Kai still believed that it was the ghost of the old red dragon who had visited them in the cave. Tao didn’t try to convince him otherwise. He was glad that the dragon was on his feet again and keen to find the way out.
“I must think of a way to thank her,” Kai said.
“Why didn’t you honour Gu Hong when she died?” Tao asked.
The dragon sighed. “She left the haven when she knew she was dying. She wanted to go to the place that she had decided would be our burial ground. She tried to fly, but she didn’t get far. Hei Lei and Tun, other male dragons, carried her the rest of the way. The other dragons escorted them. Except me. I could not fly. Hei Lei came back to get me, but I was too proud to let him carry me. So I did not help bury her. I did not sing for her.”
Tao was glad Kai couldn’t see a tear roll down his cheek. He was beginning to understand that there were reasons why Kai wasn’t in a hurry to return to the dragon haven.
They couldn’t fly across the lake as the beetles had. Instead they made their way slowly around its edge, zigzagging through the forest of stone icicles, until eventually they reached the other side. The cavern narrowed and then divided into two passages.
“Which one will we choose?” Kai asked.
“The beetles took the left passage.” Tao was confident they would find a way out. “We will too.”
Once out of sight of the lake, the green glow faded with every step. More darkness loomed ahead of them. Tao kept glancing back until the last faint glimmer of green disappeared and there was nothing but blackness again.
He could no longer rely on his eyes, but he knew he could trust his other senses. He reached out. His hands felt the shape and the texture of the passage walls on either side. They were hard, rough and cold. They were real. It looked as if there was another black wall in front of him, but when he reached out, his hands passed through it. It wasn’t solid, it was darkness. He moved forwards. Kai followed. The dragon was silent, still contemplating what he believed had been an encounter with his dead leader. Their progress was slow. Tao had drunk more of the green water before they left the lake, and he needed to stop for a nap often.
“I can feel air on my face,” Tao said. “Can you feel it, Kai? I think this must lead to another way out into the world.”
The dragon didn’t respond.
After a while Tao thought he could make out the faint uneven surface of the passage walls, imperceptible at first but becoming clearer. Finally, there was pale light. Not eerie green light, but warm yellow light.
“Can you see it, Kai? Light.”
Tao took a step towards the light and stumbled over something. He thought he must be seeing things.
“It’s my bag!” he said.
“How could it have got here, when you dropped it before we reached the lake?”
“I don’t know.”
He picked it up, feeling the coarse weave of the willow twigs that he had woven himself. It was real. He felt inside, smiling as he touched his few possessions – the vial of oil, his firesticks, gourd, blanket and the stolen bronze bowl. Then his smile faded.
“What is wrong. Is there something missing?”
“Yes, the most important thing. My dragon-stone shard.”
Tao’s brief happiness disappeared like mist in sunlight.
“The ghosts,” he breathed. “They have taken it.”
“Why would they steal your shard? It has no value to them.”
“It is payment. They have taken it in exchange for the cinnabar, and for showing us the way out of the realms of hell.”
The loss of the shard sapped Tao’s energy and confidence, but Kai had found a new store of strength.
“We must get out into daylight,” the dragon said. “Everything will make sense when we are out of the darkness.”
The dragon hurried towards the pale light. Tao found it hard to keep up with him. Then there was a bright circle, too dazzling to look at. Tao shaded his eyes. It was daylight. They hurried to it and stepped out into the world again. The day was dull and overcast, but it took several minutes to get used to the glare of the light. Tao breathed the fresh mountain air, and his eyes drank in every detail of the world – delicate fern fronds, the feathers of a bird’s wing, even the grey rock had texture and shades of colour that were beautiful to behold.
While Kai went in search of food, Tao considered how he could do his duty and honour the dead.
The villagers hadn’t deserved to be slaughtered by nomads. There was no one left to say prayers for the souls of the dead, so they hadn’t moved into another plane of existence, into new lives. Tao couldn’t return to the site of the villagers’ grave on the other side of the mountain, but he could create a memorial where he was. He selected the face of a large boulder, and although weak with hunger, he began immediately. Using the iron nail as a chisel and a stone as a hammer, he carved characters on the rock, commemorating the destruction of the village and the deaths of so many innocent people.
Kai returned. He had trapped birds, and found taro roots and mushrooms. Tao hadn’t finished the carving, but he needed to eat. He collected firewood and lit a fire. He cooked the food and they ate in silence, each with their own thoughts about their own ghosts.
It was late afternoon, so they decided to stay where they were for the night. Tao worked on his carving until dusk. He wondered how long they had been underground. It had seemed such a long time, but now that he was back in the world again, he wasn’t sure. It could have been several days, it might have been only one.
Kai ground a small crystal of cinnabar with a rock, mixed it in water and drank it. Tao put the finishing touches to his carving while Kai composed a poem in honour of Gu Hong.
“Scales the colour of cinnabar
Whiskers blue as the sky.
Gentle dragon, most wise by far
Now in heaven you fly.”
They sat in silence, watching the sky turn dark, each contemplating their own commemoration of the dead. Tao couldn’t meditate and recite sutras for seven days, as he had when his brother died, but he hoped the ghosts would be happy with his brief prayers. He turned to Kai.
