As Harley slumbered the slumber of the exhausted on the unforgiving flanks of the mountain known as Tai Mo Shan, he imagined he was warm. Really, uncomfortably warm.
He frowned in his sleep. The ground no longer felt spiky and hard and rocky against his cheek. It felt soft and bunchy, like a rucked-up blanket. He imagined that he was being pitched and rolled around, as if he were lying on a particularly wobbly jumping castle. And there were distant muffled voices – one deep and booming, the other lighter, but familiar and resonant – conversing together. The deeper one had sounded sleepy at first, then shocked, then incredibly joyful. The other one had sounded faint and strained, but grew gradually stronger as the talking continued into the early hours of the morning.
Little by little, the air grew hotter until it began to feel unbearably hot – and the ground shifted again, this time sharply, as if a rug had been pulled out from under Harley’s body. As Harley opened his eyes, he had the sensation that he was rolling, then falling. He opened them fully to find that he was falling and gathering speed all the time. The crack in the ground that Harley had stuck his right leg into mere hours before had widened, becoming a yawning, snaking chasm across the entire summit of the hill.
Harley watched himself falling away from the early morning light breaking over Kwun Yam Shan, which was when he finally realised, with a sizzle of fear, that he wasn’t dreaming. A terrified yell burst out of him then, scattering wild birds, wheeling and cawing, into the sky far above.
Hands outstretched, Harley continued to fall through a fissure in the earth, unaccountably deep and wide and superheated, that hadn’t been there before. ‘AAAAAHHHHHH—’
Whump.
Every last molecule of oxygen was expelled from his lungs as he hit something warm and hard, but also smooth and slightly yielding. He started yelling again as he slipped down a treacherous, glassy expanse like a slide, only to be lifted lazily up towards one wall of the chasm, before being dropped down again, hitting the same warm, solid, but slightly bouncy surface. Harley slid sideways, still howling, and fell off the strange platform onto another platform further below. As he was raised up again, a burst of gusty, booming laughter rang out. Seemingly coming from the centre of the earth itself, it ricocheted off the walls of the great ravine, making Harley’s ears ring.
As he continued to be lifted, slowly but inexorably, back up towards the surface of Kwun Yam Shan, the weak dawn sunlight flared off a stretch of bronze-coloured scales – each one the size of a cartwheel – right by Harley’s head.
Harley’s insides twisted as he realised what he was sliding around on: the shifting coils of a colossal bronze-coloured dragon, far larger in size and scale than the azure dragon he’d seen in the alleyway. So big, Harley couldn’t see where the dragon ended or began. The way you try to keep a hacky sack up in the air with just your feet, the dragon was flipping Harley from coil to coil to stop him from falling straight down to the bottom of the chasm in the earth.
For a moment, a gigantic coil overhead blocked out the light before tightening around Harley painfully as he was deposited, gasping, onto the newly scarred surface of Kwun Yam Shan. He surveyed the top of the hill in amazement – it now appeared cracked open, like a broken egg.
Getting to his feet unsteadily, he almost fell over again trying to avoid the jet of boiling hot steam laced with sulphur that suddenly shot out of the massive chasm before him. His arm over his face to protect himself from the flume of gaseous vapour, Harley didn’t catch the titanic, snake-like shape leap swiftly from its place of long slumber. It seemed to ride unseen waves in the air, undulating away to the north at tremendous speed, before being lost to sight.
The crevice belched forth another acrid jet of superheated air. Gagging and reeling back from the fumes, Harley stuck his face inside his bomber jacket and fled back down the hill that had seemed so impossible to climb in the dark.
He pulled up abruptly as he reached the bottom of Kwun Yam Shan. Like the weirdest mirage you could possibly imagine, Mr Hong Kong’s elderly cook was standing there, in the middle of the wilderness, her hands clasped patiently together in front of her. Warily, Harley walked all the way around her at a safe distance just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. She was dressed in the same plain, long-sleeved Chinese-style dress she’d been wearing the day before, her snow-white hair still scraped back into a severe bun. The only things that were missing today were her gravy-stained apron and smoke-stained wok. Her smiling eyes followed Harley as he completed his recon.
‘Hello, Harley.’ The old woman warmly extended one gnarled hand to be shaken.
Without warning, Qing peeked out from behind the elderly cook, wearing her usual floor-length historical clobber, looking completely unruffled and wrinkle-free.
Harley knew she hadn’t been there a moment ago. The shock of seeing her made him sit abruptly on the ground, his head in his hands, convinced now that he really was hallucinating.
‘You,’ he muttered, flapping one hand in the direction of Qing’s embroidered black slippers. ‘I’m pretty sure I killed you. And you, lady—’ He glared at the sensible tan court shoes of the old cook. ‘I’m pretty sure we left you, and your wok of death, back in the kitchen at Mr Hong Kong’s …’
‘Mr Hong Kong?’ The woman let forth a peal of delighted laughter. ‘Is that what you call him? How extraordinary.’
Harley shielded his eyes and looked up at them both with a deeply pained expression. ‘He answered when I dialled Hong Kong on the special phone my dad gave me. I didn’t know what else to call him because he never said who he was …’ His voice trailed away. Harley couldn’t keep his unspoken fear for his dad from his tone.
The old woman’s wrinkly, smiley, apple-shaped cheeks dropped immediately, her expression turning serious. ‘Where is your father now?’
Harley’s gaze dropped to his feet and his shoulders lifted in a small shrug. He blinked hard, struggling not to cry.
‘What did the old man promise you?’ the cook said softly.
‘He said the favour still stands,’ Harley replied, squinting upwards. ‘Whatever that means.’
To his confusion, she replied, ‘And we will honour that promise, never fear.’
She extended a small, crooked hand to Harley and yanked him to his feet. Her grip was surprisingly strong, although her fingers were bent out of shape with age and use.
Still holding Harley’s hand, which didn’t feel weird but strangely comforting, the old cook turned and addressed Qing as if she were resuming a conversation that had been interrupted. ‘And what did the fúcánglóng tell you?’
Harley could hear the wonder underlying the old woman’s words. ‘The what?’ he exclaimed, looking from one to the other.
Qing turned her azure-rimmed black eyes on Harley briefly. ‘Dragon of volcanoes and hidden places,’ she replied, then returned her attention to the old woman. ‘He said there was another vase. The old magician who imprisoned me and my sisters—’
‘Tiān Àn Jìn?’ the old woman queried sharply. ‘The imperial magus of the Diamond King of Heaven known as Mo Li Qing? The very same?’
Qing nodded. ‘When I awakened the ancient one, he told me that the magician intended to disperse the vases across the four corners of China, but that he only made it as far as the Taishan mountain range of the Southern Yue people before all sightings of him ceased.’
‘There was another vase?’ the old cook repeated, trying to quell the eagerness in her voice.
Qing’s eyes seemed to glow gold for a moment. ‘The fúcánglóng said the painted dragon upon it was rumoured to be vermilion in colour.’
At the bewildered look on Harley’s dirt-streaked face, Qing added dryly, ‘Red. It was red.’
‘Oh.’ Harley’s face cleared.
‘The legendary Zhu Long vase!’ the old cook breathed. ‘It is a day of wonders, indeed. So you find yourself in an interesting predicament, lóng tǐ,’ she added sternly, addressing Qing with the same honorific Mr Hong Kong had used. ‘Go directly to the Wudang Mountains, scene of the last stand between your father’s and your uncle’s forces, or hunt down the vase bearing the image of the vermilion dragon – over two thousand years after it was last seen.’
‘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.