Free Dragon Moon by Carole Wilkinson Page A

surrounded him, but evaporated as it rose. Ping put her arm around his damp shoulders.
    “You can’t achieve the impossible, Kai,” she said.“It’s just a story that’s told about dragons. It doesn’t mean they really can make rain where there are no clouds.”
    They both watched the mist rise and evaporate. Kai made soft, sad sounds.
    Every day they moved closer to the area on the map where Dragon’s Lament Creek was marked. When they finally reached areas where no one had heard of them, Ping decided it was safe to travel on roads again. Whenever they met travellers, Ping asked if they had heard of Dragon’s Lament Creek. She spoke to many people—a merchant, an imperial messenger, a family moving south to find better land—no one had heard of such a place.
    One morning they met a shaman. He was an old, old man. He wore a short gown and his bare legs were strong and brown. They shared a midday meal with him.
    “Where are you going?” Ping asked him.
    “My destination isn’t a place in the world. It is more a peaceful state of mind that I am seeking.”
    He told them that he had spent his whole life walking the lands between the Yellow River and the Great Wall.
    “Do you know of a place called Dragon’s Lament Creek?” Ping asked.
    The old shaman shook his head. “If there was such a place, I would have passed it.”
    Ping watched the old man walk away.
    “We’re never going to find it.”
    “Perhaps we can find the next place on the map,” Kai said hopefully. “What was it called? Crooked Dragon Village?”
    “It wasn’t called Crooked Dragon Village,” Ping said. “It was Quiet Dragon—”
    She stopped and pulled out the silk square. She remembered how Liu Che had also misunderstood one of the place names. The language of the Empire was very economical with the sounds it used. Each written character meant something different, but sounds were used again and again. This meant many sounds could have different meanings.
    Ping read out the name of the first destination. “Long Dao Xi.”
    She found a stick and drew several other characters in the dry earth.
    “These characters are all pronounced
long,”
she said.
    Kai peered at them. “Kai only knows the one which means ‘dragon’.”
    Ping drew other characters that were pronounced
dao
and
xi
. Kai didn’t understand what she was doing.
    Each of the three words had several other meanings. She repeated the words, trying not to picture the characters in her mind, instead just listening to the sounds.
    Kai suddenly understood what she meant. He pointedto the west.
“Xi,”
he said. “It also means west.” He mimed walking.
    Long dao xi
could also mean ‘seek westward’.
    The map transformed before Ping’s eyes.
    “The words don’t have the same meaning as the characters, but of other words that sound the same.”
    An idea suddenly exploded in her mind.
    “It’s a puzzle!” she exclaimed. “They aren’t place names at all. They’re directions. Danzi is telling us how to find the dragon haven.”
    There wasn’t a choice of three dragon places that they could go to. There wasn’t even one. The name of the dragon haven wasn’t on the map. They had to find a secret place by following Danzi’s coded instructions.
    She read out the next place name, Qu Long Xiang, and wrote other characters with the same sounds.
    “Qu!”
said Kai triumphantly, pointing to the character that meant ‘go’. Ping drew two characters that were pronounced
xiang
. One meant ‘box’, the other ‘village’.
    “Yes. ‘Go to something village’.”
    Ping went back to the
long
characters that she had written. Rising Moon Village, Prosperous Village, Steep Village. There were many possibilities.
    She read the last place name. Ye Long Gu. The characters told her that
long gu
meant ‘dragon valley’. She pointed to the other characters that were pronounced
long
. It could mean ‘basket’, ‘hazy’ and ‘deaf’.
    “Perhaps there is a valley where