The Dragon Warrior

by Katie Zhao

  My stomach sank. “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  Before I could stop him, Ren grabbed two incense sticks and a Choco Pie. He knelt down in front of the god. I joined him. Ren darted his eyes toward me, the corners of his lips lifting into a small smile.

  As we prayed, Caihe smiled and hummed a tune under his breath, one of Cindy You’s songs.

  When we finished, Caihe beamed and handed us our tickets. “Wonderful. Enjoy the show.”

  As we floated back to the others, Ren cast one more puzzled look back at Cindy You’s beatific smile, as though still trying to place where he’d seen her.

  “You know we can’t go to Cindy You’s concert,” I said softly.

  “Yeah.” His smile faltered, but then he brightened. “But maybe if the banquet ends early, we could catch the end of her concert together.”

  My heart leapt. I blinked, feeling flustered but not knowing why.

  Ren blushed and stuffed the tickets into his pocket. “Hey, we’re way behind the others,” he said, grabbing hold of my hand and pulling me toward the golden chariot that was disappearing in the crowd.

  When our cloud caught up with the others, Moli and Alex both stared at Ren’s and my intertwined hands. Moli’s lips twitched into a knowing smile, and I dropped Ren’s hand like it had burned me. I couldn’t look in his direction.

  “All right, kids. Welcome to the palace of the eight immortals,” Nezha said. The cloud disappeared beneath our feet as we descended onto solid ground. “Don’t feed the animals. They get stomachaches after eating too many warriors.”

  Nezha took us to the edge of a tall bridge that stood above a river with the clearest water I’d ever seen. The surface sparkled under the light. Moving with the crowd of other deities, we crossed over to the palace.

  There was a large courtyard in front of the doors. As we walked through it, I spotted ordinary creatures like blue jays, along with familiar plants such as lotuses. Butterflies and dogs chased each other in the garden. A pair of deer roamed, picking at the vivid green grass beneath their hooves.

  I also saw strange creatures that could have leapt straight out of the pages of Demons and Deities through the Dynasties: Qí lín, a creature with the body of a horse covered in scales and enveloped in fire, with a single horn protruding out of its dragon head. A few white tigers that had stretched out lazily along a bed of rocks watched us curiously as the deities passed by, forming a line to get into the palace.

  I heard shouting ahead. A man guarding the palace gates kicked a deity out of the long line. Then another. And another. The disgruntled deities flew off, the exploding fireworks lighting their way out.

  “What’s going on?” Ren asked. “Why is everyone getting kicked out?”

  Nezha sighed. “There isn’t enough space in their palace, so the eight immortals invite only the most distinguished deities to their annual Lantern Festival banquet. Usually it’s the same old crowd. Me, of course. Then the Jade Emperor, his wife … you get the drift. But of course, every year a bunch of the minor deities try to sneak in.” Nezha paused. “Speaking of invitations—I almost forgot.”

  He reached down the back of his cháng shā and produced three golden envelopes sealed with the sticker of a dragon’s head, handing one each to Alex, me, and Yulong. My name was written in red lettering at the top. I pried open my envelope to reveal a simple white postcard.

  Dear [insert annoying warrior’s name here],

  Congratulations on all the demons you’ve slain in your journey. To celebrate your achievements, we, the eight immortals, would like to cordially invite you to the Lantern Festival banquet.

  Please present this invitation to the guard. If you fail to show proof of invitation to this banquet, you will be promptly eaten.

  Note: if you have died an unfortunate death, please do not feel obligated to attend this celebration.

  Regards,

  He Xiangu, Cao Guojiu, Li Tieguai, Lan Caihe, Lü Dongbin, Han Xiangzi, Zhang Guolao, and Zhongli Quan

  My head spun trying to keep track of all the names.

  Yulong leaned in and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ve lived for thousands of years, and I can never remember their names either.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Moli asked, folding her arms over her chest. “What about invitations for Ren and me?”

  “Ah.” Nezha gave them both an apologetic look. “The Jade Emperor only gave me two invitations for mortals: the Heaven Breaker and her plus-one.”

