The dragon had resumed his true shape. “I saw it.”
“But it was half-human.” Tao realised that he was grasping the dragon’s mane like a child clinging to its mother. It wasn’t very brave, but he didn’t let go.
Kai pointed at a paw print on the muddy path. It was the same three-toed print that they’d seen on the other side of the mountain.
“It is the creature I have been tracking.”
“That’s not possible,” Tao said. “The monster I saw didn’t have feet. It had a serpent’s tail.”
This fact didn’t seem to trouble Kai. “It is frightened, charging in all directions.”
“If you knew you were tracking a monster, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t we go as far away from it as possible?”
“I thought I would be able to control it. I did not realise it was so dangerous until I heard the old man’s story.”
The dark sky was heavy with moisture. Large spots of rain dotted the path and the strengthening breeze carried the shrill voice of Fo Tu Deng shouting at his men.
“They’re coming this way!” Tao yanked the dragon’s mane. “We must run!”
“No. You cannot outrun the horses. We will stay here.”
Kai started to shimmer, and Tao looked away. Watching the dragon shape-change still made him queasy. This time Kai took the shape of a rock beside the path.
“Hide behind me,” he said.
Tao ducked behind the rock shape, still clinging to the dragon’s mane. The sight of his arms disappearing into what seemed to be solid rock made him feel squeamish, but he didn’t let go. Five or six horses laboured up the steep path and came to a halt right next to them. Tao was too frightened to breathe. He couldn’t understand the nomads’ language, but he could tell from the way they were glancing in all directions that they were as scared of the beast as he was. Fo Tu Deng must have ordered them to hunt it down, but they were reluctant to chase the monster. The monk, of course, had stayed at a safe distance. And even if the men had been keen to pursue the beast, their horses were refusing to continue along the path.
Tao saw the trees around him bend and sway as if they were being blown by a strong wind, and yet the wind had died. Then something crashed through the trees. The nomads, wide-eyed with terror, were turning their horses and about to gallop away, but their captain shouted orders and the men held their nerve. They drew their swords and bows, dug their heels into the horses’ flanks and set off in pursuit of the awful creature. Tao was relieved to see their enemies disappear down the track.
The creature, still close by, let out a terrible shriek just as it started to rain heavily. Kai returned to his true shape and started off after them. Tao couldn’t understand why Kai was determined to follow the nomads.
“Let them go!” Tao shouted. “Let them fight the monster.”
Tao was still clutching the dragon’s mane, now soaked by the rain. His whole body was protesting. His mind was telling him not to let go of the dragon, and yet his feet were refusing to shift. His sandals skidded along in the mud, until he was forced to move his feet or fall over.
Kai didn’t follow the path; he strode through the trees until he reached an outcrop of rock, from which they could look down on the nomads. He took on the shape of a boulder again, the same texture and colour as the surrounding rock. Tao cowered behind him. Below, they could see the creature backed up against a cliff, surrounded by the nomads. A sudden clap of thunder made the horses rear, but they didn’t bolt. Like Tao, their eyes were fixed on the monster. He had seen nothing like it, not in his worst nightmares. It hadn’t been Tao’s imagination. It was half-human. The lower half was serpentine, but the upper part was human. Its face was dark skinned and its head was covered in black matted hair. Glittering earrings hung from its ears and it had a ring through its nose. What Tao had at first thought was a headdress, he now realised was a part of the beast’s living body. Seven snakes grew out of the back of the creature’s neck and shoulders. These were cobras with hissing split tongues and small mesmerising eyes like shiny black pebbles. It was unnatural and terrifying, like a demon from the realms of hell. Some nomads stared in terror, others tried to turn their horses so they could escape from the awful sight. But the horses were mesmerised by the beast, their hoofs refusing to move as if they’d put down roots.
“What is it, Kai?”
The dragon didn’t answer.