“We should pray together for Gu Hong and for the dead in the cave. Our beliefs might be different, but we both wish the dead peace.”
He kneeled and the dragon sat next to him, his head bowed. Tao prayed for the safe journey of the souls of the dead into the next life, where he hoped they would find peace and happiness and absence of hunger. He recited a sutra. Kai made a deep humming sound that didn’t translate into words in Tao’s mind. Tao prayed for the soul of the old red dragon as well. They sat in respectful silence for a moment. A sudden gust of wind stirred the tree branches. The wind grew stronger, swirling around them, whipping up dust and fallen leaves. It made a sad keening sound as it spiralled up. The current of air ruffled Kai’s mane as it circled above their heads, and then the wind seemed to sigh before it died away completely. The ghosts had gone.
Tao had fulfilled his promise and helped the souls travel to their next life. But they had extracted a heavy price. He felt the loss of the shard like an unhealed wound.
Tao woke with new energy. He’d slept well and had bitter-sweet dreams of himself and Wei running through a forest as children. He hoped that in his new life, wherever he was, Wei’s baby body was growing strong and that very soon he would indeed be able to run through a forest, as he never had in his life as Tao’s brother. Tao stood in front of the commemorative stone. He was pleased. The characters were of an even size, the columns straight. This commemoration would stand the test of time.
“Give me the iron,” Kai said.
Tao unwrapped the nail and handed it to him. Kai held the nail in one paw.
After a few minutes, Kai opened his paw. It was unmarked. He rubbed the iron on his stomach and on the soft hide under his chin. It had no effect.
“You were correct,” the dragon said. “The tiger’s blood brew did contain an ingredient that took away the iron pain. I am sorry I doubted
you.”
Kai hurled the nail deep into the forest, as far as he could throw it. This time Tao didn’t retrieve it.
Tao smiled. He had solved the dragon’s iron problem. He had done something worthy of a dragonkeeper. They would need more cinnabar, but for the moment the chunk that they had was enough. He felt the warmth of the sun on his skin. He had lost something precious, but his life had been given back to him.
“So which way is it to the dragon haven?” Tao squinted as the sun broke through the clouds.
“This is the way,” Kai said, setting out along the path.
“How much of the journey have we already travelled?”
“It is a long way. A very long way. But we have made some progress.”
Kai was thoughtfully snuffing the early morning air, reading the smells that it brought to him.
“What can you smell?”
“More than the fragrance of pine needles and the decay of autumn leaves,” the dragon said. “I can smell urine.”
Kai sniffed again and pointed a talon at a patch of damp on a rock.
“That’s just morning dew,” Tao said, not wanting the beauty of the morning to be spoiled.
“Smell.”
Tao kneeled down and sniffed the damp rock. He screwed up his nose. It was the pungent smell of some sort of animal urine. “You’re right. It smells awful. Even worse than yours.”
“Fresh,” Kai said.
He walked along the path, head down, sniffing. He stopped and pointed again, this time at the earth. There was another paw print.
“It is the same creature I was tracking before.”
“But that’s not possible,” Tao said. “We left the monster on the other side of the mountain.”
Kai nodded. “And yet it has passed this way not long ago.”
“Did the underground passage wind back? Are we not far from where we entered?”
Kai shook his head and pointed at the sun still visible between the clouds. “You can tell by the position of the sun that we have passed through the mountain to the other side.”
The talk of urine had made Tao want to pee. He followed a small track to a place behind a rock and suddenly the mountain ended. Beneath his feet the rock plunged down to a plain far below. Though clouds were still gathered above the mountain, the sun was shining on the plain. It looked green and warm down there – and flat. His legs ached from all the walking they had done. He squinted into the distance. On the other side of the plain, far away, he could make out a walled city. His heart sank inside him.
“Kai!” he called out. “Kai! Come here!”
The dragon came up behind him. “Have you found something to eat? Do you want me to pee with you?”
Tao was still staring out over the plain. He pointed into the distance.
“It’s Luoyang.”
Chapter Eight
TOO MANY DEAD
Anger bubbled inside Tao.
“We’re south of Luoyang. You’ve led us around in a circle. You told me we were heading west, getting closer to the dragon haven, but we haven’t made any progress at all!”
Kai didn’t say anything.
“Dragons are supposed to have a good sense of direction. How could you make such a mistake?”
Kai kicked a stone with his left forepaw and avoided looking Tao in the eye.
The truth was suddenly obvious to Tao. “You haven’t been heading to the dragon haven at all, have you?”
If Tao had better navigation skills, he would have realised before.
A trail of mist issued from the dragon’s nostrils. “Do not want to go to the dragon haven.”
Tao thought of the many li he’d walked, all those uncomfortable nights sleeping on the cold ground, and the terrible time in the underground darkness. It had all been for nothing.
“We must go to the dragon haven! You are the leader of the dragons.”
“Do not want to be leader.”
