It was another snowy day, probably because of the intense work she had been doing since her injury, Chad had started to run a high fever.
It was freezing outside, but she was soaked in sweat and her short, curly brown hair clung damply to her sweaty temples.
She woke up from time to time, several nightmares intertwined, causing her to curl up in pain.
She had had parents, too, in a small village not far from the Duke's domain, and remembered a simple house with a walled courtyard and a crude house with a boarded-up bed that creaked when she slept.
She can't remember her father's face, only that he always picked up the iron poker from the fire in front of the hall and beat her.
As he beat her, he would scold her: "You little beast whose tongue has been eaten by God's dogs, you only know how to eat, you only know how to eat! What good am I to raise you, you can't even say a word!"
Her mother always stood in front of her at first, stopping her father with her red eyes: "Why are you angry with her, a child? What does she know? If she hadn't taken the wrong medicine that year, she would have been a able-bodied child."
When she spoke back, her father would beat her, along with her mother, saying that she was of bad character, scolding her for not taking good care of the child, and sometimes calling her a whore who had poisoned and dumbed down their daughter because she was having an affair with the village doctor.
The father scolded and kicked her, "She should have been drowned in the river and sacrificed to the river gods, what is the point of staying in the world?"
Chad listened to their words in a daze, not knowing who was wrong, but thinking that the most bad thing was the iron tongs in front of the hall.
So one day, while the adults were away, she quietly threw away the iron pliers from the house.
When her father came back drunk, he couldn't find the iron pliers, so he dragged her by the hair and slammed her against the wall, beating him and then her mother.
Later on, her mother gradually changed, and when her father beat her, she took it out on Chad.
She called her a mute and a debt collector, saying that it was because of her that her father drank and did not do his job, and that it was because of her that she was beaten by men day in and day out.
Chad knew that she was angry, that she had no place to vent the grievances that had been piling up inside her day in and day out, so she blamed her.
In fact, she probably knew that Chad was innocent and she couldn't take it out on a small child, yet she just about couldn't live any longer.
Finally, one day, my mother sold the only valuable iron pot left in the house and bought two bottles of ground Cicuta virosa.
The sun was shining, warm, and the wildflowers on the roadside were bright, as were the weeds.
Chad was in a good mood and took his mother's hand to look left and right.
When she returned from town, Chad was so hungry that she took a few sips of water from the water bowl, but the more she drank, the hungrier she became, so she pushed open the door to her bedroom and saw her mother hiding inside eating something.
She rushed over to her, her light maroon eyes shining brightly, and pointed to her stomach and then to her mouth.
But her mother pushed her away with her hand and scolded her in a low voice: "Get out."
Chad looked at her with bewilderment, wondering why her mother, who had bought two bags of food in the town, had to take it all for herself and refused to share it with her.
She used to pick the sweet little fruits and save half of them, pocketing them in the leaves and bringing them back to her mother.
She wouldn't like to leave her mother, so she just sat on the floor by the door and played with the sand on the ground with her palms.
Chad's tummy growled every now and then, and she knew her mother could hear her, but she ignored her, sitting on the edge of the bed with a bowl, wondering what she was thinking.
After a while her mother suddenly squatted down beside her and gently touched her face, whispering to her, "Chloe, You go outside and watch for me, and when the sun goes down, you will look for your cousin's uncle in the village."
Her gaze fell, a little loving, a little tender and loving, and a little reluctant: "Tell him that Mother has been asleep for a long time and you can't wake him up, so ask him to come and see her, okay?"
Chad nodded in ignorance, she was still too young to know what her mother's words meant.
But as long as it was her mother's word, she listened.
She happily took her mother's fingers in her two dirty little hands and tucked them in her arms.
She wished her mother could be so gentle with her every day from now on, even if she had to go hungry.
Probably because she was obedient, her mother went out of the house and went to the front of the hall to wrap in a cloth the few pancakes she had cooked before selling the iron pot and handed them to Chad, which were made from the only flour left in the house, but she didn't eat any of them.
The sun was soon setting and she was lying by her mother's bedside, her mother's lip was blue and she was a little frightened, her heart was in a panic, the tip of her nose itched and she wanted to cry, but she held back.
She could not make a sound, so she could only push her mother's shoulders one after the other.
