The Dragon's Gate

by Barry Wolverton

  “Yaozu? How big are Chinese alligators?”

  “Alligator-sized,” Yaozu responded. “I don’t know any other kind.”

  Bren looked down again. “Are they active at night?”

  “Especially at night.”

  “Do you see one?” said Sean, who had paused and was looking down. Everyone was looking down now.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Mouse.

  “We’re two feet above the water,” said Barrett.

  “Alligators jump,” said Yaozu, who seemed wholly unconcerned that Bren may have spotted one.

  “How high?” said Sean.

  “Not sure.”

  “Well, that’s helpful.”

  Bren kept scanning the water, and when he looked up again he saw that he had fallen behind. Move your feet, he told himself, but when he looked down to tell his feet this directly, he saw it again—the dark shape, which passed through a ribbon of moonlight, revealing a dark, scaly back just breaking the surface of the water.

  “Wait for me!” he said, looking up and trusting his feet to move steadily across the rattan pole. Unlike the time the shark followed their longboat in the Indian Ocean, Bren wasn’t worried that Admiral Bowman had somehow turned himself into an alligator—he was worried about being eaten by an actual alligator. It took all his willpower not to look down, and his mind began to unspool one crazy thought after another, but before he knew it his foot stepped off the hard rattan pole and onto land, and he almost collapsed from relief. They all did, except for Yaozu.

  “Alligators have legs, you know.”

  They were all on their feet immediately, running up the hill until they reached the forest on the other side.

  “For the love of God, do we need to sleep in the trees?” said Sean. “How far will an alligator chase you?”

  They looked back down the hill. No alligator had emerged from the river.

  “Not far,” said Yaozu. “The Chinese alligator is actually quite docile.”

  “Docile?” Sean sputtered. “Then why the bloody hell did you make it sound like the thing might leap out of the water and snatch us to our deaths?”

  “You were moving so slow,” said Yaozu. “Like sloths. Enough time on the bridge already.”

  They all stood there, dumbstruck. Bren was afraid Sean might actually strike the Chinese man. But then suddenly, unexpectedly, Mouse burst out laughing. She could barely control herself, and her pure emotion was so unexpected that soon everyone else was laughing as well. Bren felt light as air, like he could float to the moon.

  “So will the bridge sink now or not until sunrise?” he said.

  “That I do not know,” said Yaozu. “Nor do I know how people got the bridge to appear in past times. But Mouse—or perhaps the stone itself—must have been our connection to the ancient magic.”

  “I told you,” said Barrett, not looking directly at Sean but obviously speaking to him. “We need her. And Bren.”

  The group gathered their meager things and walked a little way into the forest until they found a suitable place to camp for the night. Over the next several days, they descended out of the mountains into the plains, past more rice fields, but also cotton farms and orange groves. Sean seemed especially grateful when Barrett bargained with one of the farmers for some oranges, the sight and taste of which seemed to make him feel a bit less homesick. There was also a keeper of bees, who offered the travelers some honey, which Bren had never tasted before. He wondered if he would ever taste anything so delicious again.

  Almost against their will, their pace slowed, even though the going was far easier. The mountainous paths had been hard on their legs, and despite the beauty of the lush forest they had passed through, Bren had felt increasingly closed in by the encircling trunks and the canopy of leaves blocking the sky for days on end. Barrett’s single-minded determination to advance went wobbly, and even Yaozu seemed to want nothing more than to lie down among the orange groves and sleep.

  “I never understood the allure of a land of milk and honey, from the Good Book,” said Sean. “I never cared for cow’s milk, and I’d never tasted honey. But after trying that man’s honey and milk from whatever that creature was . . .”

  “Water buffalo,” said Yaozu.

  “Water buffalo,” Sean repeated. “I believe I could live on water buffalo’s milk and honey.”

  “Not rice?” said Yaozu.

  “A bit bland,” said Sean. “Like those potatoes they recently started foisting on us back home.”

  Bren had to agree. British and Dutch food wasn’t any better. Why did Europeans like everything to be bland, mushy, or fatty?

