“It’s the dragon!” he shouted. “He’s come to answer our prayers!”
“How did you know he was a dragon?” Ping asked.
“News spreads even to our humble village,” the elder said. “Word came from Beibai Palace to look out for a young girl and a dragon in the shape of a boy.”
Ping realised for the first time that if someone knew they were touching a shape-changed dragon, they would have no reaction.
People cheered and pushed forward, all wanting to touch the dragon for luck. Other hands grabbed Ping’s sleeves and pulled her towards the village gates. There were still several hours of daylight left. She had planned on walking until nightfall.
“We have a long way to travel,” Ping protested. “We can’t stop.”
“You must stay and eat with us, bless our humble village with a visit.”
The smell of something delicious wafted through the gates and Ping’s resolve melted away. Since they all knew who the boy at her side was, there didn’t seem any point in Kai staying shape-changed. The villagers gasped and looked a little queasy as he transformed, but once he was in his dragon shape, they cheered even louder.
“Welcome, dragon! Welcome, dragon-girl!” they shouted.
It had been a week since anyone had made a fuss of Kai. He was quite happy to be the centre of attention again.
They were taken to the elder’s house and invited to sit in front of a blazing fire. A smiling woman gave Ping wine and Kai a bowl of goat’s milk. Then they were given dishes of gruel followed by stewed melon sweetened with honey.
Ping learned that the villagers had been watching for them ever since word arrived that the dragon had left the palace. News of the dragon that lived at Beibai Palace had spread throughout Yan. Every village had to provide a certain number of soldiers to protect Yan, and when they returned home they were forbidden to talk of the dragon. But it seemed that few of them had obeyed this rule. The villagers knew all about Kai’s antics at the palace. Everyone wanted a chance to touch the lucky dragon before he left Yan for good.
“We were rationing our food, preparing for another bad year, but now that the dragon has come to bring rain, we can celebrate,” the elder said. “The Duke promised to send us grain so that we don’t go hungry, but I will send a message to say we won’t be needing it.”
“You mustn’t do that,” Ping said, but no one took any notice.
The food was simple fare compared to what they had eaten at the palace, but it was tasty and there was plenty of it.
“Kai can’t make it rain,” the dragon said to Ping.
“I know,” said Ping. “But they think you can. Even if we tell them you can’t, they probably won’t believe us.”
She felt guilty that the villagers believed that Kai could bring rain, but nothing she said would convince them otherwise. Danzi had made it rain once. He had flown above a cloud and by spitting on it, he had made the rain fall. But Kai would need two things to achieve this—wings and clouds. He had neither. Dragons could make rain fall from existing clouds, but they couldn’t conjure rain from nothing.
That evening, all the villagers, adults and children alike, gathered to hear Ping tell her story. Since they were feeding her and giving her the best accommodation in the village, Ping didn’t feel she could refuse. Everyone sat spellbound as she told the story of her and Danzi’s journey to Ocean. She described Kai’s birth. The villagers gasped as she told them of her dealings with the necromancer.
Ping was exhausted, but no one seemed to notice. Kai was curled up asleep on the pile of animal skins that had been brought for him to sit on. Small children gradually gathered up the courage to tiptoe forward and touch his scales.
Ping showed the villagers Danzi’s scale and her Dragonkeeper’s mirror. They were passed from hand to hand, touched reverently. The village elder stepped forward.
“Could you tell us just one more tale?” he asked. “The tale of your flight from Huangling Palace perhaps?”
A woman handed back the mirror. It was warm from so much handling. Ping fingered it.
“I really am tired,” she said. Too tired, she thought to herself. I’m almost asleep standing up.
As she rolled the mirror in her hands, it caught the firelight and a beam of orange light deflected into the elder’s eyes.
“She’s too tired,” the old man said. “We must let her rest.”
Ping was surprised that he’d given in so quickly. There were groans of disappointment, but no one argued with the elder. A woman led her to a room. Ping sank gratefully onto a straw mattress.
This was the sort of reception they would get everywhere on their journey. Word would spread before them wherever they went, even if the villages were few and far between. The elder of this village had relatives that lived outside Yan. He had already let them know of the dragon’s approach. Villages would be vying for the privilege of having the dragon visit them, so that he would bring them the gift of rain. And if the spring rains didn’t arrive, their joy would soon turn to anger.
Ping took out the calfskin with the Yi Jing divination on it and read the third line in the lamplight. Active and vigilant all day. In the evening alert. All will be well. They should be travelling quietly, attracting as little attention as possible. No one should know that Kai was a dragon. Instead, their journey would be like a festival. Though the villagers meant them no harm, there was always the chance that the news would reach someone who was not as honest and well-meaning. It would only take one person with visions of becoming rich by selling a dragon to a sorcerer, and then Kai would be in danger again. Ping tried to think how she could stop this from happening, but she fell into a deep sleep before she came up with even one strategy.
