The day Li Shen woke to an empty mat where his father should have been, the house felt wrong.
The room was the same: low ceiling, smoke-stained beam, two mats laid side by side, his own in the corner. The morning light slipped in through the gap above the door the way it always did.
But the space where Li Heng usually lay was cold and flat.
He pushed his blanket away and sat up.
"Father?" he called softly.
No grunt. No rustle. No familiar curse at a knee that had decided to hurt before sunrise.
He padded out into the main room.
Li Mei was at the stove, hair already tied up, hands wrapped around a ladle. The smell of rice porridge and a hint of bitter herbs floated in the air.
"Morning," she said without turning.
"Where's Father?" Li Shen asked.
"Gone to marry a goose," she replied.
He stared.
She sighed. "To Han," she added. "The bourgade. To find your famous miracle man before he runs away."
The words hit him like a bucket of cold water.
"When?" he demanded.
"Before dawn," she said. "He wanted to leave while the road was still hard. Less mud."
"You didn't wake me," he blurted.
"I considered it," she said. "Then I imagined you chasing him down the path halfway barefoot, arguing that you're big enough to carry him if he gets tired. My heart is not strong enough for that kind of drama."
He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. She wasn't entirely wrong.
"He shouldn't have gone alone," he muttered instead.
"He's not alone," she said. "He has his stubbornness with him. It's heavier than you are."
Her voice was light. Her fingers were white on the ladle.
Li Shen walked closer. "How far is Han?" he asked.
"Farther than the well," she said. "Closer than the end of the world. Eat."
He didn't sit.
"What if the doctor refuses to come?" he pressed. "What if he's already gone? What if—"
"What if the sky falls?" she cut in. "What if the river climbs out of its banks, grows legs and walks into our house? What if Old Wu learns generosity? If we start feeding every 'what if,' we'll have no rice left for real problems."
He swallowed.
"He went for you," he said.
She looked at him then, properly. In the light from the stove, he could see the faint hollows under her eyes, the way the colour had thinned from her lips.
"He went for all of us," she said. "If this… if Pale Wind can be slowed more, he wants to know. If it can't, he wants to stop living on maybes. He's a simple man. He hates maybes."
"He hates unfair things," Li Shen said.
"Same thing," she replied softly.
For a moment, they just looked at each other.
"Sit," she said finally. "If you don't eat, you'll faint the moment the doctor walks in and he'll think we have a second sick person. We can't afford that."
He obeyed.
The porridge tasted like nothing. His tongue registered the heat, but his mind was elsewhere, out on the road between their village and the bourgade: ruts, stones, the curve around the low hill where the wind always cut hardest. His father's steady stride. The image of an unknown man in clean robes turning away at an inn door.
He gripped his bowl until the rim dug into his palms.
"I could have gone with him," he said at last.
"I know," she said. "That's why I asked him to leave before you woke up."
"Why?" he demanded.
"Because if he came back without a doctor and with you, he'd be carrying double the disappointment instead of one," she said. "I'm greedy. I like my disappointments evenly spread."
"That doesn't make sense," he snapped.
"Most of life doesn't," she answered. "You'll see."
She lifted her own bowl, took a few slow sips, and set it down again, breath a little shorter.
For once, she didn't pretend she hadn't noticed his eyes on her.
"Listen," she said quietly. "Your father went. That's the part we can do. The rest is not ours to carry yet. Today, you and I will do what we always do. Chores. Wood. Water. We don't stare at the road until our necks break."
"It won't change anything if we work," he said.
"It won't change anything if we don't," she replied. "But at least we'll be tired for a reason."
They worked.
He carried water from the well until his shoulders burned. He chopped kindling until his arms shook. He hauled a basket of grain to Wu's strip and back, under his mother's pointed comments about posture and wasted steps.
Every time he passed the path that led out of the village toward Han, his head turned.
No one came. The road was a line of packed dirt and stones under the Pale Wind, nothing more.
Around midday, Li Mei sat down on the stool by the door with a slow exhale.
"That's enough majestic labour for today," she said. "If you keep going, the mountain will be jealous."
"You should lie down," he said.
"If I lie down, I'll remember I'm supposed to feel like a sick person," she replied. "It's annoying."
"You are a sick person," he said, anger and fear tangling in his stomach.
She tilted her head, studying him.
"Say that again," she said.
He flinched. "Why?"
"Because it's true," she said. "And it's good practice. The world doesn't get less real because you use softer words. Go on. Say it properly."
He swallowed.
"You're sick," he forced out.
"Yes," she said simply. "And?"
"And… I don't want you to be," he said, voice cracking.
"Good," she said. "I'd be hurt if you were enjoying this."
He let out a strangled laugh that wasn't really a laugh.
"Shen."
He looked up.
