The burnt orange of sunrise trembles in the cracks of my stone hut door, sweetening the damp air with plum blossoms. I roll over on my cold bed and extend a withered finger to trace the droplets released from months of frost-bound stone.

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Spring mornings are a plea for becoming, but as I yawn and shrug off another night upon my stone bed, the memory of an autumn nightfall sobers me from the intoxication of this orange glow. Countless spring mornings and autumn evenings have come and gone since moss grew over the footsteps leading into these hills. All that I have become is a beating heart in a heap of stones.

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Once, a voice called from below, half-warning, half-begging: “You’ll vanish up there.” I didn’t answer. I just kept climbing, the weight of his voice falling away behind me like a stone in mist.

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I hear the crane’s call.

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This hillside is home to a creaturely symphony conducted by the rising sun. I lay awake, listening to the chorus build until the crane’s call draws me from the darkness of my stone house. That ungainly squawk acts as the cue that ignites my part in this orchestra for another day.

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I push open the old door, and the creak of its hinges launches her into flight. I squint against the breeze to catch her silhouette in the morning sun, and as always, her black eyes are upon me. Each stroke of her wings fills me with the desire to disappear into the depths of her feathers.

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She pays no mind to my disdain for civilized things. In her gaze, I am just another rustling on the hillside where trees mingle in low-hanging clouds.

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I breathe in the scent of plum blossoms, and my sleepy eyes adjust to survey the valley below. The smoke streams of morning tea brews that once dotted these hills have long since disappeared, and I am met with stillness.

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Just weeks ago, I paid a visit to Uncle Wei, a half-morning's walk into the valley. He was sowing his fields, preparing for another summer's bounty. He spoke in hushed tones of the Red Guard closing in on hermits like us. "They’ve begun sweeping the valleys," he warned. "They call us ghosts of feudal thought." He looked over his shoulder, as if they'd arrive at his garden gate at any moment.

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As I peer to the cliff on my right for signs of a distant neighbour’s morning routine, I fear that I’m the last. I don’t require a news report to know what’s coming. I turn back to the stone house, and the wind carries my whisper.

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“They’re near.”

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Like trees that bow under harsh winds, those whose hearts have driven them into these hills do not bemoan fate. Ignoring the omen, I break off a branch of plum blossoms for my table and, with an armful of fallen wood, return to my stone house. Closing the door behind me, I smile at its familiar creak, the only buffer that remains between me and the secret world of the crane.

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---

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So many suns have risen and set since I piled the stones to make these walls that a day’s cycle is no longer of any significance.

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The orange sunrise that once streamed through the cracks in my door has given way to dusk's pink gloom. I lie down, letting the idea of an eternal spring morning settle over me. The stone bed presses cold against my aged frame, made softer only by the company of delicate blossoms. As the last light slips beneath the door, I ask the darkness, “Where has my spring morning gone?”

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The blossoms, in their stillness, seem to promise: tomorrow’s crane call will bring back the orange glow.

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---

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“They’re here,” I whisper to the wall.

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Already awake, I hear footsteps and voices approaching. They stand outside my stone house, and I am addressed with a sharp “Hello?”

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An unwelcome hand fumbles with the old door and disrupts its natural rattle in the breeze.

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“Open up!” someone shouts.

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Cigarette smoke seeps through the cracks and gaps of this old hut, overpowering the subtle sweetness of yesterday’s plum blossoms. My soft gaze remains on the wall as I listen for the crane’s call, but their predatory sneers have drowned out the hilltop symphony.

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With a deafening screech, the old hinges of my door implode under the force of a single blow. Before I can yawn, shrug, or adjust my eyes to the morning sun, their harsh grip dumps me in the cold mud of spring-thawed snow.

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Exposed, their presence reveals the harsh truth that I am not of the wild, but of them. The boundary I believed to have crossed was never breached; I am not the crane, I am the one who watches, who tries and fails to disappear. I fear the crane will look away in solidarity with the secret world I begged to enter.

 

Crane call mornings will never come again.

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I look up at the black silhouettes imposed upon the vibrant colours of spring. Reluctantly pulling my gaze forward, I force myself to confront the image of my visitors. Four men in uniform, alight with pride and amusement, come into focus. I join them and cackle at the absurdity of our encounter. In the image of my aggressors, I embody nothing but a dirty old man who lost his mind. They grab me and recoil in disgust. Hatred radiates through their tightening grip.

