The Lost Ryū by Emi Watanabe Cohen

Author:Emi Watanabe Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Levine Querido

The curtained-off doorway led to a narrow hallway, which led to a low-ceilinged chamber at the back of the Egg Pavilion. It was even darker than the Pavilion itself and had a packed-dirt floor. In the center of the room, Kohei spotted a small, jade bowl. And then he saw them: a half-dozen dragon eggs, nestled on a tatami mat in the corner. Cheshire and Yuharu went over to pick one while Kohei and Isolde knelt down beside them to watch.

Apparently, there was a whole process for it: Yuharu tilted her head by each of the rough egg-stones, listening for something that Kohei couldn’t hear. Cheshire hovered behind her, a little more uncertain. Every once in a while, Yuharu gestured toward one of the stones, asking for his opinion. This wasn’t his ancestral home, but he was still a dragon, and he could hear the ōyatama’s music too.

“Kohei?” Yuharu called, tapping a particularly ordinary-looking rock. “If you’d like to make yourself useful, bring this one to the jade bowl, please.”

Ordinary-looking or not, the ōyatama was larger than Kohei thought it would be, and heavier too. He grimaced as he set it in place. “Are they all this dense?” he asked.

“No,” Yuharu replied. She was much less grumpy now that the merry-go-rounds were out of sight. “Each ōyatama has its own nature, its own personality. This one is settled and down-to-earth, like me. It told me so.”

“Right,” said Kohei, half-convinced she was teasing him. “So, what do we do?”

“Do you see the ridges on the sides of the egg? There should be one that’s deeper than the others. That’s the spot where the egg can absorb DNA from the scales.”

“It’s that easy?” Isolde asked.

“Yep. As you Americans would say, ‘easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.’”

“Lemon what?”

Kohei was too focused on their mission to laugh at Isolde’s indignation. Mostly, he was focused on the small, smooth weight in his pocket: Papa’s silver cigarette lighter, cold and heavy as a stone. Removing it from Papa’s study had felt odd, but there was something poetic about using it here. Kohei knew from their study session that if he applied heat at the right time, the dragon would have “big” DNA, and Ojiisan might look at it like he did in the impossible memory of the ryū parade, and then, maybe, everyone in his family could be happy again. Like Papa would’ve wanted.

“All right,” Kohei said, trying to hide the tremor in his voice. “Let’s do this.”

He thought that pulling a scale would be painful for Yuharu and Cheshire, but, to his surprise, they each plucked one off of their spines without flinching. It was like picking a loose hair from a human’s head. They also didn’t seem to care that they were about to pass on their DNA to a brand-new, living creature—it barely seemed to matter to them. It seemed strange to Kohei, human as he was, but he was too fascinated to ask questions. Yuharu saw him staring and handed him her pink scale so he could have a closer look.

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