The Dragon of Lonely Island (5 page)

The dragon was still there. It looked paler and its golden scales were dull. Its jade green eyes were closed, but at the sound of Mei-lan pushing her way through the thicket, it opened them and gazed at her helplessly. Mei-lan knelt and stroked its golden head. “It will be all right, Honorable One,” she said, though secretly she was far from sure that this was true. “I will help you.” Gently she raised the dragon’s head so that it could have a cool drink from the bucket. The dragon lapped gratefully and gave a sigh of relief. Then she fed it the rice cakes, one by one. Then another drink of water.

“Better,” the dragon said faintly. “It is better now. Thank you, Small Daughter.”

“Honorable Dragon,” Mei-lan said, “I could not get help for you. The doctor says that dragons never existed. The mayor says that all dragons died long ago. And no one, not even my Honorable Parents, believes that a Great One would speak to a mere girl. There is no one to treat your wounds or to speak to you with words of wisdom. There is only me. But I will do the best I can.”

The dragon’s eyes flared briefly, a brighter, sharper green.

“They have
all
forgotten me?” it said incredulously.

“It has been a very long time,” Mei-lan said gently, “since you have shown yourself. In our village, no dragon has been seen before, not in my father’s time, or my grandfather’s, or even in the days of my grandfather’s grandfather. If our people had seen you, they would remember. No one could possibly forget
you.
”

There was a pause.

“Perhaps,” Mei-lan went on in a smaller voice, “if someone else had found you . . . someone important . . . ”

But the dragon had closed its eyes again.

Mei-lan lifted her chin determinedly and cleared her throat. “If you can roll over on your side,” she said, “I will try to treat your wounds.” The dragon rolled over so that Mei-lan could reach the injured wing. Carefully she bathed the cuts and tears with a pad of cloth, wiping away the dried blood and dirt. She grasped the shaft of the arrow and, wincing, pulled it out of the dragon’s shoulder. Angrily she flung the arrow to the ground. Then, gritting her teeth, she seized the huge golden wing with both hands and pulled it back into position. There was a sharp clicking sound as the wing snapped back into place. It looked normal now and folded neatly across the dragon’s back, just as it was supposed to do. She smeared the arrow wound with the herbal salve and — tearing the cotton cloth into long strips — wrapped it in clean bandages.

The dragon settled itself more comfortably in the grass. “The pain is going,” it said. “Thank you, child. You have done well. I think I shall go to sleep now.” The green eyes closed for a moment, then flickered open. “Sing to me,” the dragon said sleepily.

So Mei-lan sat and stroked the dragon’s head and sang to it, a peaceful, sleepy song about crickets and moonbeams and white incense-smelling flowers that open only on starry nights. And soon the dragon slept. Mei-lan covered as much of it as she could with her sleeping quilt and silently tiptoed away.

Every day Mei-lan returned to the mountain to care for the dragon. She brought it tea and rice, and ginger-flavored soup with pork and bamboo shoots, and more green salve for its wound. One afternoon she even hauled buckets of hot soapy water up the slope to the thicket and gave the dragon a bath. Its golden scales began to gleam and sparkle again. While the dragon was healing, she sang it songs and told it stories, and — since the dragon was a good listener — she told it about her life at home and how hard it was to be thought of as a worthless girl. She told it about the loss of her pet cricket, Moon Singer. Telling the dragon all these troubles didn’t change things, but it made her feel better. Just talking to the dragon gave her a feeling of strength and peace.

Then one day, as she came down from the mountainside, she found the village in an uproar. News had come from the North. The messenger even now was sitting on a bench in the town square, mopping his face with a handkerchief and drinking a glass of rice wine. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and faces were fearful. Some of the women and the smallest children were in tears. “The Mongols!” Mei-lan heard over and over again. “The Mongol horsemen are invading!” “The Mongols are upon us!”

