Page 13 of A Song to Drown Rivers
“How was your meeting with Fanli?” Zhengdan asked from the doorway.
I was sitting before a bronze mirror in our chambers, assessing my expressions as critically as possible. I did not know how much control I could exert over my muscles, but I was growing rather tired of my own face.
“Lovely,” I told her. “He believes I cannot hide anything.”
“He believes I cannot charm anyone,” Zhengdan said. She walked across the room and sat beside me, her head coming to rest on my shoulder. “I suppose that is further reason why you are the concubine, and not me.”
I had to laugh. “So what does he propose for your training?”
Zhengdan’s reflection glowed in the mirror, her eyes bright, her skin suffused with healthy color. We had only been away from our village a day, but already she looked more alive than I’d ever seen her. “He asked me to show him my hands instead.”
“Your hands?”
She nodded. “It was quite astounding, really. He took only one glimpse of them and said that he knew I trained with a sword in secret. He even seemed to know how long I had been training for, and the general extent of my abilities.”
I thought about the sharp, calculating look in his eyes, like he could see everything.
“I was worried he would give me the usual lecture,” Zhengdan said, “about how it is unfitting for a young woman to fight, or how it would only scare men away. But guess what he said.”
I shook my head, mystified. There was a smile sneaking its way up the corners of her lips.
“He’s going to instruct me in swordsmanship. Proper swordsmanship.” Her words tumbled out in a rapid, excited stream. “For one, it will allow me to better protect you. But he also wants me to focus on the Wu military. While you distract the king from his duties, I’m to observe the movements of their soldiers and watch their training. As a palace lady, it will be easier for me to slip in and out without people noticing.”
I tried to smile at her. Iwashappy for her; I knew she was most herself when she had a sword in her hands. But at the same time, I was reminded again that the burden of bewitching the king fell on me and me alone. If I failed, everything would be rendered futile. All these people, all those lives, the weight of kingdoms balanced on my shoulders, and here I sat, unable to even school my features into an expression of false delight.
It did not help that Zhengdan peered at me then, and observed, “You look worried.”
“I will fix that,” I said, focusing on the mirror again. My brows were pinched, my mouth pressed into a tight, anxious line. “I just need to practice.”
At night, I tucked myself into a foreign bed, miles and miles away from home—but still the old nightmare found me.
It was always the same. The same place, the same time. The same beginning.
Susu and I were alone in the house when they came; our parents had left for the forest to gather fresh wood for the coming winter. Already the air was so cold I could see Susu’s breaths clinging tothe air when she laughed. I was telling her a story about Nüwa, and how she had made the first mortals.
“She took great care, handcrafting them and shaping them from yellow clay,” I said, smiling as Susu slumped against my legs, her small mouth open in mid-yawn. “These became the nobles and royals.”
“And the rest?” She had only learned to speak the year prior, and her words came out in a mumble. Sometimes she grew frustrated when she could not express herself as clearly as we could. But that was fine, we reassured her, she had plenty of time to learn.
“And the rest were created when she was tired. She dipped a long rope into mud and she swung it, and the droplets that landed became commoners. Like us.”
Susu frowned. “You’re not made of mud.”
“No?”
“You are made of flowers,” she said decisively, crawling onto my lap. She was getting too heavy to do so, but I sat back without protest and let her anyway, stroking her soft hair, inhaling the sweet milk scent of her skin. I would protect her with my life, I thought to myself. “And rainwater. And silk. And lanterns. You are made of good things.”
And that was when the shrieks started.
In my nightmares I felt my panic more sharply than I had even in memory, a feeling so intense it tore through my whole body. Because I knew how this ended. I knew there was no escaping it, even as I pulled Susu into the cramped closet with me, even as I buried us in old coats and tried to hold on to her squirming body.
“We must hide,” I whispered into her ear. My heart was pounding so loud I could hear it in the dark space, its every strained, heaving movement, the rush of blood like wind. “Please—Susu, listen to me—you have to keep quiet—”
But she had started crying. “Mama,” she choked out. “Mama, Iwant Mama—”
The crash of the door. The pounding of footsteps. Something cracking.
The soldiers were here.
