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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.
The Crow God
An old crow nests in Stone Gate Town's great locust and caws the night before any disaster. The watchman Old Qin reads its alarms and saves the town from fire; after his death his nephew Young Qin scorns it, until a snowy night the crow's frantic caw reveals bandits at the pass, and the town ambushes them. The crow vanishes with the thaw. The town carves a nameless stone crow at the tree. The Chronicler: the crow cried not doom but 'wake'.
The Silkworm God
All in Cocoon Bridge Town rear silkworms and honor the Horse-Head Maiden. Diligent Widow Zhou keeps the old rites and her cocoons come heavy; young Qian Gui scorns the offerings to save coin, and his cocoons come hollow. A dream shows him the goddess asking if she covets his meat. He mends the shrine, keeps the rites, and his silk thrives. The Chronicler: the goddess punishes a slack heart, not a thin gift.
The Snail Maid
The orphan Xie Duan finds a great green-gold snail and keeps it. From then on his stove is lit and his floor swept when he returns; he hides and sees a water-robed maid step from the shell. She is sent by heaven to tend his kitchen, but seen, she must return; she leaves the shell, which ever holds a little grain in lean times. He never marries, keeps the shell, and lives out his days. The Chronicler: the poor lack not wealth but warmth.
The Bridge God
A rickety wooden bridge spans the Green Creek gorge, guarded by a clay roadside god. On a stormy night the old porter Teng is warned in a dream that the bridge will break; he wakes the village, and the faithful are saved while a heedless merchant is lost. The Chronicler: the god was a man's refusal to be careless with other people's lives.
The Tea God
In the Cloud-rest Mountains an old keeper tends wild tea that opens only for a quiet heart. A greedy merchant finds it bitter; a poor failed scholar finds it sweet. The Chronicler: the leaf is the same; what is sour or sweet is the drinker's own mind, not the cup.
The Peach Demon
In the Shen garden an old peach tree blooms with a nightly red glow. When A-qiao's husband is lost on the river, her three years of waiting scatter half her soul; the tree-spirit gathers it and keeps her company to the end. The Chronicler: what the world calls foolish devotion is often the only thing that keeps a garden — and a memory — alive.