“It is a great shame that you cannot eat any of this food, Tao, because you do not eat the flesh of animals,” said Kai.
He was about to fill Pema’s bowl, but she stopped him.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure it’s very tasty, but I’ll leave it for you two dragons.”
Tao went into the kitchen to cook some vegetables.
Sunila was pushing the bowls around the courtyard in his enthusiasm to lick them clean. Kai picked up some chopsticks, delicately selected a baked mouse and nibbled off its head. He chewed it thoughtfully.
“I think it needs a little more salt.”
Chapter Fourteen
MOON SHADOW
Tao needed a night of undisturbed sleep, but spending time with Pema had made his heart race and he lay awake. The moon was high in the sky and although it looked no bigger than a plum, moonlight flooded through the window, casting a soft shadow of the rock outside. The moon shadow was shifting slightly, rippling on the floor. There was no wind, even if there had been, it shouldn’t have affected the moon shadow. Tao shut his eyes but opened them again immediately. He didn’t like not knowing what the shadow was doing. Every tiny sound was amplified. There were creaks and bangs and a scratching sound.
Just as he was dozing off, a crash jolted him awake. The lamp next to the bed had fallen off the little table and smashed to pieces. He couldn’t understand how that had happened. Fortunately, he hadn’t left it alight or the spilled oil would have burst into flame and burned the house down. A night bird called, startling him and making his heart thud. He was becoming as frightened as a child.
Tao went out into the courtyard. He didn’t want to be alone. Kai was asleep in his straw-lined hollow in the goat pen. His scales glowed softly in the moonlight. He had tried to make Sunila sleep somewhere else, but the naga had crept up after Kai had fallen asleep and was as close as he could get to him without actually climbing into the hollow. The blue dragon glowed too, but not as brightly as Kai.
Tao understood how Sunila felt. He wished he could lie closer to Kai. A dragon wasn’t warm and cuddly, but even feeling his scales sticking into him would have been a comfort. Instead, he settled down on Wei’s couch.
Kai had said he would sleep outside so that he could guard Tao. He seemed to have forgotten that his hearing was rather poor. He slept so soundly nothing disturbed him. He didn’t hear the night birds or the howling of a wolf. Tao heard them all.
Darkness surrounded him. A current of cold air chilled his skin. He had been walking in the mountains and he had somehow wandered back into the underground passage again. Everything was black. He was searching for the glowing pool, but he couldn’t find it. The gust of cold air grew stronger. Icy fingers dug into his arm. He opened his eyes, expecting to see nothing but darkness, but instead he saw mist issuing from the nostrils of a blue snout only a handspan from his face.
Sunila made a sad sound. He was hungry, and had been prodding Tao with his talons. Tao lay there, relieved to have left the nightmare behind.
“Thank you for waking me, Sunila,” he said.
It was very early, and Tao still hoped he could go back to sleep, this time without bad dreams. But the naga was persistent. He grabbed the edge of the quilt with his teeth and pulled it off. Tao felt the morning chill on his naked body, and a dragon tail wrap around his ankle as Sunila tried to drag him out of bed.
Tao was fully awake now, and it didn’t seem like the naga was going to leave him alone. He got up and put on his clothes.
“What do you want?” Tao said.
Then he remembered that the dragon didn’t understand Huaxia. “Food?” he said in Sanskrit. “Grain?”
He wasn’t sure he’d got the words right, but the dragon’s blue eyes blinked at him expectantly. Tao didn’t know the Sanskrit name for worms, but in any case he had no intention of going out looking for them so early in the morning.
“Honey?” he said.
Sunila put his paws up on Tao’s knees and bumped Tao’s nose with the end of his snout. It hurt, but from the loud purring sound he was making, Tao knew he’d guessed correctly.
“You are doing very well with communicating, considering the small number of Sanskrit words I know. You deserve a reward. We can walk over to the orchard and see if the bees will allow me to take some more honey.”
Out in the courtyard, Tao almost ran into Pema, who looked like she was still half-asleep.
