Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

Author:Carol Birch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385534406
Publisher: Charnwood
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

We took on supplies at the island of Formosa. There was a bird market, three dozen or so small, fat creatures, yellow, green and white, all crammed in one box, worse than at Jamrach’s. I wished I’d bought a cage, a bamboo palace. Two or three in there, I thought, spreading wings, rising through the height of it. I’d put in strong twigs instead of straight perches, with leaves maybe. There’s a thought. West lay China, Yan’s country.

“Which part are you from?” I asked him, me and him on deck one morning patching our clothes, looking towards the coast. “Are we near your home, Yan?”

He shook his head. “Far south of here,” he replied, “Tsamkong.” His black hair was growing long and parted above his brow in two thick waves.

“So we passed it by. Don’t you feel like jumping ship and going home?”

He smiled. His face was burned by the sun, the skin very tight and shiny across his bones.

“I go home in three more years,” he said. “And you? When for you?”

“In two.”

“I go home rich,” he said, “if the goddess allows.”

That long coast could be seen as a lilac band shimmering far away, but soon we left it behind and followed a string of islands east towards the Japanese whale grounds. The seas were full of fishing boats and Chinese junks laden with salt. In the hottest part of the day, the dragon would lie in his pool, but for most of the time he stayed absolutely still, raised up a little on his front legs, stirring only to eat the fish and birds and hogs I thrust through the hatch into his pen. In time he ate anything: our slops and leftovers, anything. I never trusted him. He was sly. It took two of us to muck out his pen, me with broom and shovel, Dan on guard with stick and gun. Even though we always kept him tethered, he was dangerous. He watched. Once he turned his head in my direction, opened his mouth very slowly and widely and gaped at me, a long, dream-like moment. A membrane of slime stretched shining between upper and lower jaw. Then, just as slowly, he closed it. A horrible display.

How was it we became so afraid of the dragon? Not just as anyone would be afraid of a wild animal with claws and teeth, but as if it was something more. We took on bad luck with that creature. Who was it first said that? In time we were all saying it. It began with a sickness. All of us went down with it apart from Abel Roper and Wilson Pride, but not all at the same time, thank God. It’s filthy and foul on a ship when everyone’s voiding from either end. Then poor Samson died. That was a horrible thing and that was because of the dragon. Samson had the run of the ship till the dragon came on-board. Joe Harper had erected a rough barricade to

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