Free Dragon Moon by Carole Wilkinson

squares.
    “Kai will be brave,” the dragon was saying, “Kai can fight off bears and tigers. Many tigers. Take on five barbarians at once. Ping doesn’t have to worry.”
    “I’m not worried,” Ping said defensively.
    Kai went back to practising a new skill he’d discovered.Instead of shape-changing each time someone appeared on the horizon, he had learned how to create a different kind of illusion. It was a sort of mirage. His scales took on the colour of his surroundings, so that he blended into the landscape completely. Creating this new illusion took much less effort, and he could maintain it all day long.
    “What’s that smell?” Ping asked.
    Kai sniffed the air.
    “Deer?” he suggested hopefully.
    “No, it’s nearby.”
    It was Ping’s turn to sniff the air. She moved closer to the dragon.
    “It’s you!” She sniffed again and then held her nose. “You smell terrible.”
    She started examining the dragon, peering into his ears, between his toes.
    “Have you been cleaning yourself properly?”
    “Yes,” said Kai indignantly.
    “Is your stomach upset? What colour are your droppings?”
    “That’s Kai’s business, not Ping’s!”
    She touched his scales. More than a third of his old purple scales had fallen off now. The new scales had hardened and were a lovely deep shade of green like the leaves of the scholar tree in summer, but the old ones were dull and greyish. Ping was about to examine his teeth. She sniffed again.
    “What have you got behind your reverse scales?” she asked.
    “Nothing.”
    Like all dragons, Kai had five larger scales beneath his chin which lay in the opposite direction to all the others. This made them useful for storing things. When he was little, the reverse scales were so small Ping couldn’t fit a finger behind them. Now they were bigger, she could just dig into them. She pulled something out and held her sleeve over her nose.
    “What’s this?” she exclaimed. “It smells disgusting!”
    Kai didn’t answer. Ping examined the thing between her fingers and then dropped it to the ground. It was a long-dead sparrow. She also took out a dried fish and several large grubs of the sort that were found in rotting wood. Ping looked accusingly at the dragon.
    “Sometimes Kai gets hungry during the night,” he said.
    They passed beyond the borders of Yan and for two days didn’t meet a single person on the track. Ping was beginning to hope that they had finally travelled beyond the reach of the gossip about a girl and a shape-changed dragon. Then late in the afternoon, another welcoming party stopped them along the track. Anxious villagers begged them to stay for the night. The children were thin and didn’t have enough energy to play. These villagers had planted seeds and watered them from a shrinkingpond which was their source of drinking water. A few pale seedlings had pushed their way through the hard earth. Ping didn’t like their chances of survival.
    There was no banquet at this village, but the people performed a rain ceremony for Kai. The children had made small statues of dragons from the mud around their pond. They held them up above their heads and sang a song.
    “This is what we want you to do, dragon,” they sang. “Awake from your winter sleep and fly into the sky. Bring rain, so we won’t be hungry any more.”
    The next morning, the sky was still cloudless. There was no cheering when Ping and Kai departed, just unhappy muttering.
    Kai was very quiet as they walked that day. Ping stopped when she realised that he wasn’t alongside her. She walked back and found the dragon crouched by the side of the path. White mist was curling from his nostrils.
    “What’s the matter, Kai?”
    “Trying to make a cloud,” he said.
    The breath of humans would only turn to vapour when the weather was very cold, but Kai could produce misty breath whenever he felt like it. It usually meant that he was in a sulky mood. Kai was concentrating hard. The white mist