Chapter 330: The Depositor

White Reed placed her hand on the paper.

She pressed down on its corner.

Her fingers curled together, but her fingertips did not touch the six old prints. Her wooden tablet still lay between the paper and her palm.

The Witness of Kinship’s smile froze on her face.

“The ink pad is on the left.”

“Let’s look at the original first.”

White Reed used her wooden tablet to hold down the paper as the well wind lifted it. In her other hand, she gripped the copper bell.

“You said these six fingerprints came from between the layers of the cover. Where’s the original inner layer?”

The Witness of Kinship studied her for a moment, then slowly pushed the birth register toward her.

A seam had been opened along the edge of the grayish-white cover, revealing dark brown, stiff paper inside. White Reed did not reach out to peel it back. She merely lowered her head and examined the stitches by the light on the table.

The outer thread was black, but the inner thread was indigo.

The blue thread had rotted, while the black thread was still sturdy.

“When was it sewn back together?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You took it apart with your own hands, and you don’t remember?”

“There’s no sunlight underground.”

White Reed looked up.

“Then how do you know you’ve been investigating for twenty years?”

The stone chamber fell silent.

From overhead came the sound of a rope rubbing against the stone steps. White Reed gently tugged the rope at her waist three times, then, after a pause, tugged twice.

They had not agreed on this rhythm before descending into the well.

All she could do was hope Lu Yuan understood.

The Witness of Kinship glanced toward the rope.

“Did you call them down?”

“I asked them to lower a lamp. Yours is too dim to see the paper clearly.”

After speaking, she called toward the mouth of the well.

Her voice traveled up the well shaft. Before long, Song Qinghe’s green lamp was lowered on another rope, slowly descending until it reached the table.

In its light, an extremely fine white line emerged beside the six fingerprints.

The white lines formed a grid.

Each fingerprint occupied one cell. Beneath each cell were two lines of tiny writing:

“Those to be acknowledged.”

“After acknowledgment, enter into the register.”

White Reed moved her hand away from the corner of the paper.

The Witness of Kinship immediately raised her sleeve to cover it, but the copper bell had already pinned down the other end of the sheet.

“This is the comparison you mentioned?”

“This was already on the original paper.”

“Then what was originally written on it?”

Wang Cheng’an’s voice came from the mouth of the well:

“White Reed, don’t press your print onto it. Fingerprints can confirm whether they came from the same person. Similar patterns can’t prove that two people are mother and daughter.”

The Witness of Kinship’s hand trembled.

White Reed looked at her.

“The loops, forks, and fine dots you mentioned are all used to identify an individual. A mother and daughter won’t have the same fingerprint because of that.”

“Some are bound to look alike.”

“Everyone in town has two eyes. Looking alike won’t help you find your mother.”

The Witness of Kinship slowly drew her hand back into her sleeve.

The green lamp illuminated her face, and the crisscrossing wrinkles suddenly seemed to fade. Only then did White Reed see that the shadows within them were not left by age. They were lines of tiny writing.

“Mother not found.”

“Original name unknown.”

“Year of birth unknown.”

The same words overlapped again and again, pressing a once-young face into old age.

She asked softly,

“Did you press your handprint onto paper like this back then?”

The Witness of Kinship did not answer.

“Did someone give you six fingerprints and tell you to choose the one that looked most like yours?”

The white lamp on the table flickered.

After a long while, the woman said, “He told me that if I acknowledged one, I’d have a mother.”

“Who told you that?”

“The keeper of the register.”

“And what happened after that?”

“After that, he told me to wait.”

Her gaze fell on the unmarked fingerprint on the paper.

“For every year I kept watch, I was allowed to turn another page. I turned through all of them. Then he said I might have missed something earlier, and told me to start over.”

A dull thud came from the mouth of the well.

Xu Erxiao seemed to have set something heavy on the ground.

“Are they treating people like millstones, making them go round and round?”

But the Witness of Kinship did not look up.

“At first, I thought so too. Later, I thought, what if I really find her on the next round?”

White Reed looked at the ring of white plum blossoms on her sleeve.

Each petal was made of a finely stitched character: “wait.”

The wait in “waiting.”

She picked up her wooden tablet and tucked it back inside her clothes.

“We won’t press our prints onto this paper.”

The light in the Witness of Kinship’s eyes gradually dimmed.

“Don’t you want to know who she is?”

“I do.”

“Then why won’t you try?”

White Reed ran her fingers along the chipped edge of the copper bell. Only after a moment did she answer:

“I’m afraid that if I try, I’ll never be willing to admit I chose the wrong one.”

The woman sat motionless.

Water seeped down the well wall and flowed along the stone cracks to the table leg. She lowered her head to look at the trail of water, as if it took a long time for her to understand what White Reed had said.

Then she turned over the sheet with the six fingerprints.

There was writing on the back, too.

“Six households to acknowledge in another’s place; the old name may be restored.”

White Reed’s heart sank.

“You need to gather six people?”

“Six people willing to leave their prints.”

“Once you’ve gathered them, can you leave?”

“That’s what they promised.”

“Who made that promise?”

