She focused her mind and tried to sense what the future held. There was something there, something as difficult to grasp as mist. Whenever she thought she was close to reading the feeling, it evaporated. There was nothing substantial, so surely that meant she had nothing to fear? But she couldn’t forget the intensity of the dread she’d felt when she’d first met Hei Lei.
She went to see Gu Hong. Is Kai safe here? she wrote in the earth.
The old dragon scratched characters next to Ping’s. Of course.
Ping tried to think of a way to express her concerns.
Hei Lei wants to hurt Kai.
Gu Hong shook her head.
“Hei Lei is not a bad dragon.”
Ping heard the words clearly in her mind. She looked around. The words hadn’t come from Gu Hong. Kai was off playing with Tun, and Hei Lei was away hunting. Jiang was the only dragon close by.
“You can speak to me,” Ping said to Jiang.
“Yes. Not all dragons can make their thoughts understood by humans, only those who have lived with a Dragonkeeper.”
“So you have had a Dragonkeeper, Jiang?”
“Yes.”
“And Hei Lei?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does he dislike me so?”
“You must ask Hei Lei.”
Ping knew that would be a waste of time. “I’m sure he means to harm Kai.”
“My mother says he will not. It is humans he hates, not dragons.”
Ping suspected Hei Lei hated humans so much because of the massacre at Long Gao Yuan, but all the dragons must have suffered there. They had escaped from whoever killed the Dead Ones, yet only Hei Lei was filled with hatred. She wanted to ask Jiang what had happened, but she knew she’d be wasting her time. Getting a straight answer from a dragon was never easy.
Ping heard the jingling sound of Kai’s laughter. He had beaten Tun in the game of hide-and-hunt for the first time—though Ping suspected the yellow dragon had allowed him to win.
Gu Hong spoke. Jiang translated for Ping.
“You may leave the haven if you wish,” she said. “But we will not let Kai go.”
Ping hadn’t had any real intention of taking Kai away, but now she knew for certain that it wasn’t possible. She looked out at the mountains stretching to the distant horizon in every direction. If they tried to escape, the winged dragons with their dragon sight would easily track them down. In any case, Kai would never agree to leave.
No matter what she envisaged for the future, Kai’s life was no longer in her hands.
Gu Hong scratched more characters in the earth. Nine good.
Including Kai there were nine dragons. Nine was an auspicious number. It symbolised long life, everlasting happiness. For a species threatened with extinction, it was the best number.
“Now we are nine, all will be well,” Jiang said. “Hei Lei is quick to anger, moody and unfriendly, but he is loyal to us. His maleness is needed. He has much yang. There are too many females in our cluster. Hei Lei balances our excess of yin.”
But as time passed Ping saw that they were wary of the black dragon. She wasn’t the only one who was happier when Hei Lei was away. The plateau was a more cheerful place when he wasn’t there. As soon as he returned, the dragons were a little on edge, as if they were worried that they might upset him. Ping remembered the Yi Jing reading. There was still one line of the divination left. It was the sixth and last line left—and the only inauspicious line. When a dragon is arrogant, there will be cause for regret. She had no doubt which dragon that would be. Hei Lei. She would have to watch Kai more closely. She looked around to see where he was, and found him swimming in the yellow pool.
Kai was a better swimmer than any of the other dragons. The yellow and the red dragons were competent, but the whites just paddled across the pools like dogs, never putting their heads underwater.
Kai loved to demonstrate his skills in the water. He dived, he did somersaults, he leapt up into the air like a flying fish and plunged back down again. The three white dragons and Sha watched his displays, encouraging him with a high-pitched chattering noise.
“Does this plateau have a name?” Ping asked Jiang, relieved that she could converse easily with at least one of the dragons.
“No. Names are dangerous,” Jiang replied. “If you give a place a name, it becomes known. If a place is never named, no one can ever speak of it.”
