“No Buddhist would harm an insect. There’s nothing unusual in that. Insects are creatures of the world that work hard all their short lives.” Tao wasn’t smiling. “Ants and bees never think of themselves as humans do. They are always working for the good of their communities. They are powerful in their own small way, and they teach us a lot, if we take the time to observe them. I am sure I have been an insect in a previous life. We all have. We should respect their place in the world.”
“You love the insects,” Pema said, “and they love you.”
Pema lifted her feet off the ground. “Look! There are beetles too, all around your feet.”
The beetles were small and shaped like miniature shields. They had dull brown shells and looked like tiny monks gathering around him, eager to hear his words.
Kai’s jingling laughter rang out. “The insects are attracted to your qi – yours and Wei’s.” The dragon considered Tao for a moment. “This is your qi power.”
“Don’t make fun of me, Kai.”
Pema couldn’t interpret the dragon’s sounds. “What’s he saying?”
“That my qi power is attracting insects.”
“What is qi power?” Pema asked.
Tao explained the ways that other dragonkeepers had concentrated their qi and transformed it into extraordinary skills – strength to lift huge stones, ability to hurl things a li or more, agility that enabled them to leap across rivers. He told her about Ping’s power, and how she could make objects move.
“And yours is attracting insects?”
“It’s Kai’s idea of a joke,” Tao said. “Not a very funny one.”
“I am being completely serious,” the dragon said.
“I haven’t discovered my qi power yet.”
Several moths settled on Tao’s shoulders as if to contradict him.
“So you aren’t Holy Boy any more,” Pema said. “Now you’re Bug Boy!”
Tao didn’t like it when Pema laughed at him. He wished he could make objects fly across the room or lift heavy objects so that she would be impressed by him, instead of amused.
Was this really his qi power? An ability to attract insects?
Pema was chuckling. Kai was jingling.
Tao picked up his bowl of pears and stood up. He was still wearing his sister’s gown. They laughed and jingled louder. Tao stalked off to Wei’s room to eat in peace, slamming the door behind him.
Tao woke in the middle of the night as he knew he would. The moon shadow didn’t even pretend to have the same shape as the rock outside. It disconnected itself from the shaft of moonlight and moved of its own accord. It rippled and stretched and lifted itself up from the floor. It had depth and shape.
Tao tried to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t. He had to watch the moon shadow.
Gradually, the rags of moon shadow took on more shape. Some tendrils elongated and then twirled around each other, merging into two thicker appendages, one on each side. Others curled and twisted, radiating from a rounded shape at the top. Tao shivered. The resulting spectre looked as if it had a head with hair, and arms ending in long wavy fingers. Below, there was a rippling patch of shadow streaked with pale moonlight that resembled a billowing gown. The pieces of moon shadow kept drifting apart and reforming. Tao watched in horror as two circles of darker moon shadow collected on the dark head. They were eyes. The moon shadow held together. It had a human form, but it was transparent. The shadow eyes glared at Tao. He could no longer deny what he saw in front of him. It was a ghost.
Chapter Fifteen
ALONE
Tao wanted to shout out to Kai but he couldn’t speak. And anyway the dragon wouldn’t have heard him. The moon shadow ghost seemed more solid, but as it drifted around the room, it passed right through a chair and a chest. He waited until it had drifted to the other side of the room before he ran through the shafts of moonlight and out into the courtyard. He leaped over the fence around the goat pen.
Tao found his voice. “Kai, there’s a ghost.”
The dragon didn’t stir. Tao pulled his beard hard.
Kai woke, indignant. “Why are you doing that?”
“There’s a ghost. In Wei’s room. Come quick.”
“You have been dreaming.”
“No.”
Tao kept tugging Kai’s beard until he got to his feet, grumbling. He refused to hurry. The moon went behind a cloud. By the time they reached Wei’s room, the ghost had gone.
