The Miller
An empty mountain mill, a great-uncle taken by the wheel, and a man who returns to stop it — only to find the wooden wheel turning at night with no water in the race, and a child's small shoe pressed beneath the stone. He buries what he finds; the wheel, it seems, has not finished turning.
The water mill at Ash Pool Village had stood empty for thirteen years. Gu Changshun stood beneath the eaves and breathed in a smell of damp timber and spoilt grain. His great-uncle had died inside this mill — the villagers said the water wheel had drawn him in. The old man had no children; on his deathbed he pressed the deed into Changshun's hand and said only this: come back, and stop the mill.
Changshun mended diesel engines for a living and never put stock in such talk. He had come to clear the place out and sell it to settle the debts.
On the first day he shut the sluice, drained the race, and pried the seized wooden wheel loose. The axle was thick with green moss; when it turned it groaned like an old man sighing. He worked until dark, barred the yard gate, and went back to town.
At night the autumn rain came. The next morning, before he had even reached the mill, he heard water. He looked up. The wheel was turning — slow, steady — though the sluice was plainly shut. There was no water in the race, yet the paddles were wet through, dripping a murky yellow.
He went around behind the wheel and reached into the seam of the axle. His fingertips met a slick, oily film, and something very fine, like hair, wound about the joint. His scalp tightened; he pulled his hand back.
On the third day he made up his mind to lift the lower grindstone and see what lay beneath. The stone weighed hundreds of catties; he raised it bit by bit with a jack and blocked it with sleepers. From the gap first came a stale, fishy stench, then a tiny shoe rolled out, its red embroidery faded to grey-white.
Changshun knelt and held the shoe in his palm. It was far too small — a child's. He remembered then an old saying of the village: long ago, the miller's family had lost a daughter; no one could name the year, only that when the wheel sounded, the child was gone.
He raised the stone higher. Beneath it lay a parcel of oilcloth, wrapped about a few small teeth and a finger bone tangled in long hair. The cloth had rotted through, yet the stench was the same as the slick upon the wheel at night.
He sat on the cold, wet ground a long while without moving. The rain kept falling; the wheel turned beyond the window, unhurried, while the race stayed empty.
At dusk he borrowed a spade and dug a pit on the slope behind the mill. He buried the shoe, the oilcloth, and those few teeth together, and set three stones to mark the spot. He raised no mound — he did not know the child, and did not wish to.
That night he heard it again. Not water, but a very faint, drawn-out humming, like a child crooning to itself as it dozed beneath the stone. He threw on his clothes and pushed the door open. The rain had stopped; the moon was white with cold. The wheel was still. The race was empty.
He stood a long time before he turned and went back in.
After that, no one came to buy the mill. Changshun did not sell, and did not leave. He set a bed beneath the eaves and listened at night to the wheel's occasional soft creak, like someone turning over in sleep. He grew used to it — used to the smell of damp timber, used to the empty space beneath the stone.
Only sometimes, waking at midnight, he would reach out and touch the shoe by his pillow. It was the same shoe, grey-white and small, as if waiting to be put on again by someone who had not yet come back.