Dragon Moon (22 page)

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.

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.

The beautiful colours of the water were caused by the different moods of the fire dragon when he breathed on the rocks. Kai had told Ping that the pools had different properties depending on their colour. The yellow one was a healing pool, the purple one cleansing, the white was for strength and rejuvenation.

Jiang came to help her mother into her favourite pool. Ping was relieved that she had a way of communicating directly with the dragons, even if it was slow and laborious. She wondered how Gu Hong had learned to write.

Ping left the dragons to have their afternoon snooze and continued to explore the plateau. She was worried about the cold weather that would be arriving in a month or two. The dragons would sleep for most of the winter. Ping wasn’t sure if they would wake up to hunt from time to time. In any case a lot of their prey would be hibernating as well. The coming winter
would be a long and lonely one for her. She didn’t want it to be a hungry one as well. Like a squirrel, she had to collect a store of food. She had started gathering berries and mushrooms and laying them out to dry, but that wouldn’t be enough. She sat in the afternoon sun and made a snare out of dried grass stalks so that she could catch rabbits and pheasants. She practised by throwing it around rocks.

Ping was looking for rabbit burrows on the northern end of the plateau, when she found a cave burrowing into a low, grass-covered hill. Bushes almost hid its entrance. She ducked her head and entered. Daylight filtered through small holes in the roof. It wasn’t as dingy as the caves at the other end of the plateau, and Ping was wondering if it would make a better home for her, when she noticed something at the back of the cave. A large flat rock was positioned in the centre and several objects were arranged on it. She moved closer. As her eyes grew used to the dimness she could make out what some of them were. There were three lumps of jade, not carved or fashioned into any shape. They looked like they had been cut from rock. There was a large stone that had split in half to reveal a forest of amethyst crystals inside. There was a mother-of-pearl seashell and several strings of dragons’ teeth. Ping caught her breath. In the middle of the display were three large oval stones.

“Dragon stones,” she whispered.

They were unhatched dragon eggs.

The thought of young dragons in the haven brought a smile to Ping’s face. When the eggs hatched, she would have a purpose. She could help the females raise the little ones. Kai would be very excited to have other young dragons to play with. She was reaching out to touch one of the dragon stones when the back of her neck prickled. Her stomach ached as if indigestible food lay rotting in it. Her skin turned cold despite the warm air. Ping’s joy at finding the dragon stones drained from her until there wasn’t a drop left. Despair filled the empty space. She gripped her stomach as the pain increased. It was so intense, she doubled over.