Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [69]
Little Li appreciated Suren’s enthusiasm and patiently answered his questions until the interpreter grew tired and stopped translating.
After a simple, spicy dinner, we were shown beds in the back room of Master Li’s wooden house. Suren slept next to me, but my thoughts hovered over Marco, sleeping close, just beyond him. Finally, long after midnight, I slept.
Before daybreak, Master Li shook us awake. He pointed toward the sky, and I could hear the caws of birds. “Are those vultures?” Suren asked.
Without pausing to eat, we left the house. The other village men were armed and ready. Master Li gave us each a huge knife and a basket. He told us to stay quiet as we followed him.
As we drew closer to the trap in the jungle, the sounds of birds grew louder. A little light outlined the mountains to the east. Master Li indicated we should wait while he went ahead. He held a long stake with a blade attached. I strained to see what he was doing. He stopped and looked at something, then poked it several times and shouted back at his men. We dashed forward.
Suren and Marco got there just before I did. A bloody, hideous sight and stench struck me as I reached the creature. It indeed looked like a dragon, long and scaly and low to the ground, flatter than I had expected. Birds had already plucked out the eyeballs. Its back was covered with hard scales and horny knobs. Half its length was a huge long pointed tail. Its fearsome head was as big as the dried one we had seen the previous day.
A villager immediately began to drain the dragon’s blood into a leather bag. “Dragon’s blood is good for fighting infections,” Little Li told us.
Then Master Li flipped the beast over onto its back. A gash was ripped from its neck to mid-belly. Bile rose in my throat and I had to look away for a moment. Master Li took a knife and cut the creature open the rest of the way. With expertise, he immediately found a small pear-shaped organ, the gallbladder. He held it up, still dripping. He handed it to Marco, who accepted it as if it were pure gold.
This gall was the precious medicine that might cure the Khan’s swollen feet.
The village men dropped their knives and baskets and began dancing around the dead dragon with joy. Marco placed the gallbladder into a small bamboo container he had brought, and held it high for all to see.
“For the Great Khan, may he live ten thousand years!” he shouted in Mongolian.
Suren and I shouted back, “May he do so!”
That was the easy part of our mission. Capturing live dragons would be far harder.
Little Li gestured for us to follow him down to the river, where we could hear men shouting. The muddy path sucked my feet every time I lifted one.
At the river’s edge, the trap had worked better than expected. Little Li said we had brought good luck from the Emperor. In the trap were six juvenile dragons, all about the length of a span of two arms, fingertip to fingertip.
Although smaller than the dead beast we had just seen, they were far more frightening. They were thrashing and biting each other, ripping at the rope, trying to escape. Some had damaged the skin on the sides and tips of their jaws, exposing the bone.
Though they were young, I could see how powerful their jaws were, filled with sharp teeth. One had a chicken in its mouth and flailed its head side to side to rip it apart.
Little Li told us to stand on a bank overlooking the scene. Then he strode to the trapdoor. His fellow villagers fell back in respect. He tossed off his coat and I saw bulging muscles in his wiry arms.
In one move, he slit a small opening in the net, grabbed a dragon by the tail, and pulled it swiftly out of the trap.
I grabbed Suren’s arm when I saw the live dragon outside the net. A villager tossed a thick wet cloth over the creature’s head. Little Li pinned it down by straddling its hindquarters, grabbing the base of the neck with one hand and the base of the tail with the other hand. Quickly, another villager wrapped a thick rope around the creature’s snout, stopping its snapping. A