The Race for the Red Dragon Page 5

  ‘There is no choice,’ Qing answered solemnly. ‘That vase …’

  ‘Is a person!’ Harley exclaimed.

  Qing’s eyes went momentarily bleak. ‘… is a living death. Time passes and everything changes – while you do not.’

  The woman nodded, turning smartly on her heel. She led them back through the undergrowth, following the path littered with broken branches that Ricotta’s cube-like form had created hours before as he’d fled, screaming, down the mountainside.

  Qing’s long golden skirt flared out behind her as she followed swiftly after the old cook, the blue, C-shaped stone dragons weighing down the ends of her belt ties swinging with her movements.

  ‘Wait! What about my dad? And Schumacher?’ Harley called, as he limped unsteadily after them down the mountain, his right knee throbbing, branches snagging on him everywhere the way they never did with Qing – even though she was wearing what amounted to a ball gown. ‘Has there been any word?’

  He finally caught up with Qing as a familiar black limo came into sight, parked just off the twisty main tourist road beneath some trees. Forgetting it was a bad idea, and desperate for answers to his gazillion and one questions, Harley latched onto one of Qing’s narrow, silk-covered shoulders with just his fingertips. A tiny sizzle of blue light shot up through his hand, as if in warning.

  ‘Yowzas!’ Harley bellowed in frustration, hopping around on his left leg, his zapped fingers jammed under one armpit in agony. ‘If you can do that, why can’t you just fly off and save Dad and Schumacher? Then save the vase? Why even travel around in a car, or on foot, when you can, you know…’ He thought about the blue dragon that had momentarily blocked out the stars in the alleyway behind Mr Hong Kong’s shop. He still couldn’t see how that beast had anything to do with this infuriating girl.

  Qing turned and gave Harley a measuring look as she slid in through the open limo doors. ‘This is not the world I was taken from, Harley Spark. If you had not woken me, the téng would still be trapped in the form of an old gardener, the fúcánglóng would still be spelled to sleep within the earth, and my cousin, Táifēng, Second Son of the Second Dragon, would not be free to …’ Her voice trailed off momentarily, her eyes very sad.

  She gave herself a shake. ‘Now they will each awaken others. As will we. But we are no longer first in the field of battle. And it is a field unlike any our kind have seen before. You must know your terrain, and your enemy, Harley, before you reignite a war.’

  Harley gulped. It was the most Qing had ever said to him in one go, and it reminded him that she might look like a kid, but that she was unlike anyone he had ever known.

  Standing by the car, the old lady made a clucking noise. ‘Qing Long is also young and unschooled, and needs food and sleep just as much as you do, young man,’ she chided Harley softly. ‘It takes more energy to do what she does than you could possibly imagine.’

  Harley thought about all the cans of sandwich tuna Qing could eat in one sitting and slid hesitantly onto the bench seat of the limo across from her.

  ‘If you hadn’t brought me to the fúcánglóng,’ she murmured, looking down at her clasped hands, ‘I might have died. The underground river that he once called home revived me enough to awaken him. He is a being of great joy and power; his mere presence can heal the mortally wounded.’ Qing turned her dark eyes on Harley and the blue ring around the outside edge of her irises seemed especially blue.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

  Harley frowned, still angry at himself for falling in a hole and dropping the glass in the first place. ‘Don’t. It could have been disastrous. I came a cropper,’ he muttered.

  Qing smiled and it lit up her angular, serious features in a way that made her look like a different person entirely. ‘You came a cropper in exactly the right place at exactly the right time!’

  Mr Hong Kong’s cook started to shut the passenger doors of the limo on them, Ricotta’s black, peaked driver’s cap clutched in one of her bony hands.

  ‘Wait!’ Harley looked around the car, then looked at the hat. ‘Where is Ricotta? How are we supposed to get back down the mountain?’ His view of ‘getaway’ drivers in this part of the world was getting dimmer by the minute.

  The old woman paused, rolling her eyes in exasperation. ‘After Ricotta drove back to the shop and could finally make himself understood to me, he threatened to quit—’ her face expressed her astonishment at the memory, ‘unless I removed him immediately from the position of family chauffeur, which was when I turned the car around and came back, thinking you might need some help. So I am driving us back down the mountain.’

