by Pepe O'Neill
The donkey lowered his head and hung out his tongue making the point to Celeste that though he was a creature born to labour, even he had his limitations.
Ignoring any further comments Celeste might choose to make, Chamly walked ahead along the sleepers. Just as the heat was beginning to melt the soles of his shoes, he saw the first water tank. Crying with relief, he returned for the flagging donkey and led him under its corrugated iron roof and into its relative cool.
Celeste woke them up as the sun was once again setting and the heat of the desert air was evaporating to be replaced by an icy cold.
All night they travelled along the railway track. Their supply of food soon ran out. By the time they reached a second water tank, Chamly and the donkey were suffering severely from hunger, cold and exhaustion. They huddled together and slept.
If it hadn’t been for the noise of its wheels as it screeched to a halt beside them, Chamly would have thought the train a mirage. He prodded the sleeping donkey beside him.
A large burly man, black from shovelling coal into the engine, got down from the train with a large bucket in his hand. He walked down the embankment towards them.
‘Hello,’ the man called out. ‘What are you doing on your own out here?’
‘I’m going east.’ Chamly replied.
‘Where in the east?’ the man asked, bending over the tank to fill the bucket with water.
‘I’m on my way to the Cave of the Ancient Dragon.’ Chamly blushed. It sounded so stupid when you said it out loud. The train driver laughed. ‘I’ve never heard of it. Is it far?’
‘I believe so.’
The driver scratched his head. The boy sounded a bit loopy, but he looked harmless enough and as he was going east himself he could easily help him. ‘I can give you a lift to the outskirts of Hami. That’s east of here. I’ll put you in the empty carriage at the back and let you out at the last tank before the city. I wouldn’t like my boss to see I’m carrying unpaid cargo.’
The train driver filled his bucket and carried it up to the train. Putting it down, he led Chamly and the donkey towards the last carriage.
Celeste circled above, agitated at this turn of events. Her heart was thumping wildly as the driver pulled down a ramp and ushered Chamly and the donkey up onto the train.
‘I’ll see you later,’ the driver said, pushing the ramp up and bolting them in.
Inside, Chamly heard the crunch of the driver’s feet on the embankment as he returned to the front of the train. He went to the window and looked out. As the train jolted forward, a ball of white sped directly towards him narrowly missing him as he threw himself sideways.
‘Out the way! I’m coming in!’ Celeste shrieked. Landing clumsily, she slid across the floor on her bottom. ‘Ooouch! What’s going on?’
Chamly got up and dusted himself down. After reassuring the owl that the driver was not going to harm them he returned to the window where he spent the day watching the desert landscape change from red sandpaper to golden pillows of sand.
The stars were out by the time they reached the outskirts of Hami. Celeste stayed in the carriage until the train had come to a final halt and she heard the driver making his way down the track.
The driver pulled back the bolts of the carriage door and helped Chamly to get the donkey down the ramp. As he helped Chamly up on to the donkeys’ back, he passed him a large bag of food and a gourd of water. ‘You look as if you could do with something to eat. My wife thinks I starve when I’m working. I’m also going to give you my spare water bottle. I can’t believe you’re not carrying one out here. You might want to take this rope too. It might be useful.’
Chamly thanked him for his generosity and waved as the train whistled its way out of view.
Celeste flew down and hovered in front of Chamly. ‘Well, I’m prepared to admit that that saved a lot of time. I’ve seen a path skirting the city over there. Can you see it?’
Chamly looked and saw a gap snaking between the sand dunes. He nodded.
‘Follow it,’ Celeste ordered. ‘I’ll see you later. I’m starving and need to find some meat, however small. You’re okay I see. I was getting worried there for a moment.’
