Catching Nian

The Jun house looked like every other building on the block: tiled roof, curved gables, wooden beams carved with dragon motifs. But the inside felt like a different world.

Geriel was stunned by the sheer amount of things this house held. Pestles and mortars were strewn across tables, containing rare plants and herbs crushed to varying degrees. In the centre of the room stood a large vat that emitted a foul smell. Everywhere she looked, Geriel saw prototypes made of paper and wooden sticks. Chariots, building layouts, something that resembled a cylinder with wheels. Every wall was covered with blueprints, notes scrawled hastily that Geriel couldn’t understand.

This was the home of Master Jun, the inventor. The madman. The wrinkled heap curled up in a corner, staring blankly at Geriel.

“Master Jun?”

Geriel waved a hand before the man’s face. He didn’t seem to hear or see her.

Where was Rui Ning? She was supposed to be waiting for Geriel here. And what happened to her father?

Geriel shook his shoulder gently. The man’s head lolled. “Jun lao ye, my name is Geriel. Your daughter told me to come here. Do you know where she is?”

Jun stared ahead with his glassy eyes.

Geriel looked around, a sudden fear rising in her chest. She could hardly recognise any of the medicines in the room. Who can say that Rui Ning didn’t drug her father? After what she did to Ming—

“Hey,” said Rui Ning. Her frost-stung cheeks were pink, dark hair dusted with snow. She smelled of the winter night. “There you are. How did it— Oh. I see you’ve met my father. He’s— Geriel?”

Slowly, as if trying not to frighten an animal, Geriel took out the purple fazan. “This is yours, isn’t it?”

Rui Ning’s eyes widened. “Yes. I lost it a while ago. Where did you find it?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

“What—what do you mean?”

“Xiaodan found it. Next to him, when he woke up in the alley this morning.”

For once, Rui Ning had nothing to say. Her mouth opened, then closed. Understanding came upon her. “You think I had something to do with this.”

“What else am I supposed to think? There’s proof you were there the night—”

“My father can—” Rui Ning flinched, as though the words had burned her throat on their way out. “He can prove I was home the whole night.”

“Can he?” Geriel hissed. Her fingers inched towards her knives. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing. I did nothing. You have to believe me—”

“Why?” said Geriel. “Ever since your brother went missing, you’ve shown no sadness. Not even when I suggested he might be dead. Now your hairpin was found near the last place Ming was seen, and the only person who can testify that you were home is like that.” She jabbed a finger at Master Jun. “Tell me, why should I believe you?”

Geriel expected Rui Ning to lay out her reasons with her logic and clever tongue. But she didn’t.

“You won’t,” she said, shaking her head. She let out a bitter laugh; her voice was hollow. “You won’t believe me anyway. So just go. Do whatever you want. I’m going to find Ming myself, so just go and don’t come back.”

The words caught Geriel like a blow. Suddenly she was no longer in the inventor’s house but a yurt on the grasslands of the North, tears stinging her eyes as her parents yelled, Get out. And if you leave, don’t come back.

She stormed out of the house, ignoring Rui Ning’s small sniff, as if she were the one who’d been hurt and had any right to cry.

That night, Geriel tried to drown out Rui Ning’s voice with cheap beer in the Dragon Inn. It wasn’t working.

Just go.

One mug.

Just go and don’t come back.

Another.

You are not our daughter.

At some point, Rui Ning’s voice morphed into her parents’, Putonghua changing to Mongol, but the meaning stayed the same. Geriel wasn’t wanted. She didn’t belong. She was cursed to be a wanderer for the rest of her life.

Geriel slammed the mug on the counter. At the same time, the tavern door burst open.

“Nomad,” said a stern voice. It belonged to a portly man with folds of fat covering his neck. His flat, black eyes bore into Geriel. “You are arrested on accounts of trespassing and threatening violence.”

Geriel squinted at him. She tried to place his face, but her beer-addled mind was not helping. “Do I know you?”

At this, several hands seized Geriel. She struggled, but a rope burned into her wrists. Someone was groping her waist, removing her knives—a man, most likely—sending a wave of nausea to her stomach.

“Trespassing? Threatening violence?” She craned her neck. Now she recognised the fat man: the village chief. Her employer. The one who promised her eight hundred yuanbao if she found Ming, not a lifetime in a cell.

“When have I done these things?” she yelled.

The whole tavern watched the scene unfold before them. No one moved to help Geriel. No one even seemed sorry for her.

“Did you not enter the Li house this afternoon, without invitation, to speak to Li Xiaodan?” said the chief.

“Yes, but I—”

“Were you not armed with your knives, bow and arrows when you entered the house, without invitation?”

“I did it because—”

“Then I arrest you on the charges of trespassing and—”

“You’re the one who hired me!” Geriel lashed out at her captors, but they held firm. “You hired me to find Ming, and the Lis wouldn’t let me talk to Xiaodan, so I had to find other ways—”

“Geriel of the Northern Steppes,” said the chief curtly, “I hereby release you from our agreement. You will no longer be involved in the search for Jun Song Ming. You are to—”

Geriel bucked and thrashed. She crashed her head into the chief’s face, hard, and saw with triumph that she’d broken his nose. Blood trickled into his mouth. He swore.

“She put you up to this, didn’t she?” Geriel snarled. “You can’t trust her. Rui Ning is behind this—”

“Take her,” ordered the chief, before they threw a sack over Geriel’s head and marched her out of the inn.