A Dragon and Her Girl

by Max Florschutz

  The trash from the canal must gather here. Were the dragons eating it up, like pigs taking to slop?

  I held still, ignoring my hurt leg and the uncomfortable angle of the branch digging into my stomach. A pair of dragons managed to flip one of the large, bobbing things up onto the bank.

  It was another dragon. The corpse of one. All flayed open. Had to be one Beth had butchered—no animal teeth made those kind of nice cuts. And it was covered—tail to snout—in the pale froth of mange-eggs. I thought it might be a trick of the light, but then I spotted another dozen carcasses on the shore. No wonder this place stank so bad.

  The live dragons sent up a mournful, haunting wail and rubbed up against their dead fellows. That only got them covered in its blood and guts and eggs. The mange swarmed thick around them and the open carcasses.

  What had Beth done to those bodies, to make the mange take to dead dragons like that? Had she done it on purpose, so more people would need to buy her soap and lotion? She should have just hired someone to compost them for her. I’d have done it, if she threw in some of her soap.

  But as the dragons nestled their fellow and grieved, I saw the reason for her secrecy. They rubbed away the guts and slime, showing bones sticking out. All the bones.

  Beth wasn’t buying those carcasses because she’d figured out how to use the skeletons of lesser dragons. She wasn’t making medicine for no miners up north. I’d been a damned fool. I should have realized something was wrong when I caught high-and-mighty Beth rendering her own tallow.

  I hauled the fellow I’d shot earlier back home, then asked Gran to help me butcher him up.

  “Weren’t you going to sell this?” she asked, sitting next to me outside.

  “I think I can do better for Ted than that.”

  Gran didn’t ask more questions. She was old, but when her hands weren’t shaking, she was one deft butcher. Soon we had nice, white-yellow chunks of dragon fat. I asked her to start rendering them into tallow inside, while I buried the messy leftovers with the chicken carcass.

  I scooped up some water from our leeching barrel and boiled it down into right strong lye. By then it was long past dark, but neither me nor Gran had any thoughts of going to sleep. Gran cooked the lye and the tallow together until we had something that looked like mashed potatoes. Gran crammed most of it into our soap mold. Some she just plopped onto a plate so it’d cool faster.

  “Anti-mange soap,” I said. “The bugs might like dragon blood, but they apparently can’t abide dragon fat. That’s why they stick with live dragons—all their fat is still safely inside.”

  Butcher out all the fat and dump the rest of the carcass in the swamp, and you’d create the perfect mange breeding ground.

  Gran poked at the lump on the plate. “Looks like fine soap. You sure?”

  “Do you think Beth’s a no-good lazy charlatan?”

  “Right. Let’s try it on your leg first, then.”

  The soap would have been harder and better with more time to cure. It stung like the devil, but the itch disappeared as soon as we rinsed my calf off.

  We sponge-bathed Ted’s limbs. Half the little scales flaked off him, and the swelling went down. He groaned softly at first, but then started protesting out loud.

  “Ain’t natural to wash a body so often,” he mumbled, slurring the words, eyes still closed.

  I tried to reassure him. “We’re helping you get better.”

  “Get offa me, or I’ll kick you in the shins, Maisy.”

  “You’d have to stand up first. Besides, we’re done now,” I said. Gran was already taking away the rags.

  “You’re done ’cause you’re scared of me.”

  I gently brushed the hair from his eyes. “That’s right. You’re terrifying. Now shut up and go back to sleep, sweat pea.”

  For once, Ted listened. The feverish sheen to his skin had gone away, and he was breathing slow and regular. Looked like he’d be fine.

  “Come eat,” Gran said, filling two bowls with chicken soup. “Shouldn’t go to bed on an empty stomach.”

  I joined her by the fire. My eyes felt dry as cotton and my bones ached with tired, but my soul finally felt light.

  Gran was smiling, too. “Beth caused this mange outbreak, throwing dragon carcasses in the swamp like that. Whether she’s daft or whether she did it on purpose to prey on innocent folks so they’d buy more soap, I figure we can get her run out of town by tomorrow night.”