But her mother did not move a muscle.
Chad was so hungry that she didn't dare to eat the pancakes, she had to do what she was told to do so that she could eat them when she returned.
So Chad ran out of the house barefoot, the straw shoes her mother had made up for her were already worn out and her father's old shoes were lying in front of the hall, but she didn't dare to wear them for fear of being beaten.
When she ran all the way to her cousin uncle's house at the entrance of the village, her feet had been cut by something and were all bloody.
Seeing her running in such a mess, her cousin uncle's daughter-in-law, who was a very nice person, was busy saying, "Aiya," and chiding her with some distress: "Why did you run here without shoes, where is your mother?
As he spoke, he wiped the blood from the wound on the bottom of her foot.
This cousin uncle, like her, was a mute, only she was suffering from a medication, while this cousin was suffering from an ailment carried in her mother's womb, and he was also a good man who had taught her a lot of sign language, which she remembered.
As she thought about the movements, she slowly told her cousin's uncle what her mother had instructed her to do, and upon hearing her words, his face suddenly changed.
There was no time to explain to his wife, so he picked Chad up and hurried to their house.
Her cousin's uncle's body was warm, with a hint of earth and the smell of sweat, reminding her in a trance of her own father, but he had never hug herself, and she hadn't even bothered to look at herself.
What Chad knew best was her father's fist.
When she arrived home, her cousin uncle left her outside and only led her aunt inside to check on her, before closing the door, Chad heard a shriek from inside, her aunt's voice.
Later her father returned and the adults discussed the matter together in the house, her cousin-in-law whispering and her father furious.
It was then that little Chad finally opened the cloth bag and went to get the pancakes her mother had made for her and ate them, one bite at a time.
Halfway through the meal, her father suddenly kicked open the door and burst out, picking up a broom from the yard and pelting her with it, cursing, "You're really a sinner, you heartless bastard, and all you know how to do is eat at this hour."
"Your mother is dead, and you killed her! Do you know that?"
Chad was knocked to the ground and was still reaching for the mud-covered pancakes.
She was so hungry, so hungry that her heart ached.
But her father, like a madman, stamped his foot on the back of her hand and crushed it hard: "Your mother doesn't want you anymore, why doesn't she take you with her, you debt collector? How much does she hate me for leaving you as a burden to me!"
She shrank into her aunt's arms and listened to her reassure her, "Don't, these pancakes are dirty, let's not use them, aunt has good food there, let's eat at my house later."
No sooner had the aunt's words left her lips than Chad let out a low whimper.
There were no sounds, only tears.
Her father didn't love her, her mother didn't want her anymore, and she was alone in the world after that, how was she going to live?
*
It was the first time Orville had ever seen Chad cry. In the past, when she had been so upset, she had only seen her eyes red and misted over with water.
Curious, he rubbed his knuckles against his tears, which were warm and as hot as his body.
When she finally awoke from her distorted dream, she looked up and saw a face that was both familiar and unfamiliar.
She flinched back sluggishly, only to be wrapped more forcefully in his arms.
I don't know if it was the days of high fever that made her so weak, but she barely had the strength to resist, and her eyes were wide open, staring at him.
Half of her body was resting in Hans's arms, a small patch of wetness from the tears she had shed from the nightmare rubbing against his lapel.
Chad blushed and felt ashamed, so he struggled again, grabbing his arm and wrenching it out.
The man, however, grimaced as if he had been wronged, "I don't know who it was, but she was screaming in pain and crying for me to hold her, while now she's awake and she don't need me anymore."
Chad froze and looked at him in disbelief; she was burning up so badly and her consciousness was so groggy that for a moment he really thought her had provoked him first.
But the next moment she saw the grimace on Hans' face that was meant to be a grin.
Yes, she was mute, so how could she have cried out in her dream about pain? This Hans must be lying to her again!
Seeing her look of bewilderment and anger, Hans laughed, "I'm not lying, you don't have a soft chair in this room, so I had nowhere to sit, so I sat on the edge of the bed.
Chad didn't believe him at all, so she gave him a cold look and stopped struggling, looking out of the half-opened window and catching a glimpse of the white moonlight, which was cold and falling with the flying snow.
She hated this man behind her, but I don't know if it was because she was still sick and had that dream, but now she felt a little better with this man around.