“Nearly home?” he asked about ten-and-seven times each hour.
“Dinner time?” was his next favourite question.
“What’s that?” he asked every time he saw something he didn’t know the name of.
Ping had to explain everything from piglets to pawlonia trees, from winnowing to weaving looms.
Eventually Kai tired of asking questions and curled up between Ping and the boy—his nose on Jun’s lap— and went to sleep. Dong Fang Suo usually dozed as well, but it seemed he was not sleepy. He stared out of the carriage, absently winding his ribbons of office around his fingers.
For the first day since they had left the Garden of the Purple Dragon, the sky was clear. They had left the snow clouds in the south. The air was still cold but there was no wind. The faint aroma of cinnamon bark filled the carriage as the road left villages behind and wound its way through a cassia wood. Ping breathed in the fragrant air.
She was startled when Jun suddenly spoke to her.
“Have you lived at the imperial palace all your life?” he asked shyly, looking at her through his fringe.
Ping shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him anything about herself.
“Did you always know that you were a Dragonkeeper?”
She wanted the boy to think that she had been trained to be a Dragonkeeper since birth.
Kai woke from his nap.
“Story,” he said.
The tale of how Ping had become a Dragonkeeper was one of Kai’s favourite stories. He loved to hear about her adventures with his father. She relented. She would tell Kai the story aloud. He still needed to improve his understanding of speech. And Jun would hear it. Then he would know that her life had been harder than his. He would realise that she was the true Dragonkeeper—the one who had travelled with a wise old dragon, the one who had carried the dragon stone across the Empire, the one who had witnessed Kai’s birth.
She told him about Danzi and her years on Huangling Mountain. She explained how Hua had been her only friend. She showed the boy Danzi’s scale and the purple shard, but wouldn’t let him hold them.
“You have had a very exciting life,” Jun said enviously.
Dong Fang Suo, who had hardly said anything all morning, suddenly spoke.
“According to the old spell books, the shell of a dragon egg has many interesting properties,” he said, leaning forward and peering at the shard.
Ping felt a sudden possessiveness. She took it back from Jun, slipped it into her silk pouch with the dragon scale and continued her story.
She had got to the part where Danzi gave her the Dragonkeeper mirror.
“Each of Danzi’s true Dragonkeepers has carried this mirror,” she said proudly. “It is hundreds of years old.” She polished the mirror and held it out to Jun. “You can hold it if you’re very careful.”
She was telling the boy about how she’d defeated Diao and outwitted the necromancer when the carriage stopped. Ping had been so engrossed in telling her story that she hadn’t noticed the change in the countryside. They were returning to Ming Yang Lodge by a different route. The cassia wood had disappeared and the road was winding through a narrow valley. Steep cliffs of rock the colour of unpolished iron rose up on either side. The valley was just wide enough for a single carriage to pass through. Dong Fang Suo put his head out of the window to see what was happening.
The Imperial Magician seemed nervous—as if he couldn’t bear any delay. Ping didn’t see that there was any need to hurry. They had plenty of time to get back to Ming Yang before the Emperor’s festival. One of the guards came and explained that there was a rock in their path.
“We are harnessing the horses to it, so that it can be hauled out of the way,” the guard explained. “There will be time for you to get out and stretch your legs.”
He opened the carriage door.
“Where are we?” Ping asked.
“This is Twisting Snake Ravine,” Dong Fang Suo said.
The Imperial Magician stood up, changed his mind and sat down again.
Ping peered ahead at the rock that had stopped their progress. It didn’t look so big.
Kai suddenly said. “Pee.”
“Can’t you wait half an hour until we get out of this ravine?” Ping asked.
“No,” said the little dragon.
Ping knew it was not a good idea to argue with Kai on the subject. The last thing she wanted was the smell of dragon urine in the carriage.
The Imperial Magician suddenly grabbed hold of her sleeve.
“No, don’t get out, Ping.”
He looked like he had more to say, but the words appeared to get stuck in his throat.
“Pee now,” said Kai more urgently and hopped down from the carriage.
Ping shook Dong Fang Suo’s hand from her arm. “I have to keep an eye on Kai, so he doesn’t wander off.”
There was barely room between the rock face and the carriage for her to climb down.
Dark rock towered above them on both sides, so smooth and steep it looked as if it had been cut with a knife. A band of blue was all that could be seen of the sky. Ping had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched.
Kai sniffed around behind the carriage. It always took the dragon some time to find the right place to pee. He preferred a tree, but there were none. Several tufts of grass had forced their way between rocks. One spindly bush had managed to find a patch of earth to grow in. A few frail, pale flowers were struggling to stay alive. Kai sniffed at one rock after another.
“Hurry up, Kai,” said Ping impatiently.
Ping’s stomach ached. She remembered the last time her stomach hurt. She scanned the rock surfaces, but there was no ledge wide enough for anyone to conceal themselves on the cliffs. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the narrow space was eerily silent.
Jun jumped down from the carriage. He kicked a stone around.
