The Dragonwife
By S. Evans

Po Hua was fourteen the first time she saw the dragonwife with her ten thousand sons. She had seen the wormlings before, of course; in the spring, the shallow lake flooded with them. They swam down the irrigation channels into the rice paddies and lived amongst the roots and puddles. By early summer, the paddies glowed so brightly with their false-fire that it was possible to work by night as well as by day.

The dragonwife was lying on her belly on a flat stone that jutted out from the lakeshore. Her smooth scalp sparkled with nacre in the sunlight, sending rainbow hues shimmering down her spine and across her back. Splay-fingered hands were cupped, supporting her chin, and she trailed her toes in the water. False-fire flashed green and gold about her rock. The sinuous backs of the wormlings broke the surface of the water in rippling patterns as they crowded close to their mother.

Po Hua sat down on the edge of the bank and began digging in the mud with a short, pointed stick. It was bad manners for a person to greet the dragonwife first, or to acknowledge her presence in any way. So Po Hua pretended to dig for the little purple snails that burrowed in the mud. She tried hard not to stare, but she could not help risking a few curious glances toward the spirit-creature as she jabbed at the mud. Occasionally she heard snatches of humming from the dragonwife's direction; the noise was off-key and not nearly nasal enough for purity.

The humming broke off on a warbling note as the dragonwife looked up and saw Po Hua watching her. She smiled, pearl-colored lips reflecting the sunshine. "Hello, little sister," she called, in an amicable tone.

Feeling her ears go red and hot underneath the broad brim of her hat, Po Hua called back, "Hello, older sister." She spoke without thinking, the question slipping past her lips. "What are you doing?"

That pearlescent smile grew larger even as Po Hua flushed crimson again and hunched her shoulders. Fortunately, it appeared that the dragonwife did not mind the question. She sat up on the rock and knotted a piece of cloth around her waist as she answered. "I am watching my sons eat each other. What are you doing?"

Po Hua's mouth fell open, her expression not polite in the least. "Eat each other," she repeated, wrinkling her nose with distaste. Belatedly she remembered that she had been asked a question. "I'm digging for snails."

As Po Hua poked at the mud energetically with her stick, the dragonwife rolled off her rock and stretched. The motion bared her flat chest to the sun, and she extended her arms over her head, before dropping her hands to her sides and wading forward.

"That is what they do," she said, sloshing closer with every step she took. "That is the way of things. My sons eat each other, and grow larger. Perhaps two hands of them will become firedrakes and fly south." She waded out of the water entirely. "What did the snails do to you, that you are digging for them?"

"They didn't do anything to me. I dig them up to eat because they taste good," Po Hua said, dropping the stick as the dragonwife advanced. She couldn't help noticing that the spirit-creature's eyes were huge and black and lashless, although the rest of her features were nearly human. "If they're your snails, I'll stop."

"Ah," the dragonwife said, as she sat down nearby. She was short, the height of a ten year old child, her head well below Po Hua's eye level.

Staring fixedly at the hole she'd dug in the mud, Po Hua saw a nacre-colored knee out of the corner of her eye. A silence composed of lake soundsCCreeds rustling, water splashingCCenveloped the shore. It seemed to stretch onward forever before Po Hua, uncomfortable, asked, "What happens to them when they fly south?"

"They are eaten, or they eat other drakes." The dragonwife sounded indifferent as she picked up Po Hua's discarded digging stick. Her fingers were long and slender, widening out to huge pads like soup spoons at their tips. "Perhaps one or two will become dragons, after a hundred years." She poked at the mud, splattering both herself and Po Hua liberally. "Do you have a name, curious little sister?"

"You can call me Mei Mei," countered Po Hua, wiping at a glob of mud that adorned her nose. She had heard the stories; to give a spirit-creature your name was to give it power to control you. Almost, she admired her own cleverness: Mei Mei meant little sister, in the oldest language. Emboldened by her own creativeness, she looked directly at the dragonwife and asked, "Do you have a name?"

Again, the dragonwife seemed amused instead of insulted by Po Hua's boldness. "That is a carefully chosen name." She tilted her head to the side, sucking absently on a finger before adding, "You may call me... Tai Tai Yan."

Po Hua knew enough of the oldest language to decipher that >name': it meant >wife person'. She noticed, as well, that the spirit-creature had not given a direct answer to her question. Before she could ponder this more fully, the dragonwife demanded, "Show me how to dig for snails." The stick was thrust back at Po Hua in an imperious manner. "Now."

When Po Hua finally straggled home that evening, her mud covered state earned her a beating. Her father scowled; her mother screeched. Even the basket of snails that she supplied for dinner did not redeem her in their eyes. And she earned a second beating when she mentioned that she had spoken to the dragonwife on the lakeshore. Her mother's screeching doubled in volume, and her father declared to anyone who would listen that it was high time that his daughter was married. Her back still smarting, Po Hua decided to say no more.