Lao Longzi had told her that the name of Dragon Plateau should never be written down, never spoken aloud. That hadn’t been enough to save the dragons from whatever happened there. Their new home didn’t even have a name.
The yellow pool was Kai’s favourite. He had told Ping that in one place it was deeper than the length of the Serpent’s Tail. The other dragons waded cautiously into the shallow end of the yellow pool only when they needed its healing properties.
Lian threw a stone into the deep end and Kai dived to retrieve it. He was underwater for a long time, but eventually he broke the surface with the stone between his teeth. All the young females gathered around to praise him. Ping felt pride for her dragon swell in her chest.
“But if they aren’t comfortable underwater, what happens when they hibernate in the pools during winter?” Ping asked Kai, when he had finished showing off.
“They don’t sleep in pools in the winter,” Kai told her.
“They don’t hibernate?”
“Not anymore.”
Ping thought that they might not need to hibernate because they could keep warm in the pools, but the males didn’t spend much time in the warm water. In fact, Ping had never seen Hei Lei enter any of the pools. He didn’t bathe. He cleaned himself by splashing water from the purple cleansing pool over his scales. She wondered if he could swim at all.
The following afternoon, Hei Lei returned with a dead animal hanging from his talons. It was a wild ox, so big it would feed the dragon cluster for several days. The yellow dragons took the ox from Hei Lei and cut pieces from it. Ping had no sense of dread, but her stomach was unsettled. Perhaps Jiang was right and the black dragon’s hatred had been directed at her, not at Kai. Perhaps she had misread the message her second sight had given her. In the past, her enemies had always been after her dragons, not her.
The black dragon dug his teeth into the raw meat and ripped off a chunk. Blood dribbled down his chin. Hei Lei was aggressive and unpleasant, but he did provide well for his cluster. Without him, the dragons would go hungry. There was no reason to expect that all dragons would be nice. There were people Ping liked and those she disliked. Why should dragons be any different?
She went to collect her share of the meat. She could tell that Hei Lei enjoyed her being dependent on him for food. She would have liked to say she didn’t need it, but she was hungry.
She picked up the meat. Hei Lei snarled as she took it.
“We should make her work for her meat,” he said, addressing the dragons. “I could use a slave to trim my talons and clean my cave.”
Ping ignored him. She turned to go and cook her meat.
“Though, on second thoughts, I wouldn’t want her in my cave. Everything she touches turns bad,” Hei Lei continued. “She allowed the whelp to become contaminated by contact with humans. Eating cooked meat and cakes. He’s not a dragon, he’s a tame pet. No proper Dragonkeeper would permit such things.”
Ping felt her anger boil, but still she said nothing.
“I suppose it’s not even her fault. It was Danzi who chose her. A female keeper. No other dragon has ever been so stupid.” He laughed. “It’s no wonder the whelp turned out bad.”
Ping tossed her meat angrily into the cooking pool, but she didn’t respond. She wouldn’t give Hei Lei that satisfaction.
When the meat was cooked, she tried to make her meal as civilised as possible. She cut it up with her bronze knife and added herbs and the leaves of a bitter green plant. She ate with her chopsticks.
Hei Lei continued to provoke her. The other dragons sat in
awkward silence. None of them dared stand up against Hei Lei.
“Humans have only ever wanted us for what we can do for them,” he said.
“The people of the Empire know that dragons are special creatures, different from other wild animals,” Ping replied, trying to form a reasonable argument. “They believe that their lives are in your … paws. Every spring, people all over the Empire offer gifts to dragons in the hope that they will bring the rain.”
“As I said. They only honour us because we are useful to them.”
“They hang painted images of you on their walls.” Ping tried not to allow any anger into her voice. “The Emperor has embroidered dragons on his robes.”
Lian, Bai Xue and Sha were trying to follow the argument, but they couldn’t. Jiang translated Ping’s words for them.
Bai Xue spoke.