The clouds had cleared by morning, and Tao didn’t want to think about the ghost and darkness, he just wanted to be out in the sunshine. To take his mind off the terrors of the night, he had to keep busy. The first thing he needed to do was check on Sunila’s bee stings and reapply the balm.
Kai was still curled up in his hollow, but there was no sign of the naga.
“Where’s Sunila? I hope he hasn’t escaped!”
The dragon yawned and stretched. “There is no need to panic. He was annoying me during the night. Before you were annoying me. He was trying to creep into my nest. I moved him to the stables.”
The stable door was open. Inside, a loop of rope lay on the ground among a colourful tangle of torn bandages.
“He has escaped!”
Tao searched the compound from wall to wall, but couldn’t find the naga anywhere.
“He must have flown away.”
Tao was surprised to find Pema up already, eating left-over grain and pears in the peony pavilion. She hadn’t seen the naga either.
“Perhaps he’s made himself invisible.”
Tao put out some grain mixed with honey, hoping that would attract the naga, but he didn’t appear.
“What exactly did you say to him, Kai?”
“I … told him he was a pest … and I may have said that I wished we had left him in the forest to starve.”
“What a terrible thing to say!”
“But he would not have understood me. He cannot interpret my sounds as you can.”
“Neither can Pema, but she can guess what you mean. Sunila can too.”
“He’ll come back when he’s hungry, won’t he?” Pema said.
When he hadn’t returned by midday, Tao asked Kai to go and search for him.
“You can shape-change. No one will see you.”
“What if he does not want to be found?” Kai said. “Searching for a dragon who can make himself invisible is a waste of time.”
“We said we were going to help people. We should be helping all creatures, including nagas.”
“He is free to go wherever he wants,” Kai said.
Pema went back to the servants’ quarters where she slept. Tao wondered what she did in there.
“This is your fault, Kai,” Tao said. “You’ve been jealous of the naga ever since we captured him.”
“That is not true.”
“It is. He has the power of invisibility and he can fly. You’ve been like a child with a new baby in the family.”
The dragon couldn’t stop mist curling from his nostrils. “You have been treating him like a pet. He is a wild creature in need of … discipline.”
“Well, if you won’t go and look for him, I will.”
Tao went out searching for the naga. Kai was right, of course. If Sunila didn’t want to be found, he would make himself invisible. But Tao hoped the chunk of honeycomb he was carrying would attract Sunila. He tramped around the outside of the walls, walked through the abandoned fields. He searched and called all afternoon. He found some onions and three eggs laid by an escaped chicken, but there was no sign of the naga.
Tao went back to the walled compound. He didn’t feel like crawling through the tunnel, so he thumped on the gate. He kept thumping until it swung open. Tao was mortified to see that it was Pema who had managed to lift the bar by herself.
“I couldn’t find him.” Tao looked around. “Where’s Kai?”
“He’s gone searching for Sunila too. He was pacing the walls for hours, worried about you out there alone.”
&
nbsp; Dusk crept over the hills to the west and the light faded, but Tao didn’t light the kitchen stove.
“Aren’t you going to cook tonight?” Pema asked.
“I’m not hungry.”
Pema lit a small fire and cooked the eggs and onions that Tao had found.
“You can eat these eggs, Tao,” Pema explained. “The chicken abandoned them. They would never have hatched.”
Tao ate a few mouthfuls. As darkness fell, moths came to settle on his shoulders again. Pema smiled.
“Go on, make jokes about me and the way the insects are attracted to me,” Tao said.
“I wasn’t going to make a joke. It shows what a special person you are, Tao. Like no other. You have something in common with the insects. Everyone else thinks of themselves first. You never do. You are unique in these times.”
She smiled at him again and took his hands. He didn’t pull them away. A short while before, he had been annoyed with Pema. Now he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving. In Tao’s daydreams of living in a walled community again, she had always been there. He was about to tell her that he wanted to make her home in the compound, but she spoke before he had the chance.
“I’m leaving early in the morning, probably before dawn, so I’ll say goodbye now.”
Tao’s dream disappeared like mist in sunlight.
