Tun and Shuang had to take Hei Lei’s place and hunt for food. Neither was as big or as strong as Hei Lei, but they hoped that together they could provide for the cluster. The long flights exhausted Tun and the prey they brought back was smaller. There was enough to eat, but rarely any left over to dry for winter.
Ping spent long hours searching the plateau for mushrooms and edible roots, but her additions to the winter store were only small. She wanted one of the winged dragons to take her further afield to find fruit, nuts and green vegetables that could be dried for storage, but they refused as they didn’t want to risk being seen by other humans.
When he was well enough, Kai joined the dragons for a moon gathering. The meeting didn’t last long, but Jiang told Ping that the council had agreed that Kai was their leader. There was no debate. He was the first dragon of five colours for three generations. But because of his youth, it was decided that the female council would continue to make decisions for the cluster until Kai’s horns grew.
“Did Danzi know that Kai is a dragon of five colours?” Ping asked Jiang after the gathering.
“He couldn’t have. It is the blood of first battle flowing through Kai’s scales that has made them show their true colours for the first time. But Danzi’s father was a dragon of five colours. Though he didn’t inherit the trait himself, he would have known there was a chance that Kai would.”
“Kai should take a new name now that he is leader,” Gu Hong said.
“Kai doesn’t want a new name.” He had overheard. “Kai wants to keep the name that Father gave.”
“All dragon leaders take a new name,” Jiang said.
“I’ve got an idea, Kai,” Ping said, picking up the stick that she’d used to write messages to Gu Hong in the clay. “You can still call yourself Kai, but you can write it differently.”
The dragons gathered round as she drew a character in the clay.
“This character is pronounced kai but it means ‘triumphant’ or ‘victorious’. You can still be Kai Duan but now it means ‘triumphant beginning’, to signify the beginning of your reign as leader.”
Kai nodded. He clasped the stick in his talons and made a shaky copy of the character.
“Yes, Kai likes that name.”
Gu Hong turned to Ping, “You are free to bathe in the pink pool.”
The other dragons nodded.
Ping wasn’t convinced that the minerals in the pink pool were harmless to humans, but she didn’t want to offend the council. Her hot falls were pinkish and they hadn’t harmed her. She knew it was a great honour.
The nights were starting to get cool. Ping bathed in the pink pool each evening and found that she slept well afterwards. It was a small, shallow pool, not much bigger than a bath. As she sat in it, she would close her eyes, relax completely and allow her thoughts to clear. An image of the dragon haven would form in her mind. It wasn’t the usual view that she saw as she walked around it. It was from above, as if she were flying over. It was a peaceful sight. The dragons were going about their business. Some were flying away, others hovering as they prepared to land. They looked purposeful. It was a vision of the future.
Ping didn’t believe in the dragons’ story of a fire dragon beneath the earth. She had read about hot springs in the library at Beibai Palace, so she knew that the earth itself made the hot springs. She also knew that minerals dissolved in the water made the pools different colours. Whatever minerals turned her bathing and drinking water pink, in combination with the dragon-stone shard, had enabled her to penetrate the mind shields of the dragons. They were also improving her ability to read the future.
“Why don’t the dragons bathe in the pink pool?” Ping asked Jiang one evening.
“It is not correct,” the red dragon replied.
Ping sighed. Why was it always so hard to get a straight answer from a dragon?
Each evening the image of the dragons’ future became clearer. She could see Kai growing up with the other dragons. She searched her visions looking for herself, but she was never there. Of course she didn’t know when the image would become reality. It might have been hundreds of years in the future. She might have lived out her entire life at the dragon haven and be buried there somewhere. She tried hard to persuade herself of this, but she couldn’t fool herself. She knew what the image was telling her.
Ping stopped bathing in the pink pool.
“Why don’t you bathe anymore?” Jiang asked her.
“No reason,” Ping replied.
It didn’t make any difference though. She couldn’t remove the image that had formed in her mind. She had seen the future of the dragon haven. The dragons were going about their lives in peace and harmony. She wasn’t there.
