Dragon Dance

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. A cold shiver ran down Kota’s spine, despite the warm sun shining. There’s no such thing as dragons, she reassured herself. She could see clouds forming in the distance and could smell rain on the air. Sunshine and rain at the same time means the dragons are having their dances. She shrugged her pack higher on her shoulders, said aloud, “Paper Drama,” for reassurance and kept walking.

Paper Drama danced in her head, stories told to frighten children into obedience, to teach or to entertain. Wild stories of boys sent from heaven in a giant peach or of spider demons that can shift forms between spider and woman to lure the unsuspecting. All nonsense she thought, agitation making her walk faster. She had made the mistake of questioning once, ‘without knowing, you can be at peace like Nyorai’. What does that even mean? For asking she’d gotten the answer in scrubbing the temple floors on her knees. It had taken her hours and she was denied supper. The lesson was ‘ignorance is bliss’ and she stopped asking questions but her mind continued to buzz, what’s on the other side of the valley, how was the temple bell made and more importantly how did it find its way up the mountain and into the bell tower when it was so large and heavy? Was the tower built around it? But it was eight flights above the bottom level, how did they get it up there?

She tripped and nearly fell, so caught up in her thoughts that she had stopped paying attention to her surroundings. She shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it and promised herself not to lose herself in the past or her flights of fancy. A promise she hadn’t yet successfully kept.

The rain smell was stronger now but the sun was still shining brightly overhead. She brought her focus more sharply to the present, as they had tried to teach her in the temple. Feel the air move in and out of your lungs, feel the ground beneath your feet, hear nature around you. She stopped, tilting her head to listen. She thought she heard, far in the distance, strange music. Only a moment and then the breeze shifted and the memory of the sound was so thin, so tenuous that she dismissed it, thinking that she had obviously just imagined it.

She looked around to get her bearings, this would not be the first time that she got hopelessly lost because of her daydreaming. Just follow the valley, how could I possibly get lost, she wondered. Still, there was something unsettling about the music she imagined, so ghostly and not like anything she’d heard before. She realized she had not been able to concentrate for three minutes before her unruly mind began its meaningless wandering again. She sighed and was glad that she had left the temple. She was clearly not cut out for it.

She walked on and tried to admire the scenery, noticed how the grass grew long enough she could run her hands over the tops without stooping as she traveled. It was too early for seeds to come out, weighing it down and sucking up all the energy available, so it was many shades of dark, rich green. She turned to look behind her and saw the path she’d forged slowly disappear as the grass she’d trampled rose back up to erase the signs of her passing. She decided to walk more softly and leave even less of a trace behind her. She felt the soft drops of rain and tilted her face up to catch it and feel the warmth of the sun on it at the same time. She imagined a dragon dance and stumbling across one. The valley narrowed up ahead of her and she started the climb up it, picturing bright red, blue and white scales swirling in time to their otherwordly music. The sounds harsh, abrasive but holding a strange beauty all its own. The music rose until it drowned out her other thoughts, her steps falling in time as she crested the shallow rise and began the descent to the valley floor where it widened to hold a blue lake. She looked out over a great thunder of dragons. She stopped, staring in awe at the spectacle before her. There were red and blue and white dragons and dragons of every other color as well. Patches of rain came and went in the bright sun. The music continued and as she listened it seemed to change shape and texture as though each dragon was contributing to a melodic, cacophonic symphony.

She walked forward in a trance, trying to piece together what was happening. She found herself among them, before her a tail of shimmering green scales, the color of the grasses that surrounded her but touched with the shine of diamonds. It was so beautiful she reached out to touch it and found it to be warm and smooth as the tail passed under her hand in its dance. It jerked away from her and she suddenly found herself staring into an emerald eye above a mouthful of deadly teeth. All at once it seemed as if she was surrounded by jeweled eyes and thousands more teeth. A heavy silence spread from where she stood until the quiet was deafening. The teeth directly before her parted and from them she heard, “Human!” so loud her ears rang.

