Dragon Moon (21 page)

There were caverns whose dark mouths were lined with small yellow crystals. They led deep into the earth. The sulphurous smell overwhelmed everything. Ping wanted to cover her nose, but thought it would be impolite. Water surged out of the earth in places, only to disappear back into it again through other holes. There was little vegetation and not a single tree. Ping had never seen a landscape like it.

None of the dragons attempted to communicate with her. She had no idea what they thought about having a human in their midst.

Ping spoke to them in her mind.

“Hello,” she said. “I am Kai’s keeper. My name is Ping.”

None of the dragons responded.

“Don’t they understand me, Kai?” Ping said. “Can I only speak to you?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do they speak to you?”

“Yes, but not like Ping. Only with dragon sounds.”

The old red dragon leaned her huge head closer to Ping as if she wanted to get a better look. Ping could feel the old dragon’s warm breath on her face. She was a formidable beast. Her horns branched many times and were at least three feet long. She had a long shaggy beard beneath her chin and the whiskers hanging on either side of her mouth were blue. Her eyes were cloudy and Ping guessed that her dragon sight was fading.

The old dragon made a metallic sound that reminded Ping of someone chinking coins together in cupped hands. It wasn’t like any of the sounds Kai or Danzi had made. Ping waited for words to form in her head, but none did.

“What did she say?” Ping asked Kai.

“She wants to know how long you have lived with dragons.”

Kai replied to the ancient dragon with the same sounds.

The red dragon snorted through her nose. They were all so old, no doubt she was unimpressed by the fact that Ping had been a Dragonkeeper for less than three years. Ping reached into her pocket and pulled out her mirror. She was young and her time as a Dragonkeeper had been short, but she had cared for two dragons.

“My first dragon gave me this,” she said, holding the mirror out to the old red dragon.

As the red dragon reached out to take the mirror, her stiff talons reminded Ping of Lao Longzi’s fingers. The dragon held the mirror close to her eyes, peered at it, turned it over and nodded.

“Did she know Danzi?” Ping asked.

“They all knew Father,” Kai replied.

Ping would have danced for joy if her legs hadn’t been so stiff. Danzi’s wishes had been fulfilled. And Kai wasn’t going to spend his life as a solitary dragon, he had other dragons to live with. She might not have brought him directly to them herself, but here he was in the dragon haven.

Ping looked around the plateau in the dying light. It wasn’t the sort of place that pleased humans, nothing like the green pleasantness of Long Gao Yuan. But Ping remembered how Danzi had once bathed in a hot spring pool and enjoyed it immensely. It was a dragon’s world. If Kai liked it, she would just have to learn to like it too.

With all the hot pools and boiling mud, at least she would never be cold. The smell would be the hardest thing to get used to. Beyond the pools and caverns, the plateau sloped down gradually before it ended in a sheer cliff on all sides. There was no way she could get down without the aid of a dragon. That didn’t matter. She didn’t want to leave anyway.

The sun had disappeared beneath the jagged mountains, leaving an orange stain on the horizon.
The dragons stopped staring at Ping and moved away, returning to their dragon business.

Ping examined Kai from head to toe.

“Are you sure you’re all right? Have the dragons been looking after you? Have you been eating well?”

“Kai was worried about Ping, but is very happy now.”

“Is the water safe for me to drink?”

“Some of the pools are poisonous to humans.”

Ping knew the white pool contained arsenic and would be poisonous to humans, although dragons loved to bathe in it and could even drink the white water.

Kai spoke to the other dragons and then showed her to a small pool which they had said was safe for her to drink from. Ping wasn’t so sure. It was no bigger than a puddle and it was cloudy and brown. She cupped some of the water in her hands and drank. It had an unpleasant sulphur taste, but Ping had drunk worse tasting water from neglected wells. A warm bath would have been very pleasant. She was longing to wash the sweat and grime from her body.

“Kai, ask if any of the coloured pools are safe for me to bathe in.”

Kai spoke to the old red dragon in the chinking voice that Ping couldn’t understand.

“Gu Hong says the pools are only for dragons to bathe in.”

“Is that her name, Ancient Red?”

