Dragonkeeper 2: Garden of the Purple Dragon (5 page)

“It’s all right,” Ping said. “I’ll look after you.”

She hoped she sounded convincing.

Ping hurried away from the cave towards the imperial path that led beneath the Halfway to Heaven Gate. She kept expecting the goat’s killer to loom in front of her at any moment. Hua was at her heels. She broke into a run.

She reached the imperial path out of breath. She would have preferred to use the smaller animal tracks that only she knew, but they would have been too hard to follow in the fog. Sometimes they zigzagged back the way they had come, sometimes they led to unexpected precipices. They were too dangerous. The imperial path was the only safe way down the mountain. But she felt uncomfortable on it, exposed, though no one could possibly see her through the fog.

The path plunged steeply down the mountainside and soon turned into steep steps cut into the rock. Ping looked back to convince herself that no one was following her and tripped, falling down six steps. She picked herself up, checked that Kai was all right and set off again. She forced herself to take the steps more slowly. The little dragon was making high-pitched,
peeping sounds that made Ping’s head hurt. She couldn’t think. She didn’t have any idea where she was going. She glimpsed human shapes out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned they were just twisted pine trees or rocks looming out of the mist. But the feeling that someone was close by didn’t leave her.

She made a sudden turn onto a narrow track that led off to the west. It had been made by sheep or goats, but hadn’t been used for some time and grass was overtaking it. She followed it wherever it wanted to lead her.

The track might be dangerous, but that could be in her favour. No one could cut her off—if there was anyone there, they would have to be behind her. She turned onto a different path and then onto another, hoping that she wasn’t going to end up back where she started. She was glad of the fog to hide in. When she came to a rocky outcrop, she crouched behind a boulder, holding Kai’s jaws shut. She waited, her ears straining for the slightest noise. Hua was listening too. There was no sound. She waited longer, until she was sure there was no one following her.

She kept going over and over the events of the morning, trying to think of why someone had killed the goat. She could only come up with one answer. Someone had wanted to frighten her. Questions crowded her head. Where would they sleep? What would they eat? How could she get another goat?

Her gown clung to her skin, wet and heavy. The cold
penetrated her bones. Kai whimpered. She held him close, hoping that some of his body heat would find its way through his scales and warm her. She had planned to walk until sunset, but she was already exhausted.

Each step was an effort. Her legs ached from the unaccustomed walking. Her arms hurt from carrying Kai. Her head was throbbing from trying to work out what she should do.

She put Kai down. “Walk in front of me where I can see you.”

The little dragon was too frightened to wander off. He wanted to keep as close to Ping as possible. Every now and again he suddenly stopped and shape-changed into something—a large leaf, a rabbit, a pile of dung—and Ping tripped over him. She showed him how to walk behind her, holding the hem of her gown in his mouth so they didn’t lose each other.

Ping began to think that leaving Black Dragon Pool had been a mistake. Perhaps she’d over-reacted. She tried to think of other explanations. A hungry mountain hermit might have come across the goat, but she’d disturbed him before he had the chance to carry the dead animal away. A goatherd could have seen the goat and thought that Ping had stolen one of his flock. A shaman might have climbed up the sacred mountain to give an offering to Heaven, seen the smoke from her fire and decided to punish her for venturing onto the forbidden slopes of Tai Shan. None of her theories
made her feel any easier.

She stumbled on through the fog. When she walked into a boulder, she realised that she had left the track and was up to her knees in wet grass. The path wasn’t the only thing she’d lost. Kai was no longer holding on to the hem of her gown.

“Where are you, Kai?” she called and then tripped over him where he had stopped in the long grass. He whimpered miserably. Hua was sheltered between Kai’s feet.

A flash of anger did nothing to warm her numb body. She was angry with the nameless person who had forced her from Black Dragon Pool. Angry that she was so powerless. Then Ping was vaguely aware of a sensation she hadn’t felt for a long time. Something was drawing her, as if an invisible thread were tied to her and someone at the other end was pulling it. It encouraged her. She picked up Kai, and followed the thread.