  Harley gaped as the old cook’s face went apple-cheeked and smiley again. She placed the black chauffeur’s cap firmly atop her white hair. ‘Buckle up, children!’ she said gaily, once more attempting to shut the doors on them.

  Harley stuck his left sneaker in the gap before she could close it. ‘But, wait! Does Mr Hong Kong know that you’re doing this?’ he squeaked. ‘You’re his cook!’

  If it was possible, the old lady’s apple cheeks became even more apple-y. ‘Mr Hong Kong knows and very much approves of me doing this because I am “Mr Hong Kong”. That old fellow you met before, Harley, is the bookkeeper of my little family enterprise – and my husband.’

  Qing was still laughing at Harley’s gobsmacked expression as the old lady fired up the limo’s engine with a roar and peeled out of the cover of the trees.

  Chapter 9

  Harley clutched the inside of the car door, feeling ill. ‘She drives like a maniac,’ he whispered. It felt like the old woman was taking hairpin corners at two hundred kilometres an hour.

  ‘I trust her,’ Qing replied softly, her head thrown back against her headrest, her eyes closed. ‘She’s a, how do you say …’

  ‘Boss,’ Harley gulped.

  ‘Yes,’ Qing murmured. ‘A boss. That is the right word, exactly.’

  No boy in his right mind ever stares at a girl when her eyes are open, so Harley took the only opportunity he was ever likely to have to study Qing closely.

  Maybe she was tired, or a little bit injured, because she appeared very pale. The pearl resting at the base of her throat seemed to merge with her skin so that it appeared almost invisible. As usual, her hair hung smooth, sleek and shining to her shoulders and none of her clothes dared to express a single wrinkle.

  Apart from her air of extreme neatness and the weirdness of her gear, she looked like any other kid his age. She did not resemble a shapeshifting dragon in the slightest. Harley, for the life of him, couldn’t work out how she did it.

  ‘It is not polite to stare,’ Qing said primly, her eyes still firmly closed. ‘Some things do not have answers.’

  Harley’s face flamed in embarrassment and he turned away quickly, looking out the window and instantly regretting it. A sheer drop fell away from the edge of the road they were careening down and, shuddering, Harley stared at his banged-up hands instead, because it seemed the safest thing to do.

  Near the base of Tai Mo Shan, they entered a sleepy village, the limo slowing enough to let the woman slide its massive, shiny bulk into a small concrete garage to the rear of a terraced restaurant. The terrace was dotted with empty tables, and festooned with bamboo cages full of wildly singing birds.

  ‘Where are we?’ Harley asked, forgetting to feel embarrassed as he took in the rickety ladders, bamboo-handled brooms, empty crates, broken sun umbrellas and old laminated signs in Chinese characters advertising handpainted dim sum menus resting against the walls of the garage.

  ‘Chuen Lung Village,’ Qing said, opening her eyes and focusing on Harley with difficulty. ‘Ah Po has a plan to get us into China without Grandmaster Chiu Chiu Pang’s knowledge.’

  ‘Does he know about the other vase?’ Harley gaped.

  Qing shook her head. ‘But he soon will, if Ah Po’s plan doesn’t work. His gaze is fixed on you. We can’t let it fall into his hands.’

  The old lady – Ah Po – opened the passenger doors of the limo outwards and hurried Qing and Harley up a set of concrete back stairs to the restaurant.

  As they entered the upper floor of the building, Harley could hear a burst of laughter from downstairs as hungry hikers started flocking into the restaurant, one of the last tasty places to eat before tackling the mountain.

  ‘Mui mui,’ Ah Po said to the grey-haired old woman knitting in one corner of the room they entered, who was seated on an uncomfortable-looking high-backed rosewood chair and dressed in a traditional Chinese pantsuit and hand-knitted cardigan. The woman looked up unsmilingly, and her eerie, cloud-white irises caused Harley to gasp aloud before he quickly clapped his hands over his mouth. Qing studied the blind woman’s face for a long moment, before visibly relaxing and looking around the small sitting room that was packed with carved rosewood furniture and ceramic and stone knick-knacks displayed in intricate wooden cabinets.