  “We should get going,” said Mouse, who was the only one standing up.

  “She’s right,” said Barrett, who remained lying down on her back with one leg bent at the knee and the other lazily thrown over it.

  “Look at those clouds!” gasped Sean, who was lying on his back as well.

  “I think you’re drunk on honey,” said Bren. “They look like ordinary clouds.”

  Bren, who had struggled to his feet, held his hands out to Sean. “Now come on, Mouse is right. We can’t stay here forever.”

  They eventually got moving again, although still at a sluggish pace, which didn’t improve when the plain gave way to mountains again. Up they went, past more trees and caves, streams and waterfalls. This time, though, when they reached a plateau, what Bren saw made his heart stop. The entire forest seemed to fall away into a vast chasm, its mouth as big as a small sea, and rising up from the abyss were thousands of towering stone pillars, some bare rock, some covered with small forests themselves. Below the rim, thick clouds gathered, as if they were standing above the sky itself.

  “How . . . how did such a place come into being?” said Bren. “It looks like an earthquake cratered the entire forest, except for a few columns of land.”

  “Reminds me of a cave,” said Barrett. “Those teethlike things that grow up from the ground and down from the ceiling. Except there is no ceiling.”

  “And no ground, either,” said Sean, staring down at the clouds.

  “This is the Forest Above the Clouds,” said Yaozu.

  “How do we get across?” said Barrett.

  Bren knew what the answer was already, and so did Barrett—the bridges Yaozu had warned them about.

  “We can’t just walk around?” said Sean. “It might take a bit longer. . . .”

  “Far too long,” said Yaozu. “Also, there are dangerous regions east and west.”

  “There must be a way to reach the bottom,” said Barrett.

  “There is,” said Yaozu. “And I will show you. But from the bottom there is only one way up, and one way out.” He pointed off to the northeast, across hundreds of the stone pillars, and at the limit of his sight Bren could just make out what could only barely be called a bridge—a thread of stone connecting the tops of two of the pillars. He knew it would look bigger up close. He dearly hoped that it would look much, much bigger, as well as shorter and wider.

  Yaozu showed them a steep path cut in the side of the chasm that zigzagged toward the bottom. It was a dizzying descent, and Bren was thankful for the carpet of clouds that kept him from seeing very far below. They went down and down for hours, until the path leveled out and they were walking across the floor of what had seemed like a bottomless drop from above. They rested and ate, and then kept going.

  “How long will it take to cross?” said Barrett.

  “Approximately twelve miles across,” said Yaozu, “but slow going. Will take two days.”

  Bren wanted to ask how high the pillars actually were, but decided against it. However, there was something else he was dying to know: “Yaozu, there must be folktales about these rock formations . . . what they look like, how they got here.”

  Yaozu smiled. “Why don’t you tell me one? What do you think? What do you see?”

  Bren hadn’t been expecting that. He paused and looked around the strange valley, at the petrifie
d fingers grasping for the sky. And he thought of the Chinese books the admiral had shared with him, and the types of stories they told, and the way they were told.

  “Before the Ancients,” Bren began, “before the Eight Immortals, there were two brothers, Sky and Earth. And Earth raised these great pillars to hold the Sky up, and in return, Sky had a daughter, the Cloud Empress, to give Earth rain. Later Earth had a son, whose job was to dig holes and trenches so the rain could become rivers and lakes and seas.”

  Yaozu nodded approvingly. “Go on.”

  “The son of Earth and the daughter of Sky fell in love, against their parents’ wishes, and when they sneaked off to be together, there was drought. This angered Earth, who in a fit of spite ripped the tops of these pillars from the Sky, leaving them only as tall as we see them today. His anger nearly caused his ruin, because the Sky would have come crashing down, except for a bargain struck at the last minute. The Cloud Empress would knit together enough clouds to support the Sky, but in return, Earth had to give his son to the Sky, and he became the Moon. Which is why the moon is a symbol of love.”

  Mouse applauded when Bren finished, and the others laughed. “You may be an Ancient, too,” said Yaozu, clasping Bren warmly on the arm.

