Dragon Moon (7 page)

As Kai recounted the story of how he’d been stuck inside a vase at Ming Yang Lodge, more than half of Ping’s attention was on what they would eat for their evening meal. She saw a slight movement out of the corner of her eye. It looked like something had fallen from the saddlebag. She stopped and looked back.

“Did you drop something, Kai?” she asked.

“No,” the dragon replied.

“Are you sure?”

As she checked the ties on the bag, she noticed something lying on the road behind them. She went back to pick it up. It was one of Kai’s purple scales.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked anxiously, hurrying back to the dragon and feeling the tips of his ears. “Do you have a fever?”

“Kai is feeling well.”

He scratched himself behind his left shoulder. Another scale fell off.

“Is it the bag? It must be rubbing your scales and making them fall out.”

“No, Kai’s scales are tough, like a soldier’s armour.”

Ping made the dragon sit down while she looked at his tongue, felt his pulse at each ankle, and peered into his eyes. He seemed to be perfectly healthy. As she examined his scales, another one came off in her hand.

“What’s happening to you, Kai?” exclaimed Ping, now very alarmed. “Why are your scales falling out?”

“Moulting,” Kai said calmly.

“Moulting?”

“Like goats losing their winter coat. Like a snake changing its skin.”

Ping looked closer at the part of the dragon’s hide where this latest scale had fallen out. In the space between the hard, leathery purple scales there was a soft new one. It was pale green and shimmered when it caught the sun. There were more pale green patches where the other scales had fallen out.

“You’re changing colour,” Ping said in amazement. “The purple scales must be your baby scales.”

Kai twisted his neck and lifted his leg to try and see. He lost his balance and fell over. He rolled on his back, but still couldn’t get a glimpse of his new scales.

“What colour are they?” he asked.

“Green,” Ping said. “A beautiful, soft green like new spring grass.”

Kai made tinkling sounds. “Same as Father,” he said.

She smiled. “Yes. The same as Danzi.”

He dug a hole and scooped the purple scales into it, then covered them over with dirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t want people to find scales.”

Ping set a fast pace, but their progress was much slower than when they had been in the carriage. At the palace she’d grown used to getting whatever she wanted as soon as she spoke it aloud. Now she would have to learn to be patient all over again.

Late in the afternoon, they were walking through a sparsely wooded area. Buds, already turning brown at their tips, were struggling to open on the spindly trees. There was no spring grass to cushion their steps. Last year’s dry yellow grass crunched beneath their feet. Flowers should have been opening, but there were none. Kai suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.
He looked into the gloom, peering at a particular tree.

“What?” asked Ping anxiously. “Do you see danger? Can you smell something?”

The sound of tinkling wind chimes rang out. “Swallows!” he said and ran off.

Kai’s favourite food was also the same as his father’s.

Kai’s hunting techniques needed improvement. His lumbering approach gave the swallows plenty of warning. There was no tasty bird for dinner that night. Ping was disappointed. She had developed quite a taste for roasted swallow herself. They ate a decent meal of beancurd and grain, but they were both used to the palace banquets. The meal didn’t fill Kai up. He managed to catch some moths, but he was much too big to be satisfied by a few insects. He poked his head into the saddlebag.

“Any baked quails?” he asked hopefully.

Ping shook her head.

“Honey cakes?”

“No.”

The spines along the dragon’s back drooped. Another scale fell out.

“You can have a jujube,” Ping said. “Just one.”

She handed him the dried fruit and took one for herself.

Lumps of dirt suddenly flew in her direction, striking her on the face and collecting in her lap. Ping had never seen Kai make a nest before. First he dug a hole with his
strong front talons—taking great care that it was just the right size for his coiled body, but paying no attention to where the excavated soil went. Then he collected dried grass and leaves to fill the hole and lay his bearskin on top. Finally he jumped onto the bed and wriggled around until it was comfortable. He was soon asleep.

