Outside, the dozing guards leapt to their feet, woken by a loud blast like bamboo exploding in a fire, an unearthly roaring like copper pans being clashed together and a flash of blinding light that briefly lit up the night. The startled guards looked around for the source of the commotion. There was another flash, another explosion, more roaring. It was all coming from the pigsty.
Ping hid behind the largest pig and with her foot kicked open the unlatched bamboo door. The three terrified guards gaped as a third explosion sounded and a flash of light revealed the occupants of the pigsty. The four pigs were there, squealing in terror, but instead of the old man and the young girl they had locked away, in the doorway there was a long green snake and a large rat.
“I am an evil sorceress,” Ping said from her hiding place in the pigsty. “Those who stand in our way will be sent to the worst regions of hell.”
The three guards, simple farmers armed with nothing more than a rusty scythe and two sharpened sticks, screamed and ran. Ping collected Hua as she jumped down from the pigsty. Danzi slithered after her. Villagers stumbled sleepily from their houses, but stopped dead when they held up their lamps and saw a snake transform into a dragon. They fell to their knees, some of them shouting prayers of forgiveness, others feeling sick from watching the transformation. Ping ran to find her basket and pouch near the fire where the guards had searched through them. Diao appeared on one of the verandahs. He ran down the steps towards them. In his hurry, he stumbled. Ping would have liked to watch him fall, but she didn’t have the time. The girl and the dragon disappeared into the darkness.
The pair didn’t stop running for half an hour. Ping rested her hands on her knees as she tried to get her breath back. Danzi was gulping air in ragged gasps.
“Stone is safe?” he asked.
Ping felt inside her basket. She looked at the dragon. “The dragon stone is gone,” she said. “Diao must have taken it.”
• chapter eleven •
OFFERINGS
Hands reached out from the darkness and
grabbed Ping from behind. She called out to
Danzi, to warn him, but the wind carried her
words in the wrong direction.
Usually Ping was forever asking when they could stop for a rest or a drink of water or a meal. Danzi’s most common contribution to their conversation was “not yet”. Since they had run off into the darkness, Ping had strode ahead of Danzi, not stopping for anything, just turning every now and then to hurry the straggling dragon. Every time she slowed her pace, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as if the dragon hunter were right behind them.
It was midmorning before Ping dared stop to rest by a small stream. Its noisy chattering, as the water rushed over the stony bed, did nothing to ease her agitation. Once Danzi had caught his breath, the rumbling sound of his anger welled up and drowned out the bubbling stream. Ping had never heard the dragon so angry.
“Ping has failed,” he said over and over again. “Ping responsible for stone. Dragon stone comes first. Even before own safety.”
They were deep in a wood of slender trees. Ping knew, by their leathery leaves and the faint spicy smell whenever her sleeve brushed the bark, that they were cassias. If she concentrated on something else, like counting the number of withered berries still clinging to the tree branches, Ping could shut out the dragon’s words in her mind, hearing only his crashing rumblings. He didn’t have the strength to keep it up for long.
Ping was angry with herself—angry that she had lost the stone to Diao. She imagined the dragon hunter’s rough hands touching the smooth surface of the stone or holding it up against the stinking hide of his clothing. The stone served no purpose, but it was beautiful. It was valuable too. It had to be if Diao was so keen to possess it. They could have sold it if the dragon’s gold ran out.
“Must return for stone,” the dragon said.
His rumble had changed to a sad, flat note regularly repeated, like the tolling of a bell.
“We can’t go back for the stone. It’s too dangerous.”
”Journey pointless without stone,” the dragon said.
“What do you mean?” Ping asked.
The dragon didn’t answer, but Ping thought she understood what he meant.
“Diao will track us,” she said. “He wants you more than the stone. If we’re going to keep walking with no sleep, we must eat.”
Danzi wouldn’t let her light a fire. They ate nuts and dried persimmons. Ping was still hungry, though the dragon had eaten less than she had.