  “So what’s the real story?” said Bren.

  Yaozu shrugged. “I don’t know one. Except yours now.”

  Bren smiled, pleased with himself. But the rest of the day’s walk would wear the smile off his face. Their path was rarely flat, and being so far below the rim made him feel trapped.

  “How the devil will we get to the bridges from here?” Barrett asked, her voice weary and full of frustration. “And why didn’t the people who carved out the path that took us down here just carve one back up?”

  “The other chasm walls are too sheer,” said Yaozu. “As to how we reach the bridges, we come to the way up now.”

  They broke into a clearing, where one of the stone pillars stood like a religious monument. From a distance they had seemed impossibly tall, but slender. Up close they were massive, as big around as some of the biggest buildings Bren had seen. And on this one in particular, there was a staircase, of a sort: iron rods that had been inserted into the stone, spiraling up and around the pillar.

  “You must be joking,” said Sean. “And it was the bridges you were worried about?”

  “Didn’t want to scare you all at once,” said Yaozu.

  “How high are these things?” said Barrett.

  “This one, perhaps six hundred feet,” said Yaozu. “But we only climb partway along the outside. You’ll see.”

  “What do we hold on to?” said Bren, his voice shaking.

  Yaozu stepped up onto the first stair and then took several more steps, demonstrating how to use the iron rods like the rungs of a ladder. An extremely high, curving ladder.

  “You’ve done this before,” said Sean.

  “As a very young boy. My cousin and I used the tunnel to sneak to the mainland and explore.”

  “And you came this far north once?” said Bren, suddenly admiring Yaozu more.

  “We were away from home without our parents’ permission for a month,” said Yaozu. When he noticed Bren smiling, he added, “The punishment kept me from ever doing it again.”

  “Keep talking,” said Sean. “I find your voice soothing.”

  And so Yaozu did keep talking, telling them all about how so many people in this part of China had been killed when the Ming invaded the Vast Land, much of which had tried to become independent again after the fall of the Mongols. “All throughout history, trouble in these parts,” said Yaozu. “Fertile land, important rivers and ports . . . rulers always want.”

  Bren was thankful for the time he had spent aloft on the mainmast of the Albatross, which had helped him conquer some fear of being so high and exposed at the same time. Although there was always the rigging that might save you if you fell. The ship’s mast was around a hundred feet tall, and Bren estimated they had climbed at least that high, and half again, when they came to a doorway carved into the pillar. Or perhaps it was a cave, he couldn’t tell for sure.

  “Oh thank God,” said Sean, practically throwing himself inside.

  “We still have far to go,” said Yaozu, “but for tonight we stay here.”

  After dinner, Bren wrote in his journal while Yaozu spoke to Mouse in Chinese. She clearly enjoyed using her native language, and Bren could tell from their body language that she was trying to explain to Yaozu how she read the oracle bones. Yaozu was fascinated by this long-lost ability of the Ancients surfacing in an eight-year-old orphan.

  At daybreak they climbed another hundred feet or so through a staircase carved into the pillar, until they saw daylight and then blue sky framed by a stone archway. They had come to the first of the two natural bridges, the Bridge of the Immortals.

  It wasn’t what any of them had been expecting. The bridge seemed to be nothing more than a handful of boulders that had collapsed between the two pillars, landing in such a way as to wedge themselves several hundred feet above the ground. And they hadn’t fallen in a perfectly straight line, either. The first “step” was several feet down from the edge, there was a V-shaped gap midway along, and the final stone was situated highest of all, so that they would have to climb it. The distance was short, but all Bren could think about was the rocks slipping, and plummeting to his death.

  “This is the Bridge of the Immortals?” said Sean. “As in, you think it looks like something Immortals would fancy as a bridge?”

  “No,” said Yaozu. “As in, so difficult to cross, only an Immortal would risk it. But we will be fine. Watch me.”

  Yaozu went first to show them how it could be done. He sat down on the edge of the cliff, adjusting his long tunic and trouser legs, and then half slid, half jumped to the stone below, landing in a crouch. He then took a two-step run up the sloping boulder, toward the V-shaped gap, and leaped across with the grace of a cat. The face of the second boulder sloped the opposite way, and so Yaozu had to stop his momentum by bracing himself against the tall face of the third boulder.