“Yes,” Kai replied.

“Did you ask them to look for me, Kai?”

“Yes. They refused at first, but the white dragons saw Ping when they were out scouting. Every day Ping got closer. They thought that Ping would eventually find the dragon haven and didn’t want other humans led here.”

“So they’re not exactly pleased to see me.”

Kai shook his head.

The dragons hadn’t picked her up because they were worried about her wellbeing, not even because they were concerned that Kai was missing her. They had just been afraid that she would give away their hiding place.

It was almost dark. Ping wasn’t sure if she was a prisoner or not. Her stomach was rumbling, but she didn’t want to ask the dragons for food.

Without warning a jet of steaming water spurted out of the ground nearby, high into the air. It startled Ping, but the dragons didn’t seem at all surprised. They all walked towards the orange pool. The only male, the yellow dragon who had carried Ping, squatted on the rocks surrounding the pool, while the females waded in. The pool was wide and shallow. When the dragons sat down, the water came up to their haunches. They made low chinking sounds to each other.

“Are they having a bath?” Ping asked.

“Not a bath, a moon gathering,” Kai replied. “When
the moon is in the night sky, the dragons gather in the orange pool after the fire dragon has spurted.”

“What fire dragon?”

“The one that lives beneath the earth. Every evening, he spurts water into the air.”

Ping wanted to ask more questions, but Kai was moving towards the orange pool.

“Kai must go to the gathering, and listen to the dragons.”

Kai sat on the rocks next to the yellow male, listening to the females. In the light of a waning half moon, the dragons all glowed slightly. Kai’s scales had the brightest glow.

The moon gathering didn’t last long. Then the dragons slowly made their way to the caverns to sleep, all except for one of the white dragons who flew up to the highest point of the plateau to keep watch. The two yellow dragons had a cavern of their own. The others all slept together in the largest cavern. As she approached, Ping could see glints of colour moving around inside. The dragons’ scales retained their moon glow. It made the dark cavern look cheerful. The younger red dragon barred Ping’s way when she tried to follow Kai inside.

“Tell them I have to be with you, Kai.”

Ping watched from the mouth of the cavern as the little dragon went up to where Gu Hong was settling down for the night. He looked very small standing in front of the enormous red dragon, but he must have
put his request well, because Gu Hong allowed Ping to enter the cave.

Once she was in the cavern, Ping wished she’d stayed outside.

“Smells,” observed Kai cheerfully.

The cavern stank. Judging by the smell, the dragons weren’t housetrained. Their bedding straw was old and stained. There were half-chewed animal bones lying around. Ping had spent the night in some very unpleasant places before, but the dragon cavern had to be the worst. The ox shed at Huangling Palace, where she’d slept all through her childhood, seemed clean and tidy by comparison. It was cooler in the cavern than out near the steaming pools. The younger red dragon brought her an animal skin. Ping’s heart started to thud. It was her bearskin, the one she’d left with Jun at the bottom of the Serpent’s Tail. She knew it was hers because she could see where she’d cut a piece off to make the ball for Kai.

“Do they have our other things, Kai?” Ping asked.

Kai spoke to the dragons and the young red dragon pulled the saddlebag from behind a rock. Ping opened it. Everything was as she had left it—the cooking things, the gold coins, her firesticks, the dragon pendant Jun had given her. Ping’s stomach tightened. The last time she’d seen the bag, Jun had been holding it. She’d assumed that he’d taken it with him. Had Jun discarded the bag? Or had one of the dragons taken it from him?

“Kai,” Ping said. “Where is Jun? Did the dragons hurt him? Is he still alive?”

“Don’t know. Kai asked, but no one would answer.”

Ping had convinced herself that Jun had given up waiting for them. She had pictured him sitting comfortably at home with his family. Now she wasn’t so sure. She slipped the pendant around her neck.

The red dragon handed her something else—the crumpled piece of calfskin that she had thrown away on Long Gao Yuan.

The two red dragons slept at the back of the cave. The white dragons slept together, their bodies coiled around each other like a litter of enormous puppies. Kai slept between them. His nest straw was flattened and stale. He’d stopped making a new nest each night.

