Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3)

by Heather Heffner

  Heesu sshed her older sister with an impatient glance. “What is the First Trial of Wisdom, Great Guardian Hana?”

  The Jackdaw preened his feathers. “Great Guardian, ooh, I like the sound of that. Well, since you asked so politely… The First Trial is rather simple, really. You see, along the Great Wall there lives a Wailing Woman. All night she cries with no peace. The louder her howls grow, the more the Wall is in danger of collapsing. Stop her…and then tell me the lesson you learned.”

  Sun Bin stared at the spirit bird in disbelief. “This is the Great Wall of China. There are epic beacon towers that can cast smoke signals, thousands of dead buried in the foothills, and places where the wind still whispers of the battles fought. And all we get to do is tell a weeping woman to stuff a sock in it?”

  The Jackdaw shrugged. “Krrch! Yes, rather boring. Can’t say I’ve ever had the patience for these dragon trials thingies. Tell you what. Since we are testing you to be the Celestial Dragons who will drive out the Elder Dark Spirits and restore balance to the seasons…then I think some endurance training is in order, don’t you? If you choose not to help the Wailing Woman, then your second choice is to fly from here to the far west end of the Great Wall in Shanhai Pass by the sea. If you make it, then come find me at Old Dragon’s Head there and I shall give you a token of my favor. A true dragon should be able to fly for days without stopping for breath.”

  From what I could recall, Hana was casually suggesting we fly a couple thousand miles, but Sun Bin’s face lit up. “Really? That’s it? And then we’ll have passed the Trial?”

  The Jackdaw shrugged again. “Well, at least tell me something profound so I won’t get in trouble with the other guardians. Oh, and you have one week, before my flock has my permission to peck out your eyes. It’s nothing personal, but dragon eyeballs fetch a good deal on the market.”

  He joined the flock of screeching jackdaws in the sky, and they drifted off toward the Wall. Their catcalling laughter rang across the desert long after they had departed.

  “I could probably shoot some of them down from here,” Ankor offered.

  Sun Bin sighed. “No, he just wanted to scare us. Like a flock of birds could make a dent on a dragon. Well, on Raina, maybe.”

  “Raina’s scales are as hard as diamonds,” Heesu shot back. “You haven’t seen her shift.”

  “And I’m not likely to on this lame Trial,” Sun Bin said, stretching. “Well, let’s get packed and find this crybaby ghost. Hopefully it’s somewhere with cell reception. Appa and Nyssa will want an update by this evening.”

  ***

  We came upon the Wailing Woman at nightfall. As sundown neared, fellow travelers along the wall grew scarce. In their place trotted deer with clawed feet, horned panda bears, and one aged qilin with a beard so long that it wrapped around its hooves. I shivered as my spirit sight adjusted. Watchtowers far and near burst to life with ghostly blue torches. Green moss crept up the old stone walls and carpeted the parapets.

  A shrill scream reverberated from the narrow gorge ahead. The watchtower lanterns shuddered under its intensity and then winked out. Pebbles trembled around my hiking boots, and I glanced ahead at the valley of shadows nervously.

  The ungodly shriek echoed again, this time from above. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and we beheld a woman dressed in a long, billowy, white gown with a pink scarf wrapped around her arms. Her face was as white as rice cake flour, and she had two black tear streaks on her cheeks. Perched on top of the watchtower roof, the woman leaned back and wailed to the face of the yellow moon.

  Sun Bin hissed and covered her ears. “Well, she’s impossible to miss.”

  “That’s Lady Meng Jiang,” Ankor said suddenly as another piteous cry caused the bricks to tremble beneath our feet. “Noona, don’t you remember Appa telling us stories about her?”

  “Appa likes the sounds of his voice too much,” his twin said dismissively.

  “During the Qin Dynasty, Lady Meng Jiang’s husband was drafted to help build the Great Wall. She tried to find him and discovered that he had died. Meng Jiang’s grief was so great that her cries made that part of the Wall collapse,” Heesu recited perfectly. Ankor gave his younger sister a rare smile and ruffled her hair.

  “So how do we help?” I asked, gritting my teeth as the widow’s cries began to crescendo, climbing higher and higher until I could only see Ankor’s lips move soundlessly. I gripped my ears in pain as a shrill ring drilled into my head. All of us curled up in the fetal position, but the deafening onslaught continued without end.