An hour later, a dark, squarish shape loomed out of the fog. It was a hut. This was what had been drawing her. Somehow she had known that the hut was there. She also knew that there was no one inside. Ping lifted the latch and entered.

The hut was small, just one room. The only light came through a hole in the ceiling designed to let out smoke from a fire-place in the middle of the room. A straw mattress hung over the rafters. Ping found a neat stack of chopped wood, a basket containing folded sheepskins
and a chest packed with food. Compared to the chilly cave they’d left behind, the hut was luxurious.

Hua climbed up into the rafters and found a large selection of insects for Kai. Ping ate salted meat, dried fruit and nuts from the food chest. After she’d eaten, she pulled down the straw mattress and made a bed on the floor. Kai didn’t need any encouragement. He was curled up under the sheepskins in moments. Ping crawled in alongside him.

She had almost forgotten about her second sight. Living a simple life at Black Dragon Pool, she’d had no need for it. When she really wanted to find something she could concentrate her mind and somehow she was drawn to it. That’s what had led her to the hut. Anger could rouse her second sight unbidden, but she had started to learn how to summon it at will. Her second sight also gave her warning of danger—a sense of dread, like the hard mass she had felt in her stomach when the goat was killed.

Ping felt as warm as a baked taro root. The delicious, almost forgotten, taste of orchard-grown nuts and fruit lingered in her mouth. The hut was a perfect place to spend the winter.

When Ping woke the next morning, she got up and opened the window shutters. Daylight flooded in. She’d slept late. The food chest was open. Nuts and dried beans were scattered on the floor. Several dried plums had distinctly dragonish teeth marks in them. Kai was squawking miserably. He didn’t like the shepherd’s food. He was hungry.

The door opened a crack. Hua came in carrying three moths which he put next to the large mushroom that he’d already collected.

“Look. Hua has brought us breakfast.”

Ping lit a little fire and cooked the mushroom in the coals. The moths didn’t satisfy the hungry dragon. Hua seemed to understand that Kai would need more food now that they didn’t have a goat to provide milk. He scurried off again and a little while later returned with a bird’s egg in his mouth.

“Hua! You know what I want even before I do!” she exclaimed.

The rat put the egg down in front of the dragon. Kai sniffed it and rolled it around with his nose. Then squawked unhappily at Ping.

Ping laughed. “Give it to me, Hua.”

Hua brought the egg over to her. She looked into the rat’s bright blue eyes. She could see a glimmer of understanding that was missing even in the eyes of some people she had known. There would be useful knowledge inside the rat’s furry little head, she was sure of that.

“If only I knew what you were thinking,” Ping said.

She broke the egg into a bowl and Kai ate it raw.

Perhaps Danzi had sent the rat to help her. He might not have had the strength to fly all the way back from the Isle of the Blest. She tried to picture the old dragon healed and happy on the Isle of the Blest, sitting in the sunlight, eating peaches of immortality, sipping on the water of life. Whatever the reason, she was glad Hua had returned.

After breakfast they went outside. The walls of the hut were constructed from saplings and bark. The roof was made of neatly woven bundles of grass held in place with rocks. It was well built and Ping was sure it would keep out wind and rain. Around the side of the hut, under the shelter of the eaves, was a spade and more neatly stacked chopped wood. From the way the sheepskins and food store had been carefully packed away, she suspected the hut belonged to a shepherd who had taken his flock back to his village for the winter.

The hut was built on a narrow terrace that had been cut into the hillside. The shepherd had chosen the position well. A meadow for grazing sheep sloped gently down the hill in front of the hut. From the door there was a lovely view of two mountain peaks. In the narrow space between the peaks, Ping could see the plain reaching to the horizon. She could just make out a small village. Perhaps that was where the shepherd lived.

Behind the hut, was a steep hill. Behind that was another hill, steeper and higher than the first. The peaks of Tai Shan were beyond that. It was good to have the dark mountain at a comfortable distance, not looming over her every move as it had done at Black Dragon Pool. They had walked a long way.

