The alcove bed was covered in sky blue sheets, so large that she could roll over twice. It was a luxury compared to her own straw sleeping pallet at home and the hard, narrow beds of tea houses. Zhi Lan sighed, grateful at least for the promising comfort of a cozy night’s sleep.
After washing up with a basin of water, she sat before the mirror and began to comb her hair.
Before Master Dan had dismissed her, Zhi Lan attempted a few sketches of his Shui Jin Mountain painting. She couldn’t be sure if any of the iterations were correct, as Master Dan hadn’t commented on them. He had only thanked her for her efforts and told her to reconvene tomorrow.
She recalled the very first lesson Master Dan had taught her on her first day as his disciple. “Everything we paint must have a deeper meaning,” he had said. “There is symbolism to be found in every composition, in every rock, bird, and tree. To paint is to communicate. If one has nothing to say, there is no purpose in picking up a brush.”
With Shui Jin Mountain, Master Dan had wanted to capture the grand mysticism of the waterfall, juxtaposing the serenity of their early morning surroundings by the sheer power of the falls in the distance. He had captured an ephemeral moment.
Painting a mere replica went against the very reason Master Dan made art.
Zhi Lan was perturbed by his somber attitude and his talk of growing old and passing on. Death was on his mind. With the magistrate’s threat, she couldn’t blame him. But Zhi Lan was determined to help him turn this around. She wanted him to succeed. And selfishly, she didn’t want to go back home yet.
Her comb snagged in her hair. Zhi Lan frowned, staring at her reflection. The glimpses she had caught of herself in the past were always in pools of water, where the ripples distorted her features. She was dismayed to find that her shoulders were narrower than she thought they were, so unlike her brothers’ broad ones, as if a strong gust of wind could knock her over.
Ba used to joke that he had found her outside a rich family’s manor.
“My little orchid looks more like a lady than a farm girl,” he’d say to her affectionately. “Perhaps you are meant for greater things, Lan’er.”
Greater things. Like marriage.
Zhi Lan was nearing twenty. If she went back now, she knew her family would nudge her toward a match. Their farm was struggling, barely recovered from the previous years of drought and failed crops. Well-off in-laws would be a massive help. Yet she hated the idea of making her fortune by marrying. She wanted to support her family like her brothers did—through her own hard work—even if she knew she wasn’t useful on the farm in the way they were.
The only reason Ma and Ba had consented to Zhi Lan leaving with Master Dan was because he was kind enough not to charge tuition like a formal school would. Free education wasn’t something to pass up.
Zhi Lan eyed the ornamented containers on the vanity hesitantly, then plucked off the lid of a tin enameled with a peony. Within lay small rectangular sheets of vermilion-tinted paper. She wet her lips and brought a sheet between them, pressing gently.
Her reflection stared back with a red mouth. She had seen the girls in her village before their wedding processions, dressed in their best robes, their lips painted just like this beneath red veils.
A painted face was art, too. Just not the sort Zhi Lan preferred.
She capped the tin and rubbed her lips, suddenly not recognizing herself. The color was stubborn, however, and remained too bold and too vibrant on her skin.
Things like this always brought unwanted attention.
She looked away from the mirror and focused on working the snag out of her hair, a frown furrowing her brow. Color, like beauty, faded. Skill could only grow.
A loud thump sounded from the roof. Zhi Lan jumped, dropping her comb with a clack. She waited a second, then two. Silence. Slowly, she let herself relax. Perhaps it was just a loose branch that had fallen.
Zhi Lan tossed her hair back and padded past the silk screen that separated the sleeping area from the sitting area, intending to blow out the dim candle on the table.
She did not expect to run headfirst into a tall, shadowed mass.
Zhi Lan gasped and stumbled back.
A man loomed over her, dressed in black from the toes of his scuffed boots to the scarf tied around the lower half of his face.
“Don’t scream,” the man said.
Zhi Lan screamed.
And was abruptly cut off when a large hand clamped over her mouth. An arm banded around her waist and lifted her from the ground. Zhi Lan struggled, gagging when she managed to inhale through his fingers. Skies, was that dirt and duck grease?
The man dumped her unceremoniously into her alcove bed, looming over the entrance so there was no escape. Zhi Lan scrambled to the corner, half frozen in fear. She managed to pelt him with her slipper. It bounced off his chest harmlessly.
“W-Who are you? What do you want?” she choked out.
“Be quiet and nothing will happen to you,” the man said. He had a surprisingly smooth voice. No doubt a trick to make her let her guard down.
