The little dragon blinked his big
green eyes at her and squawked again.
Rain had been falling from a grey sky all morning. Ping stood at the mouth of the cave and watched the drops dimple the pool. Kai had eaten a small breakfast of worms, but it wasn’t enough for him. The rain showed no signs of stopping, but sooner or later she would have to go out and milk the goat.
She sniffed. There was a bad smell in the air. She sniffed again. It was a sulphurous smell like rotten bird’s egg mixed with long-dead fish—and far too familiar. Ping got up and soon found a large puddle of dark green liquid in a corner of the cave.
“Kai! I told you to go outside to pee. Even if it is raining!”
The little dragon hung his head. The spines along his back drooped. His scales dulled to the colour of plum juice.
“You’re always wet from swimming in the pool, but you can’t put up with a few drops of rain!”
Kai slunk away to the back of the cave and hid his head under his front paws.
“You’ll have to wait for your milk until I’ve cleaned this up.”
Ping mopped up the dragon urine with some dry moss, but the smell lingered.
The weather showed no sign of improvement. The goat was standing outside with rain dripping from her. Ping didn’t feel like getting soaking wet, so she brought the goat inside. She rested her cheek against the animal’s damp coat as she milked her. The goat was a patient creature that caused no trouble and put up with the trials of life with a small dragon without complaint. She didn’t protest when Kai nipped at her knees or jumped out from behind rocks to frighten her. And every day, without fail, she produced warm milk.
Ping filled a bowl. As usual the dragon was there in a flash, slurping up the milk as if he was starving. Sometimes there was a little left over for Ping to drink. Not this time. Kai lapped up every last drop.
The smell of wet goat only added to the stench in the cave, but Ping didn’t have the heart to turn the animal out into the rain again. Her food supplies were dwindling. She should have been out collecting nuts, berries and mushrooms to add to her winter store, not sitting around doing nothing. She stared out through the drizzle. The nearest peaks were dull grey, the ones behind them pale grey, the furthest peaks were a faint outline almost blending into the mist. Perhaps she’d go out the next day.
Kai looked for something to amuse himself inside the cave. He dug up the pine-needle bed. He swung on the goat’s tail. He chased beetles, but never managed to catch any. He soon got bored with the amusements available to him in the cave, and went over to annoy Ping. He climbed onto her lap and walked around in a circle, pricking her legs with his sharp talons until he was ready to settle down. But he wasn’t sleepy. He scratched himself behind the ear, chewed on the end of the tie around Ping’s waist and snuffled in her pouch for more insects. It might have been pleasant to have a cat or a puppy sitting on her lap on a cold day, but dragons were not cuddly. Although they were warm-blooded animals, their scales were cold to touch, and Kai had lots of sharp bits that stuck into Ping through her gown.
Ping didn’t want to add smoke to the already-foul air in the cave, so she didn’t light a fire. For her midday meal she ate the nuts and berries that she had collected the day before. Kai ate the last of the insects that were in her pouch, then made a high-pitched whining sound that meant he was still hungry. Ping took no notice of him, so he snuffled around the cave until he discovered a large moth folded up in a crevice of rock at the back of the cave. He jumped up, trying to reach it, but his huge paws weighed him down like stones. He couldn’t jump high enough, no matter how many times he tried. Ping could have got up and caught the moth for him, but the weather had left her as dull and lifeless as the sky.
It was cold in the cave. Kai’s breath turned to mist. If he wanted to annoy Ping he could make it linger. The cave filled with a damp white fog making it seem even colder.
The summer weather had softened Ping. It was only autumn, but she was shivering as if it were mid-winter. Her gown, though grubby and mended in several places, was still much thicker than the threadbare jacket she’d worn when she was a slave at Huangling. There she hadn’t had a warm goatskin to sleep under at night. She’d slept in a draughty ox shed and Master Lan had forbidden her to light a fire for warmth. The memories made her shiver even more. She needed something warm inside her. She decided that she would light a fire after all.
