The Ladle Into the River

Old Gou was the last brewer left in the riverside town.

Once, seven distilleries lined the bank; now only his single stove remained. On the day of First Winter, he followed the old rule and sealed his jars for the cellar, stacking the year's new rice wine by the urnful into the cool dark and closing each mouth with yellow clay. The cellar held its fragrance like a room full of sleeping people.

Only the small jar in the corner he had never touched. It held the sweet mash he had brewed for his late wife three years before. The autumn she left, he had sworn to brew the sweetest mash and share it with her at the spring turn. Spring came, she did not, and the jar stayed sealed — he could neither bear to lift the lid nor to pour it out. For three years it stood in the cellar's corner, its clay gone grey with dust.

The strange business began the month past.

Each midnight the jar's clay would loosen of its own accord, cracking at the seams, and a layer of white foam would rise within. The foam gathered and broke, yet slowly it took the shape of a blurred human figure, as if someone were sitting up inside the wine, then sinking back down. The first time Gou saw it he staggered back three steps; the second night the foam rose again, clearer than before. He mixed fresh clay and sealed the mouth shut, weighting it with a millstone — yet at the hour of the rat the stone had shifted, and the foam still crept from the crack, the figure faint, as though calling to him.

A few nights later, a second wonder arrived.

Each midnight the old wooden gate at the town's mouth was knocked upon. There stood a slender youth in a grey jacket, river mud on his shoes. He would not enter the yard, only stood beyond the threshold and said, "Old sir, if you please, fill a flask — I come to fetch it for my late father." When Gou asked who his father was, the youth lowered his eyes and did not answer. Gou's heart softened, and sensing the cold, damp river-stink beneath the mourning cloth, he filled the flask each time. Yet the youth never drank in town; he turned and vanished into the night, leaving no footprint behind.

Gou grew suspicious.

When the youth came again that night, Gou busied himself with his tools, and when the grey figure left the town he followed at a distance. The youth walked light, yet not toward any house — only along the bank to the old dock. The dock had stood abandoned for years; moss covered its steps, and water slapped the rotten timbers with a hollow sound. Gou crouched in the reeds and watched the youth walk to the dock's end, pull the stopper, and pour the wine slowly into the river.

The moment the wine met the water, the surface fell still.

Gou held his breath and looked. Beneath the murky current lay a man. He was curled on his side, his legs askew — Cripple Zhou, the old patron who had drunk himself into the water seven years before and never come up. A ripple passed, and Zhou's mouth seemed to move, as though leaning toward that one sip. The youth poured the last drop, bowed gently toward the river, and left, leaving the air thick with wine and, at the river's bottom, a shadow that had waited far too long.

Gou went home before dawn and did not dare make a sound.

He remembered that Zhou had loved his sweet mash above all, always running up a tab, promising to settle it when fortune came. Fortune never came; neither did the man. The grey-clad youth was likely the longing Zhou had left behind, coming to fetch that overdue cup for his dead father.

From then on, at every new and full moon, Gou dipped a ladle of new brew, walked to the old dock, and poured it slowly into the river. He never again dared lift the little jar's lid — for beneath that clay, he feared, what sat up would no longer be only a shape.

The townsfolk thought him an old man grown sentimental, and still came for their wine. Only Gou knew that a patron lay drowned in the river, a jar of his late wife's sweet mash stayed sealed in the cellar, and the youth who came for wine at midnight had never truly left this river.