he would not drag another into his poverty. In truth a thought stayed with him: the snail maid had said a person needs a companion, and he feared that if he married, he would prove that watery bond a lie. He never wed. He kept his two mu of poor land and the green-gold old shell, and lived to seventy-three.

After Xie Duan died the shell passed to a grandnephew, and some generations later was lost. They say the old folk of Xie Family Bend still sometimes recall: if in some spring the water sinks far back, a great green-gold snail may be found on the shoal — do not open it; take it home, and who knows, there may be one more person by your stove.

The Chronicler remarks: The Emperor gave no gold, only a snail maid to tend the fire — for he knew the poor lack not wealth but warmth. That Xie Duan kept the shell his whole life was no folly; it was the small warmth in his heart, which he would not let a human marriage blow cold.