  Sun Bin uncoiled first. Making a violent slashing movement across her throat, the eldest Yong perched on the edge of the parapet and then leaped off. We dashed to the edge, but from out of the limestone cliffs she rose, an icy moonbeam with creaky honeycomb wings that starlight shone through.

  The Winter Dragon attempted to dive-bomb the wailing ghost woman. However, Meng Jiang’s jaw dropped to her feet, and she unleashed a horrible earthquake of a scream. Sun Bin was blown beyond the peaks. We saw her glittering white shape rise in the west, but she turned tail and did not return.

  Suddenly, blessedly, the screams stopped. Meng Jiang vanished. The ringing in my ears dulled to a soft ping, and the night’s stillness crept back in.

  At our backs, we heard the tok-tok laugh of a jackdaw.

  “Krrch! One down, three to go,” Hana chuckled.

  Chapter 21: The Wailing Woman

  ~Raina~

  We spent the days on our hands and knees at the base of the wall where we’d seen the Wailing Woman, digging for any sign of her dead husband’s body. Three days and nights passed, and each time I awoke with my head ringing unpleasantly after a night of unceasing screams.

  “She’s grieving for something,” Ankor reasoned between pants, placing his hand against the ground. “In the version I heard, Meng Jiang’s husband died on the far western end of the wall, not near the beginning. What else is she searching for?”

  “Maybe tonight you can get close enough to ask,” Heesu said mischievously, and Ankor threw a clump of dirt at her. A group of hikers rounded the bend. We slouched against the wall and tried to took inconspicuous. Then Ankor returned to placing his ear against the ground.

  “This could get done a lot faster if we could shift,” Heesu observed, sharing a piece of dried squid with me.

  “The only time it would be safe to do so would be at night, when we have Meng Jiang for company.” I shook my head ruefully. “There’s more to this test than the Jackdaw let on.”

  Ankor raised his head and tried again a few feet further down the wall. “If either of you plan on accepting Hana’s second offer like Sun Bin did, then you better start flying now.”

  “You’re staying?” I asked curiously.

  The Korean boy brushed black hair from his eyes, and I caught a glimpse of the obsidian shard in his ear. At first I had thought it was an earring, but it looked too rough-hewn and unpolished.

  “I don’t have a choice,” Ankor muttered and then tried listening near a sapling. He sucked in his breath. “Here, Heesu. I hear metal pinging within the earth.”

  “Ankor is an ore dragon,” Heesu explained as she took her place before the Wall. “He is attuned to the different metals buried beneath the earth. Appa used to take him to find a new golden band for Umma every Parents’ Day.”

  “Wow,” I said, impressed. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “Enough, Heesu,” Ankor said in exasperation, the tips of his ears reddening. “We don’t need to talk about her here.”

  “But Raina is part of our family now!” Heesu complained. “She wants to know about Umma.”

  “Oh? Her mother didn’t, when she was sleeping with our father.” Ankor glanced sideways at me and then rose stiffly to his feet, brushing dirt and rock from his cargo pants. “Excuse me,” he said and then stalked off toward the stream.

  Heesu’s face was pink with embarrassment. “I sorry they think like that,” she said, and I knew sh
e meant Sun Bin felt similarly.

  I dug around in my pack and pulled out a flask of soju. Citlalli had argued that I should bring a flask to put up with Ankor’s company, and I had only relented because it was light enough to carry. The soju was cheap and probably tasted like piss, but it was all I’d been able to find at a rickety gas station.

  “Don’t worry, Heesu. I’m used to it.” I gave her a small smile of camaraderie. “If we can’t shift, then what do you say we get some fire burning in our veins to dig up this relic?”

  Heesu gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth. Her pixie cut swished around her ears. “Is that—?”

  “Don’t tell the twins they’re right and I’m a bad influence,” I said, grinning. We each took a swig, coughed a little as the vitriolic rice wine stung our throats, and then positioned ourselves before the Great Wall.

  “Ready?” Heesu asked. I nodded, grinning.

  My younger sister went first. The sapling trembled and then began to grow. Its trunk engorged to the size of a large totem pole. It ripped a crack up the Wall’s stones. Then its giant roots erupted from the ground, tearing a deep gash in the earth. We peered down the hole, but it was too dark to see.

