Yan Zhuo stood outside the door, his hands clasped behind the back. He had stayed in the same position for hours. His hands were trembling and nervous.
A soothing breeze blew past him, the autumn wind carried the smell of dry earth and dying leaves. Inside a small, well decorated hut, few hours of cries had stopped. It was peacefully silent.
He didn't know if that was good or bad.
Twenty-three years old, and he still didn't know how to wait properly. His father had always said that about him. Always too restless. Too eager. But his father was back in their old village, almost three days' walk from here, and Yan Zhuo was still learning to be patient for the sake of his father.
He had to. Blackroot was something that rewarded patience.
The door creaked open. Old Chen, the midwife who had delivered half the children in Blackroot, stepped out wiping her hands on a rag. Her eyes were tired.
"Yan Zhuo."
He turned so fast he nearly stumbled.
"Come inside," she said. "You have a son."
The room smelled of blood and herbs. Luo Qin lay on the bed, pale and exhausted, she could barely keep her eyes open. She was twenty-one, and right now she looked worn beyond her years, yet the smile she gave him when he walked in made her seem like a girl again.
Her arms carried something wrapped in an old cloth, it was really small. It was something that moved.
Yan Zhuo crossed the room in three steps. His hands, calloused from years of working the fields, trembled as he reached out. He couldn't bring out his feelings. Was he supposed to feel happy? joy? exahausted? He didn't knew it. All he could express was a genuine smile.
"Careful," Luo Qin whispered. "He's small."
Small. The baby fit in his two palms, red-faced and wrinkled, eyes so small they looked shut. It was theirs. Something that rewarded their hardwork, their happiness. Everything they had wanted, just in two palms.
"He's..." Yan Zhuo's voice caught. He tried again. "He's ours."
"He's ours." she repeated.
Old Chen gathered her things quietly, she excused herself from the house allowing the new parents to embrace their child. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Soon the news spread all over the village. The neighbors came before sunset.
First was Uncle Liu from two houses down. A weathered man in his fifties, he had helped Yan Zhuo repair his roof last spring. He brought a small sack of grain, maybe half a jin, and pressed it into Yan Zhuo's hands without ceremony.
"For the boy," he said. "Growing children need to eat." Yan Zhuo couldn't deny it, the villagers had been doing this for every couple that born a child. Moreover, it could feed them for quite sometime.
Then came the Zhao family. The wife held out a bundle of cloth, even though it was worned, it was washed clean and felt fragnant. "For swaddling," she said. Her husband lingered behind her awkwardly, turning a wooden rattle in his hands. He'd carved it himself, you could tell from the uneven edges, though he'd taken care to sand down the grip.
"It's not much," the wife said.
"It's more than enough." Luo Qin's voice was tired, warm. "Thank you."
Others followed as evening came. Old Grandmother Sun brought pickled vegetables from her cellar. The Wei family's daughter, barely ten years old, presented a pair of tiny shoes she'd stitched herself, the seams crooked but tight. Someone left a pouch of dried herbs by the door without even coming inside.
Yan Zhuo accepted each gift, bowing his head to each neighbor. His throat felt tight. These people had so little, and still they gave.
Three years ago, he and Luo Qin had arrived in Blackroot with nothing. Two young people from a smaller village even poorer than this one, they were married off by their families, who couldn't afford to keep them. They had walked for days, carrying everything they owned in two bundles. When they first saw the empty hut at the edge of the village, Luo Qin had cried with relief.
A place of their own. Four walls and a roof. Back then, it had seemed impossible.
And now this. A son.
The last neighbor left as the stars came out. The hut was quiet again. Fuller now. The gifts sat in a pile by the door: grain, cloth, a wooden rattle, tiny shoes.
Across the village, in a house slightly larger than the rest, Village Chief Wang sat by his fire. He was an old man, past sixty, with a withered beard and hands that had worked on the fields longer than most villagers had been alive.
His grandson ran in, breathless. "Grandfather! The Yan couple had their baby. A boy!"
Wang looked up from the flames. "Hmm. Good."
He thought for a moment. The Yan family had been in Blackroot for three years now. Quiet. Hardworking. Never caused trouble, never asked for more than they earned. Good people.
"Go to the storage," he said. "Take them a bag of millet and twenty copper coins."
His grandson's eyes widened. Twenty copper was not nothing.
"And tell Yan Zhuo," the chief continued, "to take a few days off from the fields. His wife needs him at home right now. The harvest can wait."
The boy nodded and ran off.
Wang turned back to the fire. Another child born in Blackroot, another family putting down roots. That was how villages survived. Through small things: births, marriages, neighbors helping neighbors.
He hoped the boy would grow up strong.
"What should we call him?"
Luo Qin asked it later, when the light through the window had turned to moonlight. The baby slept against her chest, tiny fingers curled around nothing.
Yan Zhuo sat beside the bed, watching them both. He hadn't stopped watching since he came in.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I thought we'd have more time to decide."
"He came early." She smiled. "Impatient."
"Like his mother."
She laughed, barely more than a breath. "Like his father. You couldn't even wait outside properly. Old Chen said you wore a path in the dirt."
He didn't deny it.
The silence stretched. Through the thin walls, they could hear the village settling into night: a dog barking somewhere, the wind through the trees. Blackroot, same as always.
"Qiu," Luo Qin said suddenly.
Yan Zhuo looked at her.
"He was born in autumn." She touched the baby's cheek. "The leaves are falling, the harvest is ending. Everything is changing." She paused. "Qiu. Autumn."
Yan Zhuo thought about it. The wind outside, the scattered leaves, the season that marked endings and beginnings.
"Yan Qiu," he said slowly. Testing it. "Yan Qiu."
The baby stirred at the sound. His eyes opened for a moment, unfocused. Then they closed again, and he settled back into sleep.
"Yan Qiu," Luo Qin repeated softly.
Outside, the autumn wind blew, and the leaves continued to fall.