In the village where Zitao grew up there were fourteen mud houses and fifteen families (the Wu family moved in with the Zhao family after a summer fire). Being a small village, and situated between a great temple to the north and a great city to the south, the village was not well-known. It appeared on no maps and entered into the calculations of no great lords. In fact, the villagers themselves had trouble remembering to whom the village owed its allegiance, or even what it had originally been called, as everybody had taken to calling it the village between.

The village radiated out from a center crossroads, and each of the four roads that met at the crossroads continued in sometimes winding, sometimes straight paths until the tall grasses and unplowed fields that marked the village outskirts. Zitao’s house was the northernmost in the village, the edges of his family’s fields receding into wilderness. On the opposite side of the road was the Peng family’s fields, which extended further than those of Zitao’s family. The end of their fields was marked by a tall tree from which often hung ropes of drying fabric and various playthings of the family’s children. The southernmost end of the village was also marked by such a tree, but this tree was taller by far, and its branches extended over a small pool of water with a mud bottom. During the summer the oldest boys in the village took turns jumping from the tree and daring each other to jump as well.

When Zitao was four he could walk from one end of the village, at the drying tree, to the other, at the pool of water, and make it back in time for dinner if he started straight after lunch. He did that often, walking through the village playing in the grasses at the side of the dirt road and waving at everyone whose name he could remember. Sometimes he would become tired and a man working in the fields or a woman beating her sheets with a broom handle would invite him inside one of those fourteen mud houses. If he was lucky, he came out with a meat bun or a small green pear, round and pleasant to run his palms over, feeling the roughness of its skin.

When he was four and walking, Zitao would always come to the crossroads around which the village had been settled at high afternoon, with the sun at its greatest strength. The crossroads wasn’t much, but it was the only thing the villagers had in way of a town center. It served as a meeting place, a marketplace, and the social hub of the village, and when the fields lay fallow many could be found there sitting in the grass, cracking seeds between their teeth and chatting.

But when Zitao turned five he had no chance to find out how long it would take him to walk from one end of the village to the other and back again. His oldest brothers went to find glory in the war, which was what the villagers called every conflict to pass through their small ken, whether amongst the lords or with the barbarians. His oldest sisters went to live with their new husbands in distant villages, leaving only Zitao, his little sister and his two older brothers, who were eight and ten. His parents needed all the help they could get, even if that help was five and three, so Zitao spent his time pulling weeds with his father and helping his mother weave the hempen blankets she sold every month at the market town a day’s walk to the east.

To his parents’ exasperated amusement, Zitao did not like these activities very much. Pulling weeds put too much strain on his young back, and the sensitive back of his neck became burned red by the sun within the first two days. Weaving was even worse; in addition to boring him out of his mind, it gave him a headache from trying to remember the complex patterns and from staring at the same spot for too long, and his fingers hurt from the small movements required to shape the masses of string and thread into a cohesive cloth. Even so, he preferred helping his mother because it meant that he could go with her to the market every month, laden with blankets and surplus vegetables.

The town they went to was by no means a city, but it was bigger than anything Zitao had ever seen and he loved it. Women from many villages surrounding the town cried out their wares while the townspeople, identified by their strange gaits and manners of speaking, prowled the stalls for a deal. Donkeys brayed and chickens clucked, and there was always something delicious cooking for a little boy with a bright enough smile.

One day in the summer after he turned six, while Zitao was playing with some other children in an alleyway near the marketplace, there was a loud commotion in the marketplace and they all scampered back to their mothers to see what was going on. When Zitao reached his own mother, clutching tightly to the roughspun fabric of her clothing, she was standing with both hands clapped over in amazement. Zitao followed her gaze to the very center of the marketplace, where a deep well opened into the ground. A group of very strange men stood there, stranger even than the townspeople with their skirts of metal and their faces covered with more metal. One man seemed more important than the rest, for his armor was less dented than the others’, and in his helm he wore a bright red feather. This was the man that was holding another man by his long, greasy hair.

The man being held was struggling furiously, but the important man was too strong for him and he could not escape. When he kicked his feet ineffectually at the other armored men, stumbling in the dust and falling onto his knees, everyone in the marketplace laughed as if enjoying the show. The important man let this continue for a time, while the murmuring around him grew louder and more unruly. Then he raised his voice, lifting a hand clutching a spear to emphasize each statement.

