Catching Nian

Geriel had uttered every Mongol obscenity that she knew, and then some. The good thing about this was that her captors had no idea what she was saying. The downside was that this took away most of the satisfaction.

They left her in a room, her hands bound, the sack still covering her head. She heard the sound of a bolt sliding home, then she was alone in the dark and the deafening quiet.

She will confess that she’d missed it—the silence. Ever since she left the Steppes, she’d been living in cities and towns, with no chance to experience the deep stillness of the open grasslands. But this was an unnatural sort of quiet. The kind that came with shallow breaths and disturbing thoughts.

ZhuangXi had no prison, so Geriel knew this was a temporary holding room for her before she was transported to another city the next day, one big enough to have a proper jail. Then—what? There would be a trial, perhaps. Geriel had been trespassing, that much was true, but who would testify that she didn’t try to hurt anyone? The only people who could confirm this were Xiaodan, whose testimony would not be accepted because he was a child.

And Rui Ning, who would never help her again.

Rui Ning. Geriel replayed every interaction they had in her mind, trying to find the slip, any sign of her true nature. Did she set Geriel up for arrest? Rui Ning was the one who insisted the Lis were involved. She was the one who told Geriel to search the Li house, and Geriel, like a fool, did as she asked. It wasn’t hard to imagine her tipping off the village chief. And then there was the possibility that she played a role in Ming’s disappearance. Betrayals upon betrayals. Geriel sighed. People were worse than animals.

“Psst!”

Geriel sat up straighter. The voice came again.

“Huntress, you in there?”

No. She was imagining things. Rui Ning couldn’t possibly be here. She had told Geriel to just go and don’t come back—

There was a sound of a door opening, followed by a grunt and a thud. Light footsteps. Then, the sack on Geriel’s head was ripped off.

The night seemed too bright for her eyes. Geriel blinked.

“I’m surprised you haven’t escaped on your own. Getting lazy, huntress?”

Rui Ning was standing over her, hands on her hips, smirking. Not real, Geriel thought. She isn’t real.

“I think I’ve earned the right to be lazy,” Geriel said in Mongol. She’s not real anyway. She doesn’t have to understand me. “I spent the whole day tracking a missing boy then got captured and locked up. It’s tiring.”

“Heavens. Did they beat your Putonghua out of you?”

It was only when Geriel heard the snick of a blade, felt the bonds around her wrists loosen, that she began to think this might actually be happening.

Suddenly every word felt weighted and sticky in her throat. “Why are you here?” she managed.

In the faint moonlight that poured through the window—which Geriel assumed was where Rui Ning had climbed in from—she saw the other girl pause. The bottom half of her face was in shadow, so Geriel focused on her eyebrow: the left one, the burnt one, a reminder of her imperfections.

When Rui Ning finally spoke, her voice was so soft, Geriel wondered if she was meant to hear it at all.

“For three months after my mother died, my father did nothing. He didn’t eat. He didn’t relieve himself. He lay in bed and stared at nothing. And I hated my brother. My newborn, wailing brother, who not only took my mother from me but my father, too. I hated him. I hated myself for hating him. He wouldn’t stop crying, so I milked Madam Zhang’s cows to feed him. I cleaned his waste. I was angry, and I cursed him for being born. But I could never bring myself to hurt him or give him away.

“I don’t know why my hairpin was there. But I swear I had nothing to do with this. I just want to find my brother.”

Then, as suddenly as she began, she stopped. Perhaps she thought she’d spoken too much.

Geriel searched Rui Ning’s face for the lie. She wouldn’t put it past the inventor’s daughter to fabricate a sob story about her family. But Geriel knew even the most talented liar in the world could not have faked the sorrow on Rui Ning’s face. This, she realised, was the real Rui Ning. Not the one with the flippant manner and sharp tongue, who flirted with a boy to distract herself. But just a scared, lonely girl, who had to become both sister and mother at too young an age.

Geriel didn’t know what compelled her to speak. She thought it was only fair: a truth in exchange for another.

“When I was fifteen,” she murmured, “my parents wanted me to marry a man. He wasn’t cruel. He was good, in fact—older, but kind. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my life being bound to him. So I left. And my family…”

Get out. You’re a disgrace.

If you leave, don’t ever come back.

Rui Ning nodded. For once, there was no humour in her expression.

“I…” Geriel began. Swallowed. Began again. “I still… I hate that I still miss them.”

It wasn’t until Geriel had spoken the words out loud that she realised the truth in them. For years, she’d carried this invisible hurt, this pain that she could never, would never put into words. But over time, her mind had picked apart the strands of her heartache and woven them into these plain, simple terms: Geriel loved and missed her family, even though they didn’t love her back.

And she had not forgiven herself for that.

“Well,” said Rui Ning, “have you tried visiting them?”

Geriel blinked. “No, of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because they told me to never go back!”

“And you just did what you were told?” Rui Ning frowned. “That’s not like you, huntress.”

Geriel stared at Rui Ning, a retort on her lips. But even she knew that the other girl had not spoken out of spite, or ignorance. She was simply stating a fact.

Perhaps it was time for Geriel to stop doing as she was told.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t like me.”

A smile touched Rui Ning’s lips. She tossed a sack to Geriel; it contained the Northerner’s weapons. “Welcome back, huntress.”

Geriel returned her grin. “Where are we?”

“The village chief’s office. Not the most secure prison. Wouldn’t recommend it.”

“What about the guards?”

“Sleeping on the job. The chief’s going to have words with them.”

Geriel suspected this had something to do with a sleeping potion brewed by a certain inventor’s daughter. How Rui Ning managed to drug them all, she didn’t want to know.

“I need to tell you something,” Geriel said. “Xiaodan didn’t faint. Someone hit him on the head—it was a planned attack. Which means there was no monster at all. A person took your brother.”

Rui Ning frowned. “But that makes no sense. Xiaodan said he was sure he saw—” Then something in her clicked. Her head shot up.

“We need to put out offerings,” said Rui Ning.

“What?”

“Come on, Geriel.” Rui Ning’s eyes shone in the dark. “Let’s go catch a monster.”