My name is Xu Anbang, bailiff of Aolai Town. The title comes down from Tang times: a hundred households make a li, and a li has one bailiff — in charge of registers, crops, and prodding things along. Put kindly, he's in charge. Put plainly, he's the one they find first when something goes wrong.
The first page of my family genealogy carries a name you all know: Xu Fu.
Yes — the Xu Fu who took three thousand boys and girls to sea seeking the elixir. The histories say plainly that the First Emperor sent him to Penglai. Whether he came back, the histories don't say. Our genealogy does: he never returned. It adds that a grain clerk from his fleet was blown back by a storm and settled on this coast, founding our branch. True or not, after three thousand years, nobody can test it. What I know is that the Xus have always lived by the sea, watching it — my ancestor watched for ships; I watch for yao.
The plague started last autumn. First fruit vanished from the peach woods, then baggage from the mountain paths. Then people started vanishing.
I've written seven petitions. The first asked the county for soldiers; the second, for hunters; the third, at the very least, for iron. Three of seven came back, all stamped "noted." The other four sank without a ripple.
I'll write the eighth. I file the petitions anyway. I hold the town anyway.
The threshold of the bailiff's office has worn lower these years under my feet. Whoever comes, I receive: lost chickens, lost people, lost wits. What can be solved, I solve on the spot — Tie Chong keeps the night watch, Xing'er compounds medicine, Wan Huo'er gives credit. What can't be solved, I put in writing and post on the bounty board. To whoever takes a notice, I say the ugly part first: do exactly what the notice says. If you can't, don't make trouble.
Not long ago a young man with a medicine basket carried a monkey out of the hills on a rainy night. The whole town laughed: people need saving these days, and he saves a monkey? I didn't laugh. My grandfather used to say: our Xus are descended from the man who sent people across the sea. Monkey or man — the one who turns back to save a life is the one you can trust with things.
That young man comes by the office often now. When I look at him, I feel like I'm reading the family genealogy again — page after page of things not yet written.