Where the mountain meets the moon by Grace Lin

Author:Grace Lin [Grace Lin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Jeunesse
ISBN: 9780316114271
Published: 2009-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

24

Outside the city, Dragon waited. Even after Minli had disappeared, the dragon still watched from the trees. He had felt odd when she had passed the old stone lions and the door had closed behind her. He realized that he had never had a friend before, and what a nice feeling it was to have one.

And perhaps that was why the second night, when the sky darkened and the moon rose, Dragon crept out from the shadows of the trees and approached the closed, sleeping city. While he wouldn’t admit it, Dragon thought just standing by the walled city might make him feel just a bit less lonely.

The silver moon cast a frosted glow upon on the rough stone wall and guardian lion statues. Dragon stared at them as he approached the gate. Their stocky, heavily built bodies seemed to weigh down the stone platforms they sat upon; and the darkness of the night made their stiff curly manes look like rows of carved blossoms. One lion held a round ball underneath his forearm; the other held down a lion cub that seemed to be grinning at him. In fact, all the lions seemed to be grinning at him as if he were a secret joke they were watching.

“Am I so funny?” Dragon asked them as he passed.

“YES!” burst out the small lion cub, wriggling free of his mother’s paw. “You’re very funny!”

As Dragon jumped back in surprise, the lion cub laughed out loud, obviously highly amused at the dragon’s shock. But with his laugh, both adult lions shook themselves from their platforms.

“Xiao Mao!” the mother lion scolded. “Don’t laugh at the lost dragon. Besides, you know the rules. No moving in the presence of others.”

“But it’s a dragon,” the cub said, “not a people. He doesn’t count for the rules, does he? Besides, he is funny! Big dragon trying to tiptoe like a mouse!”

“Xiao Mao,” the deep, male voice of the other lion boomed in the air. The cub gave a half-hearted look of shame and was immediately quiet and still.

By this time, Dragon had found his voice.

“You’re alive, then,” he said.

“Of course we are,” the male lion said, scrutinizing the dragon with interested eyes. “Everything’s alive — the ground you’re walking on, the bark of those trees. We were always alive, even before we were lions and were just raw stone. However, carving us did give us a bit more personality.”

“You’re a fairly young dragon, aren’t you?” the female lion said kindly. “You seem only a hundred or a hundred and fifty years old. Don’t worry, you’ll learn soon enough.”

“A hundred!” the lion cub said. “I’m much older than you. I’m eight hundred and sixty-eight!”

“And you still have not attained wisdom,” the father lion told him. “Don’t tease the young one.”

“Well, what are you doing here?” the cub asked, not unkindly. “Dragons don’t usually come down to the earth much. Are you lost?”

Though unusual, the lions weren’t unfriendly, so Dragon settled down and told them the whole story

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