“Kai will be back,” Pema said, misinterpreting the anxiety on his face. He’s a dragon. He can take care of himself.”
Tao hadn’t been thinking about the missing dragon.
“Where are you going?”
“I have things to do.”
“What things?”
Pema didn’t answer.
“Don’t worry, Bug Boy,” she said. “I’ll come to visit you again soon.”
Tao watched as Pema headed off to the hut she was sleeping in.
The moon wasn’t quite full, but it was low in the sky and seemed huge. Tao climbed into Wei’s bed and closed his eyes, but he could still see the light through his eyelids. He turned away from the window, but the moonlight reflected off everything – the wall, a painting, a bronze ornament.
The ghost arrived. This time it didn’t form slowly from a shapeless patch of shadow. It was fully formed already, in the shape of a young girl. Her grey face, flecked with moonlight, had a melancholy beauty. Her eyes were dark and hollow, as if bruised by sadness. Tears of moonlight fell from them, but evaporated before they reached the path. The ghost girl didn’t walk. She floated. Her body swayed, her arms fluttered, as if she was moving in water, not air. Though the night was still, the tendrils of her shadow hair were stirred, as if by a breeze. The folds of her shadow gown caught the moonlight as it billowed.
Tao knew he wasn’t dreaming. And despite the fact that Pema had persuaded him that the ghosts in the cave had never existed, he was sure that this one was real.
Who was she? He thought back through his life, trying to remember if any young girl had died within the walls. He couldn’t recall one. The house had been there for many generations. Perhaps it was one of his ancestors, a child who had died before he was born and lost the way to her next life, but he didn’t remember anyone claiming they had seen a ghost. Her pale face had a look of yearning. Her eyes were pleading wordlessly with him. She was stuck in the half-life between death and rebirth. Perhaps she had been content in that state while there were people who lived in the community, but now they had all gone and she was alone.
Tao wanted to help her, as he had the other ghosts, the ones in the cave that Pema had convinced him never existed. He remembered the way they had sighed when they were released from the world. In the dead of night, with the ghost girl before him, he began to believe that they too had been real.
“I can pray for you,” he whispered. “I can help you find your way into your next life.”
The ghost girl turned to Tao. She was so small that she barely came up to his waist, but she drifted up so that her black eyes were level with his. A silver point of moonlight had formed in the centre of each eye, making her seem angry. Her tender shadow lips pulled back into an animal snarl, baring sharp, inhuman teeth. The waving tendrils of silver-tipped shadow hair writhed like a nest of snakes. Her delicate fingers bent until they were crooked and twisted like a crone’s. Each one was tipped with a glittering claw, reaching out to Tao as if she wanted to rake them through his flesh and make him bleed. The ghost rushed at Tao, but her insubstantial claws and teeth couldn’t harm him. He shuddered as she passed right through him, like a cold wind, taking his breath away. He turned around, but she was gone. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud. There was nothing but darkness. And he could breathe again.
Even if the ghosts in the cave hadn’t existed, if he and Kai had created them in their minds from nothing more than a gust of cold air and some vague sensations, it made no difference. This ghost was real. He had felt her enter his bones, stop his breath. If she’d lingered in his body, he would have died, he was sure of that. As she’d passed through him, he’d felt her anger and sorrow, which was more tangible than her body. Grief, loneliness and her premature death had turned her into a hungry ghost. Whoever she was, Tao was convinced that she hadn’t got lost on her journey into her next life. She had never begun it.
Tao didn’t want to be alone. Not ever again. He needed companionship, someone to talk to and make the night terrors go away. He went outside. The moon came out from behind the cloud and flooded the courtyard with pale light, making angry crisscross shadows of bare twigs. He didn’t look back to see if the ghost had reappeared. He ran to the hut where Pema slept and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He went inside. Pema wasn’t there and neither were her sword or her sleeping mat. It was still four hours or more till dawn, but she had already left.
