Chapter 2 — The Talisman Painter Who Guards the Village

The Cat Sleeps Three Days

Uncle Cả Kiệm's tabby cat slept for three days and three nights straight without waking up, and the whole small village at the foot of Vân Tiêu Peak was divided into two factions: one faction believed that the cat had been hit by a poisonous wind, the other faction - a small number but much noisier - asserted that Sương, Mrs. Chín Lài's granddaughter, had "drawn a spell" on its rice bowl.

Diệp Sương was eight years old at that time, standing behind the door of Mrs. Chín Lài's house, clearly heard Uncle Kiệm screaming in the yard demanding "let that girl see the crime of playing with charms and spells, maybe one day she will kill someone".

"I didn't mean it," she whispered to Mrs. Chín Lài, her hands clutching the hem of her shirt. "I just drew for fun on the banana leaf under the bowl of leftover rice I gave it."

Mrs. Chín Lài didn't say anything. She simply walked out into the yard to face Uncle Kiệm, her voice so calm that it made him lower his own.

"The cat is still breathing regularly, still warm, just sleeping more soundly than usual. Let me come over and see."

She took Diệp Sương with her, not because she needed her, but because she knew that if she left her at home alone right now, she would be tormented all afternoon. When arriving at Uncle Kiệm's house, the tabby cat lay curled up in the corner of the kitchen, its belly rising and falling steadily, occasionally its tail wagging slightly as if it was dreaming a very pleasant dream. Mrs. Chín Lài reached out to touch its forehead— no fever, no convulsions, just an unusually deep sleep.

"What do you draw on banana leaves?" she asked, turning to Diệp Sương.

Diệp Sương bowed her head, her toes tracing the ground. "I drew... like the day Mr. Tám Mực taught me. Two curved lines with two dots. But I drew darker, because... because I was sad."

"What's sad?"

"Yesterday, Uncle Cả Kiệm scolded the cat for eating fish and beat it with a whip. I saw it crying so much, so I wanted to draw it to sleep well and forget all about being beaten."

Mrs. Chín Lài was silent for a long time, then turned to Mr. Cả Kiệm, her voice was still calm but a bit more stern: "The cat is fine, just sleeping better than usual, don't worry. It will probably wake up on its own in a few days."

Sure enough, exactly three days later, the tabby cat woke up, stretched, meowed for food as if nothing had ever happened, and even curled up around Mr. Cả Kiệm's feet more than before. But those three days were enough for the whole small neighborhood to whisper about "Mrs. Chín Lài's little girl has a different drawing hand", and enough for Diệp Sương to learn her first lesson, more painful than any scolding: her drawings are not a harmless game.

*

"Do you understand why the cat slept so long?" Mr. Tám Mực asked, when Diệp Sương told him this story the next morning, his voice was still warm and confused.

"I don't know. I just want him to sleep well, why did he sleep so long?"

Mr. Tám Mực sat down, pulled Diệp Sương next to him, his brush temporarily placed on the unsharpened ink tray. "Do you remember the first day I taught you how to hold a pen? I said something, do you remember?"

"The pen must be held like a small bird," she replied immediately, without thinking, because that sentence had become something she reminded herself of every time she held a pen.

"Yes. But I'll say one more thing, perhaps you haven't noticed: the power of a talisman lies not only in whether the drawing is right or wrong, but also in the heart of the person drawing it when he puts down his pen. You drew that talisman when your heart was sad, feeling sorry for the cat that was beaten - that sadness, that hurt, it doesn't go anywhere, it flows into each ink stroke. The more you love, the darker the charm, and its effect is also stronger than you thought."

Diệp Sương blinked, trying to understand. "So that means... the sadder you are, the stronger the spell you draw?"

"Not necessarily strong in the good sense," Mr. Tám Mực shook his head, "but strong in the sense of being unpredictable. You're still young, and your emotions fluctuate up and down like summer weather - sometimes the sun is hot, sometimes it rains without warning. Drawing charms when your mind is unstable, no matter how good the intention, can easily go too far. You wanted the cat to sleep well, but you loved it too much and were afraid it would hurt, so your hand drew too boldly without your realizing it." She bowed her head, feeling like she had just done something very wrong, even though no one said it out loud. "So from now on, can I not draw anymore?"