“You’re up early,” Tao said. “I’m taking Sunila to the orchard to get more honey. Do you want to come? It will wake you up.”
“I suppose so.”
Tao was about to go out through his tunnel.
“I’m not crawling through a hole in the ground and bramble bushes,” Pema said. “I’ll only come if we can go through the gate.”
Tao didn’t argue, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask Pema to help him lift the bar. Fortunately, Sunila ran ahead and lifted the bar for them.
Pema yawned. “He’s very different to Kai. Kai is like a dragon-shaped person, but Sunila is more like a very large blue dog.”
It was a lovely morning. Sunila was leaping through the grass, enjoying his freedom. Pema stopped to collect windfall persimmons. She handed one to Tao and he bit into it. The sun shining on the dew, the sweet fruit in his mouth and Pema’s chatter made the terrors of the night ebb away. He really had believed that he returned to the darkness and the ghosts were with him again. But that was a dream. Perhaps the moving moon shadow was a recurring nightmare that seemed real at the time.
He allowed himself to imagine a life like this – feeling free like the blue dragon – walking through the fields when he felt like it, growing his own food. With Pema. It was his family’s land. He had every right to be here. Couldn’t he be Kai’s dragonkeeper here just as well?
Tao went to the pomegranate tree and waited for the bees to come and welcome him again. They buzzed around him. Pema stood back, afraid that she’d get stung.
“They won’t hurt you,” Tao said as he reached into the tree hollow and broke off another piece of honeycomb.
Sunila was trying to take the honeycomb from Tao’s hand.
“You can’t have it yet. This has to last for several days. I can’t keep stealing the bees’ honey. They need it to feed the baby bees.”
Sunila tried again to grab the honeycomb, saliva dripping from his mouth.
“You didn’t say it in Sanskrit,” Pema said.
“Maybe not, but I’m sure he understood my meaning.”
He put the honeycomb in his sleeve where the naga couldn’t get it.
“You told him he could have some,” Pema said. “He’s been looking forward to it.”
“I’m punishing him for his bad manners. He’ll have to wait until the evening meal.”
Tao repeated the words in Sanskrit, to make sure Sunila understood. Sunila made sounds like tree branches creaking in the wind and hung his head and his tail.
“The smell of the honey is making me hungry,” Pema said. “Let’s go and have breakfast.”
They started to walk back to the compound, but a yelp made them turn round. Tao ran back to the pomegranate tree and found the naga shaking his left paw, which was covered with bees. Others were swarming around him, buzzing angrily and d iving at his head.
Before Tao could get near the bees to calm them, Sunila had started running. He made a sound like howling wind. The bees were buzzing furiously after him, the whole hive. He was frightened, and with good reason. If so many bees stung him, he might die. Tao didn’t know what to do.
Sunila stopped dead, stood up on his back legs and, to Tao’s astonishment, unfurled a pair of small wings. He flapped them awkwardly from side to side, and took off, rising vertically. The bees seemed as surprised as Tao and Pema, and didn’t follow him. When he’d reached a certain height, Sunila changed the angle of his wings, flew towards the compound and landed on top of the wall. They raced after the naga.
Kai was waiting for them at the ga
te.
“He’s got wings!” Tao exclaimed.
Kai didn’t seem surprised.
“Did you know?”
Kai looked away. “I have seen him flutter his wings before, but I did not know how close they were to maturing. This is his first flight.”
“You should have told me.”
Tao knew that wings were a very touchy subject with Kai.
“We can continue this conversation once we are inside,” the dragon said, herding them back through the gate. “Can I remind you that we are supposed to stay hidden, and yet all three of you are trying to attract as much attention as possible, laughing and strolling around the countryside, with that beast making a din loud enough to be heard many li away.”
Tao blushed. He had been enjoying Pema’s company so much, he’d forgotten all about being cautious. He was annoyed that he’d allowed himself to be distracted by Pema. Kai was right; he’d hardly thought about his plans to help needy people since she’d arrived. And he’d risked revealing their hiding place.
Kai replaced the bar.
Pema was watching the naga up on the wall. “What’s he doing up there?”
