Sparrow didn’t reply. She wasn’t looking at him, but at Lian. A pitying look. A trick of the light, he thought. Then he sprinted to join the knot of scouts at the front of the line.

Chapter 10

Shangma Temple would be their refuge for ten days, giving them a much-needed rest. Built as a religious retreat, the Buddhist temple stood between hills far away from the main road. It was centuries old, a complex of buildings that included temples, a monastery, gardens, and a guesthouse for pilgrims. The path to the temple’s main gate was a steep and winding climb, the first test of a pilgrim’s devotion. An easier path for wagons and draft animals led to a side entrance. Terraced courtyards looked down on the stream that ran between two small towns called Shangma and Shiama, Upper Horse and Lower Horse, connected by a wide stone bridge.

During its years of prosperity, a steady procession of the devout traveled to Shangma Temple seeking prayer and peace. They breathed in clean mountain air and refreshed themselves in the icy chill of Shangma Temple’s waterfall pool. The truly pious climbed even higher, to the hanging valley above where they could worship at a small shrine.

But in recent decades the number of pilgrims coming to Shangma Temple had dwindled and now only a dozen elderly monks remained to look after the property. They lived in one courtyard. The rest of the property, the guesthouse and lesser temples, stood empty. The abbot had been more than pleased for Minghua 123 to stay there in exchange for rice and money.

Professors inspected temples and halls to decide which ones to use as classrooms. Servants boiled water for baths and laundry, beat quilts and mats on paving stones to rid them of bedbugs. Students cleaned the rooms where they would sleep, swept out the halls that would be their classrooms, and unpacked books to set up a makeshift library on brick-and-board shelving. All the students longed for rest, for the chance to study and think about something else besides the war. They longed for the illusion of normalcy.

HO LIFANG, KNOWN for so long as Shorty Ho that his classmates had forgotten his formal name, reached inside his pants to scratch his balls. He paused to glance at the doorway. They’d kept the guesthouse’s windows and doors open to air it out. He reached in deeper for a really long, satisfying scratch. It felt like eons since he’d taken a bath or put on clean clothes. There were nights when he had slept with nothing but a thin mat between him and hard earthen floors. The dirt on his clothes chafed his skin. Or maybe it was lice. Or maybe the itch in his crotch signified fleas.