Chapter 13
THE SHE DEMON SMELLS CHAMLY
High up in the Ta’anchi Mountains, a temporary bridge had been built across the crevasse created by the earthquake. Crossing the bridge was an old cart driven by an even older bad tempered man, who was viciously whipping his donkeys’ rump in an effort to get him moving faster. He was greeted on the other side of the bridge by a pretty young woman who called out to him in a sweet singsong voice, ‘Kind sir, may I have a lift on your cart? I am going to visit my mother who is unwell.’
‘By all means,’ the man replied leering down at the beautiful woman before him. His wife was fat and ugly and had nagged him for days about finding that treacherous old donkey until he just had to get away. He smiled, tapping the seat beside him. Stretching out his hand, he helped her up. ‘It’s only by chance that I am passing by,’ he said. ‘One of my donkey’s ran away and I am out looking for him. My neighbour saw him going this way. Now tell me, how did a beautiful woman like you get stranded up here?’
‘So that was the smell! Donkey stink,’ the she demon thought.
It had taken hours to climb and slither up the deep sheer sides of the crevasse. She had not planned to go down, but had come across a whiff in the air at the edge of the road that was somehow familiar, familiar and threatening. She had failed to find the smell amongst the debris of the burnt out bus and, choking from the ash, had climbed back up to the road. It was then that she heard the cart. Quickly shedding her snakeskin body, she just had time to kick it over the edge of the crevasse before the cart came into view.
The man was waiting for her answer and she replied in her singsong voice. ‘Didn’t you see my home on the way up?’
‘I must have missed it. Are you married?’ the man asked.
Over the centuries, the she demon had become well used to flirting and this man was no different to the rest. She kept her eyelashes down and replied with a lie. ‘I am betrothed.’
‘But not married? So I still have a chance,’ the man said with a grin.
When they reached a lake, the farmer asked the woman if she would like to refresh herself. The she demon jumped down and there it was again. That same disturbing smell only now she knew what, or more importantly who, it was. It had to be the Chosen One. She knelt down and sniffed the ground.
Seeing the young woman on the ground with her bottom in the air, the farmer grinned and climbed down from the cart.
‘What are you doing, my pretty maid?’ he asked, kneeling down beside her.
At that moment, the she demon smelt……..peach!
‘EEEEEeeeeeeeeech!’ she shrieked in consternation. She turned to see the farmers face close to hers. ‘Yuuuuuuuuuck!’ she screeched and pushed him away.
The man landed flat on his back, crying out in terror as he watched the woman’s beautiful face dissolve to be replaced by a scaly, bald head and vast open jaws. A forked tongue flicked out between enormous fangs and wrapped itself around him. His screams were cut short when the she demon pulled him into her salivating mouth.
Belching from the unpleasant taste of the man, the she demon sniffed the ground again. She could detect four distinct smells. The first three were easy, the Chosen One, the peach and the donkey, but the fourth had her flummoxed. Unfortunately, none of the smells gave her a trail to follow. All day, she searched around the lake until eventually she picked up the donkeys’ scent emerging from a stream. She chuckled at her success and followed the steep path up into the mountains.
As she entered the mountain pass, Chamly and the donkey were still circumnavigating the outskirts of Hami. They had only been walking for a few hours when a sand storm blew up and the lights of the city disappeared. Blinded by the sand, Chamly took a wrong turn through the dunes and began to head south again instead of east. He and the don
key walked on oblivious to their mistake until dehydrated and exhausted, he came to an oasis ringed by apricot trees. In the middle stood a farmhouse and in the doorway stood a woman wiping her hands on an apron. A look of concern crossed her face as they came to a stop in front of her. ‘What are you doing all the way out here on your own?’ she asked.
‘I wonder how many times I’m going to be asked that on this trip,’ Chamly thought to himself as he slid rather than dismounted from the donkeys’ back. ‘I’m on my way to the Cave of the Ancient Dragon.’ He said aloud.
‘And where might I ask is the Cave of the Ancient Dragon?’ the woman asked curiously.
‘I’m not quite sure,’ he yawned, ‘but I was told to head east. If you don’t mind, I’d like to rest under the shade of your trees and fill my water bottle.’