Bits of straw fell down.
“It looks like he’s making a nest,” Tao said.
“Not a very good one,” Kai added.
“Perhaps he feels safer up there.” Tao remembered his own experience in a dragon’s nest. “Nagas might nest on high mountain ledges, or perhaps in tall trees.”
Tao knew Kai was cross with him, but the dragon wasn’t entirely without fault. He hadn’t mentioned Sunila’s wings. That was Kai’s pride. Sunila had wings but he didn’t.
“Dragons don’t get their wings until they’re at least a thousand years old, do they?” Tao asked, although he already knew it was true. “Sunila must be older than you, Kai.”
Sunila flapped down from his nest. He had bee stings on his left paw and several on his ears, which had no scales to protect them. He was scratching the stings and making a high-pitched whining sound that was very annoying.
“I know they hurt, Sunila.” Tao was now wishing he hadn’t been so strict with the naga. “But you mustn’t scratch them. I’ll make you a bee sting remedy.”
Tao went to the kitchen and mixed crushed garlic with vinegar and honey.
Pema was watching him. “It seems strange that bees’ honey should be part of the remedy for their stings.”
“My father always had a jar of this balm for when he got stung.”
Tao dabbed some on Sunila’s stings, which were starting to swell. But the naga immediately tried to lick it off.
“You need to bandage them,” Pema said.
She went into Meiling’s room and brought out one of Tao’s sister’s discarded gowns. The cloth was beautiful, deep maroon with a pattern of pink cherry blossom and blue butterflies. Pema unceremoniously ripped strips from the hem and handed them to Tao, who made Sunila sit on his haunches and hold up his foreleg. He bound the colourful bandage around Sunila’s swollen paw. So that he could easily undo the bandaging and reapply the balm, he tied the strips of cloth with a bow. Then he bound strips around the naga’s ears. Sunila inspected his paw, now adorned with a colourful bow. With the other paw he felt the bows on his ears.
Pema giggled. “He looks sweet.”
Sunila didn’t need to understand what she was saying. He was aware that she and Tao were chuckling, and that Kai was making his jingling-bell sound. This indignity wounded the naga’s pride more than the stings had wounded his hide.
“Can’t you give him some honey to cheer him up?” Pema asked.
Tao was about to fetch the honeycomb.
“You are treating him like a spoiled child,” Kai said. “He must learn that honey is precious and he can only have a small amount each day. Then you must wean him off it, until he will eat whatever food is given to him.”
“How are you going to explain that to him?” Pema said.
“Honey. Scarce. No eat.”
That was the best he could do with his limited Sanskrit.
The painful stings, undignified appearance and lack of promised honey made the naga most unhappy. He stopped making the whining sound, much to Tao’s relief because it was giving him a headache, and flew up to his nest on the wall.
“Now what’s he doing?” Pema asked.
Tao looked up. Jets of mist were pouring out of the naga’s nostrils.
“He’s sulking. Kai also breathes mist from his nose when he’s not happy.”
Kai was watching too. Sunila was producing more and more mist. It was thick and dark grey, nothing like the fine white mist that curled lazily from Kai’s nostrils when he was cross.
“I’ve never seen Kai make that much mist!” Pema said.
Tao could see threads of mist issuing from Kai’s nostrils, though he knew that he was trying not to. Sunila’s mist didn’t thin and drift away like Kai’s. It hung in front of the naga and collected into a cloud. Sunila continued to produce mist, but the cloud didn’t grow bigger. Instead it became denser, darker. The mist stopped streaming from Sunila’s nostrils, but he was still concentrating on the cloud, as if willing it to do something. It did do something. It rose a little and drifted away from the wall and into the compound. Tao, Pema and Kai, their heads upturned, watched this spectacle. The grey cloud stopped above Tao’s head. Sunila opened his wings and flapped them so that they clashed together in front of him, making a sound like distant thunder. Then he stopped. The air was still and heavy. Sunila let out a screech. Suddenly, drops of water poured from the cloud. It was like a heavy shower of rain, but it fell only on Tao. It lasted no more than a few moments, but in that time Tao was drenched. The cloud became pale and thin, more like Kai’s mist, and then faded away.