Though Tao’s quailing heart was imploring him to run, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the monster, which was starting to shimmer. Tao was sick with fear. He couldn’t bear to watch. When he looked back, instead of a demon, there was a huge seven-headed snake. Its monstrous snake body was as thick as a tree trunk and at least three chang long, twisting and coiling in the mud. The seven heads were held upright, their jewelled crests glittering. Each pair of eyes was full of hate and hunger. The seven snake heads opened their mouths in unison, revealing long, sharp fangs. The nomads, much closer to the monster than Tao and Kai, stood in the drenching rain transfixed by the apparition. One of them screamed and shook his head, as if trying to dislodge what he could see from his mind.
Then the monster began to change from one shape to the other in rapid succession. One moment it was the giant seven-headed snake, the next the half-human demon. A nomad raised his sword and charged with a cry almost as awful as the beast’s. The creature stayed in its snake shape and the seven heads darted forwards, fangs bared. They dug deep into the man’s arm and held on while the venom pumped into him. The nomad’s war cry turned to a scream of pain and he fell from his horse. The horse reared up, turned and galloped away. That broke the spell the monster had on the horses. The nomads managed to control their mounts and turned their heads from the creature. Once the horses could no longer see it, they fled, galloping down the mountain.
“This is the beast that killed the villagers,” Tao said. “The one we heard at Shenchi.”
Tao pulled at Kai’s mane. Now was the time for them to flee as well. The wet strands of the dragon’s mane slipped through Tao’s fingers. Kai changed into the shape of a tiger and prowled down a slope towards the creature.
“Kai, what are you doing?”
Tao was left crouching among the rocks, which were not big enough to conceal him. He was as exposed and vulnerable as a baby bird fallen from its nest. When the beast saw Kai approaching, it changed into its half-human shape. The seven cobras sprouting from its shoulders hissed and spat.
Tiger-shaped Kai stood in front of the beast, not making a sound. Tao thought he must be mesmerised, but then the dragon reared up on his hind legs and roared. The creature let out another shriek and the raindrops turned to hail. Before Tao’s eyes, flaps of skin unfolded from the sides of each cobra head, opening out to reveal large white-ringed eye markings. The flaps overlapped to form a protective hood around the creature’s human head. Kai stood as if offering himself as a sacrifice. The seven cobras loomed over him, each split tongue hissing, each set of fangs dripping venom. If Tao had his staff, he would have found the courage to rush down and defend Kai, or at least that’s what he told himself, but it was out of reach and he was too afraid to move.
Chunks of ice the size of chicken’s eggs started to fall from the sky. Tao had nowhere to shelter, but most of the hail was falling on Kai. The beast changed back to the seven-headed snake, but the dragon dodged out of reach of the venom-dripping fangs. A lump of hail, bigger than the rest, struck the dragon on the head, dazing him and opening a gash above his right eye. He staggered backwards and stumbled over the dead nomad’s body. He turned back into his true shape. Tao knew why. He had felt the dragon’s triumph change to fear. He couldn’t stay shape-changed when he was afraid.
Kai scrambled to his feet, blood pouring from the wound and into his eyes. The beast reared back, surprised to see a dragon before him, but it recovered more quickly than Kai. It was ready to strike again before Kai had wiped the blood from his eyes. Tao had to do something. He picked up a large piece of hail and, w
ith a yell, threw it at the creature. The hailstone didn’t get anywhere near the beast, which changed into its half-human shape and lunged at Kai again. Tao found his courage. He picked up as many chunks of hail as he could carry and ran down the slope, hurling them. None hit the creature, but they distracted it and the cobra heads all turned to Tao. They glanced between Kai and Tao, unsure which attacker caused the greatest threat. There was a final crack of thunder. And the creature disappeared, as if it had winked out of existence.
The hail stopped. Tao stood still, a hunk of ice in each hand. He stared at the spot where, a moment before, there had been a vicious monster. Now there was only himself and Kai.
“I think we can be sure that your qi exercises have not improved your throwing,” Kai said.
“How can you be so calm? Where did it go?” Tao glanced around frantically. “It might come back.”
“I am sure it has gone.”
Tao wiped the blood from Kai’s scales with wet leaves. “You’re lucky that thing didn’t bite you.”
Alongside them lay the body of the nomad who had been bitten by the beast.