The woman raised her hand and pointed to the cover of the birth register.

The green lamp moved forward half an inch.

Another layer of writing slowly emerged on the cover embroidered with six-petaled plum blossoms:

“When six replacements are found, the watch may end.”

At last, White Reed understood why there were six fingerprints in the well.

They were not clues waiting for a child to compare.

They were six empty places.

And the woman before her had been keeping watch over those empty places for many years.

Footsteps sounded on the stone stairs.

Lu Yuan came down first, followed by Wang Cheng’an. Zhou Heng stood guard at the top of the stairs, while Lin Zhaoxuan remained above, circling the well’s edge with black thread. The light through the cracks in the well cover steadied. It did not shrink any further.

Lu Yuan glanced at White Reed, then at her hand.

White Reed opened her palm.

Clean.

He said nothing, only lifted the green lamp onto the table.

Wang Cheng’an bent over to examine the cover, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter.

“This isn’t the original cover of the birth register.”

The Witness of Kinship jerked her head up.

“I’ve kept watch for all these years, and you say it isn’t?”

“The paper inside might be, but this outer layer isn’t.”

He pointed to where the blue and black threads crossed.

“The book came first. The cover was added later. The six places for fingerprints were added afterward, too.”

“Take it apart,” Lu Yuan said.

The woman’s hand pressed down on the register again.

“If you take it apart, the writing will come loose.”

“Who told you that?”

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

Lu Yuan waited a moment.

“The keeper of the register, too?”

Suddenly, Granny Sang coughed above them.

One cough followed another, each held low.

“Black thread... cut the black thread.”

Her voice descended along the well wall.

“Don’t touch the blue thread. I sewed the blue thread.”

The Witness of Kinship slowly lifted her head. All the tiny words on her face trembled at once.

“You know?”

“I recognize the thread.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?”

There was a long silence above.

“I couldn’t see this cover before. They only showed me a copy.”

Wang Cheng’an did not rush to act. First, he made rubbings of all the writing on the cover and marked where the black thread had been knotted. Zhou Heng handed him a small knife, and he used it to pick through the first knot and cut the stitch.

The white lamp sank by half.

When the second stitch broke, a baby cried outside the stone chamber.

As the third stitch came loose, someone suddenly called from the mouth of the well:

“Sang Suqin.”

The coughing above stopped.

The voice was exactly like Granny Sang’s.

“You’ve got it wrong again.”

White Reed tightened her grip on the copper bell.

Xu Erxiao’s voice came from overhead:

“Only one person is allowed to speak here! Where did you come from?”

Right after that, an iron shovel scraped across the stone slabs with a grating screech.

Lin Zhaoxuan said, “Keep taking it apart. We’ll guard the well mouth.”

Wang Cheng’an picked through the last stitch.

The outer cover slid off.

Inside was a thin blue register, unexpectedly half as thick as the original. All the extra thickness had come from the papers for acknowledging kinship tucked inside the cover.

One sheet lay on top of another.

Each one was printed with six boxes.

Some boxes already bore handprints, with names written beneath them. The names had been traced over and over until they all became the same three characters:

“Witness of Kinship.”

The woman stared at the papers.

“It wasn’t just me.”

She reached out and turned over one sheet, then another, flipping faster and faster.

Every one bore the familiar writing from her memories.

Every one carried the same promise.

“When six replacements are found, the watch may end.”

The sheets slid from her lap, revealing the thin blue title page.

Written there in neat characters was:

“Register of Women Temporarily Lodged at Yongji and Their Comings and Goings.”

Wang Cheng’an stopped.

“Register of comings and goings.”

White Reed looked at him.

“Not the Original Delivery Register?”

“At least this one isn’t.”

Lu Yuan brought the lamp closer.

Below the title page were four columns:

Date of arrival, date of departure, belongings, person entrusted.

The following pages recorded the women and children who had stayed in the rear courtyard. Some had stayed for only two nights, others for an entire winter. Their grain, cotton clothing, and medical expenses were all recorded separately. Births were noted as well, but not every woman who came through the door had given birth there.

White Reed turned to the six missing pages.

The pages had not been torn out completely. A narrow strip remained at the bottom of each. On the six strips, half of a character could be made out in sequence: “east,” “west,” “north,” and so on.

“Destinations,” Lu Yuan said.

Wang Cheng’an pieced together the characters on the strips.

“The missing pages may have recorded where the children were sent.”

The Witness of Kinship shook her head.

“Granny Sang said all six pages were about women who had given birth.”

The old woman’s voice came from above.

“I said those six pages held the instructions left by women who had given birth.”

“You said they were burned!”

“The copy kept here was burned.”

Granny Sang paused to catch her breath.

“The people who took the children carried away the other half. They wouldn’t hand a child over until the two halves matched at the destination.”

White Reed looked down at the page strips.

Their edges were indeed uneven, with several deliberately preserved folds. She took Gu Lanzhi’s letter from the oilcloth pouch and compared the paper’s color, then its thickness.

Neither matched.

Lu Yuan, however, remembered something else.

The charred cloth.