"If the doctor comes and says there is nothing to be done," she said calmly, "that doesn't mean nothing matters. It just means we stop pretending 'medicine' is a magic word. We still have today. We still have work. We still have each other. That counts."
"It's not enough," he said.
For the first time that day, something in her expression flickered.
"I know," she admitted.
They sat like that, facing each other, while the wind scraped along the walls.
In the distance, a dog barked. Somewhere, a child shouted. Life went on, oblivious.
Footsteps finally broke the stale air of waiting.
Li Shen's head snapped toward the doorway.
A shadow stretched across the threshold, then resolved into a figure he knew and one he didn't.
Li Heng stepped in first, dust on his boots, hair damp with old sweat. Beside him walked a man in a long, well-mended dark coat, a cloth bag slung over one shoulder.
He wasn't young, but he wasn't old like Old He, either. His hair was mostly black, streaked with a few threads of grey. His eyes were narrow and sharp above high cheekbones.
He looked around the room once, quick and precise, like a hand taking the measure of a weight.
"This is them," Li Heng said, as if that explained everything.
"So I see," the stranger replied.
His voice was light but carried a fatigue that no decoction could cure.
"Physician?" Li Mei asked, pushing herself up a little straighter.
"Doctor Wen," he said with a short nod. "From the south. Passing through Han on my way to the city of Chen. Your husband made a compelling argument for a detour."
He set his bag down with care.
"What did he pay you with?" she asked dryly. "Grain? Wood? Promises?"
"Promises," Wen said. "Grain and wood are heavy. Promises travel light."
"You came anyway," she noted.
"I dislike being haunted by stubborn men with desperate eyes," he replied. "It ruins the taste of my tea."
Li Heng said nothing. He looked like someone had taken a strip of leather and pulled it tight between his shoulders.
Li Shen hovered by the wall, unsure if he should come closer or stay out of the way.
"You must be the boy," Wen said, turning his gaze on him.
Li Shen straightened instinctively.
"Yes," he said. "Li Shen."
"Good," Wen said. "You have a spine. Keep it."
He returned his attention to Li Mei.
"How long?" he asked.
She raised an eyebrow. "You're going to have to be more specific."
"The cough," he said. "The shortness of breath. The feeling that your chest is a tight box instead of a house."
She hesitated.
"A while," she said. "Months."
"More than three," he said. It wasn't a question.
She inclined her head.
"Less than a lifetime," she added.
"Not necessarily," he said.
He gestured to the stool.
"Sit," he ordered. "If you fall while I'm here, my fee doubles."
"Bold of you to assume we can pay the first one," she muttered, but she sat.
He moved like someone who had done this a thousand times in a thousand rooms.
Hand on wrist, fingers counting pulses. Ear pressed lightly against her back. Knuckles tapping along ribs. Questions dropped like stones in a pond:
"Night sweats?"
"No."
"Blood in the spit?"
"Not yet."
"Fever?"
"Sometimes."
Her answers were short, stripped of jokes.
He took a small polished metal disk from his bag, holding it over the flame for a breath before lifting her eyelid with a calloused thumb and angling the disk to catch the light.
He examined her tongue with a flat stick, her fingernails, the colour on the inside of her lower eyelid.
Old He had been rough and familiar, her touch like a neighbour scolding a borrowed pot.
Wen's touch was impersonal, efficient. Not cruel. Not gentle.
Professional.
Li Shen watched every movement, every tiny reaction on his mother's face.
At one point, when Wen pressed under her ribs, she flinched.
"Pain?" he asked.
"Annoyance," she said.
He increased the pressure.
"Pain now?" he pressed.
"Yes," she hissed.
"Good," he said. "If you felt nothing, you'd be closer to the ancestors than I can afford."
He stepped back at last.
"I assume you've seen a village healer already," he said.
"Old He," Li Mei confirmed. "She calls it chest rot. She says the wind here has a bad attitude."
"She's not wrong," he said. "We use a different name in the cities. Pale Wind sickness. It's more polite, and makes us feel clever. It changes nothing."
The word felt heavier coming from his mouth than from Old He's.
"In your case," he went on, "it's settled deep. The lungs are weak. The lining is worn. The coughs tear little by little. The body fights, but every fight leaves scars you can't see."
Li Shen felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"Incurable?" he asked, before either adult could speak.
Doctor Wen looked at him.
There was no pity in his gaze. Only a faint weariness.
"By me?" he said. "Yes."
"By anyone?" Li Shen pushed.
"In this world?" Wen said carefully. "With herbs, needles, and good air? We can slow it. We can ease it. We can stretch the rope."
His eyes flicked briefly to Li Heng, then back to Li Shen.
"We do not make ropes grow new," he finished.
Silence.
"So your answer is 'no' with nicer clothes," Li Mei said quietly.
