Bilgee had said to Chen, “Mosquito plagues are always followed by wolf plagues, because the killer insects leave starved, crazed wolves in their wake, for which humans and their livestock pay a price. The greatest terror on the grassland is linked plagues, especially mosquitoes and wolves.” A climate of fear had settled over the entire brigade.
The cub was obviously being worn out, but didn’t appear to have lost weight. The onslaught of mosquitoes continued day and night, yet he ran around the pen even more than usual. Faced with the fury of the mosquito plague, his obstinate nature held fast; his appetite did not diminish even a little. The young wolf actually fleshed out in the midst of the plague-filled season. Chen was like a doting father. As long as there was meat to eat and water to drink, the cub could withstand anything.
But now, with no warning, the cub began leaping around as if demented. A mosquito had managed to squirm under his belly and stick its needle into his little pecker. The excruciating pain left him no choice but to stop trying to evade the attacking mosquitoes and raise his rear leg to attend to his cherished appendage with its teeth; the moment he did that, hundreds of mosquitoes swarmed over his belly, causing such unbearable pain that he writhed in agony.
Leaving the cub to his afflictions, Chen grabbed his scythe, threw the willow basket over his back, and ran toward a culvert on the western hill where mugwort grew. The year before, when there were far fewer mosquitoes, he’d gone there with Gasmai to cut down mugwort. Soon after moving to the new grazing land, the rains came and Chen had gone out to determine where the mugwort grew most plentifully. Although the rains brought the mosquito plague, they also fed vast areas of mugwort, and as the plague of blood-sucking insects reached its peak, the medicinal odor of the plant filled the air. Chen looked up at Tengger and said, “This plant is what makes human survival on the grassland possible.”
There wasn’t a breath of wind down in the grassy culvert, and Chen’s denim shirt was soaked with sweat. Swarms of mosquitoes buried their needles halfway into the thick fabric, and Chen could not pull them out; the shirt was transformed into a pincushion of flying insects. He had no time to worry about that; he’d let them die there, impaled in his shirt. But then he felt a stabbing pain on his shoulder; he swatted the spot and drew back a bloody imprint.
Chen entered the patch of mugwort, where the number of mosquitoes dropped off dramatically. The plants, with gray-blue-white stalks, grew at least three feet high; the leaves had a succulent, downy surface. A bitter medicinal plant, mugwort went untouched by cows, sheep, and horses, which is why it grew in such profusion. As soon as he saw the tall plants, he slowed down, gripped his scythe tightly, and bent over cautiously into a battle stance. He and the other Beijing students had been warned by older shepherds that they should be especially careful around mugwort when they were out tending their flocks; since there were few mosquitoes, wolves often hid within these patches, rolling around and crushing the plant to coat their fur with the acrid smell, a natural mosquito repellent.
Not daring to venture too far into the patch without his dogs, Chen stopped and shouted twice. He detected no movement. He waited a few moments, then walked slowly in among the plants, where he felt surrounded by the miracle of salvation. He took aim at the densest patch he could see and began chopping like a madman, staining his scythe green and saturating the air with the strong medicinal odor. He breathed in deeply, as if to fill his innards with the smell.
After packing his basket with cut mugwort, Chen headed back, almost running, picking up a handful of the stuff along the way, squeezing out its juices, and rubbing it on the back of his hand. As expected, the exposed skin attracted few mosquitoes.
As soon as he was back in his yurt, he stoked the fire in the stove with dried cow dung, then ran outside to bring in seven or eight chipped water basins from the willow basket. Choosing the biggest of the lot, he dumped in some smoldering dung and covered it with mugwort. Dense white smoke reeking of mugwort rose immediately.
Chen carried the basin to the edge of the cub’s pen, upwind, and watched as a breeze spread the smoke out over the pen. Mugwort is the mosquito’s deadliest enemy; they retreat at the first whiff even if they’re drawing blood from a victim at the time. It took only a moment for the greater half of the pen to be clear of mosquitoes.
The mugwort had come to the cub’s rescue, but the sparks from the burning dung and the smoke made him tremble with fear. With a terrified look in his eyes, he leaped and ran as far away from the basin as the chain would allow, where he continued to struggle. Like all animals in the wild, he was deathly afraid of fire and smoke. Chen knew that this fear had been passed down generation after generation by the cub’s ancestors. He added more mugwort to the fire and shook the basin to surround the young wolf with the smoke. He’d have to train the cub to adapt to the smoke treatment, since that was the only way he’d survive the terrible mosquito plague. Out in the wild, his mother would have led him up the mountain or over to a patch of mugwort in order to escape from the mosquitoes. But here at the camp, Chen was obliged to be a surrogate parent and smoke the mosquitoes away.
The smoke billowed and the wolf cub struggled, nearly strangling himself. But Chen refused to be moved; he kept adding more plants to the fire. Eventually, the cub stopped struggling, exhausted, and was forced to stand amid the smoke and shiver. Fearful of the smoke though he was, he seemed more relaxed now that the mosquitoes were gone. Finding that strange, he looked all around, then lowered his head to examine his belly. The little marauders that had poked around down there, making him leap into the air, were gone too. The look in his eyes was a mixture of confusion and joy as his spirits soared.
The smoke kept rolling toward the cub, who cringed when he saw it; and when a couple of sparks flew out of the basin, he nearly flew over to a spot as far away from the smoke as he could get. But all that earned him was an encirclement by waiting mosquitoes, which attacked him mercilessly. When covering his face did nothing to help the situation, he started running around madly once again. As his speed slowed after a dozen or so revolutions, he suddenly seemed to grasp the reality that there were fewer mosquitoes in some places than in others, and that those places were under the clouds of smoke. He stared wide-eyed and disbelieving at the white smoke, but soon spent more time in it than out of it. The cub, a smart youngster, sped up his thought processes to analyze what was happening around him. Still, the fear of smoke would not leave, and he floundered between smoke and no smoke.
The dogs lying beneath the oxcart quickly discovered the smoke. Grassland dogs all know the virtues of the white smoke. Their eyes lit up as they excitedly led the younger dogs over to the smoky refuge; now that the mosquitoes had left their bodies, they staked out positions where the smoke was thick enough, but not too thick, and stretched out comfortably, fully enjoying the chance to sleep. This was the young dogs’ first encounters with the benefits of mugwort smoke. They followed the adults into the smoky air and rejoiced; they too found spots to lie down and rest. The restricted area that comprised the cub’s pen was quickly occupied by half a dozen dogs that lay there, a sight that seemed to surprise the cub.