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New Liaozhai: The Lady of the Pear Tree
A pear-tree spirit asks an old flower trader to carry one branch north before her tree is felled; years later, when his son would cut it down, the trunk bears the marks of a woman's grieving hands.
The Deer Immortal
Old Ke, a lone herb-gatherer on Cloud Dream Mountain, frees an old deer from a stranger's trap and binds its wound. Come spring, rare healing herbs appear at his door; the deer also leads him from cliffs. The prefect sends archers to seize the 'immortal deer'; Ke bars the door and they withdraw. The deer vanishes into mist. On his deathbed Ke says they are even—it owed a wounded leg, he owed a safe road. A faint call rises through the wind.
The Shiyou Wind
Shiyou was a woman before she was a wind—wife to You the Third, a merchant who left by night despite her plea to stay for their sick child. When his boat sank she did not weep, only waited, then died clutching his kerchief: 'I shall be a wind to bar the faithless.' Since, a headwind stalls any boat that would leave too lightly. A young boatman bound for contraband turns back to his laboring wife. The Chronicler: someone will not let you go.
The Lantern Granny
Five li north of Mist Creek a foggy fork swallows night travelers. Homeless since a gambler sold her daughter and her husband froze, Granny Lantern walks the fork each night with a bean-oil lantern, leading the lost home. Asked where she lives, she has no home that is a place. She refuses a house lest she stop walking. Years later she lights a lost salt train home and does not return; her spent lantern hangs frosted on a pine. The town raises a wordless lantern-post.
The Ferry God
At Old Camphor Crossing a spirit skiff ferries only the sincere and turns the crooked back at midstream. Honest peddler Zhou crosses a hundred times; tyrant Zhao, who seized land and lent at usury, is thrice returned and near-drowned. When Zhao's stolen bridge washes away, the wronged survive while he is stranded hungry—until the boat carries him home. The Chronicler: the boat bears the light, not the heavy.
The Fox Tomb
On the bend of the Turbid River stands a deserted mound called the Fox Tomb. Beneath it lie not men but three generations of foxes: one that left grain for the blind and broke a path through snow, one that warmed a lamb and brought grass to save a woman in labor, one that kept the grave through war. A passerby hears only wind in the grass; an adept leaves a white stone where a stele should be. The foxes never harmed a soul—they gave, accompanied, and kept watch, then were gone.
The Maple Spirit
At Cold Maple Temple an ancient maple reddens like fire each autumn. The failed scholar Shen Yan has kept it forty years. A young examinee, Liu, sees a red-robed girl—the tree's three-century grief—who tells of Zhou Shen, wronged in the Ming exam, and A-jiang, who died for him. Liu fails too, and finds Shen Yan dead beneath the tree, clutching a leaf marked 'Shen.' The Chronicler: a fool's single point of crimson can redden a feelingless tree for three hundred years.
The Tiger Matchmaker
Old Cui, a hunter, once freed a tiger's throat; years later his daughter dies. A tiger haunts her grave, then in a great snow carries a lost young peddler, Yu Sheng, to Cui's door. Cui keeps him; the tiger, he says, is matchmaker for his dead girl, bringing a son-in-law to tend his age. Yu Sheng weds the girl's sworn sister; the tiger vanishes, but each year a long call rises from the ridge. The Chronicler: the surest matchmaker need not be human.