Shadow Sister (11 page)

“Have you been eating them?” Tao said.

“No. There are not many.”

“There are lots of them. Can’t you hear them chewing through the wood?”

The dragon made a sound like small bells ringing. “I cannot!”

Tao didn’t think this was a time for laughter.

Kai took his three larvae and put them down on a large leaf. Then he and Tao hid in the trees and waited. Nothing happened. The larvae gradually started to move. Unused to crawling, they lumbered slowly like small fat emperors.

Tao was ready to give up, but when he opened his mouth to say so, he found it stopped by a dragon paw. Kai was sniffing the air. He took his paw from Tao’s mouth and pointed a talon into the forest. There was the sound of rustling leaves. Something was approaching the larvae. Something they couldn’t see. Tao knew it was there because tree branches were moving, even though there was no wind. A twig snapped. Where the branches were moving, the trees looked a little smudged, as if it was part of a painting where the artist had smeared with his sleeve. Tao didn’t want to come face to face with the monster. He was looking around for the best escape route, when one of the larvae started to move faster than the other two – and not along the ground. It floated up into the air and hung there unsupported. The air shimmered, as it did when Kai shape-changed. Tao knew he should turn away, but he had to know exactly where the creature was at all times. He felt his stomach churn as the creature began to materialise, and there was a bitter taste at the back of his mouth. He was expecting to see the seven-headed snake or the half-human half-serpent, but instead there in front of them was a four-footed beast covered in blue scales. It had only one head.

“It’s a dragon!” Tao whispered.

Kai was entranced by the creature. “But like none I have ever seen before.”

The dragon was four-legged, but smaller than Kai. It had bright blue eyes to match its scales, but its most remarkable feature was a single horn that reared up from the middle of its head. The horn was thick at the bottom and narrowed to its tip. It was more than a foot long and a creamy colour, like fresh bean curd. The horn was covered in beautiful markings in the shape of curling leaves or misshapen teardrops, as if someone had carved a pattern all over it. It was actually quite a pretty dragon. It had one paw raised and the larva was clasped between two talons. It had three toes on each paw and they were long and slender.

“You knew!” Tao said.

“I thought it was a dragon as soon as I saw its paw prints. I was sure when I saw it shape-changing.”

Tao finally tore his eyes away from the blue dragon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did not want to alarm you.”

“I was already terrified!”

The blue dragon sniffed the larva suspiciously. It opened its mouth, revealing a row of sharp little teeth with a longer fang on either side. Tao knew they were the ones that injected the lethal venom into its victims. He thought of the old man’s granddaughter and her little burial cairn.

The dragon bit into the larva. It chewed the insect cautiously and then swallowed it with a sound like a huge purring cat. Saliva dripped from its mouth. It put its head down and gobbled the other larvae.

Its blue eyes glanced around nervously, and it had excellent eyesight, just like Kai, so it saw where they were hiding. Kai made his tinkling wind-chime sound to show the dragon that he meant no harm, but it disappeared again.

“Invisibility,” Kai said with admiration. “It is similar to my mirage skill, but much better.” Kai could only change his scales to one colour at a time. And when he moved, the illusion was harder to maintain, so that it was still possible to see him if you knew he was there. “This dragon can paint a picture with its scales, and change them as it moves.”

Now that Tao had seen the creature in its true form, he knew that Kai was right about the dragon being hungry. Although Kai was sure it wouldn’t attack them if they provided it with more food, Tao couldn’t forget its previous victims. Kai placed Tao’s bowl of larvae in the clearing. They waited again.

“It must have gone,” Tao said.

“A starving dragon would never walk away from a source of food.”

After several minutes, the blue dragon reappeared and ate the rest of the larvae, grasping the bowl with its forepaws and burying its short snout in the food. It was very hungry.

“But it’s a murderous beast,” Tao said.

“I do not think it meant to kill the people,” Kai said.

“How could it accidentally kill half a village?”

“It was searching for food. The houses in the village were very old. Every summer they were drenched by rain for months. They were all rotting. And what do you find in rotting wood?”

“Woodworm larvae,” Tao said.

