After the Dragons

by Cynthia Zhang

  “I don’t look Chinese, I know.”

  “No. But you’re not Chinese, are you? You’re American.”

  “Afro-Chinese-American. It’s a mouthful.”

  “Exactly,” Kai says. “China is — it’s a strange country, when it comes to differences. America and Europe — they’re not perfect, I know, and I’m sure it hasn’t been easy, being the type of person you are in America, but at least you still have more kinds of people there. In China, it’s mostly just us. Chinese people — Han people if you want to be precise. But even that’s not completely accurate, not when you take Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into account the way most people don’t. But the point is, even in cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, there aren’t that many foreigners, and when there are, you notice them. It’s easy to tell when someone is different, and we’re not good with differences here.”

  “Neither is America. I don’t think it’s a national thing.”

  Kai laughs at that, short and surprised. “Probably not,” he says, and when he turns to Eli, he’s smiling — wry, a little sharp around the edges, but genuine. “Unfortunately.”

  Kai swings a little. “You never answered the question. Why you’re here.”

  “Didn’t I?” Eli asks, pushing back with his feet. “I told you, I had the time and I wanted to do something useful with it.”

  “And you could have done all that in America, at any of the universities there. In a country that, okay, isn’t perfect but is at least familiar. Why Beijing?”

  It’s the same question his mother and friends had asked, when they had heard, and the rehearsed answers are still there, words ready on the tip of his tongue. The opportunity to work with world-class faculty — the hope of contributing useful research on a leading problem in medicine —

  “I’m not sure I know either, honestly,” Eli says. “My family — my mother’s side, at least — has a lot of history in this city, but we’ve never visited. It’s always been Guilin or Shenzhen, one of the other cities where my relatives live now. So I guess coming here, being in the city where my mom and grandma grew up … it felt right, I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Do you still feel that? About being here, I mean.”

  Eli lifts his feet off the ground, lets his momentum carry him a few inches forward. “Sometimes, yes. I guess I’m still figuring it out.”

  Qinglu has landed on top of their swing set, and is occupied with licking the dust off her forelegs, but Cixi continues gliding above them, wings winking green and bright in the dim glow of city light. So high above, she becomes an almost abstract thing, a movement of constellation shapes against the sky.

  It’s impossible, but despite the light pollution and smog, Eli thinks he can almost make out some stars.

  “Come on,” Kai says after a few minutes, dusting himself off as he stands up. He whistles and pulls a few strips of jerky out of a pocket. Qinglu flies down immediately and Cixi, lured by the food and the loss of her playmate, follows a minute later. “We should get back.”

  “Your friend’s been looking for you,” Mr. Lin says.

  “My friend?” Kai asks, not glancing up from his sketchbook.

  “Your friend. You know, that American boy? He’s been stopping by in the evenings. Not saying anything, just hanging around looking tall and hopeful.” Mr. Lin lights a cigarette, cupping the flame between his hands. “Might want to see what he wants.”

  “He has my phone number. He’d let me know if it was anything serious.” Still, it doesn’t surprise Kai that Eli’s been staking out the shop. For all his attempts at subtlety, Eli is about as stealthy as the packages of tea and lozenges that keep finding their way into the bags of dragon food and veterinary supplies they’d agreed upon as payment. It’s deeply exasperating, as many things about Eli are, yet Kai can’t help but also find it oddly endearing.

  Mr. Lin gives him a look, the type that, when they first met, spoke volumes about what he thought of him, some nineteen-year-old college student offering to treat the wheezing cough of several of Mr. Lin’s helong. It’s a look Mr. Lin directs mostly at the other employees these days, but it never quite lost its power to make Kai feel all of twelve years old.

  “What?” Kai asks.

  “Not really polite, leaving him to wait after you like that.”

  “If it’s an emergency, he can send me a message. I’ll ask him the next time we meet.”

  Mr. Lin makes a non-committal noise. Cigarette smoke wafts between them, slowly dissipating into the evening air. Mr. Lin’s eyes are sharp as he watches Kai, making Kai instinctively bristle, but Mr. Lin keeps his thoughts to himself.