Finally the little dragon decided that the bush met his requirements. He lifted his leg. A pool of dark green liquid spread over the dry earth. Ping stood at a distance to avoid the smell, thinking that the bush would be dead before nightfall. She waited. It always amazed her just how much urine one little dragon could hold. He finished at last, but then he started sniffing around the rocks.
“Kai, come here right now,” Ping scolded.
She went over to pick him up. As soon as she got near him, he scurried away with the tinkling sound of dragon laughter.
“I’m not playing games, Kai,” she said urgently.
She looked up and down the cliffs again. She saw a flash of light out of the corner of her eye. She turned to the carriage in time to see Jun with the little dragon under his arm jump up into the carriage. The boy had her mirror in his hand.
Ping was about to run towards the carriage, when something high on the opposite cliff caught her eye. It was a snake, black with orange bands. It must have been huge if she could see it from that distance. One of the snake’s eyes was looking straight at her. A glint of sunlight reflected in it. Ping couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. She tried to move but couldn’t. It was as if her feet had taken root in the earth. She heard the sound of the horse and carriage thundering away, but the snake’s eye wouldn’t release her gaze. She heard the two guards leap onto their horses and gallop after the carriage.
Then she heard a rumbling. At first she thought it was thunder. No rain was falling, but pebbles were showering on her. Larger rocks cascaded down. One struck her on the side of the head. The snake finally looked away and slithered across the rock high above. A shadow fell on her. She looked up. There was another rock falling. This one was as big as an ox. It was heading straight for her. Her feet agreed to move at last. But the rock was moving faster than she was. The band of blue sky disappeared.
• chapter twenty-one •
ONE GRAIN OF SAND
The ravine was as silent as it had been
before the rock fall. No birds were singing.
There was no wind.
Even though her eyes were open. Ping could see nothing. She hadn’t expected to see anything ever again—she had expected to be dead. Perhaps I’m a ghost, she thought. Perhaps ghosts can’t see. Or had the crashing boulder left her blind?
After a while she realised that the darkness had shades and in fact she could just see a sliver of light out of the corner of her left eye. She couldn’t move her head to look at it though. She was aware of various parts of her body—her head, her arms, her chest. They all hurt.
The boulder had crashed its way to the bottom of the ravine and come to rest up against the rock face. There was a small triangular space formed by the fallen rock, the cliff and the ground. It was no more than a few inches deep. Ping’s body lay in this narrow cavity, not crushed, but trapped. Her head was twisted to one side. The rock pressed against her cheek. Blood was running slowly down her neck. The boulder was squashing her chest, so she could only take small, shallow breaths. She couldn’t move at all.
As soon as she had seen the boulder hurtling towards her, she had known she was powerless to avoid its crushing weight. It was as if the rock had been poised for thousands of years on that hill, waiting for the moment when she stood beneath it, to fall, to crush her. As if a blast of qi power had dislodged it and aimed it straight for her. She should have been able to leap clear, but the snake had distracted her and then her feet had refused to move.
The ravine was as silent as it had been before the rock fall. No birds were singing. There was no wind. Neither were there any anxious voices, no sounds of digging, nor anyone calling her name. There was no voice in her head either. She couldn’t feel Kai. She was alone. Completely alone.
She tried to think of reasons why she should be alone. Her mind wasn’t working well. Perhaps Dong Fang Suo had gone for help. She waited. It was hard to tell how much time passed. No one came. The slender thread that had linked her to Kai had broken. He’d moved too far away. Dong Fang Suo hadn’t gone for help. He must have thought she was dead. Left her to rot in Twisting Snake Ravine. But she wasn’t dead. Not yet. Her death would be slow.
She heard a scratchy, scrabbling sound. Something furry brushed against her face. She smelt a certain ratty smell.
“Hua,” she said, though the sound came out like a frog’s croak. “I should have known you wouldn’t leave me.”
She felt something cool in her mouth. It was moist and sweet. Some sort of flower that contained nectar. Hua had been away looking for something to revive her.
There was only one way that she could survive. The rock would have to be moved. And there was only one way that the rock would move. She had to shift it herself.
There was no anger in her. Her anger over Jun had been squeezed out of her by the rock. She would have to find some other way to focus her qi power. She would need more than she had ever generated before.
She worked through all the mind exercises that Danzi had taught her. She pictured a garden full of peonies and counted each flower. She counted backwards from five hundreds.
She knew that she couldn’t summon enough qi power to lift the entire boulder. She imagined the angle of the rock against the cliff. Less power would be required to tip it sideways. She didn’t breathe, she didn’t move a muscle, all the qi within her was concentrated on shifting the boulder.
It didn’t move. Not even a hair’s breadth.
If Danzi had been there she could have done it. She would have been able to draw strength from him. He was far away though. Far, far away. She thought of her mirror. If she could feel the cool bronze, that might help. But she didn’t have the mirror. She had carried it with her ever since she had left Black Dragon Pool, but Jun had it now.
If the rock were no bigger than a melon, she still wouldn’t have had the strength to move it.
“I can’t do it.” Her voice was just a whisper.
But she had to. She had to find Kai.
She heard Hua scratching around in the sandy soil.
