On all of Flower-Fruit Mountain, I'm the last one who still brews monkey wine.
Monkey wine is not stomped out with feet, whatever they say in town. It's a hundred flowers and a hundred fruits, laid in alternating layers inside a hollowed old tree, sealed with clay, and left to work on its own. No rushing it. Sealed in spring, opened in autumn; sealed in autumn, opened next spring. The night a jar opens, half the mountain smells it.
My mother taught me the craft. She said: when monkeys brew wine, what they brew is days. Good blossoms make fragrant wine; sour fruit makes bitter wine. You cannot lie to a jar.
The night the stele cracked, half my wine cave came down — eleven jars buried. I dug for two days and saved three. One was shattered: the last jar my mother ever sealed. I sat up all night holding the shards. The next day, I buried the two good ones deeper.
Why not drink them?
The yao plague is fierce. Count how many monkeys this mountain has lost. Wine is for glad times. Who's glad now? Old Beng came begging a jar, and I chased him out with a ladle. He wanted my wine to consecrate his fists. No. Wine is for hearts gone sweet, not for lending courage to knuckles.
So I keep them buried, jar by jar, each one marked. And every time I bury one I tell myself: Zuibai, old girl, this wine is for waiting. For the day the mountain knows peace again. For the wanderers to come home. For the cub who fell out of the stone to grow up — then I'll open a jar and let him taste what the sweetness of Flower-Fruit Mountain means.
And if that day never comes?
Then I keep brewing. As long as the craft lives, the mountain's sweetness lives.
Got any fruit? Sweet is fine. Bring it, and I'll teach you to brew. No money — I charge in stories. Tell me your road. Tell it well, and I'll teach you an extra trick. Tell it badly, and we drink twice and you try again.