“She says the humans are angry with us because there is no rain,” Jiang said. “She has seen them throw iron and chinaberry leaves into lakes and rivers.”
“If their crops don’t grow, their children will die,” Ping said. “They do whatever they can to stop that.”
Sha spoke to Jiang.
“What did she say?” Ping asked.
“She wants to know if the drought is very bad.”
“Even before summer, wells were drying up and ponds shrinking. The crops will have withered. It will be a long, hungry winter. Many will not survive, and it is always the children and the old ones who die first.”
That evening at the moon gathering, Lian and Sha spoke much more than they usually did. From the tone of their voices Ping knew they were arguing for some sort of proposal. It sounded like there was a disagreement. Ping had never seen the quiet female dragons roused before. The gathering lasted for several hours.
“What were they discussing?” Ping asked Kai after the dragons had left the pool.
“Lian and Sha want to bring rain to the Empire,” he said.
“But they can’t do that.”
“Dragons can make rain,” Kai said.
Ping thought that the dragons had come to believe the stories that people told about them. They had been separated from people for so long, they were losing touch with the world. Now Kai was starting to believe these legends, just as he believed in the fire dragon under the earth.
“They can’t,” Ping insisted. “Danzi made it rain, but there had to be clouds to start with. He flew up and spat on the clouds. His saliva made the rain fall from the clouds.”
“Dragons can.”
“How?”
“They make clouds with mist from their breath. Many dragons breathe mist together on a high mountain. The wind carries the cloud over the land. Moisture from the air is drawn to the dragon cloud. It gets bigger and divides into other clouds. When the clouds get heavy with water, rain falls.”
Ping didn’t know whether to believe Kai’s story or not. “When did you learn this?”
“At the moon gatherings.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Ping didn’t ask.”
She sighed with frustration. Sometimes Kai was just like his father.
“What did they decide at tonight’s gathering?”
“They will not bring rain.”
Ping sat out in the moonlight after Kai had gone to bed. She thought of all the desperate people they had met on their journey west, the cracked fields, the withered crops, the hungry children. It would be worse now. People would be dying. Did the dragons really have the power to put an end to their suffering?
• chapter twenty •
SCALES IN MOONLIGHT
Kai glowed from head to foot.
His scales were luminous green, like a jade vase
that was lit from within.
Ping watched Kai as he played hide-and-hunt. His skills were improving. She could tell that Tun and Jiang were no longer allowing him to win. It was an aggressive game. In fact, it wasn’t a game any more. Each dragon was trying hard to win and though they stopped short of seriously harming each other, they didn’t worry about inflicting wounds. The three white dragons watched the games. Lian always seemed to be cheering Kai on, and this attention made him even more reckless. He was covered in purple scabs where the other two had scratched or bitten him. Kai was proud of his battle scars and counted them before he went to sleep each night. Ping had caught him sharpening his claws on a rock.
“That’s not a nice thing to do,” she’d said. “You might hurt one of the other dragons.”
“Tun showed me how to do it,” Kai said defiantly. “All male dragons sharpen their claws.”
That wasn’t the sort of thing Ping had imagined Kai would learn from the older dragons.
While they were young, it was customary for male dragons to help the females with their chores, and not begin their training until they were 50 years old. Ping wasn’t sure if it was because Kai had exceptional skills or because of the shortage of males that his training had started so early.
She didn’t feel like being with the dragons, so she decided to go up to the northern part of the plateau. Her winter food store was still not large enough. She took a digging tool she’d made from a piece of bone, hoping to find roots and the edible fungus that grew underground. She breathed in the air. It was good to be away from the smell of the pools and to feel grass beneath her feet.
Ping missed the company of other people more than she had when she and Kai were living on Tai Shan. There, her days had been filled with caring for a baby dragon. She found herself thinking of Jun. She missed his company. She imagined him picking the mulberry leaves with his family and neighbours to feed their silkworms. They would be eating the mulberries too. Ping’s mouth watered at the thought of the sweet, juicy fruit. The berries on the bushes around her were sour to taste, and chewy.
