Century #4: Dragon of Seas

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  The bow screeches against the strings, producing a shrill note. Heremit Devil backs up, irritated. “What are you doing?”

  The violin produces a second and a third note, which reverberate against the infrangible walls like a wave of razor blades. Some of the otherwise indestructible windowpanes crack imperceptibly. Then the cracks grow longer and the glass finally shatters in a cascade of shards.

  “It’s time to let in a little air,” Jacob whispers as the rain, insects and wind burst into the hermit devil’s former office.

  Gunshots. That’s what Elettra and Mistral hear whistling over their heads.

  “Get down!” Elettra shouts, diving to the floor.

  Mistral stops singing, and the moment she does, the insects fly off every which way, slipping into every office, opening, room.

  People are shouting. More gunshots. The two girls are belly-down on the ground inside Heremit Devil’s building, in what seems to be a massive restaurant.

  Up to this point, they’ve encountered few obstacles: Elettra short-circuited all the doors and detectors they came across while Mistral caused panic and confusion with her swarms of grasshoppers, mosquitoes, flies and dragonflies.

  They did everything they could to try to get down to the underground level, but they didn’t find a single staircase, so they climbed one instead and looked around. And now the security guards, after their initial disorientation, have sprung into action.

  “This way!” Elettra shouts, crawling between the tables.

  “Where are we going?”

  Mosquitoes, flies, dragonflies are everywhere. Their buzzing fills the air.

  “To the elevators!”

  They run, hunched over, as other gunshots shatter the nearby aquariums.

  “Summon the insects!” Elettra shouts when they reach a long hallway that provides no cover.

  Mistral starts singing again and, as if enchanted, a buzzing black mantle forms around her and swarms into the hallway.

  The two friends dive into the first available elevator. The only underground level is one with a parking lot. Elettra presses the button. The elevator plunges down.

  Underground parking lot. Cement. Cars with tinted windows.

  Is this where Harvey called her from?

  Elettra looks around, frantic.

  “Get out!” she shouts to Mistral. Then she rests her hands on the control panel, concentrates a second and lets her anger explode.

  The gold elevator lurches to a halt halfway between the fifty-third and fifty-fourth floors. Nik Knife presses the button several times, but nothing happens. The lights go out, replaced by the glow of the emergency lights.

  “You’d better let me go,” Harvey says, next to him.

  With two swift moves, Nik Knife flings open a hatch in the ceiling, pulls himself up out of the car and stands on its roof. He’s less than a meter away from the doors to the fifty-fourth floor. He reaches them with a leap, takes out a long knife and wedges it into the crack between the doors.

  Once they’re open wide enough to get through, he jumps out and shouts to Harvey to follow him.

  “Forget it!” the boy replies from inside the elevator.

  A hiss.

  Harvey feels a burning sensation in his arm and a moment later he sees that a knife has pinned the shoulder of his sweater to the elevator wall.

  “Next time I aim at your arm!” Nik Knife shouts, above him.

  ERMETE AND SHENG ARE SITTING AT A GNARLED WOODEN TABLE with old, handwritten registers stacked on it. Sheng unwinds the journal’s strings and opens the little book, in which the ancient Jesuit painted illustrations.

  “The dates might fit,” Ermete murmurs, trembling with curiosity. “The seventeen hundreds is when they lost track of the Pact in Asia.”

  “Yeah,” Sheng says, nodding, “but there’s no telling whether it’ll explain the clues we have: a box of coins and a red lacquer tile with four knives on it.”

  The pages are numbered with a square red stamp, and the first ones contain no writing—just large watercolor illustrations and sketches in black ink: a bird with red plumage, two horses, a man brandishing a long bamboo spear.

  Then, on page four, the first annotations begin, but Sheng discovers he can’t read them. “I think they’re in Italian.”

  The engineer examines the Jesuit’s small, cramped handwriting.