  For an old woman who couldn’t abide a soul shooting dragons, she sure had a mean streak. “Gran. Then everyone’ll be shooting up dragons for tallow. You think all of them are going to handle their carcasses any better than Beth?”

  Gran’s face puckered again. Nope. “Beth deserves it. She’s family and she left Ted to rot.”

  “We can do better than a mob, Gran. Once that soap is hard enough to cut, I’ll start selling it in town at half Beth’s price. I’ll buy carcasses for double.”

  I’d make lotion, too. That was easy—just add a little oil to the tallow so it spread easy.

  “But the mange—”

  “We’ll compost the dead dragons proper ourselves. That’ll get the mange under control, eventually. Dragons will stop bothering folks’ farms for radishes all the time, we’ll cut Beth out of what I suspect is her best business, and we’ll make a tidy profit on the side. Once the mange is back to normal, I’ll stop paying for carcasses and just go hunting myself—just enough to keep folks supplied with what little lotion and soap they’ll need.”

  By then, we’ll have more than enough money to replace our chickens and buy Gran a mess of tonic. We wouldn’t be scraping by anymore—we could plan for tomorrow. Though I might have to hike to the city for tonic, if Beth was feeling disagreeable with us.

  Gran took a few more spoonfuls of soup, thinking it over. “Beth will watch her business wither away?”

  “Yup. Much worse than being driven clean out of town.”

  Gran nodded. “I like your plan, Maisy. Just promise me you’ll sell the soap right in front of her store, where she can watch.”

  “Yes, Gran.”

  Li Na and the Dragon

  Scott R. Parkin

  Li Na felt her body break in the fourth hour of her

  labor as she squatted down and curled tightly around her swollen belly, screaming for her reluctant seventh child to come quickly.

  Not the sharp pang and long sting of skin tearing to make way for the baby, but a sudden snap and release deep within her body, as if jabbed in the spine between her hips with a blunt pole. Almost before the dull thud registered came a sudden heat spreading outward and taking her strength as it moved into her chest and face, arms and legs, ears and fingers and toes.

  She fell backward against her rest chair but was too weak to catch hold of its shallow arms. She slid sideways and flopped to the floor as the midwife reached out with fingers that flailed at empty air. Hands tugged her away from the plain wooden chair and laid her flat on the lacquered floor, pressed down on her belly, and tugged at the baby as it emerged.

  Li Na heard voices, but words fled behind an insistent ringing, like the thin metallic voice of Huanglong, the yellow dragon whose shrine she served.

  “Let the child be a boy,” she whispered, her leaden lips fighting to form each word. “Great Huanglong, guardian of rivers and master of words, give my husband a son to carry on his name. Bless my long service to your shrine with this one comfort. Please.”

  But as she felt her life spill onto the pale yellow floorboards, she knew it would not be. This was the curse of her family—that the women of her house would bear only daughters. Penance for the sin of a long-forgotten ancestor who had angered Huanglong’s master and doomed the family name to extinction.

  She should have told her husband, Li Zhou, of the curse in the very beginning so he could release her and find a wife able to fulfill that most basic duty. But they had been so much in love, and the idea of parting seemed so much deeper a pain . . .

&nb
sp; The midwife brought the baby to her, and Li Na saw that she was right; her seventh and last child was indeed a girl. She tried to lift her hand to caress her beloved daughter, but her arm would not obey. Li Na tried to whisper a blessing of comfort to this child who would suffer both the burden of her own curse and the blame for her mother’s death, but her lips would no longer move.

  So Li Na gazed at her daughter as she stole rapid, shallow breaths until first whiteness, then darkness took even this simple joy from her.

  She wept silently that the only gift she could bestow on this, her last child, was a memory of sorrow.

  Li Na awoke to the soft tickle of her daughter’s breath on her neck, the baby’s reassuring weight pressing against her breast. She lay quietly, eyes closed, and enjoyed the moment.

  She had not died, after all. Still, she would bear no more children. It was for the best.