"My answer is the only one you'll get from an honest doctor," Wen replied. "If someone tells you different, he wants your coin or your faith. Sometimes both."
"Then why come?" Li Shen burst out. "If you already knew—if Old He already knew—why bother?"
"Because there's a difference between falling fast and falling slow," Wen said. "Between choking every night and only some nights. Between one more harvest with your mother walking in the yard and half of one. If you don't see that difference now, you will when you're older."
"I don't care about 'one more harvest'," Li Shen said, anger blowing past his fear. "I want—"
"Forever?" Wen finished. "Everyone does."
He shifted his weight.
"I've seen Pale Wind kill men stronger than your father in two years," he said bluntly. "I've seen it let grandmothers cough their way into their seventies in the right climate. Here, in this place, with this air and this work, your mother's body is fighting uphill. I can't change the hill. I can only give her a better pair of shoes."
Li Shen's throat burned.
"Then give them," Li Heng said suddenly. His voice was low, but it cut through the room like an axe through wet wood.
Wen turned to him.
"You understand my terms?" Wen asked. "I sell time. Not miracles."
"I understand," Li Heng said. "I don't care what you call it. Give her more time."
Wen studied him a moment.
"Fine," he said. "You'll have to pay."
"We will," Li Heng replied.
"You don't know how much yet," Wen said.
"It doesn't matter yet," Li Heng returned.
Something in Wen's mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not exactly.
He reached into his bag again, pulling out small paper-wrapped bundles and a thin notebook.
"I'll write dosages," he said. "Your Old He is not a fool; she'll understand my notes. Decoctions to thin the phlegm, to warm the chest, to strengthen the blood. Strict rules."
He looked at Li Mei.
"You'll avoid standing in the wind," he said. "You'll avoid damp. You'll not wash clothes in cold water up to your elbows. You'll let other people lift the buckets when they can, and if they can't, you'll complain loudly on purpose until they learn."
"Bossy," she muttered.
"Alive," he corrected.
"You do know we live in Vent Pâle, yes?" she said. "Avoiding wind here is like avoiding Old Wu at the market. He's everywhere."
"Then you start inside," he said. "You keep the fire steady. You keep the air warm and as dry as this place allows. You let your husband wear himself in your place for a while."
"I was already planning to," Li Heng said dryly.
Wen ignored him.
"You listen to your healer when she says rest," he added. "You don't pretend you're fine to win arguments."
Li Mei's eyes narrowed. "Did my husband pay you extra to say that?"
"He can't afford extra," Wen said. "I said it for free."
He crouched to spread his notes on the table, showing the neat characters to Old He's imagined eyes.
"When the weather turns worse," he said, tapping one section, "these herbs will matter more. If the snows are heavy this year, you'll want to double the chest-warming decoctions."
"We can't afford heavier snows," Li Heng said.
"Tell that to the sky," Wen replied. "See if it cares."
He straightened and repacked his bag.
"How much?" Li Heng asked.
Wen named a sum.
It wasn't outrageous for a travelling physician used to city rates.
For a farmer from a wind-beaten village, it might as well have been a mountain.
Li Heng didn't flinch.
"We'll pay," he said.
"In coin?" Wen asked.
"In coin when we can," Li Heng said. "In grain, wood, labour until then. I can haul, dig, break stone, mend walls. I'll speak to the merchants when you go back through Han. They always need backs."
Wen scratched his jaw.
"You're serious," he said.
"Yes," Li Heng replied.
"Fine," Wen said at last. "One visit. One set of prescriptions. I'll leave some herbs to start. When they run out, your Old He will improvise from my notes. I won't be here to hold your bowls."
He looked at Li Shen.
"You're angry with me," he observed.
"Yes," Li Shen said.
"Good," Wen said. "You should be. But not for the reason you think. Don't waste your hate on the man who told you the wall exists. Save it for the wall."
"What does that mean?" Li Shen demanded.
"It means you're learning the shape of the world," Wen said. "It doesn't bend because we cry at it. It bends when we hit it with something harder."
He slung his bag over his shoulder.
"One last thing," he added, almost as an afterthought. "Your mother's not a candle that will be snuffed tomorrow. Not if you do this right. She has time. Not as much as you want. More than you fear."
He stepped out into the yard without waiting for a response.
The Pale Wind caught his coat, tugging at the edges as if offended by his presence.
Li Heng followed him out, talking low about work, schedules, merchants. Their voices faded.
Inside, the room seemed to exhale with them gone.
Li Mei sat on the stool, hands resting on her knees.
"So," she said. "Now it has a nice name."
"Pale Wind," Li Shen said, the words sour on his tongue.
"Better than 'chest rot'," she said. "At least it sounds like something poets can complain about."
"This isn't funny," he snapped.
"I didn't say it was," she replied. "But it's here whether we laugh or not."
She patted the stool next to her.
