The snow did not melt.
It settled in and made itself at home.
Days after that first white morning, the fields were still buried, the roofs still bowed under its weight. Each time the sky cleared enough to show a strip of pale blue, the Pale Wind swept in harder, as if offended that anything dared be visible.
Inside the Li house, the fire became a fourth member of the family.
Li Heng fed it like a hungry animal. Wood, stalks, anything that would burn without choking them to death. Some days the smoke sulked stubbornly along the ceiling before remembering how chimneys were supposed to work.
"Don't glare at it," Li Mei told her son once, when he stared up at the smoky beam. "It's doing its best."
"So are we," he muttered.
"Exactly," she said. "We might as well be consistent in our standards."
The doctor's herbs sat in neat paper-wrapped bundles on the shelf, Old He's additions piled beside them in less disciplined mounds. The kettle almost never left the hook over the fire. If it wasn't rice or porridge, it was decoction.
Outside, the village moved slower.
Footprints carved paths between houses; drifts rose higher than a child's waist. The well became an enemy—further away now, every step a fight, the rope stiff with cold.
"You're not going alone," Li Mei said the first time he reached for both buckets with his usual stubbornness.
"I can handle it," he said.
"You can handle one," she replied. "If you take two and fall, I'll have to get up and drag you out. That defeats the purpose."
In the end they compromised: one bucket, two trips, each time with her voice echoing in his head about his footing.
The cold bit through coat and trousers. His fingers ached around the rope, the wood burning against his skin with a different kind of fire. Each breath seared his lungs.
On the way to the well, he passed Da Niu and a pack of other children trying to build something vaguely shaped like a fortress out of snow.
"Look!" Da Niu shouted through a red nose. "We're making a sect!"
"That's not a sect," Zhou Liang said with authority, stomping snow into a wall. "Sects have gates."
He jammed a crooked stick upright in the drift.
"Now it's a sect," he declared. "Entry fee: three snowballs to Da Niu's face."
Da Niu opened his mouth to protest and caught one squarely in the cheek. The others howled with laughter.
Li Shen almost smiled.
Then he thought of the fire at home, the herbs, his mother wrapped in blankets with Doctor Wen's words hanging over her like a second roof.
He tightened his grip on the bucket and kept walking.
---
Inside, the air was hot and dry near the stove and cold near the walls.
Li Mei stayed close to the heat now, but not so close that Old He would scold. A chair had migrated to a spot where she could feel warmth on her hands and see most of the room without moving much.
Some days, she managed her chores almost like before, though at a slower, measured pace. She peeled vegetables, sorted grain, nagged both of them about small things that didn't matter and one thing that did: timing.
"On the third ladle," she said the first time he tried to help with her medicine. "Not the second, not the fourth. You add the last bundle when the water smells like wet bark and bad decisions."
"How am I supposed to know what bad decisions smell like?" he complained.
"Like this," she said, shoving the steaming cloud under his nose. "Remember it. If your future choices smell like this, don't make them."
He coughed, eyes watering.
"Why does everything that's supposed to help you taste horrible?" he asked.
"If it tasted good, we'd never know if it was working or if we just liked it," she said. "Now stir before Old He bursts in here to tell us we've offended the spirits of medicinal timing."
Even laughing cost her a breath now. The laugh would catch, snag, and sometimes unravel into a small cough.
Small, he told himself. Better than before. The herbs are working.
He held on to that thought like a rope.
Then the wind sharpened again.
---
The first blizzard came in the middle of the night.
Li Shen woke not to coughing, but to the sound of the world trying to tear itself apart outside.
The walls shuddered.
Snow and ice scraped across the roof like claws.
For a moment, still wrapped in the blurred edges of sleep, he thought of beasts—huge, white things prowling the sky, their paws raking the village, their breath howling through the gaps in the wood.
Then he blinked awake properly and understood: the Pale Wind had decided that if it couldn't chew their lungs fast enough, it would try to eat the house instead.
