“What is it saying?” Tao asked.
“I do not know. His sounds make no sense to me.”
“So it’s a male dragon?”
“He is.”
“Are you sure he won’t turn on us?”
“I am sure,” Kai said. “We must help him. There is no reason why we should only help people. In fact, it makes perfect sense that a trainee dragonkeeper helps a dragon.”
Tao was still wary of the blue dragon.
“Show him you mean no harm.” Tao heard Kai say in his mind.
“I think it’s him who should be showing me he means no harm.”
Tao felt Kai’s snout nudge him, and he reluctantly stepped out into the clearing and stood at a distance. The dragon’s blue eyes grew large when he saw Tao approach. And then he disappeared again.
“He is as frightened of you as you are of him. Did you notice that he shape-changes when he is most afraid? It is the opposite with me. I cannot stay shape-changed if I am fearful.” Kai was fascinated by the other dragon. “If we are going to help him, he has to get used to you.”
“I tamed wild creatures when I was a child – a squirrel, a snub-nosed monkey, a leopard cub. It takes patience.”
Food was the answer. Tao spent hours collecting larvae. He placed a pile of them in the clearing. The blue dragon soon reappeared and ate them all. Kai stood back as Tao replenished the supply of larvae, so that the blue dragon saw he was the one who provided the food.
“It will take a long time to feed him up and win his trust,” Kai said. “Many days. We need a place where we won’t be disturbed by nomads.”
“Somewhere that Fo Tu Deng doesn’t know about,” Tao added.
The tinkling wind-chime sound of a dragon pleased with himself rang out. “I know the very place!”
Chapter Eleven
HOME COOKING
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it!” Tao said.
From a distance, the walled community around the Huan house looked the same as it had the last time Tao visited his family. The walls were still intact, the huge gate was still locked, but as they drew closer, the changes became obvious. There was no one working in the fields. The crops had been left to run to seed. The fruit in the orchards was rotting on the ground. And there were no guards on the walls. It was deserted.
It had taken them most of the day to reach Tao’s old family home beyond the Longevity Hills west of Luoyang. Tao was still getting used to the idea that they hadn’t travelled far, despite their weeks of wandering. It had been much closer than he’d realised.
They would have got there even quicker if the blue dragon wasn’t with them. The problem of getting the creature to follow them was solved by braiding vines from the forest to make a rope. Tao distracted him with larvae and Kai managed to loop the rope around his neck. The blue dragon was a wild creature, he didn’t like being restrained, but he could shape-change or make himself invisible all he liked, and he did, but he was still tethered by the rope. Tao had suggested tying a rope around his snout in case he tried to bite them, but Kai wouldn’t allow it. He was sure that the blue dragon wouldn’t turn on those who were providing him with food. The blue dragon pulled in the wrong direction, sat down, scratched at the rope and tangled it around bushes, but a steady supply of larvae had kept him moving.
Tao went up to the gate and pushed. It didn’t shift. It was barred from the inside.
“I know how to get in,” he said.
It was a long time since Tao had needed to sneak in and out of the walled community, but it didn’t take him long to find the narrow tunnel under the wall. It had started as a rabbit burrow. When he was young, he and another boy had enlarged it, so they could get out into the fields to play and talk to the people farming the Huan lands. Tao had managed to keep it a secret from his all-seeing mother, and he had used it right up until he left home to join the monastery. The bramble bushes that hid the entrance had grown thicker since he was a child, and it took him some time to cut a way through with the help of his wolf tooth. He tore his jacket on the thorns, but eventually managed to burrow through. If he hadn’t grown thin from his diet of wild food, he wouldn’t have been able to fit. He wriggled through and emerged in what had once been a chicken pen.
