My shop is called the Apricot Grove.
The name has a history. In the Three Kingdoms era there was a physician called Dong Feng who treated people for free. Cure a grave illness, and he asked the patient to plant five apricot trees; cure a light one, one tree. Over a dozen years it became a grove of a hundred thousand trees. When the fruit ripened, he traded apricots for grain and fed the poor. Ever since, "the apricot grove" has meant the healing trade. It's in the Shenxian Zhuan — I don't make things up.
Grandfather said our ancestors once lent a hand in that grove. True or not, the signboard came down that way, and I'm the fifth generation to keep it. His last words, gripping my hand: girl, the signboard may fade, the medicine may not.
This plague year, three of my door-sills have worn through. Wounds, fright, sleeplessness. Bletilla for bleeding, poria for the shaken mind, bupleurum for fever — gone as fast as it comes. Scarcest of all are the mountain herbs: the three ingredients from Water-Curtain Ravine used to arrive on schedule, but this year the xiao haunt the hills and two of the paths in are cut.
So Granny Tian posted a bounty for someone to gather those three herbs. Half a month, and nobody dared take it. I checked the board every day until Clerk Yinshou lost patience: Xing'er, the notice won't run off by itself.
The notice won't run. The patients can't wait.
Then a young man with a medicine basket took it down. The morning he went in, I chased after him and pressed a packet of snake-and-vermin powder into his hand. He blinked: how much, keeper? I said: it costs. How much? I said: come back alive, not a copper; if you don't, who would I collect from?
He laughed, shouldered the basket, and went.
Three days later he came back — herbs complete, hide torn. As I dressed his wounds he hissed through his teeth and asked: how much for the medicine?
I said: the medicine is bitter; the keeper's smile is sweet. That'll do.