  When he gets home, Kai thinks, turning his pencil to the side to shade in lamplit shadows, he should text Eli his hours. Stop him from hanging around the shop every other evening at least.

  Lab ends early on Monday, the result of several botched petri solutions and a temporarily broken flow cytometer. Not quite wanting to accompany his lab mates to the bar and with nothing else to do, Eli makes his way to Mr. Lin’s shop.

  Kai isn’t there.

  Eli stands in front of the shop, staring at the lines of tanks and wooden stools, then goes inside.

  “Excuse me,” he says as he approaches Mr. Lin, who is sitting at the counter drinking tea as he scowls at a newspaper. “Do you know where Kai is?”

  “Kai?” Mr. Lin looks up from his newspaper. “Kid doesn’t work today.”

  Eli blinks.

  “But he said —”

  “Kid probably says all sorts of shit.” Mr. Lin shrugs, taking a measured sip of his tea. “Doesn’t mean he’s getting paid for it. Kai wants to come in on Monday and stop my other employees from fucking up, I’m not going to stop him.”

  “Oh.” Eli pauses to process this information. “So is he sick, or — do you know why —”

  “No idea,” Mr. Lin says, shrugging. “Usually shows, but I can’t exactly go off on him for not being here when he isn’t supposed to be, can I? Not my job to babysit him. Kid works for me, not the other way around.”

  Which is logical. Logical, of course, that Kai would be busy, would have other things to tend to and would, once in a while, miss a day or two of work —

  In his textbooks, Eli remembers seeing pictures of shaolong’s effects on the body, autopsies with black lungs cut open to show the extent of the damage, the delicate calligraphies of dark smoke twining through veins and capillaries. He remembers staring at the photo and rereading descriptions of end-stage patients, mentally comparing his memories of his grandmother against established diagnostic standards. His grandmother had never seemed in terrible pain during her last months, but she had also always hated making other people worry. Had she covered up inflamed skin and purpling bruises with makeup and long sleeves, scheduled her video calls to coincide with her days of health? Or had Eli simply not seen, too preoccupied with his work and his desire to see his grandmother well that he’d missed the signs of her health worsening? And has he made that mistake again here, in Beijing with Kai?

  Eli swallows, forcing his voice steady. “Do you know where he lives, then?”

  Mr. Lin raises an eyebrow. “You know,” he says, “those type of questions get people suspicious. All I know, you could be part of some gang, here to cut him up or sell him for money.” He sips his tea, then sighs when he sees Eli’s face. “Joke, kid, wasn’t going to call the cops on you, my god — three streets down, take a left, then the ugly block on Tong Alley. 1841C. Make sure he hasn’t died on us, yeah?”

  Kai gives himself ten seconds, counting backwards, then opens his eyes. But nothing has changed in the sparse apartment in front of him. The dragons still need him.

  So Kai lowers his goggles, checks his gloves, and begins again.

  His kitchen table has been repurposed into a makeshift examination counter for the occasion, brown butcher paper serving as both exam table paper and a tarp on the floor below. On an adjacent chair, Kai lays out the bandages in neat rows, then the cotton swabs
next to them. On his shoulder, Mei wrinkles her nose, pulling back at the sight of the familiar tools.

  “It’s all right,” Kai says, stroking her head. “They’re not for you.”

  The first dragon hisses when he reaches into the tank, talons curling onto the edge of the glass lid when he gently lifts the creature up. Suspended in midair, the helong struggles in his grasp, its long body a grey-blue rope swinging in pendulum arcs. It makes him smile a little; a few hours in freshwater, and the river dragon is already spirited enough to be territorial. A fighter, this one. Kai hopes it will survive.

  He is less certain about the others.

  Three years of pouring over diagrams for zoology exams and dissecting animals for anatomy labs — the culmination of an interest sparked by a childhood spent watching volunteers sew up wounded wildlife at the Ren Ai Temple. All that so his hands would not shake when he handles the needle, pulling thread through scaly skin. He still fumbles a few times, the needle jerking as the dragons struggle against the anklets and leashes holding them in place. One of the larger hailong twists before he can get the leash over its head, snapping at his face with teeth as sharp as needles. But Kai moves quickly enough that the wound is only a scratch, and afterwards, Mei clicks so angrily that the larger dragon is shamed into stillness.

