Dragon Moon (25 page)

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.

She could tell he was glad that Ping had angered the placid red dragon.

“You say you can make it rain,” she snapped. “If you can, why don’t you do it?”

“We don’t help humans.”

“It isn’t only people who die of thirst and hunger when there’s drought. All the creatures of the world need water to live.”

“We have all the water we need.”

“Why did Heaven give dragons the power to bring rain if not to use that power? Dragons are one of the four spiritual beings. The phoenix and the
qilin
have already disappeared from the earth. Whatever powers
they had have been lost to us. There are only dragons and tortoises left. Heaven put you on the earth and gave you unique powers for a reason.”

“You are just a little girl. You are not qualified to speak of such great matters,” Hei Lei snarled.

“I have a tongue, I can speak.”

“What have humans done to deserve our protection?”

“Nothing. People were given the honour of bonding with dragons and abused the privilege. I don’t blame you for choosing to live apart from people, but you still have a job to do in the world. If you don’t do it, you will change. You will become wild creatures, no different to eagles or leopards. Magnificent creatures to be sure, but you will lose your wisdom.”

Hei Lei snorted and stomped off. Ping stood alone, seething with frustration. Her bitter words echoed in her ears as if they were still in the air around her, trying to find someone who wanted to listen to them. She shook her head. She might as well have talked to herself.

Ping’s anger was still festering when the dragons woke from their nap. Kai spent time with the females most afternoons. They told him which plants and insects should be gathered for food and healing. They taught him how dragons conserved plants and populations of animals and insects, so that they never took too much and risked a food source dying out. Whenever an animal was killed, a portion of it was kept aside to be cut into
strips, soaked in one of the sulphurous pools and then dried in the sun for use in winter.

Ping had been allowed to join the female dragons when they were teaching Kai. Even though she couldn’t understand what they said, she had enjoyed sitting with the females. But she’d caused so much fuss that day—tripping the intruder alarm, upsetting Jiang—that she thought she had better keep to herself.

The role of female dragons in the cluster was crucial. Ping already knew that they acted as decision makers. They also looked after the treasure cave and memorised dragon lore so that it could be passed on. Kai loved spending time in the treasure cave, touching the precious objects and learning their histories. One of the most important jobs for the female dragons should have been to care for unhatched eggs and dragonlings. But there were none.

Ping waited until she could speak to Jiang alone.

“I’m sorry I spoke so harshly to you,” she said.

“You do not know our history,” the red dragon said. “You do not know what humans did to us at Long Gao Yuan.”

“Tell me,” Ping said. “Then I will know.”

Jiang said nothing, but she didn’t walk away. Finally she spoke.

“There was not one dragon hunter, but many. For some reason they put aside their rivalries and banded together. I don’t know how they discovered our haven.
They waited for winter to begin. When we had been asleep in our pools for just a few days, they crept up to Long Gao Yuan. We had grown careless. We had stopped keeping watch. The dragon hunters had a sorcerer as an ally. He had prepared a strong sleeping potion to put in the pools. The hunters didn’t want to poison us—our organs would have been worthless. Instead they wanted to paralyse us so that we were easy prey, unable to fight back. In those days, we all spent the winter in the pools. All except Hei Lei. Black dragons never sleep in water. He was sleeping in the cave when they came. He attacked the dragon hunters but there were too many of them. The potion paralysed us for a few hours. The dragon hunters had prepared many iron weapons—swords, spears, hooks. Some were sharp and shiny, others had been left to rust. The hunters attacked us while we slept, hacking us to pieces one by one. The sharp weapons killed outright, the rusty ones made unbearably painful wounds.”

Ping wept as Jiang continued the tale.

“Just seven were able to resist the potion enough to escape. Hei Lei was badly wounded, so was my mother. It was her last flight. She flew only a short way, then crashed to the ground. But winter was deepening and the hunters couldn’t risk staying to track down those who had escaped. They were content with their kill. It was difficult enough for them to carry away their awful plunder. They left the bones.”

Ping couldn’t speak. She searched for words as the image of the pile of bones at Long Gao Yuan swam in front of her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

“We no longer hibernate, we have to stay alert, and no humans were allowed in our haven—until you came along.”