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Their violence strikes without warning, blunt and unrelenting. I fall to the ground, laughing, coughing, and silent. As their rage subsides, stillness settles once again. I lie there, half-conscious, half-elsewhere, cradled by mud.

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A jab to the ribs brings me back.

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“Get up! We’re leaving,” one of the men barks. Holding me upright to face my stone house, the thatch roof is engulfed in flames. That hoarse cackle yowls from me again. The flames light up my glossy eyes, and the heat dries the mud on my cheeks.

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With feet dragging, they carry me away. Still facing my stone house, fixed on the flames, I take in the familiar surroundings for the last time. The plum blossom tree grows small and disappears. My eyes shut in exhaustion.

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---

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Most of my years have passed since I climbed these hills with a vow to never return. Now, I am torn from solitude and dragged back in shackles. Crossing the boundary between wild and civilized, I dread who I will become in man’s image before unconsciousness takes me.

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Suddenly, my eyes shoot open to the sound of a distant crane call, only to shut as lucidity returns.

 

Again, I am jolted awake to the sound of her call. This time closer. This time, real.

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The two men who drag me by the arms drop my body to the ground.

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“Would you look at that,” one of them whispers with a nudge.

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Holding my breath, I watch their faces light up with a sadistic look of amusement.

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“I hear those go for a good price,” the other snarls.

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She takes flight before they devise a plan for her capture. I follow her black gaze, and as she swoops over me, the breath I was holding releases, and I fall away from my body again, this time into the white expanse of her feathers.

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The subtle sounds of our journey keep me entranced as I am dragged back to the world of action. We reach our destination. My body is discarded in a cage filled with other martyrs, potential companions I choose not to register. Rooted in the hilltop symphony, listening for the white crane’s cue, I lie on the stone bench and face the stone wall of this cell.

 

No one else sees what I see when I close my eyes and be.

 

No one else knows what I know; the mountain breeze stripped away my mind long ago.

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---

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Spring turns to fall, and the numbing greyness of an autumn evening sweeps over the barred windows. I am content here. My body aches on this stone bench as it did on my stone bed. I once yearned for a glimpse of the white crane, but as I lay here in confinement, I experience her in full form with every dreamscape that carries me from this aching body.

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Too deep in the hilltop symphony to be civilized, I emerged in the image of man, a mystery. I crossed the threshold, and in the wild I shall remain, not a man undone, but a breath, a cry, a memory in the white feathers of her flight.

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On this grey autumn evening, I face the wall, listen, and hear the crane’s call.

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I hear her call.

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Distressed squawks jumbled with the commotion of a slamming door, footsteps, and hollers jolt me from the bench. I turn to see the white crane bound in a rice sack. He, my aggressor, drags her into the room beyond my cell, grinning in pride at the extravagance of his prize.

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Her pure white is out of place amongst the greyness of the stone wall’s confinement. In an instant, I remember her first flight of spring, wings slicing the orange sky, circling above the plum blossoms, eyes locked with mine. That was the moment I first surrendered to the wild. Now, her wings are folded, her grace constrained, and the memory pierces deeper than the bars that bind us. Her squawk drowns out the rumbles of man and draws the untamed wild from me.

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The wild in me runs towards her and bashes into the gate with a shriek. The wild cannot be tamed. I roar and rampage to beg for her salvation.

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Met with my aggressor on the other side of the cell door, he orders me to “SIT DOWN!”

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“You don’t see her, do you?” I whisper.

“She’s nothing but a bird,” he snarls.

“No. She’s the only thing that’s real.”

He scoffs, but I do not blink. “You locked away the spirits. I followed mine into the mountains.”

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My veins pump with the pain of wild confinement; space and sound blur.

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A sobering stab in my side reminds the wild in me that I am a hopeless subject. Turning my attention to the origin of the blow, my weakening limbs are explained by the sight of blood pouring from my paper-thin skin.

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I look for my only companion, and as we meet each other’s gaze, I see their iron fists around her long neck. I hope to ease her distress before the noise fades into silence, and my vision succumbs to the white expanse of the wild.

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Falling to the ground limp, the twist of her neck robs me of my last breath.

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In the wild, I shall remain, not a man undone, but a breath, a cry, a memory in the white feathers of her flight.

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To get to the end, the very end. Let it all go, let it go.