I remember the day of darkness, even if no one else does.
When I close my eyes, I’m standing in a city my aunt says I’ve never visited, with my parents, who no longer exist.
The city of Chang’an is like a lifetime in a single moment, brimming with words in a thousand languages, the ghosts of footsteps softening the rammed dirt roads, silk clothes that shimmer like fish scales as people glint down the wide streets. At the faraway end of the road is a great stone gate with five doors opening into darkness.
I don’t know what’s behind the gate, but I move closer, away from my parents, past the merchants and their goatskin bags spilling wine, the pilgrims in robes the color of dust, the dancers in jewels that sharpen the sun’s rays and cast them back at me like daggers.
There is something beyond the gate. I’m sure of it. The five archways are screaming mouths, calling out for me.
A gong echoes, then the world flips and disappears, a door slammed shut in my face. I reach out for my mother, and my fingers snap in all different directions with a thousand tiny pops, like fireworks. I’m falling through a world that’s turned to sand, tumbling into the night sky. The universe unfolds my skin and stretches me across its endless dark, a pale tent over all the stars. I am the night that birthed the world. I am the bones of all the planets. I am silence. I am the end.
I hear my father’s voice speaking to me in a language that I’ve long forgotten. The words rise and fall like slow gusts of wind spilling across a valley, shivering through the grass. Somehow I know that they’re of great importance, but I am made of silk and the words flow through me. The only word I understand is my name. Zilan. Zilan. Zilan.
I wake in a bed in Guangzhou in my mother’s arms. My parents tell me it was a dream, but I know better.
I know because the way they look at me has changed. They watch me when they think I’m not paying attention, their gazes crawling up the knobs of my spine. They’re waiting for something.
What did I do? I think one thousand times over. But no one will tell me.
Then my mother dies and my father vanishes, and there is no one left to ask.
I am the only one who remembers.