‘East? You’re going south, not east. Come inside. You’re just in time for some fresh dumplings.’
Chamly was sickened to learn that he’d misjudged the direction of the path and was heading south again. After tying the weary donkey to a tree beside a trough surrounded by thick juicy weeds, he followed the woman inside. After demolishing the dumplings he was offered, Chamly did as the woman suggested and went to lie down in the back room. He slept until Celeste woke him by tapping her beak impatiently against the window. Reluctantly getting up, he returned to the kitchen and found the woman putting food into a large saddlebag.
She looked up at him. ‘I thought you might be going soon, so I’ve packed some food into this old bag for you. At the moment the routes east are impassable until you reach Dunhuang. If you keep to the trail, you won’t get lost.’ She went to a locker and took out a gourd made of goatskin. I noticed you only had one gourd for water. That won’t be enough to last you until you reach the city. With two, you won’t die of thirst.’
Thanking her for her generosity and kindness, he picked up the saddlebag and went outside. A few minutes later, he and a refreshed donkey left the oasis.
Chapter 14
THE SHE DEMON HYPNOTISES THE
TRAIN DRIVER
As Chamly was leaving the oasis, the she demon was emerging from the mountain pass. Sitting back on her tail, she stretched herself upwards, her body becoming as tall as a four-storey building and perused the red plain below her. The sheer weight of her enlarged body meant that she could not stay upright for long and it was with a thud and a sense of relief that she returned to earth despite having failed to spot the human. With her nose to the ground, she slithered and rolled down the mountain path until she came to the cave where Chamly and the donkey had slept.
Inside, the scurried smell of the Chosen One was all pervading and was enough to make any demon ill. Holding her breath, she slithered back to the fresh air. Her nose once again to the ground, she followed the donkey’s trail across the desert to the railway track where she detected once more, that elusive fourth scent. It bothered her, especially as it disappeared between each water tank that she passed.
Eventually she came across a tank where all the smells vanished. Furious, she slithered and sniffed around for hours trying to pick up the trail again. The sun threatened to fry her to a crisp and she was forced to shrink to the size of an ordinary snake and retreat into the tank of water. As she was cooling down, a train rumbled and clanked to a stop beside her. The sound of footsteps and the rattle of a bucket made her slide quietly out of the water and hide behind the tank. Quickly the she demon shed her skin, becoming again a beautiful young woman.
She startled the train driver as she peeked from behind the tank, eyelashes fluttering, ‘Kind sir! I wonder if you could help me?’
The train driver dropped the bucket. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked flustered.
The she demon’s eyelashes swept downwards and sighing, she replied, ‘My donkey has been stolen by a mischievous child, and I have been out in this heat all day looking for them.’
‘A few days ago, I gave a lift to a boy and a donkey from this very tank and took them to the outskirts of Hami. He didn’t seem like a thief to me.’
‘Where did they go when you dropped them off?’ the she demon demanded, momentarily forgetting her new role as a sweet and gentle woman.
The driver scratched his head. ‘The boy said something about heading east to the Cave of the Ancient Dragon.’
The she demon had heard enough.
‘Will you give me a lift to where you dropped them off?’ she asked politely.
‘I’m afraid I have to go to Ürümqi first with this cargo. If you’re here at two o’clock tomorrow, I’ll pick you up on my return journey.’
The she demon was used to getting her own way and if she wanted to go to Hami now, then that was exactly where this man was going to take her. She lifted her eyelashes and stared straight into his eyes.
Mesmerized by the glinting yellow eyes in front of him the train driver fell into a deep hypnotic trance. The she demon commanded him to get back onto the train and drive it to Hami.
The hypnotised train driver walked back towards the engine like a zombie, with the she demon close on his heels. He was oblivious of his surroundings as he set about letting off the brake and reversing the train back towards Hami. In his hypnotic state, he failed to notice that he’d never got round to putting any water into the engine. As a result, it soon began to overheat and before long the train ground to a shuddering halt.
