“Do they have our other things, Kai?” Ping asked.
Kai spoke to the dragons and the young red dragon pulled the saddlebag from behind a rock. Ping opened it. Everything was as she had left it—the cooking things, the gold coins, her firesticks, the dragon pendant Jun had given her. Ping’s stomach tightened. The last time she’d seen the bag, Jun had been holding it. She’d assumed that he’d taken it with him. Had Jun discarded the bag? Or had one of the dragons taken it from him?
“Kai,” Ping said. “Where is Jun? Did the dragons hurt him? Is he still alive?”
“Don’t know. Kai asked, but no one would answer.”
Ping had convinced herself that Jun had given up waiting for them. She had pictured him sitting comfortably at home with his family. Now she wasn’t so sure. She slipped the pendant around her neck.
The red dragon handed her something else—the crumpled piece of calfskin that she had thrown away on Long Gao Yuan.
The two red dragons slept at the back of the cave. The white dragons slept together, their bodies coiled around each other like a litter of enormous puppies. Kai slept between them. His nest straw was flattened and stale. He’d stopped making a new nest each night.
Ping lay down in a pile of straw near the cave entrance. She had brought Kai to the dragons, just as Danzi had instructed. She had expected the dragons to welcome her, not treat her like an intruder. But after what she’d seen at Long Gao Yuan, she didn’t blame them for being wary of people. She would have to be patient and win them over gradually.
Ping was tired, hungry and very dirty. She shivered in the chilly cave and pulled the bearskin around her. The dragon haven wasn’t the paradise she’d imagined.
• chapter seventeen •
WILD LIFE
“Wild dragons don’t do that,” he said.
The next morning, when Ping woke, the dragons were still sleeping even though it was hours past sunrise. The smell in the cavern was even worse. She decided that she had to find somewhere else to sleep. Kai was the only dragon awake. Ping found him outside squatting behind a large rock.
“Kai, what are you doing?”
“Poo,” the little dragon said.
“I can see that, but why didn’t you dig a hole and cover it over like I taught you?”
“Wild dragons don’t do that,” he said.
He had been living with the dragons for just a few weeks, but he was already changing his habits.
“We need somewhere to sleep that doesn’t smell as bad as the dragons’ cavern,” she said. “Come and help me find a place.”
They investigated several caverns that were little more than holes in the ground, and would fill up if it ever rained. Other caves offered more shelter, but their walls were encrusted with the yellow crystals, which had an unpleasant smell.
“Let’s have a look over there,” Ping said, pointing to the north of the plateau.
The ground rose in the centre of the plateau so that the northern end was higher. There were fewer craters and some low bushes and tufts of grass. A cascade of pinkish water from a bubbling spring clattered down a rocky escarpment that separated the northern end of the plateau from the dragons’ preferred pools and caverns. The water was hot.
This part of the plateau was more to Ping’s liking. She preferred to be surrounded by bushes rather than the smelly pools. But Ping didn’t want to be unfriendly and live too far away from them. She found a small cave that burrowed horizontally halfway up the escarpment. It was dry and there were no crystals on the walls. Though it was away from the pools, the slight elevation meant that she could still see the dragons. The cave was warmed by a steam vent near the entrance, and there were ferns and mosses growing around it. It was small, but big enough for two.
“What do you think, Kai? Will we be comfortable here?”
“It is a good cave for Ping,” the dragon said. “But Kai will sleep with the rest of the cluster.”
Cluster. It was a good word for a group of dragons. Ping tried not to look disappointed. That’s why she’d brought Kai to the dragon haven, so that he could live with his own kind.
The dragons were gradually emerging from their caverns, yawning and scratching themselves. They had very different habits to Danzi, who hadn’t slept much at all. They didn’t take any notice of Ping. She fetched her few possessions and moved them into her new home. The dragons still didn’t offer her any food, so she went out to investigate the northern part of the plateau to see if she could find anything to eat. There were burrows that offered the promise of rabbit. Snakes and lizards might be attracted by the warm rocks. She startled a pheasant as she walked through a clump of grass, but she would need a trap or a snare to catch rabbits and birds. She had hoped there would be a clear pool with fish, but there wasn’t. She found a couple of mushrooms, but they were dry and withered because of the warm air.
The young red dragon came up to Kai and said something to him.
“The dragons say that Ping can bathe beneath the hot falls,” he translated.
The cascade of pinkish water fell a few feet before it collected in a small pool and then ran into a crater and disappeared back into the earth again. Ping would have preferred a still pool, but she didn’t complain.
To her surprise most of the female dragons gathered round to watch her bathe. Only Gu Hong stayed away. Ping was a little embarrassed to have an audience, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper wash. Her last hot bath was a distant memory, so she undressed and slipped into the steaming pool. The steam had the same unpleasant sulphurous smell as some of the other pools. It was so small that she only just fitted into it and there was nowhere she could avoid sitting under the falls. But she soon discovered that it was actually very pleasant to have warm water cascading over her.
