My inn is called Late Return. My husband named it: travelers don't fear being late — they fear not returning.
He's been gone eight years. A cargo run; the boat went over. I'm what's left, holding up these three shopfronts alone. Meals by day, beds by night, and a pot of hot soup until deep midnight for whoever's still on the road — always with ginger. Against the cold, and against other kinds of chill.
You outsiders think innkeepers fear rowdy guests? I don't. One rule here: through my door, you're a guest; guests don't keep blades — blades go to the counter. The town knows what stands behind Ruan Sanniang's counter: my husband's old rolling pin. Thirty years of dough-working arms. One swing takes the corner off a table.
Funny thing — business is up this plague year. Refugees, couriers, bounty-takers, guests who check in and can't leave. There's a mermaid girl selling pearls, staying out back, staring toward the sea at night. I bring her soup every evening. She asked me once: Sanniang, aren't you afraid of me? I said: this house knows two kinds of guests — paying and credit. She laughed. Then her eyes went red.
About the word "yao" — it's not spoken in my inn. Not superstition. Principle. The mountain monkeys come down now and then and crouch by my back wall, and I put the leftovers out. The town says: Sanniang, with the plague this bad, you feed monkeys? I say: what hurts people is yao; monkeys are monkeys. Hurtful things live in deep mountains, on the high road, and in human hearts. If I can't tell those apart, what business do I have running an inn?
Shecan tells stories at my door and calls my inn "the town's news exchange." He's wrong. It's not an exchange, it's a pawnshop: news comes in and leaves as hot soup; a good heart comes in and leaves with another. If you've got news from Flower-Fruit Mountain, come in and sit.
The soup's free.