Tao wanted to do everything he could to spread the Buddha knowledge, in order to accumulate as much good karma as possible. He had secretly started to spend an hour or two transcribing in the evenings after the rest of the monastery was asleep. Recently, he had also tried to get up early and transcribe a few columns of characters before the morning meal. Tao was annoyed with himself. As well as neglecting his assigned duties, he had also failed to do his extra transcription.
The abbot had been pleased with Tao’s work and had given him permission to learn the language of Buddha from Lao Chen. Because of his great age, these lessons were the old monk’s only duties. He spent most of his day sleeping, but fortunately the one thing that sparked him to life was his love of Sanskrit. Tao was delighted. His lessons with Lao Chen were his favourite part of the day. He climbed the steps to the Meditation Hall two at a time. He had made amends for his previous lapse, and he still hadn’t missed his Sanskrit lesson.
Tao’s hurried steps were halted when he almost ran into a boy who was wearing the sort of old-fashioned gown with wide sleeves that Tao had seen only in pictures painted many years ago. The boy smiled at him as rain dripped from his nose. He was about Tao’s age and, though Tao was positive he’d never seen him before, there was something familiar about him.
“Are you here to do service?” Tao asked. Sometimes carpenters or gardeners came from the villages to help maintain the monastery.
The boy shook his head. Tao didn’t have time to worry about village boys. He stepped around him and went into the Meditation Hall. Lao Chen was sleeping in the corner. Tao took down his writing tools and began making ink. He poured a small pool of water on his ink stone and rubbed the ink stick on the stone, watching the water darken and thicken as the ink dissolved. It was a satisfying process and he always knew when the ink had reached just the right consistency. However, he couldn’t find his brush. He was on his hands and knees searching for it when, to his annoyance, he realised the boy had followed him inside. Tao stood up.
“You can’t come in here,” he hissed at the boy. “It isn’t permitted.”
He reached out to take the boy’s arm, so that he could lead him out of the hall, but the boy shrank back as if Tao had threatened him with a sharp blade.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Tao said. How could anyone think that of him? “But you must leave.”
He shooed the boy outside, following him to make sure he left, when something peculiar happened. The air around the boy began to shift and shimmer. Tao had never seen anything like it. Then the boy himself started to change. His skin turned green, his head distorted and changed shape. Tao felt ill, but couldn’t tear his eyes away. The boy sprouted horns and grew a long tail. Before his eyes, the boy in the old-fashioned clothes transformed into a dragon.
Tao was sick in the bushes.
Chapter Three
RED CLOUD HERB
The sickness passed. Tao could no longer deny that the dragon was real. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t excited either. His brother would have been excited. His brother would have loved to meet a dragon, but Tao had never been the sort of boy who dreamed of adventure and excitement. Even before he came to the monastery, he had valued calm and quiet. All he wanted to do was study and transcribe.
In the daylight, the dragon didn’t look as dangerous, despite its size and the sharpness of its teeth, talons and horns. In fact the dragon looked unwell. Its scales were a drab green, the spines running down its back drooped, and purple blood dripped onto the path from the unhealed wounds.
It wasn’t Tao’s fault that a dragon had turned up at the monastery in the middle of the night, and yet he felt responsible for it. The creature was the cause of his troubles, but it needed help. Yinmi Monastery welcomed all wayfarers, whether they revered the Blessed One or not, especially if they were sick or injured. Though he sensed it would only lead to more trouble, he couldn’t turn the dragon away.
The monastery was too small to have an infirmary, but there was a herbalist – or at least a monk with some knowledge of herbal medicines who kept a small store of them in a box under his bed.
“I’ll fetch someone to attend to your wounds.”
The dragon made a sound like iron blades scraping together and turned its head from side to side. Tao was astonished. The dragon had understood his words, and it didn’t want anyone else to see him. Tao had a feeling that it was for the best. He went over to a small shed where the novices kept their gardening tools. He opened the door.