Pure chaos was released. Dragons scattered. Great splashes came from the lake as dragon after dragon dove in to hide, dragons crashed into each other, tumbling into tables, knocking piles of fruit to the ground. The silence was broken by shrieks and roars of terror and Kota stood rooted to the spot in shock.

The area immediately around her was clear of dragons, but here and there they stood in groups of three and four, huddled together, clinging to each other. The sounds of fear and flight petered back into silence as the hoard found hiding places or decided they had nowhere to go.

“I’m sorry,” Kota said aloud. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She took a step forward and the dragons nearest shrank back. A pot nearby crashed to the ground and the thunder of dragons collectively jumped. She heard a groaning grumble off to her left that could have been a nervous laugh. Or maybe a diabolical one considering the company. Then a murmur rose that coalesced into, “Seiryu. Where is Seiryu? We need him.”

A great blue dragon, scales and eyes shining like sapphire rose from the back of the crowd, flowing through the air above as through water and landed silently before Kota. “I am here. Why do you disrupt our conference, Human?”

“I was just passing through.” Kota wondered how she felt so calm, decided it must be because none of this was real and the stress of leaving the predictability of the temple for the unknown had ramped up her wandering mind to unprecedented levels. “Wait, how can I understand you?”

“It is the nature of dragons to communicate with all life,” answered Seiryu. “It is why you have hunted us nearly to extinction.”

“I’ve never hunted any dragons.” Seiryu narrowed his great shining eyes at her. “Oh, you mean humans in general. I thought it was because you were destroying villages with your fiery breath and killing cattle and innocent young women.”

Seiryu sighed. “These are all misconceptions. Breathing fire is virtually impossible. It takes a ridiculous amount of concentration. Dragons spend decades in practice and very rarely ever achieve it. And as far as your virgin sacrifices go, they aren’t worth the effort. Not enough calories in a young woman to warrant the expense to eat one. Besides, we are mostly vegetarian.”

Dragons had been creeping back out of the lake and they all were inching closer. She realized they were surrounding her now. Highly aware that she was a young woman, were they lying to her about that? Well, an older girl. Ok, a teenager. She was a teenager. Fine, fourteen. All right! She’d be fourteen in two weeks. She looked around at the brilliant dragon colors around her. And the teeth. So many teeth and started to accept the idea that this wasn’t all her out of control imagination. She wondered what Lady Tomoe would do in this situation. Probably pull out her bow and arrow and start shooting. Kota would save earth worms during rainstorms, she could hardly hope to inflict an injury on any of these magnificent creatures. Finally, she blurted out, “You’re all so beautiful!”

The great, blue head of Seiryu jerked back and whispers rose and fell all around her. “What did you say?”

“You’re beautiful. All of you. I’ve never seen such beauty in all my life.” She reached her hands out as if to hold Seiryu between them. He tilted his head to peer at her with his right eye before he slowly lowered his head to her hands and stared into her face with both eyes.

“Where are you from?” Seiryu’s breath was warm on her face and smelled of honey and wildflowers.

She turned and gestured up the valley, the dragons behind her shrank back. “The Mountain Temple of Nyorai,” she said quietly.

Seiryu’s eyes narrowed again, “No,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Oh,” she said, ‘My people were from Calm Hill Prefecture, but there is nothing there now.”

Another murmur rose up from the dragon crowd around her. Seiryu sat back on his haunches and looked around. “The favorable weather is turning. We must disperse before it is too late. If you are meant to be, you will meet us again the next time there is both sun and rain in Abundant Prefecture, in the Bitter Valley in three weeks time.”

Dragons were quietly flying away or sinking into the lake. Seiryu turned away as well. “If I’m meant to be what?” Kota asked.

Seiryu rose into the air and circled. As he passed her, he said, “We will see.”

More quickly than she could have thought possible, the dragons disappeared, taking their trays and tables, fruits and pots with them. In a moment she stood alone in the valley, the glassy surface of the lake showing no evidence of the turmoil of dragons. She watched as the trampled grass rose back up, erasing the signs of the dragons’ dance.