She kept going over and over the events of the morning, trying to think of why someone had killed the goat. She could only come up with one answer. Someone had wanted to frighten her. Questions crowded her head. Where would they sleep? What would they eat? How could she get another goat?
Her gown clung to her skin, wet and heavy. The cold penetrated her bones. Kai whimpered. She held him close, hoping that some of his body heat would find its way through his scales and warm her. She had planned to walk until sunset, but she was already exhausted.
Each step was an effort. Her legs ached from the unaccustomed walking. Her arms hurt from carrying Kai. Her head was throbbing from trying to work out what she should do.
She put Kai down. “Walk in front of me where I can see you.”
The little dragon was too frightened to wander off. He wanted to keep as close to Ping as possible. Every now and again he suddenly stopped and shape-changed into something—a large leaf, a rabbit, a pile of dung—and Ping tripped over him. She showed him how to walk behind her, holding the hem of her gown in his mouth so they didn’t lose each other.
Ping began to think that leaving Black Dragon Pool had been a mistake. Perhaps she’d over-reacted. She tried to think of other explanations. A hungry mountain hermit might have come across the goat, but she’d disturbed him before he had the chance to carry the dead animal away. A goatherd could have seen the goat and thought that Ping had stolen one of his flock. A shaman might have climbed up the sacred mountain to give an offering to Heaven, seen the smoke from her fire and decided to punish her for venturing onto the forbidden slopes of Tai Shan. None of her theories made her feel any easier.
She stumbled on through the fog. When she walked into a boulder, she realised that she had left the track and was up to her knees in wet grass. The path wasn’t the only thing she’d lost. Kai was no longer holding on to the hem of her gown.
“Where are you, Kai?” she called and then tripped over him where he had stopped in the long grass. He whimpered miserably. Hua was sheltered between Kai’s feet.
A flash of anger did nothing to warm her numb body. She was angry with the nameless person who had forced her from Black Dragon Pool. Angry that she was so powerless. Then Ping was vaguely aware of a sensation she hadn’t felt for a long time. Something was drawing her, as if an invisible thread were tied to her and someone at the other end was pulling it. It encouraged her. She picked up Kai, and followed the thread.
An hour later, a dark, squarish shape loomed out of the fog. It was a hut. This was what had been drawing her. Somehow she had known that the hut was there. She also knew that there was no one inside. Ping lifted the latch and entered.
The hut was small, just one room. The only light came through a hole in the ceiling designed to let out smoke from a fire-place in the middle of the room. A straw mattress hung over the rafters. Ping found a neat stack of chopped wood, a basket containing folded sheepskins and a chest packed with food. Compared to the chilly cave they’d left behind, the hut was luxurious.
Hua climbed up into the rafters and found a large selection of insects for Kai. Ping ate salted meat, dried fruit and nuts from the food chest. After she’d eaten, she pulled down the straw mattress and made a bed on the floor. Kai didn’t need any encouragement. He was curled up under the sheepskins in moments. Ping crawled in alongside him.
She had almost forgotten about her second sight. Living a simple life at Black Dragon Pool, she’d had no need for it. When she really wanted to find something she could concentrate her mind and somehow she was drawn to it. That’s what had led her to the hut. Anger could rouse her second sight unbidden, but she had started to learn how to summon it at will. Her second sight also gave her warning of danger—a sense of dread, like the hard mass she had felt in her stomach when the goat was killed.
Ping felt as warm as a baked taro root. The delicious, almost forgotten, taste of orchard-grown nuts and fruit lingered in her mouth. The hut was a perfect place to spend the winter.
• chapter seven •
A SHEPHERD’S HUT
“Dragons can stay underwater for weeks,”
she told Hua, as she peered uneasily through
the weed. “I don’t know how they do it. They
must be able to breathe water like fish do.”
When Ping woke the next morning, she got up and opened the window shutters. Daylight flooded in. She’d slept late. The food chest was open. Nuts and dried beans were scattered on the floor. Several dried plums had distinctly dragonish teeth marks in them. Kai was squawking miserably. He didn’t like the shepherd’s food. He was hungry.
The door opened a crack. Hua came in carrying three moths which he put next to the large mushroom that he’d already collected.
“Look. Hua has brought us breakfast.”
Ping lit a little fire and cooked the mushroom in the coals. The moths didn’t satisfy the hungry dragon. Hua seemed to understand that Kai would need more food now that they didn’t have a goat to provide milk. He scurried off again and a little while later returned with a bird’s egg in his mouth.
“Hua! You know what I want even before I do!” she exclaimed.
The rat put the egg down in front of the dragon. Kai sniffed it and rolled it around with his nose. Then squawked unhappily at Ping.
Ping laughed. “Give it to me, Hua.”
Hua brought the egg over to her. She looked into the rat’s bright blue eyes. She could see a glimmer of understanding that was missing even in the eyes of some people she had known. There would be useful knowledge inside the rat’s furry little head, she was sure of that.
“If only I knew what you were thinking,” Ping said.
She broke the egg into a bowl and Kai ate it raw.