  Though her face still felt flushed, her hands were icy, even beneath the thick blanket that covered her. A dull ache pulsed deep inside, an insistent throb that flared with each breath. Her mouth was sticky-dry and tasted of the bitter herbs Li Na recognized as lei gong teng laced with a powerful narcotic meant to keep her still and asleep so she could heal.

  She heard the rustling of slippered feet and felt hands tug at her blankets and adjust her headrest. She caught the sharp scent of cinnamon and ginger and cloves—her husband. He had left the care of his warehouse to others so he could watch over her. Of course.

  Li Na felt light pressure on her chest and probing fingers checking her daughter’s wrap. When he began to lift the infant away, Li Na reached up to stop him and gasped as sharp pain sliced through her core. Her eyes snapped open, and Li Zhou knelt over her, his own eyes wide in surprise.

  “Let me hold her,” Li Na croaked from a dry throat.

  “You should be asleep,” Li Zhou said and gently touched her cheek. He reached above her head and brought back a dark green wu lou gourd. He tipped its long neck toward her mouth so that thick, bitter potion spilled onto her lips. She swallowed three sips before she let the potion pool and run off her lips, and he took the medicine away.

  “Water,” she said.

  He lifted a yellow, dust-colored gourd, and Li Na let cool water soothe her dry mouth and parched throat. She emptied two gourds and still wanted more. It was no surprise, considering how much she had bled.

  “Hui-Ying, bring more water!” Li Zhou hissed over his shoulder.

  A moment later, light, hurried footsteps announced her oldest child’s arrival, and cool water again touched her lips. The narcotic potion had begun to take effect and dulled her pain enough so she could turn her head and see her tall, slightly built, eleven-year-old daughter kneeling at her father’s elbow, the young girl’s eyes wide and her lips tightly pressed.

  Li Na finished the third gourd and smiled at Hui-Ying as Li Zhou pressed the dark green bottle on her and bitter potion again washed her lips. She dutifully swallowed three more times and saw her daughter’s expression soften. Hui-Ying studied the healing arts and was quite adept even at such a young age. She had most certainly created this unfamiliar potion as the fruits of her own study and talents and was clearly relieved to see it work.

  Li Zhou reached out again and snatched the baby from her chest, handing her off to Hui-Ying. “Take that away and change the wrapping; it’s soaking wet.”

  Li Na wanted to protest, but the potion had taken what feeble strength remained and she could only watch as Hui-Ying hurried away.

  “Sleep, dearest,” Li Zhou whispered, and she struggled to focus on his face. Though his eyes were now tender and his manner gentle, she had seen the hard look on his face and felt the harsh tug when he snatched the baby away.

  As forced sleep took her, Li Na wondered how it was possible that her husband could love her in the same moment that he clearly despised her precious daughter. Were they not the same flesh, each created in her own time from love and hope?

  The baby’s cries from the next room woke Li Na. Not the simple fuss of wetness or the long wails of hunger, but the sharp, strangled shrieks of pain or abandonment. Why was her daughter in the dragon temple? That was Li Na’s personal stewardship; no one entered except in her company.

  She struggled to sit, then stand as she heard the angry rumble of Li Zhou’s voice beneath the cries of her daughter. Pain pulsed in her center, but it was still dulled by the bitter potion, and she was able to tolerate it, though it stole her breath away.

  Li Na staggered to the small room’s single door. It was deep night and only the light of a single, small lamp wavered on the low teak table at the end of the short hallway to her left. She stumbled forward, gripping the door frame, then lurching to the side and leaning heavily on the small table. There was wetness on her thigh; she had begun to bleed again.

  “. . . ignored her pleas and let this mistake happen.” Li Zhou’s voice was hard, his words clipped and spat out as though hurling stones at an enemy. “You have stolen her time and devotion from me, yet given nothing in return.”

  She leaned against the wall beside the narrow doorway and gasped against the lightness in her head, the weakness in her legs, and the rising pain deep in both body and soul. She gazed through the curtain of amber beads that separated the bright light of the great yellow dragon’s temple from the darkness of her husband’s house.