The dragons grew bored with watching her bathe and wandered off. Ping felt her cares and concerns begin to wash away with the dirt. The dragon haven wasn’t as comfortable as she’d imagined, the dragons weren’t as friendly as she’d hoped, but Kai was safe and happy. She could allow both her body and her mind to relax at last.
Ping washed her clothes as well, and stayed in the pool while they dried on the rocks. Around noon, the yellow dragons dragged the remains of a deer carcass out of another cave. They cut off pieces using their talons and a sharpened stone, and gave a piece to each of the dragons. The female glanced shyly at Ping and put a lump of the raw meat on a rock for her. Ping bowed her thanks as she took the piece of meat.
“Tell them that I can’t eat raw meat, Kai. I’ll need to light a fire so that I can cook it.”
Kai made the sounds which didn’t translate in Ping’s head. The old red dragon made a sharp noise in reply.
“No fire,” Kai said. “Gu Hong says smoke will show the world where the dragon haven is.”
Ping didn’t know how far she’d flown on the back of the dragon, but she was sure there was no one within a hundred li to see the smoke. But she didn’t argue with the dragon.
If she was going to stay in the dragon haven, she would have to find a way to cook her food. From the smell of the meat, Ping guessed that it was several days since the animal had been killed. The dragons were busy gnawing on deer bones. Ping looked around the plateau. The steaming pools reminded her of the kitchens at Beibai Palace. She inspected some of the smaller craters. Some were dark holes that went deep into the earth. Others were just depressions in the crumbly earth. One or two were basins of water so hot they were boiling. Ping selected one of these pools and dropped her piece of meat into the bubbling water. Kai came over to see what she was doing.
“Give me your meat, Kai, and I’ll cook it for you. You shouldn’t eat such old meat raw.”
He glanced at the other dragons as he gave the meat to Ping. She scratched him under his chin while they waited for it to cook. Kai had spent a lot of his short life eating elegant banquets of tasty stews, braised meat and fish with delicious sauces. He had a lot of adjustments to make if he was going
to live as a wild dragon. The meat took less than half an hour to cook. It wasn’t as tasty as roasted meat, but at least it wasn’t raw.
In the afternoon, most of the dragons dozed in the sun. Ping watched Kai playing with the male yellow dragon. Kai had told her his name was Tun, which meant Morning Sunlight. The game they played was something like hide-and-seek, but instead of hiding in one place, they kept moving until they could sneak up and jump on each other. The aim was to throw the other dragon to the ground. Kai called the game hide-and-hunt.
As she watched, Ping realised that it wasn’t a game at all, but a way of training young dragons to hunt and to defend themselves. After a while, the young red dragon woke from her nap and joined in. Because he was small, Kai was at a complete disadvantage. He never won. He was good at hiding, but he could never get the better of the other dragons. That didn’t stop him leaping on their backs or trying to trip them up. Ping wasn’t sure she liked seeing Kai play so aggressively. By the end of the game he had several small wounds. Ping had never really considered how much damage dragons could do with teeth, talons and a swipe of their tails if they chose to. But no matter how many times Kai was tripped, winded or thrown on his back, he always went back for more.
Ping devised a routine to fill her days. She swept out her cave with a broom made of twigs. She explored the northern end of the plateau, looking for herbs and berries that she could add to her meals or dry if they had healing properties. She carved a needle from a piece of bone so that she could mend her clothes. She also carved a set of Seven Cunning Pieces from the hip bone of a deer, to amuse herself in the afternoons.
Since she had no silk hangings to decorate the dull walls of her new home, she decided to create her own decorations. From around the edges of the pools she collected lumps of earth that had taken on the different colours of the water. She used them to draw pictures on the walls of her cave. She was no artist, but when she drew Danzi, Kai and Hua, she was pleased with her work. She drew trees and flowers that she might never see again. She tried to draw her mother and brother, but they looked more like wooden dolls than real people.
The dragons led leisurely lives, spending many hours basking in the sun or wallowing in the pools. Ping sat at the mouth of her cave, watching her new neighbours and getting to know their ways.
The three white dragons were sisters. Their names were Bai Xue, Shuang and Lian, which meant White Snow, Frost and Lotus. Their mother had laid their three dragon stones at the same time, Kai told her, but each had been hatched hundreds of years apart. When dragons were more widespread, they had been able to rear more than one dragonling at once, but as their lives became endangered, it was only safe to rear one at a time. A dragon mother could choose to delay the hatching of her dragon stones. Kai didn’t know how.
The white dragons were the smallest, but their wings were bigger in proportion to their body than the wings of other dragons. That made them the fastest and strongest flyers. They acted as scouts. It was Shuang who had been watching Ping as she had made her slow way across the mountains. She and Bai Xue also went out hunting, though Ping hadn’t seen them bring back anything larger than a bird. Lian was the youngest of the wild dragons, too young to have wings.
The two yellow dragons, Tun and Sha, were mated. Tun had the strong straight nose of an adult male. Sha, whose name meant Sandy, was a shy creature who never came near Ping.
