Feeding the Dragon Read online

Feeding the Dragon

  Rex Sumner

  Cover Illustration by Nina Pancheva-Kirkova

  In the Ancient Kingdom of Sung, an old monk slept in the afternoon sun under a plum tree. Ju Qua woke with a start, rubbing his forehead and finding it sticky. He gazed in disbelief at the half crushed plum that had woken him.

  "I brought you rice, Holy One," came a small piping voice, and he looked up into the innocent eyes of an urchin, proffering a bowl to him.

  He took the bowl automatically, taking in the child, dressed in rags, barefoot, black hair cut roughly like a downturned bowl and intense black slanted eyes looking at him guilelessly.

  "You should not sleep under a ripe fruit tree, Holy One."

  Suspicion flared through him, along with incredulity. Surely this child would not have dared to throw a plum at him? And why was he not scared of the monk? Did he not know who he was? And he presumed to give him advice! Where was his respect for the aged?

  "Do you know what I am, boy?" Ju Qua's voice was rough and gravelly, sounding as if it was rarely used.

  "I am not a boy," said the child with deep scorn. "You are a fighting monk, from the monastery of Sindalar. Is it true you have a dragon?" A barely perceptible leaning forward betrayed the girl's interest and the monk was astonished.

  "Why are you not afraid, girl? Where are your friends?"

  "They think you will feed them to the dragon. I am the only one brave enough to feed you," she boasted matter-of-factly.

  The monk was silent for a while, and ate the rice slowly as he watched the girl from under his brows. Scooping the rice up neatly with his right hand, he formed it into a ball, dipped it into a piquant sauce and flicked it into his mouth with his thumb. The girl waited patiently, a stillness in her that caught the monk's attention and he studied her aura carefully. Strong and robust, without weakness and even; light colours in the main but with plenty of red and a definite black streak coming out in places indicating ruthlessness and the ability to kill. Oh, interesting!

  Gently he sent out a mental probe, intruding it into the childlike mind. Which snapped shut like the jaws of a tiger, fangs bared in protection. It would take a mental battering ram to get through that, he thought, which would probably destroy her. For the first time, expression flitted across the girl's features, as she looked sternly at him.

  "You did something," she stated accusingly.

  "So did you. Do you know what you did?" asked the monk.

  "I … pushed?" she said uncertainly.

  "You did," he confirmed with a nod. "Why are you not scared I will feed you to the dragon?"

  "It's a story," she said with the deep annoyance of one subjected to many such stories. "One that isn't true but is supposed to stop me from doing what I want to do. None of the other stories are true, why should this one be true?"

  "Tell me one of the other stories," demanded Ju Qua.

  "If you go too close to the river, a water horse will rush out and grab you, pull you into the river and drown you."

  "Why?"

  "So it can eat you. I think the story is to stop stupid people falling in the river and drowning."

  "Did you stay away from the river?"

  "No, I went to see the water horse and fell in. I am the only person in the village who can swim."

  Unfortunately this statement came as the monk was swallowing some rice, which consequently went down the wrong way and caused a fit of coughing. When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and accepted a stone flask of tepid tea from the girl, who had not moved.

  "What will you do," he asked, "in the coming years? Will you marry and be a farmer's wife?"

  She snorted delicately. "They are too stupid. No, I shall make my parents sell me to the brothel in Sinkian. I will be a very good courtesan and go to the capital."

  The monk nodded thoughtfully. It was probably the best career plan open to a young girl of intelligence and he wondered that at so young an age she had already mapped out her future.

  "You know what happens in a brothel?" he asked equably.

  "Last rice harvest I went with my father to Sinkian. While he talked to the merchants, I went to the brothel and spoke to a pretty girl. She told me everything. That was when I decided. I don't want to be a farmer."

  "And the capital? That is where you will go?"

  "When I have learnt the skills of singing and playing music, of massage and the body, only then will I be ready. I will make myself the best." She said with grave determination.

  Ju Qua nodded with a straight face. "The best, so you will become a courtesan for the Emperor?"

