Memoirs of a Merchant
If you, by any chance have stumbled upon this page, I would like to have a few words with you beforehand. All this is real. Since no one shall testify for me, I shall myself. These are all true events that occurred to me in my life, not figments of imagination put down on paper with the purpose of concealing any dark secrets of my success in the ink market. There are none.
Now I shall begin my recital.
When I was in my youthful years and only a merchant-in-practice, I once accompanied my father on the famous Whitepine trade route, the only path that passed through the colossal Actinia Mountain range. We were travelling to the city of Guming on the other side, hoping to stockpile on its fine textiles and crafts by selling the local goods of our province. It had been a good harvest that year, and my father had even set aside a dozen crates of fine dates in hope of trading some pinesap ink stones and paper from the accomplished crafters in the city. Guming was renowned far and wide for its fine ink stones and high-quality paper, and even one stone or scroll of paper brought back to our province would be double or perhaps triple its weight in gold.
It took us well over three months to arrive, for we were delayed by the weather on the way. But owing to my father’s foresight to bring yet unripened fruit and husked rice, none of our stock was spoiled, and the trip was successful. We had obtained a total of three crates of paper and two wicker baskets of ink stone, enough to cover the fees on the road and earn us a large amount of profit.
It was in high spirits that we set out on the route back home, yet disaster came out of the blue. A month into our trekking, we ended up being robbed at night by armed bandits. My father, not willing to give up our precious cargo, displeased the bandits and a fight broke out. I was thrown into a ravine amidst the confusion, having tried to conceal the baskets that held the ink stones. I thought for sure that I was done for.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on the ground of a simple hut. My head ached, and it came to my attention that my leg had been propped up and bound in bandages. Spasms of pain would shoot up my spine with every attempted movement. It was evident that I was going nowhere in my state.
As I tried to make sense of what had happened while I was out, the door of the cabin opened and a fresh gust of wind rushed into the room. The person who had saved me entered into my field of view. She was clad in a featureless white robe, unremarkable except for its thickness typical of the people that lived in high mountains. Her black hair was combed tidily behind her ears, and she stared at me curiously with expressive emerald green eyes.
I was caught by surprise. We stared at each other for a few awkward moments before I found my voice and asked if she had saved me. She nodded. Then I asked where I was. An awkward expression came to her face. She raised her hands high above her head and brought them down with a swooping gesture, her hands coming apart as they lowered to her waist. She stopped and looked at me with her head cocked, as though asking if I understood.
It was then that I realized she was mute.
I spent the rest of the day asking her questions, which she answered with signs and gestures that I tried to decipher, repeating the meanings out loud to be sure I had understood them right. I learned that she had found me washed up on the bank of the stream she fetched water from, and that I was in her home on one of the many mountaintops of the Actinia mountain range. No one ventured to these heights. We were completely alone. My leg was injured to the bone and would take at least half a year to recover.
The days seemed to crawl by at first. I slept poorly and often woke in the dead of night, cold sweat rolling down my face. The pain my leg forced my mind to register was torturous. More than often the girl would have to drench me in cold water to bring me to my senses the next morning. But those days also yielded eye-opening finds, for I slowly learned more about my savior as she catered to my needs. We talked when I could manage, often through sips of bitter medicine that she had mixed up for me in a copper pot. She lived the life of a hermit and never ventured down the mountains, only going as far as her stream. The surroundings provided her with everything she needed for life, whether it be water or firewood, for the Actinias were covered with acers of pine trees. A garden grew outside the cabin, and she was an accomplished hunter with a bow and arrow as I later witnessed. But her lifestyle was not what amazed me most. It was her ‘pastime’. (I did not ask her how she could understand my words, or where her parents were. It seemed inappropriate.)
She occupied herself with the making of pinesap ink stones from handfuls of pine needles. She would crush the fresh leaves with a flat stone dozens of times over until the room was filled with the scent of sap, which she collected in a container and heated over a small fire. The viscous golden liquid would then be mixed with a fixed amount of coal powder and various other ingredients, including a solidifier, and lastly molded into globules that she set to cool on the windowsill. The cabin walls were crowded with these ink stones of varying sizes, and every one I inspected was of a glossier and finer quality than any of the ones found in Guming.