He pushed his blanket away and crept to the door.
Cold stabbed through the cracks. The little bit of light from the dying fire made the room feel smaller, not safer.
He slid the latch up and opened the door a hand's width.
The world beyond was a moving wall of white.
Snow streaked sideways, not down, driven by a wind that shrieked like something wounded. What little he could see of the village was vague shapes under a shifting veil—fences, roofs, the distant outline of the well's frame, all blurred and swallowed.
The cold slapped him in the face so hard his eyes watered.
"Close it."
His mother's voice was hoarse but firm behind him.
He shut the door.
She was awake, propped up on the mat, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The flicker from the hearth picked out new shadows on her cheekbones.
"Is it…" he began.
"A tantrum," she said. "The sky has them sometimes."
He swallowed.
"You should sleep," he said. "You need—"
"This doesn't sound like something to sleep through," she said. "Besides, some idiot left the door open."
He almost smiled, then didn't. "Sorry."
"Don't be," she said. "It's good to know what's out there. Even if you close the door after."
Another gust slammed against the wall, making the beam above them creak.
He looked up involuntarily.
"This house has stood in worse storms than you've had birthdays," she said. "Stop looking at it like it's going to fall on your head because the sky is shouting."
"What if the roof leaks?" he asked.
"Then we put a bowl under it," she said. "We know how to do that. We're experts."
He moved closer to the fire, feeding it another piece of wood. The flames climbed greedily, throwing back a little of the cold trying to leak in.
His parents talked quietly for a while, Li Heng's voice low and solid, Li Mei's softer, edged with a tired humour.
He did not lie back down.
He sat against the wall near the stove, listening to the storm trying to claw its way in.
At some point, he must have dozed.
What woke him next wasn't the wind.
It was the coughing.
---
At first, it was the now-familiar pattern: a few short coughs, the body trying to clear something. He'd learned to tell those from the worse ones, the ones that sounded like something tearing.
This time, it escalated too fast.
The small coughs piled into each other, overlapping, deepening. Each one seemed to grab the next and drag it out of her chest.
He was on his feet before he fully knew he was moving.
Li Mei was half upright, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other braced on the mat. Her shoulders shook with each convulsion.
Li Heng was already beside her, one arm behind her back, the other steadying her wrist.
"Breathe," he said. "In. Out. Slow. Don't chase it."
Her eyes were wide. Panic was a quiet thing in her; it showed only in the way she gripped his sleeve, knuckles white.
"It… hurts," she gasped between coughs.
"I know," he said. "In. Out. Follow my voice."
The storm outside howled, as if trying to drown them out.
The coughs didn't stop.
They tore at her, dragging sound up from deep in her chest, the kind Old He had called "bad" once, her mouth thin.
"Old He," Li Shen blurted. "We need Old He."
His father's jaw clenched.
"She can't cross in this," he said.
"She'll come," Li Shen insisted. "She always comes."
He was already reaching for his coat.
"Shen, no," Li Heng snapped. "The path—"
"Then you go!" Li Shen shouted, voice cracking. "Someone has to—"
Li Mei's hand slammed down on the mat.
"Enough," she rasped.
She pulled in a breath that sounded like air being dragged through wet cloth.
"If you both leave, who will listen to me complain when I survive this?" she forced out between coughs. "Stay."
Another spasm hit her; she bent forward, caught between her own lungs and the storm's voice outside.
A thin thread of red appeared at the corner of her mouth.
The world narrowed for Li Shen.
"Blood," he whispered.
It felt worse than the snow. Worse than the howling. Worse than any nightmare.
Li Heng saw it too. His hand moved with frightening speed, thumb wiping the stain away as if by erasing it from her lips he could erase it from reality.
"Small," he said. "Small. One thread."
His voice was steady. His eyes were not.
"We need Old He," Li Shen repeated, lower now.
Another gust rattled the shutters, as if answering: Try.
He looked at the door.