  She’s still hissing when he puts away his supplies, a low, steady sibilance that persists even when the hailong has rolled into a ball inside the tank. “It’s all right, Mei,” he whispers, tickling under her chin, “I’m fine, see?”

  Mei curls her tail around Kai’s bicep but keeps a baleful eye on the hailong, clearly skeptical of Kai’s ability to protect himself. Kai remembers a time when she could curl her entire body around his wrist like a bracelet, a grey dragonet he’d snuck into the dorms, swearing his roommates to secrecy. Barely larger than a city sparrow and with scales not yet hardened to adult toughness, she’d been fearless even then, darting at mice and birds twice her size whenever Kai took her out for flight practice. Little wonder that she’s so headstrong as an adult.

  Gently stroking Mei’s head, Kai glances down. There’s blood on the floor, most of it on the butcher paper but some finding its way onto the tiles. He’ll have to scrub it later, before the stains can set.

  Kai closes his eyes, allows himself that one small, brief luxury. Then he stands up and, brushing the dust off his clothes, goes outside.

  It’s bright out. Hot. Heat speeds evaporation, makes wet, scaly skin dry out faster than flowers in the sun. Kai, plastic bag full of bloodied rags in one hand, doesn’t like to think what would have happened if he had woken up later, if he had taken the other route to work instead of passing by the trash collection bins.

  He sees no more bags or boxes or anything that could contain a dragon as he approaches the row of dumpsters and recycling bins now, at least. That is a small mercy. Dragon meat and leather may be illegal and still near-sacrilege to consume or procure, but Kai doubts that Beijing’s street dogs and scavengers care much for ancient theology.

  “Kai!”

  He starts, turns, and of course it’s him.

  “Kai!” Eli calls again, slowing to a stop. He’s breathing hard, thin T-shirt almost translucent with sweat and eyes feverishly bright. “What are you doing here?”

  “Taking the trash out,” Kai says. “I took the day off. What are you doing here?”

  “I thought — our lab finished early this morning, so I thought I would visit. But then you weren’t at the store, and I was worried that —”

  He trails off then, gaze darting over Kai as if unsure he is still there. Not for the first time, Kai resents that Eli’s height means he needs to look up to meet his eyes. Involuntarily, Kai feels his hands clench, and he thrusts them into his pockets before Eli can see.

  “Thank you for your concern, but as you can see,” he says, “I haven’t dropped dead yet. You can go now. I’m sure you’re busy.”

  Eli blinks. “I wasn’t trying to — I just wanted — I’m sorry —”

  By all rights, Kai should be angry. And on some level, he supposes he is angry. He’s angry that Eli has followed him all this way, angry that Eli has found him here after that one inadvertent stumble from the store to this apartment, this godforsaken mess he had scrabbled to afford so that no one, not even his friends, would ever find him.

  But when he looks at Eli, the disheveled hair, the brown eyes blinking in confusion, Kai feels no anger, only deep weariness.

  “Or,” he says, sighing, “you could come inside and have some tea.”

  “Stay here,” Kai says. He places a hand against Eli’s chest as they stand outside his door. “I’ll get you shoes.”

  He closes the door, leaving Eli alone in the dim hallway.

  “Okay, you can come in,” Kai says when he opens the door, handing Eli a pair of blue-and-yellow sandals. “It’s a little cleaner now.”

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” Eli says. Kai holds the sandals out between them. “It’s fine, I wasn’t planning to stay —”

  Kai stares at him.

  Flushing, Eli takes the shoes.

  Kai’s apartment is small, bare. Sweat beads on the back of Eli’s neck, the dry heat of the outdoors fading into the muggier warmth inside. A bed by one wall, a kettle in the corner, next to a small heap of sketches. Layered one on top of another, the colors and forms blur so that Eli can only catch pieces of images: a glimpse of a foreleg, the edge of a claw reaching toward some star or stretch of sky. Toward the middle of the room, there’s a table covered by a long sheet of paper — an art project, maybe? Or perhaps Kai hadn’t seen the point in spending money on a tablecloth. No art on the walls, no carpet to cover cracked floor tiles — not a sign of excess except for the tanks and cages spread throughout the room and the small, jewel-bright dragons inside.