  Yaozu turned back to them. “Better idea. You come,” he said, pointing to Barrett.

  She nodded and plopped down on the edge of the cliff, imitating Yaozu’s methods. She jumped to the first step, paused, and leaped to the second, with Yaozu there to keep her from running into rock. Yaozu then bent over, joining his hands together like a stirrup.

  “Ah, yes, good idea indeed,” said Barrett, and she stepped into Yaozu’s hands and let herself be hoisted to the top of the step. From there she was able to reach the next step—a natural wart on the face of the cliff—on her own, and then she was on top of the pillar.

  “Not so bad,” she called back. “Just don’t look down.”

  Easier said than done, thought Bren, since you had to look down to jump to the first step. But to his relief, the boulder was so wide that when he sat at the cliff’s edge, almost all he could see was stone. In a matter of minutes, he was standing next to Barrett, as was Mouse. Yaozu helped Sean up to the top step, and then Sean pulled Yaozu up. They were all intact, at the top of one of the shorter stone pillars, but still dizzyingly high above the chasm.

  “One more bridge,” said Yaozu. “Much easier.”

  They walked for perhaps an hour through the forest at the top of the pillar until they came to the final bridge, the Bridge Across the Sky, which connected the pillar they were on to the other side of the chasm. This was the bridge they had spotted from so far away, the day they started out. And if anything, it looked to Bren even wispier and less substantial than it had from miles away. It was probably two hundred feet long, and maybe three feet wide, if the feet measuring it were the feet of children. They all just stood there as if thinking the same thing.

  “Easy?” said Sean.

  “Easier,” Yaozu corrected. “No jumping or climbing.”

  “It’s like a bloody circus tightrope!” said Barrett.

  Bren had only
seen such a thing once. Never at the circus, which had only come to London, but a daredevil had once strung a high rope from the roof of McNally’s Map Emporium to the Church of the Faithful in a misguided attempt to protest the close relationship between commerce and religion. He had fallen halfway and broken both his legs and his back. If you could make that big a mess of yourself from the height of Map’s tallest building, then what would you look like after falling from the Bridge Across the Sky?

  Bren immediately regretted having that thought.

  “Nature made this incredible bridge,” said Yaozu. “It likely did not anticipate your needs.”

  This time it was Mouse who took the lead, scuttling out to the middle of the bridge like a lizard. She stopped, turned around to face the stunned group, then ran the rest of the way.

  “See?” said Yaozu. “Even a child can do it.”

  “Yes,” said Barrett. “A mystical child with supernatural abilities.”

  But Yaozu wasn’t listening to any more complaints. He calmly walked out onto the bridge, never stopping or turning like Mouse, but keeping his eyes firmly fixed on his destination until he was standing on the other side. He turned and bowed, inviting the others to cross.

  “Fine,” said Barrett. “I’ll go next.” Her bravado was transparent, but it still made Sean bristle.

  “No, I’ll go next,” he said.

  “You follow me,” said Barrett. “Like always.” And before Sean could pick his flattened ego off the ground she had stepped confidently out onto the bridge, and with but a couple of hesitations was safely across in a matter of ten or fifteen minutes.

  Sean had no choice but to be brave after that. He marched across with the attitude of a man who thought he needed to cross the bridge faster than Lady Barrett. His pace made Bren nervous, but he made it, bowing sarcastically to Barrett and then turning to Bren. “Come on, Bren. Nothing to it.”

  Bren looked across the bridge, where the others were waiting.

  “Okay,” he said, and then again, “Okay.”

  He took a deep breath and fingered the stone around his neck for good luck as he walked to the edge of the bridge, looking down only long enough to orient his feet, and then he stared directly at Mouse, into her famously opaque eyes, as she stared back at him from across the distance. He felt a certain reassurance come over him. He needed her; she needed him. His black jade and her white jade, two parts of some whole that they would discover together. One couldn’t exist without the other.