“What’s he saying?” Zitao asked his mother, the unfamiliar words and pronunciations escaping his grasp.

His mother had recovered herself and she sat on the small stool her weaving circle kept in the town, letting Zitao sit on her lap. She took one of his hands in both of her own and it gently as she whispered into his ear.

“This man is Du Jin, the criminal that has plagued these lands for so long. Though he is a learned man, appointed by the emperor to watch over the people, he has stolen from those people by forcing them to pay more than their due. He has used this stolen tax money to fund his unholy expenses, treating with the lands of the west and destroying his land to build strange buildings.”

The important man paused, and the crowd roared its agreement, the voices of the weak and suppressed, the women and the children, vibrating off the stone buildings of the marketplace. The man being held, Du Jin, visibly paled and stopped struggling. Zitao found this immensely strange, that the man would give up so easily, because of a few words and a bunch of noise from a lot of strangers. But, young as he was, he also recognized the power of those words and that noise, to suddenly send a man into silence and submission.

The important man let go of his grip on Du Jin’s hair and he fell to a defeated pile on the ground. When the important man motioned to one of the armored men standing nearby, the man handed him a great sword, taller than Zitao and with a hilt inlaid with precious stones, and the important man drew the sword from its scabbard. The sharp blade shone in the sunlight, the killing edge whispering in and out of view, and the marketplace fell silent, as if everyone knew what was to happen next.

“This man has sinned!” the important man declared, his eyes examining the blade as he turned it in the light. “And for that I, Cao Cao, sentence him to die.”

Zitao swallowed and it was only then that he realized that his fingers were trembling, his entire body shivering as if in the dead of winter despite the hot summer sun. His heart thundered in his chest and he couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene unfolding before him.

“Do you have any last words, Du Jin?” Cao Cao asked the defeated man as he lifted the sword high over his head.

Du Jin’s voice was choked and tears were streaming down his face when he answered. “Only that I am honored to have the great Cao Cao be the one to end my wretched life.”

“So be it.” Cao Cao brought the blade down with one swift , ending the man’s life too quickly for him to cry out, and blood spewed from the wound and onto the dirt of the marketplace and Cao Cao’s clothing. Du Jin’s severed head rolled slowly away from his body, eyes still wide open in grotesque terror, but Zitao did not look away. There was a moment of silence, as the crowd realized what had happened before it broke into cheering and rejoicing.

And Zitao knew that that day he had witnessed justice.

…

When they returned home that evening, Zitao recounted the day’s events to everyone who would listen, running down the dirt road to the nearest family after dinner and jabbering away at the strangers they passed at the village crossroads. Sometimes he remembered it well enough to tell the whole thing through, but mostly he would forget one crucial detail just as the story was ending, and he would tell the story over from the beginning, to the dismay of the people listening. Other times his audience would walk away in the middle of his story, and he would continue the story with the nearest other person, without missing a beat. And though at first his inquiries were met with indulgent smiles and pats on the head, as his interest wore on his family became uninterested, annoyed even. Disappointed, Zitao sat on the front stoop of the house and replayed the day to himself, from the rice porridge he had for breakfast to the smell of triumph as Cao Cao galloped away with his soldiers.

After a while his older brother, the one closest to him in age, Fahong, joined him in the cool night air. They didn’t speak for a while as Zitao absently scratched pictures into the dirt road with a stick, blades shining in the sweltering sun and horses with hooves pounding like thunder beginning to take form in the hard-packed dirt. Zitao had just made the very important decision to add a warrior, huge with fierce eyes and a magical sword, to the picture, when Fahong grew impatient and rubbed the whole scene out with the heel of his foot.

“What was that for?” Zitao complained. “I was almost done!”

“You’re never done,” Fahong replied. “I got bored.”

“You’re mean,” Zitao muttered, tossing the stick away into the darkness where the house blocked out the light of the moon. He crossed his arms and leaned back to give his brother a deep frown. “What do you want anyway?”

Fahong shrugged and kicked his legs around in the air. “I heard you saw Cao Cao today.”