Tao stood in front of Kai, so angry he had a strong desire to punch the dragon in the chest. He didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. He’d lost his temper and wished to hurt another being. Kai looked down at him. His bulk was probably five times Tao’s. There was nothing Tao could do to force the dragon to do his duty.
He sank miserably onto a rock. “Then there’s no point in us being together.”
“You have nowhere else to go.”
To the east, Tao could see the mountains where his old monastery was hidden among the trees. Fo Tu Deng was no longer there. He could beg to be readmitted.
“I could return to Yinmi. I could find another monastery. I could go to Jiankang and be with my family.”
“You do not want to do any of those things.”
Tao wished his thoughts were private.
“The dragon haven is a boring place,” Kai said. “It is small. I could walk from one side to the other in less than an hour. There is nothing to do. Nothing to see but the same rocks, the same pools, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. I escaped from that prison. I do not want to return.”
“But you have the other dragons. Your own kind.”
“The other dragons were lazy and … boring. All they did was sleep, and hold meetings and talk endlessly about rules. The winged dragons could fly away and visit other places, but I was stuck there. There were no other young dragons like me, none who enjoyed adventure.”
“But it’s your home.”
“You have left your home. So have I.”
“What were you planning to do? Walk around in circles forever?”
The dragon sighed. A trail of mist rose from his nostrils and dissolved on the breeze.
“What about the bond we made before we left Yinmi?”
“We pledged that we would be brothers,” Kai said. “I have not broken that bond. You are the one who is thinking about going back to your old life. On your own.”
“What about your vow to the ghost of Gu Hong?”
“I promised I would go to the dragon haven and lead the dragons. I did not say I would go there immediately.”
“You said we were going as soon as we escaped from the darkness.”
“I was speaking in terms of dragon time. I will go. I will honour her every day. And I will take up my role as leader. But not now. Perhaps when I have wings like the others.”
“But that won’t be for another five hundred years!” Tao knew that dragons didn’t grow wings until they were around a thousand years old. “I’ll be long dead. You said you were going to give me the dragonkeeper mirror. Was that a lie too? You don’t really want me to be your dragonkeeper, do you? You want me around to amuse you and … find worms.”
Tao’s legs ached. His feet were blistered. He was hungry, even though it was not long since they’d eaten. Tears filled his eyes. He wanted to weep like a child.
In the old days, people knew how their lives would unfold. Farmer, merchant, priest – they all had roles in their communities. Survival might have been difficult at times, loved ones died, crops failed, houses burned down, but at least folk knew what they were supposed to be doing in this life. Since the nomads had invaded, the world was not as it should be. Tao had tried to map out his life, but like so many people in Huaxia, it had slipped out of his control. He had no idea what he should be doing.
A sound broke the silence, interrupting Tao’s thoughts. “What was that?”
Kai craned his neck, snuffed the breeze. “Nothing that can do us harm.”
The dragon shape-changed into a boy the same age as Tao and they continued along the path. As they drew closer to the sound, Tao recognised what it was – a baby crying. He expected to discover an abandoned infant on a bed of moss, but around the next bend there was an old man with a baby in his arms and despair on his face. The man’s eyes lit up with hope when he saw them. He held out the child to Kai who shrank away from the baby.
“I can’t feed him. I don’t know how.” The old man looked hungry himself.
“I’ll take him,” Tao
said, though he had no experience in caring for babies.
The child was a few months old and so skinny Tao could see its ribs. The baby kept crying. Tao still had some of the water from the underground cave and he poured it into his gourd.
“It isn’t water he wants,” the old man said. “He’s had nothing but water for several days.”
“This is special water,” Tao said. “It should at least enable him to sleep while we work out what to do.”
The water didn’t seem special. In the daylight it no longer glowed. It just had a greenish tinge, like stagnant pond water. Tao managed to drip some of the water into the baby’s mouth. He had seen starving babies before, in the villages near Yinmi, and they were usually listless, with death already in their eyes. This one still had some fight in him.
The baby did go to sleep. There was no urgent need to keep moving, so Tao suggested that they stay and help the old man. Kai didn’t object. Tao remembered a woman who had lived in his family community who made a sort of porridge to feed to her infant.
“I need to light a fire. Kai, see if you can find some food – roots, mushrooms, anything.”
The illusory clothes Kai wore while in his boy shape were old-fashioned, as they had been when Tao first met him, but the old man was too distressed to notice that there was anything unusual about Tao’s companion.
Tao laid the sleeping baby on the grass while he collected wood and lit a fire so that he could cook the remainder of his grain.
Kai returned with wild roots and some sort of edible tree fungus. He also had a dead rabbit. If he’d been cooking it for himself, he would have flung it on the fire, fur and all, and eaten it half-raw. But he skinned the rabbit, skewered it on a stick and held it over the flames, turning it slowly.
As they waited for the food to cook, the old man told them his story.
“Our village was destroyed by a wild beast. Many people died.”
“Is it on the other side of this mountain?” Tao asked. “Does it have a mud-brick temple and a little pagoda with one bell?”
“Yes, that’s Shenchi, my village. I made that bell myself. I intended to make bells for all the corners of the pagoda roof, if ever I had spare metal.”