Perhaps Danzi had sent the rat to help her. He might not have had the strength to fly all the way back from the Isle of the Blest. She tried to picture the old dragon healed and happy on the Isle of the Blest, sitting in the sunlight, eating peaches of immortality, sipping on the water of life. Whatever the reason, she was glad Hua had returned.
After breakfast they went outside. The walls of the hut were constructed from saplings and bark. The roof was made of neatly woven bundles of grass held in place with rocks. It was well built and Ping was sure it would keep out wind and rain. Around the side of the hut, under the shelter of the eaves, was a spade and more neatly stacked chopped wood. From the way the sheepskins and food store had been carefully packed away, she suspected the hut belonged to a shepherd who had taken his flock back to his village for the winter.
The hut was built on a narrow terrace that had been cut into the hillside. The shepherd had chosen the position well. A meadow for grazing sheep sloped gently down the hill in front of the hut. From the door there was a lovely view of two mountain peaks. In the narrow space between the peaks, Ping could see the plain reaching to the horizon. She could just make out a small village. Perhaps that was where the shepherd lived.
Behind the hut, was a steep hill. Behind that was another hill, steeper and higher than the first. The peaks of Tai Shan were beyond that. It was good to have the dark mountain at a comfortable distance, not looming over her every move as it had done at Black Dragon Pool. They had walked a long way.
The few clouds kept their distance from the sun and Ping was enjoying its warmth. Her fear had disappeared with the fog.
“I’m sure the shepherd won’t be returning till spring,” Ping said to Hua. “We can spend winter here. But we have to be much more careful than we were before.”
She went back inside and put out her little fire. “There might be someone in the village keen-sighted enough to see the smoke. We’ll have to leave lighting a fire until after dark.”
She picked up her bucket. “Come on, Hua. Let’s go and explore. We need to find water.”
Kai squawked plaintively when she set off.
“You can come too, but I’m not carrying you.”
The little dragon followed her.
In summer, the meadow would be studded with flowers, but this morning it was covered with small snails, coaxed from their hiding places by overnight rain. Kai liked snails. Ping collected some for him.
She could see no sign of a pool or stream. To the west of the hut, an outcrop of large rectangular rocks scarred the smooth green slope. It looked as if a piece of the mountain had broken off a long time ago, and tumbled all the way down to this slope where it had lodged and become part of the landscape.
“Perhaps there’s a stream over there,” she said to Hua.
The rocks were taller than Ping. A path led through them to a flat rock platform. In the middle was a hole that was full of water.
Ping smiled. “I knew the shepherd wouldn’t have built his hut far from water.”
The pool was much smaller than Black Dragon Pool, less than a chang across. It was more like a well, but formed by nature, not dug by men. There was no waterfall tumbling into it, no stream rushing to fill it, just a still pool. Whether the well was filled by rain or from an underground source, Ping couldn’t tell. A mesh of slimy waterweed floating on the surface made it impossible to see how deep the water was. Ping pushed aside the weed and cupped some of the water in her hands. It had a greenish look to it. She tasted it. It wasn’t as sweet as the water in Black Dragon Pool, but if it was good enough for the shepherd, it was certainly good enough for her. She dipped her bucket in.
Kai came up to the edge of the pool and sniffed the water. Then he dived in and disappeared beneath the surface.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” Ping said to Hua.
After the experience at Black Dragon Pool, Ping knew there was no reason to worry. The little dragon always surfaced again—eventually.
“Dragons can stay underwater for weeks,” she told Hua, as she peered uneasily through the weed. “I don’t know how they do it. They must be able to breathe water like fish do.”
Ping found herself holding her breath, as if she were the one underwater relying on just the small amount of air she could hold in her lungs. She finally had to take a breath. Perhaps food would entice Kai out of the water. She took the snails out of her pouch and set them down on the rock, wiping her slimy hand on the hem of her gown. The snails slowly emerged from their shells and started to crawl away.
“Where are you, Kai?” Ping called. “You’d better hurry, your meal is escaping.”
She remembered the mirror. She pulled it out of her pouch and angled it so that it caught the rays of the sun. The mirror flashed. A few moments later Kai resurfaced. Ping took a deep breath. The little dragon pulled himself up out of the water. He had green weed draped over his head and a happy expression on his face. The water seemed to revitalise him. He shook himself, showering Ping with drops of water, and went over to the snails. He looked at her expectantly.
“You’re supposed to crack them open yourself,” Ping complained as she squashed the snails with a stone. “What would you do without me?”
Kai snuffled through the broken shells to find the snail meat. Ping scratched the little dragon’s head. There were a number of places he liked to be scratched—in his left armpit, between the pads of his paws, in the wrinkles around his nose. He liked to be scratched almost anywhere except under the chin, which was strange because the soft spot under his chin was where Danzi had liked to be scratched. Kai’s favourite tickle spot was around the bumps on his head where his horns would eventually grow hundreds of years from now. Thinking about the little dragon’s future made her anxious. She hoped things would get easier as he grew, but she couldn’t be sure. Kai nipped her fingers, which was his way of saying he’d had enough scratching. He went back to licking out the crushed snail shells to make sure he hadn’t missed any flesh. Ping smiled as the dragon chased a piece of shell among the rocks with his long red tongue.
