Zhao’s voice cuts through the darkness. He is speaking Mandarin, and someone is speaking back to him. It sounds like they’re shouting, but they aren’t angry. Or perhaps they’re speaking normally, and everything is just amplified.

It’s so dark, I can’t see a thing. Why can’t I see anything?

As it happens, my eyes are closed. I open them, and the door to the back room is shut; I am in here alone. There’s a blanket draped over me, and my clothes are all twisted around me. My hair is tangled and matted, wrapped around my face and neck like the frayed ends of a thick black rope.

Oh god, did I drool?! I wipe the sticky crust from my cheek, absolutely mortified, telling myself Zhao had left before that happened, or maybe the blanket was already over me, or I was facing a different direction? Yeah, there’s lots of reasons why Zhao, perfect Zhao, didn’t watch me drool all over myself while I slept.

I can’t understand the two in the shop, but it seems their conversation is coming to a close. I’ve no idea what time it is, as there are no windows in the room. My body feels well rested, like I’ve slept a long time, but my mind is exhausted, like it’s been in torment. I can remember my trip, easily and perfectly. It was clear, like I was completely lucid, and just walking through my twisted memories. How I feel about those memories, well… I haven’t quite processed that yet.

I sit up against the wall and pull my knees into my chest, hug myself and dig my toes under the blanket. The door opens gently, and Zhao peeks his head in.

“Oh, you’re awake, good, this didn’t get cold.” He brings in another cup of steaming liquid and offers it to me. I recoil a bit, and he laughs. “This is just tea, regular black tea.”

“Oh, yes, thank you.” I reach up and grab the cup like it’s lifesaving medicine. “Did you have a customer?” I jut my chin out towards the shop.

“Yes, man has a pregnant wife, and she won’t stop vomiting. They’re worried about the baby.”

“What did you give him?”

“Ginger, lots of ginger. Ginger candies, ginger tea, fresh ginger, my mother’s ginger cake recipe. Also almonds, and a mixture I make of coconut water and more ginger.”

“I’m going to need that ginger cake recipe.”

Zhao smiles at me. “It’s yours.” He raises his eyebrows and gestures to the spot next to me. I nod, and he takes a seat along the wall, so close I can lean against him, and I do.

“What time is it?”

“It’s evening, a little after 6. You’ve been asleep for seven hours.”

I take a deep breath in and slowly let it out.

“Did it work?”

I nod, looking down at my knees. “I think so.”

“Was it about your sister?”

“How did you know?”

“You were crying, laying there, wide eyed, just staring up and crying. Nothing in a normal case would make you react like that.” I drop my forehead to rest on my knees. I feel so vulnerable, like I’m completely naked and I’m the last one to realize it. “She died seven years ago now, yes?”

“You know I don’t talk about her, Zhao,” I say, muffled into my knees.

“I know, that’s why I’m asking you.”

I sigh and take a prolonged sip of tea, but I don’t speak.

“Why do you come to my shop to get high?” He asks.

I furrow my brow. “I don’t know, why do you come to my pub to get drunk?”

Zhao laughs. “Because sometimes I get sick of Chinese taverns and yours is the closest one that will serve me.”

“Fair enough.”

“You pass three apothecaries, five brothels, and countless opium dens to come see me. So why do you come here?”

“You sure know exactly how many brothels there are.”

“Emilia.”

“Okay, goodness! Because it’s hard for a lady to find a place to alter her mind where someone won’t try and cop a feel while I’m under.”

“And by that you mean you feel…”

“Tired of this conversation.” I look over at Zhao and he is not amused. His jaw is clenched in what I can only describe as quiet frustration. “Safe, I feel safe here with you.”

“Then let yourself be safe, and let yourself get some of these feelings out.”

I exhale, and only then do I realize I have been holding my breath. “Zhao. I don’t… I don’t talk about her. I don’t even talk about her to Ash. I haven’t talked about her in years.”

“You talk about your dad.”

“No, see, that’s different. He was on borrowed time. We expected him to die a long time before he actually did.”

“Why’s that?”

“Whenever he was in one of his moods, as mum called it, he would either disappear and just go off drinking for a week or two, or he would lock himself in his study for days and not answer or open the door for anyone. Then suddenly he would appear and act like nothing happened. He and mum would fight about it sometimes, but mostly nobody mentioned it. By the time I was ten I knew, I just knew he wasn’t going to survive his moods. He was either going to drink himself to death, get killed by someone, or kill himself. I ended up being right, just long after I thought it would happen.”