• chapter twenty-three •
ALONE
She dug into her pouch. “You keep this.”
She handed him the silk square. “If you keep it out of the
sunlight the character won’t fade any more.”
Kai now spent most of his time with the other dragons. They each had things to teach him. Ping tried to keep busy, but she found herself spending a lot of time sitting with Gu Hong. Even though Ping could now hear the old dragon’s voice in her mind, Gu Hong still preferred to write out their communications in the earth. Conversation with the old red dragon was slow, but Ping wasn’t short of time. They had chosen a sunny spot where the earth was brown and easier to write on than the hard white clay that surrounded the pools.
Dragonlings born in captivity usually die, Gu Hong wrote. You reared Kai well. No one else could have done it.
This was high praise from the old dragon, but Ping could read her unspoken thoughts now. She didn’t want any humans in the dragon haven—not even Ping. The same thoughts had formed in all the dragons’ minds.
Why didn’t Danzi bring Kai’s dragon stone to us himself? Gu Hong asked.
Danzi had headed in the exact opposite direction. He’d gone to Ocean, and then across to the Isle of the Blest. He couldn’t have gone any further away.
He said he wanted to leave the world of men and live on the Isle of the Blest, Ping wrote. He was going to take Kai as well, but at the last minute he changed his mind and left him with me.
He was a long time in captivity, perhaps his mind wasn’t as clear as it used to be, Gu Hong wrote.
Ping remembered the old dragon as she had last seen him. His scales no longer reflected the sun but were dull and faded. His eyes had taken on a yellowish cast. But although Danzi was weary of body, his mind had stayed sharp. Ping believed it was his pride that had stopped him from bringing Kai himself. He had lost the leadership of the cluster. He hadn’t wanted to come back and face Hei Lei again.
Ping needed to know more about Kai’s future. She returned to the pink pool, but the vision she had was of herself. It was in the future and she was somewhere that she didn’t recognise. She was in a house writing on calfskin. Something that smelt good was bubbling on a stove. There was a dog wagging its tail. Someone else was there too. She tried to see who it was, but the image faded. Whether that was her true future, or just a possible one, Ping didn’t know.
Ping now knew why the sixth line of the Yi Jing reading said there would be cause for regret. Hei Lei had been right all along. Humans had no place at the dragon haven. She had to leave Kai.
At the moon gathering that night Sha and Lian spoke again about bringing rain. They were outnumbered. Tun and the rest of the female dragons wouldn’t agree.
“Kai should decide,” Lian said.
Kai shook his head. He had been ready to fight for his position as leader, but he wasn’t yet ready to make such important decisions.
“It is too hard,” Kai said to Ping later. “Kai feels sorry for the humans who are dying of hunger, but also understands that the dragons cannot forget what humans did to the cluster. Dragon hunters killed the white dragons’ parents, Tun’s sister, Shuang’s mate.”
“I don’t blame them for not wanting to help humans,” Ping
said.
“Sha and Lian want to help. Jiang thinks we are too few. We could only make a small cloud and it wouldn’t be big enough to bring rain to the whole Empire.”
Ping decided that now was as good a time as any to tell Kai her plans.
“The dragons don’t want me here, Kai,” she said.
“Kai makes the decisions. Ping can stay.”
“I can hear all their voices now. I know what they are saying. They don’t want any humans in the haven.”
“They don’t mean Ping.”
She scratched him under the chin.
“I have to go, Kai.”
Kai sighed. He was silent for a while and then he turned to her. “When?”
“Soon.”
“Ping could wait until Kai is bigger.”
“I can’t teach you what you need to know to be a wild dragon.”
“Just wait a little while longer … till Kai is five-times-ten.”
Ping smiled, fighting back tears. “I’ll be too old to climb back down the mountains then. I think it would be better for me to leave before winter sets in.”
He made a low, sad sound. “Who will look after Ping?” he asked.
“I’ll look after myself, Kai.”