As my leg slowly healed over the course of a few months, my energy began to return. The girl fashioned a pair of crutches for me when she found the time, and thus I found myself on my legs after what had felt like an eternity of lying on the ground. I could hold longer conversations without tiring, and the girl began to pester me about my life. To her, I was a strange ambassador coming from a whole other world than the isolated life she lived on the mountaintop. I shared every bit of my life with her, from my friends in my hometown to the festivals we held every harvest in my town. Even the most common event in my life could intrigue her to no end, and then after dozens of persistent and silent questioning to sate her thirst, she would fall silent and reflective. Only after she had mulled over every last detail would she then request me to tell more. Our curious conversation with only one person doing the talking would often persist until midnight, me on a makeshift bed of her making, her sitting on the actual one. She would always look out of the window beside her bed as she pondered about my tellings. I would look out with her. Such was that long silences would also follow our conversations, filled only by cool breezes and the rising moon. I found as time passed that I did not need to guess what she wanted to tell me anymore. I could understand every tilt of her head, every glance of her eyes. I had become adept at comprehending.
When my leg had almost healed, she discovered an old accounting book of mine in my luggage. It was the first time she had seen words. I resolved to teach her the little I knew, and to my delight, she was a fast learner. In a few weeks she could write passable letters, and I wrote my address on a piece of paper for her if ever she should use the postal service.
Alas, it was hard leaving her. My leg had recovered over the course of nine months, but I lingered with her for another one, if only for the sake of being with her.
The night I told her I had to leave, she was as silent as I had never seen before. It was true that she was always silent, but in my impression she had always been animated, full of life. Though she did not speak, she had a laugh that shamed the songbirds. That night was different. She made a pot of tea, not for me, but for herself, and stared out the window for the entire night. I did not know what to say to comfort her, for it had suddenly occurred to me that this was how she must have spent her entire life- alone, with no one to talk to but nature herself.
The next day I left, loaded down with ink stones she had insisted on stuffing into my pockets and rucksack. I could sense that she tried not to cry. I did not look back as I left the cabin hidden in the forest of pines. Yet I felt her gaze follow me the whole way. I could see her in my mind’s eye, a lone white figure standing in the door of the cabin, with the wind flowing through her hair.
I returned to my home with no accident, surprising all my friends and family, who all thought I had died. My father was broke- he had lost all our cargo to the bandits- and I found everyone in a disconsolate state of mind. When I shared my encounter, they couldn’t believe their ears.
The ink stones I brought back were a change of fortune for us. We became rich, to keep things simple, and I managed to replicate the girl’s recipe from memory. The quality was incomparable to her making, but it was fairly enough to make a living from. I went about my life and forgot all about her in a matter of years.
When I heard from her again, I had become the most successful merchant in the country. I received a letter in the post one night, its yellowed paper a recount of the days it had travelled to reach me. The handwriting awakened long-dormant memories of mine. When I had opened the envelope with shaking hands, a few green pine needles fell out along with the letter. They only served to double my worries.
The letter was from the girl. It was regretfully short, only telling me that she was ill and would probably not make it to the next year. The postscript contained the recipe for her ink stones, which must have been the only information she deemed worth passing on to her sole contact in society.
The notion came to me to pay her a visit, but it went up in smoke instantly. In her short letter, I could sense peace the way I once understood every subtle gesture she once used to talk with me. It was the peace of death, still as frigid lakes, and it was not my choice whether or not to intervene with her mindset.
The moon was high in the sky that night, and there was a cool breeze blowing through the windows. Remembering what she would have done, I made myself a pot of tea and put myself to bed, where I lay and watched the serene moon through the windows, thinking of many things and of nothing all at once.
Perhaps she was watching the moon with me that night. Or perhaps I was already watching her spirit in the sky.

Note from Zealatom: This was originally fashioned as a draft for a written picturing for the wonderful @pangolin a year ago. It evolved into something much longer than anticipated, and I abandoned it for favor of a shorter piece of prose. I found it sitting around in my files and thought that I should do it some justice by polishing it up and setting it out for all to see, for that was part of its original intention anyway.