“That’s strange.” Tao was examining the wound on the man’s arm. “I saw the seven snake heads dig their fangs into him, but there is only one wound.”
There were two puncture marks on the man’s arm surrounded by purple swelling. One bite had been enough to kill him.
“The seven heads were an illusion. It has one head, the same as all creatures.” Kai had pulled the red cloud herb from behind his reverse scale. “Please concentrate on my wound.”
“Sorry,” Tao said. He smeared the ointment on the cut above Kai’s eye.
“We were lucky to escape. I hope we never see it again.”
“We are going to search for it.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Tao thought Kai was making a dragon joke.
“I am beginning to understand this creature. I think it is hungry.”
“A hungry ghost?”
“No, a creature of the world, like you and me, but starving.”
Tao realised that Kai was serious. “I don’t care how hungry it is! It’s responsible for the deaths of all those people – the baby’s mother, his poor sister. It is merciless, an unnatural murderous beast that has no place in this world. We need to get as far away from it as possible.”
“It is not unnatural.”
“But you saw it! It changed from one thing to another and then it disappeared completely. It had no real body of its own.”
“It is a shape-changer, like me.”
Tao remembered how he’d felt sick whenever the beast took on a different form. He’d thought it was fear.
“I am sure that when it is not so hungry,” Kai said, “it will be less dangerous.”
“I notice you don’t say ‘harmless’,” Tao said. “How do you know it won’t kill us?”
“This is the beast I have been tracking. I learned from its dung that it eats caterpillars. I believe it has wandered from its natural habitat and cannot find the food that it normally eats. We must help it.”
“But it would take a cartload of caterpillars to fill a creature that size.”
“You are right. We need something larger. We must find woodworms. Lots of them.”
Chapter Ten
WOODWORM
Tao was searching through rotting logs, muttering to himself. “This is not how I thought I would be spending my time when I left the monastery.”
He pulled apart the rotting wood with his fingers and revealed one of the woodworm lava Kai had instructed him to find. It was larger than his thumb and a creamy white. Its body was divided into fat segments like beads strung together. He pulled it out of the wood and placed it in the bronze bowl, which was now full of larvae.
“I don’t understand why we are trying to attract this monster,” Tao said. “I’m glad it’s disappeared. We should be running away from it.”
“It is not a monster,” Kai insisted. “It is just hungry. You will see.”
“All the more reason to keep out of its way. It’s killed many people.”
From pools of disgorged food that he had come across, Kai had discovered that the beast had tried all sorts of wuji – spiders, beetles, worms, all the creepy-crawly creatures without a backbone – but it had regurgitated most of them. Caterpillars were all that it could digest, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy its hunger. Kai knew they weren’t moths. Moths had large larvae, found in rotting logs. He had been collecting them as well – except he’d only found three.
“Have you been eating them?” Tao said.
“No. There are not many.”
“There are lots of them. Can’t you hear them chewing through the wood?”
The dragon made a sound like small bells ringing. “I cannot!”
Tao didn’t think this was a time for laughter.
Kai took his three larvae and put them down on a large leaf. Then he and Tao hid in the trees and waited. Nothing happened. The larvae gradually started to move. Unused to crawling, they lumbered slowly like small fat emperors.
Tao was ready to give up, but when he opened his mouth to say so, he found it stopped by a dragon paw. Kai was sniffing the air. He took his paw from Tao’s mouth and pointed a talon into the forest. There was the sound of rustling leaves. Something was approaching the larvae. Something they couldn’t see. Tao knew it was there because tree branches were moving, even though there was no wind. A twig snapped. Where the branches were moving, the trees looked a little smudged, as if it was part of a painting where the artist had smeared with his sleeve. Tao didn’t want to come face to face with the monster. He was looking around for the best escape route, when one of the larvae started to move faster than the other two – and not along the ground. It floated up into the air and hung there unsupported. The air shimmered, as it did when Kai shape-changed. Tao knew he should turn away, but he had to know exactly where the creature was at all times. He felt his stomach churn as the creature began to materialise, and there was a bitter taste at the back of his mouth. He was expecting to see the seven-headed snake or the half-human half-serpent, but instead there in front of them was a four-footed beast covered in blue scales. It had only one head.
