Although it filled him with guilt, Tao collected some of the insects. If they were its natural food, it was not for him to interfere in the ways of the world. Tao offered them to the blue dragon when he woke, but he wouldn’t eat them. Tao set them free again, relieved that they had been spared, but worried about how he would find something the hungry dragon would eat.
“We have to teach him to communicate with us,” Tao said that evening as he cooked every combination of grain and vegetables he could think of.
“I have tried to make the blue dragon comprehend me, but though he may guess my meaning, he cannot understand my sounds,” Kai said.
And when the blue dragon made his tweeting sounds, they meant nothing to Kai either.
“It is a waste of time,” Kai said.
“But he’s quick to learn. I’m sure eventually he’ll be able to understand my words and your sounds.”
“Maybe so, but that will take a long time. You have spent all day trying to get him to eat.” Kai’s stomach rumbled so loud that the blue dragon pricked up his ears. “Perhaps now you could prepare something for you and I to eat.”
Tao was quite proud of his cooking skills. He would make the vegetables he’d cooked for the blue dragon tastier by adding ginger, and improve the flavour of the rice with spices. Since he had a stove, he decided to be more adventurous and attempt to make steamed buns. He’d watched the process many times when he was a child, and even helped the servants knead the dough. But cooking was more difficult than he’d ever realised. Keeping an eye on the buns, the rice and the vegetable dish all at the same time was impossible. He was about to call to Kai to come and help him when he heard footsteps behind him.
“Can you pass me the ginger, please?”
A hand reached out and passed him a piece of ginger root.
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t until he had chopped it up and stirred it into his vegetable stew that he realised the ginger had been passed to him not with a paw, but with a hand. He spun round, brandishing the chopping knife. A dark figure was standing in front of him, a sword in hand, dressed from head to toe in black cloth so that only a pair of eyes was visible.
“If I was your worst enemy and I had murdered your family, you wouldn’t use that,” the intruder said.
Tao dropped the knife, stepped back and knocked over a pot of cooked grain. He knew that voice well. Its owner shouldn’t have been standing in the Huan kitchen dressed in such an outlandish way. But the blue eyes confirmed it. Tao’s mouth hung open while his brain sorted through the possibilities. Was it a vision? A ghost? A figment of his imagination?
Kai came into the kitchen, making rumbling dragon noises that translated into complaints about how hungry he was. He stopped in the doorway. His rumbling was replaced with the sound of wind chimes. The blue dragon was close behind him, but as soon as he caught sight of the stranger, he disappeared.
Tao knew then that the figure in front of him wasn’t a stranger at all.
“Pema,” he said.
He couldn’t think of another word to say.
Chapter Twelve
SWEETNESS
Tao watched Pema unwind the length of black cloth that covered her head and face. It gave off a faint smell of incense. And then revealed her smile. He knew he was staring, but he didn’t care. Her hair was in an untidy knot on the top of her head, like a boy, but not even the scar on her cheek could detract from her lovely face.
“Whatever that is you’re cooking, it smells very good,” she said.
Tao filled bowls with food, and Pema and Kai followed him outside to the peony pavilion. The blue dragon suddenly materialised in front of them. Pema squealed.
“It’s all right,” Tao said. “He’s harmless. Most of the time.”
Pema kept her eyes on the blue dragon. “Where did it come from?”
Tao smiled. “He was here all the time. He can make himself invisible. He was frightened of you when he first saw you.”
“He was frightened! So was I.”
Tao handed her a bowl of grain and vegetables. He offered some to the blue dragon, though he knew it was a waste of time. The creature made a mournful creaking sound.
“He’s hungry, but we can’t find anything he likes to eat, apart from caterpillars and larvae.”
Kai had spent several hours collecting grubs for him, but the blue dragon wolfed them down in the time that it took Tao to raise his chopsticks to his mouth. They weren’t enough to fill him up. Tao offered him different wuji. Snails were acceptable and so were worms, though from the noise he made, he didn’t like their taste.
“Can’t Kai ask him what he wants to eat?” Pema said.
“No. Kai can’t understand him either.”
“Every time I see you, you’ve got a new dragon that you can’t communicate with!” Pema said, through a mouthful of ginger-flavoured vegetables.
“What are you doing here?” Tao asked.
“Things didn’t work out as I expected,” Pema said. That was all she had to say on the subject.
They were all enjoying the food, except for the blue dragon, who refused to try it.
Pema, on the other hand, ate three bowls of grain and vegetables, as well as four steamed buns, even though they were a bit tough.
Tao was eager to hear what had happened to her since they parted company.
“Why aren’t you in Chengdu as you planned? And why are you wearing trousers?”
Pema was a member of the Di tribe. There were many Di people living in Chengdu, and though she had no living family members, she had gone to live among her own people. After she had scraped her bowl clean with her last piece of bun, and then eaten a handful of nuts and some dried persimmons, she finally began to tell them her story.