  Seeing her do this, Harley relaxed, too, for the first time in ages.

  The two elderly women conversed in Cantonese and appeared to be haggling over something, their voices growing louder and sharper as the bargaining continued. At one point the blind woman’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline while Ah Po explained something vigorously. The woman moved her hands outwards in front of her, as if measuring something the size of a puppy, and Ah Po indicated her assent with a grunt. The woman nodded abruptly after a great deal of full-volume shouting before ringing a bell. A tall man with close-cropped black hair wearing a daggy velour tracksuit and saggy black apron entered the room, looking at the three visitors out of the corner of his eye before the blind woman gave him instructions about whatever had been agreed. The man answered ‘Hóu!’ before shooting the three of them another anxious glance and stumping away,
wiping his hands on his apron as he went. The blind woman dismissed Ah Po, Harley and Qing with a wave.

  Smiling serenely, Ah Po led them through another room to the top of an internal staircase that descended into the restaurant below. But before Harley and Qing could set foot on the stairs, Ah Po turned and addressed Qing in Chinese.

  Qing frowned, looking down at herself, and nodded. Harley cried out as the black background of the girl’s embroidered tunic seemed to flow outwards, swallowing up all the colour in the rest of her outfit until she was dressed entirely in black. The billowing gold skirt, the rampant dragons, all had merged into the inky hue of her tunic.

  ‘How—?’ he breathed.

  Ah Po tilted her head to one side. ‘Still too formal for this time and place,’ she murmured. ‘Trousers, I think.’

  Almost faster than he could catch, the billowing skirt that fell to Qing’s ankles shifted into a pair of neat narrow black trousers.

  ‘Less shiny,’ Ah Po added shrewdly. ‘For daytime.’

  Harley watched in amazement as Qing’s collarless belted tunic and pants went matte black, the two C-shaped dragons that weighed down the ends of her belt melting away entirely. It was as if her clothes – just like the pearl – were actually a part of her.

  ‘Better?’ Qing asked, looking down quizzically at her legs in their unfamiliar casings.

  ‘It’s a little old-fashioned for someone so young,’ Ah Po said, eyeing her critically. ‘But it will do – especially where you are going.’ She gestured for Qing and Harley to follow her down the stairs.

  The ground floor of the building was another world entirely: a chaotic, self-serve dim sum joint, tiled from floor to ceiling in little chipped, square, white tiles. It featured heated, glass-fronted serving windows full of fried dumplings and spring rolls and long, cloth-covered tables stacked high with huge bamboo steamers holding dishes of braised chicken’s feet, steamed pork buns, sliced red roast pork, black bean spare ribs, braised watercress and sticky rice.

  Queues of people snaked around the restaurant helping themselves to food, while groups of diners chowed down at tables inside and others started to fill up the outside terrace. Harley stared in amazement at the constant flow of people, some of whom were more traditionally dressed like Ah Po and Qing, while most were in more modern clothes, like his.

  Ah Po pulled out two red plastic chairs for Qing and Harley at a small empty table with a laminated top near the base of the internal staircase. It had a plastic Reserved sign in the middle of it.

  ‘Uh,’ Harley said, pointing at the sign uncertainly.

  ‘It’s reserved for family,’ Ah Po explained crisply, ‘which we now are. That was quite a successful negotiation, if I do say so myself.’

  The old woman darted away towards the self-serve tables.

  ‘I thought the two old ladies were going to kill each other,’ Harley muttered to Qing as he watched Ah Po select dry black tea from an open display cabinet of different types of tea leaves, adding a generous scoop to a banged-up teapot and helping herself to hot water from a big silver urn. Harley and Qing watched as she deftly jammed the pot under one arm before continuing to collect morsels of food without appearing to have to line up. Lines of people simply parted to let the imperious old woman through.

  ‘The shouting is how they show they care,’ Qing murmured in reply.

  Ah Po returned, plonking a huge selection of dim sum on their table, together with the pot of freshly brewed tea.

