The dark rock walls rose up on either side of her. They were falling. She covered her head with her arms, but no rocks came crashing down. She looked up again, then closed her eyes to stop the dark rock spinning around her head. It was just dizziness.
With a great effort, Ping lifted one foot and moved it forward. She stopped to rest. She didn’t know where she was going. She looked forward and then back. The twists in the ravine meant that she couldn’t see the road ahead or the road behind her. Which way would she go? It didn’t seem to matter. All she had to do was get away from the oppressive cliff walls. She lifted her other foot. She kept moving forward. It saved her the effort of having to turn around.
Eventually, her legs became used to supporting her again. Her feet remembered how to walk without her having to remind them to take every step. Hua ran alongside her, as she stumbled along, occasionally squeaking encouragement.
The steep cliffs on either side of the road slowly shrank to softer hills and then levelled out to rocky uneven ground. Grass and bushes found places to grow. She was out of the ravine at last, but there was no blue. The sky had turned grey. Ping stopped to rest. She was afraid that if she sat down, she wouldn’t be able to get up again.
She kept walking. It was cold, very cold. Her fingers and toes were numb. It grew dark. Water started to drip from the grey sky. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth to drink. What was that called? Rain. It drenched her, but she kept walking. She couldn’t remember where she was going. She was sure there was something important she should be doing.
Every now and again, Ping stopped dead in her tracks, overcome by a feeling that she had lost something, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
She touched the side of her aching head. It was sticky. She looked at her fingers but it was too dark to see what the sticky stuff was. If she didn’t know where she was going, what was the point of continuing? She stopped walking and sat down. Hua brought her some berries. She didn’t have the strength to eat them. Her eyelids were heavy, so she closed them.
When Ping opened her eyes, it was daylight. She didn’t know where she was. She was wet and cold, but her face was burning, her head throbbing. It wasn’t raining but she could hear the sound of running water. There was a stream, fast-flowing and deep. She crawled to it and drank deeply. She splashed cold water on her face. The stream was slurping and gurgling around rocks in a hurry to get somewhere. Since she had nowhere to go, she would follow the stream.
Ping trudged along the muddy bank, not looking ahead, placing one muddy foot in front of the other. Perhaps the stream was going to Ocean. She had been going to Ocean once, though she couldn’t think why. Perhaps she never got there. Perhaps that was where she was supposed to be going now.
Then she lost the stream. It snuck away when she wasn’t looking. She kept going anyway. She walked straight ahead, through woods, over fields. The sun wasn’t shining but she was hot, very hot. She was shivering, but sweat dripped off her.
Now she was in the middle of a field of cabbages. Someone was shouting at her, waving a hoe. People were gathering around her like flies around ox dung. It seemed like such a long time since she’d seen a face. They all looked so funny with their different shaped noses sticking out of the middle. She laughed. Some of them wore short aprons around their waists. Some held spades. They all had dirty hands. They were talking, but she couldn’t make any sense of their babbling.
Ping’s stomach suddenly began turning somersaults. The crowd parted and one woman stepped forward. The babble of voices died. The woman spoke and her words made sense.
“What happened to you?”
The woman’s voice echoed in her ears. It reverberated inside her head. Ping felt dizzy.
The voice spoke again. “Where are you from?”
Ping looked at the woman who was speaking. A word exploded inside her head. She tried to say the word, but her mouth had gone dry. Silver dust specks filled her eyes. The world was spinning again.
Ping woke inside a house that smelt of beeswax. She was lying on a couch, covered with a blanket made of undyed silk. Someone was leaning over her, splashing her face with cool water that smelt of jasmine flowers. It wasn’t the woman in the cabbage field; it was a girl.
The girl called out to someone outside the room. “She’s awake.”
She sounded annoyed as if she had better things to do than watch over a swooning stranger. The girl would have been pretty if she wasn’t scowling. Her hair was in a neat knot held in place with three combs, even though she couldn’t have been more than nine years old—far too young to be wearing combs in her hair.
The couch was in a well-furnished room. There was a polished table with legs carved into the shape of bears. The polished tabletop, which balanced on the bears’ heads, was the source of the beeswax smell. A silk painting hung on one wall. It was a picture of a scholar standing under a bough laden with cherry blossom. A woman entered the room. It was the woman from the cabbage field. She was carrying a small boy.
“Are you feeling better?” the woman asked, putting the child down.
Ping felt the whirling sensation. She didn’t dare look at the woman in case she fainted again. The emotions swirling inside made her tremble. There was fear, joy and anger, mixed with a desperate longing. Ping opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak.
“What’s wrong with her?” said the girl impatiently. “Is she dumb?”
Ping looked at the woman’s face. Her cheeks were plump, her lips soft. Her hair was neatly coiled but there were grey strands among the black. Her eyes were lined with black to accentuate their lovely shape. They were full of concern for the stranger lying on her couch.
“Your fever has broken,” she said.
The woman’s gown was made of finely spun hemp dyed dark blue. It had bands around the neck and cuffs in matching blue satin embroidered with small yellow flowers.