“Did they feel that way too? Your mum and sister?”

“I think ma did. We’re very similar, pragmatic, no nonsense, no sentiment. It’s why we don’t really get on well, we’re both too headstrong. But Cornelia, she saw the world in daddy. When she looked at him, it was with stars in her eyes. Mum used to say that she loved him so much, she tried to soak up all of his sadness. She just had no idea that he had more than enough to go around.”

“She’s younger than you, right?”

I nod. “Only a year. Poor mum was exhausted by the time we were both weaned,” I laugh. “He was a good husband, though, when he was there. He helped with us girls, even as babies. I think we gave him something to work for. But, dealing with him, I grew up so fast. So much faster than Nell. I’m not sure she ever grew up, though, to be honest. She was always just a girl, waiting for her daddy to give her the love he gave her as a little one. Towards the end, though… he just wasn’t capable of it. I think that’s what killed her, and he knew it.”

“I’ve never heard you call her Nell before.”

“Hm?” I look up from my tea. I’ve completely changed positions, sitting cross legged on the ground facing Zhao, my tea in my lap, our ankles touching. I didn’t even realize it. I look down at myself, and back up to Zhao, flabbergasted. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“There’s something in the tea or something. I never, never talk about Cornelia.”

“There’s nothing in the tea, you know me better than that Em. You just clearly need to talk about her. You went through something traumatic, seven years ago, and you’ve let it all ferment inside you, and something happened that has shaken you up, and now it’s all bubbling out.”

I glare at Zhao. “So in this analogy, I’m a bottle of ale?”

He half smiles at me and wraps his hands around my wrists. “Yes, a beautiful bottle of ale that’s maybe been sitting on the shelf a bit too long.”

I try to hold back a quiet laugh. I don’t like talking about my sister, but I just did, and it didn’t hurt. It hurts to think about her, and it hurts to remember, but talking about her... it wasn’t horrible.

“Okay. Yes, she died seven years ago.”

“Wait, wait. You’re going to talk about her, and I don’t have to trick it out of you?”

“I knew it! It was some kind of...mysterious Oriental mind game!”

Zhao laughs. “If you’re going to talk, let me close the shop. Don’t change your mind while I’m gone.”

Once we are settled back in, the words spill out without any more prodding.

My dad loved birds. Every chance he got to get us out of the city he would take us bird watching. He knew them all, their calls, their tail shape, the way they flew. He had nicknames for us all. Mum, he called his Nightingale. Sometimes she loved it, but I believe she grew to hate it. Cornelia was the sweet, sad swan, and I, strong willed and sarcastic, was the rebel raven. I met Aisling in primary school, and she spent most of her time with us since her grandparents were raising her and they were very old. He gave her the nickname Sassy Sparrow and she adored it.

“Oh, that’s where the...”

“Yeah, Ash loved that nickname, and she loved my dad. She was never around for the bad parts, though.”

“His moods, as you said?”

Something was definitely wrong with dad. Mum said that we all have little gears making our brains work, and sometimes something in dad’s gears gets loose. When dad’s brain was functioning properly, he was the most fun, most loving and doting husband and father. He would play pretend with us, play dress up and chase and treasure hunts. He would stay home with us while mum worked. I never knew why, that wasn’t how the other kid’s families worked, but when I got older, I found out it was because he couldn’t keep a job. He had a lot of money that he had inherited from his parents, but mum said we couldn’t live off that forever, so we needed to save it. She got a job repairing automatons and clocks at a machinist’s shop, since she had nimble fingers from sewing her whole life.

The first of dad’s moods I remember, I was six. He was locked away in his study, which was really just a small room, not much bigger than a closet, with enough room for a few shelves of books and an armchair. Cornelia and I knocked and knocked on the door for hours, calling for him to come and play, until mum had enough and yelled at us. We went to our room and cried, and just a few minutes later she came in and apologized to us. She told us about dad’s brain, and how he was like one of the little broken machines that comes into her shop, and he needs time to repair himself, but soon he’ll be right as rain.

