He remembers darkness.  Weeping and wailing echo off the stone walls, invisible in the absence of light: a shapeless reality.  Consumed completely by a yawning black hole, the depth of this darkness becomes immeasurable.  The crystal sound of running water too testifies to the sorrow of this place, for it gathers into pools and falls in streams.  Such stale water brings no life, but its deadly salt had gathered for eternity.  This water is the tears of all those who mourn in this place, and it soaks through all that it touches.

He trudged through this place of death for days, lost in the myriad of tunnels, his boots rotten and heavy.  No decomposer came to eat away his clothes and flesh, but the very water that cloaked this hollow place was eroding away his very soul.  The constant weeping haunts the darkness, and the tears were like slippery fingers, slyly curling and seeping into his being, clinging onto every part of him, until the very presence of it would turn him mad, suffocating him.

He very nearly drowned, for there was nothing to hold onto.

Arly, you know you can be anything you want, her father used to say. You’re talented, and that’s why you’ve got to work twice as hard.

Yes, Papa, she’d say, never really looking up from what she was doing. She wanted to finish this daisy chain.

He planted a kiss on her hair. She turned up to kiss him too, pressing her lips to his rough-stubbled chin. Then she connected the last link in the chain and beamed. It’s finished, Papa! Jumping to her feet, she put it on her father’s head. So pretty!

Do you wish to see a butterfly?

Oh yes please, Papa.

Then come inside.

Arlia never understood why she always had to be inside, even when she was looking at nature. So she huffed a sigh and followed Papa back to the house and through to his study. At least that was her favourite room. Papa’s study had the most interesting books, and there was always enough light, unlike the rest of the house. His books weren’t dusty. They were read too often to ever gather dust. There were inks and inkwells twinkling like treasure along the shelves and then Arlia’s favourite thing of all: Papa’s painted globe. There was a red pin on every place her papa had ever been to – forty-six in all – and two little white pins for her.

Papa slid back a door in his cupboard and brought out a stack of wooden boxes. Arlia pushed up from the chair onto her knees and leaned across the table. How come she’d never seen these before? But Papa was taking his time, walking slow across the room as he always did. She knew better than to sigh. So she just stretched her neck as long as it would go to try and catch an early glimpse of what was inside. What kind of butterflies lived in boxes?

These are rare specimens from the Uharian jungle, Papa said, laying the boxes out onto the table.

Stunning butterflies the size of dinner plates laid stretched beneath the glass tops. Some boxes contained smaller varieties, so that up to half a dozen were displayed in the same container. Pins ensured they would never move.

Awe and horror filled Arlia. She reached out to touch the boxes and recoiled from the glass at the last moment, wide eyes searching for her father. What’s wrong with them?

Nothing.

Then why are they all in boxes? Are they dead?

Yes, Arly. They are. That’s how we study them.

Papa slid a box closer to her, right under her nose. Tentatively, she picked it up with both hands. There were four butterflies in this one, all of them a downy white flecked with delicate brown spots as if splattered by fine paint. They reminded her of foamy coffees with too much milk.

Then she imagined them on a rose, imagined their wings opening and closing in the spring.

She bit her lip. She was old enough to know tears were forbidden, young enough to still feel them in her throat.

Arly, how should we study them if we cannot hold them down? Do you think they’d sit nicely in your hand for you to inspect? Lie still as we look at their antennae under the microscope?

She shook her head. She’d never known a butterfly to stay still for longer than it took for it to drink from a flower.

So how should we do it?

The answer was cold in her hands.

Sometimes we have to do things no one wants, and no one else will, in order to achieve greater things. Do you hear me?

Yes, Papa.

Now carefully take them out – there’s a latch to the side. I will tell you all about them.

Papa lifted a microscope onto the table.

There are smaller slides beneath the main one. Those contain specific pieces of the butterfly – a section of its wing, a slice of its retina, and so on.

She did as she was told, following her father’s instructions to the letter, adjusting the lens, barely daring to breathe lest she breaks anything. At some point, she realised her father was no longer wearing his daisy chain.

Context: Luniah is a female birch dryad and Shadow Walker’s servant. Luniah betrayed her master recently and in response, Shadow Walker hung her on the city wall during a siege.

Luniah felt ill hanging on the wall. Her roots hung unsupported, all her weight pulling on the sharp hooks that had been embedded into her trunk. Ropes that had been tied around her strongest branches cut into her joints. She could see the rebels out across the plains. Shadow Walker had simply wanted her to be a lesson and a spectacle.

This was the end for her. She would dry up in the sun, die the same way she should have died a long time ago.

It was only what she deserved.

Her eyes went to the forest, a dark mass that was beginning to show against the brightening sky. It was almost dawn. Her leaves shed as she remembered life amongst the trees, the way soft soil hugged her roots. Grounded. The sun had always been the first thing she saw when she woke up, dappled between the leaves. Everywhere she looked, she would see her sisters and the trees they tended.

They fed each other with the fruits on their heads, each bite as a kiss, sweet juices running down their bark. Sacred silver eyes, always peering for a spot of sunlight to bathe in, moving the trees to create shade for each other when the heat got too much.

She’d been waiting for a day when she could join them. To beckon a butterfly for love, to share intimacy in the sun as she picked fruits from another dryad, and in turn Luniah would offer her catkins. She would get to kiss her sisters the way they kissed each other, caress them with vines that would finally be long and beautiful like theirs and decorate her head with their flowers.

Instead, her vines were mere stumps at her sides that frustrated her. Every time she tried to lift her roots, dig them out of the soil that covered them, she failed. All her strength was for nothing. The earth was her shackles.

