The Snow Maiden

Zhao Tieshan made his living hauling freight across the northern frontier. On the nineteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, in the twenty-first year of the Republic, he drove a mule cart loaded with salt from Baiyan Town toward Hongliu Hollow in the north. The cart was old elm, the mule a limping gray beast that moved slowly; it was near dusk when he reached Fox Ridge.

That was when the wind rose. Frontier folk call it the white-hair wind: snow driven sideways, stinging the face like a whip. Zhao Tieshan turned up the collar of his sheepskin coat and retied the salt with hemp rope. The mule balked, pawing at the snow, ears flat. He jumped down and struck its rump with the whip-stock; the mule circled in place while the wheel sank into a snow pit, and no amount of beating would move it.

He groped in the dark to clear the snow beneath the wheel. His fingers had gone numb, the nails purpling. As he fretted, a light appeared far off along the ridge. It did not waver but moved steadily toward him, as if someone walked the snow with a lantern. Zhao Tieshan called out, "Who's there?" The light paused, then drew near. It was a woman in a white sheepskin coat, carrying a paper lantern of oiled hide. The flame was small as a bean, and by it he saw a narrow chin and faint features; on her feet were old cloth shoes dusted with snow, yet not frozen.

"Lost?" she said, her voice low, half carried off by the wind.

"The cart's stuck and the mule won't budge." Zhao Tieshan rubbed his hands. "Where are you bound, miss?"

"There's a warm cave ahead. Follow me." She said no more, pressed the lantern into his hands. "You hold this. I'll push."

Zhao Tieshan took it, startled. The woman went behind the cart, set both hands to the sideboard, sank her weight, and the buried wheel slowly pulled free. The mule stepped forward too. One ahead, one behind, the lantern lit the snow crust underfoot; they crunched perhaps a mile until a sod cave showed below the slope, its door a worn felt curtain, orange firelight leaking through.

Inside, dried dung cakes burned; a stack of saxaul wood stood in the corner. The woman lifted the curtain and let him in. Zhao Tieshan set the lantern on the earthen ledge and warmed his hands at the fire. She scooped hot water from a clay jar, scattered in roasted millet, and handed it to him. "Drink, to warm you." Cold and thirsty, he blew on it; the smell of grain and smoke melted the ice in his throat.

"What is your name, miss?" he asked.

"Snow." She crouched by the fire, poking the dung cakes with a stick. The flame leapt and lit her face, white past nature, without the color a living cheek should hold. Zhao Tieshan asked nothing more. Exhausted, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

He woke to broad daylight.

The cave was gone. He lay in a lee below Fox Ridge, beneath the roots of a dead poplar, his own sheepskin coat pulled over him. The snow had stopped; the sun was a pale, sickly white. The cart lay tilted ten paces off, the mule gnawing dry grass under the snow. He rose and walked to where the woman had sat—a hollow in the bank, filled with clear water, still steaming, melted snow. He touched it; the water was warm.

Zhao Tieshan stowed the lantern in the cart and drove the mule home to Hongliu Hollow. He told the tale; no one believed him, all said he'd been addled by the cold. Yet he remembered the warm puddle, and the name Snow.

That spring, old Widow Zhou of Hongliu Hollow fell ill on her kang, her children all away. Each evening after his hauls Zhao Tieshan stopped by, split a bundle of firewood, warmed her bed, and left two griddle cakes. In the second month a lost peddler came through, shivering; Zhao took him in for three days of meals. At summer's turn the wooden bridge below Fox Ridge was washed out; Zhao set down his work and spent half a month with saw and axe rebuilding it, sparing travelers twenty miles of detour.

The strange part began on the first snow. In the twelfth month the white-hair wind returned; Zhao Tieshan went to Baiyan Town for Widow Zhou's medicine, and on the way back, dark and windy, he lost his bearing at Fox Ridge again. As he wandered, a light appeared on the ridge, moving steadily. His heart jumped; he did not call out, only followed. The flame was small as a bean; the hand that held the lantern was pale; the white sheepskin coat was the same. She spoke no word, led him to the mouth of Hongliu Hollow, turned the light, and was gone.

From then on, for every good deed Zhao Tieshan did, a lantern came through the snow to guide him. He pulled sheep from a snow pit, carried a laboring woman to fetch the physician, showed the way to passing carriers. Whenever he left his door with the thought of helping in his heart, that light appeared midway. He never hurried to see her face, only followed, to the place he needed to be; the light went out, and in the snow a warm puddle remained.

In the thirty-seventh year of the Republic, Zhao Tieshan was old, his back bent, the mule cart replaced by a small donkey. On the twenty-third of the twelfth month a neighbor's wife was near her time; the physician was thirty miles off at Baiyan Town. The snow fell thick; Zhao Tieshan harnessed the donkey cart and set out. Midway the wind grew fiercer. He squinted, and saw again a light ahead, moving steadily. He followed, to the old poplar at the village mouth, where the light suddenly died. He reined in, jumped down; in the snow a warm puddle steamed, the same as thirty years before. He crouched, pressed his hand to the water, and said with a smile, "Snow Maiden, I understand now."

The villagers found him at dawn, leaning against the poplar root, a thin new layer of snow on him, a spent lantern at his hand, the medicine packet for the birthing woman still inside his coat.

Later the people of Hongliu Hollow said: if on a snowy night you see a light that does not waver, do not fear—someone is leading you. Follow it to where you must go, and remember to do a kindness in return, and the light will burn again.