Chapter 1 — Where Old Elephants Rest

The fog had not yet completely dissipated on Chu Rinh peak when Duong Ha Lam took her motorbike out of the yard, her head flashlight still lit even though it was dawn. The red dirt road from the house to the elephant field is about two kilometers long, on both sides are patches of elephant grass taller than a person's head and a few old bamboo groves creaking in the morning wind. She had walked this road countless times in her twenty-seven years of life, to the point that just by closing her eyes, she knew where there were potholes, where tree roots protruded from the road, and where during the rainy season it would be as slippery as grease.

The sound of gurgling stream water coming from below told her that the elephants had woken up. Every morning, Morning Star is always the first to wake up, proudly walking to the stream bank first like a sleeping old lady, gently siphoning water from her hose before sucking a full hose and spraying it on her back to wake herself up. Ha Lam stopped the car at the top of the slope, turned off the flashlight, and stood looking for a while. It's a habit she's kept for many years — before starting anything, she always takes a minute to just look at it, not doing anything, just looking.

Sao Mai is over fifty-five years old this year, her ears have begun to tear due to age, one tusk was broken when she was young, before Ha Lam was born. That was the first elephant her father, Mr. Duong Van Thach, tamed in his life - people still called him "gru", the language the M'nong people used to call the master elephant tamer, even though he was born in the lowlands and had nothing to do with the mountains and forests of the Central Highlands until he was twenty-two years old. Thirty years together, Sao Mai and Mr. Thach are almost an inseparable pair, to the point that once a journalist came back to write an article and asked him, if he had to choose between the elephant and this entire property, who would he choose. Mr. Thach just laughed and said that question was meaningless, because without Sao Mai, there would be no place for this property.

Ha Lam took the car all the way down to the parking lot and parked it neatly under the corrugated iron roof next to the food warehouse. Bay Kinh, the oldest mahout in the camp, had already languished there, carrying two bundles of young sugar cane that had just been cut.

"Sao Mai ate well today," he said, his voice hoarse because he had just woken up. "But the Mun is still limping on its front leg. It must have been cold lately and its joints hurt again."

"I'll check the medicine for him," Ha Lam replied, taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves. Every morning work starts the same way — checking the health of each animal, preparing rations, cleaning the yard, and then the other chores of the day. The farm currently has four elephants: Sao Mai, Mun - a gentle male who has been pulling wood for more than twenty years so his front legs still have scars from old chains, May - a younger female who was once forced to carry tourists so she is still shy when strangers approach, and Vang - an older male, Sao Mai's closest friend, the two often stand next to each other at dusk like two old friends sitting on the porch chatting wordlessly.

Four elephants, more than thirty hectares of forest land, a mahout team of only three people including Ha Lam, and an operating budget that gets tighter each year - that is all that is left of the dream that Mr. Duong Van Thach has cherished and built for more than thirty years, since the day he was a young forest ranger who was accepted as a student by the people of Chu Rinh village at the foot of the mountain, passing on the elephant taming profession that was only passed down from father to son in each family.

Ha Lam scooped up a handful of bran mixed with ripe bananas and brought it near Sao Mai's mouth. The old elephant gently lowered his trunk, gently touched her palm like a handshake, then slowly took the food. Its eyes, if anyone has ever looked closely, will see something very different from other elephants - not quite sad, not quite peaceful, but as if it has lived long enough to understand that sadness and peace are inherently inseparable.

"Do you miss grandpa?" Ha Lam said softly, not really asking Sao Mai, nor really asking herself. "He rarely comes down these days."

That was the truth that kept her on the edge of her mind for the past few months. Mr. Duong Van Thach, who used to walk all morning following elephants into the deep forest without getting tired, can now only sit on a rattan chair on the porch of a small house next to the elephant field. His heart has weakened a lot after a heart attack two years ago. The doctor told him absolutely not to exert himself, not to be too emotional, not to walk uphill for more than fifteen minutes. For someone who once considered walking dozens of kilometers following herds of elephants to be a daily occurrence, those restrictions were like a punishment.

But he still tried to go down to the beach once or twice a week, using a cane, walking slowly, just to stand and look at Sao Mai from afar, waving his hand as a wordless greeting. The old elephant, every time he saw him, would roar softly, a deep and long sound that Ha Lam only heard emitted when Mr. Thach appeared, never with anyone else, not even her.

The morning passed with a familiar routine: cleaning up manure, spreading newly cut elephant grass, checking the low-voltage fence surrounding the safe area, recording the estimated weight and skin condition of each animal in a worn notebook. Around noon, Bui Xuan Mai - a young employee in charge of communications and fundraising, who had only been working for six months - rode down on her motorbike, her face looking unusually urgent.