She went out into the rain and quickly collected some damp wood. With her fire-making sticks, she soon made a flame in a tuft of dry grass, but the wet wood wouldn’t burn. All she succeeded in doing was filling the cave with smoke.
The clatter of something metallic falling on rock came from the back of the cave. Kai had discovered her precious things hidden on a rock shelf that she’d thought was out of his reach. She hadn’t realised how much he’d grown. He was standing on his back legs, rummaging through her belongings, knocking them off the shelf and onto the hard stone floor of the cave.
“Leave them, Kai!” she shouted. “They’re mine.”
There was nothing of interest for him, nothing to eat. He slunk off with his tail dragging on the ground and buried his head under the pine-needle bed. Ping didn’t scold him again. There was no point. He never took any notice of anything she said.
She picked up her scattered things. Among them were precious gifts from friends. There was the bronze mirror that Danzi had given her and the white jade seal presented to her by the Emperor himself. One end of the slender rectangle of jade had characters cut into its flat surface. The other end was carved into the shape of a dragon. She ran her finger over the cool jade. One corner was chipped where Kai had knocked it to the cave floor. She collected the rest of her things—a comb and a dragon scale which were also gifts from the old dragon. There were gold and copper coins, a jade pendant, a dish of seal ink, a bone needle and a length of red thread. There were several pieces of purple eggshell—all that remained of the dragon stone. There was also a large dried leaf folded in two. Finally, there was the square of bamboo with her name written on it, given to her by her parents. Some of her belongings were worth a lot of money, some were worthless, but Ping valued them all.
She had always worn the bamboo square around her neck, but Kai had snapped the string several weeks ago. She took a length of the red silk, threaded the bamboo square onto it and hung it around her neck again.
She held the jade seal in one hand and the bronze mirror in the other. They were both symbols of the office of Dragonkeeper, but they each represented very different roles.
She inspected the mirror to make sure it wasn’t damaged. On one side was an etched design—a full-grown dragon coiled around a knob that protruded from the centre. The dragon’s paw was reaching out to the knob as if it was something precious, like a pearl. When Ping had accepted the mirror from Danzi, he had warned her that it was a commitment to him and his heirs—for life. Kai was his son, his only heir, and possibly the last living dragon. She had received the mirror gladly, proud to take on the role of Dragonkeeper, but without really understanding the responsibility that came with it, the lonely life she had chosen. The mirror had been carried by all of Danzi’s true Dragonkeepers. It was hundreds of years old. She wasn’t sure she deserved the honour. She had travelled with the dragon reluctantly at first. It had been her job to feed Danzi who was held in captivity in Huangling Palace where she was a slave. She hadn’t intended to help him escape. It was actually Danzi who had freed her. He had given her the task of carrying his dragon stone all the way to Ocean. She smiled, remembering how terrified she’d been at the prospect of leaving her miserable home. Ping turned the mirror over. The other side was supposed to be polished bronze. Instead it was dusty and crisscrossed with the silvery trail of a snail. She slipped it into her pouch. When it stopped raining, she would take it out to the pool and wash it.
The jade seal was the badge of the Imperial Dragonkeeper whose job was to care for dragons owned by the Emperor. Ping should never have ac
cepted the seal. Danzi would have rather died than be held in captivity again.
A crackling sound interrupted her thoughts. A small orange flame licked around the wood in the fireplace. Ping blew on the glowing coals and more flames sprouted. She hung a pot of water over the fire, adding a few red berries that gave it a pleasant flavour. Kai came over to the fire, giving her a wounded look as if she was the one who had done something wrong. He tripped over the woodpile and fell on his nose.
Ping laughed. “Dragons are supposed to have excellent eyesight!”
She could never stay angry with him.
Kai sat by the fire. In the light of the flames his scales glinted like amethyst crystals. He squawked.
“And don’t think you’re getting anything to eat, just because I’ve put on a pot of water. It’s hours till dinner time.”
The dragon continued squawking and staring at the pot.
“I don’t know why I bother talking to you. You don’t understand a word I say.”