“You aren’t eating enough, Danzi,” Ping said. “You’re getting thin.”
The dragon examined his wing. The edges of the tear in the membrane had rejoined and, though it looked sore and puffy, it was healing. Ping searched through her basket. The jar of red cloud ointment was still there.
“Let me rub some of Wang Cao’s ointment into your wing,” she said. “There’s no point in letting it go to waste.”
Danzi didn’t object, so Ping dipped her fingers into the dark red ointment and smeared it onto the healing wound. The wing felt leathery and the scar lumpy. She was used to rubbing it onto the cool, smooth surface of the stone. She missed its deep purple and milky swirls which had seemed to change from day to day. She shook her head, trying to dispel such silly emotions. How could the loss of a stone have such an effect on her?
”How close are we to Ocean?” she asked Danzi to take her mind off the stone.
The dragon was silent.
“We’ve been walking for weeks,” she persisted. “We must be getting near.”
“Not yet halfway.”
Ping’s legs suddenly felt heavy and tired. She didn’t feel like she had the strength to lift them to cross the stream, let alone walk hundreds more li. It seemed as if they were in a dream where the more they struggled to reach the Ocean, the further away it became.
“Must go back for stone first.”
Ping sighed. She thought she’d convinced him that they couldn’t go back.
Danzi flexed his wing. “Wing almost healed,” he said. “Will be able to fly in seven days. Then soon reach Ocean.”
Ping didn’t like flying, but she would be glad to get the journey to Ocean over and done with. Danzi took a long drink from the stream. Ping was refilling their goatskin water bag, when she heard the crack of a twig breaking among the trees.
“Did you hear that?”
“Heard nothing. Saw flash of metal. Hide!”
The dragon had taken on the shape of a hoe and concealed himself behind a tree. The trees were too slender to hide Ping. She slung the basket and goatskin over her shoulder and clambered up one of the trees, climbing as high as she dared among its slim branches. There was another crack and two men broke out of the trees. Ping recognised them. They were from Fengjing. She could smell the cinnamon fragrance released from the bark as she’d scrambled up the tree. One man, wearing a battered sun hat, sniffed the air as if he could smell it too. She was only a few feet above him. The foliage was not dense. All he had to do was glance up and Ping would be in clear view. The other man kicked over the pile of nut shells and persimmon stalks that she hadn’t had time to hide.
“They’ve been here.” He examined the flattened grass where Ping and Danzi had been sitting. “And not that long ago either.”
“Which way do you think they went?” asked the man with the hat.
Daylight and the promise of gold had given them courage.
“Hard to say.” The other man searched the undergrowth. “Look what I’ve found! It’s a hoe.”
“It’s a bit old,” said his companion.
“I could clean it up,” he said.
Ping didn’t know what to do. If the man touched Danzi, he wouldn’t feel a metal implement but a scaly dragon. The man reached out to pick up the hoe.
“Hey! I’ve found something better,” the man with the hat said. “A footprint. It’s the sorceress’ by the look of it.”
The othe
r man drew back his hand from the hoe and went over to inspect the footprint his friend had found in the soft sand at the stream’s edge.
“There are no footprints leading away from this spot,” said the first man.
Ping held her breath. They were going to work out where she was hiding.
“The sorceress has disappeared into thin air,” said the man with the hat.
“No,” said the other man. “They’ve crossed the stream. Come on. If we find them, we’ll get the reward.”
The two men splashed over the stream and disappeared into the trees again. When she was sure that they weren’t returning, Ping slid down the tree.
“Cannot travel on road any longer,” Danzi said before he’d even returned to his dragon form. “Not safe.”
“So we’re going to keep going?” Ping asked. “We’re not going back for the dragon stone?”
The dragon shook his head sadly. Then he set off into the trees at right angles to the path. Ping followed him.
