The earthen sleeping platform had long since gone cold, thin wisps of chill seeping in through cracks that could not be found. The old quilt on the bed had been in use for many years, packed hard and stiff, and no matter how many times Ju A’mu carried it outside to air in the sun during the day, it never warmed through. Combined with fitful sleep, by the fifth watch, the blanket had been kicked into a ball of cold air by two restless feet.
“A’mu…”
Pu Zhu had been woken by the cold, yet her mind still lingered in that warm cocoon of her dream, reluctant to emerge. As she had done in childhood, she murmured the call and then waited.
Ju A’mu was mute and could not respond with words, but she would use her hands to stroke and her arms to hold, coaxing the child back to sleep.
This time, however, what she waited for never came.
She paused, then jolted fully awake. Only then did she realize she had merely been dreaming. She shot her head out from beneath the blanket and, borrowing the faint night-light filtering in through the snow-covered window, turned to look at her side.
The outer bed was empty.
At some unknown hour, Ju A’mu had risen and quietly left, leaving her own sole heavy winter coat draped over Pu Zhu’s blanket.
Though the northern border region had nominally entered spring, a cold snap had descended a few days earlier, bringing snow. The snow had fallen for only two days before stopping, yet these last several days had remained cold enough to freeze one’s ears off.
Pu Zhu glanced at the window, shrouded with worn felt to block the cold wind. It was pitch black outside, but by instinct she judged it must be the fifth watch.
Still long before dawn. Thinking of Ju A’mu dressed in thin layered clothing, trudging through accumulated snow, step by stumbling step, hurrying off to the postal relay station to work…
Pu Zhu shivered out of the blanket, dressed quickly, lit the dim oil lamp on the table, and went out to the kitchen to fetch water to wash.
If it was cold inside, it was colder still outside. The moment the door opened, the wind hit her face like a blade—pitiless, scraping across her skin.
She had come here at eight years old. Now she was nearly sixteen. Eight years spent in this bitter, desolate border region—she should long since have grown used to the dry, frigid winters here.
Yet now, since waking from a fever that had nearly taken her life half a month ago, Pu Zhu found she had grown delicate again, seemingly unable to bear the cold at all.
Her body had actually adapted. It was only her mindset that had not—she reflected silently on this.
Because ever since the high fever broke and she regained consciousness half a month ago, her mind seemed stamped with vivid, intimate memories of a “previous life.” Clear and bone-deep, impossible to banish, they felt entirely real—as though they were her own lived experiences.
Before long, her fortune would turn, allowing her to leave this place and return to the capital to become the Crown Prince’s consort, and then the Empress, and finally…
Never mind the ending. Whenever she thought of her final fate in that past life, she felt unspeakably suffocated.
As for this matter itself—after a brief moment of utter disbelief at the start, she had lost control and felt herself completely merge with that past-life self. These past days she had been in a daze, as if still immersed in the life she had lived afterward in the Eastern Palace and in the state of having been the most honored of empresses.
Perhaps that was why she had not yet been able to fully return to today’s reality. Even though in that previous life she had only been a short-lived empress for a brief few years, she had nonetheless been the most exalted woman in the realm.
They say it is easy to move from frugality to luxury, but difficult to return from luxury to simplicity—how much more so when, in that past life, she had walked on eggshells, endured and borne hidden burdens, fought her way through a crowd of women vying for favor, always holding fast to a man’s heart, finally ascending to the rank of Empress. And yet before she had even warmed that seat, before she had time to study how to be a model empress to the realm while still keeping a man’s heart, suddenly, as if heaven itself were playing a trick, all the wealth and grandeur had vanished into smoke once more.
Even an immortal who had cultivated for a thousand years would have to spit up a few mouthfuls of blood at such a turn—let alone a worldly creature like herself, so attached to wealth and comfort.
Pu Zhu smiled wryly, breathed a puff of warmth into her palm, and stepped out the door, walking along the wall toward the kitchen.
This was the typical dwelling of the He Xi borderlands: a narrow square courtyard, several low rooms. The walls were built from yellow clay mixed with red willow branches and reeds common throughout the region—short but sturdy, perfectly suited to the perpetually windy, dry climate here.
The Yang family had moved last year from their official residence in the commandery city to this cramped little courtyard dwelling in Fulu Zhen. The space was truly cramped; Pu Zhu and A’Ju shared a room. Next to theirs was a very small storage room; when the odd-jobs maidservant had still been around, she slept there at night. Beyond that was the kitchen. Across the courtyard, the only larger room belonged to the household’s master and mistress—Yang Hong and Madam Zhang, who had taken Pu Zhu in. A mud-brick wall divided that room into inner and outer sections: the couple slept within, while Lin Shi, the old wet-nurse who had served Madam Zhang for many years, slept in the outer portion.