The intensity of the heat from the engine forced the she demon to fling herself from the train, whilst the driver fainted, banging his head on a piece of metal. Falling to the floor, he lay stunned until the heat had penetrated his clothing and was beginning to roast his skin. Coughing from the smoke and flames pouring out of the engine, he rolled to the doorway and tumbled out of the carriage on to the embankment.
Recovering his breath, he struggled to his feet. He had no idea why his engine had caught fire. It was vital that he unlocked the other carriages from the burning engine before the whole train went up in flames. Using his jacket as gloves, he managed to undo the couplings and watched with relief as the carriages rolled gently away from the flames down a slight incline.
Exhausted, the train driver sat down and tried to remember what had happened. He had been a train driver for over twenty years and nothing like this had ever happened to him before. How was he going to explain all this to his boss?
Then he remembered that a passenger train was following him to Ürümqi. It would be coming along the track any minute. He struggled to his feet and started running down the track towards Hami, knowing that if he did not warn someone about his crippled train, a lot of people could be killed.
The she demon had changed back into a small snake the moment she had flung herself from the carriage. She saw the driver running down the track and gradually growing in size, she caught up with him. He turned just as her jaws opened wide and grabbed him around the middle, slicing him in two.
A whistle from a train sent her hiding behind a sand dune. She watched with glee as it sped past and collided with the carriages at the bottom of the incline. The impact sent the passenger train somersaulting off the track, flinging and crushing many passengers to death.
The she demon shrieked with laughter at the death and chaos she had unleashed.
She continued towards Hami and eventually picked up the scent of her prey at a tank on the outskirt of the city. The trail led her down a sandy path to a farmhouse. Quickly shedding her skin, she emerged as an old woman hunched over a walking stick and knocked on the door.
On opening the door, the woman of the house was surprised to see an old and arthritic woman on her doorstep. ‘I didn’t hear you coming? Do come in and have some tea and dumplings. You must be very tired.’
The two women sat at the table and talked like old friends about this and that, until the conversation changed to the other visitor the woman had had that week.
The she demon listened carefully to all that the woman had to say about the boy before losing her patience. The kindly woman’s
screams were quickly swallowed up, along with the rest of her body by the large grey snake that had appeared at her side.
Moments later, the she demon was slithering down the sandy path towards Dunhuang with the scent of her prey fresh in her nostrils. She had only gone a little way, when fierce indigestion took hold of her body. The dumplings had not suited her at all. Feeling sick, she decided to rest for a while knowing just how to slow the boy down while she did so. Opening her mouth wide, she let out an almighty burp! The gas released had the strength of a Force nine gale, stirring, and whipping the grains of sand up off the dunes and causing the most ferocious sandstorm the desert had ever seen.
‘Better out than in,’ she thought with relief and settled down for a quick doze.
Chapter 15
CHAMLY GETS BURIED
Chamly and the donkey were asleep beneath a sage bush, the shawl providing some protection against the cold, when grains of sand lashed against the material. Chamly awoke with a start. Outside, he could hear the sand dunes moaning as a fierce wind whistled around them and pushed the sand grains forward.
It seemed an eternity before the storm died down and Chamly could push back the sand laden shawl. The sky was heavy with a galaxy of stars and standing up, he looked about. In the seemingly endless silence, the soft moon revealed a vast sea of sandy waves looping and stretching away into the distance. He noticed that the path had completely disappeared. Half angry and half afraid, he looked up hoping to see Celeste flying towards them. Needing to break the silence, he gave voice to his thoughts. ‘This is just great! I’m lost and my guide has decided to take a holiday.’
With no sign of her, Chamly looked at the position of the tree’s brittle branches and thought he could remember how they’d approached. He led the donkey in the opposite direction in the hope of finding the path again.