“It’s a dragon!” Tao whispered.
Kai was entranced by the creature. “But like none I have ever seen before.”
The dragon was four-legged, but smaller than Kai. It had bright blue eyes to match its scales, but its most remarkable feature was a single horn that reared up from the middle of its head. The horn was thick at the bottom and narrowed to its tip. It was more than a foot long and a creamy colour, like fresh bean curd. The horn was covered in beautiful markings in the shape of curling leaves or misshapen teardrops, as if someone had carved a pattern all over it. It was actually quite a pretty dragon. It had one paw raised and the larva was clasped between two talons. It had three toes on each paw and they were long and slender.
“You knew!” Tao said.
“I thought it was a dragon as soon as I saw its paw prints. I was sure when I saw it shape-changing.”
Tao finally tore his eyes away from the blue dragon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not want to alarm you.”
“I was already terrified!”
The blue dragon sniffed the larva suspiciously. It opened its mouth, revealing a row of sharp little teeth with a longer fang on either side. Tao knew they were the ones that injected the lethal venom into its victims. He thought of the old man’s granddaughter and her little burial cairn.
The dragon bit into the larva. It chewed the insect cautiously and then swallowed it with a sound like a huge purring cat. Saliva dripped from its mouth. It put its head down and gobbled the other larvae.
Its blue eyes glanced around nervously, and it had excellent eyesight, just like Kai, so it saw where they were hiding. Kai made his tinkling wind-chime sound to show the dragon that he meant no harm, but it disappeared again.
“Invis
ibility,” Kai said with admiration. “It is similar to my mirage skill, but much better.” Kai could only change his scales to one colour at a time. And when he moved, the illusion was harder to maintain, so that it was still possible to see him if you knew he was there. “This dragon can paint a picture with its scales, and change them as it moves.”
Now that Tao had seen the creature in its true form, he knew that Kai was right about the dragon being hungry. Although Kai was sure it wouldn’t attack them if they provided it with more food, Tao couldn’t forget its previous victims. Kai placed Tao’s bowl of larvae in the clearing. They waited again.
“It must have gone,” Tao said.
“A starving dragon would never walk away from a source of food.”
After several minutes, the blue dragon reappeared and ate the rest of the larvae, grasping the bowl with its forepaws and burying its short snout in the food. It was very hungry.
“But it’s a murderous beast,” Tao said.
“I do not think it meant to kill the people,” Kai said.
“How could it accidentally kill half a village?”
“It was searching for food. The houses in the village were very old. Every summer they were drenched by rain for months. They were all rotting. And what do you find in rotting wood?”
“Woodworm larvae,” Tao said.
“It was ravenous and had finally found something it could eat. It destroyed the houses as it searched for the larvae, crushed them and pulled them apart, without regard for the people hiding within. That is what I believe.”
“I don’t trust it.” Tao was looking at the blue dragon’s fangs. “How can you be so sure it didn’t mean to harm the villagers?”
“Because it carried the dead to the cave and tried to bury them. It was repentant.”
Kai moved slowly into the clearing, towards the blue dragon. Tao stayed hidden in the trees, his staff at the ready in case the creature attacked. He watched the two dragons observe each other. The blue dragon was almost half Kai’s size, and more delicate. Its legs were shorter, its body thinner, but it had huge feet. Kai carried his tail low, but the blue dragon’s tail was erect, like a banner. At the end of its tail the protrusions weren’t sharp and spiny like Kai’s, which could be used as a weapon, but soft and curly, so that it resembled a flower. The blue dragon had a long thin beard and a lovely golden mane, which ran from the base of its horn down its spine to the shoulders. The dragons circled slowly, never taking their eyes off one another. Tao held his breath, worried that the blue dragon would suddenly attack and sink its fangs into Kai, but it didn’t. Instead, it lifted one of its back legs and peed on the ground. Kai did the same. Then they both sniffed each other’s pee. Kai made soft wind-chime sounds. The blue dragon replied with a high-pitched hiss that sounded almost like the tweeting of a bird.