  "No," said the little girl, indignantly. She stuck out a bare foot, perfectly formed and exquisite. "My stupid mother thought I would be a farmer. She didn't bind my feet. I can never have lilies, so the Emperor will not want me for I can never advance beyond the sixth rank." Lilies are the term for feet bound at birth on girl babies, so the toes are crushed and maimed and the feet never develop properly. It was considered a mark of great beauty in Sung.

  The monk blinked at her feet. Personally, he thought the binding of girls' feet to make them sway when they were older, a disgusting, effete practice that summed up much that was wrong in Sung.

  "The dragon will not care," he said, for the first time making the mistake of not asking a question. "He will think your feet very tasty."

  "How do you know it is a male dragon?" The girl pounced instantly. "Does it have a big baz-baz?"

  "A what?" said Ju Qua uncertainly at this new term outside his experience, and then decided he didn't want to know. "He says he is a male dragon."

  "Why doesn't he eat you?" she asked earnestly, happily turning the tables on the monk with a stream of questions.

  "He's my friend," said the monk with an evil smile. "He knows I bring him tasty virgins to eat."

  "I will be his friend as well," said the girl with determination. "I will be able to bring him more virgins that you can. Why do dragons eat virgins anyway? All the stories say they want gold and virgins, but it doesn't make sense. The courtesan explained to me that the mandarins don't like virgins, they want skilful girls so they break the barrier in training."

  "Well," began Ju Qua, again wrong footed by this extraordinary child, and then abruptly changed his mind about what he would say. He wanted this girl. Perhaps the most potential in any he had ever found in his recruiting expeditions for the monastery. It was time for action. "I have finished eating. Come, take me to your father and I will negotiate a price for you." She was a jewel beyond price, he knew, and perhaps there would be others in the village who shared her abilities.

  The following day he set out for the monastery, cutting short his trip in his eagerness to get the girl back. He had accepted two other girls, pressed on him by eager parents, who followed him dejectedly, tears pouring silently down their faces. The girl, meanwhile, skipped happily along in front of him, chasing a vibrantly coloured locust across the rice fields.

  She returned shortly, handing him a locust while she spat out the legs of another she had caught and cast a judicious eye over her friends.

  "Do you have rope?" she asked. "I think we need to tie them up at night to stop them running or killing themselves."

  "It won't be necessary," said the monk with finality.

  She walked beside one of the girls, bigger than her, and prodded her with a hard finger, under the ribs. The girl flinched.

  "We mustn't go too fast, or she'll lose weight and won't be tender for the dragon," she announced. Her victim shrank into herself and moaned slightly. She came back to the monk and proceeded to walk backwards in front of him.

  "My name is Wu Gui." She announced.

  Turtle
, he thought sourly, no doubt a snapping one. "I shall call you Nu Hai." Nu Hai means girl in Sung, and in particular refers to a serving girl.

  "Nu Hai? You just call me serving girl!" she cried indignantly. "I shall call you Shanyang Fen as you don't seem to have a name."

  He bristled outwardly, inwardly chuckling. "You have no respect for your elders. You will not call me goat shit. You may call me Sifu, Honoured Master."

  "We have an old man in the village who was always stupid and now drools in the sun. He has never done anything in his life to earn respect. Why should I respect him, Shanyang Fen?" She twitched effortlessly away from his staff as he aimed for her buttocks.

  "To think anyone managed to live into his old age, in a village with you to look after them, deserves respect," he began, but she forestalled him by twirling and running off to a nearby pond, shouting something over her shoulder. He consoled himself with the thought that soon she would be exhausted, and then worried that he would have to carry her. They had many leagues to go today.

  Fifteen minutes later she was back, beaming from ear to ear and covered in mud, soaking wet.

  "Look!" she cried in triumph, brandishing her hand for them all to see. "I got a full handful, all four!"

  She had four large dragonflies on her hand, each with the wings trapped between her fingers and the legs waving soulfully in the air. Having displayed her prowess, she released them carefully, ensuring each one flew away undamaged.

  The path forked and