  “What?” Moli snapped. She looked on the verge of explosion. “Listen, I’ve traveled thousands of miles. I’m starving and thirsty, and so are my horses.” The horses drooped their heads as though in agreement. “It’s the last day of the Lunar New Year. My entire family is on the other side of the country. My horse turned into a stupid dragon.”

  “I was a dragon first,” said Yulong.

  “I dragged these two across the country just so they could eat some food,” Moli added.

  “Hey,” my brother protested.

  She whirled on Nezha. “The least you can do, Third Lotus Prince, is let me into the stinking ban—”

  “Moli.” To everyone’s surprise, Ren cut her off. “It’s okay. I know where we can get good food and good music.”

  Moli’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Cindy You’s concert.” Ren raised two tickets in his hand. He didn’t look at me. For some reason, that made my heart sink.

  Moli grabbed the tickets. “Free music and food? Score.” She paused. “But weren’t you supposed to speak to Ao Guang about your curse?”

  Ren swallowed, his eyes falling to his feet. “Maybe another time.”

  “There won’t be another time.”

  “We’ll ask for you, Ren,” I said. Between asking about Ba, Ye Ye, and Ren’s curse, it looked like I’d be interrogating the deities for a while. “We’ll drag the Dragon King back with us if we have to. You’ll get your cure.”

  Moli leapt back onto the chariot, Ren following close behind.

  “Come find us when you’re done,” Moli said. She lowered her voice and added, “And Faryn? Good luck. Jià!”

  The horses whinnied and parted a path between the crowd of disgruntled deities. I watched the tips of Ren’s white hair disappear, suddenly wishing I could’ve been in that chariot with them.

  CHAPTER

  22

  We’d reached the front of the line. The guard standing before us had the yellow body of a tiger and nine—I counted—nine red heads with humanlike faces. Talk about an identity crisis.

  “Evening,” Nezha told the creature. “Looks like you’ve been busy kicking deities out.”

  “Me always busy,” the creature grunted. It took our golden envelopes into its paws, sniffed them, and then ripped them to shreds. It waved its arms to open the gates.

  “Five hundred years, and that thing still hasn’t learned how to properly bathe,” Yulong muttered as we walked through.

  When I looked back, the beast’s five million pairs of eyes were staring right at us. They were empty and soulless. I shuddered.

  “Oh man,” Alex murmured.

  The inside of the palace was every bit as elaborate as the exterior suggested. Beyond the golden doors was a long, carpeted hall. Several tall, circular pillars held up a golden ceiling that seemed to stretch onward into the heavens.

  Eight empty golden thrones, four on each side, faced each other. A ninth throne—the most elaborate one—sat at the back of the hall.

  A large woman sat in the ninth throne, swathed in elaborate silk robes. Even at a distance, I could see the deep frown wrinkles that lined her stern face. Two beautiful young women with long, black hair stood on either side of the woman, holding giant fans made of green leaves.

  I recognized the woman on the throne as Xi Wangmu, the Jade Emperor’s wife, the Queen Mother of the West. I could barely believe I was seeing her in real life. She looked like a blown-up version of her statue back in the Jade Society. Wangmu niáng niang
wore a silver crown on her head, with beads of glittering jewels dangling down to her shoulders. Her red-and-gold robes hung down to her feet and past her arms with big, billowing sleeves. In her right hand she gripped a black staff that curved at the top.

  Alex and I fell to our knees. Yulong and Nezha bowed their heads to pay respects to the goddess.

  “Five minutes before the banquet begins. You cut it very close, warriors. Nezha. Yulong.”

  Xi Wangmu’s slightly husky voice sounded as old as the Earth itself, and struck me as strangely familiar.

  “Apologies, Wangmu niáng niang,” Nezha said. He was the perfect obedient subject, except for the fact that his lips thinned and he gripped his spear so tightly his knuckles turned white.

  The goddess pointed a finger at a servant. “Show them to their seats. My husband will be arriving any moment now.”

  The servant led us out of the throne room and into a huge courtyard filled with the sounds of laughter and fireworks that whistled up into the sky, exploding into color high above.