He thought of the white wall outside, the way the cold had clawed at his face earlier. He thought of Old He's little house on the other side of the village, past the well, past the open ground where the wind always hit hardest.
He thought of his mother's hand curling in his father's sleeve.
"I'll go," he said.
"Shen—" his father began.
"I'm smaller," Li Shen said, words tumbling over each other. "The snow is… it won't hit me as hard. I know the path. I can follow the fences. I'll stay low. If you go and fall, who carries you back? If I go and fall, I'll… I'll stand up again."
His heart hammered in his throat. His hands shook. The idea of stepping into that screaming white was like putting his head under water and deciding to breathe anyway.
But staying and listening while his mother's breath broke… that was worse.
Li Heng looked at him.
The storm roared outside.
Another line of red traced the corner of Li Mei's mouth.
"Go," she whispered. "Quickly. Before the sky changes its mind and decides to sit on you."
Her attempt at humour sounded like cracked pottery.
Li Heng shut his eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them again, decision settled.
"You go to Old He's," he said. "You don't try to be clever. You follow the fence to the well, then the well to her door. If you can't see the next landmark, you stop and wait until you can. You don't run. You don't shout. Save your breath. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Li Shen said.
"If you get turned around," his father went on, "you turn back. You don't keep going into nothing because you think straight lines are loyal. They aren't. They lie in storms."
"I understand," he repeated, voice shaking.
Li Heng grabbed his coat, wrapped it around him, then took a second scarf from a peg and wound it around his mouth and nose.
"Stay low," he said. "Keep one hand on the wall until you reach the fence. And if you fall—"
"I get up," Li Shen said.
His father's big hand came down on his shoulder, hard enough to hurt, solid enough to anchor.
"Don't die stupidly," he said. "If you die, do it for something smarter than getting lost between our door and Old He's."
"I won't die," Li Shen said.
He hoped the storm couldn't hear how little he believed his own words.
He glanced back once.
His mother's eyes met his. They were bright with pain and something else he didn't want to name.
"Bring me that old witch," she said. "Tell her I said she still owes me three more years of insults."
He nodded.
Then he opened the door.
---
The storm hit him like a wall.
Snow and ice blasted into his face, stinging any skin the scarf didn't cover. The wind tore at his coat, tried to push him back inside like an angry hand.
For a heartbeat, instinct screamed at him to slam the door and hide.
He ducked his head, hunched his shoulders, and stepped forward.
The cold was everywhere at once: in his nose, in his eyes, sneaking through seams and cuffs, biting his fingers even though he kept them clenched. The snow under his feet wasn't solid; it shifted and grabbed at his boots, sucking, dragging, as if the ground itself wanted to hold him where he was.
He kept one hand on the wall, just like his father had said.
The house edge became the fence edge. The rough wood under his palm was his only certainty, a skinny line of reality in the blur.
He moved sideways along it, step by step.
The wind screamed in his ears. Snow slapped his face whenever he lifted his head enough to check his direction. He couldn't see the well, not really—just a darker shape in the shifting white.
Each breath burned his throat. The air felt like knives.
He reached the well frame and clung to it for a moment, panting into his scarf.
The village he'd known his whole life—paths, doors, the sagging roofs, Old Wu's pens, the cluster of trees near the far fence—had vanished. There was only white and fragments, hints of shapes where he knew things should be.
This is what cultivation must feel like, he thought, wildly. Trying to walk through something that doesn't want you in it.
He forced his hand off the well and picked the next point in his mind: Old He's place, just past Wu's, near the leaning tree. The wind shoved at him, sideways now, trying to pick him up and move him like a discarded leaf.
He bent into it, small body at war with a sky that didn't care who he was.
At one point, his foot plunged into a hole and the world lurched. Snow rushed up; the cold seized his ankle. For a heartbeat he felt the terrifying pull of nothing under his foot, as if the ground had opened.
He crashed to his knees, hands plunging into the drift.
Cold soaked his sleeves instantly.
His breath exploded out of him in a shout that the wind stole.