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The next morning, Nell was back at it again, knocking and calling through the door. I just stared at her and thought, what’s the point? We can’t fix dad’s brain, only dad can, so why even bother? Looking back, it feels like the moment my childhood started dying. I started helping mum with distracting Nell when dad was in his moods, and mum started relying on me more. Even though I was only a year older than Cornelia, I started watching her and taking care of her while mum was at work and dad couldn’t.

“At six years old?” Every time Zhao asks me a question, it pulls me back to the ground. I wouldn’t say it’s like a jolt back into reality, but more a gentle tug on my ankle as I float away into my memories. I nod at him as I take a drink of my third cup of tea. “That must’ve been very difficult for you. Did you get any kind of childhood? Any moment of wonder?”

I think a minute, and then I remember, smiling.

“One time I found a hatchling in an alley while I was on a milk run. A little blue mixed breed, with orange wings. I remember thinking his wings looked like a sunset. He was so cute, and he was only mine. I knew mama wouldn’t want him in the house, and it would be just another thing for her and da to fight about, so I kept him inside our small garden shed. Nobody went to the shed anyway. I made him a bed and got him toys and gave him plenty of warmth and water. Ash and I would save scraps from lunch or she would sneak leftovers from her grandparent’s house for him to eat. I loved him, I loved him so much, and I spent every moment I possibly could with him, even sneaking out at night to sleep for a few hours curled up with him in his bed. I did ask around to see if anyone had lost a hatchling, though I probably didn’t try very hard.”

Zhao laughs. “How old were you?”

“Eight, I think? Maybe nine. I named him Blueberry.”

“A fitting name from an eight-year-old.”

“Oh, you have no idea. I had only ever seen blueberries at that point, at the market. We never had money for fresh fruit like that, and I remember seeing them and thinking they were like little gemstones you could eat! I was obsessed with them!”

“So, what happened to Blueberry?”

I swallow. “Well, he started to get bigger, and I felt bad for him, because I could only spend a few minutes every day with him. I would play with him as much as I could in the shed, and when he was little, that was enough, but as he got bigger, he really needed to be out running or flying. I was planning on finding him a home, maybe somewhere I could visit, and I had started asking around. When I got home from my errands one day, Cornelia and my dad were out back playing with Blueberry. I guess he had gotten out of the shed and they just assumed he wandered into the yard. They didn’t question it at all, he was just her dragon. She was calling him Bluey.”

My hand is starting to shake. I guess I didn’t realize how much this moment still affects me.

“He was playing with her- he was still a hatchling, he just wanted to play with anything- and I remember being so angry, tears started forming in my eyes, but I had to hold them down. Blueberry was my dragon, and he was the only thing I had to myself. I had to share a room, I had to share my toys and books, even my clothes. All my free time went to taking care of Cornelia or dad, or running errands mum couldn’t get to. And Blueberry was the one thing I had for myself, and I couldn’t even say anything. I tried acting surprised and trying to join in the playing, but I was immediately asked to help with dinner.”

Zhao grabs my hand and squeezes it. The story seems so silly as I’m telling it, especially since it’s making tears well up in my eyes again, like I’m there watching them play with Blueberry, but Zhao isn’t judging me at all for it. He seems to just be focused on how I feel about it.

I clear my throat. “As I expected, mum and dad got into a fight about keeping it. She asked him who would take care of it and how we were supposed to feed it. I wanted to tell them that I could, I had already been feeding it, I could take care of it, but something in my little girl mind just thought I would get in so much trouble for having this dragon, so I just kept my mouth shut. Eventually they decided to take him to the pound, and Cornelia gave him a big hug goodbye, and I just watched. I pat him on the head, and the way he looked at me as they took him away... I’ll never forget that. We went home, and that night I just cried in my bed all night, silently, imagining Blueberry waiting for me to come and cuddle with him in his bed. And Nell did nothing. I know she heard me cry, and despite me always coming to help her when she had nightmares, or when she cried about dad, she did nothing.”

“Did you start resenting her after that?”

“I think I already resented her by that point. I think I resented everyone in my family, but I didn’t know the word for it. I think after that, I stopped feeling anything for her more than mild annoyance.”

“I don’t think that’s something you should feel guilty about. You were put in a bad situation at a very young age, a situation where an entire family relied on you. That was very unfair.”

I shrug. “I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about it, and I try not to. I didn’t, for a long time. Now, the guilt sort of comes and goes like the ships in Kenningate.”