  “Faryn,” Alex gasped, pointing up. Hundreds of lanterns floated above our heads like bright balloons, filling the night sky with their light. I’d never seen so many in one place before. The gods had pulled out all the stops for the Lantern Festival.

  Beneath a towering peach tree, the deities sat around a long table covered in red-and-gold cloth. I recognized a few familiar faces, among them Erlang Shen and Guanyin. They gave us a curt nod before returning to their conversation. Most of the other gods were unfamiliar.

  “That’s one of the eight immortals, Zhang Guolao,” my brother said, pointing out a scholarly looking old dude carrying a tube-shaped bamboo drum with two iron rods. “That’s another one, He Xiangu—we met her earlier. And then there’s the sea goddess …”

  Female servants bustled about carrying plates of food above their heads. They wore long, billowy gowns, with red-and-gold layers on top of white inner dresses. Still other girls performed for us in a clearing, dancing and twirling their dresses in a colorful swish while a row of servants played the flute behind them. A couple of servants wore horse heads and were putting on a performance in honor of this year’s zodiac animal.

  Most of the seats were full already. There were four more empty chairs, two at the end of the table and two near the head.

  Suddenly, Nezha doubled over and leaned against the table for support. “I don’t feel so well.”

  “Pull yourself together, Nezha,” Yulong hissed. “This is the Lantern Festival banquet. You can’t miss it.”

  “Flying back and forth all day must’ve given me cramps.”

  “I have Tiger Balm,” Yulong offered, pulling a small jar of the nasty-smelling brown ointment out of his robes. “Stole it before I left San Francisco.” When Nezha gave him a look of disbelief, Yulong added defensively, “Hey, Tiger Balm can cure anything.”

  “Not a stomachache.” The boy god shook his head with a grimace. “I’m gonna head out. Tell the Jade Emperor not to wait up for me.”

  Nezha turned and, so fast I almost missed it, winked at me. He took off, flying up into the sky.

  Still trying to process what the boy god had meant by that wink, I looked over at Yulong, only to find that his attention had been diverted by a large man with the head of a dragon and longer, more magnificent whiskers than his son. He wore white robes that shimmered under the light from the lanterns. I guessed him to be the Dragon King of the West Sea, Ao Ji. Beside him sat three other dragon-men who wore robes of blue-green, black, and red.

  The Dragon Kings turned toward me and inclined their heads in unison.

  “Master of the dragons,” they murmured respectfully. After a moment of shock, I quickly returned the gesture.

  Since they were dragons, too, would I be able to communicate with them telepathically? I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated as hard as I could.

  “Can you stop making that face and be a normal person for once? You look like you’re constipated,” Alex hissed.

  I opened my eyes. The Dragon Kings were staring at me with strange expressions. Since they were gods and I was a mortal, I guess I didn’t have any power over them.

  “Fù wáng,” Yulong respectfully addressed his father, Ao Ji, getting onto one knee and holding his fisted hands in front of him. Though he bowed his head, it wasn’t hard to imagine that he was scowling at the ground before Ao Ji. “My sentence ended after I served the Heaven Breaker in her hour of need, as you said it would.”

  The Dragon King raised a hand. “You may rise.”

  Yulong obeyed.

  “That was an awfully long time you spent as a horse. You’ve repented, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Yulong. “You could have told me it would take five hundred years for the Heaven Breaker to arrive, though.”

  The Dragon King stared at his son, who ducked his head.

  Then Ao Ji threw his head back into a laugh. “My boy! How I’ve missed you and your jokes.”

  “That wasn’t a joke. Five hundred years of punishment just for destroying your stupid pearl is a little excess—Hrmph!”

  Ao Ji squeezed his son into a tight hug. “It’s good to have you back, ér zi.”

  Some of the deities wiped tears out of their eyes and sighed in approval, and Yulong blushed as his father released him from the hug. “Wh-why are you being so nice?”

  “It’s the Lunar New Year. How can any family fight during this special time?”

  Yulong just looked at Ao Ji, obviously dissatisfied with his answer.

  The older dragon sighed. He raised his hands. “Okay, and maybe it has something to do with the fact that all eight of your brothers skipped the banquet for some silly concert.”