For a moment, panic flared white-hot. He could just… stay here. Curl up. Let the snow cover him, let the world fade into soft, numb quiet.
Then his mother's coughing hacked through the memory, sharp as a blade.
He dragged himself up, movement clumsy, breath ragged.
One step.
Another.
Old He's wall loomed out of the white like a ship out of fog.
He hammered on the door with both fists.
It flew open so fast he almost punched the old woman in the face.
"What in all the frozen hells—?" she snarled, grabbing his shoulder before the wind could rip him away. "You trying to donate yourself to the storm, boy?"
"Mother," he gasped through the scarf. "The cough… blood… she can't—"
Her expression snapped from anger to focus in a single heartbeat.
She hauled him fully inside, slammed the door, then whirled around and began grabbing things with a speed that belied her age: bundles of herbs, a cloth bag, a squat jar, the battered kit she used when she was being what she called "properly useful."
"You should have sent your father," she muttered, jamming her feet into boots. "Of course you didn't. Of course he didn't. Idiots breed true in this village."
"She said…" Li Shen began.
"Don't care what she said," Old He snapped. "Put this on the fire. No, not that—this. Good. Don't touch that one unless you want to see your ancestors early."
His fingers fumbled with the heavy kettle she shoved at him, muscle memory taking over where thought failed.
She wrapped another layer of cloth around her shoulders, grabbed a stick from the corner, and shoved it into his hands.
"Hold it in front of you," she ordered. "If you walk into something, let the stick hit first. If you fall, shout. If the wind eats your voice, get up and shout again. Understand?"
"Yes," he said.
"You're shaking," she observed.
"It's cold," he said.
"It's stupid," she corrected. "But I suppose the two travel together."
She took his arm in a grip like iron.
"Stay at my side," she said. "If you get blown away, I don't have time to argue with the storm about refunds."
She wrenched the door open.
The Pale Wind tried to punch into the room; she shoved back, small and wiry and furious.
Together, they stepped out into the white.
---
By the time they stumbled back into the Li house, Li Shen felt like he'd left parts of himself behind in the storm—heat, maybe, or fear, or the belief that the world would ever be gentle again.
Old He dragged the door shut with a curse and stomped snow off her boots.
"Move," she snapped at Li Heng without preamble, pushing him aside with her shoulder as if he weighed nothing. "Let someone competent look at her for a moment."
Li Mei was half sitting, half slumped, propped up by blankets. Her skin was too pale, lips edged with blue. Each breath sounded like it was being pulled through a too-narrow reed.
"About time," she croaked. "I was starting to think Heaven had taken you first and I'd be stuck with these two."
"Don't talk," Old He said sharply. "You're wasting air on nonsense."
She set to work with the brutal tenderness of someone who had done this for more people than she could count: listening to lungs, checking pulse, peering at the colour of gums and tongue, the small flecks of red on the cloth Li Heng had tried to hide.
"Tcht," Old He clicked with her tongue. "Doctor Wen was right. Pale Wind and real wind, bad marriage."
"Can you—?" Li Shen began.
"I can make it hurt less," Old He cut in. "I can make tonight less ugly than it would have been without me. I can't tell the sky to stop being what it is."
She dug in her bag, pulling out a jar and a packet.
"Boil this," she told Li Heng. "Not like rice. Like medicine. No distractions. If it smells nice, you've failed."
"Understood," he said.
She turned back to Li Mei, her hands surprisingly gentle as she adjusted the pillows behind her back.
"You breathe with the bottom of your belly," she instructed. "Not with your panic. Panic steals air; don't feed it. In. Hold. Out. Again."
She demonstrated, exaggerating the movements of her own chest.
Li Mei tried to mimic her.
The first few attempts dissolved into coughs; Old He rode them out with her, one hand steady on her shoulder, the other rhythmic on her back.
"Good," she murmured when the rhythm finally clicked into something less frantic. "That's it. Don't chase the breath. Let it come to you."
