Read Online Dragon Dance by John Christopher - Free Book Online

when he was nine or ten. The first couple of days, when rain kept him indoors, had been terribly dull; but at last the weather cleared, and he was able to go for awalk. The nearby countryside was as drab as the town—fields of potatoes and beet—but then he turned a corner in a lane and saw coming towards him, incredibly, a man with an elephant.
    His aunt, when he told her, was unimpressed: the farm belonged to a circus family, who sometimes sent animals down there for convalescence. It wasn’t remarkable that he had seen an elephant being exercised.
    For him, though, it was and remained one of the most astonishing and thrilling encounters of his life. He felt the same way about the building that now confronted him. Behind was the mist through which they had plodded for so many weary hours; ahead, clear and sunlit, lay a mountain landscape whose jagged wildness seemed totally divorced from and alien to human activities. But also there, nestling beneath the mountain peak, was an elaborate and extensive complex of buildings, which must have taken decades, perhaps centuries, to erect.
    They were red and white against the grey of rock. On closer view, he could see that the white was granite, the red timber. He marvelled again at its existence here. The granite might have been quarriedsomewhere nearby, though he saw no evidence of that, but the wood must have been carried all the way up from the plains.
    The massive gates were open, revealing a long drive of stone flags flanked by blossoming gardens. He saw irises and peonies, lilies and lupins, and low-lying gold-cupped flowers that looked like oversized celandines. Except that, obviously, they weren’t. Celandines were marsh plants which could not survive at such an altitude.
    An archway led to a courtyard, where they parted from the guards. Bei Tsu conducted them to a patio with a pool where fat fish floated in the shade of water lilies. At the far side, two snarling porcelain dogs, oversized Technicolor Pekingese, guarded a doorway. They went through to a hall whose floor and ceiling were black, walls a deep rose-gold, furnished only with two low tables on which lamps stood. The hall gave on to a corridor, with more lamps in niches. At the end of it, before a second doorway, Bei Tsu stood to one side, put his hands together, and bowed his head in farewell.
    His departing footsteps echoed as they went in. This room was smaller and not so bare. A friezeabout a yard in depth ran round the walls, depicting a continuous landscape: mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes and waterfalls, deer-parks and villages succeeded one another. It was a living landscape, with birds and fish and small animals, peasants working, mandarins contemplating nature. The ceiling here was creamy white, and the walls blue above a polished azure floor. Lamps glowed behind blue glass. A smell of something like incense came from enamelled bronze urns set at intervals along the walls. There was furniture: tables and chairs.
    â€œIs this the guest room?” Brad asked. “Those mats over there look as though they’re meant for sleeping on.”
    Simon felt unsettled. “Is it all right to talk?”
    â€œWho’s to stop us? Who’s here, anyway? They maybe don’t need guards on top of a mountain—but no servants? No hellos?”
    â€œPerhaps we’re meant to wait here till someone comes.”
    Brad went over to a table on which there were various bowls and dishes.
    â€œA waiting room, laid for supper?” He examined the display more closely. “Rice, of course, and ricecakes. But this looks like fish in some kind of sauce. And that is cold lobster. And look here.”
    He picked something from a bowl and held it up: an apple.
    Simon said: “I suppose it could have been brought up from the valley.”
    â€œThe apples in Li Nan were still tiny. This is ripe.”
    â€œAn early variety?”
    â€œAnd we’re a couple of hundred miles