The Wall That Closed

He came back to the county town on a market day, which was exactly the day he would have chosen. The square was full, and his mother was weeping, and his father was standing in the doorway of the house with his arms folded, looking as if he meant to be angry and was not quite managing it.

Wang Qi let them all have their fill of weeping and questioning, and then he asked for the people of the village to be gathered in the courtyard. His wife, whom he had left as a girl and found a woman, asked him what on earth he was about, and he told her she would see.

By late afternoon the whole village had come. They stood in the courtyard in their best clothes, with their hands behind their backs, and they looked at the young man who had come back from the mountain with a changed face, and they did not know what to expect.