  Li Zhou knelt before the simple cedar and river stone shrine, his hands raised as if in prayer, but his fingers were clenched into tight fists. Her newborn daughter lay naked on the shrine’s offering board, tiny arms and legs shivering in the chill of the late-night breeze from off the great Huang He River. Her skin was mottled purple and white from cold and distress as she shrieked without cease.

  Her husband stood suddenly, and she saw the long, white linen wrap that should be protecting her daughter wadded in a heap on the floor.

  “If you will not grant her wish, then hear my demand.” He snatched up the linen and shook it at the brass statue of Huanglong that stood atop the small shrine. “I have no use for a living daughter, a dying wife, or a dragon shrine that wastes my resources to no benefit.”

  She heard a high, rich metallic sound like the pure ring of a bell and recognized it as the voice of Huanglong. The great yellow dragon was growling, a sound she had heard only once in her life—years ago, when Huanglong had used the word of its power to vanish a mischievous tortoise after it had damaged the dragon shrine.

  Her husband seemed unaware of the sound.

  “This is my bargain and my oath,” Li Zhou spat through clenched teeth. “Change that mewling thing into a son or else take it away and use it to restore my wife’s health. If you fail to do one of these things by sundown tomorrow, I will tear this temple from off my house and cast its parts into the great river.”

  He flung the wad of linen at the small brass dragon statue and stalked through the temple’s open front gate and out into the cold night.

  Li Na gathered the remains of her paltry strength and stepped forward, despite the growing pain. Huanglong’s ringing metal growl never abated, and she stumbled through the curtain of amber beads. Her heavy feet knocked into each other, and she sprawled forward toward the dragon shrine where she lay still, her face flat to the worn wooden floor. Though her daughter shivered and shrieked only two arm’s-length away, Li Na knew Li Zhou was in greater danger.

  “Great Huanglong,” she whispered, “guardian of rivers and master of words, please forget the foolish words of my husband.”

  “It is unforgivable!” the tiny metallic voice cried. The ringing growl grew louder and more resonant. “To deny the worth of creation in which he had part—”

  “He is afraid,” Li Na said, her voice thin. “His one great hope lies unfulfilled on your offering board; his one great comfort lies broken before you. It has made him desperate.”

  “It has made him stupid!” Huanglong shouted and sailed down off the top of the cedar shrine, its small brass body moving with fluid grace. It plucked the li
nen wrap from its tiny horns and draped it over the shrieking baby, then gazed down on Li Na.

  “If he is stupid, great Huanglong, it is because I have lied to him these fifteen years. He knows nothing of the curse that your master rightly breathed out against my ancestor, and so does not understand that what he asks is impossible.”

  The ringing growl suddenly stopped and heavy silence filled the small temple, broken only by the distant rush of the mighty Yellow River—the Huang He—and the soft susurrus of night wind. Even her daughter’s shrieks ceased for a moment.

  “He wishes your daughter dead and has named her a mistake,” the yellow dragon said as the infant’s cries rang out again. “To imagine that a dragon would seek the life of an infant in exchange for anything . . . How can I forgive such disrespect?”

  Li Na gathered her arms under her and pushed up. Sharp pain arced through her hips and gut and brought bile to her throat, but she faced Huanglong.

  “I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” Tears streamed from her eyes. “His dying hopes have driven him mad in this moment of frustration. I know Li Zhou to be loving and kind and generous.”

  “And yet.”

  “No,” she said, her voice stronger. “No. He wishes for my health, not her death. If he has spoken vainly, it only proves the depth of his fear.”

  Huanglong gazed down at Li Na, and she gazed back, unfazed. “He feels nothing at all for her,” the dragon said, though its mouth did not move. “That much is true.”

  “Can you protect her?” she asked, then quirked the barest hint of a smile that faded instantly. Words had power and meaning, especially to the great Huanglong who had taught the secret of writing to Humanity. “Will you protect her?”

  “If your daughter asks, I will answer. Whether she hears is hers to choose.”

  No promise of protection, then. No detail as to how the great dragon would answer—whether by direct word or by indirect symbol. Li Na bowed her head. It was the best she could hope for. It was not in the nature of a dragon to give a specific answer when an indistinct one was possible.