Coisas Estranhas que Encontrei Caçando nas Montanhas

I remember being driven out of my uncle’s house just thirteen days before the New Year.

He beat me seventy-six times with a stick as thick as his calf, kicked me nineteen times, slapped me twenty-three times, and called me a curse upon the family.

I did not beg for mercy, nor did I bow my head. My father had taught me from a young age: a man should be like an eagle—better to die standing than to live kneeling.

My name is Lin Thirty-Seven. I was once a hunter—an exceptionally skilled one.

My family hails from Inner Mongolia. When I was a child, my grandfather told me that our ancestors had been imperial falconers during the Yuan Dynasty, with some even attaining the third rank of officialdom.

The string of sandalwood beads I wear on my wrist, my grandfather said, was once bestowed upon our forebear by the great Mongol Khan, Möngke.

In a way, you could say we were once esteemed.

On the night of my fourteenth birthday, a torrential rain fell, punctuated by thunder. That evening, my parents received a strange letter—no name, no address.

After reading it, my father frowned and asked my mother, “What do you think?”

My mother stroked my head absentmindedly and murmured, “What must come will come.”

I didn’t understand their words. I just stared at them, bewildered.

The day after they read the letter, my parents left me at my uncle’s house in the village, handed over five thousand yuan, and set off for Xinjiang. As they left, they told me they would be back in a month.

Three months passed. My pare