“You can hide in here.”
The dragon was about to enter the shed, but shrank back.
“Go back into the Meditation Hall, then,” Tao said. “No one will see you there. I’ll get water and healing ointment.”
The dragon made the wind-chime sound. Tao was glad to get the beast out of sight. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want the other monks to know it was there. It would be better if Tao just tended to the dragon’s wounds, and sent it on its way – wherever that was.
“You must be quiet,” Tao whispered, glancing at his snoozing Sanskrit teacher.
To avoid being seen by his fellow monks, Tao took a flight of rarely used steps behind the Meditation Hall. This route took him past Yinmi’s shrine. It was a small building, smaller even than the novices’ hut and made of mud bricks. They had no Buddha relics to keep in it, just the fragment of the burned scroll. Tao was the only one who ever visited the shrine. He liked to wipe the dust and bird droppings off the rosewood box.
When Tao returned, out of breath, with a cloth and water from the kitchen, and a healing balm from under the herbalist’s bed, the dragon sat obediently on its haunches waiting for Tao to clean its wounds. He could see now that it had many scratches and bruises. The two chest wounds were by far the worst. They were long and deep, and though they were not fresh wounds, they weren’t healing. Tao held his breath as he dabbed gently at the sores that had formed along the edges. Dark blood soaked into the cloth. There was no doubt that this was a living breathing creature in front of him. The dragon made low sounds that set Tao’s teeth on edge, but didn’t resist his ministrations.
As Tao took the lid off the ointment jar, the dragon leaned over and sniffed the contents. It shook its head firmly, its whiskers swinging from side to side.
“This is good healing ointment,” Tao said. He wasn’t expecting the beast to be fussy.
The dragon moved towards the writing desk, and with its talon picked up Tao’s lost brush, hidden by a wrinkle in a mat. Tao stared in astonishment as the dragon dipped the brush into the ink and made marks on a sheet of paper.
“Don’t scribble on the paper!” Tao snatched up the paper. “It’s very expensive.” He held his breath as the old monk in the corner stirred and then went back to sleep.
The dragon breathed out and a thin tendril of mist issued from its nostrils. It sounded annoyed. Tao looked at the paper. He couldn’t suppress a tingle of excitement. The marks weren’t scribbles. The dragon had written three characters. They were wobbly and crooked, worse than a small child’s first efforts, but they were legible.
Tao read them aloud. “Red cloud herb.”
The dragon bowed its head.
“I know that herb. It grows by a waterfall not far from here. Will that heal your wound?”
The dragon bowed its head again.
“I could go and collect some tomorrow.”
The dragon reached out and clasped Tao’s arm with its talons as it had the previous night and pulled him towards the door.
“I can’t go now!” Tao glanced at the sleeping monk. “I’m supposed to be learning Sanskrit.”
The dragon didn’t let go of Tao’s arm. It made a sound like someone rapidly banging a gong. For a beast, it was very insistent.
The rain had stopped. Wan sunlight seeped through the clouds, making everything steam. Flowers were blooming, birds sang and small animals scurried through the undergrowth as Tao walked along the narrow path, with the dragon a few paces beh
ind him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked through the forest. He breathed in a sweet fragrance. The perfume came from the small, unlovely flowers of the otherwise unremarkable osmanthus tree. He felt guilty. A novice shouldn’t be outdoors enjoying himself. The time for his Sanskrit lesson had passed, and he should have been catching up on his transcribing while the other novices tended the vegetable garden.
Tao heard the waterfall before he saw it. At a place where the mountain shrugged off its mantle of trees, a narrow stream rattled down the hillside and tumbled noisily into a pool. When the other novices went home to visit their families once a month, Tao sometimes went to the waterfall to meditate. There was a view into the distance that wasn’t visible from the monastery hidden in the forest. The deep green foliage of the cypress trees swept down to meet the yellow expanse of the plain far below. In the distance was the city of Luoyang, a dark stain near the horizon.