The next morning, the sun was high before they managed to get away. The whole village was out to farewell them. Ping gave the elder one of Kai’s fallen scales to thank him for his hospitality. The old man held it in his hands as if it was made of gold.
“We will pray to the dragon,” he said, “And he will bring us rain.”
Ping waved goodbye.
In the comfort and safety of Beibai Palace, Ping had put her past adventures behind her and given them little thought. Time had softened the memories, making them less threatening. But as she recounted them, she was reminded of the powerful enemies she and Danzi had attracted. A dragon hunter, a necromancer, and an Emperor had all tried to strip Ping of her authority as Dragonkeeper. They had all attempted to capture her dragons—first Danzi and then baby Kai.
As she walked the bare hills on the edge of Yan, she was glad that she no longer had enemies. It was as if a sack of grain that she had been carrying for years had been lifted from her shoulders. She believed that Liu Che would keep his word and would not try to capture Kai again. The dragon hunter was long dead. She and her friends—the boy Jun, an old man, a rat, and baby Kai—had taken away all the necromancer’s powers and he had poisoned his body with his own spells. He would be dead now as well.
She would still have to watch out for bandits and wild animals, but no one was searching for Kai. She didn’t have to keep looking over her shoulder.
All she had to do was keep out of the way of villagers eager for rain. As they crossed the dry hills, they were visible for several li. There was nothing to hide them, and the villagers would be on the lookout for a young woman with a boy.
“Keep your dragon eyes open, Kai,” Ping said. “If you see anyone, you must shape-change. We must try to travel in secret.”
When Ping scanned the horizon she could see no one, but Kai was always spotting a farmer or a goat herd in the distance. His skills at shape-changing had improved. He could take the form of anything he chose—a basket, a boy or a bush—and stay that way for many hours if need be, but it did make him weary.
Ping tried to find other ways to travel without being seen. They walked through the night and slept by day. They avoided villages and remote farms. But it didn’t make any difference. Somehow news of their approach alw
ays went before them. A welcoming party would always track them down and lead them to another village, another simple banquet, another telling of their tales. Kai soon grew tired of all the attention, as the villagers begged him to make it rain.
Ping was sure that no one was hunting Kai, but her mind was still not at ease. One morning, after they had left a tiny village, Kai was recounting for the sixth time how he would overcome a python if one happened to cross their path, but Ping wasn’t listening. She was searching for a sign of foreboding. There was no sense of dread in her stomach, not even a prickle on the back of her neck. She trusted her second sight, but she also remembered how the necromancer had been able to shield his presence from her by wearing a vest made of jade squares.
“Kai will be brave,” the dragon was saying, “Kai can fight off bears and tigers. Many tigers. Take on five barbarians at once. Ping doesn’t have to worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Ping said defensively.
Kai went back to practising a new skill he’d discovered. Instead of shape-changing each time someone appeared on the horizon, he had learned how to create a different kind of illusion. It was a sort of mirage. His scales took on the colour of his surroundings, so that he blended into the landscape completely. Creating this new illusion took much less effort, and he could maintain it all day long.
“What’s that smell?” Ping asked.
Kai sniffed the air.
“Deer?” he suggested hopefully.
“No, it’s nearby.”
It was Ping’s turn to sniff the air. She moved closer to the dragon.
“It’s you!” She sniffed again and then held her nose. “You smell terrible.”
She started examining the dragon, peering into his ears, between his toes.
“Have you been cleaning yourself properly?”
“Yes,” said Kai indignantly.
“Is your stomach upset? What colour are your droppings?”
“That’s Kai’s business, not Ping’s!”
She touched his scales. More than a third of his old purple scales had fallen off now. The new scales had hardened and were a lovely deep shade of green like the leaves of the scholar tree in summer, but the old ones were dull and greyish. Ping was about to examine his teeth. She sniffed again.
“What have you got behind your reverse scales?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
Like all dragons, Kai had five larger scales beneath his chin which lay in the opposite direction to all the others. This made them useful for storing things. When he was little, the reverse scales were so small Ping couldn’t fit a finger behind them. Now they were bigger, she could just dig into them. She pulled something out and held her sleeve over her nose.
“What’s this?” she exclaimed. “It smells disgusting!”
Kai didn’t answer. Ping examined the thing between her fingers and then dropped it to the ground. It was a long-dead sparrow. She also took out a dried fish and several large grubs of the sort that were found in rotting wood. Ping looked accusingly at the dragon.
“Sometimes Kai gets hungry during the night,” he said.
They passed beyond the borders of Yan and for two days didn’t meet a single person on the track. Ping was beginning to hope that they had finally travelled beyond the reach of the gossip about a girl and a shape-changed dragon. Then late in the afternoon, another welcoming party stopped them along the track. Anxious villagers begged them to stay for the night. The children were thin and didn’t have enough energy to play. These villagers had planted seeds and watered them from a shrinking pond which was their source of drinking water. A few pale seedlings had pushed their way through the hard earth. Ping didn’t like their chances of survival.