  “It’s more Latin than Italian … but that’s fine, too. ‘Drawings and notes by Giuseppe Castiglione during his journey from Zhaoquing to Xujiahui, in the former home of Xu Guangqi, imperial court official and Christian brother.’ ” Ermete turns the page. There’s a sketch of a large tree with mighty branches. “Sheng, what are we looking for in this journal, anyway?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  On page six, Giuseppe makes a note of the stops along his journey and adds small illustrations that look more like reminders or sketches for other drawings than anything else. Ermete scans down the text, reading a word here and a word there.

  “We risk spending all day on this,” he says a quarter of an hour later.

  Sheng stares at the journal’s brightly colored pictures and meticulous penmanship. “Let me see.…” He starts to flip through the pages.

  Then, suddenly, he stops. He’s found a miniature copy of the painting he saw at the teahouse: the four kids riding a dragon and the star sparkling over a cobalt-blue sea.

  “What does it say here?” he asks Ermete.

  “ ‘The four Sages ride the Sea Dragon,’ ” the engineer reads.

  On the next page is the sketch of a fleet of ships sailing toward the same sea.

  “And here?” Sheng asks, pointing at a paragraph.

  “ ‘Zheng He’s fleet leaves the ports of China to follow the Sages of the Dragon,’ ” Ermete translates. “What’s written next isn’t clear. He crossed out a line. It looks like, ‘It will be destroyed, because one cannot follow the Sea Dragon … without a heart.’ ”

  Ermete nervously turns the page. The next drawing depicts a comet shining above a tiny isle. The comet’s tail is blue, like the dragon in the first illustration. Beside the star is the constellation Ursa Major. In front of the island, a ship with a dragon on its prow. “ ‘The ship and the Sea Dragon reach Penglang Island in the Bohai Sea, the dwelling of the eight immortal Sages.’ ”

  Then, his voice brimming with emotion, he goes on. “ ‘Legend has it that the island rises up out of the water only once every hundred years.…’ ”

  “Yes!” Sheng exclaims. “What about here?” he asks, pointing at a line written in smaller handwriting.

  “ ‘Only the Sea Dragon knows its location … and only the four Sages have the gifts needed to awaken the dragon.’ ”

  “Looks like we found it.”

  Ermete turns the page and finds a drawing of two men at the intersection of two rivers. One man is pointing at the water. The second is hunched over a wooden instrument.

  “Look at what he’s doing,” Sheng whispers, breathless.

  “He’s casting a top … on the map!” the engineer exclaims. Then he reads aloud, “ ‘The name China is said to derive from the Persian chini, with which the ancient Chaldeans would indicate these religions.’ ”

  “The Chaldeans came here?”

  “Seems so,” Ermete says.

  The next page is blank. Ermete flips back through the journal, returning to the page with the four kids riding the dragon. The page before it contains a rough sketch and an annotation. “ ‘The legend of the island of the Penglang Sages as it was told to me by Hsu Kwang-ch’i, our friend and pupil, to whom it was told by the Sage Chi-Han-Ho, who in turn learned it from his master.’ ”

  “Master … master … master …,” Sheng murmurs. “Here’s the trail of information that was lost.”

  “And now that we know about it?” Ermete asks.

  “Seems clear to me: we need to find the Sea Dragon,” Sheng replies. “Only the four Sages can reawaken it.”

  “With the gifts �
��”

  “Yeah. Mirror, star, veil and—”

  “Once it’s reawakened, the dragon will show us how to get to Penglang,” Ermete continues, “an island that surfaces only once every hundred years. Sounds easy.” He rolls his eyes.

  “A dragon …,” Sheng whispers.

  “Which may well be right over our heads,” a voice says, surprising them.

  Ermete and Sheng spin around. It was Father Corrado who spoke. “Forgive me for listening in on a part of your conversation. But as you can imagine, I’m familiar with the legend of that island. And I believe it’s an astronomical legend. The dragon he speaks of, you see, is near Ursa Major. Therefore, it could be the constellation Draco, which in ancient times was the constellation in which the northern polestar was located. And which pointed north.”

  Ermete clasps his hands behind his head, puzzled.