The plant known as red cloud herb was growing at the edge of the waterfall, its rusty coloured foliage glossy with the mist from the cascading water. Tao set to work collecting the leaves.
“Do you think this will be enough?” He turned to the dragon, holding out a handful of leaves, but the creature was busy searching on the other side of the waterfall, and didn’t hear Tao’s question. Tao shook his head in disbelief. Not only was he talking to a dragon, he’d been waiting for it to reply!
Tao heard a sound above the rush and clatter of the waterfall. It was like someone softly striking rock with a tool. It wasn’t one of the dragon’s sounds. The beast was staring into the distance, flexing its shoulders, snuffing the breeze. It hadn’t heard anything. The sound drew closer. Tao’s heart thudded. It was the sound of horses’ hooves picking their way across rocky ground.
“Quick. We must hide.” It was his turn to grab the dragon and pull him to the shelter of the trees. But the trees were too sparse to hide such a large beast – not even dense enough to conceal a skinny novice. Tao looked around in a panic. There was no other hiding place. The dragon was finally aware of the approaching horses. He started to shimmer and transform. Tao’s stomach lurched and he looked away. When he glanced back, there wasn’t another boy standing in front of him, but a large rock, exactly the same colour and texture as the mountainside. Tao ducked behind it just as five men on horseback came into view.
The men were nomads, members of one of the Five Barbarian Tribes. A crude eagle in flight was painted onto their saddle blankets, though which tribe this symbol belonged to – Xiong Nu, Xianbei, Qiang, Di or Jie – Tao didn’t know. Their faces were dark and bearded. They were dressed in coarse trousers and armoured vests, and sat astride tall horses as if it were the most natural thing in the world. One of them uttered a few ugly sounds, which Tao found hard to imagine could have any civilised meaning. The nomads stared out at the view, just as Tao and the dragon had a few minutes earlier. Then they kicked their horses with their heels and continued along the narrow path in single file.
The dragon returned to his own shape, leaving Tao exposed.
“They’re heading towards Yinmi,” he said as he crouched in the grass, hoping the nomads wouldn’t see him. “If they discover the monastery …”
The abbot had been careful that the monastery’s location was never revealed to the nomads. There was nothing to steal, no land to commandeer, but members of the Five Tribes didn’t always need a reason to kill and destroy.
The dragon transformed again. Tao was getting used to turning away. This time when he looked back, he saw a pure white horse cantering along the path after the nomads. It reared up, its long mane rippling in the breeze. One of the nomads twisted round in his saddle and saw the horse. He called to the others. They all galloped back, shouting and following the horse as it disappeared into the forest.
Tao waited. Minutes crawled past like snails. He strained his ears, but could hear nothing. Perhaps the dragon wasn’t coming back. He collected the red leaves that he’d dropped in his hurry to hide. He straightened up and dropped them again when he found himself staring at a large green vase, taller than himself, that was emitting sounds like the jingling of small bells. Tao felt only slightly queasy as the vase turned back into a dragon.
“Is that your idea of a joke?” Tao didn’t smile, but he was glad to see that the dragon was unharmed. “Have the nomads gone?”
The dragon bowed its head. It picked up the scattered red leaves, squashed them into a ball with one paw and put them into its mouth.
“I was going to prepare an ointment,” Tao said. “I didn’t realise you wanted to eat them!”
The dragon didn’t eat the leaves. It chewed them thoroughly for a minute or two and then spat them onto a rock.
Tao raised an eyebrow. “I would have used a mortar and pestle and mixed it with vegetable oil or a little beeswax, though this is as good a way as any, I suppose.”
The dragon looked at Tao expectantly. Tao gingerly dipped his fingers into the slimy mixture of masticated leaves and dragon saliva and rubbed it onto the dragon’s wounds. The dragon made the wind-chime sounds.
“How did you get this wound? Did you have a fight with a wild animal?”
