The Dragon-Weaver

Zhou the dragon-weaver plaited dragons his whole life.

The townsfolk called him Zhou the Dragon-Weaver; his given name had long since slipped everyone's mind. He had taken up the reed craft at thirteen under a master, and in twenty years his hands knew Xiang reeds, bamboo bones, cotton paper and tung oil better than they knew his own flesh and blood. By middle age, a dragon he plaited stood in the hall with even ribs and layered scales, and before the eyes were ever dotted, the creature already lifted its head, as though waiting for one thing.

What it waited for was the dotting of the eyes.

In this town the rule held: once a dragon lantern was finished, the weaver himself must lay the first stroke of the eye. Zhou dotted dragon eyes not with cinnabar but with ink. A slab of aged ink, ground deep into the night until the black shone, and when the brush fell, the drop settled into the dragon's pupil like a stone sinking into a deep well. The moment the ink entered the eye, the dragon lived — so the whole town believed, though no one had ever seen it leap. Yet from that stroke on, the lantern danced with a strange spirit; the eyes followed the lamplight as though they knew the way.

The dragon lanterns for Liu Half-the-Town were plaited by Zhou every single year.

Liu Half-the-Town was the local rich man. His surname was Liu, his given name Man, but everyone called him Half-the-Town — meaning half the shops on the street and half the hillside fields belonged to the Lius. How he had made his fortune, the townsfolk all knew in their hearts, yet none dared say it aloud. Years back, after the flood west of town, the Lius had bought up land cheap in the disaster, driving a dozen households to sell their forefathers' fields; then there were the debts at usurious rates, interest upon interest, and when they could not be repaid, they took fields, houses, and now and then a life. Beneath the stone lions at the Liu gate lay more than earth.

Zhou's eldest son was named Li. Zhou had named him hoping a carp would leap the dragon gate. Li was slender, his brows like his mother's, but his temper was hard and would not bow. At seventeen he went to work for the Lius, set to tend their dragon-lantern storehouse — the Lius kept so many lanterns, new ones plaited each year and the old never burned, only piled in the storehouse needing a keeper. Li had been there less than half a year when word went round that the hillside fields the Lius had newly seized had once belonged to a lone old man, driven out for owed rent and frozen to death in a ruined shrine. Li had known that old man; as a boy he had taken half a cake from him. Hot-blooded, Li went to the Liu court to demand account.

After that day, Li did not come home.

The Lius said Li had drunk cold wine at night, slipped into the back courtyard's water cistern, and was already stiff when they fished him out. Zhou went to claim the body; the Lius gave him only a thin coffin, saying the dead was already in it, best not disturb the departed. The coffin was wrong-light. Zhou pressed a hand to it; the Liu steward laughed and stopped him, saying the weather was hot, they had already packed lime, best not offend the master's eye.

Zhou carried the coffin home, and at night pried a seam. Inside was no Li.

A handful of earth, and a few of Li's old clothes.

He did not make a scene. Not that he did not want to — he dared not. One word from Liu Half-the-Town, and any door in town would close; Zhou still had a daughter to feed, and two hands that must plait dragons to live. He buried that coffin behind the hill, set up an unmarked stone, and from then on each Qingming, each Zhongyuan, each Shangyuan, he burned a stack of paper. The whole town knew it was an empty grave, yet no one spoke it plain. Before the empty grave there was new ash each year; behind it, wild grass each year; when the wind passed, both ash and grass fell still.

From that year, Zhou plaited dragons for the Lius with more care than before, and more distance. The dragons grew larger year by year, scales denser, the whiskers hanging to the ground, the head able to poke into the stone lions' mouths. Liu Half-the-Town was pleased, said Master Zhou's hands were gold, the dragons he plaited had living breath. Zhou only lowered his head; the red cord bit into the creases of his fingers, the reed-bone splinters stuck in his flesh, and he made not a sound.

When he plaited, he would often drape Li's old clothes over the weaving frame. Not for anyone to see — for himself. Cotton paper pasted over the dragon body wrapped that bit of cloth-grain; tung oil brushed again and again, and the smell of the old clothes mixed into the oil's scent, a scorched sweetness with a touch of mildew. Others who smelled it took it for lamp oil; only he could tell them apart.

That year was Liu Half-the-Town's sixtieth birthday, and he ordered an unprecedented great dragon, to be danced at Shangyuan and overshadow the whole town. Zhou took the commission and shut himself in the work-shed for two months. The reed bones he split himself — Xiang reeds split until thin enough to pass light, yet they would not crack when bent; the red cord he dyed himself, with the root of a mountain red-grass, a color that did not shine in sun but in cloudy weather seeped a blood-light. Nine sections to the body, each detachable; the head two feet high; the eyes two empty hollows.

The night of the dotting, it snowed.

Zhou ground the ink. That slab of aged ink he had kept thirty years; the tale was it held pine-soot and a little ambergris — of course false, every ink-seller in town boasted so. Yet that night the ink was truly different: ground open, a black fish seemed to rest at the bottom of the stone, and no stirring would disperse it. He lifted the brush; the tip hung above the dragon's eye a long while.