“I did!” Zitao’s expression perked up and he sat up straight, ready to explain the whole thing over again, but Fahong only waved his hand at him to be quiet.

“Well, I know you’re going to want to be like him, but you can’t.”

Zitao was confused. “Why not?”

“Because,” Fahong said. “If you leave, there will just be me left.”

“No. What about meimei? And Big Brother? And Mommy, and Daddy?”

“It’s not the same!” Fahong snapped. “All of our big brothers and sisters left, and our little brothers and sisters died, except for you and meimei. They all went out in the world because home isn’t good enough, and they’re all never coming back. If you leave, it’ll just be more of the same. Before I know it, I’ll have to leave too.”

“But don’t you want to leave home? And find adventure?” Zitao asked. “I want to be like Cao Cao, and fight bad guys! I’ll grow a beard just like him, and I’ll find a great big horse to ride into battle!”

Fahong shook his head, and in the light of the moon the tears beading at the corners of his eyes took on a silvery tint. “No, I don’t want to leave home. I like it here, and so should you.”

With that he stood and ran back into the house, where their mother’s voice flowed out melodiously as she told their little sister a bedtime story.

…

Zitao paid his brother’s words no heed, and when he had nothing to do he played with his other brother instead of Fahong, the brother that was always boasting about how he would someday go to the capital city and become a great official, with a gated house for himself and Fei, who lived down the road and was the same age as him. This brother was called Zhuang, because he was zhuang, that is, he was strong and sturdy, and all of the village agreed he was a fine boy.

One day while they were working in the fields, Zitao flipping clods of dirt and Zhuang crushing them into fine pieces with a wooden pick, Zitao told his brother about his dream to become a great man like Cao Cao. Summer was coming to its end, and they were planting one last harvest before winter. The seeds they would push into the soil were different and interesting, the sun was less powerful, and their mother’s strawberries had just ripened, so Zitao still had plenty of energy to gesticulate as he described just what he would do.

“That’s a tall order,” Zhuang commented when Zitao had finished.

“What’s that mean?” Zitao asked without looking up from his work.

“It means that it’s going to be very hard,” Zhuang replied. “Cao Cao is very powerful, and there is very little chance that you will become as great as him.”

“That’s not true!” Zitao retorted, standing straight up and putting one hand on each hip as he confronted his older brother.

Zhuang laughed. “Calm down. I’m just saying that you don’t even have a plan to become as powerful as him. How are you going to become like Cao Cao? By telling your older brother?”

Zitao frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” Zhuang said smugly. “Get back to work and I’ll tell you how you can become like Cao Cao.”

Zitao got back to work.

“Cao Cao is a great martial artist,” Zhuang explained. “He is very strong and fast, so no one can beat him in one-on-one combat. And he has created many kung fu forms that students learn from. If you work hard and learn kung fu, you can be just like him.”

Zitao paused for a moment as he pondered this, then continued reluctantly to work after receiving a light tap on his back from his brother.

“But how can I learn kung fu? You don’t know kung fu, do you?”

“No way,” Zhuang replied, laughing. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t teach a scrawny little kid like you. Besides, I already told you how to be like Cao Cao, so you should figure out how to learn kung fu by yourself.”

“Maybe I will,” Zitao said determinedly. “You’ll see. One day I’ll ride into our village on a big black horse with a hundred men with me, and then I’ll take you all with me, so you don’t have to keep doing this stupid dirt flipping thing.”

Zhuang laughed again, this time actually pausing his work to stand up, wipe his forehead, and wrap his arms around his shaking torso. He didn’t stop laughing for many long minutes, and after a while Zitao sensed he was being made fun of, so he frowned at his brother and banged his fists against his brother’s arms. Zhuang only laughed harder at first, but soon enough his laughter subsided and he recovered enough to choke out:

“Good luck, little brother.”

…

Zitao nurtured his dream throughout autumn, and repeatedly mentioned to his parents his desire to learn kung fu. Their response was much the same as Zhuang’s--they laughed and pushed him aside, occasionally stopping to marvel at his persistence. This only made him more determined to fulfill his dream and become as great as Cao Cao. Even so, his queries about it became less and less to the point that his family decided he had given up, though in reality he was only waiting for a chance to escape their judgemental smiles.