The month before her wedding, Po Hua found a basket of snails on her windowsill. Fingering them in the darkness, she smiled. Perhaps the dragonwife had not forgotten her entirely, after all.

She had gone down to the lakeshore several times over the last two seasons, but all she had ever found had been lakeshore mud and brittle reeds. The snails still lived in the banks of the lake, and the cranes still nested on the further shore, but she had seen no signs of the dragonwife's occupation of the area.

It was, she supposed, just as well. The parents of her husband-to-be would have thought it bad luck to attract the attention of a spirit-creature more than once. The marriage negotiations would have ended abruptly, and earned her another beating from her father, at the least.

Her fingers stilled on the shells. What would they say if they knew that she had been given a gift by the dragonwife? Even a gift as harmless and worthless as snails? Her stomach curdled as she considered that thought.

With a sigh, she picked up the basket of shells and padded out of the house, toward the lakeshore. Shells clicked and rattled as they bumped against each other. At first, the noise seemed over-loud, but she rapidly became accustomed to it. By the time she reached the lakeshore, she hardly heard the percussive noise.

The sound of something breaking the water drew her attention; she dropped the basket as the dragonwife swam to shore. "Tai Tai Yan."

"Do Mei Mei," replied the spirit-creature. "You brought my gift back. Why?"

Po Hua's mind spun. "They are your snails," she said finally.

"I give them to you," the dragonwife said, waving a hand through the air. "They are your snails now."

"This is their home," Po Hua said, scrabbling for a reason that she could give that would not offend the spirit-creature unduly. Dragonwives had been known to cause flooding and famine, although this one never had. It was best not to annoy her.

The dragonwife turned on her heel without replying and waded back into the lake. Po Hua waited, breath catching in her throat, but the lake waters remained placid. When the sun began to show over the horizon, she began the long walk home.

She did not see the handful of pearls, hidden at the bottom of the basket, that had spilled out into the mud.

The next winter, the Yellow Dragon shone so brilliantly as he flew through the night sky at solstice that the villagers could work by the light he cast in the heavens. The elders called it an auspicious omen, nodding and cackling to themselves. But the wormlings did not appear a few weeks later, as they always had. They did not come at all, and the rice grew slow and stunted.

By early summer, the rice was beginning to die in the paddies. Everyone in the village had tightened their belts. Po Hua's husband sucked nervously at his moustache until it was thin and ratty, worry-lines deepening on his brow as he waded through their plots, examining the rice-damage. Two days later, he sold three of their four goats at market in the next valley over, to obtain enough rice to alst them the season. The news he brought back was disquieting; it seemed that everywhere else the rice grew tall and green and plentiful.

As the summer wore on, people began burning incense to the little god of disaster, petitioning him to ignore them. Then the summer fever swept through the village, and even the most heartfelt of prayers went unanswered. News from the world outside the village stopped altogether when the next trader to pass through heard of the fever deaths.

She did not know her name during the weeks when she burned with the fever. She remembered alternately sweating and shivering, and the sinus-burning feel of thin rice gruel being spooned down her throat. Her husband's face hovered above her, distorted with worry. His voice echoed in her ears, alternately ballooning into a shout and shrinking to a whisper. Occasionally she tried to tell him about the snails and the dragonwife, but the ability to create coherent sentences eluded her, and the phrases she did manage to whisper, he ignored.

Once she was lucid again, her mother told her that he had not left her side for five days. He had given their last goat to the village temple, pleading with the gods to spare her life. Apparently, they had listened. Although her hair fell out in great clumps, she grew stronger. Although the new life that had taken root in her belly baked away in the fever, she was alive.

Exhaustion was as much a part of her life as touch or breath. When her husband collapsed, there was no goat left to sacrifice; instead, she muttered reckless promises in a broken voice to the dragonwife as she boiled rice gruel. She spooned the greyish stuff down his throat one dribble at a time; the sickness had swollen his tongue and blackened his lips. His fever burned high, turning his skin a parchment yellow as he called out in a broken voice for his mother, his grandmother, his first wife.

It took him four days to die, and by the end of the second day, Po Hua fell silent. At sundown on the fourth day, Po Hua sacrificed her good shirt, cutting it into white ribbons and tying them to the lintel of the house she had shared with her husband. Her eyes were dry; her fingers did not tremble. The shorn ends of her hair blew against her cheekbones; she would not deny his ghost any honor she could give to ease it to the afterlife.

Stepping back, she watched the frayed ends of the material flutter in the sere night wind. They she turned away, walking aimlessly through the rice paddies, feet sinking to mid-calf in the mud.

The sun was climbing past the horizon by the time her wandering path took her to the lakeshore. The soles of her feet were cut and scratched, and the drying mud caked on her legs was beginning to itch. The sensation was a welcome distraction from grief; she turned and stared into the rosy light, willing herself blind.