“I reached Chang’an with the family I was travelling with, but the only people travelling on to Chengdu were merchants who weren’t interested in having a girl tagging along. I tried travelling alone. It didn’t work out well. I had nothing of value, but I lost count of how many times I was robbed. I didn’t get halfway. In the end, I decided to go back to Chang’an.”
“So what brings you here? How did you know where we were?”
“I didn’t know. I’ve used this place as a hide-out from time to time since I returned.”
Pema explained how she had found a place in the wall where there were footholds and climbed over.
“But I saw no sign of anyone else being here,” he said.
Pema smiled. “I am more cautious than you. I didn’t set myself up in the middle of the main courtyard. I sleep in one of the farm workers’ huts and hide my sleeping mat whenever I leave.”
Tao was pleased that she’d chosen his family home as a refuge.
“You were careful not to show a light or cook during the day,” Pema said, “but I knew someone was here. I could smell the smoke from your stove on the wind. And when I got closer, the food smelled delicious. Then I heard Kai’s cracked-bell sound, and I knew it had to be you two.”
Tao wanted to know more about what she’d been doing, but she was more interested in the blue dragon which was nuzzling her hands, in the hope that she might have something edible hidden there.
“Be careful. He’s wild.”
She giggled. “His breath is cool. It tickles.”
Tao smiled. It was a pleasure to hear her laughter.
Her blue eyes stared at him. Tao felt his cheeks start to burn.
“I know you disapprove, Tao, but I’m not the only one who’s changed their plans since we last saw each other. You aren’t wearing monk’s robes, you are eating after midday – and you have some hair.”
Tao ran his fingers through his hair, which was now more than two inches long.
“You aren’t a novice monk any more.”
“No.”
“So why did you leave your monastery? Did nomads attack it?”
“No. When I got back, Fo Tu Deng was there. I thought he was going to take control. And I felt my destiny
was with Kai.”
“I heard that Fo Tu Deng was working for Jilong,” Pema said.
“Heard?” Tao said. “From who?”
“I use the skills I perfected when I was living in Luoyang. There is no need to ask questions. I wander quietly among people and listen.”
“You’ve been back to Luoyang?”
“Of course. How else would I get news? I could sit by the roadside out on the plain and hope someone would pass every week or two, I suppose, but Luoyang is the best place to get news – people gossip, traders come from afar, and there are nomads living there, some loyal to the Zhao, some to the other tribes.”
Pema changed the subject.
“Now you must tell me what has happened to you since I last saw you. How did you come by this dragon?”
Tao sighed. “It’s a long story.”
Pema smiled at him. “Good. I haven’t had any entertainment for a long while.”
He recounted their journey since leaving the monastery, and Pema listened closely.
“Your adventures are better than any tale I’ve heard from travelling storytellers. None of them contained ghosts, invisible dragons and giant seven-headed snakes!”
Kai made a tinkling sound.
“It isn’t a tale. It’s … my life,” Tao said. “I don’t do these things so that I can have stories to entertain people with afterwards.”
Pema patted the blue dragon and tickled him under the chin.
Tao wanted to ask her advice, what she thought of his plan to help people, if she considered he’d make a good dragonkeeper, but she kept quizzing him.
“Are you going to stay here? What will you and Kai do?”
He wished he had answers to those questions.
“I need time to think, and decide exactly what I am doing.” Tao glanced at Kai. “What we are doing.”
Pema studied the blue dragon, who had given up looking for more food and, with a long sigh, curled up next to the stove.
“He’s very different to you, Kai,” she said. “He must be a different type of dragon, just as there are different species of birds. That’s why you can’t communicate with him.”
The blue dragon moved closer and closer to the stove, until he was almost lying in the ashes.
Different emotions were bouncing around inside Tao. He was glad to see Pema, very glad, but he was annoyed that she had not done as she’d promised when they had parted and gone to live somewhere that was safe. He had told her everything that had happened to him, but she had said very little about her own adventures. She hadn’t really explained how she came to be in the Huan compound, or why she was dressed the way she was. He was about to ask more questions, but Pema yawned.
“I’m tired. I need to sleep.”
She said goodnight and went to whichever hut it was that she had chosen as her sleeping quarters. Tao was disappointed. He’d been looking forward to talking to Pema into the night. He wanted to know every detail of what had happened to her since they said goodbye, but he found it difficult to tell her what had happened to him. Recounting it all made him feel like he’d failed at everything. For the first time since he was seven, his life had no real purpose.
Kai settled down in the goat pen, and the blue dragon trailed after him like a lost child.
Tao wasn’t in the least tired. He lay on Wei’s bed, staring at the ceiling. It was covered in dark spots, hundreds of them, as if there had been a sudden attack of mould. He peered at them and realised what they were – baby huntsman spiders, each no bigger than an ant. The mother spider sat in her customary corner, keeping an eye, several eyes probably, on her brood. Tao was glad to have their company.