She found a few roots near the edge of the plateau. They were quite tasty when cooked and mashed with herbs, and made a welcome change from boiled meat. The northern edge of the plateau sloped down gradually before it ended abruptly in a cliff.
A little way down the slope, Ping could see the broad leaves that meant more of the edible roots were growing beneath the ground. She carefully edged towards them. It was a good patch and there was no danger as she was still several chang from the edge of the cliff. She inched further down the slope. Then she tripped. She staggered and thrust her foot down to regain her balance. The ground gave way beneath her and she found herself falling into a gaping hole. She grabbed hold of a clump of long grass on the edge and just managed to stop herself from falling in. Her feet scrabbled to find a foothold, but the earth crumbled away. She looked down. The hole wasn’t naturally formed. Sharpened spikes of rock had been set upright at the bottom. It was a trap that had been hidden with a covering of interwoven twigs and leaves.
Ping could feel the grass that she was clinging to uprooting. The trap yawned beneath her. Then the air was full of leathery wings as three dragons appeared above her.
Tun, Shuang and Bai Xue flew at her so fast she thought they were attacking her. Without thinking, she held up her hands to protect her face from their talons, letting go of the grass. Tun dug his talons into the back of her jacket as she fell. He lifted her up and flew off over the edge of the cliff. There was nothing between her and the mountain slopes many chang below. Ping gasped as Tun let go of her jacket. She thought he was going to drop her, but he was just transferring her to his other paw. He flapped his wings and took her back to the plateau. Then he did drop her, none too gently, on the hard white clay. Ping lay gasping for breath.
The dragons stood around her as they had when she first arrived.
“Ping cannot leave,” Jiang said sternly.
“I wasn’t trying to leave. I was just collecting food.”
“Do not go over the lip of the plateau,” Jiang said. “There are traps all around the perimeter of our haven.”
“You are lucky that the traps were made to keep humans out—not in,” Hei Lei said. It was the first time he had
spoken directly to Ping.
“You triggered one of the trip wires,” Jiang explained. “They are there in case anyone gets past the spiked pits that ring the plateau.”
“So you would kill any person who happened to stumble on your home by accident?”
“If a human found the dragon haven it wouldn’t be accidental.”
“But not all people mean you harm.”
“All humans want to tame us,” said Hei Lei. “They want to turn us into pets, just like you did with the whelp.”
The other dragons shifted uncomfortably, but Hei Lei turned away. It was midday, so Tun and Sha brought out the day’s ration of meat. Hei Lei joined the others, and they ate in silence.
Ping couldn’t eat. She was still shaken. She thought about what Hei Lei had said. He believed that dragons were better off living in the wild, but Ping wasn’t so sure. In the haven, the dragons didn’t really do anything. They slept, lolled around in the pools, ate and then slept some more.
As the dragons finished eating, they went to their caves one by one to sleep. Even Kai had got into the habit of having an afternoon nap. They were wise and powerful creatures, but they had no reason to use their great wisdom.
“So is this all you’re going to do?” Ping asked irritably.
Jiang was the only dragon who was still awake.
“You eat, you sleep, you bathe. Don’t dragons need some purpose in their lives?”
“Do birds need a purpose, or snow leopards?”
“No, but dragons are more than beasts. They are wiser, they can communicate with people. There has to be some reason for that.”
Jiang didn’t reply, but Ping wouldn’t let it rest.
“Hei Lei said Dragonkeepers turn dragons into tame animals. But look, you do it yourselves. You’re just like huge, scaly oxen.”
Ping had finally stung Jiang to anger.
“How we live is not the business of humans.” Jiang turned from her and walked to the cave.
“Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion on the matter,” Ping called after her.
Ping hadn’t realised that Hei Lei was nearby, listening. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.
Dragon Moon Page 19