The weather was getting warmer. Every day seemed to bring flowers or trees that Ping had never seen before. She asked the dragon their names to try and take his mind off the lost dragon stone, but he didn’t answer. Animals occasionally appeared among the bushes or on the branches of trees, looked startled at the strange creatures hurrying through their forest and scurried off. Normally the sight of a squirrel or a deer would have delighted Ping, but coming across two small red bears tumbling in the grass gave her no pleasure.
When they stopped for the night, Danzi still wouldn’t allow Ping to light a fire. She soaked millet and they ate it raw with wild mushrooms and birds’ eggs. When they left their camp, the dragon swept the area with his tail to erase their footprints.
“The skilful traveller leaves no trace,” he said.
They walked through thick cypress forest for three days without catching sight of another person. The ground neither rose nor fell and with the tall trees crowding against them it was impossible to get a view of the sky or the land they were walking through. As they travelled, the ground beneath them grew drier. The grass became sparser and more yellow. Buds on the trees withered before they had a chance to open.
Danzi said nothing more about the dragon stone. Ping was surprised that he had so easily agreed to leave it behind.
Eventually the trees thinned and they found themselves surrounded by fields again. The peasants that they met seemed strangely idle. Despite the warm spring weather, no one was ploughing or sowing seeds. No one invited them to sleep in their stable or barn. They didn’t ask for news from abroad either, but nodded curtly as the travellers passed without meeting their eyes. When Ping asked if she could buy vegetables from an old woman, she shook her head and held her turnips and onions close to her as if they were precious stones.
Late in the afternoon they came across a crowd of people gathered around a small lake. Dried mud rings around its banks indicated that the level had fallen several feet. It had once been a lake almost half a li wide. It was now little more than a pond. A small shrine stood back on what had previously been the lake’s edge. It was a simple wooden structure, not much taller than Ping, with a wooden roof newly painted green. Ping glimpsed a primitive painting of a dragon inside. Below the painting was a neat pile of four oranges, a rock shaped like a lizard and a cone of smoking incense. The fragrance of the incense mingled with the smell of cooking meat coming from a three-legged bronze cauldron with a fire smouldering beneath. A village elder, wearing a tattered gown with green embroidery, was muttering prayers to the spirit of the lake.
“Accept our humble offerings, Father Dragon,” he was saying. “Awake and bring us rain.”
The people threw things into the lake—old iron bowls, rusty farm tools, a broken sword.
Ping was watching from behind a tree. “What are they doing?” she asked.
“People believe dragon lives in lake and has not awoken from winter sleep to bring spring rains. Know dragons hate iron, so throw iron in lake to drive him out.”
“Is there a dragon in the lake?” Ping asked.
“Perhaps centuries ago, but no longer.”
Some of the people were looking up at a trace of wispy cloud in the sky.
“Look,” said one of them. “Do you see that cloud? It is shaped something like a dragon. That’s a good omen.”
Danzi changed into his old-man shape, and he and Ping walked past the lake. The people watched them suspiciously, but no one spoke to them.
It was getting dark and the wind was strengthening. Ping headed for a small hill and found a rocky outcrop where they could stop for the night sheltered from the wind and hidden from the peasants by an overhang of rock.
Ping risked a small fire and cooked a simple meal of lentils and wild melon. It was the first hot meal they had had for a week. It filled their stomachs but it was tasteless. Danzi was weary as he was every evening, but more so as he had spent time in his old man shape for the first time in days.
”Have some more lentils, Danzi.” As usual the dragon had eaten less than Ping.
“No more food,” the dragon replied. “But would like tea.”
The goatskin bag was almost empty.
“I’ll go and get some water.”
Danzi was already nodding off.
The moon hadn’t yet risen. The wind had blown away the few wisps of cloud and the sky was studded with a multitude of stars like salt grains spilt on a dark cloth. Ping carefully picked her way through the undergrowth, hoping that she’d be able to find her way back to Danzi in the dark. Voices drifted towards her on the wind. They were loud and angry voices. As she got closer to the lake, she could see torches blazing and realised that the peasants were still gathered there. The gusty wind was only carrying snatches of what they were saying.
