'Spell' by Roger Luo

When I was a kid, outages in dog days that lasted up to two weeks or even longer were common. During those days, the stuffiness within brick and mud houses and thatched cottages would drive people out when they finished an exhausting harvest labor work day and a perfunctory dinner.

My father would put a long four-footed bamboo-made bed under a tall and straight locust tree, and my mother would bring a reel of mosquito-repellent incense. Soon, neighbors gravitated toward the tree with palm-leaf fans in hand. It was dusk, but the sky was still bright with stars winking here and there.

Then, they would start spinning a yarn or two to while away the long night. The water in the paddy field at two in the afternoon had become almost boiling that dipping feet into it would make them blister. Leeches had become more aggressive than last year, and some bit so deep that half of their length had gone into their calves.

On bad days, treetops were motionless like still pictures. When it happened, every few minutes, young men would put their hands around mouth, forming an oval, raise their heads toward the tip of the trees, and blow a long intermittent and melodic howling just like wolves. They said this would attract the wind coming.

Every word of theirs cast a spell on my mind. When they started, I always looked attentively up at the treetops, waiting for the fluttering of the leaves. “It does not work this time, but it will later,” I always thought, for a long time.