  As the old woman sat down, the man from before, in the daggy velour tracksuit and saggy black apron, placed in front of Qing the largest steamed fish topped with spring onions and ginger that Harley had ever seen. He slapped a pitcher of water in front of the girl, too, and gestured shyly for her to eat.

  ‘I like being part of this family,’ Qing murmured gratefully as she proceeded to strip the fish to its bones. Harley watched in amazement as she finished the whole thing – even the eyeballs, tailfins and fish cheeks – before he could get started on his second dish. Before Qing could put her chopsticks down, the same cook brought Qing another steamed whole fish.

  Ah Po smiled and told Harley to close his mouth (All your chewed-up food is showing, dear). ‘You have a bus to catch,’ she said sternly. ‘In China.’

  Harley shut his mouth smartly as his stomach flip-flopped at the news. Soon he would be a whole continent away from his dad and Schumacher, with no word about them still.

  Ah Po only gave Qing enough time to finish a third whole fish and pitcher of water before the old lady was hurrying them out of the restaurant and back uphill, past a small graveyard filled with ancient curved, semi-circular headstones and fields of fresh watercress, rippling in the brisk breeze. In the distance, a few children in colourful jumpers and padded cotton jackets flew kites in the shape of eagles and goldfish, their bright shapes dipping and soaring against the pale blue sky.

  As the three of them passed a centuries-old temple with whitewashed walls and a blue ceramic tiled roof with curved ends, something made Harley look up at the large, wingless ceramic beast slouching along the apex of the roof. It twinkled in the morning sun, its fearsome, snarling face turned towards them – a horned, four-clawed dragon, glazed in shades of muted gold, the spines along its back raised like hackles in warning. Along the four downward-sloping, curved ridges of the temple, Harley saw four smaller, wingless ceramic dragons pointed upwards towards the primary beast, each of them crafted to appear as if they were alive and moving, their sharp-ridged spines raised. One was whipping its flame-like tail, another appeared to be in mid-leap off its ridgeline, a third clawed at the air with its front legs and the fourth appeared to be turning to scratch its own back, its gaze and open jaws directed down at passers-by.

  Harley nudged Qing, indicating the ceramic dragons, and she stared upwards, a smile breaking across her small face as she studied them, her head tilted to one side. Without breaking her stride, she uttered a single, serpentine word that seemed to lodge deep inside Harley’s skull for an uncomfortable moment, ringing there like an otherworldly bell, the sound expanding then contracting. As Ah Po looked back at the two children, urging them to follow her quickly with a hand gesture and a frown, Harley distinctly saw the fourth dragon snap its open jaws shut and stalk back up the ridgeline towards the apex dragon.

  The other three smaller dragons seemed to blink and shake themselves, like a wet dog might to get water out of its coat, before doing the same.

  Ah Po hadn’t noticed. None of the elderly villagers standing in their doorways or shopfronts even looked up as the four smaller dragons leapt off their individual ridgelines and joined the golden dragon along the ridge at the apex of the temple roof. All five turned and watched Qing and Harley pass the front of the temple for a moment before the larger beast leapt soundlessly and gracefully into the air, followed by the four smaller ones. They headed northward, undulating through the air, just as the bronze-coloured fúcánglóng had.

  Qing put a finger to her lips murmuring, ‘This is not known as the Dragon Stream Village without reason!’

  Ah Po pointed to a beige, two-door 1970s hatchback parked in the street with a triumphant flourish.

  ‘Our getaway car!’ she announced proudly. ‘No one is going to see us crossing the border into China. And no one alive,’ she gave them a broad wink, ‘is a better getaway driver than me.’

  Chapter 10

  Qing and Harley exchanged glances – the little beige hatchback was sagging distinctly to one side and the driver’s door didn’t appear able to open. With a shrug, Ah Po crawled into the driver’s seat from the front passenger seat and arranged herself behind the wheel.

  Qing then climbed into the back seat from the front of the car, leaving the seat next to Ah Po free for Harley.

  They set off down the mountain, Ah Po shifting gears like a crazed racing car driver. Overcome by the previous night’s events and the bucketload of fried food he’d just ingested, Harley fell asleep with his face mashed into the side window.