Tao climbed over the fence and stood in a place that was very familiar and yet strange. He walked up the hill towards the house. Weeds choked the vegetable gardens. The doors of the huts where servants and farmers had lived hung open. There was no one there. Not a soul. Whenever Tao had returned from the monastery to visit his family, there were always children and chickens, pigs and puppies, and, in a little hut away from the house, his father patiently carving wood into what his mother had thought were useless objects – small statues of animals, ornate candleholders, decorative handles for spoons. This time the compound was completely quiet. There were no farm animal sounds, no children’s laughter, no steady clunk of a hammer hitting a chisel.
Tao followed the wall around to the gate and tried to lift the huge bar that held it closed. He couldn’t, but he didn’t want to admit that to Kai. He did some of the qi concentrating exercises Kai had taught him, and then searched for the core of qi within him. It wasn’t as hard to locate as before. He could feel its power. He tried again to lift the bar. He still couldn’t do it. That ruled out superhuman strength as his possible qi power.
Then he heard Kai roar angrily. “The blue dragon has escaped. He chewed through the rope!”
Tao added finding a lost dragon to his list of problems. But before he’d come up with a solution for anything, he felt something bump him. He turned. The blue dragon was behind him. He could see his fangs. The dragon lunged forwards. Tao jumped back with a cry. But the dragon was looking for more food, trying to get his nose into Tao’s bag.
“What is happening in there?” Kai said
Tao’s heart was still hammering. “It’s all right. He’s here. He followed me.”
Tao wondered how the dragon had squeezed through the tunnel. Perhaps that was another of his skills. There were only a few larvae left, but Tao had an idea for a way to put them to good use. He held one of the larvae enclosed in his fist and pointed to the bar, but the blue dragon didn’t understand what Tao wanted him to do.
Tao heard Kai rumbling and complaining on the other side of the gate. “Why is it taking you so long?”
Eventually, the blue dragon understood, and using his snout he lifted the bar. Although he was weak from hunger, the dragon was far stronger than Tao. Tao opened his hand and the dragon gobbled up the larva. He went to the other end of the bar with another larva. The blue dragon nudged the bar out of its slot and snatched the larva from Tao’s hand. Tao dragged the gate open wide enough to let Kai in.
“At last,” Kai said, pushing the gate closed again and effortlessly lifted the bar back into place.
They walked up the hill and arrived at the gateway that led to the main house. The wooden lintel was carved with peach blossoms and characters that read “Huan Family Home”. The carving was his father’s work. Above the gateway was a neat little tiled roof with corners that turned up at the ends. Tao ducked through the gateway and stood in his family’s private courtyard, where the still silence was even stranger. There were no shrill orders shouted by his mother, no servants scurrying to do her bidding, no singing or zither playing from Meiling’s room, but it was the absence of his brother that made the place truly empty. Wei never uttered a sound, but the house and garden had always been filled with his presence. Every time Tao had returned, he’d felt it as soon as he’d walked through the gate, before he had laid eyes on his brother. Wei had been the heart of the house and the community.
Kai put the blue dragon in a goat pen.
“Shouldn’t we tie him up?” Tao asked.
“The quickest way to the heart is through the stomach. We have saved him from starvation. If we can continue to provide food, he will not stray.”
“But I’ve run out of woodworm larvae. Tie him up
until we have a plentiful supply of food.”
Tao was hungry too. Kai tethered the blue dragon, and they went in search of food. The food chests, the grain sheds, the vegetable cellars were all empty. Kai made sad sounds, but Tao hadn’t given up.
His family and the other occupants had taken the food stores with them when they moved south, but Tao knew his mother well. Though she was no longer the stern and bossy woman she had been before Wei’s death, she had been reluctant to abandon the land that had belonged to the Huan family for many generations. In one room there was a large bed with ornate carvings and a canopy of dusty curtains.
He called to Kai. “Come and help me move this bed.”
Kai used his body to push the bed aside, revealing a trapdoor. Tao pulled it open and smiled as he surveyed the contents of the cellar in the dim light. There were sacks of grain, beans and rice. He climbed down the steps to have a closer look and found jars of pickles, dried fruit, nuts and a small tin of the dried leaves of the tea plant.