  My gaze settled on the nearby stream. I extended my dragon senses out until I could feel precipitation tingle along my fingertips and taste the oncoming rain on my tongue. I drew the clouds to me faster, darkening the afternoon sun and causing a sudden downpour.

  It caught Ankor by surprise. Shouting, the Autumn Dragon hopped back across the stream and dashed to take cover with a giggling Heesu under an outcrop. I stood barefoot beneath the heavenly shower. Droplets ran down the bridge of my nose and dripped into my eyes, turning them the violet of my inner Were. I weaved a deep impenetrable fog to keep us safe from sight as I fed the stream. The small trickle became a roaring river. It poured into the depths of the hole, filling it to the brim—and washing up an ancient iron chest.

  Gleeful, Ankor and Heesu kicked off their dusty hiking boots and joined me in opening the trunk. There, beneath a cobwebbed blanket of horse hair, lay the bones of Meng Jiang’s husband.

  ***

  The weeping started on cue at sundown, but this time we did not cower and clutch our ears. The three of us hiked to the westernmost watchtower and waited eagerly atop the moonlit wall.

  Heesu spotted her first. The Wailing Woman hunkered down within her billowing white robes while the pink scarf levitated around her head. We approached from behind, carrying the iron chest between us. With each step, the mourning ghost’s cries quieted.

  We dropped the iron chest with a thud and stepped back uncertainly.

  “My Lady Meng Jiang,” Ankor finally said, bowing his head. “We are sorry for your loss.”

  The ghost stopped crying and straightened. She moved in a blur toward us, and Heesu and I crouched defensively. However, the Wailing Woman stopped at the chest and regarded her dead husband’s bones. When she looked back up at us, the twin black tears streaking her cheeks had vanished. Her eyes returned to a rich mahogany color. And on all sides of the Wall, the torches roared back to life.

  –Thank you, imugi children–

  The torchlight illuminated the hollowness of her eyes and the grinning skull beneath. –You have returned my husband to me, who died building the greatest wall the world has ever seen–

  I flinched as her voice dripped with acid derision in my mind. The ghost tilted her head so her long black hair fell to her waist.

  –There is nothing left for me to mourn here. So I shall pass my gift on to the next–

  She turned to drift up toward the stars, but paused to crook a finger. Before our eyes, the iron chest levitated off the Wall and followed her.

  “Wait!” Ankor cried. “Lady Meng Jiang, what do you mean?”

  The Wailing Woman hovered high above us, but her smirk was plain even in the dark.

  –I am not the great Lady Meng Jiang. She was before my time, the first to break the Wall with her tears. They do not understand, none of them do, that the Wall will never fall to the enemies it was meant to keep out, but by those it made–

  “But…we helped you,” Heesu spluttered. “You can move Beyond now in peace.”

  –Yes, I go– The Wailing Woman raised her arms to the moon. –I go to the Bohai Sea, where I shall pass my tears on to the next widow, to the next sister, to the next child. Mark my words, imugi children. One moonrise soon, all shall see the Great Wall fall–

  She vanished into thin air. The iron chest clattered back down on the parapet. Inside was a single piece of parchment with the seal of an endless knot. I couldn’t read the Hanja characters brushed in thick, black strokes, but Heesu held it up.

  “‘There is suffering,’” she recited. “That’s it? That’s the test?”

  Ankor paled. “In the Legend of Lady Meng Jiang, she tricks the Emperor into honoring her husband’s memory in exchange for marrying him. He meets her demands. However, when their wedding day comes, Lady Meng Jiang jumps to her death in the Bohai Sea.”

  I stared at the interweaving loops of the knot embossing the message. “Suffering is a cycle,” I said. “The only way to break it is to stop the Wailing Woman from jumping to her death and passing her destructive power on to the next widow.”

  “The Bohai Sea is thousands of miles away, at the western end of the Great Wall,” Ankor said between clenched teeth. “It has been four days. Sun Bin may be close, but how will she know?”

  The harsh caw of a jackdaw echoed, and we turned to find Hana perched on a pine tree, jeering.

