"Long Head, wake up."
The voice sounded like his mother's.
That made no sense.
She had been gone for years.
Five years earlier, Long Head's parents had gone to Xinjiang to pick cotton as migrant workers—and vanished without a trace.
His grandparents took him on a slow green train across southern and northern Xinjiang to search for them.
His grandmother died halfway through the journey.
Grandfather and grandson carried her ashes back to the village and buried them on a sunny patch of wasteland behind their house.
A year later, his grandfather followed her.
The village held a simple funeral.
One coffin, two lives ended, one grave shared.After that, Long Head drifted south with several older boys from the village to Ningbo, where they worked in a beef noodle shop. Room and board were included.
Three hundred yuan a month—at least on paper. In reality, the money disappeared into deductions: broken bowls, slow hands, oversleeping.
Sometimes he even owed them money.He did not hate the older boys. They had survived the same way.
The night before, business had been good.
Winter brought customers craving hot soup.
After midnight, when the others left, Long Head prepared dough for the next day, washed his hands, cleaned the shop, added coal to the stove, pushed tables together, laid out bedding, and fell asleep.
He did not know how long he slept before the voice returned, gently calling him awake.
He loved that voice.
He wanted to see who it belonged to.So he opened his eyes.
YOU ARE READING
Shadows Over the Sixteen Prefectures
Historical Fiction"In a time where Liao, Song, Jin, and Xia clash and collide, a modern boy awakens in a small border village. Raised by his father, a Liao general, and surrounded by a stepmother and her daughters, he must navigate treacherous politics, shifting loya...