“Was it a vision that told you there was food hidden here?” Kai said.
“No. Just a lifetime of knowledge of my mother. She believes that the time of the nomads will eventually come to an end and that the Huaxia will regain control, and my family will return.” He smiled sadly. “I bet my mother never thought I would be the one to return.”
“You miss your family.”
“I only saw them twice a year, but I always knew they were here, if I needed them.”
The dragon sighed.
“I did not know my parents. My mother died before I was hatched. My father flew away to the Isle of the Blest when I was less than a day old.”
“But I thought Danzi died in captivity.”
“He did not.”
“But I was told …”
“The nursery stories you heard were not always true.”
“I still have a lot to learn about dragons.”
“Jujubes!” Kai’s sharp eyes had spied his favourite treats in a corner.
Tao passed up the jar. Before he had a chance to object, the dragon had eaten six.
After their struggle to find every mouthful of food in the wild, suddenly they had all the food they needed. Outside in the vegetable garden there was squash growing and some green-leafed plants that had run to seed. Wrinkly pears lay beneath a tree. But the Huan house was perched on top of a hill that could be seen for many li. They had to be cautious.
“We can’t risk lighting a fire in the daytime,” Tao said.
Kai made disappointed sounds. “I was looking forward to a good cooked meal.”
“You’ll have to wait until it gets dark. And even then, we must not show any light.”
Tao explored his old home as they waited for nightfall. The rooms were mostly bare. His sister had left behind a few gowns and cosmetics. His father had left most of his carving tools. Tao’s mother had changed after Wei’s death. She became quiet and introspective. Mr Huan took over management of the compound and had no time for carving.
There was one room in the house that was as it had been when the Huan family lived there, and that was Wei’s. Their mother had insisted that it be left as it was when Wei died. His bed was covered with an embroidered quilt, there were paintings of animals and trees on the walls and, on a shelf, a row of things Tao had brought back for his brother from his walks beyond the walls – a bright blue bird’s egg, a pile of coloured river stones, a cast-off snakeskin. Their mother didn’t like having these things cluttering up the house, but though he couldn’t speak, Wei had a way of letting people know what he wanted. Tao’s childhood gifts to his brother had stayed where Wei could see them.
As soon as it got dark, Tao closed the kitchen shutters to contain the light from a single lamp. He lit the stove and prepared a meal. When he’d finished, he let the fire die down and blew out the lamp.
Tao’s cooking skills were limited, but he was able to produce a tasty dish of rice and vegetables. After so long eating with his fingers from a burnt gourd, Tao took delight in eating from a green-glazed china bowl with chopsticks his father had carved. His simple meal seemed like a feast. Kai sat up on his haunches, holding a bowl in one paw and chopsticks in the other and made appreciative sounds as he ate. Tao smiled. Ping had taught him good table manners. The blue dragon, however, wouldn’t touch the food. He finished off the last of the larvae and then made a sad sound like a gate creaking. He was still hungry. There was no rotting wood in the Huan compound, no source of more larvae.
“I don’t know why he’s so fussy,” Tao said. “You wouldn’t eat rice and cooked vegetables if you were living in the wild, but you’ll eat it now, even if it’s not entirely to your taste.”
“He is a very wild beast.”
“If I was starving, I would eat anything, I’m sure.”
“Including the flesh of animals?”
Tao didn’t know the answer to that.
“Where are the jujubes?” Tao asked. “Perhaps the blue dragon will like them too.”
Kai hung his head.
“You didn’t eat them all, did you?”
Kai nodded. “Tasted very good.”
After the meal, Tao had to settle the dragons for the night. Kai dug himself a hollow in the goat pen and filled it with straw from the stable.
“I can guard you better if I sleep out here,” he said.
The blue dragon didn’t dig a nest. He made his sad creaking sound again.