There was no banquet at this village, but the people performed a rain ceremony for Kai. The children had made small statues of dragons from the mud around their pond. They held them up above their heads and sang a song.
“This is what we want you to do, dragon,” they sang. “Awake from your winter sleep and fly into the sky. Bring rain, so we won’t be hungry any more.”
The next morning, the sky was still cloudless. There was no cheering when Ping and Kai departed, just unhappy muttering.
Kai was very quiet as they walked that day. Ping stopped when she realised that he wasn’t alongside her. She walked back and found the dragon crouched by the side of the path. White mist was curling from his nostrils.
“What’s the matter, Kai?”
“Trying to make a cloud,” he said.
The breath of humans would only turn to vapour when the weather was very cold, but Kai could produce misty breath whenever he felt like it. It usually meant that he was in a sulky mood. Kai was concentrating hard. The white mist surrounded him, but evaporated as it rose. Ping put her arm around his damp shoulders.
“You can’t achieve the impossible, Kai,” she said. “It’s just a story that’s told about dragons. It doesn’t mean they really can make rain where there are no clouds.”
They both watched the mist rise and evaporate. Kai made soft, sad sounds.
Every day they moved closer to the area on the map where Dragon’s Lament Creek was marked. When they finally reached areas where no one had heard of them, Ping decided it was safe to travel on roads again. Whenever they met travellers, Ping asked if they had heard of Dragon’s Lament Creek. She spoke to many people—a merchant, an imperial messenger, a family moving south to find better land—no one had heard of such a place.
One morning they met a shaman. He was an old, old man. He wore a short gown and his bare legs were strong and brown. They shared a midday meal with him.
“Where are you going?” Ping asked him.
“My destination isn’t a place in the world. It is more a peaceful state of mind that I am seeking.”
He told them that he had spent his whole life walking the lands between the Yellow River and the Great Wall.
“Do you know of a place called Dragon’s Lament Creek?” Ping asked.
The old shaman shook his head. “If there was such a place, I would have passed it.”
Ping watched the old man walk away.
“We’re never going to find it.”
“Perhaps we can find the next place on the map,” Kai said hopefully. “What was it called? Crooked Dragon Village?”
“It wasn’t called Crooked Dragon Village,” Ping said. “It was Quiet Dragon—”
She stopped and pulled out the silk square. She remembered how Liu Che had also misunderstood one of the place names. The language of the Empire was very economical with the sounds it used. Each written character meant something different, but sounds were used again and again. This meant many sounds could have different meanings.
Ping read out the name of the first destination. “Long Dao Xi.”
She found a stick and drew several other characters in the dry earth.
“These characters are all pronounced long,” she said.
Kai peered at them. “Kai only knows the one which means ‘dragon’.”
Ping drew other characters that were pronounced dao and xi. Kai didn’t understand what she was doing.
Each of the three words had several other meanings. She repeated the words, trying not to picture the characters in her mind, instead just listening to the sounds.
Kai suddenly understood what she meant. He pointed to the west. “Xi,” he said. “It also means west.” He mimed walking.
Long dao xi could also mean ‘seek westward’.
The map transformed before Ping’s eyes.
“The words don’t have the same meaning as the characters, but of other words that sound the same.”
An idea suddenly exploded in her mind.
“It’s a puzzle!” she exclaimed. “They aren’t place names at all. They’re directions. Danzi is telling us how to find the dragon haven.”
There wasn’t a choice of three dragon places that they could go to. There wasn’t even one. The name of the dragon haven wasn’t
on the map. They had to find a secret place by following Danzi’s coded instructions.
She read out the next place name, Qu Long Xiang, and wrote other characters with the same sounds.
“Qu!” said Kai triumphantly, pointing to the character that meant ‘go’. Ping drew two characters that were pronounced xiang. One meant ‘box’, the other ‘village’.
“Yes. ‘Go to something village’.”
Ping went back to the long characters that she had written. Rising Moon Village, Prosperous Village, Steep Village. There were many possibilities.
She read the last place name. Ye Long Gu. The characters told her that long gu meant ‘dragon valley’. She pointed to the other characters that were pronounced long. It could mean ‘basket’, ‘hazy’ and ‘deaf’.
“Perhaps there is a valley where baskets are made, or one that is often hidden in mist,” Kai suggested.
Ping sighed. “It could mean many things. I’ll have to think about it when I’m not so tired.”
She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. “The dragon haven is a secret place. I should have realised Danzi wouldn’t write it on the map for anyone to see. The silk square could have fallen into the hands of enemies.”
“Trust Father,” Kai said. “He will lead Ping and Kai to the secret dragon place.”
“At least we know where we’re heading. West.”
Another group of villagers blocked their path. It was three weeks since they had left the palace. Ping and Kai looked at the villagers’ unsmiling faces. The elder stepped forward.
“We need rain,” he said pointing to the withered seedlings in the fields. “We need it now or our children will starve.”