Mei-lan felt a pang of terror. Ever since she was very small, she had been told frightening stories about the Mongol horsemen — the fierce barbarian tribes from the North who killed and burned everything in their path. In some stories, they rode monstrous black horses with flaming red nostrils and eyes and carried battle-axes, swords, and spears. The villages they passed through were left smoking ruins, with not so much as a cat or dog still alive. People said “The barbarians are coming!” as a joke when any small disaster or trouble approached. Father even said it at the annual arrival of the tax collector. But a real invasion of the vicious warriors was a terror beyond imagining. There were no jokes in the village now.

At home, Mei-lan found her parents frantically packing, preparing to flee into the hills. The family’s few valuables — a bag of coins, six silver spoons, the jeweled pin shaped like a butterfly that Mother wore in her hair on special occasions — were hastily wrapped in a quilt. Father was tying together a bundle of tools. Plum Boy — clutching the precious cage containing Moon Singer — and Little Peach —wide-eyed with fright — were sitting on the floor next to a sack stuffed with clothing.

“Go pack some food for our journey, Mei-lan,” Mother snapped as she rushed frenziedly about the house. “Rice and meat. A bottle of green tea. Anything you can find.” Mei-lan turned obediently toward the kitchen, where fresh rice steamed in the family cooking pot —and then, with a quick glance behind her, slipped out the door and began to run toward the mountain, faster than she had ever run before.

The dragon was awake and watching for her as she crashed through the thicket and collapsed at its feet, gasping for breath. For a few moments she was unable to speak. The dragon was concerned.

“Child, what is wrong?” it asked. “What has happened?”

Mei-lan hid her face in her hands. “The barbarians are coming! The Mongols from the North! They will kill us all and burn our village! Oh, please, please, most Honorable Dragon, can’t you help us?”

The dragon frowned. “I have little love for your village,” it said. “They failed to aid me in time of trouble. Some of your villagers, in fact, refused to believe in my very existence.”

Mei-lan looked up at the dragon. “I know they did wrong,” she said, “but they are not wicked people. Most of them knew nothing about this. There are babies and little children in our village who never hurt anybody. Oh, please, Great One, do not let the barbarians kill us all.”

The dragon was silent, its eyes half closed as though it were listening to some hidden inner voice. “It is always important to help those in need,” it said. It reached out a polished golden claw and gently touched Mei-lan’s cheek. “Go help your family, Little One,” it said softly. “I will see what can be done.”

The road leading out of the village was crowded with people, their faces pale with fear. Babies, too frightened to cry, were carried on their mothers’ backs. Old men pushed two-wheeled carts piled high with kettles, pots, and pillows. One woman carried the family’s prize pig; another carried a round straw basket containing a fat hen and her six yellow chicks. Mei-lan saw the doctor go by, carried in a lacquered chair on poles by four terrified servants, and the mayor, riding a fine white horse with silk ribbons in its tail and a jade-studded leather bridle.

Suddenly a great cry rose from the back of the crowd. “Faster!” someone shouted. “Faster! Run faster! The Mongols are upon us!”

The mayor set his spurs in the sides of his whinnying white horse. “Save yourselves!” he bellowed, as he galloped frenziedly forward. “Run for the hills!”

Mei-lan looked behind her. There in the distance a great black cloud rolled threateningly along the ground, advancing swiftly toward the helpless villagers. It was a cloud of dust, thrown up by the pounding hooves of horses, the steeds of the fierce Northern invaders. As they thundered closer, the sun glinted off the spikes of their steel helmets and the murderous points of their spears. The villagers could hear the clank and rattle of swords and the gleeful shouts of approaching victory.

It was hopeless, Mei-lan realized. The villagers could not possibly outrun their deadly mounted pursuers. She looked at her mother, clutching Little Peach in her arms, and at her father, who, thrusting Plum Boy behind him, was pulling an ax out of his bundle. All around her, people were shrieking and wailing in terror. The noise of hooves and the wild cries of the riders grew louder and louder. “They’ll slaughter us all!” someone screamed. “We’re all going to die!”