"Mei Mei." The voice came from behind her, and was as unexpected as it was unforgettable. Turning, Po Hua squinted. Her eyes were too dawn-dazzled to make out more than a diminutive smooth-headed silhouette cradling something to her chest.

"Tai Tai Yan," she answered. Her voice was rusty from disuse. Too weary with grief to keep up the pretense of politeness, she asked, "What do you want?"

"You taught me to dig for snails," responded the dragonwife. "You did not take my gift."

Anger flared, as she sat down in the mud. Po Hua husked out, "This is because I did not want your snails? You let my husband die because I did not take your snails?! You let my village suffer because I did not--" She choked on the words, momentarily unable to speak.

"I am sorry about your husband," replied the spirit-creature in a tone of near-disinterest. "But I chose you that day. I chose you when you did not take my gift. I chose you to care for my daughter."

Po Hua looked up; as her pupils constricted painfully against the light, she saw what it was that the dragonwife held so closely to her flat chest. Such a small thing, opalescent-skinned, with fragments of eggshell and fluid stuck to its torso, and lashless black eyes. Even as she watched, it began to thrash about, opening its mouth in a silent cry, demanding food noiselessly.

Her shorn head ached; it was too heavy to shake back and forth. A protest formed in her mouth, the closest to >no' that she could come without attacking the spirit-creature with her fists. "You don't have daughters. You have sons." That was the way it had always been. "Wormlings."

"That is the way of things, except when it is not." The dragonwife shrugged, as her burden's mouth gaped even wider in desperate demand. She poked a rounded fingertip into that open maw experimentally; the infant sucked, briefly appeased, and then spat out the offering. "Once every hand of hundred years, my husband comes to me so bright with dragonfire that ten million liveborn sons would not contain it. And when we lie down together, we make one egg."

"A dragonwife egg," Po Hua said, drawing the words out. A daughter for the dragonwife, and none for her.

"Yes," confirmed the spirit-creature, black gaze drifting away from the burden held so awkwardly in her arms. "My daughter is new-hatched. Take her and go."

Anger pricked at her again, even more sharply. "You don't want it? Then let it die, like my husband died. Like my child died. Like the village is dying. Why should I help you?"

"I am sorry for your village, Mei Mei," the dragonwife said, sounding as if she was parroting words she did not understand.

"And I am sorry for your daughter, Tai Tai Yan," retorted Po Hua, striving to match the dragonwife's tone and inflections as closely as possible. "But she is not my concern."

"She is not my concern," the dragonwife replied. For a moment, Po Hua thought the spirit-creature was mocking her with the repetition, or making a game of it. As the dragonwife stooped, she continued to speak, dropping the infant face-up into the mud near Po Hua's feet. It writhed there, twisting in protest until it was coated with the sludge of the lakeshore. "That is not the way of things. Do you think I do not know how it should be? This is not my first daughter."

Po Hua ground her teeth together, silent for a long moment as she stared at the tiny scrap of life that was thrashing in the mud. Her eyes narrowed. "Then tell me, Tai Tai Yan. How should it be?"

The dragonwife appeared to be oblivious to the contempt in Po Hua's voice. "The egg is laid, and I lose the little magic I have. The rice begins to die. The village begins to fail. In late summer, my daughter hatches. I give her to a human woman, who takes her away to an uninhabited lake and leaves her there to grow or die. My magic returns to me. That is the way of things." Her hands were relaxed at her sides; she was as unconcerned with her daughte's struggles as she had been with her sons' cannibalism.

"I don't care about your magic. What about the village?" Po Hua's voice cracked, as she felt the wet mud soak through her mourning clothes.

"The village survives," the dragonwife said, tilting her head to the side in seeming perplexity. "The village always survives, although some of the humans die. It has been there ever since I grew large enough to have the magic to sustain it."

Po Hua lowered her gaze to her lap, and did not answer. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two opalescent feet turn, moving out of her field of vision. The sound of water rippling drifted to her ears as the dragonwife departed, leaving her daughter behind in the mud.

Sitting and watching the infant struggle, Po Hua let her thoughts drift. As it turned its head to the side and bashed itself in the eye with a palely-shining fist, her thoughts came slowly. The village would survive; perhaps it might not be too much to hope that her parents could survive. Indifferent as the dragonwife was to her own children, how could she be anything but uninterested in the lives of the villagers, or even the village as a whole?

She wondered who had brought the dragonwife to this lake. How many thousands of years ago had it been? What had she been like? Had she resented the burden that had been thrust upon her? Why had she left the dragonwife to 'grow, or die?' If she had stayed...

After a long moment, Po Hua leaned forward and caught the mud-slick infant by an ankle. "You, I will teach better."

Walking her hands up the tiny body, until she could support its head as she lifted, she sighed. There would be a long journey ahead of them both.

The End

Story copyright S. Evans, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com