The few clouds kept their distance from the sun and Ping was enjoying its warmth. Her fear had disappeared with the fog.

“I’m sure the shepherd won’t be returning till spring,” Ping said to Hua. “We can spend winter here. But we have to be much more careful than we were before.”

She went back inside and put out her little fire. “There might be someone in the village keen-sighted enough to see the smoke. We’ll have to leave lighting a fire until after dark.”

She picked up her bucket. “Come on, Hua. Let’s go and explore. We need to find water.”

Kai squawked plaintively when she set off.

“You can come too, but I’m not carrying you.”

The little dragon followed her.

In summer, the meadow would be studded with flowers, but this morning it was covered with small snails, coaxed from their hiding places by overnight rain. Kai liked snails. Ping collected some for him.

She could see no sign of a pool or stream. To the west of the hut, an outcrop of large rectangular rocks scarred the smooth green slope. It looked as if a piece of the mountain had broken off a long time ago, and tumbled all the way down to this slope where it had lodged and become part of the landscape.

“Perhaps there’s a stream over there,” she said to Hua.

The rocks were taller than Ping. A path led through them to a flat rock platform. In the middle was a hole that was full of water.

Ping smiled. “I knew the shepherd wouldn’t have built his hut far from water.”

The pool was much smaller than Black Dragon Pool, less than a
chang
across. It was more like a well, but formed by nature, not dug by men. There was no waterfall tumbling into it, no stream rushing to fill it, just a still pool. Whether the well was filled by rain or from an underground source, Ping couldn’t tell. A mesh of slimy waterweed floating on the surface made it impossible to see how deep the water was. Ping pushed aside the weed and cupped some of the water in her hands. It had a greenish look to it. She tasted it. It wasn’t as sweet as the water in Black Dragon Pool, but if it was good enough for the shepherd, it was certainly good enough for her. She dipped her bucket in.

Kai came up to the edge of the pool and sniffed the water. Then he dived in and disappeared beneath the surface.

“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” Ping said to Hua.

After the experience at Black Dragon Pool, Ping knew there was no reason to worry. The little dragon always surfaced again—eventually.

“Dragons can stay underwater for weeks,” she told Hua, as she peered uneasily through the weed. “I don’t know how they do it. They must be able to breathe water like fish do.”

Ping found herself holding her breath, as if she were the one underwater relying on just the small amount of air she could hold in her lungs. She finally had to take a
breath. Perhaps food would entice Kai out of the water. She took the snails out of her pouch and set them down on the rock, wiping her slimy hand on the hem of her gown. The snails slowly emerged from their shells and started to crawl away.

“Where are you, Kai?” Ping called. “You’d better hurry, your meal is escaping.”

She remembered the mirror. She pulled it out of her pouch and angled it so that it caught the rays of the sun. The mirror flashed. A few moments later Kai resurfaced. Ping took a deep breath. The little dragon pulled himself up out of the water. He had green weed draped over his head and a happy expression on his face. The water seemed to revitalise him. He shook himself, showering Ping with drops of water, and went over to the snails. He looked at her expectantly.

“You’re supposed to crack them open yourself,” Ping complained as she squashed the snails with a stone. “What would you do without me?”

Kai snuffled through the broken shells to find the snail meat. Ping scratched the little dragon’s head. There were a number of places he liked to be scratched—in his left armpit, between the pads of his paws, in the wrinkles around his nose. He liked to be scratched almost anywhere except under the chin, which was strange because the soft spot under his chin was where Danzi had liked to be scratched. Kai’s favourite tickle spot was around the bumps on his head where his horns
would eventually grow hundreds of years from now. Thinking about the little dragon’s future made her anxious. She hoped things would get easier as he grew, but she couldn’t be sure. Kai nipped her fingers, which was his way of saying he’d had enough scratching. He went back to licking out the crushed snail shells to make sure he hadn’t missed any flesh. Ping smiled as the dragon chased a piece of shell among the rocks with his long red tongue.