  “Krrch! Oh, dear,” he said. The laughter of his flock winked in and out of the darkness surrounding us. “Another Wailing Woman to find and more bones to dig. It appears that your week shall soon expire, little imugi, and then your eyes shall be ours. Perhaps we will be merciful and take your ears instead. You will not want them for the weeping ghosts to come.”

  Heesu squeezed Ankor’s hand. “Give me leave to go, Oppa,” she whispered. “You know I am fastest.”

  Hana’s sharp ears picked up everything. “Please, by all means, try,” he said, sweeping a wing toward the west where the sun was beginning to gleam over the frosty peaks. “There is suffering. I love futile attempts to end it.”

  “Oh, I don’t have to fly all the way to the Bohai Sea,” Heesu said, emerald scales enveloping her face and hands. Feathery wings burst free from her back, and her eyes darkened to the nut-brown hues of her inner Were. The Summer Dragon crooned at the flock of startled jackdaws and held up a glitzy, severely out-of-place Hello Kitty phone. “I just have to make it somewhere with cell service.”

  A grin spread across my face. “Go call Sun Bin, Heesu,” Ankor encouraged and then caught my eye.

  The jackdaws hurtled toward us, flapping and screeching. However, my ears had become so desensitized by the Wailing Woman that I didn’t flinch. Ankor flung up his hands, and the old, groaning stone of the Great Wall bent to his command, creating a shielding barrier. I dashed up the stone slab and jumped— By the time I hit the air, I was flying. Two gusts of wind from my wings were all it took to send the birds scattering.

  Hana withstood the blast, but by then, it was too late. A green dragon whizzed across the face of the moon and morphed into the night.

  ***

  At the end of our week in China, we four Celestial Dragons perched on “Old Dragon’s Head,” overlooking the Bohai Sea. Salty spray peppered our faces, and gulls circled the ancient fortress that marked an end to the Great Wall of China. One of many, I thought, thinking of the harsh sands, the snow-capped peaks, and the bamboo forests we had traversed to end up by the sea.

  Sun Bin motioned to a dark bird being chased by squawking seagulls, and we laughed. Hana, the First Spirit Guardian, landed on the stone parapet with a huff.

  “One dragon’s roar could get rid of them,” Heesu told the bedraggled spirit bird.

  Sun Bin folded her arms and smirked. “Oh no, Heesu. Remember: ‘There is suffering.’”

 
“Krrch! Intolerable flying lizards,” Hana muttered. He held out his foot, upon which a tiny ink pot was tied. “Do you want the token or not?”

  Ankor relieved him of the ink, and Hana’s head bobbed impatiently as he splashed around in it. “Hands, hands.”

  We extended our palms face-up. The Jackdaw marked each one of them with his footprint, his claws sinking in just enough to draw blood.

  Ankor hissed in displeasure. Hana shrugged. “Krrch, dragon scales are tough. What do you expect?”

  Heesu and I held up our palms to each other and giggled. The bird-print gleamed like a freshly inked tattoo, and I worried what Mami would say.

  Hana did Sun Bin last of all. “The Wailing Woman?” he asked, cocking his head.

  Sun Bin blew out her hair in exasperation. “I caught her before she hit the sea. She wasn’t happy. But this time, I wore earplugs.”

  Heesu giggled. “You never told us what happened after, unni.”

  It was the first time I had seen Sun Bin squirm. “I brought her to a temple graveyard. We found a nice place to bury her husband, and then I sat with her until the sun came up. She vanished with the morning light. I could tell she was hurting. We all suffer, damnit. But I think it’s nice when someone else is willing to take the time to stay, to understand…”

  Hana pressed his inked foot against her palm. “You have passed the First Trial of Wisdom, Yong Sun Bin. All of you have. You have seen the suffering that creates the greatest and most beautiful of things. It also creates the greatest of evils. Have a care, going forward. The next guardians will not be as lenient as I.”

  Off he flew, but no gulls pursued him. Frowning, I realized their cries had vanished. A front was coming in, which pushed the waves to greater heights. Its clouds were tinged with green vapors.

  “The Emerald Veil is spreading,” I whispered.

  Sun Bin shuddered, and I knew a Winter Dragon never shivered from the cold. “Well, your wolf sister is obviously making no headway in breaking through that evil fog. Come on. We need to rest before our flight home to Seoul. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Nyssa.”