Ravens’ Sister

Chapter 1: “Kidnapping and Kaya”

“Too choppy.”

“Yes, Mother.” Yan adjusted her bowing. 

“Too slow.”

“Yes, Mother.” Yan readjusted her bow once again. Madam Long did not play, but that was a minor detail, not even worth mentioning. 

Yan restarted the piece. This time, she almost managed to balance the timing and the pathos of the music. By the second page, however, Madam Long’s fingernail was slowly scratching the side of her chair. When Yan had been much younger, she had been fascinated by the lines her mother’s pinkie had created, darker than the rest of the velvet, almost as though her mother had magically changed the colour of the fabric with a mere touch. That distraction had earned Yan multiple punishments. Those days, however, were years away. Yan had long since mastered the art of listening for her mother’s cues while focusing primarily on the music in front of her. 

Normally.

Today the scratching of her mother’s fingernail sounded like harsh wings beating away from her windowsill. Yan suppressed a shiver. She had woken up with that nightmare again. The one with the feathers, the one where they began to sprout everywhere. Her forehead, her neck, then her abdomen all the way down to her feet. When there was no place left for them externally, in her ears and finally in her throat, choking her to death. As always, she had woken up wheezing and gasping. 

Even recalling it made Yan want to drop her erhu and pat her face: stroke up and over forehead, sweep down cheeks, sweep up cheeks, pat temples eight times. It was a ritual that had emerged years ago, when physically checking for feathers was the only thing that kept little-girl-Yan from hyperventilating herself into a faint.

Yan’s fingers reflexively tightened. The music underwent a coughing fit as her bow stuttered.

“Daughter.” Madam Long’s fingernail pressed deep into the blue velvet. “This piece, you have had for months. Why is it suddenly like this? Again. This is only the first of your pieces. How to get through all of them when your first is so bad?”

“Yes, Mother.” 

This time Yan got through to the end with only the occasional accompaniment by her mother’s nail. All in all, Yan reflected almost two hours later, her practice could have gone much worse. The light reflected off of the erhu as she wiped off the rosin dust from under the strings. For a brief moment, ravens wheeled off to the southwest in her mind’s eye, black against the sunrise. Yan blinked rapidly to dispel the image from earlier that morning. She was not superstitious. 

Accompanying a grieving mother to every money hungry seer in Niucheshui had cured her of that. So had memorising A Seer’s Practical Guide to the Regulating Principles of His Trade, one of the textbooks Yan had managed to smuggle away before the Enforcers raided her father’s library. Precious little magic foretold the future or explained the past. And yet. Ravens.