“Perhaps you could dig a hollow for him as well,” Tao suggested.
“He would dig his own if he wanted one. He must sleep some other way.”
Kai fetched more straw for the unhappy dragon and he eventually settled down.
Tao had decided to sleep in Wei’s room. Thick cloud blotted out the stars and the moon, so he allowed himself a small oil lamp. He shook out the dusty quilt, turned over the silk floss-filled mattress and collapsed on his brother’s bed with a sigh of relief. It had been his childhood bed too. Now it seemed like imperial luxury, compared to where he’d slept in recent months.
In the soft yellow light of the lamp, Tao could just make out a large spider in the corner above the bed. It was a huntsman and would have been the size of Tao’s hand, if it hadn’t had its legs tucked neatly together, four on each side. For as long as he could remember there had always been a huntsman above the bed. When he and his brother were small, they had lain there, watching one of the spiders as it shed its old skin and emerged with a bigger body to show to the world. When their mother had brushed it down with a broom, tears had poured from Wei’s eyes. Tao had stopped his mother from squashing the spider, and Wei had stopped crying. Their mother couldn’t bear to see Wei cry, so she had allowed the spider and its descendants to live.
The huntsman crept down the wall and settled itself on the headrest. Tao could see now that it had an egg sac. He was glad of the spider’s companionship. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it had only been two or three months since he had last lain alongside his brother in that very bed, trying to decide how his life should unfold. He knew that the spiders lived for a year or two, so this spider could well have been the same one that had looked down on them that night. The smell of his brother still lingered on the quilt – sesame oil and ginger and the faintest hint of Wei’s skin. He was glad that there was no moon that night – and no moon shadows.
Tao rose early. He’d slept well, better than any other night since he’d left Yinmi Monastery. The truth was, he felt safe behind the walls of his family home. Both dragons were still sleeping. He didn’t want to waste this peaceful time when there was no need to rush off anywhere or to hide from enemies, always glancing over his shoulder. Having time to himself was a luxury. He meditated on the words of Buddha. In the dawn light he did more qi concentrating exercises. He could feel Wei’s qi within him. It was already strong, he knew that, but it was still trapped inside him. What he needed to do was learn how to control it and use it for good. Kai had described how other dragonkeepers made their qi flow o
ut through their fingertips or feet, in the form of bolts of energy that moved objects or lifted the keepers off their feet. These bolts could kill people.
Did he want a skill like those other dragonkeepers? Or would he find another sort of power that was more suited to a Buddhist? Perhaps that was his problem. Most of the qi power that Kai had mentioned had the capacity to harm people. Other dragonkeepers, even Ping, had been willing to kill to protect their dragons. Tao’s Buddhist training wouldn’t allow him to use his qi in any way that could prove lethal. He was worried that, despite having a great quantity of qi, he would never be able to convert it into any sort of useful power.
The morning passed peacefully enough. Tao walked around the gardens, collecting fruit and vegetables, though they were wrinkled and past their prime. He discovered food that lay hidden beneath the earth – turnips, onions, ginger root. He hadn’t known such freedom from duty since his childhood. But he did have to find something that the blue dragon would eat. He selected a variety of things for him to try – dried fish, nuts, pickled eggs. The blue dragon hungrily sniffed everything Tao offered him, but he wouldn’t eat any of it. Whatever Tao tried to do, the creature was always at his heels, making plaintive noises.
In the afternoon, while the blue dragon had a nap, Tao swept the peony pavilion where Wei had spent so much time. It had been built with three sides open so that anyone sitting in it could enjoy the surrounding garden. He dusted the couch and swept the path made from coloured pebbles, but he couldn’t bring himself to brush away the spider webs that festooned the eaves. Wei had enjoyed lying on his couch and watching the wuji – butterflies on the flowers, slaters and worms when the gardener turned the soil, ants marching across the ceiling. He’d also liked watching creatures that repulsed most people – spiders, cockroaches, millipedes.