Gu Hong spent each morning sitting in the sun. Each afternoon she lumbered over to the white pool and stayed there for hours. Every evening, after the moon gathering, she dragged her huge, old body to the sleeping cavern. The younger red dragon was Jiang, which meant Ginger. She was Gu Hong’s daughter, and looked after her mother’s needs, bringing her food and water in a gourd.
The dragons took little notice of Ping, though she sometimes caught them observing her when they thought she wasn’t looking. They were, however, always talking to Kai, instructing him or playing with him. Ping was pleased that they were taking care of him. She wondered what they were saying, but whenever she asked Kai, he told her it was nothing important. She thought of Jun and how frustrated he’d been that he couldn’t understand Kai. She now knew how exasperating that was. She tried to communicate with them by making signs with her hands, but they didn’t seem to understand her.
The dragons found Kai’s shape-changing skills very entertaining. And Kai liked nothing better than to be the centre of attention. When he changed into a chicken or a pig, they made the same jingling bell sound that Kai did when he found something amusing. They gasped when he turned into a beautiful vase. He sometimes changed into an innocent-looking rock and waited until another dragon walked past him. Then he would suddenly change back into his normal shape with a roar to make them jump.
“I’ve never seen any of the other dragons shape-change,” Ping said after Kai had startled Lian in this way.
“They’re not very good at shape-changing. Not nearly as good as Kai,” he added. “White dragons can only shape-change into one thing—a white eagle.”
“I think I saw one when I was walking,” Ping said.
“Yellow dragons can change size but not shape,” Kai continued. “They can appear larger or very small. Red dragons only have the mirage skill.”
“You can do all of those things,” Ping said.
“Yes,” said Kai proudly.
“What do the dragons speak about at the gatherings?” Ping asked Kai later that day as they walked together on the northern plateau looking for herbs.
“The dragons remember. They recall what has happened in their lives and in the history of all dragons in this land that is now known as the Empire.”
Ping had never considered that there was a time before the Empire and that dragons would have existed then.
“Do they ever speak about … what happened at Long Gao Yuan?”
“They remember the Dead Ones at the moon gatherings, but they don’t speak of what happened.”
All of the dragons must have survived the massacre. Ping didn’t blame them for not wanting to remember whatever had happened there.
“They also make decisions,” Kai continued. “Such as whose turn it is to be on watch. They talk about whether they should bring the rains again, or whether they will let nature take its course without the help of dragons.”
“But dragons can’t really bring rain.”
“Dragons can bring rain. Gu Hong said so,” Kai insisted.
“It’s just a story, a legend. Danzi could only make the rain fall if there were already clouds.”
“Father was old and weary and had lost the ability.”
“Well, if they can make it rain, why don’t they?”
“They don’t want to help humans. They have not brought rain since the massacre at Long Gao Yuan.”
Ping had many more questions, but Tun called Kai over.
“Ping must stay away from the edge of the plateau,” Kai said, before he ran off for a game of hide-and-hunt.
• chapter eighteen •
BLACK THUNDER
“Why isn’t there a gathering tonight?”
“There is no moon,” Kai replied.
Ping’s days took on the slow, lazy rhythms of the dragons’ lives. In the afternoons there was nothing to do but doze in the warm summer sun. One afternoon, her eyes had just closed when she felt something digging her in the ribs. It was Gu Hong. The old red dragon was poking her with a stick. Ping smiled and nodded, but wasn’t sure what Gu Hong wanted. The old dragon scratched the earth in front of her with the stick and then poked Ping again, harder. Ping looked at the white soil. To her amazement she saw that the marks Gu Hong had made in the soil weren’t random scratchings, but formed characters. Very shaky, misshapen characters, but three characters nonetheless. Mother of Kai.
Ping realised it was meant to be a question. Who was Kai’s mother?
Ping wrote an answer in the earth. Lu Yu.
Gu Hong wrote more characters. Colour. Ancestry. Cause of death.
Ping felt her face burn with shame. She didn’t know what colour Lu Yu was. She had never seen Kai’s mother in full daylight. In Ping’s memory she was just grey. She knew nothing about where Kai’s mother had come from. And, worse still, she had died from neglect and misery. At Huangling, Ping hadn’t had any power to change the conditions that the dragons lived in and it wasn’t even her job to care for them, but she could have done more.
Don’t know, she scratched in the dirt.
Ping had many questions she wanted to ask—how did the dragons at Long Gao Yuan die? Why did Danzi leave them? Couldn’t she have a more useful role in the haven?—but these were all difficult questions and she didn’t think it was the right time to ask them. Instead she asked a simple question. Dragons dig holes? She indicated the craters around them. No, was the reply. Caused by fire dragon turning in his sleep. Gu Hong scratched more characters in the earth. It was a slow method of communication, but gradually Ping learned about the huge fire dragon that the dragons believed lived far below the earth’s surface. His breath was so hot that it melted rocks. Underwater streams were heated by the molten rock. At a few places in the world, this water found its way to the surface and hot springs burst out of the ground. In these special places, the fire dragon protected the earthly dragons. Though Ping didn’t think they had much faith in his powers of protection, as there was always one dragon on guard duty, day and night.