“You won’t be able to dig me out, Hua,” she said, but the rat kept scratching until he had made his way to her left hand.
Then she felt the rat place something in her palm. It was cold and smooth but had a sharp edge. She knew exactly what it was. It was the shard of dragon stone.
“Hua, you always know what I want even before I do.”
She touched the shard with her fingertips, feeling its smoothness and its sharpness. She felt her mind focus. She concentrated again, imagining her body covered all over with tiny ink dots, each one no bigger than a needle prick. She drew qi power from every single dot. She could feel the grainy surface of the rock pressing against her right cheek. This time she focused on just one small point on the boulder, a single grain of sand. The rest of the boulder didn’t exist. The ravine didn’t exist. There was nothing in the world but that one grain of sand. Sweat dripped from her brow. She felt the power within her form into the narrowest of beams. She focused it on the grain of sand. The boulder shifted. It tipped sideways, crashing over with a rush of air and a thud that shook the earth beneath her.
A cloud of dust slowly settled. The strip of blue sky above the ravine was the most beautiful thing Ping had ever seen. She didn’t move. She could feel Hua’s whiskers against her cheek. She tried to turn towards him, but couldn’t. There wasn’t a shu of strength left in her body. The rat ran off again.
Ping was sore and bruised, but she knew that she hadn’t broken any bones. It was her head that hurt most where the smaller rock had hit her. It ached and burned and made it hard for her to think. She had to think, she knew that, but she didn’t want to. There were images from before the rock fall. Not moving memories, just three still pictures as if someone had painted those moments so she wouldn’t forget them. She wished she could forget them. She wanted to go back to before the rock fall and make things happen a different way.
She looked at the three pictures. The first was of Dong Fang Suo. He was sitting silently in the carriage. There had been something different about the Imperial Magician that had been troubling her all that morning and she finally realised what it was. He had stopped smiling.
The second picture was of a snake, a black and orange snake that wouldn’t release her gaze. She’d seen another snake like that before, back on Tai Shan, the day the necromancer had killed her goat. The snake was the shape-changed necromancer, she was sure of it. He had sent the boulder down to kill her.
The final picture was of Kai. He had his ball clenched in his teeth. He was half-turned away from her, half-turned towards Jun. His eyes were hard like small brown pebbles.
She was sure that Dong Fang Suo was in league with the necromancer. Together they had conspired to kill her. She had told Liu Che that Kai could identify any potential Dragonkeepers. It was just an excuse so that the Emperor would let her bring him along, but Kai had done his job well—too well. He had convinced Dong Fang Suo that Jun wasn’t just a potential Dragonkeeper—but the only one.
The bamboo books had said clearly that Dragonkeepers were always the sons of either the Yu or the Huan family. Jun was left-handed, he had second sight and he could hear Kai’s words in his head. He had all the attributes of a Dragonkeeper. She had handed him the Dragonkeeper’s mirror herself. And Kai had liked him from the beginning. Had Kai accepted Jun as his keeper? It was the only reason she could think of for the misery she felt.
The loss of Kai was more painful than all her wounds and bruises. Just saying his name aloud hurt. It was as if she’d lost part of herself, some piece of her body that was as essential for life as her heart or lungs. She couldn’t feel his presence, couldn’t feel the thread joining her to him. But she was sure he wasn’t dead. She would have known if he was. Tears streamed down her face
How could she have believed that she was such an important person as an Imperial Dragonkeeper? What had come over her? Her life ever since she left Huangling seemed like a dream that she’d just woken from. The sort of dream where the more you think about it the harder it is to remember.
One by one the details of this previous dream life faded, until all memory of it vanished completely.
• chapter twenty-two •
A FIELD OF CABBAGES
When Ping opened her eyes, it was
daylight. She didn’t know where she was.
Hua returned with another nectar-filled flower. Ping felt the few drops of sweet liquid moisten her tongue and run down her throat. A tiny amount of strength returned to a spot somewhere near her left elbow. She used it to roll, slowly, painfully, onto her side. Then she could see Hua. His eyes were the colour of the sky. He was such a handsome rat, even with the chunk missing from his ear. She would have told him so, but she didn’t want to waste her energy in speaking. She had a big challenge ahead of her. She had to stand up.
Getting to her feet would take more energy than she had. Walking was unimaginable. She didn’t like the dark cliffs. She hated the way they loomed over her, threatening to come crashing down on her at any moment. She looked up at the strip of blue. She liked the blue. If she could get away from the rock there would be more blue. Hua sat beside her. Every so often he squeaked as if encouraging her to get up. She moved one muscle. Then another. It took so much concentration to move an arm, to turn her head. She knew that once she’d been able to run to get away from bad people. She knew she had done many complicated things like chopping vegetables, washing gowns. How clever her body had been once upon a time. She got to her knees. Then she had to rest for several minutes. It might have been longer. But she was determined. She would stand.
Her body felt as if it were made from rags. It seemed impossible that it could stand upright and support her weight without sagging and falling over. But Ping had already achieved the impossible once that day. She had to do it again. It took her a long time, but at last her weak, aching limbs agreed to take her weight, first on her knees, then on her feet.