Zhao and I share a yawn, and he offers coffee. I follow him out to the front of his shop where he has a stove, and he puts on a pot of water to boil. Through the windows, I see nothing but pitch black. The shop is dark, save for the soft glow created by the fire in his stove.

“So, that was nine. Did things get better as a teenager? Surely, Cornelia got more self-reliant.”

I jump up to sit on the shop counter to finish my story. She did, sure, a bit. But that was also when other problems started. She slipped into full on melancholia, and it seemed like her and dad made each other worse. His moods and binges started lasting longer, and she wouldn’t bathe or even get out of bed for weeks. Mum would beg her to eat. She ended up having to leave school. It was rare that they would both be upright at the same time, and when they were it was, again, like nothing was wrong. Dad would dote on mum, he would play games with Nell, he would ask me about my studies. Mum and I played along, we knew they couldn’t help it, but we were so tired.

On the plus side, though, this gave me more free time, and that’s when I started picking up detective novels and reading crime reports in the papers. Mystery books, puzzles and trivia, these were the first things I had had to myself since Blueberry.

“Is that how you became a private investigator?”

“Sort of. I actually started as a journalist.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I smile. “First woman writer at the Etherbury Chronicle. Well, that wasn’t doing home economics or fashion pieces. I was doing small write ups on crimes in poor districts, something nobody else wanted to do nor felt the importance of, but my editor liked the idea of, even just for shock value. I would loiter around the police stations and follow them to crime scenes, watch as they looked around for clues, and write bits on it. I couldn’t help but formulate opinions on the crimes I was covering, and that’s how I figured out I had a knack for that kind of work. Couldn’t be an officer though, obviously.”

“So you started your firm.”

“Yes, but that was way later. I worked at the Chronicle for... oh, well, five years before I opened my office. Aisling had a job at a clothing shop. We both didn’t like our stations in life, and didn’t want to just marry out of them, so we made plans to save up and live together. I started at the Chronicle when I was seventeen.”

Zhao thinks a moment. “That means that-”

“Yeah, I was at the Chronicle when Nell...”

I stop, involuntarily, and look down at my hands in my lap. It’s as if the words are refusing to come entirely on their own. I can’t even bring myself to open my mouth and try. I feel a hand on my arm and look up; Zhao is handing me the same cup I’ve been using all day, but now it’s full of black coffee.

“Cream? Sugar?”

“Just a little cream please.”

Zhao pours some cream into my cup from a tiny ceramic pitcher. It slowly dances around the coffee until it becomes a light fog, spreading around the cup. I swirl my cup a bit, to help it all blend.

“So, you were working with the Chronicle when Nell killed herself.”

Zhao said it so I didn’t have to. He knew the exact words I couldn’t say, and he said them for me, like he was taking my hand and pulling me up over a tall ledge.

“I was at the Sootdrift police station. They got a call about a woman falling off the Clairmont Road overpass, you know, where the Ester tracks go-”

“East to West, from Sootdrift all the way to Whealingwall, right?”

“That’s the one. The call said the woman fell, and she was dead in the middle of the road, and I got a pit in my stomach.”

“You had a feeling it was Cornelia?”

“At this point, I was twenty, living at home. Things had been mounting for a while, and mum and I could feel it. Dad had been gone, this time six weeks. This was longer than it had ever been. We knew where he was. Mum would get calls from neighbors or shopkeepers that knew us, telling us they had seen him at such and such pub, or asleep on a park bench. She used to go out tracking him down, but she hadn’t done that for years by then. There was just no point. He was gone that long because Nell... the morbs had taken over, and dad couldn’t get her out of it. She was in bed for a week before dad took off, and she stayed there the entire time. The day before she...”

I stare into my cup a while before taking a drink and clearing my throat.

“The day before, she got out of bed. Mum and I were surprised to see her at breakfast. She got up and gave us each a hug, which made mum smile. She apologized for not feeling well, and asked where dad was. Then she ate breakfast with us, and she seemed so... ethereal, almost. Like she was a copy of herself, trying to figure out how to act human. I left for work, came back that night, and she seemed fine. She was chatting with mum, talking about some help wanted signs mum had seen in the neighborhood, saying a job might help her feel better. I remember scoffing at that, thinking to myself, you’ve never done a single thing for yourself or this family. How will you get on working for someone else? I got dinner, ate it in silence, and then went to our room with a book. I was so sick of the whole dance, waiting on her, begging her to not just let herself die, and then having to act like nothing was wrong... I couldn’t do it anymore, and I wouldn’t.