Other voices joined in the argument, shouting all at once and getting more and more agitated. A child started screaming. In the flickering torchlight, Ping could see that one of the men was holding a struggling girl. A woman tried to take the child from him, but others came to hold her back.
Fragments of their shouted conversation reached Ping on the wind.
“…just a girl.”
”Only Heaven…take life away.”
The woman was crying. Ping edged closer, trying to make out what it was they were talking about.
“…a single life will be lost…”
“If the rains don’t…many people…die of hunger.”
Hands reached out from the darkness and grabbed Ping from behind. She called out to Danzi, to warn him, but the wind carried her words in the wrong direction. The old dragon, partially deaf, would never hear her. Her first thought was that it was Diao, but neither of the men holding her had the awful dead animal smell of the dragon hunter. Ping tried to wriggle out of their grasp but they tightened their grip and dragged her to the edge of the lake.
When they reached the crowd by the lake, Ping could see the peasants’ faces in the torchlight. They were unsmiling, creased with weariness and worry. In the middle of the group was a girl about two years younger than Ping. Her face was frozen in a mask of fear. Her hands were bound in front of her, her wrists bleeding where she’d tried to twist out of her bonds. She wore a short shift made of hemp with a crude green dragon painted on the front. It wasn’t a cold night, but the girl’s body shook uncontrollably from head to foot. A woman was on her knees in front of the elder, weeping and grabbing at his robes. Whoever had hold of Ping dragged her to the elder.
”Look what we found hiding in the bushes,” said a voice behind her.
Ping saw the faces of her captors for the first time. They were hardly men at all, just young boys with fierce faces.
The woman looked at Ping. Her grimy face streaked by the flow of tears suddenly brightened.
“We can use her instead of Wei Wei,” the woman said.
Ping didn’t know what they were talking about. The elder nodded. The man who was holding the young girl let her go and the child ran to her mother.
The boys holding Ping tightened their grip. Another woman took the shift off the girl and wrapped her trembling body in a blanket. She turned to Ping, undid the sash around her waist and pulled off her gown. She dragged the shift over Ping’s head, roughly pushing her arms through the short sleeves. She then held Ping’s arms in front of her and tied her wrists with a leather thong.
“You must have mistaken me for someone else,” she said. “I’m a stranger in this region.”
The fierce faces broke into mean smiles. “We know.”
The peasants knelt by the edge of the lake, chanting prayers to the dragon god they believed lived in its depths. The boys made Ping kneel with them.
“Accept this sacrifice, oh Great Dragon,” the elder said. “Forgive us for whatever wrong we have done to you. Bring us rain and we will worship you always.”
Everything suddenly became clear to Ping. They were going to sacrifice her to the dragon god of the lake. They were going to throw her into the water and leave her to drown.
She tried to squirm out of their grasp. “Danzi! Help me!” she shouted, even though she knew there was no chance that the dragon could hear her from this distance.
The moon appeared above a distant hill. The peasants gathered around the lake as if they were eager to watch her drown. The boys led her down the steep bank to a bamboo raft. When she resisted, they tied her feet as well. She tried to twist out of their grasp, but it was useless. She wasn’t strong enough. They threw her onto the raft. One of the boys held her down, while the other rowed to the centre of the lake. Ping thought that there would be more chanting, other offerings, that she would have some time to devise a way to escape, but she was wrong. There was an urgency about the ceremony. They wanted to get the sacrifice over with as soon as possible, so that the dragon would be appeased. They rolled Ping to the edge of the boat as if she were a sack of grain. She could see the reflection of the moon rippling on the surface of the lake like molten silver. Then she felt the sharp, cold slap of the water as the men threw her in head first.