  Kai emerges from the kitchen, a cup of tea in one hand. “Here,” Kai says. “Drink. You’ve had pu-erh?”

  “It’s all right,” Eli says, shaking his head, “you don’t have to — I’ll just —”

  “Please,” Kai says. “I insist.”

  They sip their tea, Kai’s eyes never quite leaving Eli.

  “They’re all very beautiful,” Eli says to break the silence, nodding at the dragons around them. “Are they all yours?”

  Kai sips his tea as he considers the question. “You could say that,” he says. “In a way.”

  “In a way?”

  “They’re not pets, if that’s what you mean,” Kai says. “God no, you think I’d actively want a dozen of these terrors around … it’s a temporary thing. They were there and they needed help, so I took them in. Someone needed to.”

  Eli’s confusion must show, because Kai sighs, crossing his arms as he holds Eli’s gaze. Eli notices, suddenly, how dark the bags under Kai’s eyes are, how tired he looks.

  “Dragons,” Kai says, voice level, “aren’t cheap — not the ones people like to keep as pets, at least. City dragons, they’ve been around Beijing for centuries so they’ve had time to adapt, like foxes or sparrows. Imports, though, are delicate creatures, finicky as hell about salinity levels and so high-strung it makes you wonder why rich people like them so much. I think it’s something to do with some drama about a pop star who also had superpowers. It was out several years ago — anyway, it doesn’t matter. The main character had a talking dragon for a pet, and since the actress was popular then, it became a fad — everyone wanted a dragon too. But then, with the drought people started realizing what they’d bought. The more conscientious ones,” he says, shrugging, “they’ll take them to a river or a lake, somewhere out of town. The rest — the animal shelters are overfull as it is, and it’s not like there are many people who’d want an aquatic pet right now. So I do. When I can.”

  “Oh,” Eli says, fumbling for words. “That’s a very generous thing to do.”

  Kai smiles thinly. Leans forward, picks up the teapot and refills his cup before glancing up at Eli with a look that was polite. Neutral.


  “More tea?”

  “All right,” Eli says. Now that he looks closer, he can see the wads of cotton, the difficulty with which some of these dragons move through their tanks. There are scars — thick, old lines crisscrossing delicate wing tissue and armored scales. Some of the scars — some of the worst ones — are newer, red and shiny around the edges. And then those lines of stitches, the red bleeding through some of those bandages …

  When Eli was eleven or twelve and walking home from soccer practice, he’d stumbled on a box of kittens, each so small he could hold them in one hand. His mother’s allergies meant that they couldn’t keep them, and as they drove to the nearest no-kill shelter, Eli remembers staring at the box and its tiny contents. The kittens must have been barely a week old; only a few of them had opened their eyes, and even as his grandmother directed him on how to gently rub their stomachs to keep the kittens warm, Eli had been half-certain they would die before they reached the shelter. Even after the vet tech on duty had proclaimed the kittens underweight but otherwise well and thanked Eli’s mother for coming in so quickly, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it — about how small the kittens were, and how he’d only found them because he’d gone to recycle his water bottle and heard meowing from inside the dumpster. Someone must have put those kittens into that box and that dumpster, seen these small helpless things and decided that it was simply too much time and effort to, what? Let their pet cat raise her own kittens? Put up ‘for sale’ ads or simply drive to the nearest animal shelter?

  He hadn’t understood it then. Standing in Kai’s apartment, staring at Kai’s dragons and the record of deliberate cruelty written across their skin, he doesn’t understand it now.

  Kai finishes pouring and places a steaming cup of tea in front of him. Kai’s hands, when they reach for his own tea, are dry and faintly red, the scrubbed rawness that comes from too much work and not enough care. Sitting with his hands wrapped around a chipped teacup, Kai is all sharp lines and shadows, dark circles under his eyes and healing scratches on one arm. Like looking at a charcoal sketch, there but ready to smudge into blackness at an uncareful touch.