Yang Hong, the male head of the household, was kept busy with affairs and was often away from home. He had gone out half a month ago to inspect the beacon towers, the farthest of which lay a hundred li away, and had not yet returned. That room now housed only Madam Zhang and old Lin Shi with her nursing infant.
The snow in the courtyard had already been swept clear. The coal heap by the wall had frozen into a solid lump of ice. Beside the door of the storage room stood a tethered mongrel guard dog, who heard Pu Zhu emerge and came bounding out of its nest of straw, wagging its tail and shaking its head at her.
Not wanting to wake the people across the courtyard, Pu Zhu stepped quickly forward, patted the dog’s head, and quietly commanded it to lie back down.
The mongrel obeyed without complaint.
Pu Zhu was just turning toward the kitchen when, from the room across the way, old Lin Shi broke into a fit of coughing. Immediately after, the nursing infant was startled awake and began to cry.
A lamp flickered on, casting a shadow through the window. Pu Zhu heard old Lin Shi’s voice calling out to her through the door in her grating, carrying tone:
“Pu Zhu, are you up yet? Go draw a bucket of hot water! The little master is awake!”
There was a postal relay station nearby that received officials, diplomatic missions, and merchants making the long journey back and forth between the capital and the various nations of the Western Regions. After the Yang family moved here last year, A’Ju had discovered that the station lacked servants, so every day before the fifth watch she rushed over to work, to supplement the household income and shield her young mistress from some of Madam Zhang’s cold displeasure. Old Lin Shi knew perfectly well that A’Ju had already left at this hour. Too cold to venture out herself to fetch water, she simply sent Pu Zhu.
When old Lin Shi finished shouting, she apparently thought Pu Zhu was still asleep, so she raised her voice and repeated the command.
Pu Zhu responded quickly and turned to push open the kitchen’s ajar door and light it.
Knowing she would not be there, and that old Lin Shi would put all the household chores onto Pu Zhu, A’Ju always made a point of rising as early as possible, and before leaving she would always boil hot water and prepare breakfast warming in the pot, so that when Pu Zhu got up, there would be less to do.
Pu Zhu scooped half a basin of hot water into a wooden tray, held it in both hands, and carried it across the courtyard. When she was nearly there, she heard Madam Zhang’s displeased voice from inside: “Why is she so slow? Go look in on her! Clumsy creature, can’t even deliver water properly! The little master needs to be washed clean and settled before he’ll stop crying!”
Old Lin Shi responded with dutiful sounds of agreement.
Accompanied by brisk, shuffling footsteps, the door opened from within. A gust of warm air, faintly tinged with the sour smell of sour-milk, billowed out.
Old Lin Shi, wrapped in a quilted jacket and yawning, thrust out a head with a hair bun that had gone flat with sleep. She glanced at the hot water in the basin, then stepped aside and pursed her lips at Pu Zhu.
Knowing she was waiting for her to carry the water inside, Pu Zhu instead set it down at the doorway, straightened up, and smiled in the face of old Lin Shi’s dissatisfied stare: “The cold air outside clings to me. I’m afraid going in might bring the chill with me and do harm. Let me trouble you, Lin A’mu, to carry it these few steps yourself. I’ll go to the relay station to help my A’mu with her work.”
Having said this, she turned away. She washed her face quickly, went back to her room to retrieve A’Ju’s padded coat—the one A’Ju had laid over her—and pulled it on herself, then walked briskly away, leaving old Lin Shi behind to mumble discontentedly at her retreating back.
The mongrel Yang’s household kept, having often received scraps of food from Pu Zhu’s hand, was deeply attached to her. Seeing her leave, it could no longer contain itself and burst out to follow close at her heels.
Night still cloaked everything: the unbroken line of the Great Wall visible from high ground during the day to the north of town; the distant mountains on the horizon beyond it, home to fierce foreign peoples.
This land was full of wind and sand, hardship and despair, killing and death—yet also of fertile soil and flowing rivers, oases and life, prosperity and hope. But before sunrise, without the radiance of the sun, this expanse of heaven and earth seemed to hold nothing but the boundless, primordial vastness that could swallow all things.
Pu Zhu disliked this desolate feeling, but she had long since grown accustomed to it.
She quickened her pace.