Dōngzhì

On the longest night of winter, the physician follows a dirt path out of the city. It is Dōngzhì, a time for family reunions and worship, for tomorrow the light returns.

The cold nips his ears, gnaws his bones. The physician wrests his hood up against the gale. At the city’s outskirts the homeless huddle, staring at him with gaunt cheeks and anguished eyes. Hunched statues, frost gathering on them like mould. When he passes, they do not blink.

Their ears are bluish-red and blistered, blackened at their edges.

The physician feels too young, his knowledge inadequate. It frustrates him, that there is no cure for this. Winter feeds on the body, first the ears, then the nose, fingers, toes.

He steps into the darkness of the ancestral shrine. The hall is empty. He lights candles and joss-sticks, and offers up food on the altar. Just gruel, this year.

“Zhongjing,” says his grandmother. She hunches in the shadows, her lips cracked and purple.

The physician jumps, then stills. “Help me,” he prays. “Help the people.”

His grandmother indicates the holes on each side of her head. “How can I hear your prayers? Give me ears.”

She hands him a bone-sharp knife.

Zhongjing walks out into the night. There are ears aplenty he can choose from. No one would care.

He plucks a pair like flowers from a garden. No blood, the girl already dead. The homeless shift around him, a torpid wave of unease. They lack the strength to protest.

“What use have I of dead flesh?” His grandmother’s howl bites his ears, sears his face with sleet. She trembles. The rot on her cheek darkens, fractal lines deepening with shame.

The physician grabs a sleeping girl nestled in her mother’s corpse. Her blood freezes on his hands. He is, like her, too numb to feel.

“Too cold,” his grandmother snaps. “They hurt my teeth.”

She studies the small, curlicued slices, shuddering at her own need. “Poor girl,” she sighs. The offering crumbles in the wind.

He does not ask why she has to eat them. The spirit world is symbolic. It is the gesture that nourishes the souls, keeping the living dutiful and the memories of ancestors alive.

Zhongjing goes home. He packs a few things from his kitchen. On his way back, he picks a pretty pair: round and dainty, with thick lobes for good luck. The girl cries—a thin, unearthly keen. At the shrine, he wraps her ears in flour and boils them in broth, so his grandmother would not see them and weep.

His grandmother slurps them hungrily. When she hears his voice, her little body shakes with tears.

“You will do our family proud, as the greatest physician of this age.”

She sweeps an arm out and bowls of broth appear, steaming, smelling of meat and incense. “Pretty-ear dumplings to expel the cold.”

One by one, he feeds them to the people. It is the longest night of winter, but silently comes the sun.