The dragon didn’t move its head. Whatever had happened, it looked as if the dragon had come off worse. There were older scars, including a large one on his right flank, all well healed. It wasn’t the first fight the creature had been in.
Tao applied the last of the red cloud herb and wiped his fingers on the grass. He looked into the dragon’s brown eyes. The beast was far more intelligent that he had imagined at first.
The dragon lifted a paw and turned it over. Balanced on the pads of the paw was Tao’s piece of purple gemstone.
Tao took it, pleased to feel its cool smoothness again. He was glad that he hadn’t lost the stone; and he didn’t scold the dragon for taking it.
“I wonder if you have a name?”
The dragon picked up a sharp stone and scratched a single character on the rock face. It was just as irregular as the ones he had written on the paper, but Tao could read it.
“Kai. Your name is Kai?”
The dragon bowed his head.
Tao stared at his abbot’s feet.
“You have always been a well-behaved novice,” the abbot was saying somewhere above Tao’s bowed head. “Diligent, modest, frugal.”
The abbot’s sandals were woven from straw and very worn.
“I have given you special privileges – release from work in the garden so you could transcribe our sutra and have lessons in Sanskrit with Lao Chen. Yet you have neglected your duties. I did not expect you to be disobedient.”
Tao had a terrible feeling that his privileges were now in the past.
“And although monks refrain from pride in appearance, that does not mean we permit laziness in our personal presentation to the world.”
Tao tried to smooth his crumpled robe. He ran his fingers over his bristly scalp that he hadn’t shaved for several days. His fingernails, black from scrabbling around in the earth collecting leaves, were now in full view of the abbot, so Tao quickly tucked his hands under his knees.
“I am sorry, Your Reverence,” Tao stammered.
“Can you explain this behaviour?”
Tao couldn’t admit that he’d been out strolling in the forest with a dragon, when he should have been learning Sanskrit, but he couldn’t lie to the abbot either.
“I was collecting herbs, Your Reverence. There is a herb that I had noticed nearby which I believe helps heal poisoned wounds.”
“And have you given a sample of this herb to our herbalist?”
“No, Your Reverence. I … I … no longer have the leaves I collected.”
“You lost them,” the abbot said. “You must be more careful with your possessions, Tao. Such carelessness is your one fault.”
“Yes, Your Reverence.”
Tao was hoping Kai had gone away now that he had attended to the dragon’s wounds. He wanted to get back to his monkish routine i
mmediately, but the abbot had a different plan.
“I have no choice but to revoke your privileges,” the abbot said sadly. “The storeroom is almost empty. The other novices are going to the villages to collect alms tomorrow. I want you to go to Luoyang.”
Tao looked up. “Luoyang?”
“You heard me correctly. The villagers do not have much food and our grain harvest is a few weeks away yet. We must seek alms further afield.”
“Yes, Your Reverence.”
The abbot leaned towards Tao and patted him on the shoulder.
“The journey to Luoyang will give you time to contemplate your errors. When you return, I am sure you will resume your usual exemplary behaviour. Then you can take up your transcription duties again.”
Tao bowed and made his way to the door, his eyes still downcast.
“A traveller arrived this morning,” the abbot said, “seeking a safe night’s rest on his way to Luoyang. It is rare for us to have a visitor. I don’t know how he found us. You will accompany him along the road.”
Tao glanced back at the abbot.
“It will be safer for you both. The traveller is without speech, he can only communicate by writing, and he has never been to the city before. You can show him the way. Leave at first light.”
Tao’s heart sank. He knew exactly who the traveller without speech was.
Chapter Four
WHITE HORSE TEMPLE
Tao sorted through the collection of frayed and mended straw sandals that the novices wore whenever they left the monastery. He looked up at the man dressed in a worn peasant’s gown.
“I don’t know why you’re following me, Kai,” he complained as he selected the least worn pair. “Haven’t you got important dragonish things to do?”
The man, of course, said nothing. Tao strode off down the path. A silent companion suited him very well. He would meditate as he walked.