My name is Yudianer — Raindrop. The boy with the medicine basket gave it to me. The night he dug me out of the rubble, rain was falling like the sky river had burst, and he said: little thing, you were fished out of the rain — Raindrop it is.
I remember half of that night. I remember the mountain's stones jumping. I remember cold. I remember my tail pinned under a slab and no pulling would free it. I remember thinking I'd die there — and then a pair of hands, burning hot, lifting the stones off my tail one by one. His hands bled doing it; I could smell it. He tucked me inside his coat, and his heart beat louder than the thunder.
I mended at the ravine's mouth for half a month. He came every day — fresh dressings, fruit. I couldn't talk, and he didn't care; he talked anyway: a yao had come to town, the bounty board was full, tomorrow he was going into the hills, and he was a little afraid. I listened. When he left I'd tug his trouser cuff, and he'd crouch and say: Raindrop, don't worry — heal up and go home to Flower-Fruit Mountain. The elders miss you.
The day I healed, I didn't go home.
I settled at the ravine's mouth. Why? Gratitude isn't something you say. He keeps going into the hills, and do you know what the hills are? Yao, xiao, collapsing slopes, rising water. When he goes in, I wait at the mouth. When he comes out, I watch from far off — see him whole — then go back to sleep.
One thing, though. I can't tell you.
Old Taibai Jinxing came through the ravine afterward. He looked at me once — just once — and said four words I'm not repeating. Then he left. Since that day, my chest sometimes runs hot — hot like that boy's palms.
You want to know if I'm an ordinary monkey, or —
The rescue I remember. The rest, I can't say. When I've worked it out myself, he hears it first, Grandpa Marshal Ma second.
The rest of you — queue up.