Ping pulled the length of red silk thread from under her gown. Her hand shook as she held out the bamboo square. The character on it was now almost too faint to read, but the woman’s face changed as soon as she saw it. The colour in her cheeks faded. The concern in her eyes changed to shock.
The girl peered at the character. “It says Ping.”
The woman nodded as she continued to stare at Ping. Now it was she who was speechless. Ping finally allowed herself to speak the word that had exploded in her mind back in the cabbage field.
“Mother.”
• chapter twenty-three •
REUNION
“Have you really seen a dragon?” Liang said.
Ping glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one
else could hear. She smiled down at the boy.
Ping wanted to throw her arms around her mother. She wanted to touch her, to hold her hands in her own. But her mother didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just stared at Ping. The expression in her eyes wasn’t one of unexpected joy. It seemed to Ping more like hurt.
A man came into the room. He was tall and well dressed.
“This is Ping,” Ping’s mother said in a whisper.
His brow furrowed. He looked at his wife.
“My eldest child,” Ping’s mother explained. “Ping, this is your stepfather Master Chang.”
The man looked at Ping in surprise. “Well,” was all he could manage to say.
He had the dark skin of a man who worked out in the sun, a thick moustache and a tuft of hair growing beneath his bottom lip. His serious face broke into a smile and he called for a servant to bring some broth.
“We were wondering who this stranger was who stumbled into our fields two days ago. We never imagined … He shook his head in wonder. “What happened to you? Were you on your way to visit your mother after all these years? Did you have an accident?”
What had happened to her? Ping couldn’t remember.
“I’ve cleaned the wound on your head,” Ping’s mother said. “It should start to heal now. It was a nasty blow. It must have caused you some m
emory loss.”
The servant handed her a lacquered cup, Ping raised it to her lips with shaking hands and sipped the broth.
“Take your time,” Master Chang said. “It will all come back.”
Ping’s mother was now bathing a cut on her hand. “You were holding a broken piece of stone, it was an unusual purple colour,” she said. “You held it so tight, it cut your hand.”
Ping was wearing a thin shift. She knew it wasn’t hers. She looked around. There was a gown on the end of the bed. It was dark red with a diamond pattern woven through it in green. The collar and cuffs were made of green silk. On top of the gown was a piece of purple stone.
“Your things are safe,” the girl said sulkily, “if that’s what you’re looking for.”
The girl handed her a white jade seal on a purple ribbon and a silk pouch. Ping held the jade in her hand. There was a dragon carved on one end. One corner was chipped. With trembling fingers she reached for the purple shard. Then she looked inside the pouch. There was a dull, rough thing about the size of a beech leaf. At first she didn’t know what it was. Then she remembered. It was a dragon’s scale.
Memories dripped back into her mind like raindrops from the corner of a roof. She remembered Huangling Mountain and a big green dragon. She remembered a dark, scary night and the sharp smell of pickle cooking. Her mind seemed to know that she couldn’t cope with remembering everything all at once. She remembered a beautiful purple stone with creamy swirls, and flying high above the world. She remembered meeting the Emperor. She saw him smile at her. There was a garden. With each drip the pain grew. She remembered the journey to interview the Yu family. She remembered a carriage racing away and leaving her behind, a boulder crashing from the cliff top. The final drops of memory trickled into Ping’s mind. She remembered Kai and how he’d been taken from her. She lay back on the couch and longed for forgetfulness to return.
“I think she’s going to faint again,” said the girl, without a hint of concern.
“Don’t crowd round her,” Master Chang said. “Open the shutters, Mei.”
“Would you tell me about my childhood,” Ping whispered. “I have no memory of it.”
Her mother sat in silence for a moment. From her face, Ping could tell it wasn’t going to be a happy tale. She sipped the broth to give her strength to hear it.
“Your father worked in the cinnabar mines. I never saw him from one year to the next. Then the work made him sick and he came home,” her mother said. “Just after your first brother was born.”
She didn’t look at Ping as she spoke, but stared into her lap. “I made a little money weaving bamboo baskets and hats to sell in the market, but I never earned enough to keep hunger very far away. It was a blessing from Heaven when Master Lan knocked on the door.”
The dizziness returned. Ping put the bowl down before she dropped it.
“A blessing?” she said in a small voice.
“He came to see your first brother. He said that the Huan family had a right to an imperial position. Apparently one of your father’s ancestors had held the position and it should have been passed on from father to son, but for some reason only left-handed boys could take up the position. Neither your father nor grandfather was left-handed. Master Lan pulled a plum from his bag and handed it to your first brother. He reached for it with his right hand. When he’d finished eating it, Master Lan asked him to toss the plum stone outside. Your first brother threw the stone with his right hand too. We begged Master Lan to accept him for the position even though he wasn’t left-handed. ‘What difference does it make which hand he uses?’ I said. ‘He will work hard like his father. His father worked himself almost to death.’ But he wouldn’t take him.”
Ping’s mother stole a glance at Ping, as if she couldn’t bear to look at her for too long.