She recounted their names now. That was the only intimacy she was permitted amongst her sisters – being a sapling, no one was afraid to drape their vines over her and share their names. Morpha the oak, heavy and solid as the earth she walked on, birds snug as speckled eggs in her opened palm. Jemyla, who had an affinity for bees, her hanging blossoms always buzzing with activity. How she would bend and part her leaves to offer her best flowers! Othena the willow with her stories of silver fish and crystal water, rivers Luniah had never seen before.

Now she could look at it as much as she liked from her final place on the wall. Her joints creaked with her weight. The wind that blew through her roots made her cold.

She missed Hethelia, her oranges bright as gems dangling from her head. The only dryad who ever shared herself with Luniah, offering her a stick full of starry flowers just to make her giddy. When you’re grown, beloved sapling, I’ll let you taste one of my oranges.

How she’d pulled and yanked. As the summer grew, pregnant with pollen and sun, the cloudless sky became a curse. So hot she swore it looked silver, unnatural and harsh. The air became clogged with dust as wind and rain deserted her, the unyielding earth around her roots soon morphing into a deadly trap.

Can’t you help me? she pleaded with Hethelia once, the only dryad who cared enough to visit her when, one by one, they realised she was too weak to walk.

If you cannot dig yourself out, then you may not be ready to walk with us yet, sapling. It’s for your own good to wait. You just need more time.

But it’s too hot. The earth isn’t moving.

Then you’re not ready.

Where were her sisters then? The beauties who always took care of each other? Hethelia with her oranges had gone. So had the rest of them, taking the canopy with them and removing her final – only – refuge from the sun. She stooped to being man-like, clawing hopelessly with her twig-fingers at the baked earth. Crisp yellow leaves littered the ground around her, her death happening in slow motion. Her fingers snapped, stabbed too deep into the ground.

She’d been waiting all her life.

Instead, she’d been destined for her Master.

He’d never owed her any kindness, and she did not blame him now. Only, she wished he’d let her go back to the earth. At least he granted her one mercy – he had not cut her vines.

She stretched them out, soft curls of light moving across the wall and reaching for the scurry of life that lived in its nooks and crannies. Algae and purple flowers the size of ants, the pitter-patter of beetles and spiders and other things that crawled. Life was everywhere, even in the stones.

She pushed one of her twigs into a crack: a dryad’s headstone. This would have to do.

Then she covered all the life she could find on the walls with her vines, curling and stretching them so they settled on as much as possible across the entire length. Closing her eyes, she sighed with the relief of one finally sinking into sleep, and began to pour her life into the plants and insects that touched her vines.

In her dreams, she imagined she moved in the forest amongst her sisters. Her roots were strong and her story was different. In her dreams, she got to eat one of Hethelia’s oranges. 

Upworthy - Good People: Stories from the Best of Humanity by National Geographic Books

After responding to a question on Facebook asking for stories of a teacher who's changed our lives, I was contacted by a staff member from Upworthy asking to feature my story on their book project. Being a writer, I asked if I could write it myself, which they graciously agreed to. I'll always be grateful for the amount of faith they had in an unknown like me. When they came back saying their editor loved it, I decided to put myself out there. I asked: Are there any writing opportunities with you? I didn't expect the answer to be yes. Thus, I ended up on their team of ghostwriters for the rest of the book project. I am in the acknowledgements at the back of the book under the name Iris Ng.

Defying Definitions by Black Eagle Books

A collection of essays by underrepresented voices on our individual journeys. I was one of the contributors with my story on my experience of emigration.

Tinkelei poems

A short-lived project I had with an artist friend, Petra Anykem, where I wrote name poems for babies and inspirational stories on the trials of motherhood, and Petra illustrated. Together we sold printed poems as interior decor.

Blood Ginger - a Collaborative Poem

Together with Allister Nelson, we wrote this little horror poem inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood. It was Allister's concept, and she asked if anyone wanted to collaborate. I decided why not. Thus, our poem was born. She wrote the left column, while I wrote the right as Iris Ng.

Meg the Mediocre

A work for hire project. Joanna Varro asked if I might help her bring a book concept to life by writing it. As a professional graphic designer, she illustrated the entire novella herself. This special little book is in full colour. I am credited as Ka-Yan.

As you can see, it took me a little while to finally settle on a consistent pen name for myself!

Dance in These Hollow Walls - in collaboration with Sonya Lano

This one absolutely deserves its own separate post. Let's just say it all began with frustration over doughnuts! Sonya found it funny and misunderstanding after misunderstanding later, we had somehow agreed to collaborate on an entire novel rather accidentally. So, No One to Save Her was born - that was its original title.

We wrote it in 5 weeks the year I got pregnant with my first baby in 2014 and had the most incredible time. Our inexperienced selves first threw it online, just to unpublish it later.

Then, 10 years on, Sonya asks if I wouldn't mind putting it up again. I thought why not. Now with a sweet new cover and new title, Dance in These Hollow Walls, I put a pen name to it and took the plunge - only, this time, I thought I'd promote it. ARC readers, Instagram, network with other indies, the whole shabang. I was becoming frustrated with all the dead ends in trad and getting more curious about indie by the day...

Which, actually, is how I finally took the plunge and decided to self-publishing the Detective Lynx Wu series. At this point, it was Sep 2024, and both When the Mask Slips and When the Gold Weeps had long been finished, polished, queried, and shelved. Mask was done in 2020 and Gold in 2022.

So, it seems Sonya leads me to have the happiest of accidents, over and over again!

You can read Sonya talk about the story of how Dance in These Hollow Walls was conceived on her blog! Also she writes the most fun, most lyrical high fantasy romance. If you want vivid, gorgeous prose, complex relationships and so much angst, READ HER BOOKS NOW. You won't regret it!