Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [68]
Master Li opened a cloth-wrapped package, revealing six sharp blades of steel as long as a hand could stretch. They glinted in the firelight. Li held one up and offered it to Marco, who took it carefully. “Feel the blade.”
Marco put his finger on the swordlike edge. “How can such a small blade kill a beast ten paces long? How can you get close enough?”
“Time to set our traps. Follow me.” Li carefully wrapped the blades.
Bundled in warm coats, we followed the stocky dragon hunter and his son along a trail by the stream toward the river. We wore boots, but the villagers went barefoot, making it easier to walk on the muddy trails. Several boys followed us, prancing and singing hunt songs. Capturing a dragon was a village event. As the late-afternoon sun sank behind the mountains, we walked on a trail through the jungle to a place where Li had spotted a dragon a few days earlier.
“See?” Li pointed to marks on the ground, and we crowded around to look. A large furrow in the soil cut across the path and made a trail through the woods. Something large and menacing had passed here not long before.
“It will come back the same way tonight,” Li continued. He gave orders to several villagers, who began to dig deep holes along the dragon’s trail, some close together, some far apart. Master Li lashed his sharp blades to the ends of sturdy stakes. Then he buried them in the holes along the trail, with the blades sticking out slightly aboveground, glittering wickedly. The villagers filled the holes and covered the blades with soil.
The dragon master spoke in a near whisper, as if the creatures could hear him. “When the beast returns tonight, he will strike against the iron blades with such force that they will enter his breast and rip him down to the navel. He will die on the spot.”
“Why do you bury six blades?” Suren wanted every detail.
“We never know exactly where the beast will crawl on his return. Sometimes we plant six blades and the creature misses them all. That could happen tonight.”
“How do we capture them alive?” Marco’s eyes shone in the flickering torchlight.
Li’s son shook his head. “Much more difficult. Come.” Little Li was wiry and monkey-like, with long arms and a broad grin.
We followed Little Li to the riverbank, where we could see five-toed footprints of some heavy creature in the mud. There, several villagers were assembling a trap made of bamboo stakes, a box frame long and wide, with fishnet of sturdy rope covering the sides. One end, near the water’s edge, had a trapdoor. The other end had a hook for bait—a live chicken, sacrificed for the Great Khan. Several smaller dead birds were scattered near that end, in the hopes of luring more than one creature to feed.
Marco and Suren examined the trigger mechanism with interest. I was bursting with questions but did not dare open my mouth. I wished to experience the thrill of this hunt by watching.
Suren did not want to leave when the traps were set, although it was getting dark. “Can we stay here all night and watch?”
Little Li, only a few years older than Suren, smiled and shook his head. “The dragons would smell us and would not come out of the water. Or else eat us.”
Before returning to the village, the headman made everyone gather in a circle. Then he spoke in his own tongue, making gestures toward the ground, toward the sky, toward the people. It appeared to be a ritual, and we didn’t ask for a translation until after it had ended and we were walking back to the village.
Our interpreter explained. “He talked to the Great Dragon, emperor of earth and sky. He asked permission to kill one dragon. He said you will take gall from dragon back to make the Great Khan well. He asked dragon to bring good luck.”
After the hunting party returned to the village, Suren was lively and talkative. He seemed to have forgotten both his worry about me and his distrust of Marco. “What does the dragon’s meat taste like? Can we eat some