As she walked back to the hut, she thought about the invisible thread that had drawn her to this place. Danzi had explained to her that second sight developed after spending time with a dragon.
“I’d forgotten so many things Danzi told me,” Ping said. “I’d forgotten about my second sight and my qi power. I don’t even know if I can still summon it.”
Qi was the life force that flowed through all living things. The old dragon had taught her how to harness the qi within her so that she had the strength to fend off attackers much stronger than herself. She could also make the concentrated energy shoot from her fingertips. It had taken many weeks of practice to master this skill.
“It’s been so long since I practised the qi exercises,” Ping said to Hua. “If we hadn’t left Black Dragon Pool, I might have completely forgotten about Danzi’s teachings.”
Every event under Heaven has its reason—or so the old dragon had told her.
She stood on the grassy slope outside the shepherd’s hut and faced the lowering sun. She took deep breaths just as Danzi had instructed her, breathing in the sunlit air. Morning sunlight was richest in qi, but the orange afternoon light would do. Then she began the exercises the dragon had taught her—slow twisting movements of the arms and legs. She hadn’t forgotten them, but she was rusty. She couldn’t balance on one leg without wobbling. There were exercises for the mind as well to help clear away all thoughts. She resolved to use the winter months to practise the exercises and regain her skills.
“And if I have to practise my skills,” she said to Kai. “You have to practise yours. We have to go down onto the plain and buy another goat. And we won’t be able to do that until you can stay in one shape for at least an hour.”
Kai blinked back at her. Ping couldn’t tell whether he understood.
“You have to earn your supper tonight,” she said. “You have to shape-change into something and stay that way for at least a minute.”
He scratched his ear.
Ping had been wondering if it was easier for him to shape-change into simple objects. She picked up the little dragon and set him down in front of a rock.
“Change into that,” she said.
The little dragon looked at the rock and changed into an identical rock. Ping was delighted.
“Good boy, Kai,” she said. “Now stay like that for a minute and …
Before she could finish, he had popped back into his dragon shape and was squawking at her again.
She pointed at the rock. “No, stay like that.”
Kai turned into a rock again.
“That’s it!”
The dragon didn’t stay in the rock shape for very long, but at least he wasn’t turning into everything in sight.
“That was good, Kai,” Ping said, though she wasn’t entirely sure the dragon had understood what she was saying. He only seemed to turn into things that he could actually see, and there was nothing much else in sight but rocks.
Hua came back from his search for food. He stopped in front of the rock-shaped Kai. The rock turned into another rat, identical to Hua. The two rats sniffed each other suspiciously for a moment or two before one of them transformed into a dragon.
“I’ll see if I can find you some insects,” Ping said to Kai. “Just in case you did it on purpose.”
The following morning, after another comfortable night’s sleep in the shepherd’s hut, Ping got up early to practise her qi-concentrating exercises as the sun rose. The little dragon was busy eating his breakfast. Hua had gathered a number of fat worms and an impressive collection of moths for him.
Ping faced the rising sun and began her exercises, focusing on each move, breathing in the cool morning air and the golden sunlight rich in qi. After she had completed the sequence of exercises, she sat down to practise concentrating her thoughts. Kai had finished his breakfast. He came and sat in front of Ping and turned into a cooking pot. The cooking pot belched.
“I’m going to count backwards from five hundreds,” Ping said. “Let’s see if you can stay in that shape while I do that.”
Ping couldn’t count backwards without closing her eyes, but whenever she opened one eye to
check on the dragon, he was still sitting in front of her in his pot shape. She finished her counting and then began another exercise. She stared at the distant mountain and imagined following the path of a beetle on it. Kai stayed in his pot shape.
“That’s good, Kai,” she said when she’d finished. “You can turn into your proper shape now. I want to clean your ears.”
He remained in the shape of a pot.
Grass seeds sometimes got stuck in the dragon’s ears, causing them to produce dark, smelly wax. Ping found a small twig and chewed the end to make a soft brush that she could poke into his ears, but Kai was still in the shape of a cooking pot.
“That’s enough shape-changing for today, Kai.”
The pot didn’t move.
For the rest of the day, no matter how much she coaxed him or tempted him with a plate of squashed snails, Kai still wouldn’t change into his proper shape. Ping thought that if she didn’t take any notice he might get bored with the game, so she busied herself around the hut, but every time she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, he was still a pot.
She wondered if he understood more than she had thought. Perhaps he knew she was going to clean out his ears.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m not going to clean your ears. I’ll never clean your ears ever again. Let them get smelly. I don’t mind.”
It was no good. He remained a pot. By late afternoon, she was starting to get worried. She reached out to pick him up. Though she could see a pot, her hands closed around a small scaly body. It was an uncomfortable sensation that made her feel dizzy and see specks of light in front of her eyes. She had to wait a few moments for the dizziness to pass, and then she carried Kai inside.