Chapter 4 frog

Binu went to Banqiao to hire a horse, but the livestock market in Banqiao disappeared.The autumn river flooded up and submerged the temporary boat bridge built by the horse dealers.The grass sheds along the river were empty, all the smell of grass and livestock drifted away in the wind, only the skewed wooden piles were waiting desperately for the return of the horses, but it seemed that all the horses were gone forever. Lostly following its savage new master on the road to the North. Water and weeds jointly regained the land by the river, and Qingyun County after the looting was wet and desolate.Binu stood by the river, remembering how those half-naked horse traders led their horses to drink water by the river, and at the same time shouted to the peasant women in the paddy fields in the distance, sister, sister, buy my horse.Binu wants to hire a horse now, but none of the horse dealers from the Western Regions or Yunnan has disappeared. She only sees a big urn abandoned by them outside the shed. , a crow stood on the mouth of the urn.

Binu was walking along the river with her pink flower jacket on a blue background. Wild chrysanthemums were blooming by the river. A frog jumped out of the water and jumped forward following her inexplicably.Binu stopped, looked at the frog, and said, what's the use of following me, you are neither a horse nor a donkey, go, go, go, go back to the water!The frog jumped back into the water and landed lightly on the raft by the river. The raft was chopped off in half by someone, and the rest was rotten and gray-green moss grew, which happened to be the frog's home. .Binu remembered that in summer, a blind woman paddled the raft down the river. She was wearing a straw hat and a black gown that mountain women loved, calling someone's name along the way, and no one could understand her. With a northern mountain accent, she lives on the water like a black egret, never going ashore.Later, those who went to pick lotus by the river figured it out first. The blind woman was looking for her son along the river. Is it her son?Someone tried to tell the blind woman that if she wanted to find her son, she should abandon the raft and go north instead of going up the river. Someone else told her that the first flood in autumn was coming and the river was full of dangers, but it was unknown whether it was because of language barrier or The blind woman couldn't leave her raft, she still stubbornly went down the raft, calling out her son's name to the villages on both sides of the river, day and night, to the blind woman, there was no difference, sometimes in the middle of the night, the shrill And the desolate voice echoed by the river. The river is the home of the crow and the white crane. The raft broke into their home. The white cranes made a rare alliance. Under the moonlight, they rushed from both sides of the river to the surface of the water, singing wildly at the blind woman's raft, but the sound of birds attacking across the river could not suppress the blind woman's cries. The call sounded like a third high-pitched bird song, and the people on the river bank were awakened before dawn. They listened to the sound on the river in the dark, and felt an unspeakable uneasiness. The frightening sound foretold As the end was approaching, sure enough, the autumn flood came down ahead of time. People said that the blind woman called the first flood. After the flood receded, people by the river saw the raft, which was only half left, floating on the On the vast river, the raft was empty, and the blind woman on the raft had disappeared into the river like a drop of water.

The half of the raft left by the mountain woman floated by the river. It looked like the blind woman had half a nightmare and left the other half to the frog.Binu did not expect that it was not a horse dealer or a horse waiting for her in Banqiao, but a frog.Maybe the frog has been waiting for a long time, it listened to Binu's footsteps up and down the bank, and then Binu left Banqiao, and the frog jumped with her on the way to the village.The origin and identity of the frog made Binu feel scared. Could it be the blind woman who changed it?The women in Qingyun County all have their own past and future, and some come from the water's edge. Wang Jie's dumb mother was a calamus, and before she died, she climbed into the calamus bushes by the river. Wang Jie couldn't tell which calamus was changed by her mother. Every Qingming Festival, she went to the river to worship all the calamus together.Lan Niang in the west of the village looks like a fairy, she walks like a crab, it is ugly, everyone knows that she was transformed from a crab, and when she died of dystocia, she spit out a lot of foam from her mouth. Binu saw it with her own eyes, and the villagers also said that Lan Niang The mother couldn't let go of her baby, so she turned into a crab and stayed at home. She was afraid that her appearance would frighten the baby, so she hid behind the water tank every day.Binu thought, if Lanniang had turned into a crab, would the blind woman who was looking for her son along the river turn into a frog?She turned her head to look at the frog's eyes carefully, and she was startled. The frog's eyes were like white beads, pure but dull, and she was indeed blind!

Binu took up her robe and ran wildly, screaming in her mouth, it's her, it's her, it's her who turned into a frog!There was no one around, except for the weeds all over the ground, no one heard Binu reveal the secret identity of a frog.When Binu was running, he vaguely heard the wind chasing after him from the river, bringing with it the voice of the mountain woman screaming along the river, and what was even more strange was that the vague voice suddenly became much clearer, Qi Liang, Qi Liang!Binu doubted her own ears, and her panicked footsteps slowly came to a halt. Binu stopped under a mulberry tree. She was not even afraid of Lanniang's claws and claws. Was she afraid of a poor frog soul?She is not afraid, she wants to ask that mountain woman, what is your son's name?The frog jumped over wearily. After all, it was a frog. Its blind eyes retained the sadness of the mountain woman, but its closed mouth said nothing about what happened to the dead soul.What is your son's name?His name is also Qiliang?Let me ask you, what is your son's name?Binu waited patiently under the mulberry tree for a long time, and finally determined that the frog could not answer this simple question. People in the village said that those who lived in the mountains all the year round did not even have a proper name. They were called two, three, six or something. It's just an animal's name, a thatch's name, and her son's name is not Qiliang.Perhaps it relieved the tension, Binu sighed for a long time, and said to the frog with his hips crossed, if you don’t say it, you don’t say it, and if you don’t say it, I know what you’re thinking, you treat me like a raft, and you want to follow me to find son!Binu said, you are well-informed. No one in Mopanzhuang knows that I am going to Dayanling, but you, a frog, do know. Qiliang, my family, is building the Great Wall there. If I go thousands of miles away, I can’t hire a horse. Go too, how do you go?Jump like this, be careful to break your leg!