Ping lifted the pot off the fire with a stick and tilted it to pour the water into her bowl. Kai squawked again.
“You don’t like hot water,” Ping said.
The air around the dragon distorted and shimmered. Suddenly there wasn’t a small purple dragon sitting next to the fire but another pot exactly the same as the one she was holding. Ping spilt hot water on her hand she was so surprised. A squawking sound came from the second pot. Ping wondered if she was starting to go mad. Strange things happened to people who lived by themselves. Or was it the endless diet of fish that was making her see things? Ping picked up the soup ladle and held it out to poke the pot. Before she could, the air shimmered again. Ping felt a wave of nausea as she watched the pot turn into another soup ladle with a dragon’s head decoration, identical to the one in her hand.
“Kai, is that you?”
Ping’s nausea increased as the second soup ladle turned into a bucket and then into a baby dragon.
“You can shape-change!”
The little dragon blinked his big green eyes at her and squawked again.
“That’s wonderful! What a clever dragon you are.”
She went to the back of the cave and cupped the sleeping moth in her hands. It fluttered its wings frantically, leaving dusty grey powder on her palms. Ping held the struggling insect out to Kai.
“You’ve earned a reward.”
The dragon’s jaws snapped over the moth—and the ends of Ping’s fingers.
“Good boy, Kai.”
She kept the fire going all day. Towards evening the rain stopped. When Kai was asleep, Ping fetched the old dragon’s scale from its place at the back of the cave and went outside. The moon had risen early and the sky glittered with stars. In daylight the dragon’s scale was a faded grey, but in the moonlight it had a greenish glow. She rubbed her fingers over its rough surface. She wished she could tell Danzi that Kai was showing signs of learning dragonish skills at last. She felt a flicker of hope. If he could shape-change, it meant they could move among people. They could go to a market and buy food to see them through the cold months. Perhaps one day Kai would grow into a proper dragon.
• chapter three •
THE RED PHOENIX
Whatever it was, it was alive— and heading straight for Ping.
Let muddy water stand still and it will gradually clear.
The dragon’s paw reached out to her. His talons were huge and sharp and could have easily ripped her open, but they touched her hand as delicately as a butterfly.
“I don’t know what you mean, Danzi,” Ping said.
Ping knows.
“I don’t.”
Do.
The dragon opened his wings. They were not torn or scarred, but completely healed. The membrane of the wings was divided into segments by long thin bones, just like a bat’s wings. The full moon came out from behind a cloud. Moonbeams collected in the dragon’s body until it glowed luminous green.
“Don’t leave me alone, Danzi.”
Must go.
She tried to run towards the dragon, but her feet wouldn’t move. She looked down. The rest of the earth was as dry as a sun-bleached bone, but her feet were in a puddle of sticky mud. She couldn’t pull them out.
The dragon lifted off the ground.
“Please don’t leave me,” she wailed. “Help me get onto your back.”
The even way is often the rough track.
The beautiful moonbeam-dragon flapped up into the night sky. The more Ping tried to drag her feet out of the grasping mud, the further they sank. The dragon shrank to a small dot of light and then she lost him among the stars. A wind blew up whipping leaves and small stones into the air. One of the stones hit her sharply on the nose. It stung, but the ache in her heart hurt much more.
Ping woke up to find a small purple dragon nipping her nose.
“Kai, I wish you’d find a less painful way to wake me,” she said as she sat up.
The despair of the dream was still with her. She didn’t dream of Danzi often, but when she did the dreams were heartbreaking. He seemed to be trying to tell her something, but she could never understand his message. It took a few minutes for her to summon the strength to face the day.
The excitement of finding out that Kai could shape-change soon wore off. Ping’s stomach was constantly churning with the sick feeling she got whenever she saw the dragon transform. She tried not to watch, but it was hard to avoid as he changed from one thing to another when she was least expecting it.