“It was ravenous and had finally found something it could eat. It destroyed the houses as it searched for the larvae, crushed them and pulled them apart, without regard for the people hiding within. That is what I believe.”

“I don’t trust it.” Tao was looking at the blue dragon’s fangs. “How can you be so sure it didn’t mean to harm the villagers?”

“Because it carried the dead to the cave and tried to bury them. It was repentant.”

Kai moved slowly into the clearing, towards the blue dragon. Tao stayed hidden in the trees, his staff at the ready in case the creature attacked. He watched the two dragons observe each other. The blue dragon was almost half Kai’s size, and more delicate. Its legs were shorter, its body thinner, but it had huge feet. Kai carried his tail low, but the blue dragon’s tail was erect, like a banner. At the end of its tail the protrusions weren’t sharp and spiny like Kai’s, which could be used as a weapon, but soft and curly, so that it resembled a flower. The blue dragon had a long thin beard and a lovely golden mane, which ran from the base of its horn down its spine to the shoulders. The dragons circled slowly, never taking their eyes off one another. Tao held his breath, worried that the blue dragon would suddenly attack and sink its fangs into Kai, but it didn’t. Instead, it lifted one of its back legs and peed on the ground. Kai did the same. Then they both sniffed each other’s pee. Kai made soft wind-chime sounds. The blue dragon replied with a high-pitched hiss that sounded almost like the tweeting of a bird.

“What is it saying?” Tao asked.

“I do not know. His sounds make no sense to me.”

“So it’s a male dragon?”

“He is.”

“Are you sure he won’t turn on us?”

“I am sure,” Kai said. “We must help him. There is no reason why we should only help people. In fact, it makes perfect sense that a trainee dragonkeeper helps a dragon.”

Tao was still wary of the blue dragon.

“Show him you mean no harm.” Tao heard Kai say in his mind.

“I think it’s him who should be showing me he means no harm.”

Tao felt Kai’s snout nudge him, and he reluctantly stepped out into the clearing and stood at a distance. The dragon’s blue eyes grew large when he saw Tao approach. And then he disappeared again.

“He is as frightened of you as you are of him. Did you notice that he shape-changes when he is most afraid? It is the opposite with me. I cannot stay shape-changed if I am fearful.” Kai was fascinated by the other dragon. “If we are going to help him, he has to get used to you.”

“I tamed wild creatures when I was a child – a squirrel, a snub-nosed monkey, a leopard cub. It takes patience.”

Food was the answer. Tao spent hours collecting larvae. He placed a pile of them in the clearing. The blue dragon soon reappeared and ate them all. Kai stood back as Tao replenished the supply of larvae, so that the blue dragon saw he was the one who provided the food.

“It will take a long time to feed him up and win his trust,” Kai said. “Many days. We need a place where we won’t be disturbed by nomads.”

“Somewhere that Fo Tu Deng doesn’t know about,” Tao added.

The tinkling wind-chime sound of a dragon pleased with himself rang out. “I know the very place!”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it!” Tao said.

From a distance, the walled community around the Huan house looked the same as it had the last time Tao visited his family. The walls were still intact, the huge gate was still locked, but as they drew closer, the changes became obvious. There was no one working in the fields. The crops had been left to run to seed. The fruit in the orchards was rotting on the ground. And there were no guards on the walls. It was deserted.

It had taken them most of the day to reach Tao’s old family home beyond the Longevity Hills west of Luoyang. Tao was still getting used to the idea that they hadn’t travelled far, despite their weeks of wandering. It had been much closer than he’d realised.

They would have got there even quicker if the blue dragon wasn’t with them. The problem of getting the creature to follow them was solved by braiding vines from the forest to make a rope. Tao distracted him with larvae and Kai managed to loop the rope around his neck. The blue dragon was a wild creature, he didn’t like being restrained, but he could shape-change or make himself invisible all he liked, and he did, but he was still tethered by the rope. Tao had suggested tying a rope around his snout in case he tried to bite them, but Kai wouldn’t allow it. He was sure that the blue dragon wouldn’t turn on those who were providing him with food. The blue dragon pulled in the wrong direction, sat down, scratched at the rope and tangled it around bushes, but a steady supply of larvae had kept him moving.