Tao didn’t want to go back to Wei’s room. The feeling of safety he’d experienced each time he’d entered it had gone. Now, when he was in the room, all he felt was fear. He sat in the peony pavilion.
Although the ghost girl didn’t trouble him again that night, sleep had deserted him. Thoughts and fears swirled in his head, fighting for attention. If the ghost had appeared the previous night, he could have discussed it with Kai. If she’d arrived a few hours earlier, he could have told Pema. But the ghost girl had waited until he was by himself to take on her full and undeniable shape. She hadn’t uttered a sound, but Tao knew exactly what she wanted. She had left something inside him as she passed through him. A thought. A desire. She didn’t want to begin another life. She wanted her previous life back. And if she couldn’t have that, she wanted revenge for her untimely death. Tao was powerless to help her regain her old life, and he would have no part in revenge.
The orb spider was his only companion. It sat in its web, perfectly still, as patient as ever. But its calm stillness couldn’t soothe the disquiet he felt. What had happened to Kai? He must be in trouble. Something must have gone wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed away. Would he?
A few days earlier Tao had sat in this same spot sharing a meal with his friends and he had thought that his life couldn’t be improved. He had felt safe in the compound, protected. The walls had done their job and kept enemies out, but they had not managed to keep his friends within. This was the first time in his life he had been completely alone.
Tao felt around by the side of the couch until he found his bag. He reached inside for the familiar shape of his dragon stone. His heart shrank inside him. For a moment, he’d forgotten that he no longer had the shard. Then his fingers brushed something else inside the bag. Something cool to the touch like the shard. But not smooth. Something with many facets and edges sharp enough to cut skin. It was the cinnabar crystals. Kai had gone out into the world alone without taking any cinnabar with him. The sharp edges of the crystals had scratched the tender hide behind Kai’s reverse scales, so he had given them to Tao to keep in his bag. They had planned to stay together.
Tao struggled to stop his mind plunging into a whirlpool of panic. He pictured
the shard in his mind – the lovely shade of purple, the milky white vein that passed through it, the faint threads of maroon that were only visible if you looked very close. Kai had used his own shard to find Tao. It had somehow led him to the monastery. Tao was sure the dragon stone would lead him to Kai. But he didn’t have it.
Tao was the one who’d told Kai to search for Sunila. He’d expected that the naga wouldn’t stray far from the food they had provided, that he’d be out in the fields and would come as soon as Kai called out to him. Tao had spent a lot of time fussing over the naga. If he was honest with himself, he had quite liked the fact that Kai was jealous of Sunila. His life had turned bad, like milk left in the sun. And it was all his own fault.
Tao got up as soon as the first hint of daylight gave vague shape to the familiar things in the courtyard – the ornamental cherry tree, the pavilion, the mountain-shaped rocks – but the morning light didn’t weaken the power of his night terrors. Not this time. His belief in the ghost girl and his fears for Kai refused to fade.
He climbed the steps to the top of the wall, and walked around, searching the landscape in all directions for a dot of blue or green. There was no trace of Kai’s voice in his head. The breeze brought no whisper of Sunila’s cry. He didn’t know what had happened to the dragons.
Tao couldn’t sit and do nothing. He would have to go and search for Kai, though he had no hope of finding him. He wasn’t hungry, but he forced himself to eat some cold rice. He filled his water skin and grasped his staff and, instead of rushing out and leaving the gate open, he carefully made his way through the tunnel. Without the shard he had no idea which way Kai had gone. He turned to the north. Three butterflies fluttered after him. Their ragged wings meant they were old and close to death, but they stayed with him and he was grateful for their company. He hoped it was a sign that he was heading in the right direction.
Tao spent the whole day searching for dragon tracks, calling out to Kai with his mind, but he didn’t find him. Late in the afternoon, he returned to the compound. All day a realisation had been growing in his mind – without Kai, his life was meaningless. He was destined to become Kai’s dragonkeeper. Being a novice monk had merely been preparation, teaching him to disconnect from his family, from the world.
Shadow Sister Page 13
