Black Water Sister
Jess and her family are relocating back to Malaysia for a new beginning in flourishing Asia. However, in an extract from Zen Cho’s fantasy novel Black Water Sister, she begins to experience vivid and disturbing dreams in the run-up to the big move. What could they mean?
PHOTOS:DARREN JOHNSON/IDJ PHOTOGRAPHY.GETTY IMAGES
The drawing must have been bundled up with other, less interesting papers, or Jess wouldn’t have thrown it away. Mom had kept every piece of art Jess had ever made, her childhood scrawls treated with as much reverence as the pieces from her first – and last – photography exhibition in her junior year.
The paper was thin, yellow and curly with age. Jess smelled crayon wax as she brought the drawing up to her face, and was hit with an intense shot of nostalgia.
A spindly person stood outside a house, her head roughly level with the roof. Next to her was a smaller figure, its face etched with parallel lines of black tears. They were colored orange, because as a child Jess had struggled to find any crayons that were a precise match for Chinese people’s skin.
Both figures had their arms raised. In the sky, at the upper left-hand corner of the drawing, was the plane at which they were waving, flying away.