"Not at all." Mr. Tám Mực shook his head decisively, his voice suddenly serious. "You must not stop drawing. This talent in you will not disappear. It is only waiting for the day when you cannot control it and it explodes in an even worse way. You have to study until you understand your hands and your heart, so that when you need to draw boldly, you can be strong, and when you need to draw lightly, you can be gentle. That is the right way to use this talent, not to avoid it."

*

From that day on, the mornings at Mr. Tám Mực's paper factory became much more systematic. He no longer let Diệp Sương draw arbitrarily according to what "appeared in her mind", but forced her to practice over and over again each basic stroke: horizontal and straight lines that were not shaky, curved and round lines that were not distorted, and definitive lines that were not smudged. There were mornings when she sat for an hour just practicing a single horizontal stroke on dozens of scraps of bark, her hands tired, ink all over her fingers.

"Are you bored?" he asked, once seeing her sigh deeply after practice.

"Yes," she answered honestly. "But I still want to continue studying."

He smiled, his eyes filled with something both proud and distant. "When I was young, I also practiced such strokes, so much that I thought I would spend the rest of my life trying to draw a straight, horizontal line. But I never had anyone teach me the lesson about the heart of drawing like I am teaching you - because I myself only learned it from people I met on the ink trade, no one was willing to teach me thoroughly, because I am not a member of any sect."

"What is a sect?"

Mr. Tám Mực was silent for a moment, his eyes looking far away toward Vân Tiêu Peak, where white clouds still lazily crossed the mountainside like a strip of silk that never melted. "It's where the best spellcasters in Cửu Vân gather, study methodically, have rules, and have books passed down. On top of that mountain there is a place like that, called Tông Vân Các. I once dreamed of going there, when I was young, when I was still arrogant and thought that my talent was enough to pass through their big gate."

"Why don't you come in?"

"Because my family is poor," he replied, his voice not complaining, simply telling a truth that had worn away over the years. "If you want to be accepted, in addition to talent, you also need people to recommend you, you need presentation gifts, you need everything that a poor paper-maker like me doesn't have. I tried once, was rejected right from the outside gate, then I left, taught myself what I learned, opened this small paper factory to survive."

Diệp Sương looked at him, her heart filled with a vague sadness that she wasn't old enough to name exactly - perhaps it was the first sadness in her life about something much bigger than herself: that there are doors that close not because people aren't good enough, but because people aren't rich enough.

"I won't let that happen to me," she said, her voice young but somehow very determined.

Mr. Tám Mực laughed and patted her head. "I don't teach you to enter the sect, little girl. I teach you to understand your own hands and your heart. Whether you enter the sect or not, that's a matter of heaven, not something you or I can predetermine," Little did he know, when he said that, he unintentionally sowed a prediction that would come true just a few years later, in a way more dramatic than anything either of them could have imagined on that peaceful morning, when the sun was high through the thatched roof and the smell of grinding ink mingled with the faint smell of straw from the fields in the distance.

*

That night, when Diệp Sương fell asleep, Mrs. Chín Lài sat mending her old shirt by the light of an oil lamp, her ears still ringing with the whispers in the market this afternoon - some said her granddaughter "had an unusual fate," while others whispered that she should be careful; who knew, maybe the girl would cause trouble for the village when she grew up.

She did not believe those rumors, but she also could not deny that, since the night the earth turned violently last year, this Tùng Lĩnh Village had always carried within it a dull insecurity, like a small crack that had not yet fully healed under the soil's skin. And that sleeping baby, the one she had picked up from the pile of old rubble, might—just might—be the one to face that crack one day, in a way she herself did not dare to imagine.

She put away the needle and thread, blew out the lamp, lay down next to Diệp Sương, pulled a thin blanket over them both, listened to the child's steady breathing in the dark, and secretly hoped that, no matter what happened in the future, she would always have a place to return to.