The Dragon Speaks
THE DRAGON SPEAKS in a voice that overwhelms, confounds, and then destroys. “Build! Work!” cries the foreman! A boy cries from the scaffolding, is shushed and pulled away by an older man. Another worker lies dead and bloody, crushed beneath the stone. The Dragon bellows, and the men are shaken to their bones. “Bury him! Then back to work!” the foreman calls, and lashes break the midday air. “Work, and you’ll be fed! Your duty is to the emperor!”
I am the great destroyer. Bring to me mountains; I will break them into pieces. Bring to me trees, and they will feed my flame immortal. Bring to me men, and I will make them into stone and bones. I am the great destroyer, the dragon of the hills. Bring what I desire, and in return I will bring glory to your name.
A MOTHER COMES looking for her boy. “You took him from me! In Zhonghu Village, 4 months ago, you took him! Where is my son?” She screams in anger, pushing the guards, surrounded by faceless men, soldiers and peasants. All along the stony path, from Dandong to Jinshanling, she’d traced the Dragon’s back. “Not here ma’am,” a man replies. His hands and face were painted black from carrying charcoal along the wall. “Perhaps down there? The soldiers bring in more men every day; they’re sent to move the stone.” He points to the bottom of the steep grade, where tiny men swarmed like ants atop the wall. Large gray bricks are scattered at its end, where the Dragon’s head lies incomplete. She thanks the man for his suggestion, but her hope has reached its limits. As night closes upon her she sees the fires lit along the wall, the largest at the Dragon’s mouth. Her feet are tired from the miles and the weight of her pack, and the threads of her sandals begin to break. Upon arrival to the scattered stones, she looks at the many faces lit by the roaring fire. She sees the dullness of their eyes and the longness of their faces, but there is no recognition. “If not here, then where?” She thinks to herself. She sleeps among the rocks, surrounding by a multitude of strangers. In a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, the voice of the Dragon comes to her.
Your boy is mine- look at my bones. You’ve come to claim what’s long been eaten. See my scales, how they ripple like man’s blood? Ten thousand men have come before you, and now lie buried in their folds. You’ve come so far to look for him, to beg for me to give him back, but your efforts are misguided and uninformed. Run from me little mouse, and you might live to see starvation. Your tiny bones won’t make good stone---your thin blood is not worthy of my fire. Go from me and forget your boy, or be consumed in tooth and claw.
IN THE MORNING there is only smoke. She awakes to the hand of a young guard, maybe eighteen years old, pushing softly on her shoulder. “Lei?” She asks, the name of her son, wiping the sleep from her eyes and lifting herself on one arm. The guard speaks to her in a conciliatory tone. “No, ma’am. My name in Yin... You shouldn’t be here.” Her story, for perhaps the hundredth time in recent days, is told again. The soldiers took her boy, and she’d come looking. She notices the sympathy in the soldier’s eyes. While he speaks to her he gives her food, but what he says comes as a grave and unfortunate truth. “You have no food, no shelter, and no money. You’ve come very far, but now where will you go? Zhongu Village is much too far, even by horse; I’m afraid that you’ll surely starve before you reach it.” She wants to cry, but there are no tears. “Your boy isn’t here,” he says, consoling her, “but there’s still work to be done; I can’t speak for what lies ahead, but I know that there’s food paid for duty to the emperor.”
THE WOMAN IS put to work, closing the distance between the horizon and the Dragon’s head. “Bring to me mountains,” is the voice in her head as she carries the heavy stones, and she wonders if the others can hear it too. “Bring to me trees,” is the sound of her axe as she breaks down willow for the rigging and the lifts. The voice echos through the bamboo forests, intermingling with the sounds of fleeing beasts. “Bring to me men,” is the sound as years go by on the Dragon’s back, and new faces come in, as soldiers, slaves, or young men brought from Xiantian, but none of them familiar.
IN HER DREAMS she hears the faint and steady crackling of the forest, all in embers. The mountains are black and rising all around her. The Dragon’s voice sounds, “Work, and you’ll be fed!” and she begins collecting smoldering charcoal with her hands. Through the smoke-filled trees she sees the clouded outlines of other people, bending over in the flames. “How many of us are there?” she wonders, and she turns to find the wall now rising high above her head. There, hanging from a rising side, a boy is screaming desperately for his life. “Lei?” She calls to the boy, but the name is nothing but an absent breath. “LEI!” she screams as the child falls down, the air leaving her chest entirely as every piece of the world turns black.
SHE WATCHES the men as they control the fires. Overnight, the Dragon’s head became a black cloud spreading outwards from the ring of stones where she had slept. Now bright red flames spread along the edges of the ash, creeping slowly and destructively atop the hill. New faces, blackened from the smoke, lift her body from the embers. Four bricks high, and two bricks deep. She watches the new workers bury the dead and pick up where they left off. She notices the young faces as they lift her up, and stack the stones. How long have I been here? She lets her mind wander as the youngest of group comes to seal up the wall. She looks at him intently. The round curve of his chin, the softness of his eyes. The young man places the final brick; the sun is pulled away, and there in the dark she knows. My boy, I’ve finally found my boy!