Ping lay down in a pile of straw near the cave entrance. She had brought Kai to the dragons, just as Danzi had instructed. She had expected the dragons to welcome her, not treat her like an intruder. But after what she’d seen at Long Gao Yuan, she didn’t blame them for being wary of people. She would have to be patient and win them over gradually.

Ping was tired, hungry and very dirty. She shivered in the chilly cave and pulled the bearskin around her. The dragon haven wasn’t the paradise she’d imagined.

The next morning, when Ping woke, the dragons were still sleeping even though it was hours past sunrise. The smell in the cavern was even worse. She decided that she had to find somewhere else to sleep. Kai was the only dragon awake. Ping found him outside squatting behind a large rock.

“Kai, what are you doing?”

“Poo,” the little dragon said.

“I can see that, but why didn’t you dig a hole and cover it over like I taught you?”

“Wild dragons don’t do that,” he said.

He had been living with the dragons for just a few weeks, but he was already changing his habits.

“We need somewhere to sleep that doesn’t smell as bad as the dragons’ cavern,” she said. “Come and help me find a place.”

They investigated several caverns that were little more than holes in the ground, and would fill up if it ever rained. Other caves offered more shelter, but their walls were encrusted with the yellow crystals, which had an unpleasant smell.

“Let’s have a look over there,” Ping said, pointing to the north of the plateau.

The ground rose in the centre of the plateau so that the northern end was higher. There were fewer craters and some low bushes and tufts of grass. A cascade of pinkish water from a bubbling spring clattered down a rocky escarpment that separated the northern end of the plateau from the dragons’ preferred pools and caverns. The water was hot.

This part of the plateau was more to Ping’s liking. She preferred to be surrounded by bushes rather than the smelly pools. But Ping didn’t want to be unfriendly and live too far away from them. She found a small cave that burrowed horizontally halfway up the escarpment. It was dry and there were no crystals on the walls. Though it was away from the pools, the slight elevation meant that she could still see
the dragons. The cave was warmed by a steam vent near the entrance, and there were ferns and mosses growing around it. It was small, but big enough for two.

“What do you think, Kai? Will we be comfortable here?”

“It is a good cave for Ping,” the dragon said. “But Kai will sleep with the rest of the cluster.”

Cluster. It was a good word for a group of dragons. Ping tried not to look disappointed. That’s why she’d brought Kai to the dragon haven, so that he could live with his own kind.

The dragons were gradually emerging from their caverns, yawning and scratching themselves. They had very different habits to Danzi, who hadn’t slept much at all. They didn’t take any notice of Ping. She fetched her few possessions and moved them into her new home. The dragons still didn’t offer her any food, so she went out to investigate the northern part of the plateau to see if she could find anything to eat. There were burrows that offered the promise of rabbit. Snakes and lizards might be attracted by the warm rocks. She startled a pheasant as she walked through a clump of grass, but she would need a trap or a snare to catch rabbits and birds. She had hoped there would be a clear pool with fish, but there wasn’t. She found a couple of mushrooms, but they were dry and withered because of the warm air.

The young red dragon came up to Kai and said something to him.

“The dragons say that Ping can bathe beneath the hot falls,” he translated.

The cascade of pinkish water fell a few feet before it collected in a small pool and then ran into a crater and disappeared back into the earth again. Ping would have preferred a still pool, but she didn’t complain.

To her surprise most of the female dragons gathered round to watch her bathe. Only Gu Hong stayed away. Ping was a little embarrassed to have an audience, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper wash. Her last hot bath was a distant memory, so she undressed and slipped into the steaming pool. The steam had the same unpleasant sulphurous smell as some of the other pools. It was so small that she only just fitted into it and there was nowhere she could avoid sitting under the falls. But she soon discovered that it was actually very pleasant to have warm water cascading over her.

The dragons grew bored with watching her bathe and wandered off. Ping felt her cares and concerns begin to wash away with the dirt. The dragon haven wasn’t as comfortable as she’d imagined, the dragons weren’t as friendly as she’d hoped, but Kai was safe and happy. She could allow both her body and her mind to relax at last.