A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

since we three made our agreement. What is seventy years? For a worker bee producing honey, it’s more than 560 lifetimes. For a buffalo plowing a field, it’s perhaps three—if it is not slaughtered prematurely. For a person, it’s almost an entire life. In a history book, it’s probably just a few paragraphs. But in God’s plan, it’s an instant, the blink of an eye.

The living can’t control their own days, but the dead are not thus bound. After death, the soul is no longer limited by time, space, or unexpected events. The soul’s world has no boundaries. To the soul, the entire universe and all eternity are just a thought

away.

In the world of the living, I was nineteen years older than you. In the world of the dead, you are just one year younger than me. Death has brought us closer.

I saw the fire in your eyes. Actually, I had seen fire in others’ eyes before. Everyone who signed up for the training camp possessed fire. But your fire was different than the others’. It wasn’t the type that would warm others. It’s an understatement to say your fire wasn’t warm. In fact, it was icy cold, cold

as a blade. You said nothing. The only response you offered the examiner was that fire.

I knew who you were thinking of, but I could not speak that name. That name would make the sky weep and the earth groan.

She hated me, but not with the sort of hate that could be expressed in words. Hate that can find expression is not hate. Hate must come to the end of its own rope before being forgotten.

She knew the tears would return if she nodded. Those tears had already humiliated her once, she didn’t want to let them do so again. She choked back a sob.

Facing death is a form of bravery, but so is facing life. I had to live to see the day when my knife would be of use.

To the eyes of a girl who’d lost her father, everything lost its color.

A child. She was still a child. But there wasn’t room for children to grow in hard times. This troubled world was like a knife that didn’t even recognize its own family and cut childhood short. All the young people who went through it were turned into adults in one swift stroke.

If a person goes through life without secrets, what’s she living for?”

This story is difficult, both telling it and hearing it. Each word claws its way from the narrator’s heart, through the throat, over the tongue, into the listeners’ ears, and along the auditory nerve. When it finally reaches the brain, how much flesh will it have torn along the way, and how many bloody wounds will it leave behind?

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of dead land . . .

After a while, I realized it was because she had the face of a teenager but the eyes of an adult who’d

seen the world. I couldn’t look directly at such sad eyes.

“When I was small, my mother told me that every star in the sky was once a person on the ground. When a person dies, they are transported from the ground to the sky. You called me Stella and said it meant ‘star.’ I knew that this was a message from my mother.”

When the snow stopped, I looked out and saw that the trees and houses had all disappeared. The snow erased the edges of everything.

I was ashamed. I had spent every day worrying about how to mend Stella’s roots, but she was much stronger than I was. Her roots could find their way alone in strange soil, but I always needed to lean on another, to have someone to keep me company.

The muscles in Stella’s face moved oddly. It took me a moment to realize that she was smiling. It had been so long since I’d seen her smile, I couldn’t immediately recognize it.

All at once, I saw both her fragility and her bravery. She’d been wounded so severely that she couldn’t even face the name in a book, but she was

braver than a...

I finally found the way to heal Stella. She didn’t need comfort, and she didn’t need to forget. She needed to...

Stella’s sobs that day can only be described as earth-shattering. They were so dark, they blotted out the sun and so deep they made the mountains tremble.

Some injuries had to be healed through surgery, even if there was no anesthesia.

It was only me who ignored both her past and future, capturing her present. I was the only one of us who knew how to sit in the moment, admiring her blooming youth, not allowing either her past or future to destroy her perfection at that moment.

“Don’t ever let me see you again.”

She walked into the thick darkness without so much as a glance back.

He had no idea how many layers were beneath it. The humiliation was so thick, it had formed a crust. Now, no matter how many more layers were added, it would never reach my flesh.

When examined under a microscope, one will see the pores even in the skin of an angel.

shrinking myself in hopes of disappearing into his blind spot.

I suspected you had fire hidden in you.

Like the eyes of a bitch whose pups have been taken away, your eyes had a faint blue gleam in them. Like a fire, but without heat. Whatever your gaze fell on turned to ice, and whoever saw that light couldn’t help but shudder.

Shame was a shadow, and no matter how far she traveled, it would follow her. Indeed, even if she ran as fast as she could, she would never be rid of it.

shook his head and said how lonely it must be for

someone as beautiful as her to sleep in an empty bed. They all fell silent, as if experiencing the loneliness of that solitary bed.

He didn’t realize the devil had already tied a rope around his ankle and was pulling him toward hell’s door.

I’ve hidden so long and traveled so far, but that damned shadow is still with me. It eventually caught up,

I’ve already hit bottom. I can’t go lower.

But they had made a mistake. They had pushed her too far. She could handle ten steps, but they had taken eleven, and that final step pushed her to the bottom of the chasm.

From the bottom of the chasm, the sky looked different. She had actually found the crack in the darkness. She finally understood that no matter how important face was, it was not more important than life. She understood, but they didn’t. They didn’t know what sort of earth-shattering things a person was capable of once she had dared to give up her face.

There was almost no intelligence left in the heat of love and what little remained was only enough to make him aware of his own confusion.

An almost desperate loneliness swept over me, like a beast lurking in the forest, suddenly pouncing and sending me

reeling.

my body began to experience a strange feeling that’s hard to put into words. Almost like numbness. My brain no longer directed my body, but my feet seemed to move in a spontaneous, mechanical repetition.

“What did that devil say before he died?” Leaning against the tree, Liu sighed heavily and whispered, “He called for his mother.”

His mother’s speed and his father’s intelligence had woke at that moment and formed a powerful alliance.

Snot’s expression wasn’t an unwillingness to resign himself to death, but more like mockery. His mouth was turned slightly up at the corner, a kind of smirk at some sinister joke he was waiting impatiently for everyone else to get.

I know you’re angry with me for abandoning you for my master. In that moment—a half second or even less—I didn’t think of you. I didn’t have time to think of anything. In that hair of an instant, I did what any dog would do out of instinct. I protected my master. We aren’t cats, or goldfish, or parrots. They can live as pets, enjoying comfort and staying unconcerned about the fate of their humans. But we’re dogs. Our fate was decided in our mothers’ wombs. We have no choice. The purpose of our lives is to serve our masters.