The fire dragon’s jet of steaming water spurted into the air. Jiang turned and made her way to the orange pool.

Ping sat thinking about Jiang’s story. She felt drained and miserable. The sky was darkening and Ping shivered. She had been in the dragon haven for almost a month. Summer was nearly over. The days were still warm and cloudless, but they were getting shorter, and after sunset, the breeze had a sharp edge to it. A full moon slowly rose above the jagged black peaks of the distant mountains.

Kai was looking up at the night sky. “It’s the dragon moon,” he said. “Tonight all the dragons will take part in the gathering. It will last until the dragon moon fades into dawn. Each dragon will take a turn to speak.”

The moon hung above them, pale yellow, like some sort of luminous fruit. It seemed so close that Ping felt she could reach out and pluck it from the sky.

“Kai is going to speak at a moon gathering for the first time,” the little dragon told her.

“What will you speak about?” Ping asked. She could
tell by the tone of his voice that it was an important occasion.

“Kai will tell them the story of the dragon who redrew the riverbeds for Da Yu after the great flood, and the tale of Ying Long, the dragon who fought alongside the first emperor in the battle against the rebel Chi You.”

“Don’t they know these stories?” she asked.

“They know parts of them, but not the whole stories.”

Ping felt a swell of pride. She had taught those stories to Kai.

“Also tell them about Father and Kai being dragons of the Empire,” he added.

Ping half-wished Kai would keep silent about those times. The little dragon had experienced imperial comfort, but he had also endured pain and distress at the hands of the Emperor. So had Danzi. It was Kai’s life story, though, and he was entitled to recount it as he wished.

The steam rising from the gathering pool had an orange tinge to it. It drifted eerily across the moonlit plateau. The dragons, all of them, slowly walked through the mist towards the pool. Kai followed them. For the first time, the males climbed respectfully into the orange waters.

Ping imagined them telling the stories of their long lives and yearned to hear them. They each spoke longer
than on other nights. Ping wrapped herself in her bearskin ready to sit out the night with them.

The dragons glowed brighter under the dragon moon. Sitting together in the moonlight they looked like an outcrop of strangely-shaped rocks, glittering with minerals. The red dragons’ scales blushed rosy pink. The yellow dragons were flecked with gold as the moonlight reflected on the texture of their scales. The white dragons’ scales were speckled with silver. Hei Lei’s scales were lit with streaks of steely grey, like glints from a polished sword. Kai glowed from head to foot. His scales were luminous green, like a jade vase that was lit from within. Ping wished she could wade into the pool and that the orange waters would magically give her the ability to understand what the dragons were saying. But she hung back as she always did, sitting at the entrance of her cave, watching the magnificent creatures from a distance. She had to be content with the knowledge that she was the only person who had ever seen such a sight.

When his turn came, Kai’s unfamiliar dragon voice was clear and confident. The other dragons listened carefully to what he had to say. When he had finished, they asked quiet questions, which Kai answered confidently.

When it was Sha’s turn, to Ping’s surprise, the yellow dragon stood up and made a sound like she had never heard before. It was a melodic sound, as if Sha was
singing, but it was more like a drone, a humming. It was achingly sad. Ping thought she must be singing to her dragonlings, who had died before they were hatched. It made the hairs on the back of Ping’s neck stand on end.

Hei Lei’s voice was deeper than the other dragons’. He spoke firmly and without pause. He didn’t speak as long as the others and there was a silence after he finished, as if the others were pondering his words.

Gu Hong spoke next. Her speech was more faltering, her voice soft. Ping had wanted to sit up all night, but the sound of the dragons’ voices lulled her to sleep.

Ping woke with a start. It was still dark. There was a pain in her stomach. A sharp pain that made her cry out. Her heart thudded in her chest. She struggled to her knees, but she couldn’t stand up. She’d never felt such pain. It radiated from her stomach all over her body to the tips of her fingers and toes. It felt like her bones were being ground to powder. The pain shut out everything else. She couldn’t move. She could barely think. Deep breathing helped her to clear the pain from a small space in her mind.