Kai shape-changed into whatever he laid his eyes on. One minute he was a bush, the next a turtle, then he was a bowl. Ping tried to encourage him to stay in one shape, rewarding him with treats of tufty brown caterpillars. They were Kai’s favourite food, but Ping didn’t like collecting them because they squirted sticky green stuff at her when she picked them off leaves. As usual Kai didn’t understand a word Ping said. He ate the caterpillars and then changed into something else. Ping’s optimism faded. Walking around with a bowl that turned into a bush or a bucket before people’s eyes would cause just as much fuss as carrying a baby dragon.
Ping knew that dragons could live for thousands of years if they maintained good health. That was one thing that Danzi had told her. After five times a hundred years a dragon grew horns, after a thousand it grew wings. Perhaps it took hundreds of years for them to learn their dragon skills. Even if Ping lived to be a hundred, Kai would still be a very young dragon. He might still need looking after.
A question had been forming at the back of Ping’s mind ever since the dragon was hatched. Who would look after Kai when she died? One day she would have to find someone to take her place. She could teach them everything she knew about dragons—but would anyone want to take on such a task?
Ping scanned the surface of the pond. There wasn’t a dragonfly in sight. She had searched the nearby bushes and hadn’t found a single caterpillar. She hadn’t bothered to go out looking for moths the night before. Now she had no insects for Kai’s breakfast.
Kai was swimming in the pool as he did every fine day. When he walked, he was clumsy and awkward, always tripping over rocks or fallen branches. In the water he moved quickly and gracefully, diving towards rocks on the bottom of the pond and gliding away from them at the last second.
“I’ll be glad when you can catch your own insects,” she said when he next came up for air.
Ping peered into the dark waters. She could see large water beetles, striped with black and yellow, diving among the reeds. She had collected the larvae of these creatures for Kai to eat, but it wasn’t the season for them now. The beetles were big. Three or four of them would make a good meal for the little dragon.
“Why don’t you catch them instead of just chasing them?” Ping grumbled.
Since he took no notice of this suggestion, she decided to catch them herself. She fetched the fishing net that she had woven from thin, flexible twigs and dipped it into the pond. It only took her a few minutes to catch five beetles.
/> “Try these, Kai,” she said. “They look like they’ll make a tasty meal.”
Kai pulled himself out of the pond. He sniffed at the beetles that were squirming in the net.
“That’s all you’re getting this morning,” Ping said.
Kai squawked.
“All right, I’ll squash them for you,” Ping said.
She emptied the beetles out onto a flat rock and crushed them with the stone she used to pound grain. Kai sniffed them again. He licked at the yellow stuff oozing from the squashed beetle shells. Then he picked one of them up in his mouth. He crunched the shell and then spat it out again.
Ping sighed. “If you don’t like them, you’ll have to make do with milk.”
Ping went over to where the goat was tethered. She knelt down and rested her cheek against her flank. The goat continued to crop the grass.
“I wish Kai was as easy to feed as you are,” she said.
Kai started making noises again. Not the complaining squawks he made when he was hungry. Not the noise he made when he wanted Ping to play with him. It was a hoarse coughing sound. Ping turned and saw that the dragon was retching. She ran over to him.
“What’s wrong, Kai?”
Ping patted him on the back, which was not easy to do to a creature with sharp spines from head to tail. He didn’t seem to be able to take a breath. Ping thought that he must have been choking, that he had swallowed something and it was caught in his throat. She banged harder on his back. He still didn’t breathe. Then with one last retch, he vomited into Ping’s lap. In among the unpleasant milky mix of dragonfly legs and caterpillar skin was a squashed water beetle.
Kai made a plaintive sound and lay down. His eyes looked dull. His tongue was no longer bright red. His scales had turned the colour of a bruise. She brought the bowl of milk over to him, but he wouldn’t drink. Ping carried him into the cave and laid him on the bed of pine needles. She gently rubbed the little dragon’s stomach.
“I’m sorry, Kai,” she said. “I shouldn’t have given you the beetles to eat.”
Dragonkeeper 2: Garden of the Purple Dragon Page 2