The sky was clear. It had been a long time since Ping had been out in the open at night. The black sky, studded with countless stars, was huge compared to the square of night sky she’d grown used to seeing above the courtyard at Beibai Palace. The vast blackness surrounded her. It made her feel as small as an ant, and sucked away her daytime confidence. What exactly was she doing? Wandering in unknown lands following the puzzling directions of an absent and ancient dragon scribbled hastily on a scrap of fabric, guided by a riddle obtained by juggling plant stalks. It was as if she were looking for one particular star among the many thousands. At night, she wasn’t so sure that she could find it.

Ping huddled into her bearskin. The clear sky also meant that it was a cold night. Though she didn’t miss the spines sticking into her side, she did miss the dragon’s warmth. She could hear snoring coming from Kai’s nest. She wondered if she should dig a hole to sleep in, but she was too weary. She pulled the bearskin around her. She would have to get used to sleeping out in the open all over again.

Ping liked being out in the countryside again, with no one but herself and Kai deciding when they ate and slept. Palace life had been comfortable, but it was confined and unvaried, and she was often bored. She preferred a life that kept pace with the slow march of the sun across the sky: the constant search for the next meal, somewhere to fill the water bag, a comfortable place to sleep. She enjoyed the pleasure of discovery as she caught sight of a plant she’d never seen before or a new species of bird. Just the way the colour of the
earth gradually changed was a delight. Everyday there was a new horizon.

Over the next few days, Ping estimated that they travelled about a hundred
li
. It was a good pace, but they were still at least two weeks from reaching Dragon’s Lament Creek. They hadn’t followed the main road. Ping wanted to avoid contact with people as much as possible, and she didn’t want the Duke’s soldiers to find them again. The track they were travelling on skirted a small hill. A few goats were searching for any remaining blades of grass on its brown slopes.

Ping heard voices ahead of them. The dragon, whose hearing wasn’t as sharp as hers, hadn’t heard anything.

“Quick, Kai, shape-change!” she hissed. “Someone’s approaching.”

The air around the dragon began to shimmer. Ping looked away while the transformation took place. Watching a dragon shape-change made her feel sick. When she looked back, instead of a purple dragon, there was a young boy aged about six. It was an image of Ping’s own brother. Kai had never met him. The dragon had copied her memory of her brother the last time she had seen him. He would be a year and a half older now. It was Kai’s favourite image when shape-changing.

Ping put her hand on the shoulder of the young boy standing beside her. Though her fingers appeared to rest on the smooth cloth of the boy’s robe, she actually felt the rough texture of dragon scales. Three people
appeared on the track in front of them. Ping got ready to greet them politely and then quickly continue on her way. When they caught sight of her and the boy, they stopped and stared, whispering loudly to each other. Then they turned and ran back the way they had come.

“Don’t change back yet, Kai,” Ping told the dragon. “They might be coming back.”

They rounded the hill and found a crowd of people waiting for them. They seemed very pleased to see the strangers. The people were dressed in worn gowns and the children were dirty. Their fields were just dusty, brown squares of earth. Their only crop was some wilted winter greens, but they were smiling as they led Ping and Kai to a small village.

The village gates were open and what looked like the entire population of the village was rushing out to meet them. They lined both sides of the track, cheering and waving coloured silk scarves. Ping couldn’t understand why they were making such a fuss.

The village elder, a wrinkled old man with a stooped back and a limp, stepped forward. His pale, watery eyes were fixed on the young boy at Ping’s side. She pulled Kai towards her, but the old man’s knobbly fingers reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. Ping knew he was feeling a rough, scaly hide instead of the robes of a young boy. She waited for him to collapse unconscious, which was the usual reaction when someone unexpectedly
touched a shape-changed dragon. But the elder didn’t pass out. His thin lips pulled apart in a smile, pushing aside the wrinkles on his face to make room for a set of stained teeth.

“It’s the dragon!” he shouted. “He’s come to answer our prayers!”

“How did you know he was a dragon?” Ping asked.

“News spreads even to our humble village,” the elder said. “Word came from Beibai Palace to look out for a young girl and a dragon in the shape of a boy.”