Tao went up to the gate and pushed. It didn’t shift. It was barred from the inside.

“I know how to get in,” he said.

It was a long time since Tao had needed to sneak in and out of the walled community, but it didn’t take him long to find the narrow tunnel under the wall. It had started as a rabbit burrow. When he was young, he and another boy had enlarged it, so they could get out into the fields to play and talk to the people farming the Huan lands. Tao had managed to keep it a secret from his all-seeing mother, and he had used it right up until he left home to join the monastery. The bramble bushes that hid the entrance had grown thicker since he was a child, and it took him some time to cut a way through with the help of his wolf tooth. He tore his jacket on the thorns, but eventually managed to burrow through. If he hadn’t grown thin from his diet of wild food, he wouldn’t have been able to fit. He wriggled through and emerged in what had once been a chicken pen.

Tao climbed over the fence and stood in a place that was very familiar and yet strange. He walked up the hill towards the house. Weeds choked the vegetable gardens. The doors of the huts where servants and farmers had lived hung open. There was no one there. Not a soul. Whenever Tao had returned from the monastery to visit his family, there were always children and chickens, pigs and puppies, and, in a little hut away from the house, his father patiently carving wood into what his mother had thought were useless objects – small statues of animals, ornate candleholders, decorative handles for spoons. This time the compound was completely quiet. There were no farm animal sounds, no children’s laughter, no steady clunk of a hammer hitting a chisel.

Tao followed the wall around to the gate and tried to lift the huge bar that held it closed. He couldn’t, but he didn’t want to admit that to Kai. He did some of the
qi
concentrating exercises Kai had taught him, and then searched for the core of
qi
within him. It wasn’t as hard to locate as before. He could feel its power. He tried again to lift the bar. He still couldn’t do it. That ruled out superhuman strength as his possible
qi
power.

Then he heard Kai roar angrily. “The blue dragon has escaped. He chewed through the rope!”

Tao added finding a lost dragon to his list of problems. But before he’d come up with a solution for anything, he felt something bump him. He turned. The blue dragon was behind him. He could see his fangs. The dragon lunged forwards. Tao jumped back with a cry. But the dragon was looking for more food, trying to get his nose into Tao’s bag.

“What is happening in there?” Kai said

Tao’s heart was still hammering. “It’s all right. He’s here. He followed me.”

Tao wondered how the dragon had squeezed through the tunnel. Perhaps that was another of his skills. There were only a few larvae left, but Tao had an idea for a way to put them to good use. He held one of the larvae enclosed in his fist and pointed to the bar, but the blue dragon didn’t understand what Tao wanted him to do.

Tao heard Kai rumbling and complaining on the other side of the gate. “Why is it taking you so long?”

Eventually, the blue dragon understood, and using his snout he lifted the bar. Although he was weak from hunger, the dragon was far stronger than Tao. Tao opened his hand and the dragon gobbled up the larva. He went to the other end of the bar with another larva. The blue dragon nudged the bar out of its slot and snatched the larva from Tao’s hand. Tao dragged the gate open wide enough to let Kai in.

“At last,” Kai said, pushing the gate closed again and effortlessly lifted the bar back into place.

They walked up the hill and arrived at the gateway that led to the main house. The wooden lintel was carved with peach blossoms and characters that read “Huan Family Home”. The carving was his father’s work. Above the gateway was a neat little tiled roof with corners that turned up at the ends. Tao ducked through the gateway and stood in his family’s private courtyard, where the still silence was even stranger. There were no shrill orders shouted by his mother, no servants scurrying to do her bidding, no singing or zither playing from Meiling’s room, but it was the absence of his brother that made the place truly empty. Wei never uttered a sound, but the house and garden had always been filled with his presence. Every time Tao had returned, he’d felt it as soon as he’d walked through the gate, before he had laid eyes on his brother. Wei had been the heart of the house and the community.

Kai put the blue dragon in a goat pen.

“Shouldn’t we tie him up?” Tao asked.