Li Shen hovered at the edge of it all, useless and shaking, snow still melting into his clothes and dripping onto the packed earth.
Old He's gaze flicked over to him for a heartbeat.
"Take those off," she said. "I don't have spare lungs for you if you catch death standing there like an idiot icicle."
He peeled off the wet outer layer with clumsy fingers.
By the time the decoction was ready—a darker, more pungent brew than usual, heavy with something almost metallic in the steam—Li Mei's breathing had eased from outright battle to a strained truce.
"Slow," Old He said, holding the bowl to her lips. "Sips. Don't drown yourself in your own medicine."
She drank.
Every swallow looked like work.
When the bowl was empty, Old He sat back with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere older than her bones.
"It will ease now," she said. "If Heaven is in a mood to listen."
"It came faster," Li Shen said quietly. "The coughing. Worse than before. Is that because of the snow?"
"It's because of time," Old He said. "And the snow, and her work, and this place, and a thousand other things you can't punch. I told you from the start: we buy days. We don't change the ending."
He swallowed hard.
"It's not enough," he said.
"I know," she said.
He hated how calmly adults could say that.
He hated even more that they were right.
---
The storm raged outside until past dawn.
Inside, the Li house held.
The roof creaked, the walls shivered, the fire fought for territory against the cold that seeped through every crack.
Under the eaves, wrapped in blankets and the bitter ghost of herbs, Li Mei breathed.
Not easily.
But she breathed.
She slept in fits—short, restless chunks—but she slept. The harsh, tearing coughs faded to smaller, controlled ones. No more blood threaded the cloth at her lips.
Old He dozed in a chair by the stove, chin on her chest, arms folded, as if daring the sickness to try something while she wasn't looking.
Li Heng sat against the opposite wall, knife in hand, shaving slivers of wood he didn't need, more for his fingers than for the fire.
At some point, he looked up and found his son awake, eyes gritty, hair flat from where he'd leaned against the wall.
"You did well," he said simply.
Li Shen stared at him.
"I nearly fell," he said. "If I'd gotten lost—"
"You didn't," Li Heng replied. "You walked into the wind and came back with what we needed. That's enough for today."
"Old He said it won't change the ending," Li Shen whispered.
His father's jaw tensed.
"Nothing we do will change the fact that everyone dies," he said. "That doesn't mean nothing we do matters."
"It feels like it," Li Shen said.
"Now," his father said. "It feels like that now. Later, you'll remember that this night could have been worse. That someone was here to hold the bowl and curse properly and tell your mother how to breathe. That matters."
"It still won't… save her," Li Shen said.
His father's eyes met his.
"No," he said. "Probably not."
The honesty hurt more than any lie would have.
"But we fight anyway," Li Heng added. "Because that's what people like us do. We fight storms with bad roofs and sickness with bad herbs and injustice with bad tempers. We lose in the end, but we don't lie down and offer our throats."
Li Shen looked at his mother, at the rise and fall of her chest, fragile and stubborn.
He remembered Doctor Wen's words: I sell time. Not miracles.
He remembered the storm trying to push him back.
He remembered the taste of snow in his mouth when he fell.
The world, he was starting to realize, didn't just fail to care. Sometimes it pushed.
Inside, under the eaves of their small, shaking house, he felt something settle in him—not acceptance, not exactly, and not peace.
More like a knot.
A knot made of cold and anger and the knowledge that even when everyone did everything right—herbs and work and courage and stupid trips through storms—the best they could buy was another night that wasn't as bad as it could have been.
He didn't have words for it yet. Only a dull understanding that in this world, effort did not guarantee victory.
It just meant you had the right to stand up and be hit again.
Outside, the Pale Wind began to tire. Its howls softened to a lower, exhausted moan.
Inside, the Li house exhaled with it.
For now, the roof had held.
For now, the mother breathed.
For now, the medicine had done "enough."
For a boy sitting by the fire with snow still melting in his hair, the word felt too small for the price it cost.