“She came into the room that night, put on her night things, brushed her hair, and then sat on the edge of my bed. I remember looking at her over the edge of my book, trying to force myself not to sneer at her. ‘I know I’m difficult’ she said to me. ‘I know you have taken care of me. I’ve noticed that.’ I remember thinking I don’t care if you’ve noticed. She said, and I remember exactly, ‘You won’t have to take care of me anymore. I’m going to do it myself, from now on.’ And I said back, ‘We’ll see about that, Nell.’ Just like that. No disdain, or spite. Just matter-of-fact, because I didn’t believe it. It just seemed like words, like in one of my detective novels, but less true.

“When I woke up the next morning, Nell was gone. I asked mum where she went, and she told me she was out looking for a job. The way she said it, I could tell she was impressed with her, like she had a glimmer of hope that Cornelia could end up okay. I thought, yeah, okay, sure she gets work. But she’s just like dad. How long before she loses that job?

“When the call came in to the Sootdrift police department, I was sitting in their front lobby waiting area. They knew me there; They didn’t mind me drinking their tea as long as I was polite and stayed out of their way when things were busy. I heard the constables talking about the call, and I knew, I absolutely knew entirely that it was my sister, and she hadn’t fallen.”

There is silence moving slowly through Zhao and I. He’s leaning over the counter from behind it, coffee between his hands. We sit in this silence for, maybe five minutes, maybe only a few seconds. Wordlessly, Zhao gets up and goes to a large cabinet with two-hundred tiny drawers in it. He goes to a specific one and opens it up, scoops out a little bit of dried herb, and carefully parses it into a small wooden bowl. From the breast pocket of his vest, he pulls out a metal tube, slightly shorter than a pen. He unscrews the back of it, and about an inch of hollow tube comes off it. He packs the herb into the tube, screws it back on, and holds the back end over a candle.

Zhao takes a long draw off the vaporizer and gestures it towards me. “Sticky tea?”

I accept, and we resume our silence around the counter, passing the funny fag back and forth.

“Can you not go there?” He asks eventually.

I take another drag and let the herb float up into my brain. “No, no I can. Just…” I cough a bit. “Just give me a moment.”

He nods and takes the cigarette back.

I clear my throat. “One of the DI’s, a friend of mine, let me ride on the back of his boneshaker to the scene. He had barely even stopped it before I was off of it, running through the street to the body. I didn’t get too close, I couldn’t bring myself to, but I got close enough to see exactly who it was. She looked so small and fragile. Her body was all broken up, but somehow she looked less broken than when she was alive. Eyewitness reports say she walked to the middle of the overpass and just dropped off, no hesitation or waiting for someone to come help. She just did it. I stood there, kind of listening to the witness, watching them roll her body onto a stretcher, staring in absolute shock, until I saw stirring under the bridge. It was me dad, waking up all half-rat, looking at all the coppers trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“Did she choose that bridge because he was there?”

I shrug. “Seems too big a coincidence, doesn’t it? Anyway, doesn’t matter. I snapped on him. Went completely mental. I ran at him and pushed him to the ground and started kicking and kicking at him.” I laugh to myself quietly. “It was cathartic, actually. And suddenly, screaming and crying and attacking my poor arf’d up dad, all the resentment I had towards Nell went away, and I remembered only the good things about her. After that, I went home, mum wasn’t there, and I packed up and went to live with Aisling. Never saw or heard from either of them again, except when mum wrote me a letter telling me dad had died.” That was a lie. “It took me a while, you know.”

“What did?”

“To remember everything about her. Looking back, I only ever remembered good things or bad things. She was only ever the burden of my childhood or my beloved sister. It took a lot of work to remember her as a complete person.”

Zhao gives me a sad smile. “I’m still doing that work.”

I furrow my brow. “About who?”

“My mama.”

“Your mum’s dead?”

Zhao nods. “She died when I was sixteen. Complicated time to lose a mother.”

“Wait, wait. I need to go to the loo. You get more coffee, another fag, and meet me in the back room. It’s your turn to talk!”

Zhao laughs as I hop down from his counter and rush to the stairs that lead to his flat.