  Father Corrado continues. “Some thousands of years ago, the North Star wasn’t our Polaris, which is found in Ursa Minor’s tail, but the star Thuban in the constellation of Draco. The Dragon—or the Serpent, as we call it here in the East—is a very long constellation that contains all twelve signs of the zodiac in its tail. The Dragon is tied in with all the zodiacal signs. To us Catholics, it’s the inescapable temptation of evil. But to those who study the heavens, it has a different significance: by studying how it moves in the sky, they can predict solar and lunar eclipses, which always occur in either its head or its tail. That’s why there’s a popular saying among astronomers that goes, ‘The dragon causes eclipses.’ And also, ‘The dragon ate the sun.’ A moment ago, you were speaking of the Chaldeans.…”

  “Yeah,” Sheng says, “the journal says they came all the way to Shanghai in ancient times.”

  “That’s likely. Their Magi visited a good deal of the known world. In any case, the Chaldeans understood the stars and eclipses better than anyone else. Thanks to them, the great Greek scholar Thales of Miletus predicted the May 585 BC eclipse, which took place right on schedule.”

  Father Corrado stares at the library’s two guests, who are surprised by his knowledge of astronomy. “There’s one last thing I can tell you: the word dragon derives from the Greek word derkesthai, which means ‘to see.’ And one must be very brave to ride a dragon. And to see.”

  Father Corrado is staring straight at Sheng, whose jaw drops in astonishment.

  Be brave enough to see things others can’t see, Sheng thinks. Be brave enough to reawaken the dragon.

  And to follow it to the island of the immortal Sages.

  His heart is racing. He finally understands what he needs to do. Turning to Ermete, he says, “I know where it is.”

  As soon as Sheng and Ermete leave, Father Corrado puts away the old journal, deep in thought. He’s never shown it to anyone before. And no one has ever shown up asking to see it. The journal hasn’t left that bookcase for at least two hundred years.

  When everything is back in its place, Father Corrado walks over to the metro and squeezes into a packed train heading for Huangpi Nan Lu. Once he arrives, he heads toward the Old City. Twenty minutes later, he shakes the rain off his umbrella on the wooden terrace of the Yuyuan Garden teahouse. He looks around, curious, searching for the old waiter and the painting by Giuseppe Castiglione that the boy claims to have seen.

  Naturally, neither of them is there. Father Corrado nods, as if this was confirmation of what he already assumed. “Hope has eyes of gold …,” he murmurs.

  “What’s that?” a young waiter asks.

  “It takes eyes of gold to see others’ dreams clearly. And yet, they’re right here before everyone’s eyes.”

  “DASVIDANIYA! DASVIDANIYA!” THE PEOPLE IN THE TRAIN CHEER WHEN it slows down, approaching a tiny, secluded station in the middle of the Siberian taiga.

  Linda Melodia shakes everyone’s hand and looks around, satisfied. In a matter of hours she transformed the filthy-dirty Soviet train car into a sparkling little jewel. All the clothes are neatly folded in the luggage racks, the shoes lined up in the back, clean and polished. The floor was wiped down with a rag doused in alcohol, the trash collected in a bag in the bathroom. Quite a feat, which all cleverly began when she properly folded the clothes of the woman sitting next to her and little by little turned into an activity for the entire train car. At first Linda had acted alone, putting away an overcoat here and a sweater there. Then the other women followed her lead, laughing at first, but gradually more convinced and determined as the task of tidying the car proceeded. After one hour, Linda was giving orders to a team of fifteen sprightly Russian women, who magically understood her every command. And by the end of the second hour, even the most skeptical of the travelers, forced to give up their smelly cigars, had to admit that traveling in such clean surroundings was like traveling in first class.

  “Oh, no, thank you, I couldn’t!” Linda is saying to one of the chess players, who insists she accept his half-full bottle of vodka.

  She has also firmly declined two marriage proposals.

  When the train whistles and comes to a halt, Linda Melodia picks up her travel bag and, waving goodbye triumphantly, steps onto the platform. Farther down, a porter has already unloaded her large suitcase, but the pavement is so uneven that its wheels won’t turn.

  “Oh, heavens!” the woman exclaims, looking around.