Ping realised for the first time that if someone knew they were touching a shape-changed dragon, they would have no reaction.

People cheered and pushed forward, all wanting to touch the dragon for luck. Other hands grabbed Ping’s sleeves and pulled her towards the village gates. There were still several hours of daylight left. She had planned on walking until nightfall.

“We have a long way to travel,” Ping protested. “We can’t stop.”

“You must stay and eat with us, bless our humble village with a visit.”

The smell of something delicious wafted through the gates and Ping’s resolve melted away. Since they all knew who the boy at her side was, there didn’t seem any point in Kai staying shape-changed. The villagers gasped and looked a little queasy as he transformed, but once he was in his dragon shape, they cheered even louder.

“Welcome, dragon! Welcome, dragon-girl!” they shouted.

It had been a week since anyone had made a fuss of Kai. He was quite happy to be the centre of attention again.

They were taken to the elder’s house and invited to sit in front of a blazing fire. A smiling woman gave Ping wine and Kai a bowl of goat’s milk. Then they were given dishes of gruel followed by stewed melon sweetened with honey.

Ping learned that the villagers had been watching for them ever since word arrived that the dragon had left the palace. News of the dragon that lived at Beibai Palace had spread throughout Yan. Every village had to provide a certain number of soldiers to protect Yan, and when they returned home they were forbidden to talk of the dragon. But it seemed that few of them had obeyed this rule. The villagers knew all about Kai’s antics at the palace. Everyone wanted a chance to touch the lucky dragon before he left Yan for good.

“We were rationing our food, preparing for another bad year, but now that the dragon has come to bring rain, we can celebrate,” the elder said. “The Duke promised to send us grain so that we don’t go hungry, but I will send a message to say we won’t be needing it.”

“You mustn’t do that,” Ping said, but no one took any notice.

The food was simple fare compared to what they had
eaten at the palace, but it was tasty and there was plenty of it.

“Kai can’t make it rain,” the dragon said to Ping.

“I know,” said Ping. “But they think you can. Even if we tell them you can’t, they probably won’t believe us.”

She felt guilty that the villagers believed that Kai could bring rain, but nothing she said would convince them otherwise. Danzi had made it rain once. He had flown above a cloud and by spitting on it, he had made the rain fall. But Kai would need two things to achieve this—wings and clouds. He had neither. Dragons could make rain fall from existing clouds, but they couldn’t conjure rain from nothing.

That evening, all the villagers, adults and children alike, gathered to hear Ping tell her story. Since they were feeding her and giving her the best accommodation in the village, Ping didn’t feel she could refuse. Everyone sat spellbound as she told the story of her and Danzi’s journey to Ocean. She described Kai’s birth. The villagers gasped as she told them of her dealings with the necromancer.

Ping was exhausted, but no one seemed to notice. Kai was curled up asleep on the pile of animal skins that had been brought for him to sit on. Small children gradually gathered up the courage to tiptoe forward and touch his scales.

Ping showed the villagers Danzi’s scale and her
Dragonkeeper’s mirror. They were passed from hand to hand, touched reverently. The village elder stepped forward.

“Could you tell us just one more tale?” he asked. “The tale of your flight from Huangling Palace perhaps?”

A woman handed back the mirror. It was warm from so much handling. Ping fingered it.

“I really am tired,” she said. Too tired, she thought to herself. I’m almost asleep standing up.

As she rolled the mirror in her hands, it caught the firelight and a beam of orange light deflected into the elder’s eyes.

“She’s too tired,” the old man said. “We must let her rest.”

Ping was surprised that he’d given in so quickly. There were groans of disappointment, but no one argued with the elder. A woman led her to a room. Ping sank gratefully onto a straw mattress.

This was the sort of reception they would get everywhere on their journey. Word would spread before them wherever they went, even if the villages were few and far between. The elder of this village had relatives that lived outside Yan. He had already let them know of the dragon’s approach. Villages would be vying for the privilege of having the dragon visit them, so that he would bring them the gift of rain. And if the spring rains didn’t arrive, their joy would soon turn to anger.