  “Knew it’d be something like that,” Yulong muttered.

  “But that means it’s the perfect night for father-son bonding.” Ao Ji smiled at his son and cuffed him on the ear. Yulong gave in and smiled. The other three Dragon Kings clapped.

  “When should we bring up Ren’s curse to Ao Guang?” I asked Alex. I had a feeling it would burst these guys’ bubbles.

  The dragon wearing blue-green robes sneezed. Water spurted out of his nostrils, forcing Erlang Shen and Guanyin to duck under the table. The force of the water slammed an unsuspecting servant into the trunk of a massive peach tree.

  Alex swallowed. “Maybe later.”

  My brother and I settled into our seats at the end of the table. We were like those awkward kids who’d wandered into a friend of a friend’s birthday party and didn’t know anybody.

  The double doors at the entrance banged open, and a pair of men blasting trumpets marched into the hall.

  “The Jade Emperor has arrived,” a guard announced in a squeaky voice.

  The Jade Emperor liked to travel in style. I was sure the guy could’ve disembarked from his green-and-gold palanquin and walked into the banquet hall, but instead he rolled into the courtyard with eight different men to announce his presence: four trumpeters surrounding him in the front and back, and four other men to carry the palanquin forward.

  I guessed when you were the supreme ruler of Heaven, Earth, and Diyu, you were allowed to be as extra as you wanted to be.

  Once he deigned to step out of his palanquin, I finally got a close look at the Jade Emperor. It was like looking into the sun. Or the face of a man who thought he was the sun.

  The Jade Emperor had long, black hair and an equally long, black beard. He dressed in elaborate gold-and-green robes that matched his palanquin. How could he even stand up with those heavy robes weighing down his frame?

  On his head he wore the mother of all hats, a rectangular golden crown. To carry that thing, the Jade Emperor must’ve had serious neck muscles.

  Behind him, Xi Wangmu stepped out of the palanquin.

  “Did Wangmu niáng niang get on a palanquin just to move to the backyard?” Alex whispered to me. “So much respect right now.”

  Everyone bowed their heads as the Jade Emperor and his wife slowly made
their way toward the thrones at the head of the table. Once they’d taken their seats, the Jade Emperor smiled.

  “My family,” he said. He sounded like a normal guy. He wouldn’t even make a good radio talk show host. “It’s been too long since we’ve gathered for such a grand feast, although I notice we’re missing some … attendees.”

  The Jade Emperor looked at Nezha’s empty seat. An uncomfortable silence followed.

  “Nevertheless, I wish you all a happy Year of the Horse. May you give yourselves good fortune.” The gods laughed good-naturedly. “I have important news—and a fancy new toy—to share. Eventually. First, let’s eat!”

  We waited for the Jade Emperor and Xi Wangmu, who moved like five-thousand-year-old turtles, to get the first pick of the feast. Then I dove into the food, my first real banquet of the Lunar New Year.

  There were so many dishes I didn’t know what to eat first. Plates of steamed fish, dumplings, long noodles, oranges, and peaches rotated down the table as though by an invisible assembly line.

  “Try these,” Guanyin whispered, winking as she passed Alex and me two bowls. They were filled with clear soup and contained tāng yuán, balls of glutinous rice flour filled with red bean paste. “You have to eat them during the Lantern Festival. It’s tradition.”

  The tāng yuán melted in my mouth. The food of the heavens tasted—well, heavenly. Each piece of fruit was flawlessly ripe, each bāo zi steamed to mouthwatering perfection. There were no words in any human language that could describe the explosion of flavors that entered my mouth with each bite.

  The best part was the bottomless rice bowls and stone glasses. They wouldn’t empty, no matter how much people ate or drank from them.

  From now on, demons could slay themselves. I was never leaving this island.

  After the plates had been cleared, the Jade Emperor held up his hand for attention. “It seems like it was just yesterday that we last gathered here for the annual Lantern Festival banquet. Before I make a special announcement, I’d like us all to clap for two warriors who have joined us tonight, on the last day of the Lunar New Year.”