They didn’t, however, help him get to sleep. He was wide awake. A shaft of moonlight shone through the window. It cast a moon shadow on the other side of the room, a replica of one of the rocks in the garden outside. The rock was irregular, tall and chosen by his mother for its craggy shape, so that it resembled a miniature mountain. As the moon made its way slowly across the night sky, the shadow moved across the floor towards him. Its edges began to ripple. Tao watched, unable to drag his eyes away as the shadow gradually changed shape, fraying around the edges. Tendrils lengthened and streamed out like ragged shreds of torn grey silk, until the shadow bore no resemblance to the rock that cast it.
Tao leaped out of bed, grabbed the quilt and ran outside. He didn’t want to be alone. He wished he could wake Kai, but how could he explain his fear of shadows? He lay on the couch in the peony pavilion and pulled the quilt over him. The moon went behind a cloud, but there would be no sleep for Tao that night.
Tao was up well before the others. In the daylight, the events of the previous night seemed no more frightening than childish bad dreams. Turning his thoughts to breakfast, he crawled through his tunnel under the wall and walked through a field where grain once grew, towards the orchard. All he could find were some fallen apples, partly rotten, half-eaten by grubs. He picked up some of the fruit anyway, thinking that there was a chance the blue dragon might eat it as it was full of grubs.
As he walked back towards the walled compound, he heard buzzing. He followed the sound, which led him to a pomegranate tree. Bees were zooming in and out of a hollow in the trunk. When Tao was a child, his father had kept bees. Tao loved honey and enjoyed helping him collect it from the hives. He had spent hours watching the bees industriously going about their business. He had stood up close to the hive, still and silent, and they had taken no more notice of him than a fence post. He had marvelled at the way bees worked and worked until they died, all for the sake of their hive. The only time they became angry was when his father took away their honey. That was understandable. To prevent the bees from stinging him, his father had worn thick trousers tied at the ankles, goat-skin gloves and a hood fitted with a see-through mask of gauzy silk.
The smell of the honey was making Tao’s mouth water. It would be a good addition to their food store. Tao stood as still as a stone and watched the bees returning to the hollow, their legs fat and yellow with the pollen they had collected. But the bees leaving the hive didn’t ignore him. They didn’t fly off into the trees in search of pollen and nectar. Instead, they came to him. He sensed they meant him no harm. The bees swarmed in front of him. One at a time they made their way back to the hollow, forming a long line. Tao was sure they were leading him to their hive. He followed the column of bees. He had no protection, but when he got to the hollow, he reached inside. He could feel the waxy honeycomb under his fingertips. This was the sort of thing that normally made the placid bees furious.
Tao had been stung several times by angry bees when he’d leaned too close while his father was stealing the honey. He knew how painful a bee sting was. Yet without any fear, he broke off a piece of the honeycomb and withdrew his hand. The honeycomb was sealed with wax, so Tao knew that it was full of honey. The bees flew off again and resumed their work. Tao stood with the honeycomb in his hand. The bees had allowed him to take their honey. They had given him a gift.
Back at the house, Kai was awake, but the blue dragon wouldn’t get up.
“He is weak from hunger,” Kai said.
Tao cut up the apples and gave them to the blue dragon, who pulled out the grubs and ate them, but wouldn’t eat the fruit. The grubs weren’t much of a meal and he was still hungry.
“That’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid.”
Tao carefully sliced the layer of sealing wax off the top of the honeycomb with his father’s knife. The clever bees had made a mass of hexagonal cells from their wax, and each one was full of honey. The cells were where the queen bee laid her eggs, and the honey fed them as they turned into larvae and then into baby bees.
Pema, dressed in black again, came to watch as Tao up-ended the honeycomb and let the honey drip into a bowl. He didn’t stop her when she dipped her finger in.
“I have never eaten this before,” she said as she licked her finger. “It is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted.”
&
nbsp; Tao agreed with her. He remembered how sad he and Wei had been when their mother had made their father sell the hives after she was stung.
He cut away the rotten and eaten parts of the apples and put the rest on a platter with nuts and dried persimmons. Tao felt guilty that he had food to eat while the blue dragon sat there whimpering.
“There won’t be any caterpillars in winter. I’m beginning to think that we’ll have to watch him die of hunger before our eyes.”
“Perhaps not,” Pema said.
She pointed at the blue dragon, who had found the honeycomb. As he chewed it, he drooled and made a purring sound.
“I think you have discovered something he likes to eat.”
Tao mixed a spoonful of honey into a bowl of cooked grain and the hungry dragon ate every morsel. He ate another bowlful of grain and honey with the remaining apples chopped into it. The blue dragon had a sweet tooth.
The food had an immediate effect on the dragon. He was suddenly full of energy. They watched the transformed blue dragon as he ran around the peony pavilion six times, jumped over the pond and climbed a tree. He played a game where he made himself invisible and then reappeared in unexpected places. Then he went back for more food, belched, lay down and went to sleep.
“That was entertaining,” Pema said.
Tao was glad that he didn’t have to worry about the blue dragon any more.
They sat in the morning sun. Pema yawned, though she had told Tao she had slept well.
“Tell me again about the ghosts in the underworld,” she said.
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