The last harvest of the season was less than they had expected, so occasionally Zitao’s tummy would growl in its search for food. His parents were rationing their food so they could make it through the winter, which was shaping up to be one of the worst in memory. Zitao didn’t complain, though, because he saw it as a chance to prove his discipline and so convince his parents to allow him a way to learn kung fu.

It turned out to be no such chance because his parents were too tired, too hungry, too worried about their prospects of surviving the next few months, to care about Zitao’s plans for his future. Most of their time was spent lying around the house, trying to conserve energy by sleeping and sometimes doing some household work to prepare for a spring that seemed never to come. Zitao’s stomach began to growl consistently, and if he walked more than a few steps he would double over with the pain and fatigue, so he took to sleeping most of the time, and forgetting about what had occupied his attention for the past few months of his life. His only concern became the constant feeling of emptiness in his gut and the dull throbbing in his temples.

Another blow came when a raiding army came riding through the village, knocking down the fences that kept wild animals out of their fields and trampling the fields themselves with iron and blood. They demanded a part of each family’s harvest in exchange for leaving after two nights, but those two nights consisted of huddling fearfully in a corner of their house, praying to the spirits of their ancestors that they would make it to the morning. Fortunately the army kept its promise and left after two nights, but the other families suspected it was more because of the lack of resources in the villages rather than any honor on the soldiers’ parts. (At the mention of honor Zitao stirred a little in his half-slumber, but he soon fell asleep again in a vain attempt to conserve energy.) Later Zhuang told him that the army was of one of Cao Cao’s enemies, or so he had learned from a royal messenger that had ridden by not long after. Zitao hoped earnestly that his hero would swoop in to save the day, avenging his family’s loss by destroying the army and sending back their food. But it was not so.

Afterwards their food was even less and when his brothers took off their shirts to have a quick scrubbing from their mother Zitao could count every rib in their chests. Zitao was spared the washing that was supposed to prevent illness in his brothers because his parents feared that any exposure to the freezing air would be a death sentence for him. That conversation was the last thing Zitao remembered for a long time, because afterwards his memories were made up of half-remembered dreams and mouthfuls of watery rice porridge.

After that long period of dreaming Zitao was awoken and his father whispered in his ear that he was running a terrible fever, and his mother worried for his life. They were risking a journey to the nearest town, through the banks of snow and ice, in hopes that a doctor there would be able to treat him or that they would be able to buy food from the townspeople there. If not, Zitao understood, his dying meant one less mouth to feed anyway. If his father died on the road, that was two less mouths.

They were sent off with enough food for two days, which was the equivalent of a single meal during the summer. Zitao’s father carried him on his back and with blankets wrapped around their faces they braved the cold. The wind was biting as it cut into any portion of exposed skin, and dark clouds blocked out the sun so it seemed as if they were walking in twilight instead of early morning light. The only sounds Zitao heard were his father’s shoes crunching into the snow, because the whiteness around them was like a muffler that blocked out any other sound. Zitao slept through most of the journey, lips turning to blue against the cold, and when he woke up again he was propped against a tree, and his father was tipping some water, cold as ice, into his mouth. He vaguely tasted some grains of rice floating in it, but he couldn’t be sure whether they were really there or whether it was just his imagination.

“I’m sorry.” When the water was finished Zitao’s father had sat back and was whispering, as if actually speaking required too much exertion.

Zitao turned his head slowly, painfully, to look at his father. To his surprise he saw that there were tears frozen onto his face, and his eyes were closed against the world, his head tilted back.

“I thought that this would save you, son, but it was just a stupid hope. We walked all this way in the snow but in the end I don’t have enough strength to carry you any farther. I know you’re hungry, and tired, and sick, but there’s just nothing I can do. I’ve tried everything but in the end I’m too tired to do anything more. I’ve failed you, Zitao. The world just doesn’t have a place in it for small people like us.”

Then Zitao realized he was crying too, and he reached out to his father. His voice cracked with disuse when he opened his mouth but in the end he was able to force his mouth to cooperate with his vocal chords.

“It’s okay, Father. I love you. I won’t let you die.”