Back then, the small piece of cloth beneath the wooden horse had matched the lining inside Gu Changgeng’s carriage. They had kept it wrapped together with the wooden horse and had never examined its seams.

White Reed spread out the cloth.

Between its two layers was sewn a narrow strip of paper.

Sweat and smoke had yellowed it. When unfolded, one end had an uneven notch.

Wang Cheng’an fetched a thin sheet of paper as backing and brought the notch up to the fourth page strip.

They fit.

The crying in the stone chamber suddenly stopped.

There were only three lines on the paper:

“One girl, able to speak for herself, has lost her baby teeth.”

“One boy, not yet able to speak, follows the girl, attached to her.”

“They did not enter the shelter on the same day. Their kinship has not been verified. Do not separate them.”

White Reed’s tears fell without warning.

She made no sound, only read the words “Do not separate them” again and again.

Lu Yuan held down the edge of the paper to keep the drops from blurring the writing.

Below that was the handwriting of the person entrusting the children:

“Send them by cart to North Ferry. The girl is willing to look after the young child. Do not blame her as a mother because of this.”

Signed: Shen Lanzhi.

Only after a long while did White Reed whisper:

“She knew I was still a child back then, too.”

Lu Yuan looked at her.

Through all those years, the words she remembered best were “take your little brother and go.” She had memorized them so thoroughly that she had nearly believed she had lived for that purpose from the very beginning.

But the other half of what Gu Lanzhi had left behind had been hidden beneath the wooden horse all along.

Do not burden her with a mother’s responsibility.

Wang Cheng’an held the two halves of paper together temporarily and continued checking the next column.

There, stamped in place, was a small seal from the grain depot.

“Items issued for departure: one length of Red Cord, one wooden horse.”

He raised his head.

“The Red Cord and wooden horse were issued when they left Orchid Branch Ward.”

The sheet with the six fingerprints before the Witness of Kinship still said, “Two births, Red Cord and wooden horse.”

Those words could no longer hold up.

They had taken belongings from years later and inserted them into a woman’s childbirth record.

White Reed wiped away her tears, picked up the sheet, and handed it toward the stairs.

“Granny Sang, did you write these words?”

Xu Erxiao took it and passed it to the mouth of the well.

For a long time, there was no answer from above.

Finally, Sang Suqin said, “The handwriting looks like mine.”

“What about the contents?”

“They’re wrong.”

Her voice shook badly.

“I remember her entering the delivery room, and I remember her carrying a child away. But now I can’t tell... which time she came to give birth, and which time she came to collect a child.”

White Reed closed her eyes.

Wang Cheng’an reopened the corrections register and drew a thin line through the earlier entry that said “same mother.” The original characters remained legible. Beside them, he added:

“Witness reports confused memories. Original testimony not accepted for now.”

Then he added another sentence:

“Winter-month girl and following-spring boy, born less than four months apart. This cannot be taken as proof that the same mother gave birth to both at full term. The dates and columns in the copied register must be checked against the original.”

This time, nothing underground stopped him.

The Witness of Kinship suddenly let out a laugh.

It was very soft, like someone finally drawing a breath they had held for many years.

“So I’ve been reading the wrong book all along.”

She lowered her head and looked at the black six-petaled imprint in her palm.

Five petals were beginning to fade. Only the petal bearing the character “kin” remained embedded in the lines of her skin.

“Then what about me?”

White Reed did not answer her with those six fingerprints.

She turned to the last page of the register of comings and goings.

The final entry was written in very faint ink. It described a girl who had stayed in the rear courtyard to help.

“Calls herself A-Man, about eleven years old. Can boil water and mend clothes. Wishes to learn midwifery.”

Below it was another line:

“Granny Sang is old. A-Man helped deliver a baby girl. The girl was temporarily named Xiaoman.”

White Reed raised her eyes.

“You helped Granny Sang deliver a child.”

The woman looked at the line.

“That was me...”

“She was called Xiaoman. You were called A-Man.”

Two similar names had been blended into one by the years and the pages of the register.

The woman reached out, her fingertips stopping above the characters “A-Man.” They remained there, unable to touch them.

The tiny words on her face scattered bit by bit, revealing a very faint sunspot at her temple.

“Someone called me that before.”

She murmured,

“Back then... I wasn’t waiting for my mother. I’d come back to learn a trade.”

The sound of a bamboo staff striking the ground came from outside the well.

Sang Suqin was crying above.

Lu Yuan gathered up the scattered papers for acknowledging kinship, revealing a final piece of stiff paper at the bottom. On its back was an old seal from Yongji Grain Depot, with a line of transport records in the center.

Wang Cheng’an glanced at it and straightened.

“The Original Delivery Register isn’t in the well.”

White Reed turned around.

“Where is it?”

The paper read:

“One case of old Bai River birth registers, transferred with three carts of winter grain for safekeeping at Black Mountain Pass.”

In the recipient column was a familiar name.

Shen Bonian.

And beneath his name was another line, added later in red ink:

“The depositor did not claim it. The accompanying woman took it away first.”

The woman had left no name.

Only a small bell-shaped seal in the corner of the paper.

The broken copper bell in White Reed’s hand suddenly rang once on its own.