She scratched the bumps on his head where his horns would one day grow. When they did she knew she would be long dead.
Once she had voiced her decision to leave, there was no reason to delay. Tun offered to carry her back to where he had found her. She would then have at least two months to reach a town or a village where she could spend the winter. She packed some food, but without Hei Lei to provide for them, the dragons’ winter store was low, so she didn’t take too much. The female dragons gave her a pair of shoes they had made from dragons’ scales, stuck together with their saliva.
“They will not wear out,” Jiang said.
Ping had a gift for the dragons. “I think Danzi’s mirror should be kept in the treasure cave,” she said. “My life is like an eye blink compared to yours. I could keep it, but what will happen to it after I die? No one else will understand its significance.” She paused. “I would like to keep Kai’s dragon-stone shard though.”
“You will be remembered in our lore,” Jiang said. “Ping, the last Dragonkeeper, will be revered at every dragon moon.”
“We won’t forget what we have learned from humans,” Tun said. “But now it is time for us to live without them.”
“Take care of Kai for me,” Ping said. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “He might be a dragon of five colours, but he is still very young.”
Sha and Lian stood on either side of the little dragon.
“We will watch over him,” Sha said.
“Don’t let him get lazy,” Ping said. “Just because he’s your future leader doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do his share.”
Ping touched Kai for the last time, feeling the familiar roughness of his scales, the spiky points of his dorsal spines. She put her arms around Kai’s neck. Her tears ran off his scales. He made the sound of a cracked bell tolling.
Ping hoisted the saddlebag onto her shoulder and turned to Tun.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Wait.” Ping felt Kai’s talons catch the back of her worn jacket. “Ping should wait till spring.”
She turned back to him. “No, Kai. It’s never going to be easy for me to leave you. Now is a good time.”
“Take this.” Kai winced as he pulled out one of his scales. “At dragon moon, Ping will dream of Kai.”
Ping took it from him. It was smaller than Danzi’s scale and brighter. It lay like a piece of jade in her hand. In the daylight, the other colours at its tip weren’t visible. She would only be able to see them in the moonlight.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” she said.
“Ping has given Kai so much.”
She dug into her pouch. “You keep this.” She handed him the silk square. “If you keep it out of the sunlight the characters won’t fade any more.”
Kai took the silk square from her. He held it up so that it fluttered like a flag.
Ping climbed onto Tun’s back. Jiang had fitted him with a saddle of woven grass. She wound a rope around Tun’s neck and then around Ping’s waist, so that she couldn’t fall off. Ping grasped the dragon’s horns.
“Just one more thing,” Jiang said. The red dragon spat in Ping’s eyes. “If you don’t know where our haven is, you can never be forced to give up the secret of its location.”
Ping rubbed her eyes, but that only made them more sore. She opened them again. She couldn’t see anything. She felt Tun take off. She had hoped to watch Kai waving goodbye with the silk square, until he shrank to the size of a dot. She couldn’t see anything. She heard him cry out, that mournful sound of copper bowls crashing together. Tears soothed her eyes but they didn’t bring back her sight. She felt the wind on her face. She knew for certain she would never see Kai again.
The air was colder than it had been when Tun had carried Ping to the dragon haven. The tears on her face turned to ice crystals. She shivered. In a month or two it would turn cold in the mountains. She didn’t know where she would go when Tun left her. She didn’t know where she’d be spending the winter, the rest of her life. Loneliness overwhelmed her like an ocean wave. She called out to Tun to take her back. But her words were whipped from her mouth by the wind and scattered in the sky.
Tun seemed to know exactly how long the effect of the dragon saliva in Ping’s eyes would last. Just as she started to make out the blurred outline of mountains below, he began to descend. By the time the dragon’s paws touched the ground, she could see again.
Tun didn’t linger. As soon as Ping had untied herself and climbed down from the dragon’s back, he was ready to take off again. He touched her with the pad of a paw and made a chinking sound, which sounded like a friendly farewell. She could no longer read his thoughts. Then he flapped his wings and was soon no more than a speck in the sky.