  The station, whose name she no longer remembers, is dirty, full of people coming and going … and horse-drawn carts. She hasn’t seen horse-drawn carts and wagons for years.

  “Your shoes!” she cries, noticing a man boarding her train car, his soles dripping with mud. The man stares at her, not understanding, and Linda shrugs. She hopes her apprentices will keep him from setting foot inside in such a state.

  Linda sighs and grabs her suitcase. She hands some coins to the porter, who stayed to keep an eye on it, and begins to drag it out of the station. The plastic wheels become two little plows in the dirt path beside the sidewalk, making her sweat proverbial buckets.

  By the time she’s reached the deserted area on the other side of the station, Linda is panting. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the slip of paper with her travel plans. She’s already crossed off the first ten lines, leaving only the last one: HIRE A CAR AND DRIVER FOR TUNGUSKA.

  “Very well,” the woman decides, still determined to solve every problem as soon as possible.

  She looks around.

  Apart from the station, there isn’t even a house. Just a flat, desolate clearing of low grass and shrubs with horses grazing on it. As she’s debating which direction to go in, a black car comes bouncing along toward her.

  “Miss Melodia?” a man asks, getting out of the backseat. A fine example of an older gentleman, refined and elegant.

  “Yes,” Linda replies. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Vladimir. I am a friend of your sister.”

  “I believe you’re mistaken. As I recently discovered, I don’t have any sisters.”

  The man smiles.

  “Forgive me, but I do believe you’re the one who’s mistaken. From what I can gather, you have at least one. In any event, I might have been a friend of the sister whom you’ve lost.”

  Linda frowns. “You speak in quite an eloquent manner, sir.”

  “That’s because of my work. I deal in old things. And I speak in an old manner.”

  “Well, whatever the case,” Linda mumbles, “why are you here?”

  “Your sister—that is, the person you believed to be your sister—informed me that you were coming and I thought it would be nice if someone came to the station to welcome you.”

  “That’s very kind, of course, but—”

  “I would like to take you to see someone who can tell you the things you would like to know. The ones for which you came all the way here.”

  “But I need to go to—”

  “Tunguska. Yes, I know.”

  “Oh,” Linda says, taken aback. “How do you know that?”

  “Sometimes even peopl
e who deal in old things know the latest news. Would you care to get in, or would you rather stay out here in the cold?” Vladimir smiles at her.

  SHIJI PARK METRO STATION.

  Green line, number two.

  Century Park stop.

  Sheng comes out with Ermete following. They’ve bought two light blue plastic raincoats that make them look like strange, poorly packaged fish.

  “Would you try to be a little clearer?” Ermete asks Sheng for the umpteenth time.

  “I need to find that boy!” Sheng shouts.

  “What about the coins? The lacquer tile?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, “but those clues aren’t as important as the boy is. I can feel it!”

  Ermete doesn’t reply. True, it isn’t very clear how they can find a dragon that might be a constellation by using a cookie tin, some old coins and a lacquer tile. Or even the Veil of Isis and Mistral’s notebooks, which they’ve been carrying around in the backpack all day long. “But even if we find it,” he says, “what then?”

  “If we find what?”

  “The dragon.”

  “We trade both it and the Veil of Isis for Mistral, Elettra and Harvey,” Sheng says. “That way, he’ll have all four objects and we’ll be safe and sound. Then we can forget about this whole thing once and for all. Nobody’s forcing us to see it through to the end, right? Our masters didn’t, and nothing happened.”

  “Except a meteorite in Siberia and an earthquake in Messina,” Ermete reminds him.

  Sheng bites his lip and looks up. A helicopter is still circling the black skyscraper on the other side of the park.

  “How are you planning to let Heremit Devil know you want to make a trade, anyway?” Ermete asks.

  “We go back to the Grand Hyatt, find the guy with the bull’s-eye tattooed on his head and make our offer.”

  They walk into the park. To the left, a big lake. To the right, a roller-skating rink, benches. Trees. And other, smaller lakes.

  “You must be kidding,” Ermete says after a while.

  “Kidding about what?”

  “It’s not a good idea, handing over the objects now that we’ve figured out what they’re for.”