The Camphor Cradle

The town of Mist Creek sat where the river bent, a row of old timber houses huddled along the curve. Shen Shouzhuo's workshop stood at the far end. It was a small place, its doorway always piled with shavings; when the wind rose, the sweet smell of camphor wood drifted halfway down the street.

Master Shen was fifty-three. His hands were clever, and his temper was firm. He had a rule about the work he took: he chose the lumber himself, and if a client pressed him for haste, he would only shake his head and say good wood could not be rushed. The townsfolk knew his ways and gave him a certain respect.

Late that autumn a man named He came from beyond the town. He wore a grey cloth gown and old rubber shoes, and he spoke slowly, as if afraid of startling something. He entered the workshop, unwrapped two slabs of camphor from a cloth bundle, and asked for a cradle, to be ready for a child not yet born.

Shen tapped the wood with a fingernail. The grain was fine and close; it was good old camphor. Yet he felt a small unease. In Mist Creek it was no lucky thing to build a cradle before the child had drawn breath. He looked at He, whose face was pale, with shadows under both eyes, as though he had not slept in a long while.

"Does your wife know you are having this made?" Shen asked.

He nodded. "She is sensitive to cold," he added. "She wanted everything ready early."

Shen asked nothing more. He took the wood and set the delivery for ten days.

The first days went well. Following an old pattern, he carved lotus scrolls around the cradle's sides, for the wish of many sons. Camphor scent is itself a comfort; sitting among it, he could lose half a day and forget his troubles.

The strange part came on the seventh night. He worked late, past the midnight hour. The plane had just fallen still, and the room was so quiet he could have heard a needle drop, when from the cradle came a sound — a faint, breathy murmur, like an infant sucking its thumb in sleep. Shen's hair stood on end. He raised the lamp and looked: the cradle was empty, the shavings on the carved lotus petals still warm. He told himself it was the wind, but the window was shut tight, and there was no wind at all.

The next day he found thin marks along the cradle's floor — curved, wandering, not the trace of any tool, more like the scratches of fingernails. He sanded them smooth, but a weight had settled in his chest.

He came once to press for the work, asking if it could be finished by night so he might carry it home. Shen would not agree; he only said the glue still needed to set. He made a judgment: this was not a thing to hand over in darkness, nor to deliver alone. He asked Old Zhou, the ferryman, to take the cradle across the river with him in broad daylight.

He's house stood alone on the far bank, its yard thick with unswept leaves. From inside came a woman's voice, soft, saying the child had not yet come, and there was no rush. Shen lifted the curtain and went in. The woman leaned against the kang, her belly flat, yet her hands rested on it as though holding something. She smiled at him; her fingers were cold, and when she took his hand he nearly shivered.

He set the cradle in the corner of the main room. He turned, pressed a roll of silver into Shen's hand, thanked him, and saw him to the door, with nothing more to say.

On the ferry back, Old Zhou puffed his pipe and said offhand, "That woman of his — they say she died last winter. Did you see a living soul?"

Shen did not answer. He only watched the river. Something flickered beneath the water, and he did not see what.

Time passed, and talk drifted through the town that a child had been born in the house across the river, its crying reaching the ferry landing every night. Shen did not go to ask. He gathered the camphor shavings from his workshop corner into a jar and sealed it. Some nights he thought he heard, faint within the wood, that small breathy murmur; then he would rise, throw another stick on the stove, and sit until dawn.

He never carved a cradle again.