"Miss Lam, I have to tell you something right away," Xuan Mai said as she parked the car, panting. "This morning I passed by the land bordering the river bank and saw a few strangers measuring and placing stakes, including someone carrying a surveying machine."

Ha Lam stopped and turned to look at her. "Measuring? Whose land is it?"

"I don't know, but I asked one of the guys in that group, he said they worked for a company called Hoang Kim, doing surveys to do some project with the word Safari in the name. Hearing that sent chills down my spine, because the land they measured was right next to the eastern boundary of our camp, near the stream."

The name "Hoang Kim" is not completely unfamiliar to Ha Lam - she has read it in online newspapers several times, a group specializing in investing in resorts and eco-tourism in many Central Highlands provinces, famous for resorts with infinity pools overlooking the coffee valley. She never thought they would pay attention to a remote piece of land with difficult roads like this place.

"Maybe they just measured the wrong line," she said, trying to keep her voice calm even though a vague feeling of insecurity arose in her heart. "There are many places around here that don't have clear landmarks. Sometimes they survey the empty land on the other side of the river."

But Xuan Mai shook her head, her face not very confident in her own reassurance. "I hope so too, sister. But the way they measured, I saw them walking along my fence, even taking pictures of the barn."

That afternoon, when the sun began to lean towards the west, dyeing the whole valley a bright red orange on the forest trees, Ha Lam herself walked to the eastern boundary to see the truth. She stood on one side of the fence, looking to the other side, where orange posts had been placed in a long line along the stream bank, each post about fifty meters apart. There was no one there at the moment, only the afternoon wind blew through the reeds, making them move and rustle as if whispering something she didn't fully understand.

She remembered what her father often said, every time someone asked why he chose to set up camp in such a remote place instead of near a main road for convenience: "Old elephants need a quiet place to rest, not a beautiful place for people to take pictures." That saying, over the years, has become a kind of unspoken motto of the whole camp - do not advertise loudly, do not organize for guests to ride the elephants to take pictures, just quietly adopt the old and weak elephants that were abandoned or sold off when their economic value was exhausted, giving them a place to live out the last years of their lives without having to shoulder any more burdens for anyone else.

If Hoang Kim is indeed aiming at this land to build an elephant riding tourist area, then it is nothing more than a cruel irony - right next to the place where elephants are freed from the yoke of riding as passengers, people intend to build a place to force other elephants to continue doing the same job.

That evening, after feeding the elephants their last meal of the day and carefully locking the fence, Ha Lam stopped by his father's house before returning to his room. Mr. Thach is sitting in a familiar rattan chair, an old notebook open on his lap, the light of an oil lamp - even though the house has electricity, he still likes to light an oil lamp at night to reduce glare - casting a warm yellow halo on his wrinkled face.

"You're late," he said, without looking up, but his voice filled with familiar concern.

"I'll go look at the east fence again," Ha Lam sat down on the steps next to him. "Dad, someone is measuring the land adjacent to us, from Hoang Kim company."

Mr. Thach's hand paused on the notebook page, only for a very short moment, but enough for Ha Lam to notice. He didn't answer right away, just looked out at the elephant field, where in the dim darkness one could see the massive figure of Morning Star standing still at the base of an old tree, its trunk swaying slowly.

"Hoang Kim," he finally spoke, his voice lowered. "Dad has vaguely heard about this. The old commune chairman visited last month. Don't worry too much, let me ask further."

"What do you know that you didn't tell me?" Ha Lam asked, with a bit of reproach in her voice.

Mr. Thach sighed and rubbed his left chest, a gesture that Ha Lam was familiar with whenever he felt something heavy in his heart. "Nothing is certain yet, I don't want you to worry before it is necessary. But if it is true that they are aiming for this land, then we will have to prepare for a long battle, daughter."

Ha Lam sat still, looking out at the darkness where the herd of elephants were sleeping. A feeling of both familiarity and strangeness suddenly arose in her heart - familiarity, because she had grown up with the awareness that this place always needed protection, from wild animals, from epidemics, from harsh weather; Strange, because this is the first time the threat does not come from nature, but from humans themselves, in the name of development and progress.

The night wind blew down from Chu Rinh mountain, bringing with it cold air and the smell of dew-wet grass. In the distance, Morning Star roared a long, deep roar, as if the old elephant was also sensing something uneasy lurking around its common roof. Ha Lam stood up, closed the window of her father's house, then walked alone up the slope back to her room, silently saying to herself, no matter what happens, she will not let this place - the place her father spent his life to build, where old elephants can live out the rest of their lives in peace - fall into the hands of anyone who sees them as just a profitable commodity.