Ping looked around. Tun had put her down in the exact spot where he had found her. She was hundreds of torturous li from the nearest village. If she was lucky she might chance upon a tribe of wandering yak herders. If she was very lucky, they might take her in for the winter. Her life was in the hands of Heaven.
Ping hadn’t felt cold for months. It was barely autumn, but the wind had a sharp chill to it. Ping had no winter clothes. She looked up at the sun and started to walk. She was doing what she least wanted to do, but she knew it was right. It was a strange feeling.
Ping had the dragon scale shoes and enough food to last her for more than a week. She had a sharp knife, a snare she had woven from grass stalks to set traps for rabbits, a pair of fire-making sticks. She had a bearskin to keep her warm at night. Her heart was heavy with the loss of Kai, but she knew he was in the safest place he could possibly be. One day she would find out what she was supposed to do with her life. The heartache would pass. In the meantime she had to focus on her journey. She had to find her way to a village or town where she could spend winter. She had enough gold to pay for lodgings. She could perhaps earn more as a storyteller or a scribe. That was one possibility for her life. There would be others. She tried to create a thread to lead her to the nearest village, but she had already lost her second sight.
A week passed. Ping walked through the mountains without seeing another human being. The wind turned icy. She needed something warmer to wear. Just as that thought formed, she caught sight of movement out of the corner of her eye. It was a rabbit. She had walked all day and was hungry. She still had dried meat and nuts in her bag, but after weeks of eating boiled meat, the thought of a roasted rabbit made her mouth water. She could save the dried meat for leaner times. And the skin would be useful. One or two more rabbits and she would have herself a warm vest.
The rabbit was about two chang away, nibbling on a tuft of yellow grass. The wind was in her favour, and the animal had neither heard nor smelt her. Ping took out the snare and got down on
her hands and knees and crawled towards it. The rabbit was concentrating on eating the juicy grass. She moved closer, inch by slow inch. She wanted to pounce on the creature in case it hopped away, but she forced herself not to.
Ping gathered the snare into a loop in her left hand. Then she threw it. Her weeks of practice had paid off. Her aim was good. The loop fell over the startled rabbit’s head and she pulled it tight. The rabbit leapt up at least two feet and turned in midair. As it landed, it darted off. Its strength took Ping by surprise. It yanked the snare and, before she had time to react, the snare slipped through her fingers.
Ping jumped to her feet and ran after the rabbit. She wanted the meat but she wanted the snare more. It was an important part of her winter survival kit. She raced after the rabbit, stumbled on a rock and felt her ankle turn. She fell, tumbling down a slope. Her body crashed against rocks until it landed at the bottom of a gully. She hit her head.
It was peaceful in the gully. Ping was glad that she had stopped tumbling. She was quite comfortable lying where she was. There was soft grass beneath her. The wind was blowing higher up, but couldn’t find its way down into the gully. The air was still and not as cold. Her ankle wasn’t broken, just twisted. She’d be okay once she’d had a nap.
When Ping woke up, it was dark. She was cold. Her ankle hurt. She lay awake, shivering until dawn. She tried to get to her feet but the pain in her ankle was too strong. She had to find a branch to use as a crutch. The problem was, she was still too high up in the mountains for trees to grow. She tried to crawl out of the gully but it was too steep and the pain made her weak.
It felt colder than it should have been for early autumn. The sun should have been overhead by now. She looked up at the sky. There was a cloud. A grey cloud. It was quite large. She felt a few drops of icy rain on her face. She had pleaded with the dragons to make a cloud. It seemed they had taken her advice. They had made a dragon cloud. She could almost see it growing before her eyes as it gathered the moisture from the air. The raindrops turned to flakes of snow. She would have laughed if she hadn’t been shivering so much. The cloud might grow and grow until it brought unseasonal rain to the people of the Empire. That was wonderful. But there on that mountain, it might end up being the death of Ping.