“Then Master Lan noticed you winding thread onto a reel for me. ‘She uses the left hand,’ he said. We couldn’t understand why he was suddenly interested in you. Only men can take up imperial positions. ‘Does she ever seem to know in advance anything that’s going to happen?’ he asked. I thought it was a very strange thing to enquire about. But as it happened you did say something odd just before a neighbour died. I thought she just had an upset stomach, but you said ‘Auntie will be gone by morning’. She died the next day. Master Lan was very interested when I told him this.”
It seemed that, like Jun, Ping had also had the beginnings of second sight before she had ever laid eyes on a dragon.
“Your first brother was sick,” Ping’s mother was saying. “And he wasn’t getting better because he didn’t have enough to eat. I knew I couldn’t keep two children alive, so when he offered to take you to train as a lady’s maid, I agreed. If one child could live well and not be hungry, that was a good thing.”
Tears started to roll down Ping’s mother’s face. “Your father didn’t last the year out. Your first brother died two months later.”
Master Chang put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.
“I expected to hear from you, once you were settled in the palace,” Ping’s mother continued. “Master Lan said that, after a year or two of training, you would receive a generous allowance, and since all your needs would be provided for, you’d be able to send most of it to me.”
Ping could hardly believe her ears. Had Master Lan known that she was a Dragonkeeper all along, and told no one? Had he made her his slave, so that he could keep the position himself? She opened her mouth to speak. But no words came out.
“I sent a letter to Chang’an to tell Master Lan that I had moved to another town,” Ping’s mother continued, “but I never received any money.”
The sulky girl was standing with her arms folded. “I suppose she was too busy to send any.”
“Sssh, Mei,” said Master Chang. “Let your stepmother finish.”
“Heaven chose to smile on me, though,” Ping’s mother continued, wiping her eyes and patting her husband’s hand. “Master Chang had just lost his first wife. He had a young child and no one to care for her. He saved me from poverty and despair.”
Ping still didn’t speak, but thoughts were crowding her mind. How could she have let her young daughter go? How could she have not seen through Lan’s lies?
Master Chang smiled at his second wife. “It took years of hard work, but we are comfortable now.”
“Not as comfortable as she’s been at the imperial palace,” said Mei.
Though Ping’s gown was splattered with mud, it was made of fine cloth and her undergarment was padded with silk floss. They looked like they belonged to a rich woman. She had gold in her pouch, a silver comb in her hair and a jade seal of office hanging from her waist. Ping couldn’t deny that she was well-off.
“I wish I could live in a palace and not in this ordinary house,” Mei said.
Master Chang frowned at his daughter.
“Mei, go and tell Yi Min that there will be a guest eating with us tonight.”
The girl glared at Ping and stomped off to the kitchen.
“It’s amazing,” said Master Chang as if he’d just heard a storyteller’s tale. “Chance brought you here. And on the very day that your mother was in the fields to help with the final harvest before the snow.”
Ping knew it wasn’t chance that had brought her. She hadn’t been wandering aimlessly at all. Even though her mind was dazed with fever, her second sight had chosen her path for her.
Ping wanted to tell them that the imperial position Master Lan had given her was as his slave, that she’d had to sleep in the ox shed and clean pigsties. But there had been too much misery, too many years of loneliness and hunger to express in words.
“I was taken to Huangling Palace, not Chang’an,” she said instead.
“Where’s that?” asked Master Chang. “I’ve not heard of it.”
“It’s on the edge of the Empire far to the west. Your letter never reached me.”
Even if it had, Ping knew that Master Lan would have destroye
d it. Her mother believed that she had been living in imperial comfort. Ping wanted to pour it all out, every minute of unhappiness, every blow, every cruel word. She wanted to shake Mei and tell her how lucky she was. She wanted to explain how it felt to be so cold you couldn’t sleep, so hungry you’d eat scraps from the pig trough, so lonely you had no one in the world to turn to but a rat. Mei had something that was worth more than gold, more than fine clothes—she had a family.
Her mother had the plump, fragrant skin of a wealthy woman, but Ping could read her history in the lines on her face and the sorrow behind her eyes. The unexpected arrival of her daughter had ripped open a place inside her that she’d kept closed for years. If Ping told her the truth, it would only make her unhappy. Ping didn’t want that.
Master Chang took hold of the little boy’s hand and pulled him out from the protection of his mother’s gown.
“This is your second brother, Liang,” he said.
“Hello,” Ping said.
The little boy was too shy to speak. He peeked at Ping and then looked down at the floor.
Ping’s mother and stepfather asked her many questions about her life. She described the palace at Huangling (even though she’d only seen it in the dark, on the occasions she’d snuck in at night to explore). She spoke about the old Emperor (though she’d only met him once and had been under arrest at the time). She told them about the lovely Garden of the Purple Dragon. She proudly told them of her friendship with the young Emperor.
“What exactly are your duties, Ping?” her stepfather asked.
“I was the Imperial Dragonkeeper,” she answered. Even though she’d lost the position, she couldn’t stop a little bit of pride creeping into her voice.
Mei giggled. “Dragonkeeper? There’s no such thing as dragons. Everyone knows that.”
In that comfortable house, there was no hunger or hardship, and a busy town bustled outside the doors. Dragons didn’t seem to have a place there. Ping had no desire to change their minds. It was better this way. She wouldn’t have to tell them the whole heartbreaking story.