Mei-lan closed her eyes. “Oh, please, Honorable Dragon,” she whispered, “oh, please, come now.”

And as she stood there, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, the sounds changed.

The shouts of the invaders stopped, replaced by gasps and cries of surprise and shock. The drumming rhythm of the charging hooves faltered, slowed, and came to a halt. All around her, one by one, the villagers fell silent, except for one long indrawn breath of wonder.

Slowly Mei-lan opened her eyes. Then she, too, gasped in awe. There in the sky above their heads loomed the great dragon, its vast wings outspread, its scales a blinding dazzle of pure sun gold. It threw back its magnificent head and its voice roared and echoed off the hills and mountains: “GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM, ACCURSED, AND TROUBLE US NO MORE!” Then it opened its great jaws and loosed a thunderous sheet of red flame. “BEGONE!” it bellowed, “OR BE DESTROYED!”

The invaders, so brave and bloodthirsty only moments before, gave a great moan of horror and fear. Frantically they wheeled their horses around and, hardly daring to look behind them, fled back the way that they had come. The dust stirred up by their headlong retreat hung in the air. The dragon roared once more, a deep, rolling wave of ground-shaking laughter. Then, golden wings glittering, it descended to the earth and faced the astounded villagers. The dragon studied each one in turn — the mayor and the doctor, the farmers and their children, the woman with her squealing pig, the old men and the babies, Mei-lan and her mother and father, Plum Boy and Little Peach — and the villagers, speechless, stared back. Then, like a field of grain bending before the wind, they all bowed low to the dragon.

Now that the barbarians were gone, the mayor had recovered his dignity. He dismounted from his white horse, adjusted his pale green coat embroidered with swallows and chrysanthemums, brushed people aside, and advanced importantly toward the dragon. “O Great One,” the mayor began, but the dragon, with an expression of scorn, waved him aside. Its jade green eyes swept the crowd and rested on Mei-lan.

“Come here, Small Daughter,” the dragon said.

Mei-lan set down her bundle and walked forward until she stood at the dragon’s feet. The dragon reached out a golden claw and very tenderly smoothed Mei-lan’s hair. “This child,” the dragon said, “fed me when I was hungry and healed me when I was hurt. She comforted me when I was lonely; she cheered me when I was sad. She saved my life when her elders”— the jade green eyes rested briefly on the mayor, who turned red, and on the doctor, who looked at his feet —“would have left me to die. For her sake, I saved the village.” The dragon rose to its full height and flexed its glorious golden wings. Very solemnly, it bowed low to Mei-lan. “Thank you, Small Daughter,” the dragon said.

There was a murmur of awe from the villagers. Then the dragon bent its long neck until its head was level with Mei-lan’s. Quietly, in a voice that only Mei-lan could hear, it said, “Hold out your hand.”

Shyly Mei-lan held out her right hand, palm upward.

The dragon delicately stretched out a golden claw and pricked her hand, precisely in the center. Mei-lan gasped. There was a sharp, stinging pain, then a lovely feeling of spreading warmth. When she looked down at her palm, there was no wound. Instead, shining in the cup of her hand was a tiny indelible pinprick of glowing gold.

“We are bonded,” the dragon said softly. “You are a true sister, a Dragon Friend. You will be honored in our memories as long as there are dragons here on earth.”

For one last time, the golden claw stroked her hair.

“A long and happy life, Small Daughter,” the dragon said. “Remember me.”

Then, in a rush of incense-scented wind, the dragon, shining even brighter, rose into the air. For a moment it hovered over the village. Mei-lan, craning her neck upward, saw it nod majestically to the villagers. Then the golden head turned toward her. The dragon smiled and one jade green eye — the right eye, which only she could see — winked. And then, between one breath and another, the dragon was gone.”