Tao stood there dripping. Pema applauded. Sunila seemed very pleased with himself, and Kai was trying not to look impressed.
“Can you make rain, Kai?” Pema said.
“The dragons at the dragon haven can make rain, but it is a long and exhausting process. It takes many dragons to produce a cloud that contains enough moisture to bring rain. Afterwards, we are spent and must sleep for several days.”
“Sunila doesn’t seem at all tired,” Pema said.
Tao sat shivering in the courtyard. Pema had wrung out his dripping jacket and trousers and spread them on bushes, but the weak autumn sun had failed to dry them. He didn’t have any other clothes, so he was wearing Meiling’s cherry blossom and butterflies gown, which only came down to his knees because of the strips ripped from the bottom.
“I wish I could light a fire,” Tao grumbled.
Pema was watching Sunila, who was flying around the walls, getting used to his wings, dipping and banking to one side and then flipping over.
“Look at that!” she said. “He can fly upside down!”
“We cannot let him fly around,” Kai said. “Nomads might see him.”
“How can we stop him?”
“We must lure him down and tether him,” Kai said.
Tao didn’t like the idea of restraining the naga. But he knew Kai was right. He fetched the honeycomb from the kitchen. Most of the honey had dripped out of it. He held it up and called out to the naga, who flapped down into the courtyard.
“Here you are, Sunila,” Tao said. “You can have this. If you chew it, you’ll get lots of honey.”
The naga took it from Tao. Kai found a length of rope and slipped it over the naga’s head. Sunila was too busy chewing the honeycomb to object. Kai led him to the goat pen and tied the rope to a strong pole.
“It’s a shame to tie him up now that he can fly,” Pema said.
“We have to,” Tao said, though he felt the same way.
Tao spent the rest of the day in the garden and was glad when it finally got dark and he could light the fire, dry his clothes and begin preparing the evening meal. He opened one of his mother’s jars of pickled vegetables, cooked some millet that he had found growing wild and steamed some greens. He also made
a dish of stewed pears flavoured with ginger and honey.
He took the food out to Kai and Pema.
Sunila’s meal was the same as theirs, but liberally sweetened with honey. He ate noisily. Kai complained that the naga’s share of the pear dish was bigger than his. Tao enjoyed watching his friends as they ate the food he’d made, complimenting him on the flavours. For a boy who knew nothing about cooking, he thought he was doing a pretty good job of preparing meals for everyone.
When Sunila had finished his food, he started to whine and to pull at the rope around his neck. Tao went over and patted him.
“I’m sorry, Sunila. You must only fly at night when there is no moonlight.” Tao patted the naga again, before leaving the goat pen and shutting the gate behind him.
“Nagas must have exceptional weather skills,” he said. “Do you remember the sudden snowstorm on the mountain, Kai? I think he created that because he didn’t want us to find the bodies of the Shenchi villagers. I have never heard of a dragon making snow.”
Kai didn’t answer.
“And the hailstorm, when the nomads were attacking him,” Tao continued. “I heard a screech and a sound like thunder before the storm came.”
A large spider was spinning a web in a corner of the pavilion. It was an orb spider, as big as Tao’s hand, with bands of yellow on its body, and yellow stripes on its long legs. Pema refused to sit near it, but Tao wasn’t afraid of it.
“Why are there so many insects?” Pema said, batting away mosquitoes.
“It’s because my mother isn’t here. She was always ordering the servants to kill all the wuji, though she knew Wei liked them. Not so much as an ant was permitted to live.”
Tao turned towards the setting sun, feeling its golden light on his face. The mosquitoes flew towards him, circling around his head.
“And why are they biting me and not you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps your blood tastes better.”
Moths started to gather around him.
“It’s you, Tao,” Pema said. “The insects are attracted to you.”
“Pema is right,” Kai said. “You refuse to kill insects because of your beliefs, and Wei got great pleasure from observing insects. They are drawn to you because of your qi.”