"Sit," she said. "You look like a bowstring about to snap."
He sat.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
"Are you… scared?" he asked finally.
She considered.
"Yes," she said. "A little."
"You don't sound like it," he said.
"I also don't sound like a bird, but I still have bones," she said. "Fear is just… another thing in the room. Like that crack in the ceiling. Once you know it's there, you stop being surprised every time you look up."
He followed her gaze. The familiar fissure in the plaster stared back.
"What if the medicine doesn't work?" he asked.
"It will work," she said.
"You don't know that," he insisted.
"It will work," she repeated. "Because 'work' doesn't mean what you want it to mean. It doesn't mean 'erase everything and make it like before.' It means 'make now less bad than it would have been without it.' That's already something."
"It's not enough," he said.
"I know," she said quietly. "But it's all we get."
He hated that answer. He hated how calm she was. He hated the word incurable. He hated doctors with clever hands and no miracles. He hated herbs that could stretch a life like thin dough and never quite fill the hole.
Outside, footsteps signalled Wen's departure, boots crunching on packed earth. The sound faded toward the village path.
Li Heng came back in, shoulders heavier but eyes a fraction calmer, as if having a clear enemy—even an invisible one with a pretty name—was better than fighting smoke.
"He says if we keep you warm and dry, and you drink his poison on time, you can shout at us for years," he announced.
"I'd like that," she said. "Shouting is one of my talents."
"Then we'll do it," he said.
He moved to the stove, poked the fire, added another piece of wood, as if heat alone could keep Pale Wind outside.
The doctor's herbs worked.
At least, at first.
The coughs became less violent. Nights passed when Li Shen woke, listened, and heard only the soft, even rhythm of his mother's breathing instead of the desperate hitching that had haunted him.
She still tired easily, but she no longer had to sit down halfway between the stove and the table. She made it all the way, then pretended she had only stopped for the view.
The colour crept back into her cheeks, barely, like someone had brushed them with a dry peach.
"Old He and the fancy man make a good team," she said one afternoon, sipping a cup of the new decoction with a face like she'd bitten into a bitter melon. "Between them, they might even bully the wind into sulking for a while."
"Does that mean you're getting better?" Li Shen asked.
"It means today is better than last week," she said. "That's all I'm allowed to say without making Heaven jealous."
He didn't like that answer. But he liked the way she walked around the yard that evening, slowly, hands tucked into her sleeves against the breeze, hair lifting a little, lips moving in some silent conversation with the sky.
He liked it enough to pretend he didn't notice how she leaned on the wall when she came back in.
Life slipped into a new pattern.
Li Heng left earlier, came back later. There was more wood stacked against the house, more days when his hands came home raw and cracked. Sometimes he carried bundles of unfamiliar herbs—payment from Wen's merchant contacts in Han, filtered back through sweat and labour.
Old He and Doctor Wen's prescriptions blended into a routine: boil, drink, rest, repeat.
The village adjusted too.
People began to say things like, "She looks better," in the vague way people use when they don't want to poke at a wound.
"Those doctors from Han know a thing or two," Wu said at the market, pretending he hadn't tried to charge extra for the dried mushrooms he'd brought over in a show of concern. "Not like us dirt people."
Old He snorted so hard she almost inhaled her own pipe.
"Pale Wind is not a fever you wipe with a cloth," she said. "The man from Han did his job. Now we do ours."
Even so, for a little while, hope moved into the Li house along with the bitterness of herbs.
Li Shen let it.
He let himself imagine a future where his mother's cough stayed small and contained, where Doctor Wen's talk of "years" became real instead of a kind lie.
He let himself believe that if everyone worked hard enough—his father with his back, Old He with her roots, Wen with his notes, his mother with her stubbornness—maybe the word incurable could be cheated.
Until the sky changed.
The first snow came early.
One morning, he woke to a silence that sounded wrong. The usual drip of distant water, the thin whine of the wind through the gaps, the muffled calls of neighbours—all pressed under a new, heavy quiet.
He shoved the door open and stared.
The village was white.
Snow clung to thatch and fence, smoothing the familiar rough shapes into soft, deceptive curves. The air bit his face like teeth. His breath came out in ghosts.
He'd seen snow before, dustings that melted by noon.
This was different.
The clouds overhead were thick and low, a ceiling of dirty wool. The wind had teeth and a voice, hissing over the drifts.
Behind him, his mother's cough—small, for now—pulled his attention back inside.
"Close the door," she called. "You'll let the sky in."
He obeyed, shutting out the sight of the white world.
Inside, the fire suddenly seemed very small.
The doctor from Han had warned them: When the weather turns worse, these herbs will matter more.
Looking at the frost already creeping along the inside edge of the window, Li Shen had the sinking feeling that the Pale Wind was only just starting to show what "worse" meant.