Wind slipped through the shed's cracks; the oil smell grew bitter. Outside was the town on the eve of Shangyuan, distant firecrackers, children running the snow with little lanterns, their laughter shattering in the cold. Inside, stillness; only the ink trembled faintly in the stone.

He laid the brush down.

First stroke, the left eye. The ink drop fell into the hollow like water into a dry well — no sound, yet the whole body quivered. Second stroke, the right eye. The two drops slowly rounded in the pupils, rounding into two black pills, black without bottom.

The dragon lived.

Not the living of a dancing lantern, but of one waking. The head lifted first; section by section, the nine-part body unfurled; the reed bones gave a very soft sound, like bones returning to place. It slid from the frame; the body of paper and oil touched the snow yet did not wet; the scales stood one by one; the whiskers swept Zhou's wrist, cold enough to pierce.

It did not go to the Lius' dance.

It turned and left the shed, toward the Liu great house — yet not to dance. It entered the storehouse and unstrung the old lanterns of years, winding them on its body; it entered the counting-room and rolled up the silver ingots, the land deeds, the debt notes. The Lius were all drinking at the front for the birthday; none heard the small sounds in the back court. At dawn they found the storehouse empty, the counting-room empty, and even the pair of stone lions at the gate nudged aside by the dragon's whiskers, like two pebbles in the way.

The dragon, bearing that load of unjust wealth, left town for the hills. On the snow it left a winding mark, like a river frozen to the ground.

Liu Half-the-Town searched, reported to the magistrate, who came to investigate. But the dragon was as though it had never been; no proof, only a thief with inside help who had carried off the wealth. The Lius, struck in their vitals, sold half their fields, closed three shops; and Liu Half-the-Town himself took to his bed the next spring, wheezing, saying he heard sounds in the water cistern in his dreams.

The townsfolk whispered the dragon had settled Li's debt.

That night Zhou went home, unwound the red cord from his hands; the reed splinters still lodged in his flesh, and he picked them out one by one until his palm was dotted with blood. He did not go gawk at the Liu house, nor seek the dragon in the hills. He only, on Shangyuan, sat the whole afternoon before the empty grave behind the hill.

Strange it was: from that year on, each Shangyuan the dragon returned.

Not to dance in town every year, but to circle that empty grave once.

On Shangyuan night the town's lamps were a sea, firecrackers filled the sky, everyone crowded the street-center to see whose dragon was fiercest. Yet the sharp-eyed would, around the hour of Zi, catch a faint light on the back hill — a dragon, twice the size of any common lantern, scales bearing old-year tung oil and snow, coming down the mountain path without a sound, circling the unmarked stone. It turned slowly, head lowered, as though knowing a person; the two black pills in its eyes, where the lamplight did not reach, shone black.

After one circle it rose and went into the hills; on the snow, again, a mark.

While Zhou lived, he went to the grave each Shangyuan to wait. He did not say what he waited for, only sat in a bamboo chair, still twisting red cord in his hand, as though ready to plait another at any moment. When the dragon came he did not move; when it circled he did not move, only wound the cord round and round his fingers. When the dragon left he rose, brushed the snow from his trouser-legs, and went home.

Later Zhou too passed. The year he went, the dragon came earlier than usual and circled the grave twice — once for Li, once for Zhou. The old folk said that night the wind carried a scorched sweetness of lamp oil, and in the sweetness a touch of mildew, like old cloth.

The town still plaits dragons now, but none dares let the Zhou art dot eyes with ink; all have changed to cinnabar. The dragons cinnabar dots make dance with noise, yet feel hollow; the eyes follow the lamplight, turning in a fluster, as though they had forgotten the way. Only the empty grave behind the hill, each Shangyuan, is glimpsed by some from afar — a dragon-shadow sweeping past, circling the stone, quietly, once.

When I was small I went with my grandmother to the back hill to set out lamps, and met it once. The dragon was larger than a lamp-shadow yet quieter than a man; the tung oil on its scales cast a cold light under the moon, and in its eyes the two drops of ink were black as two wells. It circled once, then suddenly stopped, the head slowly turning toward where I stood. In that instant I clearly felt something fall into its eyes — not light, but something sunk long and not yet fished up.

My grandmother pulled me to crouch, saying, do not look into the dragon's eyes.

She said, the dragon carried off wealth, but left behind a debt. Each year it circles, waiting for the person in that grave to walk out himself.

I have not dared look a second time. Each Shangyuan, the street-center dragons roar to the sky, yet I cannot help glance once toward the back hill. The mark on the snow is covered by new snow each year, yet I know it is still beneath. Like the print of reed splinters in Zhou's finger-creases — picked clean, the flesh still pitted, and when the wind passes, a faint itch, faint, as of someone, very far away, still owing a word left unspoken.

Endnote from the Midnight Recorder: To dot a dragon's eyes, the folk custom calls "opening the light"; when the craftsman lays his brush, the dragon gains a soul. In old village ways, after the lantern dance the dotting ink must be wiped with clean water, called "gathering the soul," lest the dragon live too long and turn on its maker. In the old affair of Willow Town told here, the dragon carried off wealth and yet circles the grave each year — whether it settles accounts for the riches or for the grievance pressed down, none can now decide. Only the mark before the empty grave behind the hill, on Shangyuan night, the snow cannot cover and the wind cannot fill.